“What a weird conversation that would be,” said Tess. “The squirrel would have only seen you rolling around naked, so Mattis would think you’re some kind of pervert. More of one than you actually are.”
“If I’m a pervert, then that makes you a pervert’s plaything,” said Lee.
He tapped a teasing finger against her lips. Tess surprised him by opening her mouth and giving the tip of his finger a quick suck, much like she had a few minutes earlier. Lee felt himself getting excited again, despite his recent exertions.
“You should go check in with the others,” said Tess.
“Yeah, I should.”
He got dressed and made the transfer back onto the balcony. He found Mattis and Kei waiting in the same place they’d met up earlier, though a single glance at their serious expressions was enough to tell him that the situation had evolved since then.
“The lich was spotted outside by one of Mattis’s bonded animals,” said Kei. “It’s somewhere out there. We aren’t sure exactly where.”
Lee’s hand went for his kris dagger on reflex before remembering his newly acquired pistol. His fingers twitched with anticipation, and out of the corner of his eye he saw Tess hug her arms across her chest.
“Well?” he asked. “What are we waiting for?”
“I think its goal is to get us to open the gate,” said Mattis. “It wants inside the college.”
“That could work in our favor,” said Kei. “It’s much easier to hunt a monster confined by walls.”
“I would vastly prefer that we neutralize the threat without having to resort to that kind of measure.” Mattis scowled and exhaled loudly through her nose. “But I do see your point.”
“So?” said Lee. “What’s the plan?”
Lee half expected Mattis to demand that he, as an initiate, retreat to somewhere safe within the college.
“We’ll open the gate and proceed outside,” said Mattis. “All three of us. We’ll stay within sight of each other and wait for it to show itself. If it tries to rush by us into the school, we collapse on it.”
Kei and Lee both nodded. Kei already had his gun in hand, and Lee reached into his sweatshirt to draw his own, though it still felt unwieldy in his hand compared to the familiar handle of his kris dagger.
Again, he found it strange that Mattis didn’t say anything about the weapon, or at least demand to know where he’d acquired it and how long he’d been in possession of it. Her eyes did linger on the pistol’s barrel for a few seconds, but she seemed to accept it in the same pragmatic style that often accompanied her Meta-Magic instruction.
“Remember,” said Mattis. “We’re not splitting up completely. The goal is to draw the lich out, not for any of us to confront it alone.”
“Got it,” said Lee.
Mattis took the lead as they headed across campus, drawing to a stop in front of the gate. She opened it and led them outside into the frigid winter night. Lee wished he’d thought to grab his coat from his dorm, but it was warmer than average and his adrenaline was enough to blunt his susceptibility to the cold.
It felt later in the night than it actually was, as though the lich had co-opted the early evening’s darkness for its own purposes. Lee split off to the right once he was outside the gate, while Mattis continued a short distance down the path toward Gillum and Kei went left.
Tess walked alongside Lee, holding his arm, still within his mystic stream. She was shivering, and he knew that it had nothing to do with the cold. He saw a shape move amidst the windblown snow ahead of them and immediately came a stop.
The lich’s silhouette seemed to materialize from the shadows. It didn’t approach Lee, instead just standing where it was, watching him and Tess with unnerving stillness. Lee aimed his pistol at it, though he wasn’t sure if he stood a chance at firing an accurate shot from that distance.
“Tess,” whispered the lich. “It’s time.”
“No…” Tess’s arms jerked outward, and she let out a terrified gasp. “No! Lee, he’s… calling to me.”
Lee had been worried that the lich might try to control her again, but leaving her alone on campus had seemed like an even greater risk than bringing her with him. He reached an arm out and strengthened the will behind his mystic stream.
Tess stepped away from him before his fingers made contact with her. She clutched at her head and let out an anguished scream, falling to one knee.
“Tess!” shouted Lee. “Hey, it’s okay. Focus on your breathing. I’m right here with you.”
“I can’t—stop it,” she whimpered. “Lee—I can’t control myself!”
The change happened gradually, then all at once. It began in Tess’s eyes, the vibrancy and sparkle that usually danced within them fading to a dull emptiness. She hugged her arms across her body, shaking with rippling tremors that she was trying and failing to fight against.
“Tess!” he shouted.
“Run, Lee,” she said. She shook her head slowly, mouth agape in the kind of anguished horror that made Lee sick to his stomach.
“Tess, just keep breathing,” he said. “It’s okay. It… will be okay.”
She stood up then, moving with the clumsy motions of an afternoon alcoholic, or more aptly, a puppet on twisted strings. She opened her mouth, trying to say something, only to let out the strained squeak of a person who’d just lost their voice.
She turned around, not facing him. Lee tried to grab her shoulder, but Tess moved with inhuman speed. He went after her, but within three steps, she was already out of the range of his mystic stream. Lee watched in horror as her ethereal silhouette faded and then disappeared alongside the lich, into the shadows of the night.
CHAPTER 33
The next few minutes were some of the longest and most helpless of Lee’s entire life. He wanted to chase after Tess, but Mattis and Kei took his shouting to be the signal. They arrived and immediately began questioning him on what he’d seen.
“I have to go after it,” said Lee. “Now! I can’t wait.”
“Initiate Amaranth,” snapped Mattis. “This is not the time for heroics. The monster has obviously retreated for the moment. We should retreat back to the college and—”
“I can’t!” cried Lee. “Yo—you don’t understand.”
She didn’t understand, and he knew couldn’t make her understand. Even the truth wouldn’t be enough to make Mattis see his point of view, not coming from him in the emotionally ruined state he was in. Even if Kei backed him up, Mattis would err on the side of caution.
Or, at least so Lee thought. She stared at him, seeing, if not the truth of what he was as a mystic, then the truth of his emotions. Mattis looked back and forth across the endless snow surrounding Primhaven and breathed a heavy sigh.
“Fine,” said Mattis. “You may search around this area for a time, Lee. I’ll have one of my bonded animals stay with you in case anything happens.”
“I will stay with him,” said Kei.
Mattis hesitated for a moment, then nodded.
“So be it,” she said.
She left, returning to wait at Primhaven’s gate. Lee started off in the direction that Tess had disappeared, but it wasn’t as though she’d left tracks or anything he could use to trace her. He saw her again in his mind’s eye, shuddering and desperate, unable to even speak to him in those last few seconds. What had the lich done to her? He needed to do more than just bring her back, he needed to save her from whatever sinister state of control the monster had forced over her.
“I notice that your companion ghost is no longer here,” said Kei. “Did the lich attack her?”
Lee had to force the words out, his throat raw and painful.
“It did… something. I don’t know what. I don’t understand.”
Kei nodded and said nothing more. He set a hand on Lee’s shoulder, offering him strength as they continued the search. They did a full lap around the college, along with a trip to Gillum and back, but it only confirmed what he’d already suspected.
The lich was gone, and Tess along with it.
Mattis insisted on everyone getting some sleep once they were back on campus. Lee retired to his dorm and took her advice, though it was as much out of hopes that he’d “wake up” as it was that he’d drift off. He lay in bed, weighed down by his frustration and regret, and forced his eyes closed. A memory came to him as soon as he did, a memory better left forgotten.
***
“Zoe says it’s called an amaranth,” said Eldon.
He grinned as he held the flower out. Kylie had been so shy when they’d first met, but she leaned forward with wide eyes, sniffing the indigo flower with enthusiasm. So much enthusiasm that she went past it, and the petals poked harmlessly through her young, ethereal face.
“So pretty,” said Kylie.
“You like it?” he asked.
“I like it best!” said Kylie.
Eldon grinned as he watched her clapping her hands together. They were alone in the backyard of the apartment complex where they both lived. Or rather, where he lived, and she once had. It felt strange to acknowledge the fact that Kylie was dead, but she’d already told him as much. Eldon couldn’t understand how he could see her, but he enjoyed her company enough that it didn’t matter. He was so sick of being alone.
“I can bring you more,” he said. “There’s plenty on the way to the bus stop! I’ll bring you more tomorrow, I promise.”
“Bring me amaranths on our wedding day,” said Kylie.
“You want to marry me?”
“Yeah!”
“We’re too young,” said Eldon. “We’re just kids.”
He tried to turn away, hiding his smile and reddened cheeks.
“I’ll wear it in my hair, like a princess!” announced Kylie.
She leaned her head forward, trying to entangle the flower within her ethereal curled locks. Eldon knew it wouldn’t work, but felt a sudden certainty that he could help her, if he wanted to. He closed his eyes and breathed, attempting something that was new, yet strangely familiar.
“Here,” he said. He let out a small breath as color suddenly returned to Kylie’s small body, face, and hair. Eldon knew that he hadn’t really brought her back to life, much as he’d known how to try it in the first place, but that didn’t seem to matter to her.
“You’re amazing!” She took the flower from him and tucked it into her hair. “I’ll be a princess, and you’ll be a prince, and one day, we’ll both be king and queen!”
***
“Kylie, stop!” shouted Eldon. “That hurts!”
Another rock hummed through the air, and he winced as it struck him square in the shoulder. Kylie was laughing, and it was almost as though she couldn’t hear him.
“No it doesn’t!” she shouted. “It doesn’t hurt me…”
The game had started out in the same simple, childish way that it always did. Eldon had flicked a dandelion at her. She’d tossed a small dirt clod back. He’d thrown a similarly sized clump of grass in response, and then she’d thrown a rock.
And another rock. She’d kept going, ignoring Eldon’s pleas for her to stop. She could hear him, she was listening. She just couldn’t understand, as though she’d forgotten what it meant to hurt and be hurt.
“Kylie!” Eldon covered his head as another rock came within inches of striking him, this one larger than either of the two children would have normally been able to throw at their age. “Stop!”
***
“Kylie, just keep holding my hand,” said Eldon.
They were walking to the bus stop together. She insisted on making the walk with him now, so she could pick each amaranth herself, fresh, with all its petals. Kylie wasn’t looking at the flowers, this time. She was looking at the other people on the sidewalk, pushing and grabbing at them, laughing at their reactions.
“Look, Eldon!” laughed Kylie. “Isn’t it funny?”
She pushed the cane of an elderly woman. Eldon barely had time to utter a syllable before Kylie’s newest victim wavered on her feet and toppled to the ground. Eldon glared at her, letting go of her hand to help.
“Ooh,” said the woman. “Thank you, young man. You’re too kind.”
“I’m sorry,” muttered Eldon. “I—”
“Look, Eldon!”
Kylie was laughing again. She was standing in the middle of the bike lane, her attention fixated on a fast-pedaling biker heading straight toward her. There was a semi-truck in the vehicle lane, traveling faster than the speed limit, like everyone did on that particular road.
“Kylie!” screamed Eldon. He didn’t care about the looks people gave him. He didn’t care about keeping his secret, like he’d promised Zoe he would.
He watched, in numb horror, as Kylie shoved the biker. The man’s handlebars twisted at an acute angle. His bike tipped over to the side, and he fell along with it. The truck didn’t even slow down.
There weren’t any screams at first, just a sickening crunch of bone, followed by a few scrapes from the spasms of a dying body. Blood soaked into the road, tan grey darkened to reddish black. Eldon had never seen anyone die firsthand before. He’d always wondered if everyone left a ghost when they died, wondered how scary it would be to run into so many ghosts.
He realized then that the alternative was far crueler, and far lonelier. No ghost arose from the biker, but people did start to scream.
***
“It’s a toy, Eldon,” whispered Kylie. “Let’s play with it. I’ll be the mama and you’ll be the papa.”
“It’s not a toy, Kylie,” said Eldon. “Please… just come over here. Come away from her.”
He hadn’t gone out back to play with Kylie behind the apartment complex for the past three days. He’d thought maybe she’d just go away, go to wherever ghosts that didn’t have anybody to play with went in the end. Instead, she’d found him at his babysitter’s, one of Zoe’s older friends from school.
The babysitter’s little sister was less than a year old. Kylie was running a hand across the baby’s head, ethereal fingers prodding against its chubby, innocent face in a manner it clearly didn’t enjoy.
“Kylie,” he pleaded. “You can’t keep hurting people.”
“It doesn’t hurt them,” said Kylie. “Watch!”
She closed her hand around the baby’s neck. It let out a hideous, panicked scream that cut off as Kylie’s ghostly will took form. The babysitter was in the other room with her boyfriend, out of earshot of the horror that was about to play out.
“No!” shouted Eldon. “You can’t do this!”
He charged, using his trick to make Kylie into a ghost he could interact with. He slammed his shoulder into her, knocking her away from the baby and into the dining room cabinet. Plates and expensive silverware fell from the upper shelf in a clatter. He expected Kylie to relax and reconsider what she was doing, like she often did when he forced her to stop.
She didn’t this time. Her eyes narrowed, and there was a new, unpleasant edge to them, as though the goodness had been snuffed out like a candle flame at the end of its wick.
“You’re mean, Eldon!” shouted Kylie.
She grabbed him by the throat, choking him with such ferocity that Eldon felt his eyes bulging outward. He pushed forward again, banging against the cabinet a second time. The two of them fell to the floor. Eldon flailed out with his hand, finding a butter knife. He jabbed it at her, desperate to make space, desperate to breathe.
A butter knife shouldn’t have done anything, not to a person, not to a ghost. Kylie screamed as the silver utensil made contact. She collapsed forward as though Eldon had truly stabbed her, and it was only then that he realized… he had. She glared at him, but the expression softened, and then her eyes were dripping with a flash flood of tears.
“Eldon…” she whispered. “One day… I’m gonna… marry you.”
And then she was gone.
CHAPTER 34
Lee began running through the gamut of post-nightmare emotions and rationalizations before he’d even c
ompletely opened his eyes. Tess and Kylie weren’t the same. He’d just been a boy, barely eight years old, and Kylie had just been a little girl, too young to have a real moral compass.
Their circumstances were different, and nothing was inevitable. He was in control and could choose a new path forward. He repeated the sentences to himself like protective mantras, desperate for whatever optimism they could provide. He punched his pillow and flung it across the room.
He’d fallen asleep late and woken up late. Judging from the sun’s position in the sky, it was already past noon. The campus was still empty, but the silence felt more like a punishment than a gift as he made his way toward the dining hall.
Kei was waiting outside the Seruna Center. He nodded to Lee and fell in step beside him, not saying anything until they’d both cobbled together lunchtime meals out of what had been left by the kitchen staff.
“Are you coping?” asked Kei.
Lee shrugged, though the way his chest ached at the question was an answer in itself.
“I know that this may be hard for you to hear right now, but I must say it.” Kei bowed his head respectfully as he continued speaking. “You are a powerful shinigami, Lee Amaranth, and with that role comes responsibility. You have a duty to uphold, a path you must walk.”
“What does that have to do with anything?” asked Lee. “I’m here, aren’t I? I was with you and Mattis last night. I was outside when…”
His throat constricted, and he stopped talking, knowing any words he forced out wouldn’t sound like real words.
“There is a painful truth which I think you already know, however much you attempt to avoid it,” said Kei. “Your companion ghost, for all she may have aided you, is not a being of this world. She’s caught between stages, in purgatory, in a sense.”
“No,” said Lee, with a grimace. “Tess is different. She… she wants to be here. She wants to be with me.”
“Does she? What would you say to another spirit that made similar claims about its place and its future?”
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