by J. A. White
If Elijah heard her, he gave no indication at all. Within moments, he was standing face-to-face with his wife. As the portal began to close, he gazed into her eyes and gently touched her cheek.
Only then did he drop the Brightkey.
The moment the key struck the ground, Elijah was expelled from his Bright like a fallen angel. The triangle slammed shut and vanished.
“I’m sorry,” Cordelia said.
Elijah looked away, his eyes brimming with tears, and rose through the ceiling; now that he had refused his Brightkey, he was no longer bound to his ghost zone. A few moments later, Cordelia heard the sound of the armoire sliding across the floor.
Benji yanked the lever, and the floor opened above them. They ran up the stairs to find Darius staring in astonishment at the armoire.
“How did my key do that?” he asked.
“Later,” Cordelia said. “Right now, you and Vivi have to get down to the conservatory and free the teachers. They might be able to help.”
“Nice to meet you,” Vivi told Darius. “This is not a normal day for me.”
Cordelia turned toward Agnes. “You have to shut the portal pyramids down before the ghosts leave the school. I’m thinking the dumbwaiter entrance is a safer bet than—”
“How am I going to turn off the pyramids?” Agnes asked. “I don’t have Elijah’s instructions, remember?”
Cordelia grinned. “You don’t need Elijah’s instructions,” she said. “You have Elijah. He’ll show you what to do.”
The architect gave Agnes a quick nod.
“Cool,” Agnes said. “But even with his help, it’s going to take some time.”
“I know,” Cordelia said. “That’s why Benji and I are going to create a distraction.”
“And how are we going to do that?” Benji asked, clearly afraid of the answer.
“Something I just thought of!” Cordelia said, smiling brightly. “And it’s totally not dangerous and insane!”
Benji groaned into his hands. “We’re going to die,” he mumbled.
Cordelia looked around at her friends, both living and dead, and a feeling of warmth filled her body, like drinking hot cocoa after shoveling snow. She wished there was enough time to hug every one of them. But each second they stood there brought them closer to disaster.
“Good luck,” she said—and took off.
23
Face-to-Face
The safest route to their destination would have been the secret passageway accessed through the third-floor storage room, but Ms. Dunsworth had locked that up months ago. They had no choice but to sneak all the way to the fourth floor, where the ghosts would be gathering in preparation for their pilgrimage to the outside world. From there, they could cut through Dr. Roqueni’s apartment.
As far as plans went, it wasn’t ideal.
Benji and Cordelia crept up the western stairwell while listening for the slightest noise. The school was silent. As was Benji, who hadn’t said a word since Cordelia explained how they were going to create their distraction.
“Who was president during the Mexican-American War?” Cordelia whispered. “It’s really bugging me.”
Benji put a finger to his lips.
“Sorry,” Cordelia said. “I babble when I’m nervous.”
“What’s there to be nervous about?” Benji asked. “This is a completely flawless plan.”
“I didn’t hear you come up with a better one. We need a distraction. This is going to work.”
“How can you be so sure? Because of some page Agnes showed us in an old journal?”
“It’s not just that,” Cordelia said. “If Ms. Dunsworth was trapped, it only makes sense that—”
The door above them slammed open, and a line of students spilled onto the stairwell with the jerky, unpracticed steps of living marionettes. Cordelia recognized a few familiar faces: Francesca Calvino, her normally inquisitive eyes sharpened to a single task; Grant Thompson, marching with borrowed purpose; and Mason James, who looked pretty much the same. Brows were narrowed in intense concentration as the ghosts struggled to maintain hold of their new hosts, slipping in and out like cowboys clinging to bucking bulls.
Ms. Dunsworth was right, Cordelia thought, cringing at the grotesque procession. It’s harder to possess a child.
A boy she didn’t recognize began to turn in their direction. Benji yanked Cordelia out of sight just in time.
“We’ll have to wait until they pass,” he whispered.
Cordelia nodded. It would add precious minutes to their trip, but they didn’t have any other choice. She just hoped that Agnes was making better time. By now, Cordelia figured, she should be in the passageway with the portal pyramids, working with Elijah to turn them off.
If no one saw them, Cordelia thought.
A door opened beneath them. Cordelia heard footsteps heading in their direction—a second procession of students, coming from the floor below them. She looked up. The first line had slowed to a trickle, but it hadn’t stopped.
Benji and Cordelia were stuck in the middle.
“Quick,” Benji said. “Blend in.”
Trying to mimic the jerky manner of the ghosts as best they could, Benji and Cordelia joined the line just as Miranda Watkins came out the door. She looked them over, eyes narrowed with suspicion.
“Where have you two been?” she asked in a haughty tone. Her hands spasmed for a moment before settling on her hips.
“Had to pee,” Benji said. “I forgot about that part. Been a while since I’ve been alive, you know?”
“Eww,” Miranda said, walking off.
The hallway was packed with students slowly making their way toward the mirror gallery. For the most part, the ghosts walked in silence—Cordelia imagined that talking while walking was a nearly insurmountable challenge—but every so often a hushed voice shared its future plan: “I’m going to eat all the rocky road ice cream I want!” “I’m going to travel the world!” “I’m going to wear a seat belt this time!”
Limbs flailed; bodies rocked unpredictably from side to side. Cordelia and Benji were jostled apart. Within moments, she lost him in a sea of bodies that was toothpaste-squeezed from the narrow hallway into the spacious mirror gallery, where older students directed the new arrivals into queues that had formed in front of each mirror. Cordelia quickly found herself eighth in line behind a mirror lined with seashells. Its curtain, along with the curtains of all the other mirrors, had been torn away. Peeking around the long line of backs, she saw the reflection of the first student, a funhouse distortion that wavered and jumped like a television with bad reception.
“It is almost time, my friends,” Ms. Dunsworth said.
She was standing on the large, sturdy table from the teachers’ room, which had been repurposed as a makeshift stage in the center of the hall. For a single, horrifying moment, Cordelia was directly in her line of sight, but then a tall boy took his place in line and blocked her from view. For the first time in her life, Cordelia was grateful she was small.
“I know that you are still growing accustomed to these vibrant new shells,” Ms. Dunsworth said, “but I promise you that it will get easier. Practice makes perfect, as they say!”
A hand squeezed her arm. Benji. He held a finger to his lips and led her through the lines of students, who were too busy staring spellbound at Ms. Dunsworth to notice them. They passed out of the crowd and into the hallway on the opposite end of the mirror gallery, feeling more exposed than ever. Cordelia could see the stairway that led up to Dr. Roqueni’s apartment, teasingly close.
“Where do you think you’re going?” a tiny voice screamed.
The crowd of students parted to reveal the boy once known as Ezra, pointing triumphantly in their direction.
“Well done, Harold,” Ms. Dunsworth said, clapping her hands. “Luke! Eric!” Two boys stepped forward. One of them was a mean-looking eighth grader who had once lit his report card on fire in the boys’ bathroom. The other one was Mason. “Gather a
few volunteers and search the school. If these two have escaped, it means their friends are out there as well.”
The two boys cut through the crowd, eager to follow their orders.
“What about these two?” Harold asked, sneering at Benji and Cordelia.
“We have a few minutes,” Ms. Dunsworth said, straightening her glasses. “Let’s have a little competition.” She faced the crowd. “Bring them to me, and you go through the mirror first!”
Cordelia and Benji, not waiting another moment, took off down the hall. They were immediately followed by a stampede of middle-schoolers. By the time they sped up the stairs toward the door to Dr. Roqueni’s apartment, several members of the track team were on their heels.
Please be unlocked, Cordelia thought. Please be unlocked.
Benji grabbed the doorknob. Turned. Pushed.
It was locked.
“Move!” Cordelia exclaimed, jamming her hand into her pocket. She withdrew the spare key that Dr. Roqueni had given her and slid it into the lock. As Benji shoved a boy named Stu Collins into the crowd of approaching students, Cordelia backed into the apartment and pulled Benji in behind her. Working together, they managed to slam the door shut and turn the bolt.
Dozens of fists pounded against the door. Cordelia wasn’t sure how long it would hold.
They sprinted through the apartment and crashed through the door at the end of the hallway. The houses remained atop their wooden pedestals as though nothing had changed since the summer day when it had all begun.
“We need to hurry,” Cordelia said. “I’ll start with the ones on the—”
“Cordelia,” Benji said.
His voice, sharp with desperation, was an arrow in her heart. She spun around and screamed. Ms. Dunsworth—the real Ms. Dunsworth—stood behind Benji. There was nothing particularly evil, or even notable, about her appearance. She was a middle-aged woman in a drab housedress that Cordelia doubted had been stylish even when she was alive. Her grayish-blond hair was frizzy and unkempt. If Cordelia had passed her in the halls of Shadow School, she might have assumed her Brightkey was a brush.
“Let him go,” Cordelia said.
Ms. Dunsworth clenched the back of Benji’s neck. She moved her lips, and Benji spoke like a ventriloquist’s dummy. The voice was his. The words and inflection were not.
“All that running around,” Ms. Dunsworth/Benji said, “and all you’ve done is trap yourself in a dark attic with the ghost who wants to kill you.”
“Stop using his voice!” Cordelia exclaimed, clapping her hands to her ears. “It isn’t right!”
“Don’t talk to me about what’s right,” Ms. Dunsworth said, moving deeper into the attic. Benji’s feet shuffled forward to keep pace. “Do you know how I died? I choked on a piece of overcooked chicken. Alone. In my dining room. And then I spent the next fifty years watching family after family move into my house and enjoy their precious happy lives. How I longed to be them. With enough practice, I learned how to do it.”
Cordelia backed deeper into the attic. She glanced over her shoulder and saw that Ms. Dunsworth’s house, which she had last seen in the conservatory, had been returned to its original position on the pedestal. It was a little crooked.
“Let me ask you, Cordelia, since you’re so keen on right and wrong—was it right that they got to live while I didn’t? All because I didn’t chew my meat carefully enough?”
“I’m sorry about what happened to you,” Cordelia said. “It was a terrible accident. But that doesn’t change anything. Life isn’t meant for the dead. It’s meant for the living.”
For the third time, a terrible grinding noise shook the school. It was followed by a soft whirring, like a machine kicking into gear. Cordelia heard shouts of joy coming from the mirror gallery.
“You hear that?” Ms. Dunsworth asked. A sinister smile stretched across her face—and Benji’s face as well. “That’s the sound of our liberation. My people won’t begin without me, so I really need to end this as quickly as possible. I suppose it will be easier if I have hands to wrap around your neck.”
She vanished into Benji’s body. After flexing her fingers, just to make sure they were prepared to carry out their gruesome task, Benji/Dunsworth took a few steps forward. Only then did she notice how close Cordelia was standing to her former home.
“That’s your plan?” Dunsworth asked. “You were snooping around during one of our faculty meetings, weren’t you? You saw how I punished those who failed me.” Benji’s eyes burned with a cold, merciless fury that left no doubt there was an imposter behind the wheel. “Do you hope to trap me, just like Elijah did all those years ago? Do you think I’m stupid enough to go anywhere near that damned house?”
“No,” Cordelia said. “But I do think you’re stupid enough to follow me into a roomful of phantoms.”
She turned to her left and shoved a house off its pedestal. Glass shattered, and a tall figure suddenly appeared. It had a windowpane for a head—its eyes, nose, and mouth like streaks of mud—and venetian-blind fingers that scraped the floor.
“You weren’t the only ghost that Elijah captured in one of these traps,” Cordelia said. “And when ghosts get old, they change. Sometimes they gain special powers, like you. But other times . . .”
Cordelia knocked the second house to the ground, releasing a small girl with horns who ran on all fours out the attic door. At the same time, the man with the windowpane head strode in Ms. Dunsworth’s direction. She screamed once with Benji’s voice, then fled his body and plunged through the floor. The man followed her. Cordelia resisted the urge to check on Benji and continued to destroy the houses, afraid that if she stopped for a single moment, her courage, already teetering, would abandon her completely. She tried not to look directly at what she was releasing—a cloaked figure weighed down with chains, a sad-looking dog with a triangular collar—praying that they would feel too indebted to their rescuer to harm her. Fortunately, these phantoms—or whatever they were—seemed eager to get as far away from their tiny prisons as quickly as possible, and paid Cordelia little heed as they ran/slithered/flew out of the room.
She heard screaming from downstairs. She hoped that was a good sign.
“What happened?” Benji asked, rising unsteadily to his feet. A glowing orb brushed passed him, leaking droplets of light, and he nearly fell again.
“Help me push the rest of them over!” Cordelia exclaimed.
Working together, they made short work of the re-maining houses. It was Benji who pushed over the last one: a stone farmhouse. Moments after it hit the ground, a scarecrow materialized before them. It took a moment to bow in gratitude before skipping out the door.
Cordelia had hoped that these otherworldly creatures, trapped by Elijah Shadow, might scare the ghosts out of their human hosts, buying them a little more time. As she retraced her steps to the mirror gallery, however—and heard the chorus of screams awaiting her—Cordelia wondered if she had underestimated the whirlwind she had unleashed.
24
Mirrors
It was chaos.
Students and ghosts were running everywhere—sometimes together, sometimes apart. Two creatures that looked like tri-winged pterodactyls fluttered overhead, occasionally picking off a ghost and tearing away a layer, leaving them fainter than before. A white sheet that kept changing its shape glided across the floor. Even the more workaday spirits—a tall woman wearing a red scarf, a little boy waving a sparkler—were making their presence felt. Ghosts fled bodies like passengers abandoning sinking ships, leaving students to wake in a state of shock and confusion. Fortunately, Vivi and Darius had done their job and freed the teachers from the conservatory. Cordelia saw Ms. Jackson—the real Ms. Jackson—help a frightened girl to her feet, and Mr. Bruce carry a wounded boy to safety. And then, in a sight that did much to renew her flagging energy, Cordelia caught a glimpse of Mr. Derleth leading an entire group of fifth graders toward the east stairwell.
“The portals are working!” Benji
exclaimed, tackling a boy with blond hair. “Don’t let the ghosts escape!”
Cordelia looked around the room and saw, with horror, that the mirrors no longer cast reflections. Instead, each one showed a different location just beyond the walls of Shadow School: the playground, the basketball court, the front yard. The ghost wearing Francesca Calvino leaped straight through a mirror and into the parking lot. She giggled and ran away.
“No!” Cordelia screamed, wondering how many other ghosts had already escaped.
She turned to Benji, but he was no longer there. Scanning the mirror gallery, she saw him on the opposite end, running at full speed. His target was clear: Ms. Dunsworth, safely ensconced in Dr. Roqueni’s body again, heading for the nearest portal. Cordelia took off after them as Benji tackled Ms. Dunsworth from behind. She kicked him away and got to her feet, limping toward the mirror. Cordelia ran as hard as she could, but there was no way to reach her in time. With both hands on the frame of the mirror, Ms. Dunsworth took a moment to fix Cordelia with a vicious smile of triumph.
Before she could take that final step to the outside world, the mirror turned black.
“What is this?” Ms. Dunsworth screamed, poking the surface. It rippled like water. “Bring it back! Bring it back!”
Cordelia saw a boy next to her fall forward as the ghost within him was yanked away. It was a man wearing a tool belt. He looked confused as he floated across the gallery to a nearby mirror, which cycled between a scenic mountain lodge and hockey game before settling on a workshop laid out with every tool imaginable. Cordelia heard the sound of sawing and saw the ghost smile.
He vanished into his Bright.
“Agnes did it,” Cordelia said, staring in wonder as the mirrors around her began to reveal all manner of paradise: still and silent lakes without a whisper of a breeze, a thunderous ticker-tape parade marching down a city street, towering stacks of books surrounding a comfy chair, cartoon heroes fighting a monstrous dragon, a baby in a crib. The paradises were as varied and unique as the humans meant to inhabit them. And here they came! All around Cordelia, ghosts were being pulled toward the nearest available mirrors. Some went willingly, clapping their hands as the dehaunter pinned down their eternal home. Others struggled. It didn’t matter. There was no escaping the mirrors’ hold.