Haunted Heroine

by Sarah Kuhn

  “What a sight that would be,” I said, chuckling. “Shall we split up, cover double the ground?”

  “Um . . .” Her expression turned hesitant, her gaze going to my stomach.

  “I’m fine—for real this time,” I said gently. “And if I’m suddenly not, I’ll yell real loud.”

  “All right,” she conceded, her eyes still locked on my stomach. “Yell with all your might. In the meantime . . .” Her gaze flicked up, scanning the crowd. “I think I see Shelby over there. Do you want to try to go talk to her? I can look for Leonora and Richard.”

  “Sounds good,” I said, following her gaze. I thought I saw a quick flash of shaggy hair and Pucci print, then it disappeared behind a gaggle of girls in Slytherin school uniforms. “I’m surprised, though. Usually when we have a solid lead, you want to handle it yourself.”

  Aveda shrugged. “You have a way with Shelby—with all of these kids, really. I think you’ll get better results out of her than I will.”

  “We’ll see,” I said. “I’m not feeling super confident after today’s costume shopping adventure.”

  I managed to get Shelby in my sights again—she was hard to miss in all those bright colors. She was hunched over one of the cornucopias, picking through the candy avalanche. I left Aveda to search for Richard and Leonora and aimed myself toward the girl in the loud Pucci dress.

  “Shelby?” I said her name softly, hoping not to scare her.

  She whipped around, eyes shifting back and forth. She’d literally been caught with her hand in the cookie jar. Er, candy cornucopia.

  “I’m sorry about the dress!” she blurted out. Her words sounded garbled—probably because her mouth was stuffed full of candy. I sternly ordered myself not to smile, even though it was kind of funny.

  “It’s all right,” I said, taking a tentative step toward her. I felt like I was approaching a skittish wild animal. I really didn’t want her to bolt from me again. “Forget about the dress, I just want you to talk to me.”

  “I . . . I . . .” She crammed another handful of candy into her mouth and seemed to gulp it down without chewing. Then she leaned in, her eyes wide and terrified. “I’m a ghost.”

  “What?!” I shook my head, taking a step back from her. She threw me an injured look, still chewing away on a mixture of candy corn and Starburst. “Sorry,” I said hastily. “I . . . that is not what I was expecting you to say.”

  Shelby grimaced at me, backing away and grabbing another handful of candy. She was giving me a Gollum vibe. “Never mind. I was joking. Ha ha. Now I have to—”

  “You weren’t joking,” I said firmly, resting a hand on her shoulder. Frustration was clawing at my insides. Why was she pulling away from me so hard? Something was clearly wrong, and if she’d just tell me what it was . . . but what did she mean she was a ghost? “Talk to me. I’ll listen, I promise.”

  “I . . .” Shelby fiddled with the candy in her hand, playing with the crinkly plastic wrappers. She met my eyes and studied me, looking like she was trying to come to a decision. Then a weird sense of calm seemed to settle over her—that stillness I’d noticed the night of the dorm party. “This is all my fault,” she finally said, her tone measured and even. “But I’m going to make it right. I have to make it right.”

  And with that, she turned and took off.

  “Shelby . . .” I shook my head in frustration as she ran away from me for the second time today, those bright Pucci colors bobbing through the crowd.

  I started after her—then was stopped in my tracks by another searing jolt of pain, a knife stabbing straight into my abdomen.

  “Fuck,” I breathed, leaning back against the cornucopia table for support. I closed my eyes, and a million dots of light danced in front of them.

  I needed to talk to Shelby.

  I needed to find Aveda.

  I needed to yell.

  I needed to . . . to . . .

  I took a deep breath, forcing myself to focus on one thing at a time. I pushed myself up from the table, and scanned the crowd. I’d lost Shelby again. I started to elbow my way through, shoving my way past clusters of princesses and Pokémon. The sickly sweet scent of candy corn mingled with savory notes of hot, spiced apple cider floating through the air, making me feel like I was trapped in some sort of Halloween bubble. I took another breath, trying to banish the nausea that was threading its way through my stomach.

  Pain stabbed at me again, making my vision go hazy.

  “Ughhhhhhh.” I stumbled backward, clutching my stomach.

  “Evie?” Suddenly, Aveda was by my side, steadying me with one hand on my elbow and the other on my back. Her glamour was fully intact, and Angelica’s eyes were gazing at me with extreme concern. “You said you’d yell. That was not yelling.”

  “Yeah, did not anticipate how hard it would be to follow through with my yelling plans once it started feeling like someone was stabbing me in the gut. But listen, we have to find Shelby.”

  Aveda scanned the crowd, her eyebrows drawing together. “I don’t—”

  She was cut off by the orange and black twinkle lights suddenly shutting off, plunging us into total darkness.

  A hush fell over the crowd.

  The clock tower chimed, its deep bong reverberating through the entire campus.

  Then the screaming started.

  “Students, please!” I heard Provost Glennon yell over the din. “Everything’s fine, we’re having some technical difficulties!”

  “No,” I murmured. “That’s not right. She’s lying again. Something really bad is about to happen. I can feel it.” I couldn’t explain how or why I knew this—I just did. Dread curled low in my gut, a cold hand squeezing my insides until I could barely breathe. “Annie. We need to—”

  “There’s Shelby!” Aveda interrupted, gesturing to the other side of the courtyard.

  I whipped around and saw a brightly colored blotch shuffling into—

  “The library,” I breathed out. “Why is she going into the library?”

  Even as I said these words out loud . . . somewhere deep inside of me, I already knew the answer. I just couldn’t quite get it to cohere into something clear and understandable, something that would end whatever was happening once and for all.

  But I definitely knew what I had to do next.

  I’d come back to Morgan College to close the door on the past, but I’d been going out of my way to avoid it, to pretend like it didn’t bother me. To act like Scared Mouse Evie had been left so far in the dust, she didn’t even exist anymore.

  But she was still there, buried deep inside of me. And she’d begged me to never set foot in the library again. Now my present was sending me on a direct collision course with my past and I finally had to face everything I was still so terrified of.

  I had to save Shelby—whatever she had gotten herself into. I had to save the students of Morgan—so they could have the futures they were dreaming of one day. And I had to save the school from whatever evil Richard had set free.

  “Come on,” I said, straightening my spine and nodding at Aveda. “Let’s go to the fucking library.”

  * * *

  Aveda and I made our best attempt to enter the library build site stealthily. I had no idea what Shelby was up to, but I didn’t want to risk scaring her off again. The construction site was appropriately haunted house-esque. The entrance was covered with thick plastic sheeting, and the actual structure was still a skeleton of plywood draped in even more plastic sheeting, waiting for the rest of its blood and guts and organs to fill in. The roof wasn’t done yet, so Aveda and I were lit by the moon shining down on us as we crept through the piles of rubble littering the floor.

  As soon as I set foot on the not-quite-finished floor, I felt a stab of déjà vu so powerful, I nearly fell over. Sensations from that fateful day when I’d burned it all down came flooding b
ack. I remembered my back hurting from the stack of heavy tomes I’d stuffed into my bag, the cool fall air whispering over my skin. I remembered how I’d been running through my mental to-do list, cataloging all the things I still needed to accomplish. I had to return books, check out new ones, prep for several papers, call to switch some shifts around at my campus jobs, stop by the store and get Bea’s peanut butter, make sure we had laundry quarters, pay the electric bill, check my bank account to see if there was actually enough money for said electric bill—

  And then I’d seen Richard and Ms. Clarion and it had all just . . . stopped.

  The constant churn of my mental to-do list had quieted for the first time in maybe ever.

  All I’d felt was that unadulterated, undeniable rage.

  “There someone’s over there,” Aveda hissed, interrupting my stroll down memory lane. She nodded toward the very back of the skeleton building—the dark depths where even the moon couldn’t illuminate much. But if you stared long enough, the tiniest movements were evident, disrupting the shadows and making the curtains of plastic sheeting rustle. All that sheeting almost looked like some kind of cartoon representation of ghosts, the classic bedsheets with cut-out holes for eyes and mouths.

  I tried to brush aside the creepiness and focus on recapturing that rage I’d felt so long ago.

  “Let’s get closer,” I whispered.

  We shuffled toward the moving shadows, doing our best to navigate around the rubble. Aveda motioned for me to duck behind a wide, wooden beam with her. We peered into the still of the dark, and a shiver ran up my spine—it felt like we were willing something to happen. Trying to get those little movements to appear.

  “Look . . . there,” Aveda murmured, jerking her chin toward a specific spot in the darkness.

  I homed in on the area she was pointing to: there were definitely at least two figures shuffling around in the shadows. Maybe more.

  The sheeting rustled again, as if sending us a warning.

  We crept toward the movement, both of us tensed up, on high alert. Adrenaline blazed through my system, and I breathed deeply—I wanted rage to overtake my fear, but I also didn’t want to do something rash or trip over an errant stack of construction detritus.

  “I told you—I’m done,” a voice hissed.

  Aveda and I froze in our tracks, our gazes trained on the shadows. The voice was pitched low, but it was so eerily quiet in this half-finished skeleton building, it seemed to echo up to that exposed patch of sky above us.

  “You’re done when we’ve finished our mission,” another voice hissed back. “I’ve told you that from the beginning. And I don’t know how you keep managing to forget this, but: I made you, my dear.”

  “Ladies, ladies—let’s not argue. We can all still get what we want.”

  Aveda and I exchanged a glance. There was no mistaking that self-satisfied tone. Especially since he didn’t bother to lower his voice.

  “Richard?!” Aveda mouthed. I shrugged. It was definitely Richard. And he sounded very much alive.

  “But what you guys want isn’t what I want,” the first voice—the one who had been “done”—said, getting louder. I was pretty sure I recognized that voice, too: Shelby. Protesting whatever Richard was trying to do. “And I need you to listen to me on this—really listen. Because—”

  “Ow, god—fuck!” Another debilitating stab of pain ripped the words from my throat, cutting Shelby off. I fell to my knees, cradling my stomach. I couldn’t breathe, and gasped for mouthfuls of air, trying to keep myself sort of upright. I felt Aveda crouch down next to me, her hand going to my back.

  And then, the room was flooded with light—all of it shining on the voices that had been shrouded in shadow.

  Shelby was there, still clad in her colorful dress, her eyes sparking with anger.

  Richard was there, looking even more smug than usual.

  And stepping in front of them, tossing her rainbow hair over her shoulder, was the source of the light. Leonora Quinn.

  She somehow looked brighter than usual, like she was wearing an Instagram filter over her entire body. Light emanated from her, as if she was sporting an angelic aura. Her hair shone under the moonlight, her eyes gleamed. And her smile was so white, it seemed unearthly.

  She took a step toward Aveda and me, reaching a hand out.

  “I knew you’d come,” she said, beaming. “I felt it—so deep in my bones.”

  “Stay back!” Aveda snarled, holding up a hand.

  “Oh, now, now,” Leonora said, giving us a faux-regretful look. “I only want to help. That’s all I’ve ever wanted—to help Ms. Tanaka finally say good-bye to the past so she can have the future she wants.”

  “You don’t know what I want,” I gasped, clutching my stomach and trying to breathe through the pain.

  Leonora cocked her head to the side, her unearthly smile widening. “Oh, yes, I do. You want to give me your baby.”

  CHAPTER THIRTY-ONE

  “I MOST CERTAINLY do not want that,” I managed to snarl.

  “Oh, Evelyn.” Richard gloated at me. “Why can’t you admit this to yourself, even now? This is just like when you dropped out—admit that you can’t handle everything, that you’re too weak, too damaged.”

  “Stay away from her,” Aveda growled, leaping to her feet and positioning her body in front of me.

  “No need to get aggressive, Ms. Jupiter,” Leonora said, waving a benevolent hand. “I believe we can come to a mutually beneficial agreement.” She smiled down at me, her eyes glittering. “But rest assured, if you try anything while I’m explaining my terms to Ms. Tanaka, I will hurt her. And her baby.”

  She flicked her wrist my way and I felt another pulse of pain—not as intense as the others. More like a warning.

  “Talk,” Aveda said through gritted teeth.

  “Of course,” Richard said, resting a hand on Leonora’s shoulder. “This all started when I decided I had to win Evie back, that she was my destiny—”

  “Oh, shut up,” Shelby blurted out. She was lurking behind them, looking unsure about how to proceed. “That’s not where it started and you know it.”

  “Indeed,” Leonora said, sending Shelby a condescending smile. “Everything started way before Richard became fixated on you, Ms. Tanaka. I’d been biding my time in the Otherworld, just waiting for a lovely opportunity to explore the human realm. We’ve heard so much about you. Ever since you sent Princess Shasta back.”

  “Shasta’s still alive?” I said, putting a protective hand on my stomach. “And hold up: you’re a demon?”

  “But of course I am,” Leonora said, her smile widening. “You could sense something superior in me immediately, no? I am one of Princess Shasta’s most trusted courtiers, her closest confidante. Or at least that’s what I’ve become ever since she returned to us. As you know, she’d tried unsuccessfully to return to the Otherworld many times, but your little push through the portal is what ended up doing it. Of course she was badly injured for a while, but you know Princess Shasta—she’s a survivor.”

  “Wait . . .” I shook my head, trying to force myself to focus. “Those underground demon groups were . . . were right?” I managed, thinking back to the conversation I’d had with Nate when we’d started this mission. “And Nate’s dreams . . .”

  “I have been trying to help Princess Shasta with innovative ways of visiting her son!” Leonora beamed. “You see, my power allows me to transport myself to different locations in the Otherworld in the blink of an eye, and I’d been trying for ages to transport myself to Earth. I’ve always been an experimenter.” She chuckled to herself, but no one else was laughing. “Once the walls between our world and yours started to rub thin in spots, I realized I could sort of do that—I could project myself over. A version of myself, anyway.” She gestured to her rainbow-haired human form. “My actual body is still in the O
therworld. And I was able to help Princess Shasta project her voice into her son’s subconscious thoughts, even though she’s in the Otherworld as well.”

  “But how did you go from experimenting with projections to messing with ghost demons?” Aveda demanded, exchanging a look with me. Her look told me she was trying to buy time while figuring a way out of this. I gave her a slight nod—I was doing the same thing.

  “That was due to my darling Richard,” Leonora said, gazing at him fondly. I resisted the urge to gag. “He did want you back very badly, my dear—ever since you started making headlines as a superheroine, since you became truly great. I was working on projecting myself into your realm and I accidentally projected myself into his bedroom.” She lowered her eyelashes girlishly. “He was shocked at first, of course, but we got to talking, and then I saw that . . . ah . . . thing on his wall, the photo collage dedicated to you. And I realized you were the girl Princess Shasta was always talking about. The one who stole her son.”

  “Wow, talk about an unreliable narrator,” I muttered.

  “Richard and I concocted a plan—supernatural incidents that would prove irresistible to you,” Leonora continued. “I was able to provide actual demonic energy, direct from the Otherworld source—that’s how we activated the ghosts on campus. Including our very first demon-powered ghost.”

  She threw a loving look at Shelby, who looked like she wanted to sink into the floor.

  “So you are a ghost?” I said to her.

  “Sort of?” she yelped, throwing up her hands. “I began as these excess bits of paranormal energy, feelings people had left behind. Nothing big enough to be a full-on ghost, but I caused a lot of little unexplained oddities. Made the light switches around here malfunction. Caused all those weird noises you hear late at night. And then once fused with demon energy, I became . . .” She gestured to her Pucci-clad form. “. . . this.”

  “And she was supposed to help us in our quest,” Leonora said, throwing Shelby the stink-eye. “Instead she ended up making a weak human friend and enjoying campus life too much. So I activated the courtyard ghost, because I knew Shelby would walk directly into its path—and I gave the ghost the exact words to say to her.”