by Eva Chase
There was no one else alive here except Trix, who wasn’t meant to be here at all. Who could I apologize to? How could I make up for this, even by a fraction?
How would she ever look at me from now on without seeing blood and broken bones?
I sank closer to the ground and dropped my head to my knees. The stink closed in around me, overwhelming all my other senses.
There wasn’t anything else I could do. That was the worst part of the whole thing. I could never bring the lives I’d destroyed back. I could never repay what I owed them. I couldn’t even come close. Roseborne didn’t need to tell me that, but I guessed it wanted to rub the fact in.
My breath seeped from my mouth slow and ragged. My eyes started to burn. I’d just stay here, then. That was what Roseborne’s spirits wanted, wasn’t it? For me to recognize that there was no undoing what I’d done, and so I should take whatever punishment they threw at me. Even if it was spending whatever time I had left surrounded by my most brutal crime.
Footsteps rasped across the pavement. I held back a flinch and forced myself to raise my head, just slightly.
“Don’t,” I said.
Trix stopped by the median line. She looked down at the ground and back at me, her mouth twisting. How could she know what to say?
“You can go,” I said. “You should. Now you know what kind of scum I was. This is my mess to live with, and I should have to live with it.”
“Ryo…” Her voice came out softer than I had any right to expect. “I’m not going to tell you it isn’t horrible. But I want to be here with you anyway. Take as much time as you want, but when you’re ready—whatever you need, I’ll do my best to help.”
The question quavered up my throat. “Why?”
She smiled, pained but genuine. “Because I believe in you. I believe you’re more than this, even if Roseborne thinks differently.”
How could she look around us and still say that? How could she see anything other than a totally wretched human being? I ached to collapse into the ground and offer up all the agony this body could contain…
But that wouldn’t fix anything either, would it? Trix was standing there, ready to take action, and what the hell was I doing? Wallowing in my emotions, letting them dictate what I did instead of tackling them and moving myself in a new, better direction. Just like I’d let the drugs and my hunger for them overwhelm every other motivation for years before.
Giving myself over to misery and guilt wasn’t any more noble than chasing a high. I knew that; I’d been trying to pull myself out of that habit, but being thrust into the middle of this scene had nearly pulled me right back down to bottoming out.
My body balked. I hesitated and then pushed myself slowly to my feet. My stomach still listed and that awful smell still choked me, but I couldn’t dwell on that.
What did I wish I’d done back then? What did I wish I’d done before the crash had ever even happened?
A tremor of energy passed through my chest as an image sprang into my mind. Yes. By all the gods there were, yes. Even if it wasn’t what the vision wanted from me, that was what I needed. I was abruptly sure that if I just concentrated and pulled with my will and resolve…
Our surroundings spun around us. The ground lurched, and with an audible snap, Trix and I were standing not amid highway wreckage but in my bedroom in my parents’ home. Trix blinked, staring around her in confusion.
I dove straight for my dresser. Boxers and socks tumbled over the edge of the drawer as I dug through them. My fingers closed around the rounded end of a glass pipe. I yanked it out and whipped it at the floor.
The glass burst apart with a smash that sent a pulse of satisfaction and certainty through me. Yes, yes, yes. This was right. Turn all this shit into the garbage it was.
I spun toward the closet and pawed through the mess on the floor to find the smaller pipe I’d hidden there. The shattering of the burnt glass gave me the same relief. I knelt down by the bed, heedless of the shards cracking under my knees, and yanked out the box that held my current stash of powder.
The fine white crystals glinted faintly within the plastic baggie. I snatched it up and charged into the hallway. Trix followed at my heels. She didn’t say anything, only bore witness as I marched into the bathroom. Without a second’s hesitation, I upended the bag over the toilet. Then I flushed, watching the substance that had directed so much of my life whirl down the drain.
A ragged laugh tumbled out of me. It was gone. It’d been that easy.
Trix tucked her hand around mine. “I guess you didn’t need my help after all. You handled it all on your own.”
I tugged her closer to me, wanting her warm clementine scent to wash away any lingering traces of the highway stench. “Not all on my own,” I said tightly. “Not really. And you’re not alone either. I’m here for you too, Trix. I believe in you. Whatever’s left to face, I know we’ll make it through.”
My heart thumped with the truth of those words, which sparked a surge of joy in turn. A sharper, starker joy than I’d been able to feel since I’d stepped past Roseborne’s gate. I wanted to cling onto it and her with both hands, but as she tipped her head toward me, the vision hurled us both back into darkness.
Chapter Twenty-One
Trix
Falling back into the college foyer left me momentarily dizzy after the intensity of Ryo’s crash and his destruction of the tools of his addiction. I teetered on my feet in the dimmer golden light cast by the chandelier, and Jenson caught my arm to help me keep my balance.
The four of us were all still together by the base of the grand staircase. Elias was frowning at something by the doorway behind me.
“Trix,” he said in a cautious tone.
As I turned, I glanced at Ryo to confirm he’d returned from that agonizing trip through his past all right. The quick, grateful flash of his smile reassured me as much as the memory of his last words there did. I believe in you.
One of Roseborne’s founding spirits had flitted into the foyer after us. I tensed automatically at the sight of the shining figure streaking from one end of the room to the other. Did they plan to blast us apart again? Could we stop them this time?
But no other bolts of supernatural glow followed this one. When it slowed to a halt in front of me, I recognized Mildred’s face amid the light. She peered at me with her lips pursed in a way that fit her former persona as Professor Hubert better than the teenaged girl she appeared as now. As her gaze traveled over me, I got the sense that, like before, it wasn’t exactly me she was looking for.
“What do you want?” I asked, briskly but trying to avoid sounding outright hostile. Of the seven, Mildred was the one I’d gotten through to the most. She cared about Winston, and she knew I had a connection to him. If surviving Roseborne was going to require tackling its “staff” head-on, she was still my best hope.
She cocked her head, meeting my eyes directly now, and then hesitated. After a moment, she ventured, “You said you’ve seen Winston’s memories—that you’ve experienced what he was feeling before, when… everything happened. Does that include what he was doing out there when he decided not to come back?” She motioned a translucent hand to the side to indicate the world beyond the campus.
“No,” I admitted. “All the memories of his that have come to me are from here at Roseborne. But that doesn’t mean I can’t tell from what he was going through then and what I’ve sensed now that—”
“I know,” she said quickly. “I’m not asking so I can argue. I… I wondered if you’d let me see if we can find those later memories, if I could take a peek inside your head.”
Jenson stirred, glowering at her. “Forget that. Do you think we’ve forgotten who you are and what you’ve done to us, especially Trix?”
She scowled at him. “I could delve inside her mind without asking permission. You should know we’ve done that plenty of times to all of you in the past.” Her gaze slid back to me. “But it’ll be easier and more comfortable if
you’re assisting rather than fighting me. And… I think you and he deserve at least that respect. He was one of us, before.”
It was clearly difficult for her to offer me even that minor concession. And I couldn’t deny that I was curious what had changed my probable great-grandfather’s mind too. If whatever had happened had been enough to make him want to break free from Roseborne’s toxicity, maybe it would do the same for his former friend.
“How do we know that’s all you’ll do?” Elias asked, stepping over to me. Ryo closed ranks with us too as if I needed a full guard. Which, to be fair, I might.
Mildred kept her attention focused on me. “Either you trust me or you don’t. You wanted to make me see his perspective before. What better way than this?”
My body still stiffened at the idea of the intrusion, but I shoved that resistance down. Winston had cared about this girl once, if not as much as she’d hoped for. I didn’t sense any concern from whatever of his essence still resided inside me.
I looked to the guys. I couldn’t jump in without offering them some kind of explanation. “We’ve only gotten this far because of the risks we’ve been willing to take—the trust we gave each other without any guarantees. There never are any real guarantees. I think I should offer her a chance.”
Ryo’s mouth tightened, but he nodded.
“You’re completely sure?” Jenson said, still eyeing Mildred as if he could ward off any evil intent with the power of his stare.
“We’ve been running mostly in circles. I want to go forward.”
Elias let out a strained breath, but he didn’t argue. “You’re the only one who can decide what you’re prepared to handle, Trix. We’ll be right here to help if it looks like you need it.”
“Okay.” I inhaled deeply and stepped toward Mildred. “Let’s do this. I want to see too.”
She reached toward me like the lesser ghosts did, but to touch my head rather than my chest. As her fingers seeped through my scalp with a tingling, my mind rose up and away into the same clouded realm as when I’d grabbed her and slipped into her memories earlier tonight.
Flickers of images blinked past me—Winston in this foyer, Winston with the bow and arrows, Winston transforming into a stately middle-aged man who strode through a classroom I’d never entered before with his narrow chin held high.
Then the school fell away. A young man who walked like his teenaged self but looked more filled out and darker haired strode along a street in a city I didn’t recognize. Now he stopped in a park, watching groups of friends chattering. Now he was wandering a regular college campus, pausing and fading out of view to listen in on discussions here and there. From the clothes of the people he passed, I guessed this was sometime in the 1950s.
I watched all of the scenes that wavered by from above like I had with Mildred’s memories, but Winston’s emotions trickled through me in a way hers hadn’t, as if part of me were inside him too. Boredom and uncertainty and confusion came in wafts. Then a spark of anger lit as he watched a few of the college students taking turns belittling a young woman in their midst. A ripple of supernatural energy coursed around him—was that the way that he started to lock onto a potential target for Roseborne?
It never developed any further than that ripple, though. A moment later, another young woman with bronze-brown hair like my mother’s marched over to the group.
“You all need to get your heads out of your asses,” she announced with her hands on her hips. “Do you think it makes you look important when you’re happily tearing someone down? Because you really just look pathetic.”
A couple of the guys in the group swore at her and the other girls muttered, but the woman who’d intruded didn’t show any sign that she cared. She motioned the bullied girl away from the group with a beckoning gesture and led her to a nearby café. Winston watched them go with a heady warmth I could tell he didn’t totally understand spreading through his chest. He waited a few seconds, and then he walked after the two girls.
I sensed Mildred beside me then, with a twinge of sorrow that ran through the air between us. When I squinted, I could make out the faintest outline of her form, watching all this as I was. My stomach twisted.
How was she going to handle seeing the guy she’d crushed on for decades falling for some other woman? This plan could totally backfire—she might come out of it even more furious at the world than she’d been before.
But we were here now. The images shuddered and jolted forward in time in fits and starts as Mildred must have propelled the memories on in her search for answers. We saw Winston sitting in a different café with the bronze-haired girl across from him, his heart swelling with affection at her easy-going remarks. Saw them hand-in-hand holding signs at some sort of protest. Saw Winston gazing out an apartment window with a pensive expression and a pang of guilt in which I could taste Roseborne’s influence before his girlfriend came over and tucked her arm around him, and his distress melted into joy.
When a memory of their wedding day swam up before us, I glanced toward my impression of Mildred’s presence again. How was she coping so far? I could feel how Winston’s connection with this woman had healed his soul and given him new life—could Mildred recognize how deeply it had affected him while watching from the outside?
It warmed my own heart, witnessing his transformation, but she might view this as nothing more than a betrayal.
Had he ever told his wife—my great-grandmother, I was now more sure than ever—anything about his past? I couldn’t imagine how he’d have explained the supernatural aspect of it in any way she’d have believed, but the bullying, the violence… That was a huge secret to carry.
Maybe that was why some part of his spirit had stayed with the family through the generations even after his death, whenever that had been. Why he’d come back here with me. To make his own amends? To carry out some final business with his co-conspirators?
I wished he could just tell me what the hell he wanted here and how I could help make it happen.
The happy couple danced at their reception. “Mildred?” I said tentatively, my voice faint and hollow in the mist that framed the memory. I couldn’t tell if she heard me or not. I drew in a breath to try again—
And with a lurch, her presence tore away from me. A second later, I spun out of the realm of memories too, finding myself landing on my butt on the foyer floor, my mind reeling from the abrupt departure.
“Trix!” Ryo dropped down beside me. Elias and Jenson flanked me, and we all stared at the light show happening before our eyes.
The other spirits of Roseborne had congregated just inside the front door. They whirled past Mildred’s form like shooting stars. Oscar loomed over her, his glow blazing around him. I could tell from the fury in his stance that he’d yanked her out—and me with her.
Mildred had obviously reached the same conclusion. “What was that about?” she snapped at him. “I wasn’t finished with her.”
“You should be finished with him.” Oscar floated higher as if that would intimidate her more. “He showed his true colors ages ago. He’s nothing to us. He never deserved to be part of Roseborne to begin with.”
“I needed to see it for myself. I needed to understand.”
“You need to remember who’s worked with you all these years. Who helped you get the power that keeps you going.”
I scrambled to my feet with the guys’ help. Oscar’s tone and words left me with an uneasy sense of recognition. It stirred up echoes of times with Cade.
Maybe my foster brother fit in here in ways I’d never even considered.
“We were there for you too,” Mildred shot back, her own glow flaring brighter. “You couldn’t have gotten what you wanted on your own. You made all those promises for your benefit as much as ours—don’t think I can’t see that.”
Oscar bared his teeth. “If you think you have any grounds to complain about—”
Something shifted inside me, a quiver and a jab provoked by what I saw in th
e leader of the spirits, the way it resonated with my own memories, and its ties to the essence of a boy in me who’d lived under that domineering presence before. A prickling sensation crawled up my throat. I started to swallow it down in an instinctive panic, but caught myself.
No. I’d wanted Winston to speak clearly. Let’s see what he could say.
My lips parted, and a voice that didn’t sound quite like my own carried from my mouth.
“You can be better than this, Mildred. We can all be better than him. We should have been, back then… I wish I’d seen how he was twisting us sooner, before it was too late.”
Mildred’s head jerked around. She gaped at me, but I knew it wasn’t really me she was seeing.
“Winston?” she murmured.
“It can be so much better,” his voice said through me. “He has no real hold over you, not if you don’t let him.”
“Why, you—” Oscar started, lunging toward me with a sharper burst of light and, within it, an unfurling of the dark cloud I’d seen inside him before.
Before he could do whatever he’d meant to, Mildred threw herself between us. “I’m done with you! I’m done with all of this!”
She shoved him backward, and in the same motion her spirit crackled apart like a firework. The glow sprayed all through the room in a shower of sparks, softly warm where they brushed my skin. In their wake, a puddle of shadow dropped to the ground, where it shriveled into nothingness in the time it took for me to blink.
Oscar let out a wordless sound of rage. The other spirits raced back and forth around him with a distress that washed over my skin. Elias grasped my shoulder, Ryo my hand. I might have tugged them and Jenson back up the stairs to get away from whatever fresh hell our captors were about to unleash when the front door burst open.
