by Stacey Kade
Huh, well, that changed things a little. Maybe it wasn’t a guilty conscience. But that didn’t necessarily mean it was a ghost, either. A living person could do all of those things she mentioned, including the mirror writing. Steam up the mirror, and write the words you want. Then, when the mirror is covered in steam again, the words reappear. Maybe a living someone wasn’t pleased with this new development in Misty’s love life and had decided to express it as “Alona.”
“I can’t believe you’re getting married,” Alona said. “What are you going to do for a maid of honor? It better not be Leanne.”
Misty gaped at her, but before she could respond, the door to the back rooms opened, catching everyone’s attention.
An elderly woman in a tidy black suit and heavy black shoes shuffled out, clinging tightly to the arm of a guy who had to be Malachi the Magnificent. For one, he was wearing a cloak. In August.
The sight of that was enough to shake Alona from her sulk. “Seriously?” She snorted. “I’m beginning to think this guy doesn’t understand the difference between a magician and a medium.”
Probably a lot of people didn’t. It was all in that mysterious realm of “might be real” to most. And if this guy was willing to play up the mystical part of it, that likely helped sell the bill of goods.
Other than his cloak, “Malachi”—no way was that his real name—didn’t seem too extraordinary. He was maybe in his mid-twenties, a thin, kind of dweeby guy with curly red hair and heavy black-rimmed glasses. The effect, actually, was of someone who’d gotten lost on his way to a Harry Potter or Lord of the Rings costume party.
Great.
A few steps behind the elderly woman and the caped douche bag, a young guy in an Al Capone–era suit and hat followed, looking kind of pissed.
“You’re not listening. That’s not what I said at all,” he shouted at Malachi.
Next to me, Alona stiffened, and I knew she’d heard the ghost, too.
But Malachi just smiled fondly at the old woman and walked her over to the main door. She squeezed his hand, leaving him with a wad of cash, which he quickly tucked inside his cloak.
I relaxed, relief warring with disappointment. Malachi was a fake. We weren’t any closer to finding a solution for Alona or figuring out what my dad had been doing checking out all these fake ghost-talkers. But at least we didn’t have to claim Malachi in our ranks.
I leaned over to Alona. “When he takes the next person in, we’ll get out of here.”
She frowned at me. “No way. What about her?” She tipped her head toward Misty, who was staring at Malachi like he was a walking ray of hope.
I shook my head. “I don’t think it’s anything we can fix.”
She opened her mouth to protest, but stopped as Malachi moved to stand in the center of the waiting room.
He bowed his head and placed his fingertips at his temples.
“Oh, please,” Alona muttered. “Doesn’t this drive you crazy?” she demanded of me.
I grimaced and looked around, but Malachi seemed to have the rest of the room captivated. “What do you want me to do?” I whispered back to her. Denouncing him as a fraud would only cause more problems for us, and we didn’t need that.
Misty shushed us.
Malachi rocked back and forth on his heels. “I’m sensing several spirits here who’d like to communicate.”
“Yeah, I have something to communicate,” Alona muttered, maybe not quite as quietly as she should have. “Jerk.”
He looked up sharply and searched the room until he identified Alona as the source, which probably wasn’t too tough. She was glaring at him as if she’d have set him on fire if she could.
He gave a forced magnanimous chuckle. “I see we have a doubter in our midst.”
Heads, belonging to both the living and the dead, turned toward us. Damn it, Alona.
Malachi approached, still smiling. “I understand your hesitation, but the ways of the dead are not—” He stopped abruptly, staring at me.
The color drained from his face, making his glasses stand out starkly. He attempted to keep his smile, but it wobbled and then fell away. “The ways of the dead are not our own,” he tried again in a croaky voice, his hands at the sides of his cloak.
Then he swallowed hard, forced out a barely audible “Excuse me,” and turned tail, stalking back through the door he’d just exited, his cloak flapping behind him.
I couldn’t have been more surprised if he’d dropped to the ground and started clucking like a chicken.
Alona stared after him. “What the hell?” She looked to me, and I had no answer.
Except…he’d looked right at me and freaked. That had to mean something, didn’t it? It was almost like he’d recognized me, but I’d never seen him before. Did he know that I was the real thing, the ghost-talker he was pretending to be? Or…could he possibly have known my dad?
The thought took my breath away.
My dad and I had looked enough alike; it wasn’t impossible that Malachi would come to the conclusion that we were related.
I scrambled to my feet and hurried after Malachi. At least, that was the plan—catch up to him, pin him down, and make him talk. But apparently the ghost of the girl dressed for spring break had the same idea. And we collided…hard.
We went sprawling in different directions.
I’m not sure whose gasps of surprise were louder—those of the living people, including Misty, who saw me bounce off seemingly nothing and hit the floor, or those of the dead, who saw exactly what happened and knew what it meant.
“Will!” Alona lurched to her feet.
Misty looked astonished.
“Will?” the ghost in the Abe Lincoln hat repeated, moving closer to stare down at me.
Crap, crap, crap. Still half dazed, I rolled to my side and pushed myself to stand, ignoring the sharp pain in my elbow. Malachi’s carpet had, unsurprisingly, the cushion factor of cheap toilet paper.
Spring Break Girl flipped her long auburn hair out of her face and got to her feet. “You’re Will Killian? The one everyone’s been talking about?” she asked, reaching through the neck of her Señor Frog’s T-shirt to tug her bright pink bikini top back into place. She managed to sound surprised and disgusted at the same time.
“Another ghost-talker?” Severed Arm Dude asked, pointing the stump end of his arm at me.
The woman in the long white nightgown danced closer. She seemed, possibly, a little crazy.
I took a step back, unable to stop myself. Severed Arm Dude, Faux Lincoln, Spring Break Girl, and Nightgown Lady…four, no, five—I’d forgotten about the Al Capone– type who’d been disappointed by Malachi’s interpretation of his message—against just me.
If I tried to run, they’d stop me without breaking a sweat…Well, you know what I mean. If it came down to a physical confrontation, each of them vying for attention, they’d probably tear me apart. Attacking me might drain them of some of their energy—being violent as a spirit takes away from the resources required to remain on this plane of existence—but how much and whether that would be enough…there was no way to know. Not until it was too late.
I swallowed hard, my heartbeat shaking my whole body.
Alona moved toward me, faster than I’d seen her move before, at least in this body. She stepped between the ghosts and then turned to block me from them, her bad leg dragging a little behind.
“If you know Will,” she said calmly, “then you know his spirit guide.” The ghosts stared at her, as if uncertain what to make of her. I wondered, for the first time, what she looked like to other spirits. Could they see she wasn’t like the rest of us?
“What are you doing?” I whispered, alarmed. They hadn’t even known there was anything different about her. She was putting herself at risk unnecessarily.
Alona ignored me and turned to face Severed Arm Dude. She lifted her chin, daring him to come closer. “You don’t want to get on her bad side, do you?”
I prayed I was the
only one who could tell she was a little off, her gaze on his neck instead of his face. Several of the breathers who’d been waiting for Malachi bolted for the door. I didn’t blame them. I could only imagine what it must look like to them. Misty was still in her chair, staring at us.
“The one who they say disappeared weeks ago?” Severed Arm Dude scoffed. “No one has seen her.”
Spring Break Girl rolled her eyes as if the entire conversation were ridiculous.
I couldn’t see much of Alona’s expression at this angle, but from the sudden tension in her shoulders, I guessed she hadn’t considered what the ghosts might be saying about her absence.
“Really?” Alona flipped her hair back, a classic attitude-filled move for her, and seemed startled when it didn’t stay behind her shoulders. Lily’s hair was shorter. But she recovered quickly enough. “I’ve seen her, and trust me, she is not happy.”
Spring Break Girl tilted her head to one side, giving Alona a shrewd look. “Who are you?”
“No one you need to know,” Alona said in a snotty tone that was a bit jarring to hear in Lily’s voice. She reached back toward me with her left hand, flapping it until I realized she wanted me to take it. I stepped up and slipped my hand into hers. Her fingers closed over mine and squeezed almost to the point of pain, and as I drew even with her, she leaned into me the slightest bit, and I could hear her uneven breathing. She needed the help, I realized belatedly. That quick moving she’d done had come at a cost.
“We’ll be going now,” Alona said. “Give our regards to Malachi.”
She started forward, and to my surprise, Severed Arm Dude and Spring Break Girl moved out of her way, though the latter watched us with more suspicion than was probably healthy.
I adjusted my stride to match Alona’s shorter one so she could lean on me without it being as noticeable. But the slow walk across the room to the door felt interminable with the ghosts staring holes through us.
I held my breath, waiting for their rallying cry and the inevitable rush to block the door.…
But they let us walk out without another word.
So, maybe there was something to be said for being a bitch…or at least, knowing one. We’d coasted out of there on nothing but attitude and Alona’s spirit-guide reputation. Problem was, that was not going to last forever.
“That was fun,” I said through gritted teeth, collapsing into the passenger seat of Will’s battered Dodge. My heart was pounding way too hard from the adrenaline rush, and pain shot up my leg in uneven bolts of agony.
“Hands in,” Will warned before slamming my door shut and scrambling around the car and into the driver’s seat. Once he was inside, he cranked the engine and peeled out of the parking space in reverse. “Are they coming?” His gaze was fixed behind us as he backed out.
“How should I know? Unless they’re talking about following us, they could be in the freaking car for all I know.” Which wasn’t quite true, but I was feeling a tad irritable because once more I didn’t have answers, and did have—hello?—intense pain. God, I’d forgotten how much it could hurt to be alive. And to be scared. Really and truly scared.
I squeezed my hands together to stop them from shaking. There’d been a moment when I wasn’t sure, when I thought the spirits might try to stop us, and we would have been screwed. Will’s abilities gave spirits physicality around him. They were as real and as capable of violence against him as any living person. I’d seen it happen before. Crowds of the dead pushing and shoving at him to get his attention. It wouldn’t take much to turn it into a tug-of-war with Will as the rope.
And me, too, most likely. I shuddered at the idea. We hadn’t tested whether ghosts could touch me and vice versa. I’d taken a leave of absence, sort of, from my spirit-guide duties. Since my “transformation,” I’d been doing my best to stay away from disembodied voices, including those belonging to the spirits waiting for Will’s help. If it turned out they could touch me—and there was a decent chance that would be the case—I would be utterly defenseless against them, just as Will was. His theory was that it was better to risk only one of us until we figured all of this out. So he was doing his best to manage them without me, relatively unsuccessfully, from what I’d heard.
“You were seeing something, though, I could tell.” He spared me a glance as he shifted into drive, and I crossed my arms over my chest, hiding my hands so he couldn’t see the trembling.
“Distortions, like shimmery spots in the air.” I shook my head, and he accelerated toward the exit, the tires spewing gravel behind us. “I don’t know. It’s—”
The car hit a pothole, jarring my leg, and I sucked a breath in through my teeth.
He slowed down and looked over at me. “Are you okay?”
I shifted in the seat, putting more weight on my right hip, trying to alleviate the pressure on my left leg, which, at the moment, felt like it was going to explode into a thousand pieces. “I’ll be fine,” I said, trying to sound like I meant it. “Just go, get us out of here.”
He complied, but I couldn’t help but notice that he also took care to avoid the worst of the holes until we reached the smoother pavement of the street. “What you did back there…” He hesitated.
No, no, not getting into this. “I was saving my ass as much as yours,” I pointed out quickly, trying to stop this topic in its tracks.
He shook his head. “No, you weren’t.” He sounded almost stunned, which, frankly, stung a bit. “Until you said something, they didn’t know you were different, that you were anything other than a regular living person.”
Which meant I’d been dumb, dumb, dumb to stick my neck out. But I couldn’t leave him like that, defenseless and trapped, even if it meant risking myself. And that was so unlike what I would have done a few months ago, it unnerved me. I definitely did not want to talk about it.
I forced a shrug. “If they’d started tossing you around or something, somebody would have probably called the cops, and then we’d have to go through that whole is-he-crazy-or-not conversation, not to mention a hospital trip to get you fixed up.” I sighed. “And I don’t have the time or patience for that today.”
He made a face. “Can you just let me say thank you?”
“There’s nothing to thank me for,” I snapped, growing more and more uncomfortable with the conversation. I…I cared too much about him, and this should not have been happening. It was way too big of a risk for me, leaving myself open to that kind of vulnerability. “You could have done it yourself. Should have done it yourself.”
And short of that, what he probably should have done was find himself a new and fully functioning spirit guide to keep his ass out of a sling.
That was the real trouble. Before, at least, I’d been useful. He’d needed me, maybe even more than I’d needed him. And that was the way I liked it. If somebody needs you more than you need them, you’re the one with the power, the control. But now…now he didn’t need me at all. If anything, I was a burden, a problem to be solved. I was worse than useless, and that sucked. If I had truly been the person he thoughtI was, the one he was trying to thank, I’d have told him to dump me and find someone who could really help him, keep him safe. That’s what I would have done in his position.
But I couldn’t make the words come out. Because that would mean I’d be alone. No, not just alone…I’d be without Will. And somehow that was even worse. I’d gotten used to him being here with me, and it was getting harder and harder to imagine my life—in any form—without him. Which was terrifying in an entirely different way. Just thinking about it made me flinch.
Will noticed, of course. “Do you need to go to the hospital?” he asked quietly.
“No.” I stared out the windshield, willing my eyes to stop burning with unshed tears.
He slid his hand across the seat, offering it to me. I looked at him, and he took his gaze off the road for a second to meet mine. My heart thumped triple-time in that moment, at the warmth in his eyes, the question that I wasn’t
ready to answer.
Hating myself for the weakness—because I knew, on some level, even this was for Lily, the person I looked like instead of the person I was—I took his hand, locking my palm tightly inside his. Holding his hand made me feel more securely tethered to the world, as if I wasn’t going to float away and disappear like one of the balloons we used to release on the first day of Sunday school.
“So, why did he run?” I asked, shifting my attention to the side window and changing the topic, trying to pretend that this was not somehow more intimate than the kissing we’d done, that we weren’t connected in this simple and yet powerful way that I felt in every cell of my borrowed body. “Malachi, I mean.”
“I don’t know.” Was it me, or did Will sound a little unsorted himself?
“Better question: why did you chase him?” This time, I did look over at him.
He hesitated. “I think he recognized me.”
“Really? How?” I was pretty sure Will would have remembered and mentioned meeting Malachi before; dude cut a fairly distinct figure in that stupid cloak of his.
“I think maybe he put it together, connected me with my dad.”
Will did look a lot like his father in the pictures I’d seen, but…
I frowned. “We’re talking years ago, though. If they even met. And he’d have to have left a hell of an impression for Malachi to recognize you from your dad and then also to run.” I shook my head. “Which doesn’t make sense. The guy’s a fake. What would be the point of your dad talking to him at all?”
Will shrugged. “Maybe my dad was hunting down con artists for the Order or something.”
“None of the other fakes were scared of you,” I pointed out. In fact, based on the sheer amount of false-eyelash-batting that had gone on, I was pretty sure Madame Selena might have tried to keep him as her houseboy/love slave if I’d been paying less attention.
“That’s exactly why we need to talk to him again.”
“Again?” I turned carefully in my seat to stare at him. “Did you miss the part where the guy is a fraud? Totally of no use to us?”
