Missing, Presumed Dead

by Emma Berquist

  “I’m sorry,” he says, pulling his hand away. “I mean, I’m sorry you got hurt, but I’m not sorry you’re here.”

  I almost smile. “Thanks.”

  “You hungry? We can go out and get something to eat.”

  I raise an eyebrow. “Go out? Like on a date?”

  Phillip laughs. “Yeah.”

  “I don’t think so,” I say. I sit up and reach for the bundle of clothes on the floor. “I should get going.”

  “Of course.” Phillip sighs. “I knew that would scare you off.”

  “I’m not scared,” I tell him, tugging my shirt on. “I just—it’s hard for me to be around people, Phillip.”

  “Even me?” he asks, frowning.

  I pause and look over at him. He only knows half of what I can do; no one knows all of it, except Ilia and Urie and Deda. Even within our world, I have to keep secrets. Talking to ghosts isn’t exactly common, but it’s not unheard of: psychics can sense ghosts; mediums can communicate with them. But knowing when people die? That’s the kind of thing that scares people. And once they know what you know, they’ll never look at you the same. But right now I hurt Phillip’s feelings, and his bottom lip is sticking out in a distracting way. I lean over and kiss him.

  “Yes, even you,” I say. I swallow, block out the knowledge that screams in my head. “But I do it anyway. That’s got to mean something, right?”

  “You just can’t stay away, can you?”

  I shove him back and shake my head. “Idiot.”

  I put my boots on and stand up, running a hand over my fuzzy hair.

  “Are you going to call me?” Phillip asks, watching me. “Or am I not going to see you for another month?”

  I look down at him and chew on the inside of my cheek. “I don’t know. But thanks for tonight.”

  “Anytime,” he says.

  He takes my hand and I let him pull me down for one more kiss.

  “You could stay,” he says. “I’ll order something.”

  I push his hair out of his eyes, read the words that are written there.

  “Not tonight,” I tell him. “I’ll see you around, Phillip.”

  “Yeah,” he says, his voice trailing after me. “I’ll see you around.”

  I go out the back gate, passing Katya’s minivan and setting off the motion lights, hoping Urie isn’t looking out one of the dozens of immaculate windows. Fucking Brentwood. I hate this neighborhood. Everything is manicured and exact, tall hedges hiding faux-Venetian columns, xeriscaped gardens and wrought-iron fences. It screams money and perfection, and it makes me itch for chaos.

  I sit in my car, in a neighborhood I hate, in a city I hate, in a life I hate, all of it inescapable. I let myself wish, just for a moment, that things were different. That I was different. That I didn’t have this thing inside of me, this gift that isn’t a gift at all, that I could cut it out of me like a tumor.

  I lean my head against the seat and stare at the soft glow of light that filters through the houses along the street. I’m not ready to go home yet, back to my unwashed sheets and a scrawny ghost for comfort. I could go to the clinic, but it won’t change anything. My life is always waiting when the hours are up. I wonder, Are the people inside these houses as lonely as me, or do beautiful things keep the longing away?

  My phone rings and I jump, startled. I go to put it on Silent so I can ignore Ilia when I see the number.

  “Nicole?” I say, answering.

  “Lexi, thank god,” she says, her voice an octave higher than normal.

  “What’s wrong?”

  “I—I don’t know exactly,” she says. “Can you meet me at work?”

  “Now?”

  “Please,” she says. “I don’t know who else to call.”

  My heart thumps in my chest at the panic I hear her trying to suppress. If Nicole is afraid, then something is wrong. The dead girl’s face flashes through my mind, and I turn the key in the ignition.

  “I’m on my way.”

  “Thank you,” she says, and my phone goes dark.

  I drive as fast as my car can handle, the pedal almost flat against the floor. I roll the windows down and let the wind tear into my face. The lights sear my retinas as they streak by; bass blasts from someone’s car stereo. The air is hot and smells like smoke, and I don’t know if it’s my tires or if the hills are on fire again. Everything around me is burning. I breathe the acrid smell deep into my lungs, not caring that it fizzles and sparks as it kills my cells. My ink-covered fingers squeeze the steering wheel. Something builds inside me and for one brief, blinding moment I want to scream at the sky. Then my exit flashes ahead, and the scream dies on my lips. I swallow it down, where it lodges in my chest, burrowing deep beneath my ribs to wait for me to call it back up.

  I park as close as I can and break into a half run, half walk down the neon strip, dodging bodies and creeping cars. My legs are tired but I keep going; I should’ve eaten something with Phillip instead of running away the first chance I got. But that’s all I ever do.

  I finally reach Elysium and duck into the alleyway, kicking at the side door until Georgie sticks his bald head through.

  “Jesus, Lexi, give it a rest, will you?”

  “Where’s Nicole?” I ask, barging past him, wincing as his arm brushes my side.

  “I don’t know,” he says, slamming the door shut. “She got off a while ago. Not my job to keep track of you when you’re off the clock.”

  I’m already dialing her number, and she answers on the second ring.

  “Lexi?”

  “I’m here.”

  She lets out a shuddering breath that hisses in my ear.

  “I’m in the coatroom,” she says.

  I rush down the hallway toward the front of the club. The coatroom is the go-to place to hide during breaks or to sneak off to smoke weed. It’s dark and cool and no one wears a coat in LA so no one ever needs to use it. Over the years we’ve filled it with spare chairs, a mini fridge, and a soda can tower that’s steadily reaching the ceiling.

  A murmur of soft voices greets me as I head through the door.

  Nicole is huddled in a shabby green armchair with Theo perched next to her, his arm slung loosely around her shoulders.

  “What the hell happened?” I grab a rickety wooden chair and settle directly in front of her.

  Nicole shakes her head, her bright red curls tumbling around her face. “I don’t know, I don’t know,” she says, pressing her palms into her eyes.

  I look up at Theo and his lips press together.

  “I found her in the hallway,” he says, his dark eyebrows pinched. “She was shaking so bad I thought she was gonna pass out.”

  I frown; Theo doesn’t exaggerate. He’s the steadiest person I know, one of the two reasons he’s the only person I trust to ink my skin. The other is that his death is one of the less painful types, pneumonia at eighty-eight. It still hurts, but not unbearably, and Theo doesn’t pry if I flinch under his gloves or need to take breaks away from his touch.

  “Nicole,” I say softly. “You called me to come help you, so you need to tell me what happened.”

  She takes a deep breath, her hands falling from her face.

  “I got off about an hour ago,” Nicole says, her voice shaky. “Everything was fine; it was slow tonight. I was walking to my car, same way I always go, behind the club and then down through the alley behind Xanadu,” she says, naming the place down the block. She stops and takes a deep breath. “I was walking, looking at my phone, and then—I’m not sure what it was, but I felt something. Something really bad.”

  “Bad how?” I ask her.

  “Bad like . . . like a monster under the bed, only you know it’s real. Like something you never want to see because you’ll never get over the nightmares. Bad like wrong.”

  “Did you see anything?” Theo asks.

  She shakes her head again. “No. But I knew something horrible would happen if I stayed there, the same way I knew I had to call yo
u. So I ran back and that’s what I did.”

  I brace my elbows on my knees and clasp my hands together.

  “When you say you knew you had to call me, is it the same way you know about other stuff? Who’s going to start a fight, who’s going to call in sick?”

  Nicole nods. “It’s sort of like déjà vu, like I’m remembering something I dreamed.”

  Shit. There’s only one reason Nicole would have to call me and not someone else.

  “Well?” Theo asks, glancing from Nic to me.

  I let out a sigh, lean back in the chair. “You did the right thing.”

  “It’s a ghost, isn’t it?” Nicole asks, swallowing. “I’ve never felt anything like that before. Is that what it always feels like to you?”

  “Not always,” I say.

  “Do you think it’s Marcus?” Theo asks. “What are you going to do?”

  “Don’t worry,” I say, not answering the questions. “I’ll take care of it.”

  Nicole sits up straighter, pulling away from Theo. “God, it all sounds so crazy now.”

  “Everything we can do sounds crazy,” Theo says, his eyes meeting mine for a second. “Doesn’t make it less true.”

  “Alvarez, you gonna be a gentleman and take Nic home?” I ask him.

  “I’ll be fine,” Nicole says. “You don’t have to babysit me.”

  “I’m going that way anyway,” Theo says, which is clearly a lie, since Nicole lives with her aunt and Theo lives in the big complex with Ilia and the others.

  I stand up and run my hands over my hair. “Stick to the streets this time. I’ll let you know when the alley’s safe.”

  Nicole stands up and raises her hand toward me. I go still, refusing to flinch and upset her further, but she doesn’t touch me. Her hand hovers by my shoulder, close enough that I can feel the heat of her palm as she caresses the air. It’s almost real, almost enough, and then her hand drops to her side.

  “Thank you,” she says softly. “For coming.”

  “I owed you,” I tell her, uncomfortable. “I’ll see you later, okay?”

  Nicole nods and I turn to go, my skin feeling tight and the scream in my lungs itching to get out.

  “Lexi?” Theo calls after me, and I look back over my shoulder. “You need backup?”

  I shake my head, tapping on my arm where he inked a knife for protection. “I have backup.”

  Theo takes me at my word and doesn’t argue. “Be careful” is all he says.

  I nod once, and then I leave them behind as I go to meet what I know is waiting for me.

  The streets are dark, the buildings so tall they block out the glow from the streetlights. I cut through the lot behind Elysium, turn left at the corner by the converted bank, avoid the dumpsters and the pools of water and oil. It smells like piss and gasoline, old beer and rotting food. The only sounds are the drip of leaking air conditioners and the constant soft roar of traffic.

  “Where are you?” I whisper, and I don’t know if I’m talking to myself or the darkness.

  My boots click on the rough concrete as I turn down the long alleyway behind Xanadu, and suddenly I’m too warm, heat pressing against my face and gathering at my back. I smell rusted iron and exhaust fumes and something weighty, something desperate, pushes against me.

  “I know you’re here,” I say to the death pulsing in the air. “Marcus? It’s Lexi. You can come out.”

  It unfolds from the darkness in the alleyway, a patch of shadow peeling away. It makes no sound as it comes forward, steady and relentless.

  My stomach drops. She stands in front of me, the blood and the heat and the fury.

  “Oh,” I say, my lips numb. “It’s you.”

  7

  MY BREATH CATCHES IN MY THROAT AS MY BRAIN tries to reconcile the after with the before. She’s wearing the same outfit she had on that night, but her shirt is soaked with blood. The pink cheeks are still there, but her neck is marred by a brutal gash from ear to ear. She’s still beautiful, even as a ghost, even with eyes the pearly color of death. She’s still the kind of beautiful that makes you ache.

  “You can see me,” she says, her voice lower and rougher than I remember. Jane. Her name is Jane.

  I swallow, my mouth tasting of iron. “Yes,” I whisper.

  She moves forward, her feet sliding silently along the cement, and I fight the urge to back up.

  “You can really see me,” she says again, almost to herself.

  And then she’s reaching out and grabbing my arms. When her fingers close around solid flesh, her eyes go wide and she looks up at me with something close to awe, like I’m her savior, like I’m holy.

  “You have to help me,” she says, her grip so tight it’s almost painful. “I tried to go home, but no one can hear me, no one can see me. Please, they don’t know I’m dead, you have to tell them, you have to—”

  “Jane,” I cut her off, and her eyes snap to mine. For two days she’s been screaming at people who can’t hear her.

  “That’s . . . do I know you?”

  I shake my head. “No. Not—no.”

  She blinks at me slowly. “Yes, I do. I remember your hair. It was that night,” she whispers. “You were there.”

  “Jane—”

  “Who did this to me?” she screams in my face, the lights in the alley burning brighter and brighter.

  “Jane, stop,” I order. “I don’t know what happened, I swear.”

  She doesn’t listen; the murdered ones never want to listen. She pulls me even closer, and it’s too much, the heat and the anger and the acid; my legs go weak, and wetness trickles down from my nose.

  “Please,” I say. She’s not intentionally trying to hurt me, so my spells aren’t kicking in. I don’t want to have to force her away, but I’m close to passing out. “I don’t want to hurt you.”

  She starts to laugh, the sound hollow. It fills up the small space between us, ugly and bitter, and then cuts out.

  “I died,” she says. “What else can hurt me now?”

  “I can,” I say, and I shove my magic at her with just enough strength to make her feel it.

  Jane’s mouth opens and she abruptly drops me; I fall to the ground as she backs up, her eyes darkening from white to brown.

  “What was that?” she asks, pressing her hands to her chest like she’s looking for a wound. “How did you . . .” She sees me on the ground, blood dripping onto the asphalt.

  “Oh, god,” she says, hurrying toward me. “I didn’t mean. . . .”

  “It’s okay,” I say, holding out a hand to stop her. “It’s okay.”

  Her face crumples up and she screams then, slamming her palms against the rough stone of the building. “I’m so angry,” she yells, her voice cracking. “What’s wrong with me? I can’t stop it. I don’t want to stop it.”

  I press my sleeve to my nose and swallow, tasting blood on my tongue. “I’m sorry,” I say, and I wonder if she has any idea how much I mean it.

  She lowers her hands from the wall and looks over her shoulder at me. “Who are you?”

  “My name is Lexi,” I say, my voice thick.

  “You were there that night,” she says.

  “Yes. I work at Elysium. But I wasn’t the one who hurt you.”

  “No,” she says. “No, that part wasn’t you.” She frowns, blinks. “I keep trying to remember that part.”

  “Jane—”

  “How can you see me when no one else can? How can I touch you?”

  I try to stand up, and the ground tilts dangerously beneath me. “It’s what I do,” I say simply. “And now I’m getting something to eat before I pass out.”

  The mini-mart across the street is empty except for the bored-looking cashier. I buy a carton of milk and a bag of powdered donuts, my hands trembling as I dig out my wallet.

  I sit on the curb in the dark, licking powder off my fingers and waiting for the sugar to hit my bloodstream. Jane sits next to me, her back straight, body rigid. If someone drives by us, I
wonder what they would think of what they see; a girl, or maybe a boy, sitting alone on a curb in the middle of the night.

  “How much do you remember?” I ask Jane quietly.

  “Not enough.”

  Her eyes go unfocused, staring at something I can’t see. This is what I must look like when I see the dead.

  “The last thing I remember clearly is the alley. After that it gets foggy. I think I was somewhere else when I was dying,” she says, her lips barely moving. “The blood felt like warm water spilling out of me. I remember the pain. It was . . . sharp. And then it was deep.”

  Blood starts to bubble up from the slash in her throat, cherry red and shining. Jane blinks, her face calm and detached, and presses a hand against the cut.

  “Jane.”

  She lifts her hand up, examines her wet fingers, and I feel my neck start to crawl.

  “I’m sorry,” I say, curling my own fingers into fists.

  “Not your fault,” Jane says, and I flinch. I didn’t hold the blade, but I’m still guilty. I let it happen.

  “What else?” I ask, my skin hot from being this close.

  She frowns. “I remember you. Looking afraid. Like you needed help.”

  “I was having a bad day,” I say, which is almost the truth. “Anything after that? The person who . . . ?”

  “No,” she says. “Nothing, until I woke up like this. With this . . . this rage inside me. Not that I was dead, but that someone killed me.” She glances over at me, but I won’t meet her eyes. “I tried to go home. They haven’t found my body yet, have they? That’s why my mom thinks I’m still alive.”

  I tear a donut into pieces. “No, they haven’t.”

  And they won’t, because Urie’s going to make sure they’ll be looking for her alive, and somewhere outside the city. Because of me.

  “If they can’t even find my body, how are they going to find who did this?” Jane looks down at her shirt, at the bloody fingerprints on it.

  “They’ll keep looking,” I say. They’ll just be looking in the wrong place.

  “Not good enough,” Jane says, her hands curling into fists. “I want a name. I want a face. I want justice.”

  I wipe powdered sugar on my pants and stand up. “I need to make a phone call,” I tell her, taking a step away.