Portals Heather
Page 16
I hoped he hadn't seen what I could do. It would only scare him.
I crouched next to him on the cushions. Emmett slid his arm around my shoulders without hesitation and my face grew hot.
Sweethearts. That's what he called us. And although his strict Victorian upbringing had so far prevented him from actually kissing me, he showered me with his chaste displays of affection. Hugs. Hand-holding. Gazing into my eyes. For three weeks, it had gone on like this. Emmett was incredibly cute, and it was driving me crazy.
I would have preferred a kiss. I did not grow up in the Victorian era and I, a normal, fifteen-year-old girl, wanted a normal boyfriend-girlfriend relationship. Even if my "sweetheart" was pretty recent to the mortal realm, having existed as a spirit until only a couple weeks ago.
Okay, I might have had ulterior motives when I brought him to live here. He was awfully cute, especially once he was alive. But the last time he'd been mortal, the year had been 1900! In some ways, Emmett was still stuck in stuffy Victorian manners.
I tilted my face toward him, hoping he'd finally be tempted. Our lips were inches apart. I waited . . . and he turned to gaze out the window at the green Hebrides sea. He kept staring, wrapped up in his thoughts, until I cleared my throat a few times. "Emmett!" I said, and he glanced at me with sad eyes.
"What were you thinking about just now?" I asked.
He shivered against me. "Nothing, really. A daydream. I was a dead soul floating under the sea. Can you imagine how beautiful it must be under there?" He turned to the window again, to the dark, brooding skies, the thrashing waves of the alien and otherworldly sea. The Round Room was not exactly on Earth, and it was not exactly in the spirit world, either. From here, we saw in between—a halfway space, suspended between both worlds. Emmett had been spending more and more time up here—like he instinctively wanted to get closer to the spirit world.
"Something's bothering you," I said. I suspected I knew what. I laid my head on his shoulder, since he wouldn't kiss me.
His voice came out hollow and distant. "I feel . . . there is something important I'm meant to do. I'm so distracted, and I have the weirdest dreams. When I can sleep at all."
He released a huge sigh, which disheartened me further. When he had been a spirit, Emmett had always reprimanded me for sighing. He claimed it was unsanitary and broadcasted all my emotions and desires to anyone in the spirit world who cared to listen. But as a mortal Emmett sighed all the time, without reservation. After just three weeks, he'd lost all memory, all connection, with his former spirit manifestation.
I said, "Maybe I was wrong to keep you here. What if I said there is something important you're supposed to do?"
He said, "I would believe you in a heartbeat. But what is it, I wonder?"
I hesitated. Dare I tell him about Dead Town?
Three weeks in our world and he was trying to throw himself out of windows. He was so regularly mortal that he couldn't see ghosts and scoffed at the idea of the paranormal. I didn't dare show him any of my "talents" he'd been so impressed with when he'd been a spirit. That meant no spectricity in front of Emmett. No levitation. Certainly no teleportation. If I held a séance, it had to be in secret. The Ring of Esperance stayed on my finger and kept my spectricity under control. But without his teaching, my destiny as a medium seemed to be on hold.
How long could I hide it from him, what I was? And how long could I hide what he was?
I knew then I was going to have to tell him. All of it. Before he slid out another window. I sat up straight, took his hands in mine, and looked into the bottomless deep of his black eyes.
"Do you remember a place called Dead Town?" I asked him, making my voice gentle.
He shook his head, but smiled. "The name has a pleasant ring. It rivals the one on your finger."
I clapped my hand over the ring, because it felt warm. Buzzy. Like a Smartphone that had been working too hard. "Yes, the ring. It can show us things. Do you want to see?" I held it up before his eyes, where the black jewel spangled crazily in the light. His eyes dazzled in return.
"It's so flickery. Like it's got fire inside. How did it get like that?" he asked.
"I think this ring has something it wants to tell us," I said. I didn't really know myself, but I had a hunch. "It can show you the place you're supposed to be."
I touched the glittering ring and a gauzy apparition appeared above it, projected out of the stone. It took the shape of a tree with a full crown above and thick roots below. But when I looked closer, I saw it was actually a map—a map of the spirit world! The All had gifted my ring with this ability, to navigate to any location in the afterlife.
"Amazing! How does it do that?" Emmett lifted his hand to the image, gaping in awe when his hand passed through.
"It was blessed by the All," I said, not sure how to explain that one.
"It's got to have some kind of tiny camera or magic lantern inside . . . let me see. Didn't you say I got this out of a gumball machine?" He reached for my ring and tried to wiggle it off my finger.
"Yeah . . . I might have fibbed just a little," I said. I gulped. Had I told him that? His questions were so hard to answer sometimes and I didn't want to scare him.
Maybe you didn't want him to know the truth, said a rather nasty voice in my head.
Okay, maybe. If he knew too much—if he saw my spectricity or found out who he really was—he'd leave. He'd have to go back and I'd lose him to the spirit world.
Emmett was still trying to fiddle with my ring, but I made a fist and stopped him from removing it.
"Sweetheart, don't worry. I won't break it," he said. "I gave it to you, remember?"
"I do." The memory flashed through my mind, Emmett as a wafting, transparent spirit kneeling before me, proffering the ring. All around us, the insubstantial forms of the spirit world wisped by. He'd gazed up at me, so sincere, and willing to wait all day. "I would be so honored, Aether, if you'd be my protégée," he'd said, promising me the ring would control my spectricity at last.
I hadn't taken it then. I'd needed a little more convincing. But eventually—in a spirit world coffee haunt where the waitress levitated the cups to our table—I'd finally agreed. I took the ring. I received its protection, and one thing more: for the rest of my life, Emmett and I would share a bond. I became Emmett's mortal protégée.
Except the ghost boy who'd made me his mortal protégée was now a mortal himself.
Emmett eyed the ring I was holding onto so tightly, and flicked at it. It glowed and buzzed in response.
"I have got to see how it does that!" he said.
"Don't try to take it off," I warned. When Emmett had been a spirit, removing the ring from my person had unleashed his vengeance incarnation—an ugly skeletal death form that attacked with balls of flame. I didn't want any part of that. Of course, Emmett was mortal now. Maybe it would be okay. But a spiritualist can never be too sure just what might happen. I certainly did not want to chance it.
"If you leave it alone, I'll explain," I said. I took a deep breath. I didn't know how I'd explain, or where to start. But, All help me, I was going to try, when—
Emmett twisted the black jewel of the Ring of Esperance. It made a deep and ominous tolling sound that echoed endlessly, like a gong. Or a death knell.
I looked into Emmett's puzzled eyes. And I heard another sound. The whirling, the murmuring, the turning around and around. A portal. It was descending over our heads. As the whirring sound surrounded us, I panicked. I flung myself at Emmett, held on tight, and wrapped myself close to him. Then the portal spun us both upward, head over heels, squeezing each other in the flux for dear mortal life.
About Leslie Edens Copeland:
Leslie Edens Copeland lives in Bellingham, Washington. She writes far too often of ghosts, mortals, transdimensional aliens, paranormal gay love triangles, half-ghosts, portals, deadzines, and magical teenagers. She lives on a super-charged writing ley line with an 18-pound monster cat that may be a Calico puma in
disguise, and a 14-year-old creative consultant. Together, they are TEAM DESPAIR, fighting for truth and justice and paranormal tolerance in novels everywhere! (cue triumphant music)
Portals: Heather Despair Book Two is her second book. Preceded by Mortals: Heather Despair Book One and followed by Spirits: Heather Despair Book Three! Keep on rockin' in the Despair 'verse and Allspeed.
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