by Stacey Kade
Mrs. Turner folded the strip of fabric into my palm and closed my fingers over it, and then she kissed my forehead with a sigh that seemed to indicate now that Blankie and Lily had been reunited, all would be right with the world.
I looked away, staring at the far corner of the room so I wouldn’t start crying again when I’d barely stopped. It wasn’t fair. Why did Lily Turner get these parents, this family, and not me? She wasn’t even around to appreciate them. She probably hadn’t appreciated them even when she was around. Not as much as I would have.
13
Will
Alona Dare had stolen a body, and not just any body, though that would have been bad enough. No, she had topick Lily.
It really shouldn’t have surprised me. She always thoughtshe was entitled to take whatever she wanted, and damn the consequences. But my God, of all the selfish things to do.
She’d said it was an accident and maybe it had been, but that didn’t change the fact that she hadn’t considered anybody else in this mess except for herself. That was vintage Alona Dare, right there.
I stalked back through the hospital and out to my car, fury fueling my stride. I was half-tempted to call Mina, let her show up in the room with all of her clanking boxes, and maybe Alona would freaking learn something.
But that wasn’t my job. I wasn’t the one responsible for teaching her. The light had sent her back; the light would decide if that had been a mistake, not me.
However, that didn’t change the fact that I needed help.
I got to my car — it hadn’t been towed, thank God — and climbed inside. I needed privacy and a second to think before taking any kind of next step.
I was willing to bet someone within the Order knew more about what Alona had done, not specifically that she’d done it but how it had happened and maybe how to undo it. The trouble was what they’d do with Alona afterward. No matter what I’d let Alona think, I would not be calling Mina in on this. No way. Removing and boxing Alona would be too much of a trophy for her to resist.
But the Order was still my best option for information. The only trick was how to get it without them descending upon the hospital and Alona and Lily. Mina had claimed Mrs. Ruiz was a green-level ghost, whatever that meant, but it insinuated that there were levels higher than that. And if I had to guess, I would say they’d classify Alona as belonging to one of those more powerful categories. Which meant the Order wasn’t going to just let her walk away.
But that didn’t mean I couldn’t attempt a little subterfuge and see what I could learn. If I was careful, it would look like I was simply an eager student.
I reached into my pocket for the crumpled card with the 800 number on it.
Lucy seemed to be the most sympathetic among the Leadership and the most willing to overlook my dad’s peculiar concern with the dead instead of — or in addition to — the living. She might be more willing to give me answers the others would dismiss as information I didn’t need to know.
I pulled my mom’s cell phone from my pocket. She’d insisted that I take it so I could call her and give her an update after my visit with Lily, which I’d have to do immediately after calling the Order. Otherwise she might freak out and start trying to track me down.
I flipped the phone open and started dialing the number for the Order, trying to organize my thoughts into a coherent story that didn’t sound too suspicious.
It rang once and then a woman’s efficient but nasal voice said, “Answering service.”
I hadn’t been expecting that. Not that I thought the Order would be trumpeting their name and purpose, but this generic greeting made me wonder for a second if I’d misdialed. “Um, hey, can you connect me with Lucy?” I realized belatedly that I didn’t know Lucy’s last name.
But this didn’t seem to faze the operator. “One moment, please.”
The connection clicked in my ear and then it started ringing again, tinny and distant. Hopefully, the woman was transferring me to Lucy’s cell phone and not a desk phone out in California somewhere. I assumed that Lucy was still in town after last night, or maybe on her way back.
“Lucy Shepherd,” she answered, sounding more professional and crisp than she had at the theater.
“Hi Lucy, it’s Will…Killian,” I added quickly.
“Will!” she cried with delight, so much so that the phone vibrated against my ear with the reverberations of her voice. I winced.
“I’m not interrupting anything, am I?” I asked. If she was in a meeting with John and Silas, I wanted to know. That might affect the answers she’d be willing to give me.
“Of course not, hon. I’m just packing up for my flight back this afternoon. What can I do for you?”
“I just had a couple of questions, if you don’t mind.”
“Oh, sure.” Her voice softened. “I understand.”
And I realized she thought I wanted to ask about my dad. I did — badly — but now was not the time. Except I couldn’t help but think, what if there wasn’t another time? Who was this Danny Killian that Lucy and the others knew? Like, asa person, not just the secretive and unhappy guy who was my dad?
“Will, are you still there?”
“Oh, yeah, sorry, just got distracted for a second.” I needed to keep my focus on the immediate problem. Getting Alona free. “Listen, I know this is going to sound strange, but I’m just trying to wrap my head around everything, and I’ve been hearing some things I wanted to run by you.”
“Okay,” she said cautiously.
“Is it possible for a ghost to possess a person? Not what they show in movies, where everything is all crazy and split pea soup, but like almost undetectable? The person might seem normal or close to it.”
She was quiet for a long moment, a silence that dragged out way too long. Shit, had I just given myself away? “Lucy?”
“You’ve been talking to Mina,” she said with a sigh.
“What?” I asked, confused. “I mean, yeah, but not…”
“She’s insisting that we take this priest’s call seriously, but what she’s forgetting is that red-level manifestations are very rare. I’ve never even seen one before and—”
“Wait, what priest?”
“The chaplain at St. Catherine’s.” Now she sounded confused. “Didn’t Mina tell you that?”
Despite the heat in the car, I felt a sudden chill. Alona had mentioned a priest.
“Apparently, a girl who was in a coma for months and months woke up early this morning, and she’s already talking and moving around.”
Oh, no. No, no, no.
“That can be one of the signs,” Lucy continued, oblivious to my distress. “Red-level echoes like that tend to go after weakened targets and make them their own. Like I said, though, they’re incredibly rare.”
“What is the Order doing about it?” I forced myself to ask in what I hoped was a normal voice or the closest thing to it that I could manage at this point.
“Do?” She laughed. “There’s nothing to do. This is just that poor girl’s attempt to win one more chance at full membership with a containment. But I doubt they’ll find anything.”
I froze. “They’re looking to find something?” Looking was bad. Looking meant members of the Order with disruptors and boxes would be in the vicinity of Alona.
“I thought you said you’d talked to Mina,” she said with a frown in her voice. “John took her to the hospital to check it out, even though—”
I snapped the phone shut, dropped it to the floor, and bolted from the car.
14
Alona
The strange thing about a hospital is that you’d think it would run on routine, the same thing every day, every hour.
Instead, it was more like they set out to throw random elements in at odd intervals just to keep you off balance.
Mr. Turner had just left to take Tyler to the cafeteria when an orderly showed up in my room with a wheelchair. “Physical therapy,” he called out far too cheerfully as he pushed the chair up to my be
d. His scrubs had dancing teddy bears on them. Blecch.
“Are you serious?” I asked. The last thing I wanted to do in this body was anything physical.
“Dr. Highland never said anything,” Mrs. Turner spoke up with a frown.
The orderly was undeterred. “The sooner we start, the faster she’ll be back on her feet.”
“Okay,” Mrs. Turner said, still uncertain. She set her book down, a tattered paperback that she carried with her everywhere without ever seeming to make progress in it, and stood up.
“It might be better for you to wait here. Therapy is hard on the patient, but sometimes it’s even harder to watch,” the orderly said.
Great. This sounded like more fun every minute.
“No, I think I should—” she began.
“I’ll be okay,” I said. Now that I could talk, I wasn’t completely helpless. And it would probably be a good idea to start putting some distance between us. If Will could figure a way out of this — and he seemed determined, if more for Lily’s sake than mine — then the less time we spent together now, the better. Not that it would help all that much after everything that had happened, but it wouldn’t make thingsworse as further bonding might.
“Are you sure, baby?” Mrs. Turner asked with a frown.
The weird thing was the prospect of leaving Mrs. Turner here and going to therapy alone didn’t exactly spawn the feelings of relief I’d expected. It was almost like I wanted her to go with me.
No, no, no. Not your body, not your life.
Not your family.
“Yes, I’m sure,” I said firmly, trying to convince myself as much as her.
“Okay,” she said, beaming.
Oh. She saw it as a sign of improvement. Fabulous. Well, at least it made her happy.
After some very awkward maneuvering that revealed far more of this body than I would have wanted if it were mine, the orderly managed to get me into the wheelchair. That alone was enough to exhaust me, even though I’d done little more than just keep my balance during the transfer.
He spun the chair around expertly to face the door, and only then did I realize I’d left Lily’s cell phone on the bedside table. Crap. Well, how long could one physical therapy session last anyway? I’d probably be back before Will called.
If he called.
“Bye, Lilybean,” Mrs. Turner called after us.
This girl had more ridiculous nicknames than I had cute shoes. Or, used to have. Whatever. I wondered if my mom had finished cleaning out my room. Were all my clothes and shoes already on the shelves at the Salvation Army, next to ugly plaid sports jackets and sensible heels that nobody wanted to wear?
I shoved that thought away. I had enough to worry about right now.
The orderly moved us down the hall swiftly, like we were running late or something. The momentum, especially around corners, made staying upright a little tricky. More than once I thought I’d slide right out of the chair into a big hospital-gowned heap on the footrests.
But I didn’t ask him to slow down. Because every second we cut off this little adventure was one less in the hallway where everyone stared at me as we passed by. Some of them even followed me down the corridor, whispering to each other.
Look, I get it. It looks like a miracle, talks like a miracle, but…it’s not.
Reaching the service elevator — they never used the visitor elevators to move patients around, as I’d discovered during my bajillion tests earlier this morning — was, quite frankly, a relief.
Humming a tuneless collection of notes under his breath, the orderly wheeled me inside and pressed the button for the basement.
The basement? That seemed vaguely odd. Not that I had any clue where physical therapy took place, but I’d seen most of the basement at various times. After all, the morgue was down there, as was the MRI machine — another discovery from this morning.
Looking back on it, I should have asked. I should have spoken up and said something, anything. Maybe that would have been enough to push events back on course.
But I didn’t. I was tired from the effort of sitting up during the (relatively) wild wheelchair ride, and honestly, at the hospital, with so many people pushing and pulling at you, taking you one place, only to drag you somewhere else, you kind of just surrender your destiny to the powers that be with the idea that they know what’s best. I wasn’t proud of it, but that was just the way it worked.
The orderly wheeled me out of the elevator and down the main corridor before turning off into a small hall I’d never noticed before.
He stopped in front of an unmarked door and knocked.
The door opened, and the first thing I noticed was the smell: mildew and fake pine. The orderly pushed me inside, and then I saw the mops standing in the metal bucket, the rusting and tilted shelf that held crusty-looking bottles of industrial cleaners, and a huge washtub.
Father Hayes stood next to the industrial tub, his hands folded at his waist, as though he’d been praying while waiting for us.
“What’s going on?” I demanded, feeling the first spark of fear. Though somehow, in the back of my head, I was still thinking that this must be a mistake. A wrong turn.
“Raymond, thank you.” He stepped forward and extended his hand toward the orderly who shook it. “You are truly doing the work of the Lord.”
Oh, this was not good.
I craned my neck around to find Raymond or as much of him as I could see from that awkward angle. He released the priest’s hand and turned to leave. He was just going to abandon me down here in the janitor’s closet! “No, no, no. Come back, Raymond. Take me out of here. What about physical therapy?”
But he just kept going, at a speed much closer to normal rather than the rapid rate at which he’d moved before. And that’s when I realized he hadn’t been doing that to spare me embarrassment or discomfort. Nope, he’d been trying not to get caught. Bastard.
The door snapped shut behind Raymond, and I twisted around to face Father Hayes again, but he wasn’t looking at me. His attention was focused on something behind me.
“I assume this space will be adequate for your needs?” he asked.
I turned the other way, straining my neck to see who he was talking to, and as soon as I did, my breath caught in my throat and my heart exploded into a frantic beat. There, where the door would have hidden her from sight, stood Mina, scourge of the spirit world. She had her huge duffel bag strapped over her shoulder, and her curly hair stood out around her head in a frizzy halo. And, in her right hand, she held the shiny disruptor weapon that had taken down Mrs. Ruiz, aimed right at me.
Will. Had he called her down on me?
I wanted to throw up, not just from the fear but the betrayal. He’d threatened it, but I never actually thought he’d go through with it.
Mina moved to block the door. “This is fine,” she said to Father Hayes, her weapon hand steady and unwavering. She reached up and removed her duffel with her free hand, setting it down on the ground with a loud clanking sound.
But if Will was responsible, where was he? He might leave me to Mina, but he would never abandon Lily to chance. And what was the priest doing here? This made no sense.
“I think there’s been some kind of mistake,” I said, trying to sound level headed, the way a regular person would if she found herself in a janitor’s closet with seemingly crazy people instead of physical therapy.
“No. No mistake,” Mina said, circling me. “I can almost see you in there, flickering just under the surface.” She leaned over, bringing the disruptor closer to my face. I didn’t know if it would work on me in this form, but I was pretty sure it would, or else she wouldn’t be pointing it at me.
“Touch me with that, you freaky-haired bitch, and I will make you regret the day you decided to home perm,” I snapped.
Mina stopped, her mouth hanging open. Then she cocked her head to the side, an evaluating look on her face. “Highness? Is that you in there?”
Damn.
&nb
sp; “You’re the red level.” She grinned. “This is going to be fun.” She backed up from me and knelt down by her duffel, careful to keep her attention on me. With her free hand, she started pulling out little metal boxes, ones I recognized as similar, if not identical, to the ones from the front room of the Gibley Mansion.
This was it. Mina was going to haul me out, box me up in little pieces, and stick me on a shelf somewhere.
Think, Alona, think! Talking her out of it was nevergoing to happen. I couldn’t run. Hiding was definitely out, duh. So, I did the only thing I could.
I screamed bloody murder…because I had a feeling that was exactly where this was headed.
15
Will
I didn’t bother with waiting for the elevator, just plowed through the lobby to the emergency stairs and up to the fifth floor, taking the steps two at a time. I cursed myself for leaving my phone in the car. At the very least, I could have called and tried to warn Alona while I was running, but it was like I’d stopped thinking the second I’d heard Mina was at the hospital.
I yanked open the door and burst into the hallway on the fifth floor, startling a nurse who happened to be passing by at the same time.
“Can I help you?” she asked, annoyed.
I ignored her and charged past the nurses’ station and down the corridor toward Lily’s room. The door was open, I could see that much, but I couldn’t hear her, as I had before.
Dread filled me, but I forced it back with an attempt at logic. She might be sleeping. Or, maybe they took her for more tests.
I jogged toward the door, moving slower than I had before, almost afraid to look inside.
And when I did, I saw exactly what I’d expected and feared. Lily’s bed empty, the covers shoved back. My heart sank.
Mrs. Turner looked up from her paperback, startled. “Will? Did you forget something?”
“Where is Al…Lily?” I shifted my weight from foot to foot, feeling potentially vital seconds tick away.
She frowned. “Physical therapy. Is something wrong? You look panicked.”
