by Leo Hunt
“All right.” She looks away. “Sorry.”
“Look. Come by tonight, after school.”
“I will,” she says.
The street’s stillness is complete and total. You could believe that time had stopped, that we’d be here in Ash’s car forever, the sun never rising or falling, the sky stuck in its strange tropical blend of pink and blue. Inside their houses, my neighbors will be asleep, waiting for the shrilling of their alarms. Ash is facing ahead, breathing lightly, not seeming to look at anything in particular. I wonder what she’s thinking. I think about my neighbors, immobile in their darkened beds, and the dead, lying in their dark graves.
Ash restarts the engine, breaking the spell. I reach for the door handle.
“Hey, do you want your sweater back?” I ask.
“Keep it,” she says. “It fits you better than me.”
I get out of the car, shut the door behind me. I walk around to our gate and look back at Ash, still parked, watching me. I’m not sure what’s appropriate. Are we friends now? I’m helping her with something important, but I’m still not even sure if we like each other. She trusts me. I’m trusting her, too, come to think of it.
In the end I give her a little wave, but she’s already driving away.
I wake up in my clothes, my alarm chirping, Ham scratching at my door. Seven thirty. I got maybe an hour of sleep. An hour later and I’m in my uniform, sitting on the damp wall of a crumbling mausoleum, drinking coffee out of a thermos. My yawns stretch out my jaw like I’m a snake swallowing eggs.
Elza pushes her way through the gap in the fence, wearing her dad’s old leather jacket over her school clothes. She makes her way across the graveyard, boots shiny with dew. “Are you all right?” she asks. “What happened?”
“You should probably sit down,” I say.
“You look grim,” she says.
“I didn’t really sleep.”
Elza wraps her arms around me. I return her embrace, but I feel awful. I’m going to have to tell her a lot of stuff I’ve been keeping secret, and I don’t think she’ll take it that well.
“Did you have another fit?” she asks.
“No. Look, sit down. I need to talk to you.”
“All right.” Elza sits beside me, folds one leg over the other. She winds a strand of hair in her fingers as I talk.
I give her the whole story, from us parting ways last night to me being dropped off at my house by Ash this morning. I tell her about Ilana and the Widow, Magnus Ahlgren, and my promise to Ash. She listens without saying a word. Halfway through, she takes out a cigarette.
“. . . so she’s coming by tonight to read the Book,” I conclude. “Or that’s what I told her, anyway. I don’t know. It was strange.”
Elza lets smoke leak from her mouth.
“Can you say something?” I ask.
“Honestly? I don’t even know where to begin.”
“Are you angry?”
“Am. I. Angry?” The words come out staccato.
“I’m really sorry that I didn’t tell you —”
“About what? What are you sorry about?”
“Elza, I’m really sorry I didn’t tell you about the Book of Eight. I shouldn’t have kept that a secret from you.”
“Berkley came back to Dunbarrow? He came to your house and you didn’t even mention this?”
“I . . . look, I —”
“Oh, just . . . save it. Seriously. So you’ve had it buried in the field behind your house this entire time. You can walk out of your own body and you didn’t think I needed to know about that, either? And then you just go flying up to this horrible house. Ash could’ve killed you —”
“I don’t think she would.”
“You don’t know her! We don’t even know she’s a person at all!”
“She is,” I say. “And she needs my help.”
“Well, at least I know how to get you to trust me!” Elza snaps. “Keep you prisoner inside a mirror! Because apparently you’re totally OK with sharing your every secret with someone who does that to you.”
“Elza, I do trust you.”
Her voice is like ice. “You know what hurts about this, Luke?”
“Elza —”
“What hurts is I thought we trusted each other. I thought I’d finally met someone I could share everything with. Someone else who saw ghosts. Someone else who knows more about what happens when you die than anyone might reasonably want to know. I’ve always been honest with you. And it really hurts that you’ve been keeping stuff from me.”
I don’t know what to say to her. She’s right. I should’ve told her. I don’t really know why I didn’t. I could tell her I wanted us to be as happy as we could, didn’t want to bring up the dark parts of my life if I didn’t have to, but that’s not totally true. Maybe I just wanted to pretend I was still normal, even if it was just to myself. Maybe I wanted to pretend it was entirely my decision to spend all my days hanging out with Elza in a graveyard while all my old friends avert their eyes when I walk past or do impressions of me having a seizure? I wanted to pretend there wasn’t some big dark anchor tied to my foot, pulling me away from them. It’s not that I don’t love her. I do. But sometimes it doesn’t feel like I ever had a choice about being with her.
“I’m sorry,” I say after a while.
Elza stamps her cigarette out in the wet grass. I want to take her hand, kiss her, but her expression stops me from moving. I just want to wrap my arms around her and go back to bed.
“I need you,” I say. “I can’t deal with this alone.”
“I’m very pissed off with you,” she says.
“I know.”
“I haven’t decided exactly how pissed off I am. But you’re on thin ice.”
“Elza —”
“Just don’t, all right? We’ve got other things to worry about right now. Whoever, whatever, Ash is, you told her you’d help her. Whatever that’s going to mean, we don’t know. But you’re giving her free rein this evening with the Book of Eight.”
“I never said ‘free rein’—”
“Luke . . . She. Is. Dangerous. She’s got a bound spirit, this Widow. You said this ghost knocked you down like you were hit by a car. She’s powerful. What do we have? Some hazel charms? Your dad’s rings?”
“I don’t think Ash will hurt us,” I say. Elza didn’t sit by Ilana’s bedside. It wasn’t Elza’s dad who broke Ash’s world apart, put her sister in a coma. Elza’s dad is an IT professional whose greatest pleasure in life is looking at birds through a pair of binoculars. He’s never come close to killing anybody, except perhaps by inadvertently inducing lethal boredom at a dinner party. Elza doesn’t have the kind of family you need to atone for.
“Well, I’m coming to your house tonight as well. I think it’s best if we both supervise her, don’t you? Since you apparently believe anything she says as long as she flutters her eyelashes at you.”
“Elza, that’s not fair.”
“Yeah, it’s not nice, is it? When someone treats you unfairly.”
The graveyard’s grass ripples in the wind.
“Look,” Elza says, “I’ll see you tonight.”
She walks away at a pace that doesn’t invite me to follow her. A few sulky spits of rain darken the gravestones. I put my thermos in my backpack, pull my hood over my head. That went about as well as I expected. I slip out of Saint Jude’s the way we came in, through the gap in the fence, pushing on into the school grounds.
Holiday, Ash, and Alice are standing just inside the school gates. When they spot me, they forge a path straight toward me.
“See? I said they’d be in their graveyard,” Alice is saying.
“Luke,” Holiday says, “I want to talk to you. Is Elza around?”
“You just missed her.”
Ash says nothing. She looks as exhausted as me.
Holiday gives me a brittle smile. “So when I got home from rehearsal, my mum told me you and Elza came to our house and went through m
y room and Ash’s stuff?”
“You know that’s, like, totally illegal?” Alice asks us.
“I’ve always stuck up for you, Luke,” Holiday says, glaring at me. “People say horrible things about you, and I always tell them to leave you alone.”
“Well, thanks,” I say.
Ash is fiddling with her nose ring, her face a perfect mask of boredom. She’s a good actress.
“Look, I don’t know if this was your idea of a joke or what, but it isn’t funny. It’s weird. Tell your girlfriend that, too. I’ve told my mum that if you come over again, she shouldn’t let you in, all right?”
“Sure,” I say.
“You’re such a total creep,” Alice says.
“I know you’ve got”— Holiday’s smile is stretched about as thin as I’ve ever seen it —“mental health problems. I’m sure it’s hard. I don’t want to cause more trouble for you.”
“I’m glad to hear you’re so concerned about my mental health problems,” I say.
“If you could give my DVD back, I’d appreciate it,” Holiday says.
“It’s in my bag.”
I rummage in my backpack. I wonder what Holiday would do if I told her the truth about Ash. It’s a moot point, I suppose. Holiday doesn’t have the mental framework to even begin to understand the truth about her new friend.
I pass Holiday her Best of Hannah Montana DVD, and she tucks it into her handbag with as much dignity as she can muster.
“Well, I hope this was at least funny for you,” Holiday says.
I don’t say anything. Ash’s gray eyes are boring into me, hungry, almost seeming to shine. Is Elza right? Do I trust her only because she’s a pretty girl? I remember thinking the Vassal was evil because he had some kind of skin condition, and he was actually the kindest of all my dad’s ghosts. I suppose it’s too late. I made a promise to her, and there’s no way she’s going to leave me alone now.
Holiday tosses her hair and walks away without another word. Ash and Alice flank her, making their way to homeroom. I look up at the sky: pale blue, dappled with high gray clouds. It might rain later, or then again, maybe not. It’s one of those spring days. Everything’s up in the air.
I meet Elza again after school, and together we make the walk up to Wormwood Drive in chilly silence. The clouds have clotted into a tumorous ceiling, a layering of grays and whites with occasional hazy glimpses of blue, like a half-remembered dream. The wind is high and cold, and the trees that are coming into bud seem misguided.
When I come in, Mum’s on the sofa with Ham, watching TV. He gets up when he sees me and rushes right at me and past me, going out into the hall to nose at Elza, who’s still untying her boots. Mum looks guilty.
“You’re always telling me not to let him up there,” I say.
“I know,” Mum says. “He just has such sad eyes, though, doesn’t he?”
“He’s got nothing to be sad about,” I say. “We treat him like a king.”
“He’s a good dog,” Mum says, and then her face lights up as Elza walks into the room. “Elza! Hello! How are you?”
“Oh,” Elza says, “I’m fine, Persephone. Just came by to do some studying. Mum’s working tonight”— her mum’s a nurse —“but she can pick me up later, after her shift, if that’s OK?”
“You can stay over if you like,” Mum says. “Save her making a trip after work.”
Ham butts and snorts at Elza while she scratches his furry shoulders. I’m left standing in the doorway as Elza makes her way into the room, my mum and my dog hanging on her every word. Sometimes I wonder if my family wouldn’t secretly like it if Elza were the one who lived here, and I just came by to visit sometimes.
“We’ve got an owl living out back,” Mum’s telling Elza, who smiles as if it were the best news anyone had ever given her. “Haven’t you heard it, Luke? The last few nights?”
“Yeah,” I say, remembering the field past midnight, the first time I met Ilana and the Widow. I shudder. “I’ve heard it a few times.”
“I’ll have to tell Dad,” Elza says. “I’m sure he could identify it by the hoot alone.”
“It’s a lonely sound,” Mum says.
“I don’t think I’d mind being an owl,” Elza says absently, stroking Ham’s snout.
“Me either,” Mum says.
“They’re beautiful creatures,” Elza says.
“Drifting through the night,” Mum says. “Sitting under the moon.”
“Eating small mammals whole,” I say. “Spitting up dry little pellets of bones and skin.”
Elza, Mum, and Ham all look at me with naked disgust.
“Does anyone want tea?” I ask.
They do, and I take the excuse to vanish into the kitchen. Elza still hasn’t spoken to me directly since this morning. Exactly how angry she is, I can’t tell. We have arguments, of course. We’re different people in a lot of ways. Elza likes sitting still with a book; I like running around with a ball. Elza likes movies in black and white, preferably with subtitles, and I like movies where as many things as possible explode at the end. I think Elza is too quick to brand people she doesn’t even know as “stupid” or “dull.” Elza thinks I get far too emotionally invested in local soccer teams. She really hates that I wear polo shirts. I really hate that she smokes. She can’t stand trance, and I think most punk bands need to learn how to play their instruments. Elza encourages me to grow my hair and will sometimes try and coax me into buying some old cords or a moth-eaten tweed jacket while she’s rooting around in a thrift store, and for my own part, I wonder if she really has to put on black lipstick and a spiked dog collar just to go out and buy a quart of milk. You get the picture. At our core, though, we’ve always been an unshakable team. My Host saw to that. Elza saved my life, and had several near-death experiences herself along the way, and the bond we formed seemed to be unbreakable.
That is, until today.
Mum has chai; Elza favors Earl Grey. I’m still suffering from my lack of sleep last night, and I’m brewing up a big strong pot of coffee for myself when there’s a sharp knock at the front door. I make my way into the hall and open up to find Ash standing on the front step. She’s wearing a white backpack and carrying what looks like a briefcase made of dark polished wood, an unexpected palette change. It has a leather strap that hangs from one of her shoulders. She smiles.
“Hello, Luke. I’m here to work on our project?”
Her charming greeting is slightly spoiled by the presence of the Widow, white-robed and glaring, stranded just at the end of our drive, beyond the protective influence of Elza’s hazel charms. It’s possible for Elza to grant Ash’s servant entry to my house, but I’m not about to ask her to do it.
“Your friend has to stay outside,” I say in a low voice.
Ash frowns. “I was hoping —”
“No,” I say. “Just you.”
“She was a Priestess of Osiris. She knows the Book. I might need her opinion on some passages.”
“You can go to the end of my drive and ask her, then. She’s not coming in.”
Ash looks back at her ghost and makes a small motion with her left hand. The Widow bows and then blinks out of existence.
“You still don’t trust me, do you?” Ash asks.
“Not quite.”
“Fair enough. Still,” she says, laying her wooden case down in my hallway, “I’m trusting you. Without her, I’m totally defenseless.”
“What’s in the box?”
“My father’s reading equipment,” she says.
I never knew you needed equipment to read the Book of Eight. I just opened it up and used my dad’s number sequence, which even now I can’t say I totally understand. I think his notes are still at Elza’s house, actually. I should have thought to bring them over. What was it Dad called them? The sequence. I wonder if Ash has a sequence inside her wooden case.
“You should probably meet my mum,” I say. “Elza’s in there, too.”
Ash raises her eyebrows,
a gesture I find difficult to interpret in this particular context, and moves on ahead of me into my living room. Elza looks up at her with suspicion and hostility, Mum with drowsy welcome, and Ham with crazed joy. He rushes up to Ash and buries his head into the space between her knees, grunting like a wild hog. He nearly knocks her over. Ash falls back against the wall and, laughing, scrubs at his back with one hand. Ham is usually pretty good at judging character. He was afraid of the Host from the start, but seeing him so relaxed and friendly with Ashana Ahlgren seems like a good omen. Elza remains suspicious, hunched up in one corner of our sofa.
“He’s so big,” Ash says cheerfully. Her public voice is much more dizzily Californian than her real one, a voice honeyed with the sound of beaches and palm trees and wide, dazzling oceans.
“Ham’s a deerhound,” Elza replies in a voice as cold as the damp foggy moors around Dunbarrow. “They’re known for being pretty sizable.”
“Mum,” I say, “this is Ashley Smith. We’re working with her on a project. Ash, this is my mum, Persephone Cusp. And you already know Elza.”
“Persephone,” Ash says with a warm smile, “so great to meet you!”
“It’s always nice to meet one of Luke’s friends,” Mum says. “Are you American?”
“Yup — I come from Marin County, just north of San Francisco. I’m here on an exchange program.”
“It must be very beautiful out there,” Mum says.
“Oh, sure,” Ash says, “but I like it here, too. It’s bleak, y’know, but also beautiful?”
Mum nods at this, seeming pleased, like Ash just told her something enormously important. Maybe my family could just adopt Elza, and Ash as well.
“Would you like some tea, Ash?” I ask.
“Oh, no, thank you. I’m really eager to get started on our work,” she replies.
“Enthusiasm is a great gift,” Mum says. “What are you working on?”
“Old documents,” Ash says.
“Math,” I say at the same moment.
“We’re doing a project on the arithmetic of ancient hieroglyphs,” Elza says after a pause, getting up, giving me a cold look.
“That sounds very interesting,” Mum says. “I really think there’s a lot we can learn from looking at ancient civilizations and how they lived. What kind of hieroglyphs?”
