Tiger Lily

by Wende Dikec

  I looked at Nick in alarm. I didn’t know how to fight a soul reaper. That thing had scared the crap out of me when I first encountered it. Mr. Wan patted my hand before sticking it in the nail dryer.

  “Don’t worry, Tiger Lily. You will know what to do when the time comes, and Mrs. Chang can help you too. But you are running out of time. The full moon is tonight, but you must be careful. If you send the soul reaper on its way before midnight, it might slip back into our world. If you wait too long, the door will be shut. You must time it perfectly.”

  “What about Nick? The boy we talked about?”

  Mr. Wan stood up. His other customers waited impatiently, but Nick’s life depended on me figuring this out. “First get rid of the nice ghost. Then get rid of the soul reaper. After that, Nick must find his own way home. The road will be open for him, but it is a journey he must complete himself.”

  Noticing my crestfallen expression, Mr. Wan put a hand on my shoulder. “Don’t worry. He is the lucky one.”

  My mouth dropped open in shock. That was the name of the Fortuna Brothers’ song. Mr. Wan winked at me, and tapped a finger against his head. “I am old, but I am still smart.”

  Miss Lin brushed past him. “You are old, but you were never smart.” She fixed a scowl on me. “Did you find Mr. Lucky yet?”

  I looked at Nick and nodded.

  “It’s about time. Why are you so slow? I told you about him days ago.” Miss Lin stomped back to her table, as pleasant as always, and Mr. Wan waved goodbye.

  “Good luck. See you next week.”

  Mrs. Chang waited for me at the door of her shop. She wore traditional Chinese dress again, and leaned heavily on an ornately carved cane. “I knew you were coming.”

  “Because you’re psychic?” I asked.

  She smiled at me in her gentle, sweet way. “No, silly. Mr. Wan told me. He called to let me know.”

  “Mrs. Chang, I met the soul reaper.” I told her about what had happened, and how Blobby had saved me. I also told her about Mr. Wan’s advice. “Mr. Wan said I have to fight it, but I don’t know how. He said Nick will find his way back into his body, but I can’t help him.” Blobby did a nosedive onto the floor and slid back and forth like an ice skater in a rink. “And then I have this ghost that doesn’t want to go home.”

  “You have a lot of work to do. You must be brave. You must be strong. And you must be clever.”

  My shoulders sagged. “I’m none of those things.”

  Mrs. Chang hit the ground with her cane. Blobby, Nick, and I all jumped in surprise. “You are all those things and more. Why do you think you have these problems in the first place? There is something special about you, Tiger Lily, something that made the ghosts follow you back. Something that makes the soul reaper want to eat you, and something that made Nick come to you for help. Do you know what an aura is?” I shook my head. “It is a light that surrounds people. It is part of their spirit, but most people aren’t able to see it. They look for what they expect to see, but they don’t see what is actually there. I can see auras, which is why I know Nick is standing right here.” She pointed to the exact spot where Nick stood. “And your little ghost is right there.” Blobby slid up her leg and curled up in her arms. She smiled and murmured something to Blobby in Chinese. “Do you know what I see when I look at your aura?”

  “No.” I studied my hand and my arm. I couldn’t see anything, no matter how hard I tried. Nick tilted his head to one side and studied me. He couldn’t see it either.

  “I see a beacon, so bright and so pure that it lights up my entire shop. This is what brought these problems to your doorstep, and this is what will help you solve them.”

  “Really?”

  “Yes, but you are not alone. You have your friends, you have your family, and you have this candle, and you have the necklace I gave you.”

  I wasn’t too sure about the family part, but I nodded anyway. Mrs. Chang placed the candle in my hands and held onto me for just a minute. “But the most important tool you have is your own heart, Tiger Lily. You must be willing to sacrifice everything, or you will lose everything. I was not so brave, and I was not so strong, and because of that, the boy I loved died. It will not be the same for you, but you are almost out of time. Go. Now.”

  I walked out of the store in a daze. The bright spring sunshine dazzled me as the thoughts whirled around in my head. Everything was interconnected, just as Mr. Wan had said, but I was missing something important, and I didn’t have much time left to figure it out.

  We hopped into the car and drove to the hospital in silence. Even Blobby seemed subdued. As we pulled into the hospital parking lot, Nick turned to look at me. “Whatever happens today, know that I will never stop loving you.”

  I bit my lip. “I know. I love you too. But I’m scared.”

  “Me too.”

  Uncle Johnny and Uncle Danny waited for us at the entrance with a small, dark woman who looked fragile and pale in the bright fluorescent lights of the hospital.

  “Mom,” Nick said, his voice soft. Maria was so tiny she barely came up to his chest. Uncle Johnny and Uncle Danny stood protectively close to her.

  I held out my hand. “Ms. Fortuna, I’m Lily.”

  She held my hand in her small cold one as she studied me closely. “You aren’t at all what I expected. Please call me Maria.”

  Uncle Danny and Uncle Johnny both looked surprised. “Lily. You look really....different,” said Uncle Johnny.

  “Yeah, where’s all the leather?” Uncle Danny giggled. “And is that a ribbon in your hair?”

  I blushed. “This is the real me. I dressed up before so I would fit in at The Zone.” Zoe and Josh ran up the sidewalk to join us. She had on her usual black skirt, shirt, and combat boots, and Josh looked like he’d just been at soccer practice. “These are my friends, Zoe and Josh.”

  “Now Zoe looks like the kind of girl Nick usually dates. But he’s never dated anyone who looks even remotely like you, Josh.” Uncle Danny laughed even harder, and Maria elbowed him in the side. She linked her arms through Zoe’s and mine.

  “Well, you all look very nice to me. Don’t listen to those guys. Tell me how you know my son.”

  I explained everything to her. By the time we reached Nick’s room, she knew the whole story. I expected to see skepticism on her face, but there wasn’t any there. She looked deeply into my eyes as we stood outside the door of his room, and I felt like she looked into my soul.

  “You’re a good girl. I want to believe you are telling me the truth.” Maria’s eyes were the same dark brown as Nick’s, but she had the thick, curly hair of the Fortuna brothers. Nick must have gotten his silky, straight hair from his dad.

  Nick leaned close to me, his eyes on his mother. “Tell her what I said to you before, ti amerò fino al giorno dopo per sempre. I’ll love you until the day after forever. She said that to me every night before I went to sleep.”

  I repeated the words in halting Italian to Maria, with a lot of help from Nick. Maria paled, clinging to my arm. “It’s true. He’s here. Ti amo, Dominick. Ti amo.”

  “Tell her I love her too.” Nick’s voice sounded choked and tight. I could barely speak myself.

  Maria’s filled with tears. “I can’t tell you what this means to me, knowing he’s here. Knowing his spirit still exists. But how do we fix this, Lily? How can we save my Dominick?”

  “I don’t know, but I have to try.”

  She paused just a moment at the doorway, staring at me with her sad, dark eyes and studying my face. “Then it’s time,” she said as she opened the door to Nick’s room and let me in.

  “A bit of fragrance always clings to the hand that gives you roses.”

  Chinese proverb

  Chapter Fifteen

  Nick lay in the hospital bed, as pale and as white as the sheet he rested on. His left leg was in a cast. His dark hair fell across his forehead. Machines beeped and whirred, recording his heart and each breath he took, but my Nick wasn’t
there. He stood right next to me. What I looked at on the bed was a shell, a husk of the actual person.

  “Well, this is weird.” Nick hovered next to the bed, staring down at his own body. “What do I do?”

  I looked at Zoe, but she seemed confused. Blobby darted around the room in an agitated way, and soon I understood why. A large, dark shadow rose up from the floor and rested at the bottom of Nick’s bed, barely covering his toes. Without being the least bit psychic or clairvoyant, I could feel pure evil pulsating from it.

  “Is that what I think it is?” I asked.

  “I don’t know, but it’s bad.” Zoe looked scared, which said a lot. She didn’t scare easily. “Josh, can you get a feel for it? It’s on the bottom of the bed, just covering Nick’s feet.”

  Josh reached out a hand and recoiled so quickly he nearly shot backward across the room. “Whoa,” he said, shaking his hand. “What was that?”

  Maria exchanged looks with Uncle Johnny and Uncle Danny. “What are you guys talking about?”

  “I think we might have a problem here.” I explained about Mr. Wan and the soul reaper. Surprisingly, they took it in stride.

  “Is that why Nick isn’t in his body? I know he isn’t here. I’ve felt him slipping away more and more each day.” Maria sat down in a chair next to his bed.

  “I just realized something, Lily. The times I left you, the times I had to go away, those were the times she called me back.” Nick stared at his mother’s face before turning back to me. “Is the soul reaper pushing me out of my own body?”

  “I don’t know.”

  How had I become an authority on soul reapers? I sank down into a chair. I thought I’d been prepared for anything, but watching this black evil thing creep up Nick’s helpless body shook me to the core. Emotional and physical exhaustion weighed on my shoulders like a boulder as the soul reaper ate Nick alive, right before my eyes, and I couldn’t do anything about it.

  Nick knelt beside me, his hands resting on mine. Even if I couldn’t feel them, his presence was so strong it gave me comfort. “Don’t you dare give up, Lily. We’re so close.”

  I bit my lip, trying to stop the tears from rolling down my face, but I couldn’t. “I’m sorry, Nick. I love you so much, and I’m terrified that I’m going to do something wrong. I can’t lose you the way I lost Rosie. I can’t watch you die.”

  Nick brushed his hand across my hair. “You won’t have to. I’ll find my way back. I promise. You just have to do what Mr. Wan and Mrs. Chang told you to do. Can you do that? Can you be my brave, sweet girl?”

  I nodded, and wiped my tears away with the back of my hand. I’d had my little meltdown. Time to get to work.

  “Well, that was kind of weird,” said Uncle Danny. Everyone stared at me and watched what they saw as a one-sided, teary conversation I had with the wall. “But I’ve seen weirder.”

  Maria rolled her eyes. “I’m sure you have, Danny boy. The important thing is that she loves our Dominick. That’s all that matters.” She gave me a smile that warmed my heart.

  I stood up. “Let’s do this.”

  Nick tried to get back in his body, but it proved hopeless. He jumped into it, laid on top of it, and moved around it, attempting to slip in from different angles, but nothing worked.

  “It’s like I’m locked out.” He ran a hand through his hair in frustration. The others had gone out to grab some sandwiches for lunch. Only Nick, Blobby, and I remained in the room.

  When I saw Nick touching his hair, I turned to the body lying on the bed. “I want to know what it feels like.” I ran my fingers through it, caressing the silken strands. I gently traced his eyebrows, and the outline of his lips.

  “Kiss me, Lily.” I looked up at him, blushing. “I know it sounds weird, but I want you to kiss me.”

  I leaned forward and placed my lips against his. For the briefest of moments, I felt a slight tremor, like I actually kissed Nick and not just the empty shell of his body.

  Nick shivered slightly. “I think I felt that.”

  My eyes got huge in my face. “Me too.”

  I was about to try it again, when I heard a huge commotion outside Nick’s room. The door swung open, and my parents stood there, arguing with the Fortunas and a couple of nurses. The rest of the brothers had joined them, so we had a whole herd of Fortunas in the hallway. My parents did not look happy.

  “Lily Anne Madison. Time for you to go home. Now.”

  Jess or Maura had probably blabbed about Nick, but I couldn’t blame them. When my parents went on a rampage, they were a force of nature. My dad barely even looked at me. He expected to be obeyed because I’d always obeyed, but I couldn’t. Not now.

  I stood up, very slowly, and looked each of my parents directly in the eye. Then I said the one thing they had never, ever heard from me.

  “No.”

  “What did you just say?” My father acted like he might blow a gasket. My mother had been primping and looking at Uncle Johnny, Uncle Danny, and the other Fortuna brothers from under her eyelashes, but now she stared at me with undisguised astonishment. I’d never stood up to my father. Ever. Or to her. But I was Tiger Lily now. Their docile little Lily Anne was gone.

  “Mom. Dad. I love you both. But I love Nick too. I’m not leaving here until I help him. I mean it.” I reached for Nick’s hand on the bed and held it in mine. I thought I felt the faintest answering squeeze, but I couldn’t be sure.

  My parents began to rant again, but I held up a hand to stop them. “Sit down, you two, and listen to me. For once in my life, I demand to be heard.”

  That got their attention. They sank down into chairs next to the door. I took a deep breath.

  “I know things haven’t been easy for you. You’ve both suffered, but I’ve suffered too. I might not show it, but it has had an effect on me. The amount of sanitizer I use isn’t exactly a good sign, you know.”

  I wrinkled my brow for a minute when I realized I hadn’t brought any sanitizer with me to the hospital today. A hospital was a virtual cesspit of germs, but I hadn’t even considered it. Come to think of it, I hadn’t taken sanitizer to The Zone last night either, and that place was even dirtier than a hospital. In fact, I couldn’t remember the last time I’d used any sanitizer at all.

  Nick smiled at me. “It’s been days, princess. I haven’t said anything because I didn’t want to screw it up.”

  I smiled back at him, which kind of freaked my parents out since it looked like I smiled lovingly at a wall. My father stood up.

  “That’s it. I’m getting Dr. Carter.”

  I grabbed him by the shoulders and pushed him back into his chair. “No, Daddy. I have a story to tell you, and you’re both going to sit here and listen.”

  I told them everything, about the blobs and the soul reaper and about Nick. Zoe and Josh both backed up what I said, but I could see my parents didn’t buy any of it. They sat there in their expensive clothes, judging me and my friends and the Fortunas, as they refused to even consider the possibility that I might be telling the truth.

  My father reached for my hand. “Lily. You were in a terrible accident. None of this is your fault. We’ll get you the help you need.” He turned his icy stare to the other people in the room. “I blame all of you for encouraging this. You should be ashamed.”

  I pulled my hand away from him, shaking my head. “No. You should be ashamed. You both left me days after I got out of the hospital, when all this started happening to me. I knew you wouldn’t believe me. I knew I couldn’t go to you. That’s why I’ve been dealing with it myself. You’ve never been there for me. Ever since Rosie died, you both checked out emotionally and you’ve never come back.”

  My mother rolled her eyes. “Don’t be so melodramatic, Lily. It doesn’t suit you.” She stood up and grabbed her handbag off the chair. “We’re leaving. Now.”

  “No you aren’t.” Zoe, wearing a rather peculiar expression on her face, walked over to stand next to me. Blobby sat on her shoulder.

>   I looked at the clock above Nick’s bed. Almost five o’clock. We didn’t have time for this. The soul reaper had crawled up to Nick’s knees. I groaned in frustration, but Zoe stopped me.

  “The reason you can’t leave is because someone here wants to talk to you.” She gave me a funny little smile but I still wasn’t following.

  My parents had reached the limits of their patience. They argued with the Fortunas, and my father threatened to sue. My mother whined about losing half of her vacation because of this, but my eyes were glued to Zoe.

  “Be quiet. All of you.” I shot my parents a very hostile look, and to my surprise, they actually listened. “Zoe has something she wants to say.”

  “Actually, it is Blobby who has something she wants to say.” Zoe looked at Blobby, and Blobby seemed to wobble encouragingly.

  “Blobby is a girl?” I asked, and Zoe nodded. Blobby flew up to the ceiling and then whooshed through Josh.

  “Whoa, little ghosty girl,” he said with a laugh. “That tickles.”

  Nick watched Zoe intently. “I think I know what’s going on,” he said softly. “Ask her what Blobby’s name is.”

  I decided to humor him. “Okay. Zoe, what’s Blobby’s name?”

  Zoe laughed as Blobby sailed up to the ceiling and twirled around before coming down to kiss her on the cheek. Zoe and I both watched Blobby, but everyone else watched us watch Blobby. There was no way we could have synchronized it so perfectly. I could see the first bit of doubt enter my mother’s eyes, and soon my father followed. They were no longer entirely sure I might be crazy or delusional or under the influence of a controlled substance. A part of them, a very tiny part, started to entertain the possibility that I actually might be telling the truth.

  “Her name is Rosie.” As soon as Zoe said those words, the wall my parents had carefully erected around themselves shattered into a thousand pieces. Zoe’s blue eyes turned bright with unshed tears. “She’s your baby sister. I’m so sorry, Lily. I didn’t know.”