“Now what?” Connor asked. “There’s no guard. Maybe we could lift the gate.”
“That guy used an ID card,” Mickey pointed out. “No way we can drive in.”
“Maybe we can walk in.” I tapped the back of the driver’s seat. “Let’s go back and see if there’s a fence.”
“Wait a few minutes,” Dylan warned. “There might be a camera at that security station. If they see us drive by again so soon, they’ll know we followed the van. They might run our license plate.”
I got the feeling Dylan was forming his plan of attack based on TV shows, movies, and video games. Still, what he said made sense.
Connor eventually turned the SUV around, and we proceeded back to the gate at 3A.
No fence. No armed guards. No plaque with the DMP insignia or even PROPERTY OF THE FEDERAL GOVERNMENT. Just a dark road plunging into an even darker forest.
“Guys,” Siobhan said, “the GPS says we’re an hour away from our lake house. We could go there, change, maybe take a nap, then come back in the middle of the night.”
We all agreed—out loud at least. I longed to smash the SUV through the gate, drive up to Area 3A’s front door, and demand Zachary’s freedom.
But Siobhan was right. Stealth was our best bet. The moment I showed my cards to the DMP, the moment they knew I was doing something other than sitting around crying, or getting over Zachary by hanging out with Dylan, I’d lose the upper hand.
Assuming I had it in the first place.
“How do you spell SecuriLab?” Megan asked me, opening Mickey’s laptop.
I sat down next to her at the long dining table in the lake house’s rustic great room. “I’ve already done searches on them.” Using the library computers (I assumed the DMP was tracking my own laptop), I’d learned that SecuriLab was a multinational corporation charged with bribery in four different countries.
Megan ran a search, thumbing her sun-chapped bottom lip as she scrolled through the results.
“That’s interesting,” she said. “Their patent on BlackBox is running out in a few years.”
“What does that mean?”
“It means other companies can start making it. At the funeral home, there’s this new machine that takes the body’s—” She cut herself off. “Never mind.”
“Thanks.” I didn’t need an image of any machine doing stuff to Logan.
“Anyway, my dad always complains how expensive it is, because the company that invented it still has the patent. Their obnoxious salesmen are pushing it big-time right now. That way when other companies can start making it, all the funeral homes will have already bought one from the inventor company. They’re greedy bastards, but smart greedy bastards.”
Because of her job, Megan was even more jaded than most post-Shifters. Death was big business.
“Let’s go lower in the search results,” she said. “The weird stuff is always on pages ten and up.”
We kept scanning, and finally on the twenty-sixth page of results, a rumor-mill website contained the heading: “BlackBox maker hiring private spies?”
“Uh-oh.” Megan clicked.
According to the article, SecuriLab was paying a group called Nighthawk to perform corporate espionage. Nighthawk employed ex-spooks from intelligence agencies all over the world—CIA, KGB, MI6, Israel’s Mossad—along with ex-special forces operatives.
Megan read a quote aloud. “ ‘Everyone does it,’ said an anonymous source. ‘Corporations have to get the edge on their competitors.’ ” She slanted a blue-eyed gaze at me. “By hiring ex-assassins? I’m definitely majoring in business now. It’s a lot more exciting than I thought.”
“And this is more dangerous than we thought.” Mickey read the screen over her shoulder. “What if Nighthawk is at Area 3A? We could be going up against professional badasses tonight.”
The rest of them were milling nervously around the table. Instinctively my eyes went to Dylan, Operation Scot Free’s co-mastermind. He turned away and stared out the floor-to-ceiling window overlooking the sun-spattered lake. From here the boaters, Jet Skiers, and swimmers looked so carefree. Their biggest concern was avoiding sunburn, or where to find good, cheap barbecue.
“I still say secrecy is their security,” Dylan said finally. “You don’t need a thousand guards when you’re hard to find. You only need a few.”
“We could be supercareful.” Siobhan stirred the ice cubes in her lemonade with her straw. “Go up there, see what we can see, then leave. No unnecessary risks. It’s better than driving all this way for nothing.”
Mickey groaned and pressed the heels of his hands to his eyes. “Not getting killed isn’t ‘nothing.’ I don’t wanna have to tell Mom and Dad that I lost another one of you.”
My gut froze as we all stared at him. Mickey still felt responsible for Logan’s death, despite his claims that he’d made peace with it.
Megan went to him. “Logan would’ve wanted us to do this. Hell, if he were here, he’d be leading us.”
“She’s right,” I said. “If he hadn’t turned into a shade back in January, he’d be in a little box at Area 3A right now. If you won’t do this for Zachary, do it for ghosts like Logan. Do it for their families.”
Mickey backed away. “Look, I know someone has to do something about the DMP. I just don’t see why it has to be us.”
“Why not us?” Siobhan shrugged and crunched a piece of ice. “Seriously. Why not us?”
Mickey did a slow pace, half the length of the table, rumpling his dark hair until I thought he’d pull it out.
Finally he stopped and turned to us. “I’m outnumbered, so okay. But I have a really bad feeling about this.”
While waiting for pizza delivery, we watched online videos about how to avoid the authorities—or escape them.
Dylan made us all practice slipping out of zip ties, which he said a lot of law enforcement types used now instead of handcuffs. They were based on the plastic-and-nylon ties used for household jobs like bunching up video cables, or hanging Christmas garland, so the Keeleys had a package of them in the lake house basement.
“This is kinda fun,” Siobhan admitted, watching Connor try to Houdini his hands out of the bindings.
A grin dimpled his lean cheeks. “You would like me like this, wouldn’t you?”
“It’s easier for girls,” Dylan said quickly, probably to change the subject. “They have smaller hands.”
“I will not even comment on that,” Megan grunted. “Oh! I got it.” She waved the white tie triumphantly, then rubbed the red marks on her pale wrists.
“Are you sure this is what they’ll be using?” Mickey seemed more reluctant to escape now that it was a matter of hand size.
“Cops in New York were using them on ghost-rights protesters last month.” Dylan watched me struggle with my restraint. “Aura, it’s easier if you relax.”
“I’m trying,” I said through gritted teeth. “Funny how we haven’t heard anything about ghost rights since Flight 346.”
“Guess it’s not cool to like ghosts anymore.” Megan came over, bopping to the music on the stereo. “Aura, twist one wrist at a time. Once your thumb is loose, the rest is easy.”
“Why am I the only one still bound?” Even huge-handed Mickey and Connor were tossing their zip-tie loops up and over the great room’s high wooden beams like glow sticks at a concert.
“You weren’t listening to the video.” Dylan gave me a stern look, taking this more seriously than the rest of them put together. “The most important part comes before you’re tied up. You gotta be passive. Don’t let them think you’re a threat.”
“Right.” I was supposed to present my hands, thumbs together and wrists flexed. This would make slack in the tie, so I could slip out easily. “Would a DMP agent really fall for that?”
“Maybe not.” He patted my shoulder. “But if you ever get kidnapped, this’ll come in handy.”
The pizza arrived then, and everyone started eating without me. Mickey offered t
o cut me free, but I refused. Eventually I tried a new tactic: shifting the zip-tie’s plastic lock so I could use my thumbnail as a shim, separating the tie from the teeth that held it tight.
“Finally.” I slapped the plastic-and-nylon nightmare on the table and took a slice of pizza. My friends cheered and toasted me with raised sodas.
We went to bed at nine, setting alarms for a midnight departure. Between the midsummer sky’s lingering light and my mind’s restless worry, I couldn’t even doze.
Hearing the television on in the main room downstairs, I got dressed and went out to the hallway, which overlooked the dark lower floor. Dylan was sitting on the love seat by the giant stone fireplace, bare feet propped on the edge of the coffee table.
“What are you watching?”
He waved the remote control, his face blue-white from the TV light. “Everything.”
I went down and sat in the overstuffed armchair while Dylan flipped through the channels faster than I could follow.
“Are you looking for something in particular?” I asked.
“I keep forgetting you don’t live with guys. You never watched TV with Logan?”
“Not like this. He couldn’t sit still long enough.”
Heated voices leaked from an upstairs bedroom. “Megan, why are you doing this?” Mickey yelled.
“Doing what? Asking to spend time alone with you for once?”
“We went out last Saturday.”
“Yeah, out. In public. Not alone. Ever!”
Dylan turned up the TV volume so we couldn’t hear.
“You think Mickey and Megan’ll stay together?” I asked him.
He snorted. “Shyeah, right. Long-distance relationships always crash and burn.”
“You’re an expert?”
“I watch TV. People go to college and meet hotter people.”
“Mickey won’t leave Megan for a hot college girl,” I said.
“You wanna bet?”
“I’m not betting on my best friend’s happiness.”
“If they break up, can I at least say, ‘I told you so’?”
“Whatever.” I wondered if his point about long-distance relationships was meant for me and Zachary, or if it was only my doubts and fears that made me interpret it that way.
“I remember when we were kids.” Dylan tugged on the hem of his gray sweatshorts. “We’d come here with our cousins. Our parents and aunts and uncles and Nana would take the bedrooms, and all of us kids would camp out here in the living room.”
“It must have been jammed.”
“Yeah, it looked kinda like a hurricane shelter with all the sleeping bags lined up. But it was awesome. We hardly slept the whole week.”
Something he said awakened a memory in me, and I sat forward in shock. “Oh my God, in the cemetery, Logan asked me to convince your grandmom to pass on. It was like a last request.” I put a hand to my head, hot with shame. “I can’t believe I forgot.”
“That was right before the plane crash. I can totally believe you forgot.”
“We could call her at your old house on Calvert Street. I’ve seen her ghost there in the front yard, complaining about the flowers.”
“Okay, we’ll do it for Logan.” Still flipping channels, Dylan slouched to recline against the love seat arm, smushing a wave of brown hair against the side of his face. He paused at the twenty-four-hour concert station. It showed an old Nirvana gig from what looked like their pre-Nevermind days. Before I could say, “Ooh, let’s watch this,” Dylan kept clicking. Soon the channels were no longer in English.
“I miss Logan,” he said suddenly. “Back when he was a ghost, Mickey and Siobhan were jealous I could talk to him and they couldn’t. But now that he’s passed on, they seem so normal, and I feel so abnormal.”
It was good to hear someone else say it. “It feels like I just started missing him.”
“Because he just left.”
“The worst is when I listen to the radio,” I said. “I hear a new song, and it hits me that he’ll never hear it. He’ll never say something sucks or something rocks. We’ll never argue over whether a band is so last month.”
“It was really bad last weekend at the beach. I kept expecting his ghost to show up at the arcade or in our cousins’ apartment where we stay, like he did Memorial Day weekend. I couldn’t even eat a stupid funnel cake without remembering how he liked them.”
“With powdered sugar and apple pie filling.” I tried to laugh, but it came out like a cough. “So gross.”
“I know, I hate the pie stuff. They’re better with just sugar.”
“That way you can taste the dough.”
“Seriously. And our parents always used to make us share one, because a whole funnel cake would get us too wired. But last Saturday I had one all to myself, just the way I like it, and I couldn’t—” His jaw worked, like he was trying to swallow. “It tasted like nothing.”
To my left, the TV suddenly went silent. I looked at the screen to see that Dylan had reached the top of the listings, where everything was pay-per-view.
“Four hundred channels of shit,” he said. “How is that possible?” He hurled the remote control at the couch across from me. It bounced off the back cushion and onto the floor.
A heaviness filled my chest at the sight of his grief. Dylan understood more than anyone how much pain remained. But getting closer to him felt as dangerous as stepping into a bonfire.
Still, Dylan had comforted me when I’d needed him. I could do no less.
I stepped around the coffee table, sat on the edge of the love seat beside him, and took his hand.
It felt strange, like it was a different hand than the one that had groped me back in May. Maybe that was a good thing.
Dylan gave my hand a quick squeeze, then a longer one. He fidgeted with the seam of the green throw pillow, his face tight with tension.
Uh-oh. Was our new lack of attraction mutual or something only I felt? Would he be relieved or hurt if I let go?
“You shouldn’t do that.” His knee jittered, making his heel tap the floor. “It makes me want to—”
“Oh my goodness!” a woman shouted. “Am I interrupting something?”
We jerked our hands apart, and I almost slipped off the love seat. A trim, elderly lady sat in the chair with her legs crossed primly and her entire form shimmering in violet.
Dylan touched his chest like he’d had a near heart attack. “Nana, what are you doing here?”
Chapter Sixteen
What do you mean, what am I doing here? You called me, so I came.”
“We didn’t call, we just mentioned you.” Dylan stood and stepped forward. “Hi.”
“I’m so sorry I haven’t been around. I was afraid the men with the black uniforms and little boxes would try to grab me again.”
I gaped at her. “The Obsidian Corps tried to get you?” The Obsidians were the DMP special forces unit that protected the country from shades and at-risk ghosts.
“I saw them at your old house,” she said to Dylan, “and on my street in Ellicott City. I don’t go there anymore.”
“Why would the Obsidians want to capture you?” he asked her. “Were you shady?”
“Oh goodness, no. I don’t know why they’d find someone like me interesting.”
I knew why. She was a ghost related to Logan. If the DMP thought he had special qualities, they might wonder if it was genetic.
Ex–Nana Keeley turned to me. “I’m ready now.”
“To pass on?”
“No, to play roulette at the Bellagio. Of course, to pass on.” She looked between us, maybe trying to read the nature of our relationship. “Are you two alone?”
“Nana Keeley!” Megan straightened her nut-brown Sleater-Kinney T-shirt and beckoned Mickey to follow her down the stairs. “She’s in the chair.”
“Great.” Mickey sounded skeptical. “So what, uh . . .”
“Brings her here?” Dylan was still on the love seat, knees drawn to his chest
. “She wants to tell us good-bye.”
Mickey stopped on the landing. “Oh,” he whispered. Then he moved forward reverently, as if down the aisle of a cathedral, stopping to kneel beside his grandmom’s chair.
“Nana? Is that really you?” Upstairs, Siobhan clutched the wooden railing. “Aura, ask her why she’s passing on now after all these years.”
“If Logan can do it,” their grandmother answered, “so can I. He loved this world more than anyone I know, but he left it behind. And after less than a year of being a ghost.” She scrunched up her eyes. “It was less than a year, right? I lose track of time.”
“Two hundred forty-seven days,” I confirmed, thinking of ex–Tammi Teller’s obsessive count.
“So how do we do this?” she asked me. “Is there a light I’m supposed to walk toward?”
“I think it’s more like, you become the light.” I looked at the Keeley siblings. “Did you guys want to tell her anything before she goes?”
“I’ll start.” Dylan gripped his knees, knocking them together. “I’ll miss you, Nana. But I’m glad you’re going. I think you’ll be glad, too.” His lips folded under for a moment. “I love you.”
Ex–Nana Keeley wiped a tear from her right eye. I made a mental note to call my own grandmom when I got home.
Siobhan sat on the arm of the love seat. “Nana, I wish I could see you one more time, but I want to say, thanks. Thanks for buying me that fiddle when I was seven and for not letting me quit when I sucked at it. And thanks for all the banana bread. No one makes it like you.” She scrunched the material of her green pajama pants and looked at Connor, who stood near the stairs. “That’s my boyfriend, Connor. He puts up with me. You’d like him.”
Her grandmother laughed. “Silly, I already like him. I’ve been watching you two for over a year.”
I decided not to translate the second sentence.
“Anyway,” Siobhan concluded, “I love you, Nana. Say hi to Grand-dad for me, okay?”
“Ugh, Lord, spare me the sight of him. But I love you, too.” As I translated the last bit for Siobhan, their grandmother turned to Mickey, kneeling on the floor beside her. “Look at you. I always knew you’d grow up to be so handsome.”
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