by Lee Nichols
“Are you all right, Emma?”
“I heard the music and thought it was maybe my dad.” I tried to give her a reassuring smile. “I’m fine.”
She looked at me more closely. “Are you sure?”
“I—I don’t know what to do, I—” Then I was crying, ugly gulping sobs that I expected would make her regret she’d ever asked the question.
Except she just said, “Oh, dear. Come here.”
I went to her and she enveloped me in a hug. She led me to the yellow couch under the window and cradled me until I finally got the tears under control and settled into that weird hiccupping breathy noise you make when you’re a little kid.
She handed me a tissue. “Do you want to tell me what’s happened?”
I shook my head, then told her anyway. It helped to unload about my feelings for Bennett—even if it was a little weird telling his mother. And I explained I would never get over my guilt in Coby’s death and that he wanted me to dispel him, and about being haunted—literally—by my dead aunt and the man who tried to kill me. “And all the kids at school. How am I supposed to keep them safe?”
“I don’t know,” she said, after a moment. “That all … sucks.”
Enough that I wanted to stuff my face with comfort food. She caught me eyeing the breakfast tray on the coffee table. A white coffee cup held the remains of frothy milk and espresso, and there was one half-eaten croissant and another whole one.
“Are you hungry?” Mrs. Stern asked, offering me the plate.
“A little.” I grabbed the croissant and took a perfect, flaky-buttery bite. “Oh, my God.”
She smiled. “I know. Anatole gives me two, because he knows I love them.”
“I’m sorry,” I said around a mouthful. “I stole your second one.”
“It’s better this way.” She ran a hand over her flat stomach.
Raised voices sounded in the hall; Natalie and Lukas were arguing over the bathroom. “It takes me five minutes to shower,” Lukas grumbled. “You can’t let me go in first?”
“Why should I?” Natalie said. “I was here first.”
“Because you take forty minutes to get each strand of hair perfect, then you stare at yourself in the mirror for an hour.”
“At least I don’t spend that long over the three-course breakfast Anatole makes me special every morning.”
“Why don’t we just shower together?” Lukas snapped. “That’s what you used to like.”
“Shut! Up!” Natalie said, venomously.
I looked at Mrs. Stern. “And I thought all the fake politeness was bad. Should I go talk to them?”
“No,” she said, standing. “I think that’s my job.”
She crossed to the door and leaned her head out. “Natalie, I just bought a shampoo that I’m not sure about. I’d love your opinion. Would you mind showering in our bathroom?”
Silence from the hallway.
“It’s Aveda,” Mrs. Stern tempted her.
“That would be wonderful,” Natalie said politely, and I watched her sashay past the office door on her way to their bathroom.
“Thanks, Mrs. S,” Lukas called out before slamming the bathroom door.
I stood, shoving another bite of croissant in my mouth. “I should get ready for school.”
“Wait,” Mrs. Stern said. “Sit down.” She sat next to me and twisted her wedding ring in a circle around her finger. “I haven’t been fair to you, Emma. It took me a long time to admit you weren’t responsible for Olivia’s death. And Bennett … well, I’d hoped your feelings for each other would fade, but they haven’t, and I see now that they won’t. His father and I made some unpopular choices ourselves.”
“Mr. Stern’s parents didn’t want him losing his ghostkeeping powers?”
“Nobody wanted him to lose his powers,” she said.
“Do you ever think you chose wrong?” I swallowed. “Does he?”
“I …” She glanced away, then turned back and clasped my hands. “You’ll never get over the guilt. But you’ll never get over the love, either.”
I walked to school with Natalie. She didn’t want to wait for Lukas to finish breakfast, so we’d started off together. It was snowing again, a light flurry that wasn’t supposed to amount to much. I buttoned my coat and draped myself in the faux-fur hood. I liked how peaceful it felt. The snow seemed to muffle the ambient noise of the world, though not the crunching of the peanut-butter toast Celeste had handed Natalie at the door.
“It’s good,” she said around a mouthful. “Want a bite?”
“No, thanks. I already had one of Mrs. Stern’s croissants.”
She raised an eyebrow, and I told her about our conversation. “What did she mean, ‘You’ll never get over the love’? Why couldn’t she just have said, ‘Yeah, it’s worth it’? Instead she leaves me totally confused about whether I want to feel guilty my whole life for stealing his powers or be miserable if I leave him, because I’ll never stop loving him.”
She crunched again. “Are you sure it’s his powers that are going to get stolen?”
“What do you mean?”
“He’s super-good at taking powers now, Em. That’s part of what the Asarum does. What if he wants to take yours?” When I didn’t answer, she said, “Don’t pretend it never occurred to you.”
I shrugged. “He wouldn’t do that, not without asking me. He just wouldn’t.” I didn’t mention my vision on the football field.
“Not before he started taking the herb. He’s changed, Emma. Maybe he doesn’t feel the same anymore.”
“I don’t know what he’s planning, he won’t tell me. But I do know he loves me, and I’ll never stop loving him.”
“How do you know that?” Natalie asked. “How can you be so sure? You’re seventeen, Emma; you’ve only been together for a few months. What if he isn’t the one?”
I grew silent as we crossed the street toward school, the soft snow falling all around us.
Natalie stopped and looked at the sky, the snowflakes dotting her face. “I’m asking because … I think I’m really in love with Lukas.”
“Oh, Natalie.” I hugged her. “I’m sorry.”
“No,” she said, pulling back from me. “That’s just it. I do love him, but I don’t think it’s forever. Love’s weird that way, you know?”
“Yeah,” I agreed, but for different reasons. “Love’s weird.”
What I didn’t say was that I didn’t know why—maybe it was “destiny,” or maybe it was something stronger and more ordinary—but I knew Bennett and I were forever. Now I just had to figure out if I could live with taking all his powers. Or, if Natalie was right, with him taking mine.
We found Harry at the gates, buttoned up in his long black wool coat, brooding at his Droid. He looked up as we approached. “Natalie, vos es decorus.b Emma, you look like your dog died.” He frowned. “Would it come back as a ghost?”
“I don’t have a dog,” I said repressively.
“In theory?” he asked.
“In theory,” I answered, “this conversation sucks.”
“Ignore her,” Natalie told him. “She’s grumpy about the never-ending saga of her and Bennett.”
“Natalie!” I said. Did she have to share everything?
“What?” she asked. “Is that a secret?”
“No.” I sighed. “I just want this to be over.”
“You mean the thing with Bennett,” Harry said slyly, no doubt trying to get a rise out of me.
“No. I mean Neos.” It was true—it was time for me to end it, whatever it meant for me and Bennett. I’d allowed it to go on far too long.
In Latin class, I made a list of all the places we hadn’t searched yet—or hadn’t searched well enough. I actually wrote it in Latin, so if questioned by Mr. Z, I could say I was running vocab. Except in the end, the list looked more or less like: everywhere.
I planned to do a little brainstorming during Advanced Bio, trying to narrow down the location from the other direct
ion—who’d brought the ashes to Thatcher, and where would they have put them? But thoughts about what I was going to do to Neos when I did find him kept creeping in. Yeah, I wanted this to be over, but the final confrontation was bound to be ugly and bloody—I wasn’t sure I was ready for that.
And today’s assignment didn’t help: dissecting a sheep’s heart.
Really? I said to the universe. I’m trying to track down a ghostly killer and you’re tossing me a sheep’s heart?
In typical Thatcher fashion, the bio lab looked more like a high-tech kitchen than a high school science classroom. There were four counters made of stainless steel with square sinks cut into them, and I stood at one with my three lab partners, waiting for one of the guys to start cutting.
Instead, they both stood there making dumb jokes while the other girl nibbled her lower lip.
“Oh, give me the knife,” I said.
I took the scalpel, eyed the worksheet, and made the incision. Not nearly as bad as a wraith—the sheep’s heart didn’t ooze black oil or leap up from the table to attack me. My partners took notes as I made the cuts and peeled back the flaps of flesh. When we got to the center, even the other girl was totally hooked.
“Wow,” she said. “It’s almost beautiful.”
But I stepped back, dropping the scalpel in the sink. Because the cold, dead flesh suddenly reminded me of Neos, of tearing his tongue from his mouth to get the jade amulet. What kind of person does that? The same kind of person who coldly cuts into a sheep’s heart? I used to care. I used to worry about killing ghosts. Now I hardly even noticed, and I sliced into a sheep’s heart like slicing a loaf of bread.
“I’m done,” I said, and scrubbed my hands in the sink. Then I kept scrubbing, trying to wash away something deeper than the traces of sheep’s heart.
One of the guys watching me said, “Who would’ve thought the old man had so much blood in him?”
My heartbeat spiked. This kid knew about Neos? Was he possessed? I spun on him and hissed, “What did you say?”
He stepped back in alarm. “Nothing! Nothing, it’s a quote from Macbeth.”
I exhaled. “Shakespeare?”
“Yeah, you were scrubbing your hands like Lady Macbeth after she forces her husband to kill the king. Chill out. It was only a joke.”
I ignored him and wrote down my observations, but he was right. I was on edge. Even more than usual. I felt something coming, something cold and hard and big as a freight train, hurtling toward us from the darkness.
I stared at the scalpel in the bottom of the sink. Was I going to have to cut into Neos’s heart before this all ended? How much blood would there be then?
15
There is a moment before a major storm when the world grows eerily quiet. Birds stop chirping, dogs quit barking, and families huddle in their houses. Conversations are hushed, and even the wind seems to slacken and wait.
There’d been no more possessions at school, no more outbursts at home. Natalie and Lukas were rebuilding a friendship. The Sterns were distant but kind. Bennett was nowhere, and even Harry and Sara were uncharacteristically quiet.
But with a storm, you know exactly where it’s coming from. Clouds form, the wind lashes, and the sky goes gray—but no matter how hard I looked, I couldn’t see Neos’s attack coming.
So I lived my life. Went to class, searched the school grounds, and one night, alone in my room, called my mom again to ask her to come for Parents’ Night.
“How’s it going with the ashes?” was the first thing she asked.
“It’s not,” I said, hopping onto my bed. “The school’s so old, there are too many hiding spots. For all we know, they’re in a locker. Harry and Sara have been going to all the lounges, flirting and browbeating kids into letting them poke around, but there’s still like three hundred to go—and that’s just lockers.”
“You don’t sound hopeful,” she said.
“We’re not going to find the ashes,” I told her. “Not before Neos comes.”
“You feel it, too? The Knell is on high alert. Things are crazy here. Dad’s going through Rachel’s things, and he’s not having a great time.”
“What’s wrong?”
“Nothing serious. Just reading things he’d rather not, and feeling guilty he wasn’t there for her. He’s hoping to find out why she’s helping Neos. She helped him even before that wraith possessed her, you know. But why?”
“She loved him, isn’t that enough?” I asked.
“No, Emma,” Mom said. “It’s not.”
I sensed a lesson coming on, probably about Bennett, so I said, “I’m doing a presentation in Trig. For Parents’ Night on Friday.”
“Good. We’ll be there.”
“You will?” I couldn’t keep the surprise out of my voice.
“Simon thinks whatever Neos is planning is going to happen in Echo Point. We’re all coming up. We’ll get there as soon as we can on Friday.”
I was silent, trying not to let it bug me that they were really coming because of Neos. Was it too much to ask that they act like normal parents for once? Although, I supposed they were trying to protect me, which was more important than solving a math problem in front of an audience.
My father muttered in the background and the phone thumped as my mother put her hand over it. But I still heard her muffled voice say, “No, I didn’t forget … I know it’s important … Fine. Then you tell her.”
The phone clattered, and my dad came on the line. “Your mother has something to tell you,” he said, and handed the phone back, with three random beeps, accidentally pressing buttons.
God. How hard was it to use a telephone? They were like cavemen at an ATM.
More scrambling, and my mother was back. “You know Simon’s been researching the ashes? He’s developed a theory. The ashes will increase Neos’s strength and help him possess you.”
“So, he’ll be even stronger. Well, that’s good news.” I was terrified at the idea of Neos having more power.
“The good part is that Simon thinks the ashes will become noticeable to you a few minutes before Neos uses them. He can’t hide them while he’s preparing to use them. So once you feel the ashes, get them immediately.”
“But no pressure, right?”
“Let’s just hope it doesn’t happen before we get there.”
…
After hanging up with my mom, I crawled back to bed and stared at my homework for a while, but the words just swum around on the page. I thought about talking to Natalie or even Mrs. Stern, but what I really wanted was to break things. I went downstairs to spar with the Rake, but he didn’t show, even though I waved my sword back and forth in the ballroom.
Instead, I replaced the sword and stomped into the billiard room and started whizzing balls around the pool table, making them smack into each other.
After a while, Natalie came and stood in the doorway. “You look like you’ve got a personal grudge against the fourteen ball.”
“What’s the fourteen ball ever done for me?” I smashed the three into it.
She stopped one of the balls from bouncing off the table. “Is this about Bennett?”
“No, it’s about Neos. I just want this to be over.”
She nodded. “Did Lukas tell you Simon called yesterday?”
“No. What’d he want?” To tell me I couldn’t help Bennett? I creamed the fourteen with the yellow ball.
“To know if you’ve been feeling … what’s the word he used?”
“Scared? Anxious? Panicked? Tense? Emo?”
“Foreboding!” she said, spinning the one ball across the table. “A sense of foreboding. Who talks like that?”
“Only Simon.”
“Well … have you?”
“Yeah,” I told her. “Whatever’s coming, it’s coming soon—and it’s big.”
The next two days crept past. Lukas never told me about Simon’s call, I think because he didn’t want to add to the feeling of growing dread. He and Natalie we
ren’t polite or bickering anymore, both distracted by the gathering storm. Celeste was more formal and subdued than usual, Anatole bristled at everyone who stepped into his kitchen, and Mrs. Stern came across even more remote and chilly.
At school, Max searched the archives alone—Edmund had stopped appearing, and I didn’t have the heart to summon him. Kylee was still acting timid and injured, and the ghost jocks were even more outrageously annoying—trying to cover their underlying nervousness, I thought.
Harry and Sara couldn’t feel anything wrong, but they took their cues from us, and searched the student lounges with a wariness that I’d never seen from either of them. Britta was as sneering and mean as ever, completely unchanged, and I wanted to kiss her.
I managed to restrain myself.
After dinner on Friday, I changed into my gray boatneck sweater, red pashmina, black miniskirt, thick tights, and my favorite boots, and stepped into the hall.
“Well,” Lukas said. “If it isn’t the Great Unparented.”
He and Natalie met me at the top of the stairs, ready to face Parents’ Night without parents. It was freezing outside, so even Lukas had resorted to a long-sleeve brown polo over jeans, while Natalie wore her leopard-print sweater, because she liked wearing it into battle, and that’s how she viewed tonight.
“I thought your parents were coming,” Natalie said.
I shrugged. “I thought so, too. Just once, it would be nice to be able to rely on them showing up.”
We stood there for a moment, looking at each other with recognition. We weren’t the center of our parents’ lives. And maybe that was okay.
“Don’t laugh,” I said, “but I love you guys.”
So, of course, they both started cracking up.
“I said don’t laugh.” I giggled along with them, partly from the break in the tension. “I’m serious. You’re the best friends I’ve ever had, and … and screw them. Our parents. Screw them for being screwed up.”
“Yeah,” Natalie said. “They’re messed up. We rock!”
