Deadgirl

by B. C. Johnson

  He slid his arms around my waist, and I laid my head against his chest. My eyes closed, and I enjoyed the moment, listening to the rustling thump of his heartbeat through his shirt. After not-enough-time, I took a breath and stepped back.

  “I really want to kiss you,” I said, blatantly, brazenly, ignoring the flush blazing across my cheeks like a wildfire.

  “I know,” Zack said. I hit him hard enough to make him laugh.

  It was Morgan who spoke up. Well, Morgan and Puck anyway.

  “Hold your breath,” Morgan mimicked. “And think of nothing.”

  I turned to him and covered my mouth. Could that work? After a moment of staring into my searching eyes, Puck nodded.

  I turned to Zack.

  “I don’t know,” I said.

  “I do,” Zack said.

  He looked at me with those eyes. Those cobalt blue eyes. He was cheating, and he knew it. The smirk on his stupid perfect lips told me so. I wanted to punch him on the mouth. I should have. I would have, but I didn’t want to damage that face. For selfish reasons. Naturally.

  “I trust you, Luce,” Zack said. I believed him, too.

  I closed my eyes and let my brain wander. The last week drifted through my mind, the horror and the chaos. The raucous blast of gunfire at close range, the ice-cold feeling of my blood trickling out of my body. Abraham’s monstrous face, the horrid thing on the slope of the Grey. Things I wanted to let go, and so I let them disappear into shadow. I let go of my worries, my fears, my thoughts.

  I opened my eyes and saw Zack, and we were the only two things in the entire world. I moved forward to kiss him, but he was there first. I let my lungs still, and I held my breath as our lips crushed into each other. His fingers dug into my hair, pulling me tight to him, and I clutched at his back and tugged desperately at his lips with my own.

  Then it was over. Ten seconds of all-too-brief eternity.

  I wanted to linger more—some traitor’s whisper in my head wondered if it would be the last time I’d ever kiss him.

  I touched Zack’s chest, nodded to Puck, and flipped.

  Chapter Fifteen

  The Fates

  I dumped back into the real world in a bus station.

  On the edge of a curb, actually, with one foot on the ground and one in open air. I tumbled and hit the ground with all the grace of a tranq-darted buffalo.

  The very first thing I noticed, before I noticed the bus station, before I noticed the light pattering of rain, was the bright lance of pain shooting through my hand. I rolled over onto my back, the gravel digging its stubby spikes into my skin, and held my left arm up. My fingers were twisted and mangled, a purple and yellow bouquet of shattered digits. My gorge rose, and I snapped my eyes away and gagged and coughed up long strings of saliva.

  I’d forgotten. My fingers had been stomped on during the fight at Benny’s party and had been shattered and twisted. A wave of nausea crested over me, and I gagged more bile. My fingers cycled between hot and cold, searing when the pain hit, frozen as it faded. I tucked my twisted hand under my shirt, to hide it from myself if nothing more, and tried to breathe. I sucked lungfuls of cold, wet-tasting air. The nausea made my head swim. Little dots of light swirled in my vision. Was I passing out? I might have been passing out.

  As my breath began to slow, I began to think. The apparent injury hadn’t followed me into the Grey. Why? Puck said he and I, phantoms—God how I hated that word—didn’t have a body to go back to. We actually shifted between the Real and the Grey in our only body. And yet…

  I looked down at my hand, just a misbegotten lump beneath the bottom of my blouse, and felt another sharp staccato blast of agony.

  Was there a chance for me? Maybe I wasn’t what Puck thought I was. Maybe I just looked like something he knew—looked like himself. Was there room for something else?

  I tried not to let the thought worm its way in, but it was a sneaky one, and a powerful one—maybe not just something else, but something alive?

  I tried to regulate my breathing, and I had an interesting thought—I’d shifted from a train station to bus station. I didn’t for a second think it was a coincidence.

  I may have been freaked out, in over my head, and possibly dead, but I’m still a quick learner.

  I couldn’t see anyone—a small comfort, but the bus station looked to be in the middle of a large series of interconnected parking lots. Oh goody, nothing ever goes wrong for me in dark parking lots at night. I stood in a pool of harsh fluorescent light, and the darkness beyond shimmered and danced with a curtain of light rain.

  I got to my feet slowly, trying not to jostle my demolished hand. It didn’t really matter- it was like trying to stay dry during a hurricane. My broken fingers still spun a tale of woe every time I breathed.

  In the distance, I heard a train rattle down its tracks. It made me think of Zack. I touched my lips and breathed a stream of frost between my fingers. I’d never felt more lonely in my entire life.

  And I was cold. Always cold. In the Grey, things seemed to even out—never warm, never cold. Here, it seemed to be one extreme or the other. The cold meant one thing—I’d have to take soon.

  I waited for another ten minutes, wrapped in frost, trying to rub my arms to life on a bus-stop bench in the middle of the night. I tried to formulate a plan, but it wasn’t coming. I wasn’t exactly full-up on courage. In fact, the needle floated a breath above “E.”

  The bus finally arrived. A middle-aged black woman sat in the driver’s seat. She was pretty but tired-looking—I could almost see the two-point-five children and the husband she couldn’t stand. Knowing what I did about myself, there was a good chance I actually was seeing her two children, her newborn—Kevin, or Kellin, something like that—and her husband, James.

  As I walked up the steps, and I smelled something that could have been Britney Spear’s Curious, I was positive. It was Kellin, and her husband, James, was cheating on her. A little seed of panic popped inside of me, and I made a conscious effort to hold my breath. The weird ambient images disappeared.

  “Bus pass, hon?” she asked me, in a surprisingly soothing voice. I wanted to be read-to in that voice. I would have listened to a speech in that voice.

  I touched my pockets and shook my head—the international symbol for no dice. It took some doing, but I convinced her to take the tiny amount of cash I had on me. I found my seat and let the radio fill up my thoughts.

  I listened to the end of Muse’s Starlight, and a voice hissed into being, swimming out of the static.

  “The time is five-to-eleven, and it’s 75 degrees. The search for fifteen-year-old Lucy Day has yielded little results. As stated earlier, she disappeared last night at approximately nine-thirty, according to eyewitness reports—”

  I reeled. Holy shit. We’d been gone over a day. Twenty-six hours, almost. I touched my lips. They felt like ice. My parents. My poor parents.

  “—and the status of the two teenagers, names undisclosed, hasn’t improved. You’re listening to the World Famous—”

  The bus driver clicked the radio off. Thankfully.

  I cupped my hands over my mouth and leaned forward. The bus rumbled underneath me, and for a long while there was nothing. I tried not to think of my mom and dad. They would despise me for putting them in this situation. Again. My stomach dropped out from under me. My life was over. Even if I somehow got through all of this mayhem tonight, my life would never be the same. Would I transfer schools? Maybe even boarding school? I might never see Morgan again. Or Zack.

  The bus rolled slowly to a stop. I looked around, surprised by the speed. We’d arrived at a little line of houses in the middle of a suburb. I checked the address—it wasn’t too far from where I was going.

  The doors closed behind me, and the bus pulled away from the curb with a hiss of hydraulic breaks and the squealing-squeak of ancient machinery. I watched it go until it was nothing but a pair of tiny red dots in the distance. I thought I had felt alone at the bus
stop.

  Out of habit, I flipped my phone out my purse and checked the time. The screen was cold—was it dead, or just off? I didn’t care. If it had died, having the worried text messages and terrified voice mails at bay was a good thing.

  The address took me to 516 Spruce Street. I looked up at the house as I approached, a little surprised. A smoke-gray little BMW coupe sat in the driveway, like it had just leaped out of a James Bond movie. I could imagine Daniel Craig in that thing, glaring into his rear view mirror while he bled from a gash over his eye. He was even making that little sexy pout in my daydream. I took a deep breath.

  Down, girl. Really not the time. Anyway, Bond drove an Aston Martin.

  I walked up to the doorway, under the eave, and rapped the wood with my knuckles. Three solid hits.

  I felt nervous, and cold, don’t forget cold, but kind of light. Airy, almost. I think knowing that some of the Puck mystery was about to be revealed pumped a little helium into my balloon. I knocked again.

  The door swung open, and I turned from my musings to say hello and to get my first glimpse of Puck’s granddaughter—down the gaping barrel of a giant black revolver.

  “Whoa! Whoa!”

  I held my hands up and staggered backward, tasting nothing but metal. I couldn’t make out the figure of the woman holding the gun, back-lit by the bright light in the doorway, but I could make out the gun just fine. And it brought to mind the little bald wannabe vato and his friends who had joked about raping me, and had settled on pumping a bullet into my stomach. The metal taste disappeared, replaced by the taste of bile and fear.

  “Wait, please…”

  “Stop moving, girl,” the voice said. It could have been a vulture with a bullhorn. That voice could cut glass.

  The flood of memories made my legs tremble, but other than that I was a statue.

  “There’s silver in here, girl, and I promise there’s enough.”

  I didn’t miss it that time. She was putting on an act, I was sure of it. Granted, I had no idea what she was talking about with the silver, but her voice trembled. She might have been as afraid as I was. Maybe even more.

  “I’m not here to hurt you. I just…I need your help.”

  The expansive maw of the revolver barrel, floating a foot away from my forehead, dipped only slightly. It was enough.

  A surge of uncontrollable anger blasted up from my stomach and into my chest, making my heart hammer and jive. My hand flicked, imperceptibly, just a little clench and unclench. The hot flood of energy burned through me, warming my skin, if only for a second before streaming out of me.

  Something invisible and powerful ripped the revolver out of her hand. She barely had time to yelp before that same wave came back in and blasted her backward. Her butt landed on the entrance steps at the exact same moment that her revolver whumped softly into the grass behind me.

  I could see her now, in the porch light. A frail-looking woman, somewhere in the vast gulf between fifty and sixty years old. Her huge eyes, wide in shock and terror, were crystal blue. Her graying, thinning hair was twisted up into a bun. A pair of sweatpants clung to her legs, and a simple white tank top hung from her thin shoulders.

  The hot wave of anger, and energy, passed. I felt colder than ever.

  “Not gonna hurt me, hmm?” The woman asked in her crone’s voice. It didn’t fit her. That voice would have been at home in some gnarled ninety-year-old. This woman might not have even qualified for a discount on her Grand Slam Breakfast yet.

  “You had a gun on me.”

  She shrugged.

  “What did you mean about the silver?” I asked her. The idea made my mind itch. “I’m not exactly a werewolf.”

  “You don’t know?”

  I sighed. “If I knew I wouldn’t ask.”

  She nodded at that, even smirked a little. “I suppose that’s true.”

  “Well?”

  “It’ll send your kind packing. At least for a little while. Force you into the Grey to rebuild. Well, as I understand it. I’ve never actually used it.”

  There was enough in that sentence to keep me occupied for a while. Still, I didn’t have time for twenty questions. If she said silver could hurt me, I believed her. It could have been plausible—it hurt werewolves and vampires, right? Why not ghosts, too?

  “I need to talk to your daughter, maybe granddaughter,” I said.

  “Don’t have a granddaughter,” she said. “And Barbara isn’t in town. Sorry to disappoint.”

  It didn’t take me long to put that one together. If this was Puck’s granddaughter…then Puck had to have a century or two under his belt. Wow, capital W.

  “You’re Ophelia?” I asked, though I knew the answer easily enough.

  “Yeah,” she said. Her face went from confused to angry in seconds. “Granpa sent you? Are you serious?”

  I raised an eyebrow. She must know something all right. Either that or she thought having a living grandfather who might have fought in the Civil War was normal.

  “Come inside,” she said, and sighed. “I guess we have talking to do. Mind picking up my gun on the way up?”

  With that she disappeared inside the house. I grumbled, scooped the cold, heavy revolver out of the grass, and walked toward the house. As I did, I popped the chamber of the revolver open, thank you, Dad, and dumped the cartridges into my hand. One-two-three-four-five-six. I’d never seen a silver bullet before, but I’ll be damned if those weren’t them. The rounded tips gleamed with a sheen lead envied.

  Unbelievable.

  I followed her into the house and shut the door behind me.

  The house was cozy, if a little cramped. Old-fashioned, elaborate ottomans and free-standing cabinets choked every hallway. I actually had to walk sideways into the living room to fit past all the shelves of knick-knacks. And though they were notable for their number, I couldn’t help but notice that almost all of them were coated with a blanket of dust. Many of them had been jostled out of their poses and left there—a few of the Hummels lay on their side, looking forlorn, or maybe just sleepy.

  Ophelia stopped our little silent, awkward tour in the kitchen. She poured herself a cup of coffee with unsteady hands. She didn’t offer me any. In fact, she went about the task in silence. It wasn’t until she stared into the sink drain for about thirty seconds without moving that I cleared my throat.

  No response. I dropped the empty revolver on a little table next to the toaster. It landed beside the cordless phone with a prolific wham-crack.

  “Christ!” Ophelia said. Half of her coffee slopped into the sink. She looked over her shoulder at me, under her drooping eyelids. “Forgot you were…never mind. Coffee?”

  I shook my head and raised an eyebrow but said nothing. Knowing Puck, and I liked to think I did, even if only a little, this is not what I had expected from his granddaughter. Not in the slightest. Puck was a college professor. Puck knew sign language. Puck could be a gentleman when he wasn’t being a crazed lunatic. He ghosted class with every movement. Playful, irreverent class, but class unmistakably.

  Not much time.

  I took a deep breath. Ah, to hell with it.

  “Puck sent me because—”

  “Robin.”

  I looked up at her. I’d intended on running right through the speech I’d been rehearsing on the walk over. The air I’d saved up sort of just…leaked out of my body.

  “What…Robin?”

  “My grandfather’s name is Robin Woodrow Goodman. Doctor, in fact,” Ophelia said, her harsh vulture voice returning. “His name is not Puck.”

  I tried to rub warmth into my face. And maybe even a little patience.

  The thought of Morgan and Zack lying in hospital beds was beginning to plant seeds in my mind. In those distant train windows, that hospital had seemed dream-like, our problems interesting but hypothetical. But there, in the kitchen of Doctor—in fact—Robin Woodrow Goodman’s granddaughter, they began to feel real. And the knowledge that Abraham was all that stood b
etween them and death did little to comfort me.

  “Whatever,” I said. “He sent me here because I need your help.”

  There it was. From the look on her face, that wasn’t surprising.

  “Your somewhat…hands-on help.”

  She shrugged and took a swig of coffee. The hand on her hip told me one thing—make it quick, sister.

  “You don’t find it odd that you’re one-hundred-and-fifty year old dead grandfather has sent a fifteen-year-old girl—”

  “Fifteen-year-old phantom—”

  “Fifteen. Year. Old. Girl,” I said.

  My nostrils flared. An upside-down teacup shivered on the counter next to her. She looked at the cup, then back up at me. Her smug look faded somewhat.

  “He’s one-hundred-and-twenty-five, actually,” Ophelia said, quieter.

  “Swell,” I said. “You don’t find any of this, I don’t know, weird?”

  She downed her coffee. As she poured another one, she shrugged.

  “Honey, I don’t mean to hurt your little ego,” she said. “But I’ve been dealing with dead Grampa Robin since before you were born.”

  She turned.

  “Lucy, is it?”

  I raised an eyebrow.

  “How—?”

  “It’s a two-way street,” Ophelia said.

  “Grampa used to pick up on our thoughts, dreams, particularly loud emotions—eventually it began to rub off on us. Not a whole lot—I only now and again pick up little inklings. Names more than anything, like neon signs sometimes.”

  I nodded. She left the kitchen, and I followed. I knew I should hurry, and even though Ophelia had the warmth of a snow bank, I couldn’t just run off. I didn’t want to. So far, her answers were easy, off-hand. And those answers had become everything, hadn’t they? The things Puck couldn’t, or wouldn’t, say. To protect me.

  Ophelia didn’t want to protect me. Hell, she probably wanted me to take a long walk off a short pier. She led me to a door at the end of a cluttered hallway and shouldered the door open.

  “Story time,” Ophelia said, and walked into the room. I followed her inside.