The Afterlife of Lizzie Monroe

by Kelly Martin

  "He died, but he gave Daniel a magic ring to keep me from dying? That doesn't make any sense."

  "Maybe he didn't know it was magical. Maybe he just bought it thinking it was cool looking and sold it to Daniel on the way to the battlefield." It was as good of an explanation as any.

  "Maybe." She relented. "I guess the why doesn't matter. How does the ring work? Does the symbol mean anything? Did you find that out?" Lizzie placed her hand on his shoulder like it was second nature, and bent close to his ear, examining the new — to her — technology in front of them.

  Shane's eyes automatically left the screen and focused on her, so close, so real, so… so there. Noticing the weirdness of it all, he shook his head and forced his eyes back on the computer monitor. In his peripheral vision, though, he saw Cheyenne smiling like an idiot. He didn't pray, but he threw up an S.O.S. to the Almighty — who may or may not be there, in his opinion — to keep Cheyenne from telling Lizzie that he might have some sort of feelings for her. He didn't need that complication.

  Focus.

  Get the girl out of the state.

  Move on.

  But why in the world had Cheyenne sprayed vanilla body spray on Lizzie. She knew it was his favorite scent on a woman. Surely, she wasn't stacking the deck against him.

  "I couldn't find anything about the symbol. It's three conjoined triangles so it probably means something, but I'm not finding it. Nothing else, really. I've spent most of my time looking up this Dupree guy. Didn't get me much. A guy on the magic message board said he'd heard of a curse that could be attached to an object."

  "Curse? Such an ugly word." She trembled against him.

  "It's just a word."

  "I just don't like being thought of as cursed."

  "Miracle, remember? We are calling it a miracle. A miracle curse." He grinned playfully.

  Lizzie took a deep breath and didn't say anything else. Shane took the rare opportunity of her silence to go over what he'd learned. "Anyway, the curse, according to this guy, can't be broken. It'll always be attached to the object, but not necessarily the person."

  "So, the ring can exist without Lizzie, but Lizzie can't without the ring?" Cheyenne said, leaning over his other shoulder.

  He felt like a sandwich. "Yeah. We already know what happens when Lizzie takes the ring off."

  "Nothing good." Lizzie shivered.

  His body involuntarily shook too. The sight of Lizzie bloody and dead on his bedroom floor would forever be burned in his mind. He never wanted to see that again. "So we have to keep the people who know about this to a minimum."

  "Why?" Lizzie asked, innocent beyond her years. "I mean, I understand about the government and stuff. But what about the ring?"

  "Because, if anyone found out they could try to take it from you for their own selfish reasons. That ring, in the wrong hands, could be deadly."

  "Can you imagine how much money a person would pay for it?" Cheyenne said in a dream like voice, causing both Shane and Lizzie to look at her. "I mean, hypothetically speaking."

  "Not hypothetically, I'm afraid," Shane voiced what had been bothering him for the past few hours. "If the wrong person found out about this, they could get the ring from Lizzie and sell it themselves. Can you picture how much someone would pay for eternal life?"

  "Unless you are spending it in Heaven, eternal life isn't all it's cracked up to be," Lizzie said sadly.

  "Maybe not cooped up in a box, darlin', but if you were free to roam the Earth for eternity, yeah, people would pay for that. People would kill for that," Shane said almost as an afterthought.

  He pushed the chair back — taking the two girls back with him. "Hey!" Cheyenne protested, but he ignored her. "Did Mom ever come home?"

  "She's still at work remember. She's not coming home. Why?"

  "Good. You keep Lizzie here. I'm going to go see if I can beg my way in to see Dad."

  "They won't."

  "They might." He hadn't gotten two steps when his phone lit up with a text. Checking it, he saw it was from Preston, freaking out again. As if he needed any more issues today.

  Meet me at the church. We have big problems!

  *I* have big problems here. I'll meet you tomorrow! Shane sent back.

  NOW, SHANE! Something's wrong.

  What?

  GET HERE!

  "Who is it?" Cheyenne asked.

  "Preston." Every curse word ever invented plus a few he just thought of himself yelled through his mind. "I have to go meet him."

  "But I thought…"

  "Trip to see dear ol' Dad will have to wait until tomorrow. Probably couldn't get in tonight anyway. It's too late." He put his phone in his pocket and grabbed his car keys.

  He turned to Lizzie, whose eyes were big and scared. His heart broke for her, and that was an unusual feeling for him. He wasn't the type to normally care, but he couldn't help caring about her. With a firm grip, he squeezed her shoulders, bent down to her eye level, and tried to speak as comforting as he could. "I'll take care of this."

  "I know you will." She forced a smile back. It didn't reach her eyes. She looked totally terrified and worried about him. He felt the same way about her.

  Shane took a few seconds to look at her. Really look at her. Before he could stop himself, he kissed her forehead. His lips lingered and he rubbed his fingers over her temples.

  He felt her lean into him. Fear made him let her go.

  "Take care of her," he ordered Cheyenne, who nodded.

  With a bad feeling in his gut, Shane left the room to go to the burned out church to meet Preston. Whatever had him spooked, it couldn't be good.

  Chapter Thirteen

  Yesterday

  It hurt.

  Everything hurt.

  Fire consumed the building. The familiar building her father had built. And now it was gone. And she was freezing on the ground below this stranger.

  He didn't look like a stranger, though. He reminded her of someone. Someone she loved.

  Her Daniel.

  In the limited light, she saw his hair. Wild like a stallion's, but the same color as Daniel's had been. His nose was similar and so were his lips. Lips she'd never see again.

  "Are you okay?" he asked through ragged breaths.

  No, she didn't suppose she was. She'd been in Hell, and now she was back on earth with a man who looked like Daniel, but wasn't, and her family church on fire.

  A second thought erupted in her mind. The Devil. He'd invaded her thoughts and turned into someone resembling her Daniel. It was sneaky. Smart. Cunning. Just like she expected from the Devil.

  "What's your name?" he asked a second question when she didn't answer the first.

  "My name is Lizzie Monroe," she answered, never expecting the response she got. His face fell and twisted in some sort of horrible recognition. She had no idea why, and she couldn't dwell on it.

  Daniel was dead. He wasn't coming back. He was in Heaven and she feared she never would be. And this guy, her savior or the Devil, reminded her of him. Was he as generous and noble as her Daniel? She hoped to never have to find out.

  ****

  Shane hadn't been gone ten minutes when Cheyenne's contraption started singing its own song, if one could call that singing. Actually, it sounded more like her old cow bellowing. She missed that cow.

  "It's Drake." Cheyenne sighed, her eyes moved back and forth reading whatever he'd sent via wireless telegraph. "He wants to know if he can come over."

  "Why?"

  "Who knows." Cheyenne kept her eyes on the device and her thumbs moving.

  "Do you care for him?" Lizzie asked, feeling brave. Everyone knew everything about her life and she knew nothing about them. It was time to change that.

  "Care for him? Drake?" Cheyenne first looked horrified then laughed. "No. Not really. I mean, he's cute and all. But he's, I don't know…"

  "Drake?"

  "Yeah. He's Drake." She laid the phone on the desk. "He's nice enough, and he's great in the band."
>
  "Band?" Had she heard about a band? "Like with banjos and washboards? 'Cause I can't see Shane playin' a washboard."

  Cheyenne nearly choked. "Not exactly. With guitars and drums."

  "Ah." If the 'music' on their portable devices were any indication, she couldn't imagine the type of music they played. "And you are all in it?"

  "Yeah. I play guitar. Preston's bass. Drake is the lead singer and Shane plays drums."

  She hadn't imagined Shane as a drummer. She knew of drummers. "I'd love to hear you sometime."

  Cheyenne winced. "We haven't had any paying gigs. We're supposed to play a birthday party Saturday."

  Lizzie's face fell. "But I won't be here."

  "If all goes right, you'll be living the high life in New York City."

  "Do you really think it's a good idea?" She needed some confirmation because she wasn't so sure.

  Cheyenne took time to consider. "I think that New York would be easier to blend in than Dixon, Tennessee. I mean, you're like a legend here. Our band's even named…" And then she stopped talking.

  "It's okay. I know. Love's Suicide."

  "I'm sorry. I shouldn't have brought it up," Cheyenne said quickly.

  "It's okay. Fitting I guess." Of all the things to be known for… it wasn't how good of a person she'd tried to be in her life or how many times she'd gone to church. No one cared that she'd read the entire Bible front to back or that she could practically quote Revelation. Nope. All she'd ever be remembered for was slitting her wrists in one act of ill-thought out desperation.

  Cheyenne's phone sang again before she could say anything else. "Ugh. He's at the backdoor. Wants me to let him in."

  "Are you?"

  "Don't want to be rude." She grimaced. "Might as well see what he wants."

  "Might as well," Lizzie agreed.

  "Be back in a second," Cheyenne said before shutting the door behind her.

  For the next few minutes, Lizzie paced the floor. It felt good to be able to walk. She was getting better at it. Sure, she wasn't the sturdiest person even on two legs, but they were mobile. That's all that mattered.

  And Love's Suicide… really? Could they have not thought of a better name? She saw nothing funny or musical about the worse day of her life. But, to their credit, it wasn't like they knew she was still alive to be offended.

  On the floor at the table next to the bed, she found a small piece of paper crumbled up. She picked it up to look at it when the door behind her opened. "What did he want?" she asked Cheyenne without turning.

  "He wanted to see you," A male voice surprised her, making her spin around.

  There in the doorway, stood Drake. His brown hair was spiked like he'd just rolled out of bed, but his gray shirt with a collar and beige short pants that only fell to his knees didn't have a wrinkle on them. He'd changed clothes since she'd seen him last. "I see you've raided Cheyenne's closet." He smiled warmly.

  "Yes." She felt her clothes self-consciously. Even though Cheyenne had given her the most conservative clothes she had, she still felt exposed. "You too? I mean, you've changed clothes."

  He shrugged. "Went home for a while. That's why I'm here actually."

  Her brows creased. "I don't follow."

  He strolled closer with a big smile. "I was in my room and Shane texted me."

  "Shane?" She hadn't thought they were close enough friends to correspond.

  "He asked if I'd come get you and take you to the museum. He said it was closed now and we might be able to sneak in. Said there was a letter there from Daniel that you might want to see."

  "Where's Shane now? Why can't we wait for him?" Not that she wanted to wait. It just seemed the right thing to do since she'd started this new phase of her life with him.

  "He got held up with Preston," he said with a small twinkle in his eye. "He asked if I'd take you." Drake held out his hand innocently. "I promise I won't bite."

  She hoped not anyway. "What about Cheyenne?"

  "Right when she answered the door, she got a message from Shane asking her to come meet up with him and Preston at the church. So I told her to go and I'd take you to the museum. See, it's all worked out. We just need to be going."

  Taking a deep breath, Lizzie had to consider her options. She did want to go read the note Daniel had sent her all those years ago, but she wanted to read it with Shane by her side. Oh well, it wasn't like they were attached. He obviously had something better to do, so why should she wait? "Alright. Let's be going." She grabbed his hand and started out the door.

  Cheyenne's phone device caught her eye on the desk and she hesitated a second before she started walking again. Who knew? Maybe people in this age had two or three of them. How else could she have gotten a message from her brother to meet him as Drake said?

  The stairs were difficult, but Lizzie managed to get from the second to the first floor. She had never seen the first floor of the house before. It was nice, a little dirty and cluttered, but nice.

  "Back door," Drake instructed, leading her through a small hallway next to the stairs and through the kitchen. Dishes were stacked in the sink and a little door, supposedly to a pantry, was cracked open. A little drop of red had splattered on the floor in front of it.

  Curious, she wanted to investigate, but Drake pulled her out the back door and toward the outside until they got to something she'd never seen before. It was big, black, shiny, and monstrous. "It's a truck," Drake explained when her legs balked. "You ride in it."

  "Like a carriage?" A very strange carriage.

  "Something like that. Come on, let's go before someone sees Lizzie Monroe alive and well and asks questions, shall we?" He opened the door and helped her climbed in. It was the tallest carriage she'd ever been in. And the fastest. When Drake caused it to roar to life and go on the road, she had to hold on for dear life.

  ****

  When Shane pulled his old, beat-up Mustang into the makeshift, grassy parking lot at the burned down church, he was pretty miffed. If Preston kept this up, they definitely would be found out. The idiot had to calm down. Shane had never imagined that someone so tattooed and pierced would be scared of anything. Preston kept proving him wrong.

  Though his headlights, he saw the church, or what was left of it. The fire had done its worst, reducing it to a burned out shell. Charred wooden beams fell in the sanctuary like a black skeleton. To his surprise, the pulpit at the front of the church appeared to be intact — burned, but standing. Fires were strange things.

  Preston ducked under the yellow police tape surrounding the building and walked into his headlights. His hands were stuck in the pockets of his dark blue jeans with several chains looped around it. The pink Mohawk Shane was used to seeing lay too pitifully to the side. He did have the safety pin thing in his cheek and around his lips, though. Even Shane wouldn't go that far in the piercing department. It looked painful.

  Without turning off his headlights, Shane got out of his car and yelled, "What are we doing here, Preston? This is stupid. We can't keep meeting like this. Twice in one day?"

  The closer Preston got to him, the more distraught he appeared. His jaw stayed in a rigid line and he kept shifting his eyes. Something had spooked him. Something besides the fire. "I lost something."

  "Yeah, your mind. Why are we here?"

  "I lost something," he said again, kicking the blackened grass around the church like he was searching.

  He'd lose something too if Preston kept this up. "What?"

  "A ring. Last night, I lost a ring here. I didn't notice it until a little bit ago."

  Why did the entire world revolve around rings? "Oh for the love of… It's a ring, Preston." I'll buy you another one if it matters so much to you." He started to get back in the car and drive off, leaving this loser behind. He had more important things to do.

  "It's my senior ring!" Preston yelled, catching Shane's attention. "The one with my name on it! If the police… if Drake's dad… finds it, they'll know I was here. They'll put two an
d two together, and I'll be up a creek."

  "That's your problem, buddy. I have other things to worry about." Shane sat back in the seat. No way did he have time to search in the dark for Preston's ring. He could find it his own self.

  "If they find out about me, you can be sure I'll tell them about you. I'm not taking the heat of this all by myself, Buddy!"

  That got his attention. Shane stepped out of the car and slammed the door, making Preston jump. The little weasel. "You'd tell on me? On me! You'd tell the cops I had something to do with this?"

  "If they find my ring, you can bet those pretty little curls of yours I will. I'm not going down for this all on my own."

  Automatically, Shane's fist balled up and, with every muscle in his body, he wanted to punch Preston in the nose. The little twerp was actually blackmailing him into looking for a stupid ring in the dark at a church. "If anyone sees us looking for it, they'll know."

  "Then I guess we'd better find it quick," Preston said as he bend down to search a new grassy area.

  Shane clinched his teeth and let out a loud groan. This wasn't happening! "Fine!" He grunted. He went to his car, popped the trunk, and pulled out two flashlights. "Might need one of these, you know, to search at night." He threw one to Preston, wishing it would hit him hard enough to hurt.

  Preston ducked out of the way before Shane could get that satisfaction. He picked it up, turned it on, and started looking.

  Shane did the same. This was pointless and would take forever.

  All he wanted was to be home with Lizzie… and, er, planning her new life in New York.

  Lizzie… He wondered what she was doing right now. No doubt, Cheyenne was probably introducing her to the thrill of gossip magazines.

  They were never going to find this ring…