by Элисон Ноэль
But Bodhi just shrugged, having already reached the top of the landing and tilting his head to the right as he said, “If I remember correctly, it’s that way, third door on the left.”
I stopped. Stopped right there in my tracks. Not liking the sound of that. Not liking it one measly bit.
“What do you mean if you remember correctly?” I studied him closely, trying to find some kind of tell, some kind of giveaway nervous tick, twitching eye, jerking knee, something. But other than that odd chewing of his bottom lip, I got nothing. He was stone-faced. Completely unreadable. Unwilling to give anything away. “You mean you’ve been here before, right?” I continued to probe, knowing he was hiding something, something I might very much need to know, for future use if nothing else, and I was determined to make him spill. “Was it for the Radiant Boy? Were you sent here to convince him to move on? And if you were, does that mean you failed? Does that mean you were unable to—” I raised my hands, curling my fingers into air quotes when I said, “coax and convince the ten-year-old to cross the bridge?”
He looked at me, his eyes betraying nothing when he said, “It’s a long story, Riley. One we clearly don’t have time for if you want to make it to London.” And even though his voice was curt, and more than a little dismissive, it didn’t work. I was on to him now. I could feel it in my nonexistent bones.
He’d failed, where I was about to conquer.
Ha! Some guide he was turning out to be.
“Fine.” He sighed, giving a little, but only a little. “Let’s just say you’re not the first to have a crack at this kid. Many have tried over the last, uh, several hundred years. But that just means that the bar is set so incredibly low no one’s expecting much from you now. Which is lucky, since ten bucks says you run out of there screaming the first second you lay eyes on him.”
“Ten bucks?” I rolled my eyes, swinging my blond hair over my shoulder. “Please.I can manifest mountains of ten-dollar bills, as can you. You wanna bet for real, then bet me something that’s actually worth something. Seriously, give me a little something to strive for here.”
He squinted, lips lifting at the sides when he said, “How about that trip to London? You convince the Radiant Boy to move on, you get your trip. If not—” He shrugged, leaving the rest to hang there, though the meaning was clear.
But I just shook my head. We’d already decided I was going, all I had to do was get the job done in a timely manner. No way was he changing the rules now. Not after they’d already been set.
He turned away, trying to hide the smile that snuck onto his face. The smile I didn’t have to see to know it was there. By the time he turned back again it was gone, wiped away clean, and replaced by a look of deep skepticism when he said, “Fine, you don’t run out of there screaming, you succeed where all others have failed, you actually get the Radiant Boy all the way across that bridge and I’ll teach you how to fly to London, okay? There. How’s that?”
And when he looked at me, it was clear he was proud of himself. So sure that it would never happen, that I’d fail miserably, and the whole thing would be off.
Which was fine by me. As the youngest in my family, I was used to being underestimated, and I loved nothing more than to prove everyone wrong.
“What about Buttercup? Can he fly too?”
Bodhi glanced between my dog and me and just shrugged.
“Fine,” I said, tucking my hair back behind my ears, preparing for the battle ahead, figuring the rest of the details could be worked out later. “You got yourself a deal.”
I followed alongside him as he headed down the hall, stopping abruptly when he said, “Well, this is it.”
He pointed toward a heavy, elaborately painted door just a few feet away. “The blue room. Home of your newfound friend.”
“Home of aten-year-old,” I mumbled, shaking my head.
Just about to walk right through the door when Bodhi reached toward me, his arm wavering, hovering, before he dropped it back to his side, rearranged his expression from serious to friendly, as he said, “Riley—” I turned, catching a look of real, genuine concern glinting in his eyes.
“It’s — it’s not what you think. There’s plenty more to the story. Stuff you should probably know about before you go in.”
But I just sighed and rolled my eyes, figuring it was just another stalling tactic, or some kind of psych-out. Figuring he was pretty much willing to do anything at this point, to make sure he won this one and keep me from a flying lesson he was so clearly reluctant to give.
“He’s a ghost. He’s ten. He goes by abizarre name that either is or isn’t his fault — that’s yet to be determined — and I need to convince him to move on,” I said, uncurling a finger with each point made and still left with a thumb pressed against the center of my palm. “Seriously, how hard can it be? And what’s the worst he can do? It’s not like he can kill me, you know? So, now that that’s settled, can I please have at him? I’d really like to cross this one off my list — I’ve got a flying lesson to get to.”
Bodhi looked at me, a long, hard, conflicted stare. Then he shook his head and waved me away with his hand. Maybe mumbling some stuff about wishing me good luck, about how he’d be waiting right outside for me in case I needed any help — and maybe not.
I’d never know for sure.
I’d already moved on.
Buttercup and I were already on the other side of that door.
13
The first thing I saw when I entered that room was No, scratch that. First let me say what it wasn’t.
It wasn’t the Radiant Boy.
It also wasn’t the blue room.
In fact, nothing in that room came anywhere near a color that anyone would ever refer to as blue.
If anything, what I’d entered was the yellow room.
A room so incredibly bright and yellow, just looking at it made my eyes hurt.
“Back so soon?” Bohdi called, lounging on the banister in that slouchy way of his, chewing on a long, green straw, like the kind they give you at Starbucks, instead of his bottom lip which he was chewing on just a few moments earlier. Looking me over carefully and seemingly not the least bit surprised to see that I’d caved so early in the game.
Only I hadn’t caved.
Not even close.
If anything, I was totally on to him.
He was still trying to mind-game me. Going so far as to send me to the wrong room.
Some coach he was turning out to be.
But no biggie. It’s not like I actually needed Bodhi’s guidance anyway. I mean, what kind of help could he possibly provide when it was so painfully clear he was actually trying to sabotage me?
So afraid I’d succeed at where he so miserably failed, he’d stop at nothing to doom me.
That’s it, I decided. As soon as I got back, the first thing I would do was find Aurora, or even one of the other Council members if she wasn’t available, and I’d demand a new guide. Or, better yet,I’d become Bodhi’s guide. And the first thing on my agenda would be to give him a head-to-toe makeover.
Insist he ditch the glasses, the clothes, start over with the hair — and that was just for starters. Then, once that was settled, once he wasn’t so completely embarrassing to be seen with, well, then we’d see. . .
“Sit tight. We’re not out of here yet,” I called over my shoulder as Buttercup and I made our way down the hall. “You sent me to the wrong room, as I’m sure you already know. But don’t get up. You’re gonna need all of your energy for that flight to London, so stay right where you are. It won’t be long before I track down this scary little ten-year-old and send him on to the Sweet Here After so that we can be on our way.”
I poked my head through a long series of doors, and after spying a green room, a white room, and a pink room, I’d finally found it.
Not the Radiant Boy, mind you; from what I could see, he was nowhere to be found. But there was an abundance of blue. And I mean, lots and lots of blue. Like an
ocean. Yard after yard of the same blue fabric used to make up the drapes, the pillows, the blankets, even the little antique couch-and-chair set, what I think is called as ettee, was upholstered in the stuff, while the walls were painted in an almost identically matching hue.
Blue, blue, I was drowning in blue. And when I gazed over at Buttercup, who was busy sniffing all four corners and then some, I couldn’t help but wonder how all those earlier rooms had looked to him. If being dead somehow cured him of that canine inability to see most of the colors in the spectrum.
But even though we were clearly in the right room, there wasn’t a single ten-year-old Radiant Boy to be found. Nor was there anything that even remotely resembled one.
Aside from Buttercup and me, the room was completely cleared of all earthbound entities.
But that’s the thing with ghosts. They don’t always stick to one place like most people think. Sure they have their preferences and their steady routines, places they like to hang in more often than others where they repeat the same acts over and over again. But for the most part, they have no boundaries. They can go anywhere they want, whenever they want. It’s all there for the taking. All they have to do is choose it.
And I should know, I was once one of them.
Though that’s not to say I was about to go on some kind of big hunt for him, ’cause from what I could tell, there were at least a hundred more rooms in the place. And since it was close to being nighttime, and since Bodhi had said something about the boy liking to scare the beejeemums out of people, I pretty much figured the best, most energy-efficient thing to do would be to just wait it out until the sun went down, the sky went dark, and he’d begin his nightly fright fest.
Because if there’s one thing I knew for sure, it’s that all ten-year-old boys were the same.
Dead — alive — it didn’t make the least bit of difference. They were all annoying, all disgusting, all of them royal pains in the bums who just loved to torment people. And from everything I’d heard, this one was no different.
I climbed up onto the big canopied bed that was situated so high they actually provided a little step stool to get onto it, arranged all the pillows just the way that I liked them, then patted the bedspread, inviting Buttercup to leap up and join me. Then we sat back and waited. Waited for so long we both fell into a nice, deep, soundless sleep.
Until someone had the nerve to crawl in beside us.
At first, when I felt the mattress kind of dip, shift, and roll, I was so deeply involved in my dream state I didn’t really think much about it. But then, when the snoring started, coming at me from both sides, my eyes snapped wide-open, and I turned my head to the right to find a large, bushy-browed man practically vibrating with his own snores. And when I looked to the left, I was greeted by the sight of a slightly (but only slightly) less bushy-browed woman doing the same.
I was sandwiched.
Sandwiched between two rather sizable, loudly snoring people I’d never seen before.
And I was so discombobulated that, well, I couldn’t help it — my mouth popped open and a long, loud scream jumped out. Instantly waking Buttercup who pointed his nose toward the ceiling and started howling and barking like mad. Peering at me with his ears all perked up, his tail thumping like crazy, as he awaited further instruction, sure that it was some kind of game.
Only it wasn’t a game.
Not even close.
I’d been rudely awakened, and shaken to the core, but more importantly I’d screamed so loudly, I could practically see Bodhi standing in the hall, doing a lame little victory dance, straw bobbing crazily in his mouth while he gave himself a high-five.
“Great,”I mumbled, patting Buttercup on the head, trying to get him to calm down again, even though I knew the sleeping couple couldn’t hear us unless we wanted to be heard, and truth be told, most of the time not even then. It was the rare person who could truly tune in to the dead, though they did exist, of that I was sure. “That’s just great. ” I shook my head and slid out from between the snoring couple, wishing this radiating kid would just hurry up and show himself already so that I could cross him over and be done with all this.
I moved toward the dressing table and peeked at their stuff, trying to get a handle on just what they were doing here. Lifting the top off a bottle of cologne that smelled just like dead pine needles (blech), before sniffing from the perfume just beside it and inhaling a nasty combination of mothballs and old, dried-out shrubs (double blech). A scent so startlingly bad the bottle accidentally slipped from my fingers and landed with a horrifying thud.
Well, make that a series of thuds, as I watched, frozen in panic, as it tumbled across the floor with Buttercup chasing behind it.
I peered at the sleeping couple, knowing that even though they couldn’t hear us or see us unless we wanted them to, unless we tapped into their own energy supply in order to manifest before them, there was nothing to stop them from hearing the sound of an inanimate object crashing to the ground. And seeing the way they both shuddered and stirred, I knew that on some level they had heard it, but were determined to sleep through it.
I moved on to their overflowing suitcases, curious to see what kind of clothes they’d packed for their haunted castle weekend getaway, when Buttercup, still entranced with the perfume bottle, hit it with his paw so hard it went spinning across the room and slammed into the wall where it cracked into a million little pieces of foul-smelling shards.
“Good one, Buttercup.” I shook my head and rolled my eyes at him. “Way to go.” I sighed, watching as he tucked in his tail and bowed his head low, knowing he was in trouble and unwilling to come anywhere near me. And I was just about to manifest a leash, which I knew he would hate but was obviously becoming necessary, when I heard a click.
Followed by a soft whirring sound.
And then a nervously whispered:
“Did you get it?”
I glanced over my shoulder, clutching a white T-shirt featuring a picture of the Union Jack tightly in my hand, only to find myself face-to-face with the dynamic duo — otherwise known as the husband and wife team who’d sandwiched me earlier. The two of them dressed in matching his and hers forest-green sweatshirts, with the words PENNSYLVANIA’S OWN INTERNATIONAL GHOST BUSTERS written in a large, loopy white scrawl across the front.
The husband holding some kind of recording device that seemed to really excite him, while the wife held the camera with a noticeably shaky hand. Creeping toward my general direction, clearly bent on capturing live, streaming footage of Well Me.
Crouched down low, T-shirt still dangling from the tips of my fingers, knowing I’d just been caught in the embarrassing act of nosing through their belongings.
My eyes darted frantically, realizing the full scope of what was really going on — not only had I been caught peeping — I’d also been caught inadvertently haunting a haunted room I’d fully intended to, well, de-haunt.
And there was nothing I could do about it. No way I could leave. I was stuck right there in that blue room until I could find a way to accomplish what I set out for. Otherwise Bodhi would never let me fly to London, never let me hear the end of it.
“Buttercup!” I hissed, dropping the T-shirt and hearing them both gasp at the sight of it seemingly falling through the air of its own accord. Determined to keep my voice to a whisper, but by the way they gaped at their recorder, at the little squiggles and lines that jumped all around, it was clear that even though they couldn’t see me or hear me, their equipment registered every last bit. “Come here,now!” I called between gritted teeth, annoyed by the way he’d loped toward them, sniffing then licking their hands as though they were long-lost friends suddenly reunited again.
He slunk toward me, tail tucked tightly between his legs as his big brown eyes gazed into mine. “That’s better,” I cooed, scratching his head to show I was more annoyed than mad, watching as the couple lifted their hands and studied the fingers Buttercup had just slobbered all over, before
turning to each other, bushy brows raised as if to say: Did you feel that?
“You need to stick by me,not them. No matter what happens from here on out, I need you by my side, okay? We can’t take any chances — I just have to figure out what to do before they—” The woman moved toward me, moved in small baby steps as she crept across the floor. Her large bare feet, riddled with corns and bunions, with nail polish so badly chipped they made my own nails look salon fresh. Raised up high onto her tippy-toes, padding across the rug, video camera held out before her, the soft whir of it the only sound in the room as it recorded what I could only assume were a series of white, glowy, wavering images of one smallish blob of light and one even smaller blob of light, since, from all the shows I’d ever seen on TV that covered ghosts and hauntings and such, it was pretty rare for those recorders to pick up anything more.
“He’s not alone,” she whispered, waving to her husband from over her shoulder. “There’s someone with him, someone smaller, like they’re crouched down low.”
He?
I narrowed my eyes and scowled, nudging Buttercup even closer to my side. Tugging on my skirt and running my fingers through my hair until it was arranged a little more nicely, a little more girly, completely offended by the fact that I’d just been mistaken for a ten-year-old boy.
“Is it him? Is it really the Radiant Boy?” her husband called, the words rising at the end in a potent mix of excitement and fear.
“Yes,” she said, her voice having firmly decided, though her eyes weren’t quite as convinced. “At least it certainly seems like it. And he’s got someone with him — someone smaller — there are two Radiant Boys here!”
Oh brother.
I rolled my eyes and shook my head, sitting back on my heels as she continued to creep closer and closer.
Some ghost buster she was turning out to be. Mistaking what was clearly a cute blond girl and her adorable yellow Lab for not one, but two bratty little boy ghosts.Sheesh!
