“Whoa, calm—”
I whipped around, slapping my palm flat against the chest of—Jack. Again. Seriously, one of these times I was going to kill him by accident. Or on purpose. And I wasn’t going to be sorry. “What’s wrong with you! Let go of me!”
He raised his eyebrows and loosened his grip on my wrist. “Really? Okay, if you insist.”
If he let me go, I would be lost in this darkness. Alone. Forever. The only thing you could see on the Paths was the person you were with—there was nothing else there. I hadn’t wanted to use the Faerie Paths ever again, and now that I was here the familiar dread filled my entire body. I clutched his arm with my free hand. “Stop it! Why did you grab me like that? Terrorizing me at school wasn’t enough?”
He shrugged. “Raquel told me to get you at eight.”
“It’s called knocking, dimwit!”
“I know I make it look effortless, but creating doors between realms isn’t exactly simple. Pulling you through was easier than coming in for some polite conversation and perhaps a bit of tea, at which point I would have had to make another door. I didn’t know you’d scream like a little girl.”
“I did not scream like a little girl.”
Flashing his dimples, he took a huge lungful of air and burst into an earsplitting—and decidedly little girlish—scream. “Like that. Only with crazier eyes and more flailing.”
“Shut up.”
“Gladly. We’re going to be late.” He slipped his hand down from my wrist to my hand and started walking. “Heaven and hell, your hands are cold.”
I never thought I’d prefer the dead silence of the Paths over anything, but it had to be better than listening to this idiot. And I didn’t need any reminders that my hands were cold. Cold, mortal, dying hands. “Can we not talk?”
“But you’re such a charming conversationalist. Still, if you’d prefer to simply bask in the glory of my company, I understand. You’re probably overwhelmed by holding my hand and want to enjoy the moment.”
I rolled my eyes. “It’s all I can do not to swoon, but I’ll try to contain myself.”
“I think swooning is highly underrated. You could bring it back into vogue.”
I turned my head to look at him rather than focus on the inky black around us. It was like people on the Paths existed outside anything else. Jack and I were the only two creatures alive, for all you could tell. What a horrible thought.
“Where on earth did you come from?” I asked.
He grinned, but there was a strange tightness to his face. “Telling that story would require talking, which I seem to recall you requested not happen. And here we are!” With a flourish he waved a hand—at nothing.
I watched him expectantly. Nothing happened.
“Can’t you feel it?” he asked, his eyes narrowing.
“Feel what?”
“Come on. You’ve been through here as much as I have. You never tried to figure it out?”
I made the mistake of looking at my feet standing in the emptiness, and now I kind of wanted to puke. “Can we please get out of here?”
“Honestly, Evie, you don’t know how to have fun, do you?” He put a hand flat out, and his eyes narrowed in concentration. The darkness rippled, light tearing through it but illuminating nothing as a door formed, opening into a painfully familiar white hallway.
“Home sweet home,” Jack chirped, pulling me forward with him. The door shut behind us.
I felt like I had walked into a dream. When I left this behind, I let part of myself believe it ceased to exist. The fluorescent lights buzzing overhead drilled in the fact that the only different thing was me.
We both turned and looked down the length of the hall. A woman I didn’t know, dressed in a pin-striped suit, ran past us, screaming bloody murder and swatting at the air around her head.
I sighed. “Yup, home sweet home about covers it.”
I looked back down the hall, my attention drawn by the soft tapping of sensible pumps. This time the woman in a suit wasn’t insane—or at least, not the running-around-screaming type. “Evie,” Raquel said, pursing her lips to avoid smiling.
Another scream echoed; I caught a glimpse of someone running through one of the cross halls. He looked suspiciously like Bud, my tough and gruff former self-defense teacher.
“I leave for a few months and this whole place goes to pieces.”
Raquel shook her head, shooting an annoyed look in the direction of the continued screams. “Well, since you’re on the clock, why don’t I show you to the problem area?”
“Sounds good to me.” Being here was like déjà vu. The faster I solved their problem, the sooner I could leave and freak out in private.
“You’re welcome.” Jack waved cheerfully, got a running start, and did several roundoffs down the length of the hall.
I turned to Raquel. “I think he’s broken.”
She heaved a don’t I know it sigh. “Jack’s past isn’t one that contributes to stability. But he’s a good boy.”
He nearly got me disemboweled by my gym teacher. Good boy he was not.
More screams rang through the hall. “Seriously, what’s going on here?”
“It’s the poltergeist. Apparently we’ve pinpointed its current location.”
“Yippee.”
“If we can get this little problem taken care of, I’m certain that the other issues will be easier to address. Not only is it nearly impossible to keep employees functioning, important files keep disappearing.”
I followed her down the hall, trying not to think about all the times I ran wild here. This wasn’t my home anymore. I was here for work. A job. I could be professionally detached. As long as we didn’t have to go to—
Central Processing. Raquel stopped right in front of the sliding doors. Of course. Because nothing could possibly be easy tonight.
“Here?” I asked, already knowing the answer. Of all the places in the Center, the poltergeist had to take up residence here. I closed my eyes, picturing her aquarium as it had been—blue-green water; tropical fish; living coral reef; happy, funny, capable Lish in the middle of it all, running the computers and saying bleep.
No matter how hard I tried to hold on to that image, I could only remember the jagged hole in the glass, Lish’s lifeless body iridescent in the lights as it lay at the bottom of the pool.
I opened my eyes, realizing that Raquel had been talking for a while now.
“—understand why I can’t come in with you.”
I frowned. “Uh, sure.” I raised my hand to the palm pad and . . . nothing happened. The strangest sense of betrayal and abandonment surged through me. They’d changed the locks?
“Sorry about that,” Raquel said, waiting for me to move so she could palm the door. It slid open with a hiss, and she backed up out of view. “I’ll leave it unlocked.”
Taking a deep breath, I walked in. The emptiness of the large, white, circular room hit me like a blow. The aquarium was gone. No trace left except a faint ring around the middle of the floor. It was like Lish never existed. The door closed behind me, and I slid against it to the floor.
I definitely wasn’t ready for this.
A bitter cold breeze tickled the back of my neck. Something dark darted past the edge of my vision. I turned my head, but nothing was there.
The lights flickered, then went out, except a single dim bulb.
“I’ve been waiting for you,” a low voice hissed in my ear.
A tickle on my arm drew my attention to the black spider with a crimson hourglass belly creeping its way up. The last light died and a death scream ripped through the room as it plunged into darkness.
Deadly Reunions
In the pitch black the only sensation was the spider’s eight sinister legs on my arm. “You’ll die in this room,” a voice whispered in my ear. I wouldn’t be the first. My chest tightened, thinking of Lish’s last moments. Was she scared? Did it hurt?
The lights flashed back on to reveal my entire b
ody covered by a writhing mass of black widows.
“Oh, piss off,” I snapped, standing up. I’m sure I would have been scared, terrified even, if it weren’t for the fact I could see right through the scampering little arachnids. Poltergeists’ projections are a combination of glamour and manipulating air currents to create the illusion of sensation. Neat trick, really.
There was a pause, then the spiders disappeared, replaced by a howling wind. Blood seeped through the seams between the wall and ceiling, dripping down right in front of my face. I stuck my hand out and let the blood illusion pass right through it. “Maybe try corn syrup and red dye next time?”
A low growl echoed through the room, which proceeded to burst into flames, crackling as they devoured the walls and surrounded me.
“Are you about done yet? Because this is all very impressive, but it’s a school night and I’ve got homework to get back to.”
The flames winked out of existence, leaving the room as pristine and empty as before. “I’ll kill you,” the voice croaked, and something about it triggered a memory.
“Steve?”
The air shimmered in front of me to reveal the translucent image of—yup, Steve the vampire. Or at least, what used to be Steve the vampire. Considering he was dead dead now, instead of undead, he wasn’t technically a vampire.
He scowled at me. “You aren’t any fun.”
“Party pooper extraordinaire, that’s me. What are you doing here?”
“What does it look like I’m doing?” He raised his hands and they burst into flame.
“Looks like cheap parlor tricks to me. Seriously though, the last time I saw you—” The last time I saw him, he was so wigged out over being brought into the Center that he bit Raquel, knowing it would trigger an injection of holy water and kill him. Again. But permanently.
His eyes flashed with anger. “Glad to see you remember me.”
“Of course. But why are you still here?”
“I’m going to make them pay. All of them. They’ll rue the day they ever brought me into this prison.” Steve had always had a flair for the dramatic. He should have raised one ghostly fist in the air as he said it, though, for the full effect.
I sat back down, settling against the door. “I guess that’s fair enough.”
“Aren’t you going to try and exorcise me?”
“Nah. Not my department.”
“Oh.” He bit his lip—or at least tried to, but failed due to the whole incorporeal thing. “Well, what now, then?”
“Ooh, can you make it look like bugs are exploding out of my skin?”
He dropped a few inches in his hovering. “Seriously?”
“Could be cool, right? If you want, I’ll even pretend to be scared.”
“It’s not the same if you’re faking.” He dropped down to my eye level; this left about half of him beneath the floor, but he didn’t seem to notice.
“Sorry. I can’t help it.”
We sat there for a while, Steve shifting position like he couldn’t quite get his ethereal body comfortable.
“I have a question,” I asked, finally breaking the silence.
He perked up. “What?”
“I don’t get it. I mean, you hated the idea of this place, right? You committed hari-kari just to avoid being locked up here for even a few days.”
“Yes. And?”
“I don’t understand why, after all that, you’d choose to spend eternity here.”
His eyes went out of focus, the outline of his body fuzzing ever so slightly. “I— They need to— I’m making them pay.”
“Sure, I get that. But aside from giving them nightmares and being a nuisance, you can’t do anything, can you? All you’ve done is trapped yourself more effectively than they ever could.”
His shoulders slumped. Man, poor guy. I kept ruining his afterlives. I reached out to pat him on the shoulder but stopped short. It’d probably make him feel worse if I went straight through him. “Umm, don’t worry about it. You’re not really stuck, after all.” I waved my hand near his arm in a way I hoped was comforting.
He was already starting to lose definition. It’s not easy hanging on once you’re dead, and if you take the will to haunt out of them, they usually poof right on to where they’re supposed to be.
Wherever that is.
But most people couldn’t handle sticking around long enough to pinpoint the location for an exorcism, or, in this case, a good old-fashioned chat session. Which was where I always came in on poltergeist duty for IPCA.
Steve nodded. His extremities had already vanished. “You’re right. About time I gave being dead a shot.”
“That’s the spirit!” I smiled encouragingly.
“Thanks. At least one of us will finally be free of this nightmare.”
“Oh, I—” I was going to explain that I was free now and it was my choice to be here tonight—or at least, kind of, since Jack hadn’t really given me a chance to turn him down—and honestly, I had such mixed feelings about the whole thing, I wasn’t sure what to tell Steve, other than that I wasn’t a prisoner or even an employee and he shouldn’t assume I was—
Before I could form a coherent thought, he had disappeared. For good, this time. I hoped.
“Bye, Steve,” I whispered to the empty room.
I sat there for a few seconds, but being alone here was far more frightening than any haunting could have been. This room didn’t need dramatics to give me nightmares. I scrambled up, waited for the door to open, and stumbled into the hallway.
“Raquel?” The blank hall stretched out, empty. Great.
I walked toward her office, lost in thought about Lish, and poor Steve, and all the other souls I’d sent out of this life, some quite literally. Where did they go? Did Steve go the same place as Lish? And was it vampire Steve or normal Steve? What exactly happened to the souls when their human bodies died and became vampires? And then when the vampire bodies died?
Hello, headache.
I sighed and put my hand on the door pad. Only when it didn’t open did I look up and realize I’d unconsciously gone back to my old unit.
I stared, dumbfounded, at the door. It felt like part of me, old Evie, should break off from the rest, smile and wave, then go through and flop down on the purple couch. Instead, all of me stood on the threshold, barred from a life I said I was done with.
I had thought so many times about the things—actual, physical things—that I’d left behind. A pair of red peep-toe heels in particular plagued me. Now I actually had excuses to wear them, and they were stuck in my unit. I had even composed a running list in my head of all the stuff I would snatch from my room if I ever had the chance.
But I couldn’t get in, couldn’t go back. I didn’t think I wanted to, either. That unit was a tomb for the Evie who had lived there, oblivious to the complexities of the world around her, clueless as to what she really was. I didn’t want anything from her.
I turned and made my way carefully to Raquel’s office. I needed to get out of here. Now. Claustrophobia had set in with a vengeance, and the sudden panic of realizing I couldn’t get out unless theylet me out made it hard to breathe. I turned the corner and nearly ran into Jack, who looked equally startled to see me.
“Why, Evie, you look like you’ve seen a ghost.”
“Har, har.” I felt wrung out, empty. I wanted to go home. “Is Raquel in her office?”
“How would I know?”
“Weren’t you just there?”
“Nope.”
“Oookay.”
“Evie?” I turned in relief at Raquel’s voice as she walked up behind me. “How did it go?”
“The Center is officially Not Haunted.” At least, not by any poltergeists. If memories were ghosts, it was positively oozing with them. And now I was, too. “Can I go now? I’m pretty tired.”
“Of course. Jack, if you’d—”
We were interrupted by a door forming on the wall next to us. A tall faerie with pure white hair an
d skin the color of a ripe peach stepped through. “You!” Her voice rang like cold metal through the hallway.
I jumped back. “I won’t—”
“I didn’t do it!” Jack shouted, interrupting me. I looked at him, puzzled. Did he think the faerie was after him?
She took a step toward us. Jack turned, booking it down the hallway and sliding around the corner, leaving Raquel and me with the faerie. The way her cobalt eyes tracked him, I wondered if maybe she really was after him.
Who was I kidding. With faeries it was always about me.
Raquel recovered faster than I did. She reached into her suit jacket and pulled out a small iron cylinder. With a neat flick of her wrist it telescoped out into a baton of sorts. “I suggest you leave.”
The faerie regarded her coolly, then backed through the wall and out of the Center. I looked wide-eyed at Raquel. “Holy bleep, Raquel, you were totally bad—”
“Please don’t finish that phrase.” She slipped the baton back to its smallest size and tucked it into her jacket. “Now, do you have any idea what that was about?”
I shook my head. “Nope. Reth visited me the other night, but he didn’t try and take me again.” Well, mostly he didn’t try. Had he tried? Stupid Reth. “But that makes three now—the sylph, Reth, and that faerie. And it seems like there are a lot more weird paranormals turning up in town.” I remembered the frog woman in the housedress. It wasn’t just that they were weird; it was that they were noticing me. Interested in me. I bit my lip, suddenly nervous. It was too much to be a coincidence. Something was going on.
“This complicates things. I’d thought we were past the faeries’ interest in you. I’d feel safer if you stay here tonight.”
“I—oh, no. No. I don’t want to stay here. Jack can take me home.” I turned, but Jack was still nowhere to be seen. Raquel smiled, and I was stuck in the Center.
Again.
Bite My Tongue
Look,” Arianna snapped. She slammed to a stop in front of my school so fast I was nearly strangled by my seat belt. “If you don’t want to hang out with me, fine. But don’t just ditch me and then go stay with a friend for two days without even bothering to call.” Huge shades covered half her face, but I could read it well enough by now. She was hurt.
Supernaturally (Paranormalcy) Page 7
