“I explained it to the detective,” Ellen said, and something about her tone made Dylan turn his head—painfully—and look at her. Ellen’s eyes looked unusually alert and bright. “Mason was at the party. He’s a friend—he was a friend—of Trick’s. He got out the gun and showed it to a couple of people; Joon Park touched it, and so did my—so did my sister. And so did I.”
“And he liked her,” Mateo asked. He glanced up from his notebook, where he’d been writing. “He had a real thing for Mary, isn’t that what you said?”
“That’s right,” Ellen went on, and Dylan felt her grip tighten on his hand. “So when Mary brought Dylan home, I figure Mason must have followed them to Mary’s house. My house. He must have shot Dylan, and then …”
“The emergency call,” Mateo said, nodding. “Your mother called nine-one-one at two-oh-four A.M., reporting a gunshot. Which frightened the assailant away—”
“—and he must have followed Mary back to the hotel and shot her there,” Dylan said. Ellen squeezed his hand, and he avoided looking at her. It hadn’t been difficult to pick up the logic of the story Ellen was telling.
“But you followed him.” Mateo was frowning at his notebook. “You got up off the floor with a gunshot wound to the abdomen and made your way down to the hotel to save Ms. Shayne, but you were too late.”
“I don’t remember,” Dylan said again.
Detective Mateo stood motionless, staring at his notebook. After a moment he raised his eyebrows and closed the notebook, audibly exhaling as he reached to return it to his back pocket.
“All right,” Mateo said, raising his eyebrows. “I guess I buy it. I mean”—he grimaced—“it’s a weird one, make no mistake. But we’ve got the gun, we’ve got the prints, we’ve got ballistics, we’ve got motives … when the lab work comes back, if the prints on the gun are Ms. Shayne’s”—he indicated Ellen—“and Joon Park’s and Mary Shayne’s, then I guess that’s all she wrote.”
Dylan could hear Ellen exhaling with relief.
Then the door was swinging open and Dylan sat up straighter in the bed as Dawn Shayne came into the room, wearing a black overcoat, her face pale, her eyes red and wounded. Detective Mateo stepped toward her. Ellen reached for her mother and hugged her tightly. “Dylan,” Mrs. Shayne said in a husky, tired voice. “I’m so glad you’re all right.”
“Hi, Mrs. Shayne,” Dylan said, trying to smile.
“After what we’ve been through together,” Mrs. Shayne told him, leaning to kiss his cheek and flooding his nostrils with the aroma of cigarettes, “I think you can call me Dawn. You had me talking forever last night, just trying to keep you conscious.”
What? Dylan had no idea what she was talking about.
“He doesn’t remember, Mom,” Ellen said quickly.
“I’ll leave you alone,” Mateo said briskly. “Dylan, I may have some more questions for you later, when you’re feeling better.”
“Are you going to catch the killer?” Dawn Shayne demanded. “Are you going to find the—the monster who killed my daughter? He’s got to be caught. I want him punished for what he did to her.”
“We have a suspect,” Mateo told her, “but he’s gone—he’s deceased, ma’am. That’s all the punishment he’s going to get, in this life, anyway. Besides”—Mateo was making his way out of the room—“you really shouldn’t be thinking in terms of revenge, Mrs. Shayne. It’s not a good idea. It’s never a good idea.”
“Amen to that,” Ellen said quietly.
“I’m sorry for your loss,” the detective said, nodding at all of them and leaving the room. He pulled the door shut behind him.
Mrs. Shayne stood at Dylan’s bedside with her shoulders slumped forward. She struggled through a fit of wet coughs. “It’s not fair,” she whispered, peering down at the sterile white floor. “I had to stand there and identify my daughter’s body and that boy is not even going to face retribution.”
“Mom—”
“That boy is already dead—that’s not justice.” Mrs. Shayne lifted her head and locked eyes with her daughter. “He should have to pay for what he did—he should have to suffer. He should feel the way I feel right now, every day, for the rest of his life.”
“Mom, stop.” Ellen wrapped her arms tightly around her mother’s stiff body. “We can’t do this anymore.”
Mrs. Shayne stared back at Ellen. “Do what?”
“I know what it feels like,” Ellen told her. “I know that feeling like there’s knives and needles in your stomach—like they’re just going to keep cutting away at you until someone pays for what they did—but you have to let it go, Mom. Mason’s gone. If you let all that anger keep slicing away at you, then you’re just going to end up … empty.”
“I know that.” Tears were running down Mrs. Shayne’s cheeks. “I know that. I should have let it go. I should have forgiven her.”
“Wait, who?”
Mrs. Shayne reached out awkwardly, groping toward Ellen and falling into her daughter’s arms. She nestled her head beneath Ellen’s chin.
“I’m the mother,” Mrs. Shayne said, her voice muffled by Ellen’s shirt front. “Mary was just a child, Ellie. I should have forgiven her then, and we could have had all this time together like a real mother and daughter.”
“It’s okay,” Ellen said weakly. Her face was contorted, Dylan saw—she was beginning to cry. “It’s okay, Mom.”
“No it’s not. I never said it to her. I never told her I forgave her. I thought we’d have more time. Now she’s gone.”
“But that’s just her body,” Ellen argued. “Her body’s gone, but her soul is still here with …” Ellen flashed Dylan a glance that he couldn’t understand. “I mean, I think her soul will stay with us in a way. I think I can feel her with us … watching over us … hearing us sometimes. Don’t you believe that, Mom?”
“I want to believe that.” Mrs. Shayne tried to smile.
“I think”—Ellen dug her finger awkwardly under her glasses and swiped at a runaway tear—“I think she heard you forgive her. And I think she forgives you, too. She forgives you, Mom. She does.”
“Is that true?” Mrs. Shayne looked at Dylan. “You told me Mary was sorry … you said that she was sorry, and that she loved me. Was that true?”
Dylan had no idea what to say—he didn’t understand what Mrs. Shayne was referring to.
“Yes, it’s true,” Ellen said. “She was sorry, and she does love you. Did.”
“Maybe,” Mrs. Shayne said. “Maybe.”
Dylan watched as mother and daughter hugged each other more tightly, rocking in place, eyes closed, and then Mrs. Shayne pulled away and began to rise to her feet.
“Mom—wait.”
Ellen reached her fingers under the collar of her mother’s navy blouse and fiddled with something Dylan couldn’t see, until she’d pulled it free from her neck—a slim gold chain with a golden amulet hanging from its center. He recognized the symbol immediately—the Eye of Tnahsit—as Ellen flung the necklace across the bed, onto the chair the detective had vacated. It slid to the floor in a tangled, ugly heap.
“But your father gave—”
“I know he gave it to you that day. And that’s why you’re never going to wear it again. Because we’re done with that day, Mom. We’re done. Okay?”
Mrs. Shayne took a long deep breath. “Okay,” she said quietly.
As she took another breath, Dylan noticed something strange: Mrs. Shayne’s coughs had suddenly begun to subside. Her first deep breath led to another, and then another. For as long as he’d known her, he’d never seen her breathe so deep and easy.
“You sounded like Mary just then,” Mrs. Shayne said quietly, rising to her feet. The sunlight caught Dawn’s halo of graying hair, making it look oddly beautiful. “I have to rest now. Honey—are you coming?”
“You go ahead,” Ellen said. “I’ll be along in a minute.”
“All right.” Mrs. Shayne gave Dylan a watery smile and then disappeared through the d
oor, taking her menthol cigarette aroma with her.
Dylan was starting to feel sleepy again. Ellen sat back down beside him and took his hand. The sunlight shone against the venetian blinds, which shifted quietly in the air-conditioned breeze.
“I miss her,” Dylan said.
“You don’t have to miss her,” she told him. “Remember what you said on our date? What you told me in the restaurant? ‘The true mystery of the world is the visible, not the invisible.’”
He squinted at her.
“Ellen?”
“Yes.”
Dylan tilted his head on the pillow, gazing quizzically at her.
“Mary?”
“Yes,” she said, nodding.
Dylan smiled. His eyes were drifting shut—he needed to go back to sleep. “Enlightenment is a good thing,” he told her. “They say the soul becomes wise at the end of its journey.”
“That’s what they say.”
Dylan took her hand and squeezed it and they smiled at each other in the bright morning sunlight that filled the room.
About the Authors
BARNABAS MILLER has written many books for children and young adults. He also composes and produces music for film and network television. He lives in New York City with his wife, Heidi; their cat, Ted; and their dog, Zooey.
JORDAN ORLANDO sold his first novel before his twenty-first birthday. Besides writing, he creates Web sites and works in graphic design and digital cinema. He lives in New York City. You can visit him at www.jordanorlando.com.
This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents either are the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, events, or locales is entirely coincidental.
Copyright © 2010 by Barnabas Miller and Jordan Orlando
All rights reserved. Published in the United States by Delacorte Press, an imprint of Random House Children’s Books, a division of Random House, Inc.,
New York.
Delacorte Press is a registered trademark and the colophon is a trademark of Random House, Inc.
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Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Miller, Barnabas.
7 souls / Barnabas Miller and Jordan Orlando—1st ed.
p. cm.
Summary: Inexplicable things have been happening to Manhattan socialite Mary since she awoke on her seventeenth birthday, and by the end of the day she has been killed, inhabited the bodies of seven people close to her, and faced some ugly truths about herself.
eISBN: 978-0-375-89381-0
[1. Interpersonal relations—Fiction.
2. Spirit possession—Fiction. 3. Death—Fiction. 4. Blessing and cursing—
Fiction. 5. Sisters—Fiction. 6. New York (N.Y.)—Fiction.]
I. Orlando, Jordan. II. Title. III. Title: Seven souls.
PZ7.M61216Aaf 2010
[Fic]—dc22 2009043530
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