“Everything else I said in it was true,” Garrett conceded. “What I did. I helped invent Chrysedrine and unleash it on Parole. I put Hans in that coma, and when I could have helped him, instead I let him rot in that prison. So you can thank me for…him.” His eyes flicked to the dead boy with the poltergeist controlling him, who was busily cracking his knuckles and sticking out his tongue, trying to see its blue tip. “But I also meant the good things. I meant that you’re the best thing to happen to this city in a long time, Evelyn Calliope. I meant that if anyone can save us, it’s you. And I meant that the show must go on.”
“Okay,” Evelyn said softly. Tears were running down her cheeks now, and she made no effort to wipe them away. “Okay. So. Where do we go from here?”
“Now,” Jenny said quietly, looking up at Hans, still grinning from behind Benjamin’s dead eyes. “I do this!” One hand flew out and she grabbed at the air, seeming to catch something invisible—and he gasped in reply.
“What are you doing?” he staggered back, clutching at his stolen, broken neck.
“You weren’t supposed to tell!” Jenny glared, other hand shooting out to grab something else, another unseen string. “You said you’d help me, help Evelyn, the way you said you needed Benji’s body, you’d treat him with respect—but you lied! You don’t care about anyone but yourself, do you?”
“Jenny, no! Please, no! It took me ten years to get a body back!”
“You didn’t ask.”
“I couldn’t! He was dead!”
“The flower boy doesn’t belong to you.”
“Please—”
“He brought me lilies.”
“Wait!”
Snip. Jenny’s fingers came together in twin scissor motions, slicing the air. Benjamin Kim slumped like a marionette whose strings had been cut, and Jenny rushed forward, catching him gently and easing him to the ground. She lay his arms across his chest and shut his eyes, giving his cheeks each a gentle pat before looking up with a smile.
“I did not know you could do that,” Evelyn stared.
“I said I manifested some new powers,” Jenny’s cheeks went just a bit pink. “I was telling the truth. Oh! Garrett! You’re…you’re going all ghostly!”
Evelyn looked up at his projection in horror, which was quickly fading. “Jenny! Do something, please!”
“I can’t!” Jenny gasped. “I lost focus! I can’t keep connected for much longer! Talk fast, Garrett!”
He tried. “Evelyn, I’m sorry! I’m sorry for everything! Please forgive me, I never wanted to—”
“It’s all right! Just come home!” Evelyn’s eyes stung but she refused to blink, trying to keep the fading image in sight as long as she could. “We haven’t forgotten you, you’re not a ghost! We still love—”
Garrett was gone, exorcised like a wandering spirit, like Hans. A sudden gust of cold wind blew through the curtains and the circle of candles sputtered out, leaving the stage dark and silent.
They were alone. Just Evelyn, Jenny Strings, and the dead boy on the floor.
Evelyn sighed, letting her head drop as she stared at Benjamin’s body. The Jack-o-Lantern smile was gone, and his face looked calm, peaceful, and very young. “Come on, honey. Let’s give him a better place to rest.”
❈
Later that night, Jenny came to meet Evelyn in her office. She had taken off the witch hat, and her long hair hung down partly in front of her eyes. When dressed in her usual several layers of skirts and leggings and too-long sleeves, she just looked like a young girl, too thin and pale and tired. Her hair was platinum blonde, not the ghostly white it had looked in candlelight. She stared down at her feet—in fuzzy boots, not the ballet shoes she’d once worn—as she shuffled in, not looking up to meet Evelyn’s eyes.
“I’m sorry,” was the first thing she said, her voice small.
“For wh...” Evelyn started, picking her chin up out of her hand and blinking her eyes back into focus. She’d been staring at Garrett’s—at her desk again, and how it was exactly as cluttered with papers as it had been earlier. She’d let her hair down and now it hung in a mass of limp magenta curls down to her waist. Even her hair looked tired. “Oh. I understand why you lied. You were just doing what Garrett said. You thought it was the right thing, to protect him.”
“But it still hurt you.”
Evelyn was quiet for a moment. “Yes, it did.”
“You don’t know how you can trust me. Or him. Either of us.”
She didn’t answer.
“You think you’re the one who’s supposed to protect everyone,” Jenny said softly. “You don’t know what to do when it’s us trying to protect you.”
“Stop,” Evelyn said, laying her hands flat on the desk. “Stop trying to figure me out. I haven’t even figured me out yet. I’m—I’m very upset that you both lied to me. Especially Garrett. I’m furious that he put you in the middle of this. He’s the adult here, not you. I’m angry that he made this decision for me and didn’t let me make it on my own.” She took a deep breath, used her hands to push herself into a standing position. “But I’m also…so happy that he’s alive.”
“Me too.”
Evelyn gave a choked little laugh that threatened to become a sob. “Because now when I see him, I can—I can smush his lousy, not-dead face!” She sniffed, smile spreading across her own face. She had no idea if she was laughing or crying. Both. “And I’m so glad that, even if you couldn’t tell me he was alive, that you wanted to show him to me! You wanted to give him back to me, however you could.”
“I had to,” Jenny nodded, tears in her eyes. “I love you and you were hurting. And I love him, and he was hurting. And I had the power to make it stop. If I can make the pain stop, and I don’t… how am I good? You told me that people started calling you a superhero.”
Evelyn just nodded, couldn’t speak. Her mouth opened but no sound came out.
“And that’s all it means. Doing good when you can. If you have the power to make it stop hurting, and you do, then you’re a hero. You said that. So I tried. Did it... did it work?”
Evelyn sucked in a breath, as if she were about to release a sonic blast, or a powerful song that would save the day. Instead, what came out was an anguished cry.
“Oh…oh, God! We’re losing so many people, Jenny!”
In a heartbeat, Jenny Strings ran across the paper-littered office floor and flung her arms around her friend’s neck. Evelyn sobbed, burying her face in Jenny’s thin shoulders and soft sweater, and finally, after weeks, months of holding back, holding it in, being the fearless leader, being the conquering revolutionary, being the bulletproof superheroine, the radiant queen on the pedestal, the symbol to whom all others looked and gained strength, she let herself cry.
Jenny held her tight and didn’t say a word, just letting Evelyn cry and wail, muffled by her shoulder, and clutch as tightly as she needed to, her thin white fingers gently stroking the mass of messy pink curls. She softly hummed a soothing melody, and it was this that brought Evelyn slowly back to the present. She didn’t even know where she’d heard the song before or if it had words. But it made her feel better on a stormy night.
“Thank you,” Evelyn managed after several minutes, a dry whisper. She cleared her throat, instantly guilty. “I’m sorry. You shouldn’t have had to see that.”
“It’s not bad to cry,” Jenny shook her head and rested her chin on Evelyn’s shoulder. “Or need a hug. I do all the time. Both.”
“I know, but I’m…” Evelyn sighed, let her head drop again. “Well, I guess I’m not as strong as I think I am.”
“That’s not it,” Jenny said immediately. “Of course you are. But you push yourself too hard. You’re wicked to yourself. Would you push me like that? Or Rose or Danae or anyone else you love? If anyone did that to me, you’d slap them down!”
“Hmm.” Evelyn shook her head, finally breaking the embrace and leaning back to dry her eyes and wet, flushed face. “Well. Moving on. Jenny, wha
t did we learn tonight? Not this, this embarrassing crying thing that we’re never speaking of again. Before this.”
“That I can’t talk to the dead.” She sighed, looking at the floor again and twiddling a strand of her silvery hair.
“Well, yes, but that wasn’t what I meant.” Her mind was already working, eyes brightening, heart beating faster. “So you can’t talk to dead people. But you can talk to living people. As far away as New Mexico, if we believe Hans.”
“Do we believe Hans?” Jenny looked apprehensive.
Evelyn hesitated. “I’ll get back to you on that. In any case, living people who at least aren’t here. You could talk to Garrett, even if you didn’t know exactly where he was, right?”
“Right. I just… I just thought, Garrett, we love you, we want you to be here very hard. I found the—the string, that connected me to him, then I pulled it. And then here he was.”
Evelyn inhaled deeply, like taking the first breath of fresh, sunlit air after a week locked in a small, dark room. “We have so many missing and lost people. Maybe now we can start finding them.”
“Yes! This will be so, so good!” Jenny bounced a little on the balls of her feet. “I can help you, Evelyn? Really?”
“Really.” She smiled, a real smile. It felt good to find she still remembered how. “You’ve helped so much already. Actually, I have an idea for the first person you can find.”
“Oh! Good! Who?”
Evelyn took a deep breath, steadying herself. “Rose. I know she’s alive. I need her. Not flowers, her.”
“Yes. I’ll find her.”
“Thank you,” Evelyn sighed, tension lines in her face smoothing for the first time in what felt like weeks. “I just thought of another one. Well, I guess it’s more like two people in one now. Do you remember Regan, the man I came here with? The, uh. Lizard-like one.”
Jenny went quite still, thinking. “I don’t think I’ll ever forget that one.”
“Good. Well, he’s pretty important to find. For a lot of reasons. Do you think you could help me find him? He’s got someone else with him now who’s very important too.”
“What’s their name?”
“Gabriel. He’s a little boy who’s been lost and alone and scared for a long time. We want to help him if we can.”
“Then so do I.” Jenny nodded. “Yes, I’ll find them. If it’ll make them stop hurting. If I can make you stop hurting, then I will.”
Evelyn smiled, squeezed her hand. “That’s why you’re a hero, Jenny.”
“Hmm, hmm, hmm…” Jenny was back to humming the song she’d started when Evelyn was crying. “Hans, I know you’re there, I can feel you, like the shivery tickles in a lightning storm. Someday you might get your wish. Who knows what will happen? Maybe a castle will rise above the highest clouds. Maybe a ghost will breathe and sing after all. Maybe the trick will turn out to be a treat!”
Evelyn thought about the bright circle of candles where Garrett Cole’s image had floated and told her that the show must go on. She thought about Benjamin’s resting face, peaceful and serene at last. Maybe her own face finally had the same look of peace. “Sure did tonight.”
Claudie Arsenault saved this book with editing. You heard it here first. Claudie Arseneault also probably saved my nerves, my brain cells and me, from crying, on many occasions. Thank you. So much.
Lyssa Chiavari saved this book again with formatting, font and digital design sorcery. You also heard this here first. This book counts as my firstborn and it is yours.
Thank you first to Moo and Kevie for the constant love, Bunny-snuggles, and reassuring me that I would actually get this done. I jawr. I jawr very well.
Thank you so much to my dear Cassie, loveliest and most magical of gender mages. You’ve been with me all the while.
Eri, thank you for this book of many pages, about a house of many doors. Thank you for the same-braining and mutual-flailing and poking and shipping and loving this into reality a second time. Thank you for the forehead kisses. Thank you for believing in me, even when I hadn’t done anything yet.
Now you listen to me, Jack. You're gonna rattle the stars. Let this lighthouse in the sea of time light your way. <3
Quinner. Hey. See you in Book 2. Break out the black leather and fast bike. Let’s go real fast.
Love and love and love, Tobias. All of the snuggles. Every one of them. I seek bees now.
Thank you to my writer-family on Twitter (I'm @RoAnnaSylver!), with special mentions to Shira Glassman (@shiraglassman), Kiran Oliver (@koliver_writes), Rachel Sharp (@WrrrdNrrrdGrrrl) and B. R. Sanders (@b_r_sanders). There are so many awesome people I have to stop there. Tweet me for recs, I'll throw confetti 'in person' instead.
Thank you to my wonderful community of followers and friends on tumblr.com. (Come say hello; I'm TheSylverLining!) Please imagine me standing outside your window blasting songs of adoration. I always am. In my heart. And my mind. And my soul. Truly. Deeply. Madly.
Thank you to my amazing patrons on Patreon, who support me while I create things that I hope make the world a little more beautiful and safe, with less fear and pain. That's what you do for mine. (I'm at patreon.com/RoAnnaSylver. If my words helped you, checking that out would help me more than I can say.)
I could write a book entirely of Thank You’s and still need more pages—but I only have this one, so I need to stop here. I’m more blessed than I ever imagined, with more loved ones than I could ever Acknowledge half as much as they deserve. Thank you all. The moment I let go of it was the moment I got more than I could handle. The moment I jumped off of it was the moment I touched down.
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About the Author
RoAnna Sylver is passionate about stories that give hope, healing and even fun for LGBT, disabled and other marginalized people, and thinks we need a lot more. Aside from writing oddly optimistic dystopia books, she is a blogger, artist, singer and voice actor.
RoAnna has worked as a contributing fiction writer, concept artist and voice actor for videogame company Phoenix Online Studios, been a background actor on several episodes of NBC's Portland-based TV series Grimm, and now writes for entertainment news website Moviepilot.com.
She lives with family and a small snorking dog, and probably spends too much time playing videogames.
Read more at RoAnna Sylver’s site.
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