Another One Bites the Dust

by Chris Marie Green

  As me and Mrs. Cavendish stood there in awe, it lingered, gazing at her, ruefully shaking its head.

  Then it dispassionately sank into the street, its gray veil belled up, almost giving us a view of what was underneath.

  But not quite.

  As the cops ran around and went about securing the crime scene, I glanced at Mrs. Cavendish, seeing that a big dark X was oozing from the front of her essence. She looked down at it.

  “It was worth it,” she whispered, and my essence moaned.

  What was going to happen to her? Why couldn’t she just have her reckoning with Tim?

  From behind us, a familiar voice sounded.

  “No, duh, it was worth it.”

  I whipped around to find Twyla, a little grayer for the wear, but in one piece.

  I went to hug her, but then remembered that I shouldn’t even bother. Still, happiness abounded.

  “Where were you?” I asked.

  “Hanging out with the Brat Pack at the Hard Rock. Where do you, like, think I was? I thought I had that wastoid Tim cornered in a parking lot, but he felt me or something and grabbed a crowbar. Messed me up, too, then he drove off again. Bu-ut, since I was near a gob of cars, I sucked on a battery for a while. Then this bohunk guy came to pick up his Porsche, and I was like, Yow.”

  No words. And it wasn’t just because of what Twyla had said. I kept looking at Mrs. Cavendish’s X.

  It could’ve been me. . . .

  “Psych!” Twyla said, making a flicking motion at my head and recapturing my focus. “Kidding about the bohunk. It took a while for me to recover, then I wasn’t sure where to go, so I looked on the freeway again for Tim, then came back here. Looks like I missed most of the fun, too.” She faced Mrs. Cavendish. “And, like, gag me out the door, that last part was nasty gross, you Terror Train! Job well done.”

  Mrs. Cavendish didn’t seem to mind Twyla’s weird dual-sided look. In fact, the woman smiled at her, as if Twyla reminded her of a student who needed guidance.

  I left them alone to bond, because Mrs. Cavendish would need it. Plus, I had a few other loose ends to tie up tonight.

  And I wasn’t just talking about how Heidi, Nichelle, and Ruben were doing.

  24

  After I’d made sure that Nichelle, Ruben, and Heidi were a-okay, all my core ghost buds except for Louis had gone over to Wendy’s and gathered outside her window in the courtyard while the fountain trickled happily.

  Even Mrs. Cavendish was here, hovering over the wall next to Twyla, who’d adopted her in the place of Cassie. I guessed it was one of those pay it forward things I’d heard of recently—Cassie had helped Twyla transition into Boo World so Twyla was going to do the same for “Marg,” as she’d taken to calling her.

  I was up by the window with Scott as Wendy leaned out of it. The recent gloom had worn off, bringing the moon out, and it shone over the pink streak in Wendy’s black hair. When she’d first seen our ragtag flock, she’d pointed us to the fuse box and listened to our tale of our big adventure, asking a million questions.

  We hadn’t told her everything about Tim, though. Why did a kid like her need to know? She had enough to handle. But we could tell her the good parts.

  After the storytelling and juicing up, she said, “I know how it feels to have your house invaded by a killer, just like Amanda Lee and her place were.” Her eyes were dark and troubled, because I’m sure she was remembering when Farah had lived in the mansion with her . . . and when that dark spirit had made its way through it, too. “At least Louis and Old Seth are with her to put everything back into place.”

  Old Seth had missed all the action, just like Twyla. That’s what you got for being a slowpoke.

  “Where’s everyone else?” Wendy asked me.

  “Heidi took Nichelle home with her, and Ruben’s also with Amanda Lee. She’s cooking him soup or what-have-you to make him feel better about leaving the house with just Nichelle. He wanted to grab Heidi, too, but she was in another room and he didn’t have time to get to her.”

  We’d skipped over the details about Ruben and Nichelle’s escape. They’d run to a neighboring house when Tim had first gotten to Amanda Lee’s. No one had been home, so they’d scooted to another one. Unfortunately, the next closest neighbor was a ninety-five-year-old woman who didn’t have her hearing aid in, and after she let them inside, it took a minute or two to explain themselves so they could use the phone for the cops.

  Scott was watching Wendy with his dreamy gaze. “They’re all cool now. Even those lookiloo ghosts who’ve been hanging around Amanda Lee’s went off to find something more amusing, now that the party’s over.”

  “I’m sure there’s a lot of counseling in everyone’s future,” Wendy said. “I should know about that. Gavin’s been making me take some sessions on Skype.”

  When I looked confused, Wendy added, “Remember where you talk on the computer and see the person at the same time? You’ll get comfy with the new millennium eventually, Jen.”

  Everyone laughed, even Randy, who lived so deep in the past that he’d probably be getting his butt downtown before the sun rose so he could hunt down his old girlfriend’s love letter in the rocks where he’d taken a fall and died. Old habits were hard to kill.

  Speaking of killing . . .

  I glanced at Mrs. Cavendish. Marg. That’s what she’d told us to call her, as soon as Twyla had started doing it. She stood out from the rest of us because of that fluid X on her chest, and she still looked stunned, even with Twyla trying to cheer her up in her own quirky way.

  I wasn’t sure if regret had set in for Marg, but I did know that I would’ve done the same damned thing as she’d done to Tim if my own killer had been alive and I’d had the chance to give him his just deserts. It wasn’t fair that Marg would exist with a mark now for taking the place of karma.

  As she tried to smile at me, I smiled back, sending her a thumbs-up. Yeah, I’d been ready to fry Tim myself, and giving that power up to Marg had left me restless. But now, more than ever, I was going to bring right to the world.

  Or maybe all I could manage was my world.

  Scott looked at me like, Can we tell Wendy about who the dark spirit really is now?

  We’d been putting that off after the small talk, so I nodded, letting him take the reins. It felt like I’d been talking all night and day with no downtime.

  “Guess what?” he asked Wendy.

  She trained that dark gaze on him, and he reached out to clip her under the chin with a finger. Of course, he didn’t quite succeed. All he did was make her shiver, but she smiled a little, amused.

  “You can come out of your castle now,” he said. “That dark spirit? It’s not your pop.”

  She wrinkled her brow. “It’s not?”

  Twyla finally sounded off. “It’s Jen’s killer. Like, talk about a situation not improving all that much.”

  Wide-eyed, Wendy turned to me. “Your killer broke through the portal?”

  I sank against the wall. “Long story. Short version? You don’t need to worry about it coming after you.”

  Not unless my killer decided he wanted to attack the people I held dear in life—and Wendy had become one of those. Wendy and Suze and . . . whoa, even Amanda Lee, with all her faults. Ruben was in the running, too.

  Fake Dean’s face crossed my mind, but I shut it out. He wasn’t human, anyway. Not in any capacity. Even so, my essence fizzed at the thought of him.

  Wendy noticed my preoccupation, but Scott brought her attention back to him.

  “You can walk around outside now, have some fun.”

  “I’ve got my computer to keep me busy,” she said. But she was just kidding with him, because her cheeks were flushed with the good news. Then she frowned. “Gavin’ll probably make me go back to school now, but I suppose that’s okay. You don’t do squat for work right before summer break, anyway.”

  “Things’ll be boring without you,” Scott said.

  “Aw,” said Twyla from the ch
eap seats. But it got a faint smile from Marg.

  Scott gave Twyla a shut-up look, and Wendy glanced at all of us in turn, even Marg. Wendy had asked about the X and we’d had to tell the truth about it, so Wendy was already being extra nice to her.

  “Does this mean you’re not going to come around now that I don’t need protecting?” she asked. “Because, Jensen, I’m still working on your fake boyfriend stuff. You’ll still need help with that.”

  She seemed so hopeful. Why crush her heart by telling her I’d never see fake Dean again?

  Why crush my own?

  Besides, I hadn’t given the details about the “breakup” to anyone. It wasn’t worth the effort.

  “Yeah,” I said to Wendy. “We’ll sure be around.”

  She and Scott exchanged cute looks.

  When the sound of the garage door opener buzzed the air, all ghost eyes went to me. Gossips. But Wendy had only the vaguest clue about the level of strangeness my relationship with Gavin had reached.

  “Looks like he’s back for the night,” she said. “Gavin’s been getting out more and more. I don’t know where he goes, but he seems kind of smiley when he gets back.”

  Suze, I thought. She made Gavin smile, and evidently it lasted long after he got home from the pub.

  God. Someday my friend would have to know everything about Gavin, if they continued to see each other. And I was afraid the bearer of bad news would have to be me. Fake Dean had taunted me about wanting to tell Suze, but I actually didn’t want to see her disappointed. Not when she’d been that way for most of her life.

  Randy was watching Marg, and I saw him trade looks with Twyla, too.

  “Whaddya say we have some fun?” he slurred, pushing his tilting sailor cap in place. “I know a good pub to show Marg. . . .”

  “You do know a few,” I said.

  Twyla had already risen above the wall, waving Marg to come with her.

  “Have we got a world to show you,” she said to the new ghost. “And you’re looking foxy enough to attract some male ghost attention in it, even if we can’t, like, fool around with each other.”

  She gave Marg directions, then said a quick good-bye as two travel tunnels sprang into the air. They went through them and disappeared.

  Randy waited for a moment, grinning at me. And, even though it wasn’t the same grin I was used to, I loved to see it on him.

  Who cares if a dark spirit has part of me? he seemed to be saying. I’m off to paint the town red.

  He busted into his tunnel, too, leaving me with the tentative lovebirds. Through Wendy’s open door, I heard Gavin’s boots pound up the stairs, then down the opposite side of the hall.

  “Still not talking to him?” I asked Wendy.

  “I’m making him suffer.” She didn’t look happy about it, though. “I’ll go to him tonight to tell him the news about the dark spirit. In a while.”

  “I can tell him about it first. If you want.”

  “Would you?”

  I nodded, rising up to the entire window. But as I slid through it, something caught the corner of my eye. A movement in the trees. A formless flash.

  My killer? No, there was no negative energy around.

  I hesitated to think of the other possibility, because to think of fake Dean would be to hope, and to hope would mean disappointment.

  But it couldn’t be him, either. I didn’t have that solid phantom body he gave me when he was near.

  When a cat jumped out of the tree, I shut all my optimism down. Instead, I thought how pathetic it was that I was a ghost who jumped at horror movie clichés. Nice.

  As Wendy and Scott murmured to each other, I went through her room, took a left in the hall, and found Gavin’s door gapped, like he’d left it that way in case Wendy wanted to stop by.

  I peeked inside to see him lying flat on the bed, the TV on, his eyes closed. Was he sleeping?

  I slipped into the room, flattening myself above him so that I looked straight down at him.

  Yes, he was smiling, just like Wendy had said he’d be. And he’d gone right to sleep, his thick lashes dusting his cheeks, his cupid-bow mouth giving his tough face a sense of peace.

  I wished I could have some of that peace. Wished I knew for sure what was making him smile.

  Aching, I touched his skin, going deep into him, my psyche body landing softly in the dream he’d already put in motion.

  Before, he’d dreamed of fire and dragons and death, punctuated by creative machines and monsters and emotional anarchy. But now . . .

  Now his subconscious was a simple tank of flowy blue water, and I was outside the glass of it, watching him float, tranquil and placid, his arms stretched, looking like the angel he’d believed I was at one time.

  To my right, a stairway stretched, and I took it, climbing up and up until I reached a sundeck, where a bright sky swallowed the sound of palm fronds in the wind. Waves languorously rolled upon an unseen shore, and there Gavin was in a swimming pool, floating on his back.

  I was standing behind two beach chairs, and someone was sitting in one of them. It was only when Gavin lazily stopped floating in the pool and swam over with that smile still on his face that I realized who it was.

  Suze stood, handing him a towel, smiling, too.

  I pushed out of the dream before I could see any more of it, snapping out of him with a small, gentle break. Hovering over him, my essence hummed.

  I felt his happiness, and Suze’s, all the way through me. And when I glanced up to see that he’d taken down those pictures he’d drawn of me as the hellbitch, I smiled, myself.

  Floating above him, I lingered, watching over him.

  Truly becoming his angel again.