Ghost Heart

by Ripley Patton

“What about her powers?” Passion asked. “You said she had powers. Couldn’t she use those to protect herself?”

  “I doubt it,” Palmer said. “She can soothe people with her touch, like calm them and take away their stress. She can do what Olivia does, pull things from people, but the objects have different properties. Kaylee can’t use them to do anything, but the people she pulls them from can.”

  So, that explained the matchbook. Kaylee must have pulled it from Palmer, which meant it had been a pretty ballsy move for him to give it to me in Indy with no guarantee of getting it back. How did it work though? Could I have used it? Probably not. But that was so cool, my sister and I having similar powers. I guess it made sense. And the thing about calming people, that was kind of what my mom did for a living.

  “But I don’t get why those powers put her in danger,” Samantha said. “Why would both The Hold and the CAMFers go to war over that?”

  “Because she’d just begun to manifest a new power,” Palmer said. “She’d started passing through walls and solid objects.”

  Yeah, I’d seen that one myself, as well as her ability to restore my PSS, which would be a huge threat to the CAMFers. But I had a feeling Palmer wanted to keep that one tightly under wraps. I wasn’t going to mention it. I still hadn’t told the group about Anthony cutting off my hand, mainly to protect my mom from the horror of it. Everyone just seemed to have assumed my hand had developed a fancy new “on and off” feature.

  “She was only just mastering moving through things,” Palmer explained, “and I tried to get her to keep it a secret, but she isn’t good at secrets. Then Dr. Fineman started acting strange, and I knew someone must have seen her passing through something on camera and told him. He was scared. He was pushing the limits of his agreement with The Hold. He started talking about how dangerous she was, how she had to be taken care of. That’s when I knew I had to get her out. For good. So, I convinced him we should kill her in front of Mr. James and crush The Hold once and for all. Not really kill her of course, that was all fake. And I hoped Olivia would do the rest.”

  “You could have been way more specific when we had our little chat in the security suite,” I said, still pissed at him. “My power isn’t exactly made-to-order on a good day. And that was not a good day. Not even a little.”

  “Olivia’s right,” Grant said, coming to my defense. “You left her completely in the dark and expected her to pull off this miracle for you. She had no idea what was going on, and what she did do probably saved countless lives. Plus, she got us all the hell out of there, which was more than anyone else could have done.”

  Thank you, Grant.

  Even with the fire it was getting cold, the bitter cold of the high desert at night. We’d figured out that much about our location, based on the landscape and the plant life. We were still in the high desert, but Palmer didn’t think we were on the reservation anymore. He thought we were somewhere further east.

  “I agree,” Samantha said, turning to me. “You prevented a war between the CAMFers and the Hold, and that’s huge.”

  “I’m proud of you,” my mother said, slipping her arm through mine, her fingers entwining with my ghost fingers. It was both intimate and startling, considering how she’d once reacted to my PSS. But so much had changed since then, including my hand. I’d been keeping it on, because it kind of freaked her out still that I could make it disappear and reappear at will. “I’m still confused about a lot of things,” she admitted, “but that isn’t one of them.”

  “She didn’t prevent the war,” Mike Palmer pointed out like the Eeyore he was. “It’s delayed at most. If one of them has Kaylee, the other side will find out soon enough, and all hell will break loose. If neither of them have her and they all think she’s dead, there’s nothing holding them back any longer. There is going to be a war. It’s inevitable.”

  “Nothing’s inevitable,” I said. God, he was such a downer.

  “Fine, so she delayed it. Give her some credit,” Passion piped up, shivering and sinking her hands deep into the pockets of her camo jacket. But then she got a funny look on her face and began digging around in them frantically, as if she’d lost something.

  “What’s wrong?” Samantha asked, frowning at her. They were sitting next to each other, but they weren’t close the way I had seen them before. They weren’t together. Something had happened while I’d been with the CAMFers. Something had created a rift between them.

  “My magic eight ball is gone,” Passion said, looking close to tears. “The one I found at the river.”

  A magic eight ball. The one I pulled from that CAMFer? What were the chances?

  “It probably fell out when you got displaced,” Samantha said, still sounding annoyed. “Or it got displaced too. It’s just a stupid kid’s toy anyway. What’s the big deal?”

  “It’s more than that, okay?” Passion said, getting up and glaring down at Samantha. “I found it after the Eidolon, and it means something to me.”

  “Okay, I’m just saying there are more important things right now than—”

  “You know what?” Passion interrupted. “You don’t have to be such a bitch all the time. You’re not the only one who’s ever been hurt by their parents, and I’m done being your personal punching bag.” Passion stormed off into the dark, but she didn’t go far. Palmer had told us to stick close, at least until morning. There were coyotes out here and other things that could eat us. But she moved as far away as she safely could, sitting on a rock, her back turned to the group.

  I thought about going to her, but I hoped Samantha would. She was who Passion really wanted.

  Samantha didn’t look sorry though. She was practically fuming. I imagine she didn’t get called out for being a bitch very often.

  The night was quiet, the fire crackling, and it wasn’t hard to hear Passion when she began to cry, her sobs coming in hiccupy gasps like the sound of something deeply broken.

  I couldn’t sit there and let her hurt alone. I started to get up, but my mom squeezed my elbow, stopping me.

  Samantha stood up, her face and demeanor completely changed. She stepped over the log she’d been sitting on and walked over to the rock, wrapping Passion in her arms. They clung to each other, whispering into each other’s hair.

  I looked away, wanting to give them privacy, my heart happy that at least something had been reconciled on this cold, strange night.

  “So, what do we do now?” my mother asked, looking to Palmer. “How do we get out of here and back to civilization, so we can find my other daughter?”

  “Well,” he said, “first we make it through the night, probably by huddling together around this fire. Then, in the morning, we hike out of here. It shouldn’t be too far to the nearest road or township. We’re in Oregon, not Alaska. Then we go to Portland. I have friends there who will help us. They should be able to tell us what’s happened since the displacement at the dome.”

  “Yeah, these friend of yours?” I asked, knowing the way he liked to flip-flop between groups. “Are they CAMFers or Holders?”

  “Neither,” he said. “Just traffickers of information. That’s all. They’re hackers, and they don’t take sides. Plus, they may be able to help us find Kaylee. So, if you can get some rest, you should. We may have a long trek ahead of us tomorrow.”

  I looked down at the hard ground and the meager fire. I was hungry and thirsty and exhausted. My sister was missing and so was Marcus, and according to what Passion and Samantha had explained, he had no memory of me and our relationship. He’d lost it at the bottom of the pool at the Eidolon. That all seemed pretty grim, but at least I wasn’t in a cell, and I wasn’t a prisoner of the CAMFers. I had my ghost hand back, and my mother was next to me, proud of me, unafraid of me.

  So, I was pretty sure I’d sleep like a baby.

  And that’s exactly what I did.

  29

  KAYLEE

  The dome of the world was bigger than I’d ever imagined. The sky was immense, tou
ching the bottom of the floor on all sides as far as I could see. And I could see so far. I could see farther than I could comprehend seeing. It didn’t end, my eyes straining and not reaching. The world didn’t end. It was amazing and wonderful and terrifying, the largeness of everything. The shapes and bumps, the rocks and hills and trees, the green lumps and scratchy things dotting a landscape I’d only ever imagined in my dreams. It made me feel so small, like the ants that had sometimes found their way into my little sphere, my little world. The ants I’d studied and shared my crumbs with and pretended I was the god of. I was the ant now. I was the tiniest speck of humanity in a colossal world.

  I think I would have cried if I’d been alone. But I wasn’t.

  There was a boy with me. One of the ones who had come into the dome to retrieve my sister. The sad one. The broken one. Well, all of them were broken, but this one most recently and in such an unusual way. He wasn’t awake yet, but he was alive, splayed out on the floor—no, ground—that is what the outside floor was called. Ground. I needed to remember that. I needed to work on my vocabulary, using all the wonderful outside words I’d learned from the books in my library. Because the more words I had, the more I could write, the more things I could express, and the more world I could hold in my mind.

  Mike had been worried I wasn’t ready, that my brain would explode with all the new experiences and sensations. Sensations like wind. Wind was the air touching me now, caressing me like a friend or a lover. Wind was the air alive and sentient. Or maybe this was breeze. Wind was something else, stronger, something I’d get to feel later. And gust? That was something stronger again. None of them was a draft, though, the dead, stale shambling of air inside the dome. Draft. It even sounded dull.

  The wind breezed in the boy’s hair, his dark, luscious hair, flopping over his face, revealing long thin lines of white along his skull where something had injured him. Scars. I had one on the back of the flesh part of my hand. I’d jabbed myself with a pencil, digging the sharp point in deep, feeling the pain. When they’d asked me why I’d done it, I didn’t explain. I didn’t tell them I’d just wanted to know pain. I’d wanted to give it to myself like a gift. And the scar had just been an unexpected bonus.

  Maybe the boy was hurt. Maybe he was hurt so badly and he would never wake up, and I really was alone in the big wide world. What would I do then? And who would stop me?

  But then he moaned and rolled over a little, revealing a surprise underneath him.

  It was a black ball buried in the earth, only half of it sticking out because the boy had been on top of it, pressing it into the soil.

  I reached out and touched it, feeling the PSS essence of it. Not an ordinary ball, then. It had come from inside someone. And not just that. There was something other about it. It had a hidden treasure, like an Easter egg of energies. A riddle, wrapped in a mystery, inside an enigma. I’d read that in a book once. It was from one of Mr. Winston Churchill’s speeches. This enigma was tied to the boy in front of me.

  I could see the way of it. He’d stored something inside the ball to keep it safe. Maybe he wasn’t broken. Maybe he knew something I didn’t. Maybe he was wise.

  I rolled the ball in my hands, noticing the white circle with the eight in it. Or was it the sign for infinity? On the other side there was a black circular glass indentation, something blue swimming upward toward me.

  I almost dropped the ball I was so startled when the words appeared.

  “Where the hell are we?” the boy demanded, sitting up and grabbing my arm, looking around frantically as if he thought the wind or the sky might attack us.

  We’re in the world, I thought to him. You should know that. You’re from here.

  It was easy to talk into people’s minds when they touched me, but not many people had ever touched me. Mike had, and he knew. And my sister knew because I’d talked to her, except Mike didn’t know that. He’d warned me never to do it. Told me to always write instead. He said if I talked into people’s heads they’d want to kill me, but that was silly. I could make them not notice. I could make them see my lips moving, like I just had with the boy. He didn’t even realize I was speaking right into his mind.

  Mike had been afraid of everything. He’d said if I went out into the world alone everyone would want to kill me, and here I was. Alive. Unless the boy did want to kill me. He looked a little like he might.

  Are you going to kill me? I asked him.

  “What? No. Of course not,” he said, dropping my arm and looking down at the ball in my hands.

  “Where did you get that?” He glanced around. “Where is everyone? What happened?”

  I reached out and touched his arm, calming him a little. My sister did it, I told him. She sent us away to save us. She sent everyone away, and separated the sheep from the goats, and now we have to save ourselves.

  “Your sister?” His eyes fell on me, really seeing me for the first time. “Who’s your sister?”

  Olivia, I told him, proudly.

  “Of course.” He got up, pulling away from my hand. “I should have known she was the sister of the mythical icon The Hold worships. Man, I know how to pick them.”

  I’m not mythical, I corrected him, but he didn’t hear.

  “I’m going to pretend this all makes sense,” he said, looking down at me. “At least for now. Come on. We should find some shade before we get sunstroke. Put your hood up. That will help. We’ll shelter in those trees, and maybe I can find us some water, and hopefully we can figure out where we are.”

  I got up from the ground, pulled my hood up just as he’d said, and slipped the black ball in my robe’s inner pocket.

  Then I followed the boy into the world.

  THE END

  Coming Fall 2015:

  Ghost Hope, Book Four of The PSS Chronicles

  Go to www.ripleypatton.com for more details

  If you enjoyed this book, please support the author by leaving a review right now on the venue you purchased it from.

  ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

  I’d like to thank the universe, so bright and bursting with story. I’d like to thank my husband, Pete, and my two wonderful children, Soren and Valerie, for empowering me to be what I was meant to be. Soren, especially, helped me mold the end on this one and he made me promise to tell you he was right. I just didn’t know it yet.

  I couldn’t have done this without my amazing PA, Samantha Hansen. She does all the hard stuff so I can write, and she never complains. In addition, my awesome Street Team, Ripley’s Rebels, handles more PR and encouragement than I can quantify. Had I known what quality people I would meet when I became a novelist, I would have done it sooner.

  To all those who supported the Ghost Heart Kickstarter, both familiar and strangers, thank you for backing book three:

  Lisa B, Dayne Edmondson, Lisa Heacock, Loretta Czekala, Katie Bleil, Stella Kiel, Bear Charlton, David Snider, Chris Cannon, Jade Zivanovic, Delana Wells, Kim Mulrooney, Virginia M. Mohlere, Julia Dvorin, Alisa Rowe Kenney, Michaela Kenney, Liz Harpur, Jim Ryan, Shona Lawrence, Leona Leigh Goodison, Dan Rabarts, Tricia Sparn Grissom, Jan Butterworth, Jim Waters, Angie Chute, Debbie Howell, Tina Jacobsen, Sandy Puckett, Roslyn McFarland, Jim Kirk, Steve Gayler, Mary Holland, Satima Flavell, Deb Marshall, Carol Hightshoe, Owen Baillie, Mark English, Andy Bunch, Leyla Baghirova, Roxanne Bland, Brian Tashima, Natasha Echeverria, Jennifer Ingman, Steph Arbogast Spann, Jennifer Krause, Beaulah Pragg, Beth Barany, Jason Posivio, John Frewin, Karen Johnson Mead, Mark E. Phair, Laura Buchholz, Cheryl Duval, Stephanie McManus, Hazel Godwin, Jennifer Greenleaf, Jonathon Burgess, Kevin Berry, Megan Beals, Sandra Ulbrich Almazon, Jacintha Fidelis, Regan Vacknitz, Brian Moon, Elaine King, Neil Patton, Athena, Younjee Shon, Joffre Horlor, Gemma Astley, Marty Young, Paris Crenshaw, Jeremy Zimmerman, Jessica Morrell, Ten Ruo Hui, Paul Wilson, Karen Cook, Kam Oi Lee, Frank Pitt, Bonnie Schuster, MIchael Alltop, Jeanette Marsh, Kathy M McDonald, Petra Delarocha, Maria Pease, Natanya Auerbach, Rose Roman, Emma Gallagher, Stephanie Gunn, Co
ry Herndon, Claira Pam Vo, Jennifer Willis, Amanda Peake, Bethany Cherry, Gareth Griffiths, Mona Enderli, Moriah, Sheila Ryals, Lisah Stephens, Juliet Marillier, Courtney Pierce, Sue Slanina, Mary Victoria, Adam Copeland, Phoebe Kitanidis. Caitlin Diehl, Donna Jo Smith, and Jennifer Strickland.

  And last, but never least, to the amazing team that makes the story into a book: Scarlett Rugers for her wonderful cover designs, Lauren McKellar and Jennifer Ingman for tireless editing, and Simon Petrie for his precise and efficient formatting.

  Thanks to all of you, I have a career I love, working with people I adore, and who could ask for more?

  ABOUT THE AUTHOR

  Ripley Patton is an award-winning author who lives in Portland, Oregon with one cat, two teenagers, and a man who wants to live on a boat. She has also lived in Illinois, Colorado, Georgia, Indiana, and New Zealand.

  Ripley doesn’t smoke, or drink, or cuss as much as her characters. Her only real vices are eating M&Ms, writing, and watching reality television.

  To learn more about Ripley and read some of her short fiction, be sure to check out her website at www.ripleypatton.com. You can also sign up for her monthly e-newsletter there to keep up-to-date on The PSS Chronicles and win cool prizes.