Nearby me, I heard a strange, whining kitty sound. Sure enough, it’d come from a black-and-white cat that shot off into the bushes at my presence. I wasn’t positive it’d even seen me, but it was a sensitive little cuss.
Someone else walked into the massive kitchen, high-heeled shoes tapping on the marble floor.
“What is it with you two now?” Her voice was cultured. It actually reminded me of Princess Leia during her less “Han Solo, you really suck” moments.
“It’s the party again,” Noah said.
Wendy gave one of those loud, disgusted sounds that teens did so well. Once, I’d been excellent at them, too.
“Yeah, it was no biggie,” she said, “especially when your friends were pounding on my door and calling for ‘the geek’ to come out and play.”
The high-heeled woman walked into my view. If I weren’t a spirit who’d already resigned herself to being eternally unstylish—seeing as I couldn’t seem to find a way to change the long-sleeved blue shirt over the white tank and jeans I’d died in—I would’ve immediately been envious of Farah.
With a thick mass of smooth brunette hair spilling over her shoulder in a stylish braid, with her long legs and champagne-stem waist and her red designer cocktail dress, she belonged on the cover of a fashion mag with Christie Brinkley. She was obviously on her way to a social function, probably a charity event where she’d raise millions with just a sultry wink and smile.
I watched as she languidly rested against the marble counter, composed, even in the middle of a teenage war zone. Impressive.
But could Sex Bomb do this?
I tested out my ghost skills for the first time on the Edgetts, letting out a soft moan, just to see if they could hear me—but mostly to see if I’d be able to use this skill to invisibly mess with people. I had to know what I could do and when I should do it for when Gavin showed up.
Wendy did hear, and she tilted her head, wrinkling her eyebrows as she paused in drinking that Bull junk. She peered toward me.
Could she see me?
When she didn’t glance away, I thought she could. But then she went back to drinking, her forehead furrowed as she flipped off Noah and left the kitchen.
Farah shook her finger at Noah in a halfhearted scold. “Gavin’s on his way home. Maybe you shouldn’t take advantage of his business trips like that.”
“You’re not sticking up for me?”
“Sure.” She ruffled his hair. “All for one and one for all, right, Noah? I’ll always be by your side.”
When she kissed him on the head, a long look passed between them, and Noah glanced away.
“You’re gonna crush my good times,” he said, like he was trying to lighten up.
“That’s what sisters are for.”
“Sisters. Can’t live with ’em . . .”
“Can’t send some of them back to China,” she said, strolling past him and tweaking his cheek.
He watched her pass, but I didn’t see anything beyond that, because I smelled her perfume, and it made me back away from the window.
God, it was like roses. My mom used to keep those in our living room when I was a kid—
A door slammed from inside, and I went back to the sliding screen. Was it . . . ?
Yes. The man I’d been looking for.
Gavin Edgett.
He appeared in the kitchen, dressed in an untucked white shirt, blue jeans, and work boots. Sparks burned in me. If he’d seemed alive in that picture on the computer, the feeling was multiplied now.
Clipped brown hair, wide shoulders . . . chest . . . arms . . . He came off as strong and taciturn, not like a rich guy at all, but more like one who liked to sit in bars and watch football games. Yet he also had kind of a bookish vibe, like he always had something on his mind.
Still, it was his life force that filled me most of all, just like a heartbeat. He just seemed so vivid next to everyone else, and it wasn’t a good feeling.
Murderer, I kept telling myself. A killer, just like my own?
Farah was right behind him, taking baby steps on her pumps and holding a clutch bag in her hand. “Gavin, come on. . . .”
But he was focused on Noah, who’d slipped off his stool and pushed back his rebel hair.
Gavin tossed his sunglasses on the counter. “I’m gone less than twenty-four hours and you manage not only to piss off the neighbors but to lie to me about studying for that history test. Didn’t we have a deal after you were expelled from your last school?”
“I haven’t cheated since then,” Noah said in a much less confident tone than before. “Besides, I just invited a few friends over, and someone posted it on Facebook.”
Gavin wasn’t hearing any of that, though, and I wasn’t, either. I was just watching . . . feeling.
It started out as a shiver, deep in the belly, and it spread outward, tingling.
But spirits couldn’t get turned on. Could they?
And why would I, out of all the spirits in the world, be drawn to this could-be killer?
Maybe it was just because I hadn’t seen Gavin up close in that picture of him, but I was fixated on his eyes. They were a pale blue, surrounded by thick lashes. . . .
Gavin was still talking, low and level, using the type of tone parents usually used when you’d pushed them too far.
“You think this is your own private palace?” he asked Noah. “You think it’s yours to dirty up with your friends?”
A wave of emotion from Noah crept into me and . . . Good God, I could feel his fear. It was like pure energy, working its way into me, taking the place of the strength that was leaking out of me bit by bit because I wasn’t close to my death spot.
Noah sputtered. “I—”
“I asked you a question,” Gavin said with such an edge that his voice sounded serrated.
A picture came to me, whipped up by imagination: Gavin angry. Gavin stalking Elizabeth Dalton . . .
Farah placed a hand on Gavin’s shoulder, then ran it down his arm. “Maybe we should shelve this for now.”
Gavin shrugged away from her touch, giving her a look that I couldn’t decipher.
She backed off, glancing away, retreating to the edge of the kitchen.
But I wanted to know what was driving Gavin right now, what was filling his head. So I started to flow into the screen door, thinking that maybe I could pass through if I just tried hard enough.
Nope.
I gasped at the pain of the screen separating my essence. Gasped so loud that everyone in the room turned toward me.
Rushing all the way back to the other side of the screen, I felt my essence being sucked back together.
I felt . . . exposed.
Could they see me now? Were any of them sensitive like Amanda Lee?
Gavin slowly walked toward the patio door and, emboldened, I came toward it.
All that was separating us was that screen, and I could smell him—the scent of soap and skin, shockingly human. He was bigger than I’d thought, broader and taller, his face all rough-hewn angles. The warmth from his body hushed against me, but that’s where it stopped—just outside, around my edges, as if my invisible outline was the only smart part of me and wouldn’t allow him to burrow any further.
But . . . that life force of his.
Without thinking, I raised my hand, putting it near the screen.
He paused, raising his hand, too, and I could’ve sworn he knew I was there.
His blue eyes widened; then . . .
Then he shivered, stepping back, and I just stood there, like he’d cut me.
But that was how I should’ve been feeling, right? Repulsed by this possible killer. And I was just now realizing it again.
As he went back to the kitchen, laying into Noah, I didn’t move. My energy seemed lower than before, but I think it was because I felt like nothing.
I would recover, but I just needed a minute.
Just a minute.
I took a little bit more than that, actually. I flo
ated outside that patio door for I don’t know how many minutes. Enough time for everyone to leave the kitchen. Enough time for the numbness of being ignored to skulk away. Enough time so that I needed to start figuring out a way to get inside the mansion, where I’d be able to tail Gavin and collect information on him.
But then, just as I was about to move around the side of the mansion, I heard something behind me.
A whisper.
“Jenny.”
I looked behind me at the pool, not seeing anything except for the play of wind over the blue-lit water.
Then I heard it again, this time from near the guesthouse.
“Over here, Jenny.”
I rose high into the air, like I couldn’t control myself. That voice . . .
It sounded just like Dean’s used to.
I listened for it to carry on the wind another time.
One second. One minute.
Two minutes.
The voice didn’t come again, and I started to get back to business.
But then my old boyfriend stepped out from around the pool house.
Dean?
I almost dissipated. Was I only seeing what I wanted to see, like all those people who’d witnessed Elvis?
This wasn’t the older man I’d watched earlier today, tossing a football back and forth with his son.
This was the beautiful guy who’d looked down on me one night on the beach, years and years ago as we’d sat on a blanket under the stars, as the moon had made his straight blond, chin-length hair so light that it almost glowed. This was the boy with the whiskey brown eyes that had looked at me with such affection.
And those eyes were seeing me now.
Actually seeing me, when I’d believed no one but Amanda Lee could.
He smiled that crooked smile that had won me over the first time he leveled it on me.
What the hell was happening?
“Why’re you so surprised?” he asked. “I told you when I drove off to Columbia that I’d come back for you someday so we could be together.”
“Dean?”
He held up a hand. “You gonna get outta here with me or what?”
Before I could think straight, I nodded, barely, unsurely, because I still wanted this, wanted the past, wanted him—
Out of nowhere, a whoosh of sparking air blew me back, and I lost my balance, tumbling near the ground, rolling in the air and righting myself again near the pool.
By the time I regained my equilibrium, he was gone.
I turned around and around, looking for him. He’d completely disappeared. Why? What had—
He popped in front of me, taking me into his arms.
“Then let’s go,” he whispered, dragging me into an electric current and plunging me into absolute darkness.
3
One second I was by the swimming pool; the next—
I popped out of nowhere, rolling over the ground, everything around me a vicious tumble of confusion until my momentum stopped and I was lying on my back, out of breath, staring skyward until my vision adjusted.
But all I saw was darkness. Pure, spreading, unending deep purple.
What just happened?
As my brain tried to catch up, I angled to my side, planting one of my hands on the ground.
That’s right. It was planted. As if I’d become solid for some reason . . .
I quickly glanced around, but I didn’t see my old boyfriend anywhere. Had it even been Dean?
If not . . . then what the hell?
When nothing attacked me—no Dean, no more truly messed-up supernatural surprises—my pulse finally slowed, my lungs filling with crisp air as I seriously took in my location.
At first, everything above and around me didn’t register very well.
It all seemed to be a purple haze, like layer upon layer of the gaseous clouds you’d see in middle school science textbooks when you studied astronomy and celestial bodies. And there were stars dotting the plane.
I thought that maybe I was still stunned and my head wasn’t working right, so I closed my eyes and opened them again to get rid of the haziness and starriness. But the twinklers were still there, hanging in the midst of the purple, most of them far enough away so that you could almost wish on them, but some near enough so that they seemed like shapes that should’ve been familiar but weren’t.
Then I looked down to where my palms were plastered to the ground.
Damn!
I jumped away from the sight, because, fuck, there was nothing there. Just more sky, almost like a glass ceiling that was holding me up over a gazillion miles of empty, purple space.
Skittering backward, I tried to distance myself from all of it, even though I couldn’t. It’s just that my adrenaline was ruling me.
Yes—I had adrenaline again. Why? How?
I was solid here, in heaven, or limbo, or wherever Dean had taken me.
When I crashed into something behind me, I startled, jumping away from that, too. But when I faced it I discovered it was only a knee-high, circular wall of white that glowed ever so slightly.
It looked like . . . a fancy aboveground pool? Something that belonged in a Roman villa?
Peering around me again, I saw that I was just as alone as I’d been before. Still nothing but sky and stars.
If I hadn’t known I was dead before, this was the clincher. I had to be in heaven, right? Maybe I had only been cheating mortality for nearly thirty years, and when Amanda Lee had pulled me out of my time loop in Elfin Forest, she’d put into motion my true demise.
Had the powers that be finally sucked me into oblivion?
Gradually, an even more disturbing question dawned on me. If this was genuine death, then what had “Dean” been?
Was he the Angel of Death, disguised as my old boyfriend, luring me to its arms only to deposit me here?
I grabbed the edge of the circular wall, dragging myself upward, only to stare at what I saw below me in the pool.
Glowing, swirling, the water or whatever was absolutely beautiful. If I had to describe it, I could only say that I was watching a bunch of flowing, liquid, filmy, white-winged lotus leaves waving in water, serene and welcoming.
Real and unreal, I thought, leaning over it more, a little lulled, suddenly not afraid of where I’d landed.
Finally feeling a bit of peace in all this chaos.
The leaves kept opening, then closing, and I started to feel heavy.
Heavier.
You have found us, they seemed to say. Come in. Reach down your hand. Feel the warmth. . . .
I smiled. Who cared about solving those mysteries back on earth? Who needed justice?
Not me. Not when I had the ultimate Jacuzzi.
I leaned even closer, the lotus’s sweet scent infiltrating me, the leaves beckoning—
When a neon white hand clawed out of the water, grabbing at me, I screamed, falling backward, my ass smacking the ground just in time to avoid getting pulled in.
As the fist disappeared below the wall line, milky light splashed up, and everything around me was placid again.
My pulse was back to tearing through me, and while I stood, I pressed a hand against my chest, almost like I could stuff my heart back into its place.
Then I heard laughter.
When I turned around, I knew whom I was going to see, and as I caught sight of that surfer-boy smile, the straight, chin-length blond hair, the lanky, young body of my old boyfriend, I gritted my teeth.
“You’re not Dean,” I said through them.
“Just repeat that a thousand times, and maybe you’ll believe it.”
That voice—untouched by age, heart-wrenchingly vivid, like he wasn’t a lie at all.
“You’re . . . ,” I said. “Hell, I don’t know what you are, and I’d hate to guess.”
“Why don’t you do it anyway?” He was wearing a white T-shirt, faded jeans, blue Vans. How had this thing found out Dean’s usual wardrobe? “Tell me—what do you think I am?”
> Was he flirting? “I’m not going to play games with you. I just want to know why you brought me here.”
He glanced around, like he’d never seen this star place before. Or maybe he was just like a guy who was admiring his first apartment when he’s finally brought his girlfriend there.
“You don’t like it?” he asked in the exact same charming way Dean would’ve. I would know, because charm was what had gotten me into his first apartment all those years ago. And it was what had gotten him into my . . .
Like it mattered right now.
“Are you expecting me to like it here?” I asked. “Maybe you should know that something in your pool just tried to molest me. Plus, any second, I feel like I’m going to drop through this weird floor.”
I motioned below me, to the clear purple expanse of nothing. It made me a little sick to be suspended in space like this.
“Yeah,” fake Dean said, following my gesture. “Most ghosts take a few to get used to these digs.”
I couldn’t stop looking at him. My Dean. But I forced myself to not care.
“It’d be nice if you’d just tell me why you kidnapped me,” I said.
He shrugged. “It’s what I do.”
“Kidnap ghosts?”
“Sure.”
I glanced at the purple haze, the stars, the glowing lotus pool, which was also starting to make sense.
Come to me, it’d said.
Was it the thing we call “the light”? The pathway to a real heaven since I was starting to think that this was just some kind of way station?
If it was the light, then humans had been right about it all along. The light wasn’t just a cliché or a story to tell ourselves on earth so we could comfort our what-comes-after-this fears.
I thought I should’ve been happy about solving such a great mystery. But it wasn’t easy to be happy when I just wanted to run.
When I looked back at the fake Dean, he mildly stuck his hands in his jeans pockets. I remembered those jeans. He’d ripped off a back pocket once since it was already loose, and he’d given it to me in a moment of odd romance, just as if it were a bunch of roses.
“To remember me by,” he’d said, kidding around. But I’d kept it in a drawer in my room, never letting go of it after he left for school.
Only the Good Die Young Page 4
