Deception

by Lee Nichols

  He collapsed to the sandy beach and lay there unmoving. Oh God. Bennett! I knelt beside him. “Please,” I whispered. “Wake up.”

  He stirred, but didn’t wake, and I heard Coby calling my name from the cliff. I froze in fear as the ghost started curling into itself again. I closed my eyes and focused, feeling the tendrils of energy and spirit that connected me to the wraith. I used every trick Martha had taught me to compel the thing away once and for all.

  But it had gotten too strong.

  “Dispel it,” Bennett murmured, his voice weak.

  I shook my head. I couldn’t even remember how.

  The ghost pulsed. Once. Twice.

  Then erupted. Not at me. At Bennett again.

  I shoved my hands into the thickest coil of its blackness and ignored the biting cold as I blasted with those invisible bolts that felt like lightning shooting through my body.

  Its back arched and its mouth opened in a silent scream. There was a flash of light and the darkness recoiled. I loosed blast after blast until nothing remained of the ghost but a long smudge on the sand, like an oil slick.

  “Kill it,” Bennett whispered.

  “It’s done.”

  He sighed and I barely heard him say, “Or it’ll come back stronger.”

  The oil slick thickened and grew in the sand. It took the form of a child, a little blond girl who looked a bit like me at that age. She crawled toward Bennett, her black eyes intent and hungry. He lay there unmoving as I tugged at him, and the girl reached for him, inky tendrils spiraling from her fingernails.

  She whispered that word that frightened me every time I heard it: Neos. Neos. Neos. She grabbed Bennett and started digging into him with those ghostly death claws and I lost it.

  I killed her, okay?

  A little blond girl, who writhed in agony and stared at me in terror, as I shot endless bolts into her and ended her life.

  Bennett pulled himself into a seated position, watching shreds of the wraith’s darkness shimmer and fade on the sand, like cockroaches scurrying from the light.

  I didn’t know what I felt. I’d killed something—something evil. But still, it had lived, before I snuffed it out. As I watched Bennett rise and brush the sand from his pants, a sudden suspicion hit me. “You set me up. You—you wanted me to kill it. So you pretended you couldn’t fight it off, just so I’d have to.”

  “Natalie called me,” he said. “And I didn’t believe her. But that thing was a wraith, which means someone is raising them, feeding them. We need to—”

  “We?” I said. “There is no ‘we.’ After what you did in San Francisco? You’re a liar. You sent Natalie to get me tossed into a halfway house. And now you have me killing—” I blinked back sudden tears. “I trusted you, Bennett.”

  He ran a hand over his face. “I’m sorry. I—”

  “Whoa!” Coby called, trotting toward us from the stairs. “Did you see that lightning?”

  The whole thing had happened in mere minutes, yet I’d never be the same again. Coby stopped beside us and looked at me carefully. I don’t know what he saw, but he offered to take me home.

  “I’ll take her,” Bennett said. “I think as her guardian, I should—”

  Something inside of me snapped. “Shut up!”

  I grabbed Coby’s hand and led him toward the stairs. “Let’s go.”

  . . .

  Coby led me back along the cliff’s path, around the side of Harry’s house to his car. He knew I didn’t want to say good night to anyone. Then he drove me home. Five minutes of silence in the car, with me feeling like a murderer—even if it was justified.

  Then I sighed. “You know the best thing about you?”

  “My screen pass?”

  I giggled. “I don’t even know what that is. Football?”

  “Uh-huh. I’ll also accept my keen intellect, my perfect attendance record, or how cool I look as a rock star.”

  I smiled at him. “Your mascara’s starting to run.”

  He swiped at it, only making things worse.

  “What I like best about you, is that you always … know. When I need quiet, you’re quiet. When I need a friend, you’re there.”

  Coby kept his eyes on the road. “Do you wish Bennett drove you back?”

  “No,” I said.

  “I like you, Emma.” He half shrugged. “But if you just want to be friends …”

  We turned into my neighborhood before I answered. “I don’t know what I want. I don’t want to make any promises. But I also don’t want you to go away.”

  “You’re not with Bennett?” he asked. “The two of you fight like there’s something—”

  “There’s nothing between me and Bennett.” I half laughed. “Nothing but ghosts of the past.” And I wanted it to be true, I wanted to stop caring about him.

  “Good.” He parked in the maple-lined drive. “Will you go to Homecoming with me?”

  Homecoming? I wasn’t expecting that.

  “Coby, I went to Harry’s party with you, and ended up on the beach arguing with my idiot guardian. There are girls who are, you know … prettier, and more eager to please. Don’t you want—”

  “I want you to say yes,” he told me.

  Homecoming with the high school quarterback. A normal girl, on a date with the cutest guy in school. I so wanted to be that girl—and only that girl—and forget all about the one who killed ghosts.

  So I said yes.

  And he leaned across the seat and kissed me.

  20

  A shadow fell across the car and Bennett tapped on the door.

  We jumped apart and I cracked the window. “Go away!”

  “We need to talk.”

  I turned to Coby. “I’m sorry. Maybe if Bennett catches the Ebola virus, we’ll have a real date sometime.”

  He started to answer, but I kissed him again. Not so gently, this time.

  “Or maybe he’ll go on exchange to India,” I said, stepping from the car. “That’d work, too.”

  I could hear Coby laughing as he drove away.

  I stood in the drive, next to a glowering Bennett. “I think they still have the plague in India.”

  “Are you finished?” he said. “We need to talk.”

  “No, Bennett, what you need to do,” I said, “is listen.”

  “I know,” he said, as we headed inside. “You must have a lot to say to me.”

  Huh? Not what I’d expected. I’d been gearing up for a fight. “Um. Where’s Martha?”

  “I’m here, dear.” She stepped from the kitchen, wrapped in a cashmere robe, holding a book. “Did you have a nice time?”

  “I killed a ghost,” I blurted, and fell into her arms.

  “Oh, Emma …”

  “I didn’t want to.” I sniffled. “Bennett tricked me.”

  “You can’t kill ghosts,” he protested. “They’re already dead. And I didn’t trick—”

  “Bennett,” Martha said, “she’s had a scare.”

  He looked so contrite at this that I almost forgave him everything. Almost. Instead, I poured out my feelings to Martha. She comforted me, understanding that it wasn’t only the dispelling that upset me.

  Truth was, now there was no going back, no denying that I was part of this world—a world made of fear and wraiths and lies. I could pretend that I was a normal girl, with parties and friends and a date to the school dance. But it wasn’t the real me. The real me could slay a ghost. So I wasn’t only crying for that dead ghost on the beach, I was crying for myself. For the girl I no longer was.

  When my tears softened into sniffling, Bennett set a cup of tea in front of me. Not just any tea. Chai. A red-eye chai.

  “How did you know?”

  He shrugged as I silently gulped the chai. When I set the empty cup on the table, Martha said, “Emma, you and Bennett do need to talk. Go for a walk. I’ll be here when you get back.”

  As always, I was unable to displease Martha. I pulled off Sara’s heels, dusting the floor with sa
nd, put on my boots, and wrapped a silver gray scarf around my neck. I stomped to the front door and glared back at Bennett, who was shrugging into his jacket.

  Before we left, I noticed Nicholas watching us through the stair railing on the second floor. His pale face looked worried, his eyes grave. I gave him a little wave, but he just stared. Had he heard me say I’d killed a ghost? Could he smell the dispelling power still on me? Finally, he waved back, tentatively.

  Like he was scared of me.

  I couldn’t take it. I shoved outside and Bennett and I walked down the driveway in silence. It was after midnight and the evening had turned cloudy, fading jack-o’-lanterns and old streetlamps providing the only illumination in the wispy fog. I had to admit that it spooked me. There was no telling what might turn up in this atmosphere.

  “I’m never doing that again,” I said.

  “Kissing a guy?” Bennett asked. “I find that hard to believe.”

  “What is wrong with you?” I asked. “You’re not a normal person.”

  “No, Emma, I’m not. And neither are you.”

  I stopped walking. This wasn’t what I wanted to hear. I should’ve been home in bed, analyzing my feelings for Coby—worrying about why I still lusted after Bennett. He’d stopped too close to me, his coat unzipped. I wanted to slide inside it, feel his warmth, smell his skin, and brush my hands through his wavy brown hair.

  “You manipulated me, Bennett, and ruined my life in San Francisco to get me here.”

  “Yeah,” he said. “I’m sorry, Emma. Look at me. Please.”

  I bit my lip and blinked up at him. The night cast shadows on his face, making him look older and harder—more like the Rake.

  “I didn’t want to hurt you,” he said. “I never want to hurt you. I’ve worked for the Knell, since … well always. I’ve sworn my life to ghostkeeping, to protecting the innocent from ghosts that might harm them. I can’t break that promise.”

  “Even when you think they’re wrong?”

  “It’s like being a cop, Emma. You don’t want every guy out there making his own laws. You expect cops to uphold the law, even when they disagree.”

  I swallowed. “So, if the Knell told you to do that to me again, you would?”

  “And hate myself again.”

  It wasn’t the answer I wanted to hear, but I didn’t turn away. I couldn’t let go of whatever it was that connected us: our ghostkeeping skills, our shared family history. Or maybe just that I never felt more alive, more right, than when I was with him.

  “I thought that wraith was going to kill you,” I said.

  “Would you have minded?”

  “Yes.” I sighed into him. “I would’ve minded. Too much.”

  I saw his pulse thumping in the open neck of his shirt. I pressed my thumb against it and laid my other palm against his chest. He looked down at me and reached around to run his fingers in between my scarf and the back of my neck. This was the moment. The second kiss in one night.

  The kiss I really wanted.

  The kiss that didn’t happen.

  Because Bennett pulled up my scarf and stepped away.

  I stood there, shaky and confused. I’d really thought it was finally going to happen. How could I have been so wrong? Then I noticed the ghosts. Three women, dressed in Colonial garb, watching me and Bennett.

  “Did you summon them?” he asked.

  “No,” I said. “I don’t think so.”

  “You’re not sure?”

  “Um …” Was it possible that my feelings for Bennett somehow drew them forth? Were my tingles all mixed up? “Sometimes they just appear, right?”

  Bennett took a deep breath. “Emma, I need to know what’s going on with you.”

  Really? Well, I think I’m in love with you when I should like Coby, especially since I still hate you for using Natalie to ruin my life and drag me here under false pretenses. And you still don’t want to kiss me.

  “I mean about your talents,” he said, reading something in my face. “You summon, you communicate. Now we know you dispel.”

  “Lucky me.”

  “You’re like the original Emma, aren’t you? You can do it all.”

  “Martha hasn’t told you?”

  He shook his head. “She doesn’t say much about you. She doesn’t even keep the Knell fully informed.”

  “Because I can trust her. You’re going to tell them I killed that wraith, aren’t you?”

  “I already reported in.”

  I shook my head in disbelief, a sick feeling in my stomach. Already? He hadn’t even talked to me first? He automatically told them everything. Oh God, maybe he told them I was fixated with him, too. That I wanted him to kiss me. What if they were using him to manipulate me more?

  “Yeah?” I said. “Where do I report in about you?”

  “What would you report?” he asked. “That I do my job?”

  “Oh. Right. That’s all I am to you,” I said. “A job.”

  “That’s not what I—”

  “No, I get it now. I’m just one of your duties, right? A job that has to be done.”

  “Emma, the Knell is—”

  I told him where he could stick the Knell, and ran back to the house.

  I wanted to go straight to bed, but stopped first in Bennett’s dad’s study. I scanned the shelves until I found the book I was looking for. It was leather bound and felt ancient and heavy in my hands as I carried it upstairs.

  I could see a crack of light under Martha’s door as I passed her room. I considered knocking and letting her solve all my problems. But I needed to be alone, to figure out how I felt about everything before I got any advice from her.

  My plan was short-lived as I discovered Nicholas stoking the fire in my room and Celeste turning down the bed.

  It is true? Celeste asked. You can dispel us?

  Yes.

  Nicholas glanced at her furtively. Told you so.

  I knelt beside him. I promise you—I promise you both—I will never hurt you.

  He nodded, biting his thumbnail.

  You don’t ever need to be afraid of me.

  Celeste laid out my pajamas on the bed. You are like her then.

  Who?

  The first Miss Vaile.

  You knew her? I asked.

  Memory is a hazy thing in the Beyond, Celeste said. But we know of her.

  They say she cared for the ghosts, too. Nicholas ducked his head shyly.

  That she was very kind, Celeste said. Like you.

  Reassured, Nicholas faded out while Celeste helped me off with my clothes and into my pajamas. Good night, Emma, sweet dreams.

  Tucked under the covers, I thought about Coby. He was the perfect guy. I liked that he’d kissed me. And I liked kissing him back, even if I’d only done it to prove something to Bennett. I wanted to fall asleep while fantasizing about Homecoming—what I’d wear, what he’d wear, where we’d go to dinner. Imagining slow dancing in the school gym, or considering it was Thatcher, probably the swanky yacht club.

  But I couldn’t stop thinking about Bennett.

  We’d fought again; we always fought. Why did I like him soooo much? Especially when he treated me like some bratty younger sister. Why couldn’t he just like me back? It would make life so much easier.

  I willed myself to forget about him. Because he was so wrong for me. He was older and clearly I wasn’t his type and besides, he’d never put me first before the Knell. And I wanted that—to come first in somebody’s life. Isn’t that what we all want?

  I fingered the tooled leather cover of the book I’d brought to bed with me. I knew what I didn’t want: this life, the life of a ghostkeeper. I’d never wanted any of this. Especially now that I’d killed one of them.

  That’s why I’d gotten the book from Mr. Stern’s study. To find out about wraiths. To convince myself that what I’d done tonight wasn’t wrong. There was no title on the cover, but I knew what it contained because my own father had a matching copy in his office. The
pages were yellowed with age and filled with illustrations and information about ghouls and ghasts and ghosts and wraiths. Max used to scare me with this book when we were kids. Tell me everything in it was real and they were all coming to get me.

  I’d thought he’d only been torturing me.

  I leafed through the pages, wanting to absorb it all. Because one thing was clear—I’d been chosen for this life. And there was no turning back.

  21

  On Monday, two girls I didn’t know cornered me in the hall outside Trig and congratulated me.

  “Thanks,” I said. “Um. For what?”

  “You’re going to Homecoming with”—synchronized squeals—“Coby Anders!”

  How did they know already? Coby kept a pretty low profile, and— I saw Harry down the hall, a crooked grin on his face. I smiled at the girls and nodded, and flipped him the finger when they weren’t looking. His laughter floated down the hallway toward us.

  I glared at him, then slipped into the classroom and sat beside Coby.

  “I might have to beat up Harry,” I told him.

  “Well, watch his elbows—they’re sharp like javelins.”

  Mr. Sakolsky called the class to order, but I barely paid attention, my thoughts stuck in a constant loop of Bennett and Coby, ghosts and wraiths.

  I managed to get all the practice problems right anyway.

  You’re getting smarter, the man in the brown suit—Edmund, as he kept reminding me—said. He’d materialized halfway through class.

  I’m seventeen years old, I think my intelligence level is already well established. You should see my PSATs.

  Then why are you so easily achieving perfect scores in math?

  I looked at him. Why are you unable to change clothes?

  He flicked an imaginary piece of lint off his lapel. Why would I want to? And you haven’t answered my question.

  Because I don’t know, I said. How smart does that make me?

  I believe it’s the school, he mused.

  An exceptional private education?

  He snorted. You’re not the first ghostkeeper student I’ve seen. Something about this school, the Beyond being closer at hand … they all changed. Smarter, stronger, more focused than before.