Deception

by Lee Nichols

  Neos’s surprise and anger boiled toward me, and I fled.

  Like a ghost, I escaped through the walls. It would’ve been so cool—if I hadn’t been so freaked out.

  He screeched and followed close behind with his dagger. I twisted through the walls and ceilings, slid through the brick of the chimney, and spun with quicksilver weightlessness into the basement. Then I went up through the stone foundation to the rose garden.

  Before Neos reached the garden, the Rake appeared. He engaged Neos as he was halfway out of the cellar door and fought him fiercely, his blade flashing against Neos’s knife. But he was only a ghost, not a walking nightmare. He pierced Neos in the shoulder then fell back, desperately defending himself against Neos’s snakes of shadow.

  I reached out with my mind—if I couldn’t dispel Neos, I’d compel him away. But his thoughts revolted me. They were disjointed and tortured, livid with madness. Wearing the ring seemed to make it worse; I couldn’t compel him while overcome by his sick thoughts.

  I removed the ring and Neos turned to me as the Rake vanished. I tried to force him away—I compelled with all my will—but his form, made of shadows and inky blackness, simply faltered, then refocused.

  Behind me, there was a crush of gravel. Bennett, arriving in his old Land Rover. He sped from the driveway across the lawn toward us.

  He leaped from the driver’s seat and launched a spear of light at Neos. Martha had said everyone’s power was different, but I couldn’t believe I could actually see Bennett’s. He advanced toward Neos, his face a mask of concentration.

  Watching him use his power was like watching the Rake with a sword: intense and masterful. But he was also unable to defeat Neos. At first they seemed evenly matched, but slowly Neos overwhelmed him.

  I circled behind Neos, and loosed a blast of my own into his back. He screeched, and I poured everything into a ribbon of light, my own power no longer invisible, but an endless stream from my fingers into the blackness. Neos clawed at my light and Bennett leaped closer and thrust one hand inside Neos’s chest.

  His fist glowed with my power, and my ribbon of light swayed like a python. Slowly, slowly, Neos started to waver, then to fade.

  Until he was gone.

  We stood there a moment, stunned and breathless. Until I ran to Bennett and he hugged me fiercely.

  “Thank God, Emma. Thank God you’re all right.”

  He kissed the top of my head and held me. I’d lost Martha and fought some nightmare monster from the Beyond … but finally, wrapped in Bennett’s arms, I felt safe.

  Bennett. It was Bennett who had saved me.

  He kissed my temple, his lips moving closer to my mouth. “Emma,” he whispered. “I’ve wanted to tell you for so long—”

  I couldn’t let him finish. “Martha’s inside,” I interrupted. “She’s dead.”

  When the police finally left, I wandered into the kitchen and collapsed into the breakfast nook. A notebook sat open beside the teapot. Martha had just begun another list. The tears started again.

  Anatole appeared and quietly took the notebook away, then coddled me with cookies and tea while Celeste wrapped a blanket around my shoulders.

  What is he? I asked.

  We do not know. An abomination. We just—Celeste blew a puff of air—fled into ze Beyond when we felt ze wickedness.

  I wish we’d been braver, Anatole said.

  Oui. For your sake, Celeste agreed. And for Martha.

  I glanced at their distraught faces. She might have been bossy, but they’d loved Martha in their way.

  There’s nothing you could’ve done, I told them.

  But what about me? I’d given her Neos’s name. This was all my fault.

  . . .

  Hours later, Bennett found me sitting at the piano in the ballroom. I’d left the lights off, preferring the darkening gloom and the few candles flickering in a silver candelabra on top of the piano.

  I missed everyone so much. My parents, to tell me everything would be okay. Max, who made me crazy but was always my brother. I loved my new friends, but still ached for the intimacy I’d shared with Abby. I just couldn’t pinpoint where I’d gone wrong. If only I could go back, make a better choice. Somehow stop Martha’s death. At least keep my family from disappearing.

  “We’re going to get frost tonight,” Bennett said, sitting down next to me at the piano.

  “I’ve never seen real snow. Martha told me it’s magical the first time.”

  Bennett smiled sadly, then played the opening phrases of Beethoven’s Moonlight Sonata. My dad was totally into classical music and made me listen with him on Sunday mornings. I suddenly yearned to see him, to lie on the couch in his office and have him explain yet again why Mozart was so very brilliant.

  “I didn’t know you played,” I said when he finished.

  “Not very well. My sister—” He shook his head. “She played better than that when she was eight years old.”

  He sampled a few measures of something else, mournful and slow, then we sat in silence for a time.

  “Why did you lie to the police?” I asked. “You told them you found the body.”

  “To protect you, Emma.”

  “Oh,” I said in a little voice. He wanted to protect me. “Thank you.” I plunked a few piano keys. “Except … what exactly do I need protecting from?”

  He made an unhappy noise. “You’re not going to like it.”

  “Martha’s dead. The worst thing that could happen already did.”

  “You know that image next to—” His jaw clenched. “Next to Martha, on the floor?”

  “Yeah.” I swallowed. I still hadn’t told him about the version of it I wore around my neck.

  He glanced at me. “Did she tell you what it is?”

  “Some ghostkeepers need a talisman to hone their power. She said the owner didn’t practice anymore.”

  “Yeah, but did she tell you whose it was?”

  “No.”

  He stood and ran his fingers through his hair. “Your mother’s.”

  Yeah, I’d pretty much figured that out. “Bennett, just because someone’s using my mom’s amulet, doesn’t mean—that’s not evidence she’s involved in the murders.”

  “It’s not proof,” he said, “but it is evidence. She’s involved somehow.”

  “She’s—someone else is using it.”

  “Emma, no one else could use it. Each focus is unique and individual.”

  “What about me?” I stood and walked across the parquet floor toward him. “Why did you bring me here, Bennett? Do you think I had anything to do with this?”

  He hesitated a fraction of a second too long. “Emma, you’re the most powerful ghostkeeper I’ve ever seen, and now wraiths are appearing. And that thing today—what was that?”

  “Neos.”

  “You know his name?” He ran a hand over his brow. “You haven’t learned to control your abilities yet. Isn’t it possible that you’re summoning these things without meaning to?”

  “No,” I said in a small voice. But I thought of what Neos had told me. He’d tasted my blood and we were connected. I didn’t tell Bennett about the ring. I wasn’t sure what he’d do if he knew I could turn into a ghost. “I don’t think my powers are out of control. I just think … I don’t know what they all are yet.”

  He looked at me. “I want to believe you.”

  His lack of confidence stunned me. And made me furious. “Do you really think I’m capable of hurting—of murdering—Martha?”

  “Of course not, but you keep demanding the truth, while you’re keeping your own secrets.” He grabbed my arms. “I’m not stupid, Emma.”

  I wrenched myself away and went to the windows to stare at the moonlight. I wasn’t ready to explain about the ring or the talisman. How could I share anything more with Bennett when he didn’t trust me? I didn’t even know who I was talking to: Bennett or the Knell.

  “Emma,” he said from behind me, “tell me about Neos.”
<
br />   I shook my head. I’d told Martha about Neos, and gotten her killed.

  “Ghostkeepers are dying. The killing’s not gonna stop now.”

  I pressed a hand to my chest, feeling the jade through my sweater. I pictured my mother in her uniform of black T-shirt and pants and chunky jewelry, not a hair out of place in her blond bob. She couldn’t be involved. She just couldn’t.

  As if sensing my thoughts, Bennett asked, gently, “Have you heard from Max?”

  “No,” I answered. “Not from any of them.”

  And I felt guilty. Because the truth was, I already missed Martha more than I missed them. I was left with nothing. “What am I going to do? What am I going to do without Martha?”

  Bennett cleared his throat. “I’m leaving tonight. And you can’t stay here.”

  “Don’t leave.”

  “I have to. The Kne—”

  “Don’t say it!” I snapped.

  “You can stay with the family who’s hosting Natalie.”

  I made a strangled noise. “With Natalie.” I turned back to the darkness in the window.

  “Emma,” he said. “Please.”

  “Fine. Whatever,” I said. “I’ll get my stuff.”

  Nicholas and Celeste were waiting for me when I got upstairs.

  I’m leaving, I said.

  No, you mustn’t go, Celeste said. You belong here, with us.

  I glanced at Nicholas who was cleaning the grate. He gave me his best starving-waif look and it was all just too much. Maybe Abby was right to hate ghosts. Had they ever done anything but cause me problems? I was ready to forget them all. Go back to San Francisco and live my boring, asocial, but normal, life.

  I’m sorry, I mumbled and compelled them away.

  I dug my suitcase from the floor of the wardrobe and shoved my meager clothing and necessities into it. The room was clean and the bed still made. I zipped my case and paused at the door, my hand on the polished nickel knob. It looked like I’d never been here.

  I met Bennett, waiting in his jacket, at the bottom of the stairs. He grabbed for the suitcase.

  “I’ve got it,” I said, stepping toward the door. I didn’t bother looking back.

  At the Finches’ house, I found Natalie in the front doorway, her hair pulled into a sloppy ponytail, which only served to highlight the shadows under her eyes from weeping.

  The little flat over the three-car garage included a small living room and kitchen, two minuscule bedrooms, and a bathroom, where the tub was filled with steaming hot water that smelled of grapefruit.

  “That’s for you,” Natalie said. “I thought you’d need a soak.”

  I stripped and sank into the tub, liking the scalding water on my skin. The aftershock of Martha’s death was setting in and I was beginning to go numb.

  After an hour, Natalie knocked on the door. The water had long gone cold.

  “Emma,” she called. “Are you all right?”

  “Yeah,” I croaked.

  I unstopped the drain with my foot and rose from the tub, wrapped myself in the fluffy lavender towels and opened the door. In my bedroom, my suitcase was a mess. I already missed Celeste. Amazing how easily you could get used to a maid, even one of the ghostly persuasion. I finally settled for an old T-shirt and leggings and found Natalie bawling in the kitchenette.

  “I’m sorry,” she wailed. “She w-was a better m-mother than my mother was.”

  So I hugged her and started sobbing as well. We stood, wailing into each other’s arms. Then the absurdity of it hit us at the same time and we both started to giggle.

  Natalie wiped tears from her eyes. “God, what if they could see you at Thatcher? You’d no longer be the most popular girl in school.”

  “What?” I said. “I’m not that popular.”

  “Your best friends are Harry and Sara, and Coby is taking you to Homecoming.”

  “Oh.” Back in San Francisco, I always fantasized that if I moved away, I’d become popular. Well, it had happened. “You’d think I’d enjoy it more.”

  Natalie shook her head and made another pot of tea while I poked into cabinets until I found some almond cookies. Then we sat at the little table and maybe this wasn’t the right moment, but I said it anyway, because I couldn’t get it off my mind. “Natalie, I need to know about the Knell.”

  “We’re not supposed to talk about it.” She sipped her tea. “What do you want to know?”

  “Well, does the government know about it?”

  “Not officially. There are ghostkeepers everywhere: CIA, FBI, all the military branches. When they come across something ghost-related, they let us know.”

  “Is there an office somewhere?”

  “Yeah, a few—it’s more of a home office sort of thing. I don’t actually know the details.”

  “Does Bennett?”

  She shrugged. “I don’t know if you’ve noticed, but he’s not, like, chatty.” She bit her lip. “He likes you, you know.”

  “No he doesn’t.”

  “He doesn’t want to,” she said, “but he does.”

  Why didn’t he want to like me? Because he thought my mother was a murderer, that’s why. “He’s not even nice to me.”

  “Exactly,” she said, as if that only confirmed her opinion.

  “It doesn’t matter,” I said. “Nothing matters anymore but finding Martha’s killer.”

  25

  I threw myself into school. It was either that or obsess about Martha and Neos. I didn’t summon ghosts and if one approached, I compelled it away. I didn’t even give Edmund, the man in the brown suit, a chance; he flashed me his most offended look before fading away.

  I absolutely banned Bennett from my thoughts—well, more or less—and immersed myself in normal life. I texted Sara catty comments about other girls (mostly Britta), perfected my secret smile and flirted with Coby—and Harry, of course, because he didn’t know how to have any other interaction with a girl.

  I even went Homecoming-dress shopping with Sara and watched her plunk down a cool nine hundred dollars on a bloodred velvet gown by a designer I’d never heard of at her beloved Neiman’s. I couldn’t find a dress, but used my dad’s credit card to buy a pair of black satin peep-toe pumps on sale. Even Sara approved, despite the sticker shock—she was bowled over by how cheap they were.

  And I really enjoyed being normal. Well, I enjoyed pretending to be normal. Pretending that I wasn’t worried about wraiths looming from the darkness and that I didn’t mourn Martha every time I woke. And pretending that I didn’t wonder what Bennett had wanted to tell me for so long.

  Then came Martha’s funeral. Instead of going with Natalie as planned, I’d hung back until the last mourner, a dapper middle-aged man I didn’t recognize, climbed into his car and left.

  The cemetery was located in the oldest part of the village, next to a Congregational church built when Massachusetts was a colony. It was too small for a backhoe to fill the grave, so an old gravedigger had begun to shovel in the final dirt when I asked him to give me a minute. He wandered off to have a smoke as I stood at the edge, staring down at the oak coffin.

  For a moment I hesitated—I’d gone through a Stephen King phase, and couldn’t help thinking about Pet Sematary. Would Martha’s ghost be just like she was, or wrong, like in Pet Sematary?

  Then I shook my head. It didn’t matter. I wanted her back.

  I closed my eyes and summoned her. And nothing happened. There was no familiar tingling, no sense that she’d been waiting for me to summon her. I tried again and again to no avail.

  She wasn’t coming back.

  I only wanted … I wiped tears from my eyes. I only wanted to see her one more time. Okay, more than once. I thought she could live in the museum with Anatole and the rest. But once would’ve been enough. To tell her I was sorry and that I was going to find who did this to her. And dispel them for good.

  The gravedigger was done with his smoke. He came back to Martha’s grave and I walked away, trying to tune out
the sound of the dirt hitting the casket.

  When I got home, Natalie met me at the door. “You tried to summon her, didn’t you?”

  I nodded. “Didn’t work.”

  “Ghostkeepers don’t come back, Emma.”

  “Never?” I asked.

  “Never,” she said. “When we’re dead, we’re dead.”

  A few days later, Natalie and I were watching some MTV reality show rerun, when she said, “So are you going to dump Coby after Homecoming?”

  “What?” I said. “We’re hardly even going out.” We had lunch together every day and hung out after school a few times, but he hadn’t tried to kiss me again.

  “Everyone else thinks you are.” She shot me a look. “Including Coby.”

  “Am I going to find you kissing Coby behind the stadium at Homecoming? This has Jared written all over it.”

  “What is your problem?” Natalie asked.

  “What’s my problem?” Martha was dead, my family was missing, the guy I liked didn’t want to like me, and the guy who liked me I only liked as a friend. Plus some nightmare demon wanted to kill me, and my family might be responsible for the deaths of several ghostkeepers. “Where do I start?”

  But before I could, there was a knock on the door.

  “Oh, he’s here.” Natalie eyed me. “Are you going like that?”

  “Like what? Who’s here?” I was wearing a stained T-shirt and an old pair of ripped Sevens. My hair had finally started to grow out and consequently was driving me crazy, so I’d braided what I could with little rubber bands I’d found in a kitchen drawer. I was not prepared to see anyone.

  “Didn’t you get my e-mail about Bennett taking us to dinner?” Natalie asked.

  Yeah, but I’d deleted it unread—she sent a dozen e-mails a day. Of course, I’d noticed she was wearing matchstick jeans, a flirty burgundy top, and leopard-print flats, but the possible reason hadn’t registered.

  She went downstairs to open the street door for him, while I stood frozen like a deer. I fingered my braids trying to decide which looked worse: leaving them in or the inevitable crimping from taking them out. There was a little mirror by the apartment front door, and catching sight of myself, I realized frizz was preferable.