Deception

by Lee Nichols

  He smiled. “That’s what I like about you. No other girl will be wearing the color of ghosts tonight.”

  “No,” I said. “No, they won’t.”

  We headed outside, into the cool air. For a moment, my entire body tingled with the incipient presence of a ghost, as if the veil had parted fully and the Beyond encroached on our world. The feeling was so strong that I stumbled a little, and Coby steadied me with a steely hand on my elbow.

  I longed to go back inside, to the safety of Bennett’s arms, but I couldn’t disappoint Coby.

  I touched Emma’s gold ring for luck. I still wondered whether or not I should have given Bennett the amulet. It had been safe around my neck. Was I responsible for Neos getting it? Had my newfound powers somehow summoned him? Were all those deaths my fault?

  So many questions I couldn’t answer.

  But they’d have to wait. I followed Coby to the car. Tonight I just needed to pretend everything was normal and go to the high school dance with the cutest boy in school.

  Not such a bad fate.

  28

  Coby helped me into the passenger seat like a true gentleman—or a guy afraid his date would tumble off her heels again.

  “I don’t wear heels that much,” I told him.

  He started his dad’s Lexus.

  “Or gowns.” I tried not to think about Bennett’s look when I’d descended the staircase.

  Coby concentrated on driving, and a silence fell. Not one of the comfortable ones.

  “Maybe we should go to that tailgate party instead of Harry’s,” I finally said.

  Coby didn’t answer, watching the road. I examined his face in the light of the dashboard. Did he regret asking me? Maybe it was my dress—he wasn’t into vintage. Or his parents were going to be at Harry’s, and he was worried about me meeting them.

  Or maybe he knew I was in love with someone else.

  I vowed to be an exemplary date. He was the high school quarterback and my friend. For God’s sake, he deserved a satisfactory Homecoming. Then I noticed he wasn’t driving in the direction I expected him to. “We are going to Harry’s, right?”

  Coby didn’t answer. He just kept driving.

  “On the Neck, I mean.”

  He turned right, away from the Neck, as a faint drizzle started to fall from gray clouds.

  “Coby,” I said, a little sharper. “Where are we going?”

  “A surprise,” he said, his voice tight, like he was nervous.

  “Oh, good,” I said, trying to feel the school spirit. “I hope it’s not a parade, though—I hate parades. I mean, I don’t hate them. But it is raining and—”

  He pulled into a parking lot. “Here.”

  “Here where?” I asked, trying to see under the rapidly darkening sky.

  He stepped out and made his way around to my side of the car.

  I cracked my door. “Maybe I’ll just stay here. My shoes—”

  Coby wrenched the door open and dragged me from the car.

  “Ow!” I said, stumbling in the mud. “What is up with you?”

  He dragged me through the squishy parking lot and my satin peep-toes were immediately ruined, not to mention the hem of my ghost dress.

  “Coby, what’s wrong? Where are we?”

  He grunted and pulled me along toward a black mass of water, and I realized where we were. Redd’s Pond.

  Martha told me kids skated here when the water froze over, which sounded romantic, like a winter wonderland. Tonight the water smelled of pond scum mingling with mildewed earth, and the water looked sluggish and black. And I felt a tingle of wrongness. A wraith.

  No. Worse.

  Neos.

  I tried digging my heels in the ground, but my heels were satin and the ground was wet and slick. I stumbled along in Coby’s painful grip. “Coby, listen to me. We have to get out of here. There’s something out here, that shouldn’t be—” I realized that telling him ghost stories wouldn’t change his mind, so I made a play for his sense of chivalry. “I’m scared, Coby. Take me home.”

  “Home,” he whispered, as the tingle in my spine grew even stronger. There was something totally wrong with him.

  I punched him in the arm. “Coby! What are you on?”

  He pulled me closer to the pond, where the grim wooden contraption—the ducking chair—loomed in the gray drizzle. The feel of wraiths pricked my skin and the stench of evil clogged the air.

  “Coby, I’m serious,” I told him. “We have to leave!”

  “Not going anywhere.”

  Coby was a football player in perfect condition, eighty pounds heavier and a foot taller than me—yet I knew I could get away. The Rake hadn’t taught me to waltz, after all. My only problem was I didn’t know if I could get away without crippling Coby. Whatever was going on, he didn’t deserve that.

  “Coby,” I said, my voice calm. “We need to leave now.”

  “You’re going nowhere,” he said, a little stronger.

  So I stopped resisting, and let him drag me while I dug inside myself and channeled my ghostkeeping ability. I reached into the night, trying to find the source of the wrongness.

  It only took a moment—and I recoiled.

  Neos stood next to me.

  Wearing Coby’s skin.

  Looking at Coby with his beautiful eyes and his quick smile—but sensing the roiling evil inside—I felt myself sway for a moment, overwhelmed. How could I not have known? I’d been so distracted by my feelings for Bennett, I’d ignored what had been sitting beside me.

  Then I punched him in the throat.

  But I didn’t follow through hard enough to crush his windpipe—I couldn’t endanger Coby like that. Not that he was in much danger. Neos laughed inside of him and socked me in the stomach with inhuman strength.

  I folded over, breathless and in pain, as he whispered in my ear, “Do your worst. Hurt your friend—kill him. I’ll throw him aside like a used suit. Maybe I’ll wear you next.”

  “I’m going to kill you,” I gasped.

  “I’m already dead.”

  I forgot my training, everything Martha had taught me. And freaked. I pounded his chest, screaming. “Get out! Get out of him.”

  “Well, I do owe you.” He inhaled deeply, nostrils quivering. “If not for you, I’d never have learned how to step through the veil into a living body.”

  He dragged me along the water’s edge, and I didn’t put up a fight. I needed to focus. I felt his arm digging into my skin, the bushes scratching my legs, and wet mud worming into my shoes. Summoning the sparks inside, I shoved power at him and felt all my force swallowed by his darkness.

  “Maybe this,” he said, “will motivate you.” With his free hand, he pulled out the silver blade that he’d cut me with as a child. The blade that had killed Martha. “She begged when she died. She begged for you to help her.”

  The world flashed red and the power inside of me burned brighter with fury, condensing and tightening to a single point. My body erupted with the might of all my hatred. But it was compelling power I shot at him, afraid that if I tried to dispel him, I’d hurt Coby. It was still a tremendous force—one aimed at driving him away.

  He stumbled and his grip on my arm tightened until his fingernails punctured my skin. I poured everything into him, wrapped him with bands of light and skewered him with javelins, but something protected him. Some force deflected all my attacks.

  Spent, I slumped in exhaustion.

  Neos looked down at me in triumph. “You are too weak.”

  When he spoke, something glinted on his tongue. My mother’s jade amulet, her talisman, embedded somehow in his mouth. Her focus animated Coby and protected Neos.

  A sound I didn’t recognize came from my throat, full of anguish and horror. My body went lax and my mind blank, as Neos dragged me onto the platform of the ducking chair. The chains had been shattered and the mechanism was free. Part of me believed that if I went along with him, I wouldn’t get hurt.

  That part o
f me was very wrong.

  He strapped me to the heavy wooden chair, the stiff leather biting into my wrists. Neos pulled on a rope and the chair swayed and I rose into the air. I screamed as the beam overhead swung me toward the center of Redd’s Pond.

  My fear overwhelmed me. More than fear. Panic, terror, a mindless horror—I realized my own fear was magnified by sitting in the chair. I felt the memories of other women who’d been strapped here, I flashed on the leering faces of their accusers. I couldn’t separate their terror from my own.

  Until the chair fell into the icy pond.

  The shock spiked through me. I couldn’t think, couldn’t see. The water was pitch-black, and the skirt of my beautiful ghostly dress ballooned around me. I blinked frantically in the murk, my hands clenching and my lungs burning. I kicked, trying to find solid ground, to push myself upward, but my peep-toe shoes only sank into the pond slime.

  Finally, the chair rose and broke the surface. My body shuddered and my teeth chattered uncontrollably. I couldn’t decide which was worse—the freezing water or the chill night air. “Wh-wh-what do y-you—”

  “What do I want?” Neos said, his voice strong, as though he’d learned to control Coby’s body perfectly now. “Power.”

  “F-from me?” I asked, to keep him talking, to keep him from drowning me.

  “Look at me. A ghost, mastering the flesh of the living.” He smiled horribly, no trace of Coby left in his expression. “Have they told you that possession is a myth? That no ghost can possess the living? Well, they were right—until me.”

  I trembled in the rain and wind of the growing storm.

  “I’ve taken physical form, but you … You took spectral form. You turned into a ghost. How did you do it?”

  The ring! I felt it, dangling on my necklace, but strapped to the chair, I couldn’t reach it.

  “Tell me how, and I’ll kill you quickly instead of agonizingly slow.”

  There was no truth in him. He’d kill me like all the rest of the ghostkeepers. I’d writhe in agony as he carved designs into my skin.

  “No,” I croaked.

  Neos let the rope slide through his fingers and I dropped until my feet grazed the water.

  “Please,” I begged. “N-not again.”

  “Answer me.”

  “I c-can’t.”

  He grinned, forcing Coby’s lips into a foreign, cruel expression. “I’ll give you time to think about your decision.”

  And he let the rope slide between his fingers.

  The shock was worse this time, the cold slamming into me. But now I knew what I needed: the ring. My skin numb, desperately needing to breathe, I strained against the leather straps. They’d tightened in the water and I’d weakened. I was helpless as the darkness closed in.

  Just as I thought I would pass out, he pulled me up and swung the chair toward him. My body convulsed, but I needed to buy time, so forced myself to speak. “Why did you k-kill them?”

  “I already told you. Power.”

  “But h-how?”

  “I was born a ghostkeeper, little Emma,” he said scornfully. “And a good one—one of the best. But not like you. I’ve never seen one like you, turning into a ghost—”

  “Liar.” I slumped listlessly in the chair. “You weren’t a ghostkeeper. Dead ghostkeepers can’t be summoned.”

  “I wasn’t summoned, I never fully left. I killed myself—they said I’d linger forever, always fading but never gone. Until insanity overtook me, enfeebled me. But look at me now, I—”

  “Y-yeah. You’re Mr. Sanity.”

  He slapped my face, but I was so numb that all I felt was a distant stinging. “I am not feeble. Nothing—nothing is as powerful as I. It took my death for me to come into my full potential.”

  “Why did you kill them? Why kill Martha?”

  “Poor, pathetic Emma, the lonely little girl pretending ghosts are her family, and a housekeeper her mommy. By killing other ghostkeepers I gain more power—using the focus of the jade amulet.”

  I gasped.

  “Oh, yes. Your mother’s amulet. I could only use the design, until you kindly brought me the talisman itself.” He opened his mouth and I saw again the jade embedded in Coby’s tongue. He wiggled it at me, like some obscene piercing. “And now I walk in living skin.”

  “But—why my mother’s? Why me, all those years ago?”

  He pulled me close and I smelled Neos under Coby’s body, foul and sulfuric. “Because you’re Jana’s daughter.”

  “You knew my mother?”

  “I loved her.” The knife blade glowed despite the lack of light, and he traced the tip across my neck, then down between my breasts. I felt so vulnerable, and searched his face for some sign of Coby, but there was no gentle sweetness there. “Why do you think I killed myself?”

  “My m-mother?” I asked.

  “She chose your father over me. I knew her focus so well, it served to anchor me. Then I bonded myself to you, in that storefront—remember me taking your blood? I would’ve risen to power then, if they hadn’t driven your skills out of you. But now your powers are returning, stronger than ever.”

  “Lucky me,” I said, rain sheeting down my face.

  “And they’ll make me not a ghost, but a god.” He slapped me again, harder this time. “Tell me how you took spectral form.”

  I shook my head, my teeth chattering.

  And he plunged me into the water again. I couldn’t see, couldn’t breathe. Strapped to the chair, I was shivering and my lungs burned. A moment before I blacked out, the chair rose through the icy darkness and broke the water’s surface.

  I gasped and coughed, but the instant I caught my breath, he plunged me under again, brought to the verge of drowning over and over.

  “Once more, Emma?” he asked. “Or will you answer me now?”

  I longed to tell him everything, to end the fear and stop the pain. But I couldn’t leave him to kill more ghostkeepers. I couldn’t leave him like this, polluting Coby’s body. I couldn’t leave Martha unavenged.

  And I knew how to save myself: by slipping the ring onto my finger.

  Only one problem—I couldn’t get the ring. The straps around my wrists were too strong.

  “Tell me, Emma. Now …”—he kissed my cheek and traced a wavy cut across my sternum and my blood dripped onto the dress—“ … or later.”

  As he cut me, he exposed the wedding band on my necklace, and I panicked. If he realized what it was, I was dead. I needed to distract him, to goad him into dropping me into the pond, to get one last chance to break free and slip on the ring.

  Tears welled in my eyes, because I knew I’d fail. I’d tried compelling him and dispelling him, but he was too strong. And I was just a girl. A girl with a dysfunctional family, torn between two boys, and about to lose everything else.

  But I was also the girl who could keep ghosts and I had no choice.

  So I thought of Martha and the Rake and the original Emma. Of my parents and my brother—and of Bennett.

  And I found the sparks inside me. Martha had told me, when I most needed it, my power would be there. I gathered the sparks into a bright ball radiating out from my chest and launched the light at Neos. He wasn’t expecting it and I slipped under his protection and battered him with an onslaught of brilliance that made him take a step back.

  He winced and shoved at the chair and swung me out over the pond. “Try that again, underwater.”

  And the chair plunged again into the freezing pond.

  Exactly what I’d wanted, to be hidden under the water to get the ring. Except I was so cold I couldn’t move my arms, and so tired I couldn’t summon more power.

  I surrendered. I had nothing left, except desperate pleading. Please, I implored. Please help me.

  I’m not sure if God heard me. But someone did.

  Ghosts.

  As my body went limp and my brain started to misfire from lack of oxygen, amorphous figures floated in the water in front of me. They glowed i
n the murky darkness, not looking like regular ghosts. They were less solid, less defined and they drifted through the water like patches of luminous fog. I thought I was hallucinating—until I felt a tingle in my spine.

  And in a rush, I knew who they were. The spirits of women drowned as witches. They’d heard my call for help.

  They didn’t take human form, but a strong current rose in the still pond, and the necklace drifted upward, the ring illuminated in the dark water. The chain slipped over my head and the ring drifted down, spinning and twisting until it landed firmly on my finger and—

  A new rush of energy pulsed through me. I turned translucent and felt the water crashing though the place I’d been. I still couldn’t breathe, but I no longer needed to. My wrists lifted free of the leather straps as the spirits swirled and faded, and I said, Thank you.

  I streamed upward toward the surface, and noticed the chair rising behind me. Neos was trying to lift me into the air, for the pleasure of plunging me under again.

  Well, he was in for a surprise.

  “Are you finished?” he asked, as the chair broke the surface. “Or will you answer me now?”

  Yes, I’d answer him. I knew things now that I’d never imagined. I wasn’t just Emma Vaile, the girl with boy troubles, SAT-phobia, and poorly fitting uniforms. I was Emma Vaile, who lived and died over two hundred years ago, the most powerful ghostkeeper of her—or any—time.

  In my ghostly form I couldn’t dispel or compel, so I flew from the chair and flashed past Neos, hearing his cry of surprise and anger behind me.

  I flew faster than I thought possible and felt a wave of evil swooping behind me. He’d summoned a wraith to follow me. It crashed heedlessly after me. Neos thought I was running away—and he was right.

  But only as far as the trees. I tore a long thin branch from one and spun into fighting stance. The wraith came flying and skewered itself on the point. I shot bolts of my dispelling power into the branch. Blackness spewed and heaved around me, and I shoved the wood jacked up with dispelling energy further into the thing as the shadow howled and faded. Easy enough, even if it was the first time I’d imbued an object with dispelling power.

  One down, I told Neos.