“You'll probably feel a need to stay near him. You'll be compelled to go back to the house when he does...” My friend and I fall into step with Finn as the latter starts walking toward school. “And if you fall asleep, you should wake up back here.”
“Why here? I thought Finn himself was my Place of Power. Not his house. Shouldn't I wake up wherever he is?”
“Good question.” Fray gives the skull bells a jingle. “Wish I knew the answer. But I don't. I just know what the energy around you looks like.”
“There's energy around her?” All of a sudden, Finn's willing to notice Fray again.
“Around both of you,” my dead friend corrects. “It sort of floats between the two of you. And the house. You're tied to the house too, Finn. You'd have a hard time spending the night somewhere else, though you wouldn't be moved back.”
Finn's forehead wrinkles in confusion. “Why would someone do that?”
Fray jingles the bells again. That's starting to get aggravating. “Another good question.” He looks at me. “I thought you said he was an idiot.”
“You're mental,” I mutter back at him.
Fray makes a clicking sound with his tongue. “Love you too, luv.”
Me grabbing his silly stick and using it to whack his arm makes him laugh, but Finn notes it with a frown before casting his eyes to the ground for the rest of the walk.
“You hanging with us today?” I ask Fray as we come withing sight of the building. “Drew had a little ghost,” I sing. “Little ghost, little ghost.”
“Who you callin' little, little girl?” He yanks the jester stick from my hand before shrugging and going back to the question. “Might as well follow you to school today. Nothing going on anywhere else until noon.”
“I'd forgotten about that...”
“About what?” Finn asks, still looking at the sidewalk rather than me and Fray.
“Oh, there's this...” I look to Fray. “What'd you call it?”
He chuckles. “We're off to see the wizard!”
I blink and miss Fray transforming into the Tin Man.
“I'm supposed to meet The Shadow Lord,” I tell Finn, who stops walking and starts staring at me. “I probably should have mentioned it earlier.”
“You sure that's a good idea? I mean...” His eyes flicker ever so quickly to our companion. “Are you sure?”
Fray shakes his head. Despite being the the Tin Man now, he's still clutching his jester stick, but at least he's stopped jingling it. “It's the only idea. If she doesn't go, then she's flaunting The Shadow Lord's authority.”
Generally speaking, if you can flaunt someone's authority, they aren't the sort of person to take lightly to having their authority flaunted. Otherwise, you wouldn't use those words. You'd just say it would make him unhappy. And even that sounds ominous when you're talking about someone named The Shadow Lord. The title doesn't exactly scream warm and fuzzy.
“And, no,” Fray answers a question no one voiced. “No living allowed. Not even Walkers.”
Wonder which one of us was wondering about that.
A car drives up, honking. Someone yells Finn's name out the window as it passes and he waves, then starts moving again.
“When will you be back?” The words are muffled through the corner of Finn's mouth and directed at the sidewalk a foot ahead of us.
The question was meant for me, I think, but I have to let Fray answer since he's the one who knows. “Nightfall.”
“What's up with that?” I ask him. “It's Halloween and all the spooks are going to be home by sunset?”
He laughs and shakes that stupid stick in my direction. “Not a good question, luv.”
I glare at him in response, making him sigh and give me a real answer. “We'll be finished with official business at nightfall. And thus free to roam the streets with all those adorable kiddies.”
Finn gives me a tiny smile. “Jack-o-lanterns keep away bad spirits and guide the good ones home again.”
“So you'll be carving one to scare me away?”
“Please.” He rolls his eyes. “Carved it a week ago. It's been in the fridge.”
I grab Fray's jester stick to smack Finn with, which the latter seems to find more amusing than when I hit Fray with it. Masochist.
The three of us all go to Finn's locker while I brief Fray on the layout of the building and tell him about our classes. He's good with English and physics, but has no idea what calculus even is, having learned minimal math when he was alive and never having an interest in learning more after his death. Trailing off an explanation of what it is you do with advanced math, I lean against the locker next to Finn's with a groan. “I'm going to be sick.”
I don't mean to say that out loud, but as I stare down the hall, the words sort of fall out.
The spectacle by my locker, or my reaction to noticing it, strikes Fray as funny enough that he whoops in laughter. Not so Finn, who, alerted by my whining to the fact that the other me and Cris are busy violating the school PDA policy, has his hands clinched at his sides like he might storm down there and hit someone.
“I can't believe she wore that,” I say, referencing TOM's donning of my sister's cheerleading sweater. Sure, it's decorated with cobwebs and worn over a ripped miniskirt and clearly meant to symbolize that everyone in this school is a mindless zombie, but still.
“I can't believe you let him touch you in it,” Finn growls.
Fray grins. “Notice how you two use different pronouns?”
Finn glares at him, making the freshman passing behind him gasp and pick up her pace.
“Are you stoned?” I pause at the thought. “Can we get stoned?”
“Sadly, no on both counts.” His clothes shift into 1960's tie-dye. It sort of suits him. “Although I think you might be.” He peers down the hall at the other me, who's stopped making out with Cris but is still talking to him.
Both Finn and I tense, squinting toward TOM ourselves. She doesn't look high on anything, other than hormones and stupidity. “Are her thoughts clouded or something?”
“A little.” Fray bites his lips and walks closer to the pair. Looking back to the current me, he frowns. “Is it possible he's the one who kills you?”
Finn goes absolutely rigid. I'd thought he was tense a second ago, but that was nothing compared to how tightly wound he is now. “What?”
“Dude, just saying hi.” One of his teammates stops, overlapping Fray until until the shade moves. “Wanted to make sure you're coming tonight...”
Visibly annoyed, Finn nods. “Yeah. Sorry. I'm...”
“No worries. The end of the season gets to me too.” The other guy winces in commiseration. “All that aggression and nothing to do with it.”
“He's not planning anything,” Fray says over the interruption. “But he has a lot of issues.”
I snort. “Like being in lust with my sister?”
“Amongst other flaws.” Eyes narrowed, he concentrates harder. “And he's not half as picky as he should be concerning who he gets his supplies from.”
“I don't do his drugs though.” Well, except for the occasional weed. But that's not a drug the way those pills he takes are.
Finn makes a strangled sound that tells me he's listening and I know his thought as clearly as if he's spoken it. I don't take drugs with Cris on purpose. The 'on purpose' part could be relevant. Even if it was an accident, being killed by my best friend would probably be enough of a betrayal to earn a ticket to Shadow.
Quiet as I think, I get to hear Finn's friend suggest, “You should try banging that McKinney girl. They say she has a lot of energy.”
If it weren't for me leaping to grab Finn's arm as he started to shift stance, the guy would have just found himself punched.
“Finn,” I hiss, trying to break through the shield of anger that's slid over his eyes. “Finn!”
He goes perfectly still, not even breathing until he's ready to say, “I'll keep that in mind.”
The guy, eyes wide
, nods quickly and makes himself scarce.
“Shit, Finn.” I let go of him and take a step back, my eyes glued to his face as he keeps up the struggle for calm. “He's right, you need to channel that aggression.”
He slams his locker door. Which doesn't use up much of his energy and makes people who weren't looking before stare but does seem to make him feel a little better.
“Wow,” the other me says dryly. “You almost hit that ape to defend my sister's honor. How chivalrous. I'm almost impressed, Cooper Finnegan.”
He spends a second looking at her as though she's sprouted an extra head, then snaps out of it to mutter, “Whatever,” and try to walk away.
TOM doesn't let him leave though, but moves just enough to block his path. “What stopped you?”
He looks her straight in the eye. “A poltergeist.”
“Well, it is Halloween.” She smiles. An honest to goodness not-filled-with-loathing smile. Must be the magic of the holiday.
Cris slides up behind her, wrapping his arms around her waist and looking at Finn over the top of her head. It's a gloating, taunting sort of look. “Who are you supposed to be? Me?”
“No.”
Just one word, but it conveys an epic's worth of hate.
Cris's eyes narrow and his body responds to Finn's expression with tension. “I'm getting really tired of your attitude.”
With a dismissive half-smile, Finn shoots down Cris's posturing with the confidence of the dominant. “Feeling's mutual.”
“Oh, please.” The other me says, thus summarizing my own opinions on current events. Rolling her eyes, she wiggles free of Cris and starts toward class. “Get over yourselves.”
A deliberate twitch of her hip makes her skirt flip up just enough to get Cris to give Finn a parting scowl and rush after her.
Finn opens his locker again, throws his books inside, and storms in the other direction.
Fray and I stand in a rapidly emptying hallway.
“I should come here every day,” he says. “This place could be on TV. It's way more entertaining than those morning talk shows. Like Degrassi with Southern accents.”
I stare in the direction Finn disappeared in, wondering if I should follow. Fray shakes his head at me. “Give him some space, luv.”
But at noon, when he still hasn't come back and I have no choice but to leave, I seriously regret not sprinting after him.
Chapter Eighteen
High stone walls form a decent-sized dungeon, dwarfing the man who sits in the middle of the room at a massive wooden desk. The desk could be from the middle ages. The slick laptop computer in the middle of it, not so much.
The back of the computer is shiny black with a decal plastered on it. Death playing guitar. It doesn't fit the room and it really doesn't fit the man behind the desk, who wears clothes suitable for a concierge in an upscale hotel and has a very noticeable bald spot spreading across his head. He sighs at Fray and types in several things. “Alright, you're here. Who's she?”
I leave off wondering about the laptop long enough to feel miffed. “She knows how to talk.”
“But sadly, not how to shut up,” Fray adds, giving me a smile I can only describe as proud. I don't think anyone's ever been proud of my inability to keep my mouth shut before.
“And your name, Miss?” The man's tone is that of many a weary DMV worker.
“McKinney, Drew.”
“Very funny,” he pronounces, he face pinching in an unamused way.
I squint at the guy. What's his deal?
Fray intercedes. “Her name is Drew Elizabeth McKinney. Place of death, Pine Ridge, North Carolina. Date and cause unknown.”
“Unknown?” The man frowns, annoyed. Like I've failed to figure out why I die just to spite him. I can only assume there's extra paperwork involved.
“She's still alive,” Fray answers easily, making it sound like it's normal to be walking around living and dead at the same time.
“Ah.” The man would appear to agree. He nods and types some more. Then he frowns very, very deeply. “Her file's locked.”
News to me I'd have a file, let alone a locked one. Now that I think of it, it's news to me there are computers in Shadow. Was it made here? Can he use ones belonging to the living? And if he can, why can't I?
“It's not really a computer,” Fray says after the man excuses himself and slips out a door that suddenly appears behind his desk. “Or, it is. But it's also a file cabinet, a ledger, a stack of parchment, some cave paintings, and a bunch of stuff in between.”
My face contorts as I try to sort that out.
“The information is kept,” he tries to elaborate. “What it appears to be kept in changes based on what people expect it to be kept in.”
“Right...” I give the laptop a frown. The idea makes some sort of weird sense. Yet, I can't help but note, “I wouldn't have expected a computer.”
“You would if you'd been dead longer.”
“Huh?”
Fray laughs. “You were expecting something archaic because it goes with your idea of the ghost world. Most people think that way at first. But once people have been dead for a while, we grow out of that sort of thing and start expecting our world to change because we're constantly watching the living world do it in a maddening blur.”
This is bordering on something that's going to make my head hurt.
My guide gives me a sympathetic smile. “The only thing constant in the world is change. You get used to it eventually.”
“Okay...” Folding my arms, I lean against the desk. “Since you're going to be all informative and philosophical just to distract me, care to tell me where we are?”
He leans against the desk next to me and looks at his shoes, a nice pair of biker's boots that go with the black leather outfit he's changed into. “It's hard to explain.”
“How did I know it would be?” I sigh. “Can it possibly be more confusing than the stupid laptop?”
Fray smiles again. “It's easier than that. You know how some parts of the living world aren't in Shadow? Like your house, for example.”
“This place is like that, except it has no parallel in the living world?” I catch on.
“Right.” His nod is accompanied by a pleased smile. “But if it did, it would be under the mountain.”
“Like one of those nuclear fallout bunkers?”
“Or a secret government facility.” He grins. “Yes.”
Which explains why we had to think our way here instead of walking. How deep is it though? “It's inside my radius?”
“Not really.” Fray shakes his head. “It's an exception to that rule. If your territory is anywhere in our little cluster of hills, you can get here. And, yes, we can come here anytime, but most people stay away as much as they can because if you spend too much time here, you run the risk of falling into The Spirit.”
“Why?”
Shrugging, he makes a sound to indicate he doesn't know. “It has something to do with the energy of the place. It's tied to The Spirit and The Shadow Lord somehow. Sort of like the third piece of their trinity.”
“The Lord, The Spirit, and The Holy Mountain?”
His foot kicks mine as he laughs at me. “Something like that.”
The door creaks open and there's an appalled gasp from behind us, followed quickly by a an aggravated tsk. “Is it customary to sit on furniture in your families?” the returning clerk asks.
Wonder if the librarian's coming today. She'd be perfect for this guy.
Fray smothers a snicker at my thought and grabs my hand to pull me off the desk.
“He says to let her in.” The haughty look that comes along with the statement strongly implies that if it were up to the clerk, we'd both be turned out.
“Terrific.” Fray grins and pulls me to another magically appearing door. “Thanks for everything, Russel. See you next time.”
The new room is a lot bigger and more interesting than the last. It's another stone dungeon, but this one'
s huge enough for the ceiling and far walls to be lost in darkness. Torches burn in holders placed on massive support columns. In the center, a very Goth looking band plays a soft and haunting tune. The lead singer, dressed like Morticia Adams and with black hair shimmering down to her knees, sways in rhythm while lamenting that her one true love is alive.
Plush sofas are scattered around the room in little groups, like in a coffee house. It's strange to see people sitting around like this and not drinking anything. Beer, wine, coffee... This sort of place makes me expect beverages. And gourmet sandwiches. There are coffee tables, but the only things on them are games and books.
I flop onto one of the sofas next to Fray. “Nice joint. I could come here a lot if it weren't for the whole loosing my individual identity thing.”
With a lazy smile, Fray spreads his arms out, one along the couch's back and the other on its arm. “That is a serious drawback.”
Closing my eyes, I focus on listening to the music. It's good. I wait until the end of the song, then ask, “Do you know her?”
Fray scoots closer to me so we don't have to speak as loud to hear each other when the music starts again. He keeps an arm on the back of the couch. His other hand rests on his knee. “Her name's Colleen. She was burned for witchcraft.”
“No.” I shake my head. “That hardly ever happened in real life. There was only like a tiny number of people who were killed for witchcraft in the US. ”
“But there were some,” he counters. Then he sighs. “She didn't die during the witch hunts though. Her mother went crazy in the nineteen fifties. Thought flames would cleanse her daughter's beatnik soul.”
I stare at the woman. “Her mother?”
“Yeah. She thought she was making a sacrifice for her daughter's wellbeing.”
“What happened to her?” I wonder, appalled. “The mom?”
“Nothing.” He watches the stage with dull eyes. “They didn't suspect arson and they didn't find the drugs in Colleen's blood that kept her from waking up.”
“Nothing,” I repeat. Nothing Colleen could do about it either. When I figure out who killed me, will I have the discipline to keep myself from returning the favor? What do they do to ghosts who kill?
I'd Rather Not Be Dead Page 14
