“And the ashes?”
“I will take care of it.”
“That’s probably best.” I sat Jake down on the porch and stood with Ian inside the house. Ian bent to awaken Isabelle and helped her to sit up. When she saw him, she drew away from his touch and managed to get to her feet on her own.
“Are you okay, Isabelle?” I asked.
She rubbed her head and chuckled. “Did you have to suck me dry so quickly, Libby? I came to help, you know.”
“I’m sorry. I couldn’t help it.”
“Don’t worry. I know Jake was in trouble. Ian came to me.”
I gaped and turned to him. “You risked your life for us. I can’t thank you enough.”
He said nothing.
I turned to Isabelle and gave her a look she interpreted right away. She joined my son on the porch, and Ian took my hand. We stood in silence for a while as the sirens drew closer. “Ian, about Monica.”
“Yes?”
I hesitated. A car door slammed.
“Later.”
He agreed, and we faced the police together.
Chapter Seventeen
I arrived at the hospital with Monica at my side. How would I convince Agnes to come home with me, or the hospital to release her in my care if she hadn’t awakened?
“She’s coming whether she likes it or not,” Monica informed me.
I shook my head. “We can’t force her, Monica.”
“Watch me. I want this over now and our lives to go back to normal. You’ve suffered enough.”
“And so have you,” I countered. Recalling her fear, I knew what I had decided was for the best. The minute I got a chance to talk to Ian I would ask him to erase Monica’s memories. I had asked her about it, and she’d become so terrified, she couldn’t form words. She would never be around Ian without fear. Maybe I was selfish not wanting her to hate my boyfriend, but I would do it anyway. She needed the peace of mind, and honestly, if I could go back… No, I wouldn’t return to ignorance. I needed to know what was out there, but I did wonder about myself and my personality when I got my body back.
We bypassed the nurse’s station to head to Agnes’s room, but when we got there, the bed had been stripped of the sheets, and no Agnes. A sick dread came over me, but I pushed it away as Monica and I rushed to speak with a nurse.
“Where is the woman who was in room 205?” Monica demanded.
One of the nurses paused in executing her duties to smile at Monica. “Are you family?”
Monica’s hands slid to her hips. “Do I have to be family to know if she’s still here? If so, I’m her cousin.”
I suppressed a laugh as the woman blinked at Monica. After a few silent moments she relented. “Her brother took her home an hour ago after the doctor released her.”
“But she was unconscious!” I forgot I had gone invisible when we arrived at the hospital to minimize confusion over my identical appearance to the patient. The nurse whirled around at the sound of my voice, and Monica nabbed her arm to regain her attention.
“What was her brother’s name?”
The woman gave Monica a look that said she should know what her cousin looked like if she were truly related.
“There are so many of us, you never can tell.” Monica lied with ease.
“Now that you ask, I-I’m not sure,” was the response. The nurse rubbed her forehead as if trying to recall. Monica turned a worry-filled glance in my general direction.
We headed out to the street and paused on the sidewalk as patients and hospital staff passed us by. Monica chewed a nail and stared off in the distance. “Do you think she ran, Libby?”
I floated nearer to her. “I hope not. Monica, I can’t feel her.”
She whirled to face me, her gaze darting about as if looking for somewhere to lock on. “What do you mean?”
“I don’t feel the connection. I don’t know if it’s completely destroyed or if she’s no longer in Summit’s Edge. We’ve come so close, and to have her get away… It’s too much.”
“Don’t assume the worst. Maybe you should talk to Isabelle.”
I agreed. My witchy friend was no worse the wear for my zapping her of energy, thank goodness, so I left Monica with the promise to update her later and went to visit Isabelle.
I found Isabelle in her new shop, sorting through boxes. “Isabelle?”
She looked up, hair all over her head, a smudge of dirt on her cheek. The bright smile soothed my frayed nerves just a little. “One down, one to go, huh?”
I raised an eyebrow. “You’re always so upbeat.”
“It’s the only way to face life, my dear.”
“Hm, we have a problem.” I walked over to her and then hesitated. “Do you mind? I’m low lately.”
“Do you need some of my energy?” She reached out toward me, but I stepped back.
“No, I just don’t want to be solid. I…I feel drained even when I’m around people now. I’m worried.”
“Libby.” She stood up and hugged me. “Go ahead and let go. No one is around, and I’ve covered the windows until I can get this place sorted out. I’m so excited about this venture. It makes me feel like there’s hope.”
I didn’t respond, and she grew serious.
“What problem? We can work on it together.”
I started to sigh and then decided it was useless. “I can’t feel Agnes.”
Isabelle’s eyes widened in alarm. “Not even a little bit?”
“Not at all. I think the tether has broken.”
“Or…” she began and then clamped her lips together.
I finished for her. “Or she’s gone.”
“Do you really think she would give up and leave?”
I thought about it. “No. She wanted me dead, and she was also curious about Jake. He’s safe, as well as Mason, so I’m not worried about them.”
“Safe where?”
I smiled even though she couldn’t see it. “Ian arranged for someone to watch over them until Mason is strong enough to go back home. Then he will take Jake with him.”
“Is that what you want, Libby?”
“Of course not!” I longed to cry, but the emotions clogged in my spirit. “I want Jake with me, but I have to concentrate on getting Agnes to let go of my body. That’s why I came here, to see if you can help.”
“Yes! Let’s do the spell again, the one to draw her to us. It worked before, why not now?”
With swift movements, Isabelle sorted through her boxes for the required elements. I followed her to the back room of her shop where she had sectioned off one part for storage and another part for rituals. I assumed customers wouldn’t be allowed back here and wondered what she would do when she needed to hire extra help. Her secret would be revealed.
Soon we knelt before the ceramic bowl, me in a transparent form. Isabelle chanted, eyes closed, palms raised in supplication. Unlike before, I felt no drain on my energy. Nothing. No connection with the unseen. We kept it up for a solid hour, and then Isabelle sighed in exhaustion.
“I don’t understand why it’s not working,” she said. “I’m sure we’re doing everything the same way we did before.”
“Maybe there’s an expiration on whatever you used on Peter Jenkins,” I suggested.
She snapped her fingers. “Perhaps because he’s been laid to rest.”
“Or somewhere my body—”
“Don’t say it, Libby!”
“You have to admit it’s a possibility, Isabelle. I want to be realistic about this so I can move on if I need to.”
“No one wants that.” I heard tears in her voice, and it broke me.
“Liberty.”
I stilled.
Isabelle took my hand in hers. “Is something wrong?”
“Ian is calling me. I have to go.”
She eyed me and then nodded.
“Thank you for trying, Isabelle. You are a true friend.”
“My pleasure always.”
I winked out from her s
hop and blinked in to Ian’s book room. I let out a squeak of alarm the moment I set eyes on Agnes in my body. “Ian, what did you do?” I rushed to her side. She sat in a chair, eyes closed, head turned, and two pinpricks on her neck with dribbles of blood coming from them. “You drank her blood—my blood!”
He sat in a chair behind his desk, completely unfazed by my outburst and my rage. “I owed you for taking care of my brother when I could not.”
I gaped, all hope dying. “You killed her?”
“No, I did not. You misunderstand me.” He stood up and walked around his desk then held out his hand. I resisted taking it, and he seemed to understand. “You knew I could not kill my brother a second time, and you did it. Although I cannot commend you for taking such a risk without me there to protect you.”
I raised my chin. “I’m a big girl. I can take care of myself.”
His expression turned doubtful.
I glared at him. “Was my blood good?”
“It is not the same without your spirit.”
That surprised me, but I hid whatever twisted pleasure I derived from the compliment. I touched Agnes’s hand and was surprised not to feel resistance. “It weakened her hold,” I whispered.
He agreed. “You may find you are able to get inside. Are you ready to try?”
“I don’t feel very strong right now. I haven’t since…”
“Liberty.”
I glanced up at him.
“I do not blame you. What you did was right, for all of us. It is not easy to take a life, and even though my brother was a bad excuse for a living creature, he was that—a living being. All I can offer you is, in time, your confusion and pain will ease.”
“I don’t want to kill without feeling.” I looked at Agnes, unconscious and vulnerable. “I don’t even want to kill her. I just wish there was another way.”
He stood behind me, and I sensed his strength. Mentally, I let it bolster me.
“You understand this is the way?” he asked.
“Yes.”
Just as Ian had suggested, I was able to slip into my body. I can’t describe what it felt like as opposed to the experience of entering Clark, Luis, and Bart. All I know is it was like coming home, like slipping into a favorite pair of jeans that fit my curves and the pouch at the base of my stomach that I’d never gotten rid of after Jake was born. Even still, I felt her there with me, taking up space, foreign. One might even describe Agnes’s presence in my body as a sensation like the Princess and the Pea, a tiny bit of something that shouldn’t be there.
I wasn’t sure how I should go about kicking her out. I searched around for her, a hold I could get onto her spirit so I could drag her out of hiding and give her the boot. At first she seemed to weasel away, and then out of the blue she stood before me.
“This is my home now,” she said, sneering. Power behind her words made my determination wobble. I held on and stiffened my spiritual stance.
“I’m taking it back, Agnes. You don’t belong here.”
Her cackle resounded in my head, driving pain like daggers through me. How did she do it? Where had she learned such tricks? I seemed to be fighting a losing battle, but I told myself over and over, this was my body. I belonged here, not her. I had what they called home court advantage.
“Get out,” she growled. “You don’t know anything about our kind. You’re weak. You will die before a year is out.”
“I’ll take my chances. They’re mine to take!”
Back and forth, we fought with wills and words. With her mind, Agnes pushed me back. I felt myself crumbling, even sometimes leaning outside my body. I couldn’t go back to that life, because it wasn’t a life at all. Being a ghost was more like an existence, cut off from everything and everyone. She had lived her life, and this one was mine. I told her so.
“Fool! You can’t beat me.”
I don’t know where the memories came from and assumed they were hers. I’d seen a single memory from the others that I possessed. This was more. My mother stood before me, arguing with Agnes. While she had to be no older than I was at that moment, I recognized her.
“I’m not staying here with you. I don’t agree with taking other people’s bodies,” my mother had shouted at Agnes.
“Then your body is a waste. Give it to me.”
“Never!”
Agnes bellowed a name I didn’t recognize when my mother ran, and I recalled how I had never found any record of her past. She had truly disappeared in order to protect herself and me from Agnes. Because Agnes never knew of my existence, my mother had given me thirty years of safety.
Knowing my mother’s sacrifice, I couldn’t let Agnes win. I fought on, willing her to leave, pushing with all my mental strength. At last, I felt her weakening, and with one final shove, I was free and she floated outside my body. Ian started in with the chant. I had realized early on I couldn’t wink out when the banishing chant took hold. He spoke slowly, trapping Agnes, but not sending her to the darkness right away.
I sat up inside my body. I felt heavy and dizzy. My neck hurt, and I raised a hand to it. The bite marks were tender. My stomach growled, and I think I had to use the bathroom. All these sensations seemed odd after feeling nothing for so long.
When I looked toward the center of the room, I gasped. I could see Agnes as she struggled and screamed against Ian’s hold. Chairs wobbled. Books on the shelves fell to the floor and flew across the room. I had to duck to keep from being hit by one. I had never seen such activity without touching physical items myself. Agnes was on another level, and it was a miracle that I’d gotten her to leave my body.
“You’ll pay for this,” she screeched. “I’m going to take your son. I’ll raise him, and when he’s old enough, I’ll move into his body.”
“No!” I jumped to my feet like I could do anything in my physical body.
Before I could reach Agnes, the darkness that I had felt so many times gathered in the corners of the room and expanded as if it would suck up all the light. A black hole appeared to the right of Ian’s desk, and someone stepped out of it. My jaw went slack, and Ian forgot to continue the verse. Agnes saw the tall man as well and spun away from him, letting out a blood-curdling scream. The man extended a hand and without saying a word, touching her, or even moving from the spot where he appeared, he captured Agnes and kept her still.
“Silence,” he said, and I slapped a hand over my mouth.
Ian narrowed his eyes but said nothing. Agnes’s teeth clicked together, and her voice quieted. Not even a whimper escaped her. She watched the man with shaking shoulders and eyes so wide they must hurt. Everything in me said if she had the choice, she would never appear in this person’s presence, for all eternity.
I swung my gaze back to him and took in his form. At least six foot five, he was a wiry man—or manlike. Hair the color of midnight extended down his back, and his eyes matched in color, but they were not quite human, with less white and more black. He wore dark clothing, slacks, a shirt, and shoes, but I couldn’t get a good feel for the design of any of it. Darkness surrounded him, shielded him from the light. Above all, his presence consumed the space and air in the room. I knew this was a supernatural being, yet, I was equally sure I saw him with my physical eyes. No one had to tell me. This was the being called Death that Ian had told me about.
“Liberty Grace,” he intoned, and I gulped.
“Yes…uh…sir.” How did one address him? I sensed he wasn’t actually the devil.
“I am neither good nor evil,” he answered, reading my mind. “I am Death. I keep the balance.”
“So I would just call you Death?” I found the boldness to ask.
“Exactly.”
He turned toward Ian, and Ian nodded to him. Death sneered. Great, another being that hated him. I could figure that one out easily enough though. Ian as a vampire didn’t fall under Death’s jurisdiction. He had died but through his curse was allowed to stay among the living. Death couldn’t take him even if Ian was k
illed.
When Death looked at me again, I wished he wouldn’t. I thought I saw a smirk form on his mouth, but blinked, and it was gone. “Liberty Grace, I have been hunting this soul for many years.”
“This, meaning Agnes?”
“Yes.” He flexed his fingers, and Agnes seemed to feel the pressure. She opened her mouth in plea, but no sound came out. When Death had ordered her silent, she had no recourse but to obey.
“She said she’s immortal.” I deliberately left out the part where she said we are immortal. He probably read it in my mind anyway.
Death glanced again at Ian. “Every living soul must pass from this world eventually, a transition humans have called death, and it is my job to take them from this world to keep a very necessary balance.”
He glared harder at Ian.
“I’ve been ordered to leave cursed ones alone.”
That part surprised me. “Who ordered you?”
He ignored the question. “You, Liberty Grace, and this soul are different. You could be immortal, but you aren’t cursed. I won’t allow you to stay here.”
I thought I would pass out at his words, but Ian moved for the first time since he arrived. He zipped between me and Death, holding me behind him. “You are not taking her.”
I peeked around Ian to find Death had raised an eyebrow in amusement. “I didn’t mean now.”
He glanced at my forehead, and my spirits sank. I knew he saw my mark. He had put it there, labeling me as his own. I swallowed the lump in my throat and forced myself to speak. “Can you tell me when you’ll come back for me? Please?”
“That’s not for you to know.”
“Ten years, twenty? Thirty?” I stepped out from Ian’s shield. “If you could please just let me see my son grow up and go out on his own.”
Death didn’t appear to have sympathy for human concerns. I felt like I fought a losing battle reasoning with him for more time. How many others had begged for the same? If he gave in to us all, the world would be overcrowded in no time. I didn’t like seeing this perspective, but it passed through my head, and Death nodded because he knew.
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