Joshua’s smile held, but faltered at the corners. “Amelia? What’s going on?”
I steeled my back, and my voice. “I’ve been lying to you, Joshua. You called me out for acting weird lately, and I lied to you about it. So now I’m going to tell you the truth: I’ve been thinking a lot about us, and our future.”
“And?” he said softly.
“And we don’t have one. A future, I mean. Tonight just proved it.”
His smile disappeared. “But … but tonight was just about me helping you. I thought you were okay with that?”
“I … I lied.”
Panic edged into his eyes. “Look, I won’t try that again. I promise.”
“N-no,” I whispered, my voice finally cracking. “You probably won’t. But will it matter? When five, ten, twenty years pass, will it really matter that we just sat back and enjoyed each other? Are you really going to be a forty-year-old man with a dead, eighteen-year-old girlfriend?”
Now Joshua’s eyes burned. He lunged forward, clasping his hands to my upper arms. He didn’t intend to hurt me, but he grabbed me forcefully enough that the movement lifted me onto my toes.
“I will, Amelia,” he said roughly. “I will.”
“It doesn’t matter,” I moaned, trying to pull away from him. I cursed myself when the tears began to flow, filling my eyes despite my resolution to be cold and immovable. “I’m leaving you, Joshua. Right now.”
He leaned in, trying to hold my gaze. But I closed my eyes so tightly, I forced the tears out onto my cheeks. I had to get out of here, had to materialize before my willpower completely crumbled.
So I ignored him. Ignored the heat I suddenly felt rising off his skin. Instead of his smile, his hands, his eyes, I pictured the ghosts I’d met in Jackson Square. Though they didn’t expect me for another day, I pictured myself finding them, joining them. Fading with them.
The effort worked. I could feel the soft pull of the materialization tugging me out of Joshua’s arms. Helping me vanish from his life forever.
Just before I slipped away, I heard him call out to me.
“Amelia, don’t do this! Stay with me.”
“Why?” I sobbed, though I could no longer see him. But his fading whisper still followed me into the darkness.
“Because I love you, Amelia.”
Chapter
NINETEEN
I love you.
The words whispered in my mind long after they’d been spoken. They echoed, haunting me, distracting me in the darkness.
Maybe they were the reason my materialization didn’t work. Not entirely anyway.
When I opened my eyes, I didn’t see the other ghosts. Instead, I saw a throng of drunken, living people, laughing and shouting and surging around me. Beads were flying, drinks were sloshing, and loud music was pouring out from every window and door.
Bourbon Street.
For all I knew, I’d landed right in the middle of a parade, or what might have been just an average night in the French Quarter. Either way, it was nothing but utter chaos, and it mirrored perfectly how I felt inside.
I began to stumble through the crowd like a zombie—mindless, uncaring, blind. I wanted to be numb, too, but my body wasn’t complying with that wish. As I walked, I grew dizzier and sicker, burning and reeling inside. It felt like my veins were filling up with kerosene and my brain was just seconds away from striking a match.
At this point, I probably wouldn’t stop it. While I stumbled and burned, one word repeated itself on an endless loop in my mind.
Mistake. Mistake. Mistake.
I pushed my way through the mass of bodies, moving without direction or coherent thought. With nothing on my mind but that one repeating word and the impulse to get away. Every now and then I would catch the stench of rot, alcohol, and centuries of decadence. Even though they vanished quickly, these momentary sensations just made my head spin faster.
The farther I walked, the dizzier I got and the more the crowd pressed smothering-close. Their drunken laughter disoriented me so much, I started to superimpose the scene on other memories.
Memories of another party, on a bridge, many years ago.
A lifetime ago, technically.
That night—the night of my death—I’d seen shapeless black forms writhing their way through the crowd, inciting my friends and classmates to attack me. But tonight I couldn’t distinguish the living beings from the supernatural.
Until I smacked right into one.
The force of the contact knocked me off balance, and I stumbled backward. My legs tangled in my skirt; and, despite a clumsy attempt to right myself, I began to fall. I threw my hands behind me in time to land palms-first upon the dirty curb.
The moment my hands slapped pavement, a nasty, stinging sensation slashed across my palms—surprising me not only with its force, but with the fact that I felt it at all. Even stranger, the jolt of the fall actually knocked the wind out of me. I sat there stinging and gulping for almost a full minute before I had the sense to look up and figure out who I’d just run into.
When I saw the face leering down at me, I shivered—a reaction that had nothing to do with the cold wind suddenly biting into my exposed skin.
He tipped his flamboyant hat in acknowledgment and then bent his knees so that he crouched at my level. Of course, from my vantage point, he didn’t really exist below the knees.
“That felt good, running into you,” the pirate said, giving me a crooked grin. “Our group doesn’t ever touch. But I wouldn’t mind doing it again with someone who looks like you do.”
Before I could react to his innuendo, another voice hissed in my ear.
“Trying to seduce one of my own? Or are you just out for an evening stroll, dear?”
I jumped slightly and then shuffled backward on my stinging hands, away from the hiss. I moved even faster once I saw the speaker: the gray-haired woman from Jackson Square. Once I’d backed a safer distance away from her, I straightened my spine and gave her my coldest glare (despite the fact that my veins were now scorching).
“I don’t like your tone,” I told her icily.
A harsh, ugly smile cut across her face. “It doesn’t matter what you like, girl. You came to us—you’re ours now.”
As if they’d been planning this confrontation, the other three ghosts appeared out of thin air, materializing to form a circle around me. The soldier, with his arms folded menacingly across his chest; the sneering aristocrat; and the black-haired Creole girl whose dark eyes—now that I could see them more closely—looked a little manic. Those three must have agreed with, or at least overheard, the gray-haired woman, because they all flashed me triumphant, possessive smiles.
This wasn’t exactly how I pictured this scene going down: burning on the inside, freezing on the outside, and outnumbered by five spirits who I’d started to suspect weren’t my allies. Glowering back at them, I pushed myself off the pavement, dusted off my skirt in mock indifference, and then drew myself up to my full height.
“Other ghosts have tried to control me before,” I warned. “Trust me when I say it didn’t turn out too well for them.”
The soldier eyed his companions and then smirked. “I like our odds.”
The other ghosts shifted in response to his threat, moving as one to tighten their circle.
“What do you want from me?” I demanded.
“A trade,” the aristocrat said.
“For what? I don’t have anything to give you.”
He laughed. “We don’t want to trade with you; we want to trade you. We plan to exchange you for something else.”
My mouth dropped open, and I took an involuntary step backward. The dark-haired girl moved with me, pressing in closer to block my escape. I turned toward her, hoping to appeal to someone nearer to my own age. Even if she did look totally crazy.
“I just wanted your help,” I whispered to her. “Like you promised. You and I probably have a lot more in common than you think.”
To
my surprise, she grinned. Then she held up her forearms for me to see the vertical scars on them. “I don’t think so. Not unless you slit your own wrists, too.”
When I recoiled, her grin only broadened.
She’s nuts. They all are.
I repressed my horror and tried to keep my expression smooth, confident. Although I suspected that the girl was past the point of reasoning, I asked, “Is what you’d get in this trade really worth trying to hurt me?”
“Oh, yes,” she whispered, her eyes widening. “Yes, it certainly is.”
I spun back around to the rest of them. Louder, I asked, “What price are you getting for me?”
“Our freedom,” the soldier said. “From the demons. We have it on good authority that they want you. Badly.”
My rigid posture faltered, right alongside my bravado. I knew that I would do just about anything—aside from murder and betrayal, obviously—to avoid the demons. And I’d only been running from them for less than a week. So how could I expect these ghosts, half rabid from centuries of hiding, to feel any differently? How could I reason with all that fear and desperation?
“So they offered you your freedom,” I asked softly, “in exchange for … me?”
“Not exactly,” the pirate said. “An intermediary has agreed to negotiate on our behalf, as long as she—”
“Silence!” The gray-haired woman cut him off with another hiss. She held him in her cold stare as she addressed the rest of their companions. “We’re done explaining things to her. Let’s get on with it.”
Upon hearing her command, they each nodded. Then they began to take slow, stalking steps toward me. Almost in unison, they extended their hands like claws, reaching for me.
They looked like predators. Dead, crazy predators.
Panic and terror boiled inside me, along with that damned, searing heat. But I still clenched my fists and let loose a feral snarl.
“I won’t go without a fight,” I growled.
Still moving in, the soldier chuckled darkly. “Good.”
Once again, something about him reminded me of Eli—of his cruelty and sadism; his pleasure in my pain.
And just like that, I was infuriated beyond rational thought. Suddenly, mindlessly, I began to stalk forward, too. Ready to meet them headlong.
But just as abruptly, they scrambled away from me, skittering back across the uneven surface of Bourbon Street like leaves. Only two ghosts remained close enough so that I could still see their eyes, which shined with fear.
When I peered closely, I realized they shined with the reflection of something else, too …
Something almost neon, and blue.
I didn’t even have time to register what I’d seen in their eyes before the burning inside me doubled. So much so that I felt like my brain had finally dropped that lit match into the kerosene.
The blaze was so hot, so blistering that I arched my back and then hunched forward, flailing in some subconscious effort to put out the fire. A particularly strong wave forced my head downward so that I faced my hands. When I saw them—still clenched in defense—a soft shriek escaped my lips.
My protective glow was back.
Sort of.
Instead of fire, traces of blue light raced each other up and down my hands, my wrists, my arms. I glowed again.
But not with the ghostly flame I knew. That flame had never harmed me. This glow hurt. Wherever the light moved it seared, leaving lines of pain in its wake. Roasting me from the inside out.
After a few seconds of mindlessly staring at my hands, I realized that the light followed the tracks of my veins. In fact, it looked as though the veins themselves were shining through my skin. Like blistering hot, illuminated pathways that followed the course of my dead circulatory system. Blue lights, crisscrossing the places where my blood once flowed.
This isn’t possible, I thought. It can’t be.
Then it struck me: this is what I’d been feeling since Joshua and I left the cemetery. This is what had been boiling inside me. The slow, hot buildup of an internal lightning storm.
What did Gabrielle do to me?
With my mouth hanging open, I raised my head and faced the other ghosts.
None of them had vanished yet. They still hovered cautiously, at least a few feet away. But although the ghosts still watched me, none of them actually looked me in the eye. Instead, they seemed hypnotized—entranced by the light that snaked its way across my skin.
Slowly, one by one, they stirred. While I still writhed in pain, they leaned in to get a better view of my light show. And as they did so, their frightened expressions began to disappear.
They started to smile.
“Now this,” the pirate hissed, “is interesting.”
“What do you think?” the aristocrat whispered. “That she’ll be worth more to them like this?”
The soldier moved one scuffed boot closer to me. “What do you say, troops? Should we find out?”
The other ghosts nodded again and took slow, careful steps toward me.
Obviously, my light had only provided a momentary distraction. In a few more seconds, the ghosts would completely regain their confidence. Once that happened, they wouldn’t hesitate to capture me and serve me up to the darkness like a meal.
I had to get away from the ghosts; I knew I had to. But I just hurt so badly. I tried to move forward so that I could run, but the pain intensified. Instinctively, I curled into a ball and crossed my burning, glowing arms against my chest.
That move, however, was a mistake.
It was as if my arms had marked an X. All at once the fire contracted, rushed through my limbs and veins toward one target.
My heart.
The fire blossomed in my chest, unfurling petal after petal of pain. I thought my heart might explode, ending my existence right there on the grimiest street in New Orleans. But it kept scorching me—so fiercely, I actually screamed aloud.
Thank God I didn’t scream too loudly to hear someone calling out to me, shrill and urgent.
“Amelia! Holy hell, Amelia, get out of there!”
I didn’t recognize the voice, and I had the fleeting impression that I’d simply imagined it. But while I sucked in rapid, shallow breaths, I heard it again.
“Amelia! Run!”
And suddenly, I did just that.
Despite the incapacitating pain in my chest, despite the bloodlust shining in the Quarter ghosts’ eyes, despite my suspicion about who had shouted that last-minute warning—I ran.
I broke through the ghosts’ ranks easily, shoving in between the aristocrat and the gray-haired woman. As I passed, I felt their hands clawing at my dress, but I shrugged them off without a backward glance.
Free of the ghosts, I ran fast and hard down Bourbon Street. Sidestepping underage girls and bleary-eyed boys, dodging late-night hot dog vendors and people peddling booze in grenade-shaped cups. I flew past them all, pushing my legs to their limit until, finally, I couldn’t take another step.
I shouldn’t have felt the acidic burn of adrenaline in my legs. Nonetheless, it flooded my muscles with crippling force. I had just made it to the relative safety of a side alley when my thighs gave out and my legs buckled beneath me. There in the darkness I collapsed in a heap on the dirty ground.
All my energy spent, I gasped desperately for air and pressed my hands to my chest, where my heart still punished me with fire. I couldn’t breathe, couldn’t think, couldn’t feel anything but scorching.
I couldn’t even open my eyes when a familiar voice spoke from somewhere above me.
“It worked,” a girl whispered. “Holy hell, it worked.”
“Jesus,” a male voice hissed. “What have you done?”
“What she asked me to do,” the girl snapped.
“She didn’t ask for this. Just look at her chest; look at her heart. Don’t you remember how that felt?”
“Yes,” the girl answered, surly. But her voice softened as she went on. “She can touch the living,
Felix.”
“She can what?” he gasped.
“I know, I know. Try to touch her.”
The voices fell silent for a moment and then the boy whispered, “I can’t.”
The girl swore and then said, “That doesn’t make any sense.”
“Well, can’t we just figure it out later?”
“Fine.” She sighed. “If you stand watch while I grab her—”
The boy cut her off. “Don’t I always help you clean up your messes?”
She made a petulant sound. “Don’t think you can lecture me just because you’re alive and I’m—”
“Gaby,” he warned, “now is not the time for that discussion.”
The voices once again fell into a tense silence. Then, so softly I knew I must have dreamed it, a set of arms slipped under mine. As someone lifted my body, I felt an impossible heaviness settle in my chest; and I wondered, deliriously, how anyone had the strength to carry such a weight.
“It’s happening,” the girl breathed. “Look.”
At that point I finally managed to flutter my eyelids open. In the few seconds I stayed conscious, I saw a pair of astonished, radiant blue eyes staring back into mine.
“Joshua,” I whispered. “I need to go back....”
I trailed off when my vision doubled. At least, that’s what I think it did; that was the only explanation for why I suddenly saw two indistinguishable pairs of blue eyes studying me.
I blinked, trying to clear my vision, but the moment I closed my eyelids, unconsciousness slipped over me.
Chapter
TWENTY
The world had gone dark again, like it had in my dreams. All around me, everything was still and quiet, except for the hushed lapping of water.
This time, however, I didn’t panic. I felt peaceful. At rest. And I had no idea why.
I kept my eyes shut, breathing shallowly for who knows how long. When I sensed daylight breaking, I opened my eyes and watched as a uniform layer of dark clouds became visible high above me. A weak sunrise began to filter through them, and I realized that I was somewhere outside, lying on my back and facing the sky.