The major difference in her room appeared to be the pile of college stuff—a new comforter still in the plastic, a laundry basket stuffed full of notebooks, folders, and other school supplies, and a stack of plastic plates and utensils—in the corner.
She caught me looking at it. “Millikin in the fall.” She rolled her eyes. “Free tuition because of my mom. But at least I get to live on campus.”
I nodded, knowing that had been the plan for years. I’d been considering going with her. The school had fit my dad’s requirement of being close enough for me to drive home to check on my mom on a regular basis; hence, the car I was supposed to get as a graduation gift. Only, that car had been traded in for a minivan with a car seat for my new half sister, as I’d discovered last month.
I forced away thoughts of my evil stepmother—and her potentially evil spawn—to focus on the task at hand. “This is where you sense her presence most often?” I asked, trying not to squirm at the supreme cheesiness of that line.
But Misty apparently saw nothing amiss in it. She nodded, rubbing her hands over her arms as though chilled.
I didn’t feel anything out of the ordinary besides amped up air-conditioning, which I knew was Misty’s standard protocol whenever her mother was out of the house. Dr. E. was very environmentally conscious and probably wouldn’t have installed A/C at all if she could have handled the whining from the other members of her family.
I didn’t see any obvious blurry spots, but seeing ghosts still wasn’t something I was particularly skilled at. So I focused on listening instead, trying to screen out the noise of the television for the sound of whispers or movement nearby, but all that garnered me was Leanne downstairs, apparently yapping away on the phone.
“No, seriously, she just showed up here. Can you believe it?” She gave a bark of laughter. “I should invite her to Ben’s party tonight. Now, that would be worth seeing, I bet. Freak-out of the Century, part two, you know?”
Wonderful. News of my arrival and recently acquired weirdo status would reach the entire graduating class before I could even leave here. Fortunately, most of them would be going to college in the next week or so, and I wouldn’t have to deal with them much after that.
Though, of course, there was no way I’d be stuck in this body for that long. Right?
Riiight.
“Anything?” Misty asked anxiously, looking around the room as well.
I shook my head with a grimace. I really wanted to catch this jerk who was pretending to be me. “She was here this morning? Are you sure?”
Misty nodded rapidly, then hesitated before adding, “Well, I’m pretty sure. Nothing was knocked over or anything. It was just that feeling again.” She shivered.
Great. Maybe Will had been right, and this was all in Misty’s head. “Anywhere else we can check?”
She thought about it for a second and then gestured to the half-closed door to the attached bathroom. “That’s where the message showed up on the mirror.”
Might as well check it out while I was here. God, it was going to suck if I had to leave without anything. Will, assuming he ever spoke to me again, would never let me live it down.
I crossed the room, feeling Misty’s gaze on my uneven stride, and yanked open the door, expecting nothing scarier than the heap of wet towels Misty was prone to leaving on the floor until they mildewed. Gross.
Instead, though, I almost walked face-first into a spirit, a big blurry spot leaning over the vanity, probably hard at work on another message.
An embarrassing and involuntary squeak escaped me before I could stop it, and I took a step back.
“Oh, hey.” The spot shifted and swirled in front of my eyes as it turned toward me, a distinctly female voice emerging from it. “I was wondering when you were going to show up.”
I couldn’t believe Alona. I pounded my fist against the steering wheel in frustration.
Though, really, shouldn’t you have known she was going to pull something like this? my logical side asked, deciding to put in a belated appearance. After all, Alona was not one to heroically suffer looking anything less than the best she thought she was capable of at any given moment. In fact, it was a little surprising it had taken her a month to get to this point.
And my reaction? You definitely could have handled that better.
Shut up, I told that censorious voice in my head.
That icy expression she’d worn before kissing me off had given me a sick feeling. It reminded me too much of the one she’d paraded around behind at school, back in her original body. That was Alona Dare—perfect, cool, untouchable. The irony was, of course, that it proved I was right in my long-running argument with her: it was more about attitude than actual appearance. But I didn’t feel I’d be helping myself by bringing that up today.
She looked good, and she knew it. For a second, I could see her stepping up and taking this life for her own, becoming the “Ally” she’d created in the space that used to be Lily’s.
True, she didn’t have her original body, and I was sure that that would have been her first choice if it had been remotely possible, which it wasn’t. But with what she’d done today—the clothes, her hair—it was clear she was growing more comfortable with being Ally, making that persona her own.
It was conceivable that one day she’d be comfortable enough with the new and improved Ally that she might not want to leave.
And if she didn’t want out anymore, she wouldn’t, in theory, need me any longer. There would be nothing keeping us together. That realization struck with cold, hard force, distracting me. A car horn blared, and I looked up to find myself crossing the yellow lines. Heart pounding, I jerked the wheel to keep the car on my side of the road.
I’d always considered, in the back of my mind, the possibility of losing her. To the light, to her own stubborn refusal to keep her energy level up by being positive. But the longer we’d been together, the less I liked to think about it, shoving it further and further down in my thoughts. I couldn’t imagine my life without her, in one form or another, and I didn’t want to think about her being taken away. I’d never thought about the fact she might walk away.
I swallowed hard, fighting against the panicky feeling clawing at my chest. Yeah, in Lily’s body, she could hear and sort of see ghosts, which would make her life more complicated; but it wasn’t like I could help her with any of that. I’d needed her to help me.
Besides, she didn’t seem to need much assistance in that area. She was handling it better than I was.
No. I shook my head. I was being ridiculous. There was no way that she’d ever voluntarily stay in Lily’s body.
The only reason she’d even pulled this extreme-makeover routine was because she was unhappy with how she looked, finding Lily’s appearance inferior to her original body. Hadn’t we been fighting about that only yesterday?
So our problem was still the same as it had ever been: we had to find a way to get her out without hurting Lily.
I tried to feel as reassured by this line of thought as I had been over the last month, but it wasn’t working this time.
And then what? that pushy voice returned to ask.
Having started down this path of thinking, the conclusion was impossible to avoid. Assuming I could get Alona back as a spirit guide, things would go back to normal. We’d be helping ghosts between make-out sessions, and all would be great with the world…for a while.
But I was getting older and she wasn’t. I’d go to Richmond for classes and meet people who didn’t know her. If I wanted to go out and grab pizza with someone, either Alona couldn’t go or she’d have to tag along as a spectator and keep quiet, astate I couldn’t even imagine.
One day I’d be twenty-five and then thirty-five, forty-five.…She’d still be eighteen. At some point, that was going to get creepy, even beyond the living/dead issue we had going already. And maybe not now, or even in ten years, but I might want the possibility of a family. I couldn’t see any woman, even one cool e
nough to handle the fact that her husband talked to the dead on a regular basis, being okay with a spirit guide who looked like an eighteen-year-old cheerleader hanging around, especially if she knew there’d once been kissing. And, for that matter, I couldn’t see Alona being happy in that situation, either. I might not have been Chris Zebrowski, but sharing attention was not something Alona did well with anyone.
I imagined an argument with a wife or a girlfriend on one side, Alona on the other and me in the middle. I shuddered. No way.
Suddenly I was afraid that no matter what happened, I was going to be saying good-bye to her, one way or another.
As soon as I pulled into the strip-mall parking lot, I noticed with a rush of dread that Malachi’s window sign—a neon outline of a hand with an eye in the center—was dark.
Crap, crap, crap.
I parked as fast as I could and approached his storefront cautiously. I didn’t particularly want another run-in with Erin. But the lights were off and the waiting room was empty, of ghosts and living alike.
I pulled on the door handle. Locked. Malachi the Magnificent was closed, despite the decal in the lower part of the window proclaiming hours that would have indicated otherwise.
I resisted a stupid urge to punch the glass. Without any other way to contact him, I was out of luck if he’d holed up somewhere. Apparently, he’d been really scared yesterday, another piece of this that made no sense.
Putting my hands up to block the light, I tried to get a better look through the window. Most of the chairs were now stacked three or four high, and the receptionist’s desk had been shoved back against the wall. Either Malachi had a very dedicated cleaning team, or he was gone…for good.
And it keeps getting better.
But as I started to move away from the window, I caught a flicker of light. Pressing my hands tighter against the glass to block out more of the sunlight, I searched for what I’d seen.
There. Underneath the door to the private consultation area, territory Alona and I had not managed to breach yesterday, a fine line of light flashed and then dimmed. Like someone was moving around back there.
Malachi.
I considered knocking, hammering on the door in case he hadn’t heard me trying to open it a minute ago, but what were the odds he’d actually open it if he saw me standing there?
At times like this I wished for Alona to be here in spirit form. She’d have slipped through a window on the far end and unlocked the door to let me in.
But maybe there was another way.
One of my responsibilities during my short stint as a busboy at Sam’s Diner had been taking the garbage out to the Dumpsters in the alley. The strip mall on the block behind the diner had its back to us. If I remembered correctly, all the units had doors in the back. And on any given day, most of those doors remained unlocked or even propped open for the ease of employees’ coming and going.
I jogged around to the side of the building and then to the back. As I’d suspected, several of the green doors stood open, and a couple of employees from a cell-phone store stood outside smoking. The door corresponding to Malachi’s location was closed, but a battered blue van was parked in front of it, with the cargo doors open.
Score.
I approached the van cautiously, wary of Erin and afraid Malachi might bolt if he saw me.
But Erin was nowhere to be seen, and Malachi wasn’t in the van, at least as far as I could tell. Hastily filled cardboard boxes dominated the cargo area in the vehicle, and the driver’s seat appeared to be empty.
I stepped away and started toward the back door to Malachi’s storefront. Before I could reach it, though, the door opened, and the man himself emerged, carrying another worn-looking box. Minus his cape and with his hair sticking up in several directions, he looked more like a harried delivery guy than someone with “Magnificent” in his title.
He saw me and froze, the box slipping in his hand, like he might drop it and run. Then his shoulders sagged and he just looked exhausted. “We’re leaving, okay? In a matter of minutes.” He brushed past me, heading toward the van.
“Wait,” I said, hurrying after him. “I just want to talk to you.”
He shoved the box into the van and turned to face me, raking a hand through his already rumpled hair. “Look, we got the message the first time. We shouldn’t have stayed, but no one else came around.” He shrugged helplessly. “We were subtle, careful not to overdo it—”
“I know,” I said. “That’s what I want to ask about.”
He stared at me. “Who are you again?”
“Will Killian.”
He nodded slowly. “I think I met your—”
“My dad?” I ventured.
He nodded. “That was a few years ago,” he said, seemingly trying to piece something together. “You’re not a member of the Order.”
It was a statement, but I could hear the uncertainty in it, the question.
I shook my head. “No.”
“Well,” he said, “that’s a relief.” But he looked almost disappointed, which made no sense. “So, what do you want?”
“Just to talk,” I said again. “There aren’t many of us who can…” I hesitated, glancing at the cell-phone store employees, who were watching us with unabashed curiosity. “Not many who can do what we do.” Assuming he was legit, which I still wasn’t sure about. But if he was, he might have some major skills worth learning. Like how he’d managed to ignore the ghosts in his office so completely.
“No, no.” He shook his head. “If you figured us out, someone else isn’t far behind, and I can’t take that chance.” He slammed the van doors shut and headed for the front of the vehicle.
I followed him. “I didn’t figure anything out. Your name was on this paper my dad left, that’s all.” I pulled the page from my pocket, unfolded it, and held it out to him.
He glanced at it, his face tightening.
“I was hoping you might have some answers,” I said.
He laughed, but it sounded bitter. “Kid, the day I have anything other than questions, you’ll be the first to know.” He pulled open the driver’s-side door and levered himself into the seat.
Kid? He wasn’t even ten years older than me. I’d thought it was bad when the Order had been bent on recruiting me as some kind of prodigy. But it was infinitely worse, as it turned out, to be treated like a nonentity, someone not important enough to talk to. I’d expected that in high school, from people who didn’t understand. But from this guy? No way.
“Look, I don’t need the mysteries of the universe explained,” I said, getting pissed. “I just want to know how you keep from being overwhelmed.” I wanted to ask him about Alona’s situation, too, but I wasn’t stupid. He was a stranger with potentially shady business practices and an overly aggressive spirit guide. Caution seemed like the smarter route, at least until I got a better feel for his character. He might not be a member of the Order, but I couldn’t be sure that he wouldn’t trade information on us to save his own skin.
He shook his head at me again, like I was speaking Japanese despite having been told that he wasn’t fluent. “Don’t you have anyone else to ask about this? Where is your dad?” he asked.
“Dead.” I folded up the page from the phone book and tucked it carefully into my pocket. “Killed himself. Almost four years ago.” Those words came out more readily now, after so much time, but they were never easy to say.
Malachi sat back in his seat, startled. “I’m sorry,” he said after a long pause. “I didn’t know.”
It wasn’t something discussed openly at our house, obviously, and I doubted my mother had given much information publicly, in an obituary or anything, if at all. I didn’t like bringing it up now, feeling like I was somehow using what had happened to get sympathy or manipulate him into giving me answers. But it was, in fact, the truth. I couldn’t go to my father because he was dead. And he was dead because he’d wanted it that way.
So I made myself wait, squelching the
intense urge to say, “Forget it,” and walk away.
Malachi gave a heavy sigh. “All right. He did me a favor once. I suppose I owe you the same.”
Guilt and relief competed for priority, with relief winning out only by a slight margin. “Thanks,” I said.
He stepped down from the van. “Five minutes. That’s it.”
The back room in Malachi’s storefront was decidedly utilitarian and boring, not at all what I’d expected. Walking through the door, I saw a small kitchen/storage area to the right and a tiny bathroom to the left. The main area, where’d Malachi had obviously performed his spirit “consultations,” was a wood-paneled room with cheap white shelving lining the walls and a table and chairs in the center.
There were signs, though, that the decor had once been more exotic, or at least aimed to be. Puddles of purple candle wax stained almost every square inch of the shelving. The metal curtain rod that hung behind the door to the waiting room still held a strand or two of dark beads.
“Crystal ball is already in the van,” Malachi said from behind me, as if all too aware of how mundane the space appeared now.
I couldn’t tell if he was kidding.
He pushed past me and dragged a chair away from the table and gestured for me to sit in it. “Ask. Let’s go.”
He hadn’t been joking about the five-minutes thing, evidently.
“Uh, okay.” I sat down, even though his nervous/twitchy energy was enough to make me want to pace instead. “When I was here the other day, you had me fooled. I would have sworn you were a fake. It was like you didn’t even hear or see the ghosts in the waiting room. Where did you learn to do that? To tune them out like that?”
He gave me a tight smile. “I’m not sure that’s something I can teach.”
“Seriously, you’re going to pull this ‘it’s a trade secret’ bullshit on me? This is my life. I’m just trying to survive.” Before he could respond, I pushed further, struck by a sudden idea. “Is it something Erin does?” She was powerful beyond anything I’d ever seen.
He paled. “Erin. You talked to her?”