“I love you, and I’ll be home as soon as I can,” Will said, and hung up before his mom had a chance to respond.
“She’s just going to call back,” I pointed out, unable to resist.
He pushed the button to turn the ringer off and held the phone up to show me the volume symbol with the line through it. “Satisfied?”
“Yeah, actually,” I said, seeing him through new eyes. Who was this guy, this new assertive version of Will? And why did he have to show up just as I was leaving?
Edmund Harris’s parents lived on a quiet street in a middle-class neighborhood on the north side of Peoria. At seven thirty, the sun was setting, but kids were still out playing in the yards, occasionally chasing balls, dogs, and one another into the street. I slowed down, ignoring the urge to hurry to the Harris driveway. If we were this close, a few more seconds weren’t going to matter.
At least, I hoped not.
I glanced out the window to check house numbers again—we were looking for 1414 and were currently passing 1398—and noticed Alona watching me again. She had her head tipped to one side, blond hair tumbling down over her arm, and she was studying me.
“What?” I asked, resisting the urge to wipe my face.
She shook her head, as if waking herself from a zone-out. “Nothing,” she said quickly, but her cheeks were pinker than normal.
I frowned. “Uh-huh.”
She lifted her chin with a haughty sniff. “I was trying to figure out why my presence hasn’t influenced you more, particularly your wardrobe.”
In spite of myself, I looked down at my dark jeans and T-shirt. “My shirt is gray,” I pointed out. “You’ve expanded my fashion horizons dramatically. I wear three colors now.”
She rolled her eyes, but I caught a glimpse of a smile before she looked away. Nice. In spite of everything, I still liked making her smile. It didn’t happen all that often.
“Hey.” I sat up straighter behind the wheel, staring at a house down the street on the right. I nudged her shoulder. “That has to be it.” I pointed to the perfectly ordinary two-story red house, my heart beating a little faster.
“It doesn’t look like the family home of a criminal mastermind,” Alona said. “Not nearly lair-y enough. And where is the moat?”
“Funny,” I said. But I knew I was right. An all-too familiar battered van sat in the driveway. “He’s here.” I nodded toward the vehicle as we approached, and I slowed down.
“No,” Alona said sharply. “Don’t stop.”
“What?”
“Do you actually pay attention to any of the movies you watch?” She gave me an exasperated look. “We don’t want to spook him.”
“You would be the expert on that,” I muttered.
She stuck her tongue out at me. “Ha-ha. Keep going,” she said.
And much as I didn’t like to admit it, she probably had a point. The subtle approach was definitely better with this guy.
I drove past the house, which was dark with no signs of life, and pulled to the curb about four houses down, where the street curved and would partially hide us from view.
“We still have to walk to the front door,” I said, unbuckling my seat belt, “unless you’re planning some kind of ninja stealth attack.” I opened the door and got out.
She slid out after me, shaking her head. “Don’t be ridiculous. We don’t have to sneak up to the house. It was the car that would have attracted attention.” Alona stood and stretched her arms over her head, and I could have sworn I heard her joints pop. “Think about it. You notice when someone pulls into your driveway. But do you pay attention to people out walking around? No,” she answered for me. “Especially not here.” She nodded to the residents walking their dogs, chasing their kids, and watering their lawns.
She was right again. I raised my eyebrows at her in question.
“I spent years hiding my mom from people,” she said with a shrug. “The only ones who ever caught me by surprise were the neighbors when they walked over.”
Once again I felt a twinge of sympathy for her for the life she’d lived before. No wonder she was so concerned about the Turners. They’d actually been concerned about her in return. Well, what they knew of her.
I felt the last of my anger toward her evaporate. Yes, she’d lied about the light, but lying to protect herself was her primary defense mechanism. Should it have surprised me, then, that in a moment of fear and confusion she’d exaggerated to make sure things worked out to her benefit? And she was trying to change, trying to trust. That was huge for her.
She also maybe had a point in that it had been a little naive of me to assume that she’d been given specific instructions. Nothing about the afterlife, or at least my experience with it, worked quite that precisely. The only thing that seemed to have any definitive impact in the in-between place was action. Certain things a spirit did or said to get closure or resolution would bring the light. Being nasty would—eventually, depending on the spirit’s strength—make you gone.
So…if the light hadn’t wanted Alona to be Ally, perceiving it as a selfish move, maybe she would have disappeared already? She would have just depleted her energy and vanished, leaving Lily’s body as it had been before.
Maybe.
Except Erin was currently holding that position, without, as far as I knew, any ill effects. And the light surely couldn’t have intended for Erin to do what she did, right?
My head hurt just thinking about it. And somewhere in this whole debate, there had to be an element of that free-will thing, points for making the unselfish choice or something, but was it the selfish or unselfish choice for Alona to be Ally? I didn’t know. I couldn’t figure out how the system worked. And maybe that was the point. If you aren’t sure how it works, it’s a lot harder to game it. Okay, maybe. But it made me long for the days when I’d thought it operated as my dad had first told me. Simple. Exact. Which, in retrospect, struck me as the kind of explanation you gave a little kid when you weren’t capable of or didn’t want to give amore detailed and accurate answer. You know, thunder is just two clouds bumping into each other, and that sort of thing.
“Hello?” Alona waved a hand in front of my face. “What’s the plan?”
I slammed my door and put aside the deep philosophical ponderings to consider her question, which was far more relevant to the moment.
If Edmund had actually been able to see ghosts, it might have been easier to send Alona ahead through the walls for the element of surprise. But since he couldn’t, I wasn’t sure that ringing the doorbell wouldn’t be equally effective.
After a moment, I shrugged. “We see if he’s home and try to talk to him.” Actually, more like plead with him to help us, but I couldn’t see any point in being that specific with Alona right now. Maybe it wouldn’t come to that.
I started down the street, and she followed.
“That’s it?” she asked, when she caught up, skepticism heavy in her voice.
“What were you thinking? Hot pokers and broken glass?” I moved to the edge of the sidewalk, forcing Alona into the grass, to let a neighbor with schnauzer pass. He stared at me, the crazy unknown guy in his neighborhood talking to himself. I forced a smile and nodded at him. Whatever, dude. You can think what you like.
“We’re not trying to break him. We want his help,” I whispered to Alona, once the schnauzer guy had passed and we’d moved back to the center of the sidewalk.
“If everything you said is true, I think we might have better luck with the pokers and glass,” she said grimly. “He doesn’t want his sister back. And if we can find her and kick her out of Lily, that’s exactly what will happen. She’ll end up right back at his side.”
I shook my head. “I think it’s more complicated than that. If he wanted her gone, all he had to do was have my dad call in the Order. But he didn’t. And when he thought I was one of them, he was packing up and leaving town to protect her.” I hesitated, going more from a gut sense than from anything Edmund or Erin ha
d said to me. “There’s more to it, whatever happened between them.” Which was going to make dealing with them much trickier.
And that wasn’t the only thing. Approaching the house from this direction, I saw something I’d missed before. In the yard, under the shade of a huge maple tree, was a fairly discreet real estate sign. What was less discreet, however, was a giant foreclosure notice plastered diagonally across it.
I stopped. “Crap.”
“What?” Alona asked, but then she followed my gaze. “Oh.” She shrugged. “So? His van is here. He has to be here.”
Yes, but in what kind of state? Probably not one prone to helping us. He’d been gone from his family for five years—thanks to the ghost we were trying to shove back in his direction—and in that time they’d evidently lost their home.
I sighed. “Come on. Let’s go.”
We made our way toward the house, dodging neighbors and their small children alike.
Up close, the home had a distinctly abandoned look and feel to it. The grass was longer than it should have been. The windows didn’t have any blinds or curtains, creating the look of hopeless eyes gazing back at us. And through the windows, we could see dark squares on the walls where pictures or paintings had been. The rooms, at least the ones I could see, were empty—no furniture visible.
I took a side trip to the driveway to check out the van. It was definitely Edmund’s. Even if I hadn’t recognized its battered appearance, the box full of half-melted purple candles on the passenger seat was a dead giveaway. But he wasn’t in it.
“His?” Alona asked.
“Yeah.”
“Still want to walk up and ring the bell?” She rested her hands on her hips, as if this plan had sucked the whole time instead of just the last ten minutes.
“No,” I admitted. If Edmund was inside, he certainly wasn’t going to be running to answer the door, that was for sure. “You want to—”
I didn’t even have to finish before she’d turned on her heel and marched up the porch stairs to the front door and then through it.
Suddenly, with her absence, I felt more conspicuous hanging around this house that was not mine, like someone was going to start pointing and shouting at me. Which was ridiculous. From the perspective of the living residents here, I’d been alone the whole time. It was just, I guess, that I hadn’t felt it until now.
I ducked my head and tried to look like I belonged here, trying to ignore the uneasy feeling growing in my chest.
Was this going to be what it was like if/when Alona vanished for good? Me, lurking around places alone, feeling even more like a freak just for being by myself in this mess? What if we couldn’t find a way to get Erin out…or if Alona was right and she was no longer strong enough to keep the physical form of Ally going? Or, if she simply chose not to? In the end, it was Alona’s decision, in the best-case scenario. Would she really intentionally choose to live as someone else, knowing it would be forever and that the person she’d been before would be gone for good?
I could safely say the Alona I’d first met would have chosen disappearing over life as Lily—or even Ally—Turner, and I certainly hadn’t made the prospect of changing her mind any easier by being so hard on her changes to Lily’s appearance and the way she was handling her second chance at “life.”
I wanted her to stay, definitely. But when it came down to it, I didn’t want her to be miserable just because I would miss her if she were gone, because my life was better—although, okay, more complicated and sometimes more stressful, too—with her around.
No. I pushed those negative thoughts away. We couldn’t have come this far together for her to just…not be here anymore. We’d figure it out. We had to.
“Hey.”
I looked up to see Alona leaning out through the still-closed door, her hair hanging forward over her shoulders.
“It’s unlocked already. And you should probably get in here.” Her mouth was curved downward in distaste or worry, or maybe both.
Uh-oh.
Then she pulled back inside the house, leaving me no choice but to follow.
The house had that clean but closed-up smell that I associated with the first day of school after summer break. Floor wax and disuse, I guess.
I was standing in a small foyer, with what was probably the living room to my left—the spacing of dents in the whitish carpet indicating that a sofa and chairs had once lived there. A long, narrow hallway led to a kitchen, and an open stairway to the second floor was to my right.
“Up here,” Alona said from a landing midway up the steps. Her expression did not look any less grim than it had moments before, and I wanted to ask why, but that would have meant giving up any element of surprise, which I didn’t want to do yet. Getting through the door without a racket—the stupid real estate lockbox on the door had rattled with every movement—had been tough enough. If Edmund was still unaware that I was here, I wanted to keep it that way for at least a little while longer.
I followed Alona up the stairs as quietly as possible to an open area at the top that also looked like it had once held furniture. Three more empty rooms branched off from this space—probably bedrooms—but I didn’t have to go any farther to find Edmund…or smell him.
He was sitting on the floor, leaning against a small section of wall between two bedroom doors. The fumes pouring off him, and the whiskey bottle clutched in his hand, made my eyes water even from ten feet away. That explained Alona’s reaction, at least. She was probably experiencing flashbacks of her mom.
“Hey,” Edmund said with a goofy grin, lifting his bottle in greeting. “What are you doing here? It’s me, Ed.” Like I’d somehow managed to forget him in the last eight hours.
Alona rolled her eyes.
“I messed up, man,” he continued before I could respond. “I left because of Erin, and everything went to shit.” He waved the half-empty bottle around, the contents sloshing. “The neighbors said my mom got depressed, my dad lost his job, and now…they’re gone. Kicked out of their own house.” He shook his head glumly. “No one knows where they went. And even if they did, they aren’t going to tell me, the crazy son who caused so much trouble and made everybody’s property values bottom out.”
I shook my head, not sure I’d gotten the gist of what he was saying through his muddled speech. What did property values have to do with anything?
I moved closer and knelt down next to him, breathing through my mouth and forcing myself to be patient, when all I really wanted to do was shake him. “It’s not your fault. You were doing what you had to do to survive, and I’m sure they’d understand that if they knew. And we can help you find them, eventually. But first I need you to tell me—”
“Nah, man, you don’t get it.” His head flopped from side to side in a poor imitation of voluntary movement. “I was there. I could have stopped it.”
Except that made no sense. The whole point was that he hadn’t been here, and that’s why everything had fallen apart. Evidently, he’d already gotten to the part of this drunken excursion where he’d lost his grip on reality. Wonderful.
Alona frowned and knelt next to me. “At the party? On the roof?”
“What are you talking about?” I asked her.
“Ask him,” she insisted and nudged me hard in the ribs when I hesitated.
I glared at her, but repeated after her dutifully, “At the party? On the roof?”
Ed looked up, his gaze glassy, but it was, at least, direct eye contact for the first time in this conversation.
He leaned forward with a sudden intensity in his expression, and I edged back slightly in case that was his I’m-going-to-throw-up-right-here-and-now face. “No,” he whispered, like he was revealing some big secret.
I glanced over at Alona—it was my turn to roll my eyes at her—but she wasn’t paying attention to me. “Where were you?” she asked Ed.
With a sigh, I repeated the question aloud, not waiting for her to jab me with her elbow again. My ribs still ach
ed from the last time.
“On campus. In my dorm room,” he said in that same hushed voice, and tears spilled over from his watering eyes down his cheeks. “She wanted me to go with her to that stupid costume party, expand our social horizons, whatever that means. She was nervous about going alone.”
And then it clicked. He wasn’t talking about his parents;he was talking about his sister and her death.
Alona gave me a triumphant look.
“We fought about it, and she went alone. I was just so tired of doing everything together.” He thumped his head back against the wall, and the bottle in his slack grip tipped. If he hadn’t already drunk more than half, the whiskey would have spilled out onto the carpet. “The same college, the same dorm, the same major in Econ. And she was changing, becoming this person I didn’t know. Contact lenses, different hairstyle—”
“How about just a hairstyle in general?” Alona muttered, eyeing the out-of-control curls on the top of Ed’s head.
“—ditching her jeans and sweatshirts for clothes like the sorority girls were wearing, hanging out with dickhead frat guys…and she wanted me to change, too. Telling me who to talk to, what to wear. Nothing all that different from what she’d always done, but suddenly I was just sick of it. I didn’t like who she was becoming—all fake and plasticky—and I didn’t want to be a part of it. But if she reinvented herself without me, then who was I, you know?” He let go of the bottle to scrub at his face, and liquor flowed out, staining the carpet. “I was…It was confusing. I was trying to work it out, figure out what to do. So I told her no that night, probably for the first time ever. She was pissed, but I thought, It’s only one night—no big deal. Instead, it was everything.” He drew his knees up to his chest and rested his forehead on them. “It was just a stupid party,” he said, his voice muffled.