“Skyla!” Gage’s voice resonates through my bones, through each molecule I’m comprised of, until I land square in front of the shifty Sector in the Transfer.
23
Devastation
“You’re not funny,” I say, moving past Marshall in the glossy white hall of the Transfer while on the lookout for the hatchet queen herself.
“I believe the words you used as you entered my home this evening were trick or treat.” His caramel hair glows in the light, and I’m not sure if that has anything to do with the price of tea in the ethereal plane.
“Oh, so you decide to go for the trick just as Gage and I were about to indulge in a little treat.” I poke my head in the lab, but there’s nary a sign of Ezrina’s dowager’s hump.
“It seems the entire exercise was lost upon you. I, my love, am the treat.”
“Ha!” I yelp in his face a little louder than anticipated. “By the way, how was your party?” I pause from my hunt and peck efforts a moment to take him in. He looks no worse for wear. There’s no sign of external trauma, no bedhead, no claw marks—at least anywhere I can see—not one hickey to sexually incriminate him.
“You think I slept with her.” His cheek rides up the side as if he were relishing this.
“Did you?” I stop breathing in the event he paints a picture that I’ll need to grate out of my mind with a razor.
“No, Skyla. I’m perfectly chaste. The only place these lips have been this evening is on your person. And you, Ms. Messenger? Can you say the same?” He tips into me, ready to roll his eyes if I deny it. “I thought so.”
“All right, so I’m not perfect. But I do know something about that kiss you gave me tonight felt final. It’s like what you said seeped into my brain, and I innately knew everything would change.” I fan my arms out. “But, I feel fantastically normal. Weird huh?”
He shakes his head, not amused in the least by my fantastical weirdness.
“Come, let’s get this journey underway. I’ve guests lingering in secret places.”
“If by ‘secret places’ you mean Demetri’s then you’re right. Your entire pussy cat posse escaped the asylum for the night.”
“No, love, those were his. To each his own or something to that effect. He’s got another mirror, another century all together.” He picks up his pace, and I struggle to stay by his side.
“Those things were crawling out of that mirror in your living room. I saw them myself.” I pull him back by the elbow before he leads us out of Ezrina’s lair and into the dark armpit of the Transfer itself. “Marshall, my mother said the only things you could pull out were things you feared. Are you afraid of those ladies?” Their scantily clad bodies rush to mind, and I’m quick to blink them away.
“Heavens no.” He gives a slow blink. “Perhaps I feared one thing.”
“What?” My heart thumps. Marshall fears nothing. This might be delicious.
He pinches his lips together for a moment. “Rejection.”
“Rejection?” The exuberance I had just a moment ago deflates to nothing. “Marshall.” I step in, touching my hand to his chest. “She just wasn’t the one.” I shake my head. I’m despondent at the thought of my favorite Sector nursing a broken heart.
“I know that now.” He nods into me in all sincerity. “You are.”
“I am.” I give a soft nod. It’s strange to know this, to live in three alternate realities all at once. I desperately need my mother to solve the riddle of the minx, me being the little minx.
I swallow hard. This night, this life I’m living, is on some matrimonial loop. I’m willing to bet someone got their wires crossed in the destination station, and now I’m stuck with an overflow of spouses.
I press my lips together, glancing out at the dark, velvet night. The giant, haunted mansion that Demetri replicated on Paragon stands erect in the distance.
“What’s going on? Why are you taking me out here? Does this have to do with Logan or Ezrina’s secret?” Marshall mentioned he could solve them both for me in one fell swoop.
“No, but it has everything to do with Mr. Harrison and his insatiable need to introduce the natives to the twenty-first century by way of his groin.”
“Ellis!” A scream gets locked in my throat. “He’s in there isn’t he?” I know exactly which room is reserved for humans, so I don’t waste a second.
I speed through the crowd of women in bustles, men with their evening suits and disgustingly long, handlebar mustaches.
“Ellis!” His name rips from me like a battle cry as I push open the wrought iron gates of this hell and run up the haunted porch. Gossamer wafts from the corner in long dusty scarves. The door is locked—jammed or both, but not even my Celestra strength can let me inside. I back up before launching my foot into the door, and the wood splits. The oversized lacquered door glides open as if it were never locked to begin with. It’s cool inside. The slight scent of Granny Smith apples enlivens my senses as I run through the sinister halls. A perennial ball is taking place in the grand room with corpses in dresses with their skeletal remains, translucent bodies swirling in a frenetic circle. Then there is the ragtime music. The same insane tune from Demetri’s haunted soirée rattles and pounds through my body like an irregular heartbeat.
I run down corridor after corridor until I come upon the familiar breathing door. It puffs and hisses like an expiring tire, expanding and retracting, until it starts the whole process all over again.
“Ellis!” I pound my fists over the swollen belly of the wood. “Ellis, it’s me, Skyla!” I twist the knob, fully expecting a fight, but the door slips opens under my hostile command.
Here I am, again. Same haunted suite I’ve been in so many times before. It’s cloistered, smaller than I remember with a velvet couch and…a pair of high heels?
A groan emits from the other side of the sofa, and I walk up gingerly behind it.
“Swear to God, Harrison, if that’s you messing with some dead chick, while all of West moans for you like pigeons, I’m going to freak out on your shiny white ass.” I peer over the frame of the sofa and see Ellis’s beautiful, beautiful face. He gives a nervous wave as the redhead he’s with buries her lips in his neck.
“Ellis!” I want to dive down and hug him, but he’s sort of being hugged rather aggressively at the moment.
“OK. Party’s over.” He rolls her off, disembarking her from their adventure rather unceremoniously. “My ride’s here.” He jumps into a pair of grey slacks that I’m pretty sure don’t belong to Ellis or anyone in our century. “Got to go, babe.”
“No!” She cries out as if he’s leaving her to die in a fire.
“Yes.” I yank Ellis out of the demonic dorm before pulling him into a long, rocking hug. “I’m so sorry, Ellis. I swear I’ll never even point a knife in your direction again. I’ll make all of the sandwiches you ever want with extra avocado and everything. I’ll even face five you ten times a day if you’ll let me.”
“Start now.”
I peck a kiss on the side of his bristly face before pulling his shirt up and touching my hand to his bare midsection.
“You’ve got a nasty scar,” I say, horrified that the clean slice I produced is still etched in his skin like some indelible memory.
“It’s cool. Turns out chicks dig that shit. Told ‘em it was a war injury. And that got me twice as much action than I’ve ever scored at home.” He spikes an imaginary touchdown.
“Glad to see you’re feeling better.” I wrap an arm around his waist as we make our way back toward the grand room.
“Did I miss much?”
“Nope. It’s still senior year. Halloween night. Demetri threw the boringest party ever.”
“I’d better get back in the swing of things. Get ready to rock the house, girl. I’m switching things up this year.”
“I’m pretty sure I don’t want to know what that means.” Last year Ellis hosted topless wrestling in his pool, and, of course, the skanks from East were quick to com
ply.
“Anyone miss me?” He runs his fingers through his sandy hair, shagging out his waves.
“Are you kidding?” I lean up on my toes and plant another kiss over his cheek. “Everybody in their right mind missed you, including Chloe.” I don’t dare tell him that his parents never once asked about him. “You’re like family to me, Ellis. We’re always going to have a special bond.” Even if it does have to do with a felony.
“Yeah, you’re kind of like a sister to me, but I’d totally bang you if the opportunity presented itself.”
“I’ll pass on the incest. I’ve got enough tag-team testosterone in my life to outfit three of me.”
We exit out the front and step into the cool night air as a blue fog filters into the front yard.
“The throne room was pretty awesome though, right?” he asks as we walk right out the gate.
“Yeah”—I take up Ellis’s hand before glancing back at the pristine mansion with its glittering windows that hold a ruched taffeta curtain in each one—“the throne room made everything we went through worth the ride.”
Ellis leans in and dots the tip of my nose with a kiss. “Remember that, Skyla. All of the bullshit of life evaporates when you’re standing in the presence of the Master. All pain is erased. The only people grief belongs to is those that remain on earth.”
He says it so calm and composed that for a moment I wonder if this is Ellis at all.
“Now get back in there.” He nods toward the tunnel leading to Ezrina’s lair. “I’ve got a cliffside to run through.”
“How did you know I needed to get back in there?”
“Because I know what you’re looking for, and believe me if you found it, we wouldn’t be having this conversation.” He looks over at the granite wall and gets into position like’s about to run a race. “I gotta blow some smoke.”
“Hey! You knew how to get back all along!”
“Sure did. But I was wanted here—hell, I was needed here. It’s nice to be wanted sometimes.”
Marshall, Logan, and Gage waft through my mind like ghosts. I want them all, greedy as a miser.
“I guess it is nice to be wanted.”
I watch as Ellis starts in on a sprint before breaking out into his Countenance stride and warping into the sheer granite wall that looms in the distance.
Ellis Harrison is headed back to Paragon.
We all survived that damn war—every single one of us.
***
“Marshall?” I call as I reenter the long stretch of halls that Ezrina roams at any given hour, with the exception of this one apparently. “Ezrina?”
I pick up my pace until I hit her main lab where she once imprisoned me in a bathtub to drain me of my lifeblood—good times. I make a face as I head toward the Count aquarium.
Maybe they’re loading and unloading the dead? Coop mentioned something about Laken retaining her memory, which, in turn, implies that others do not. Maybe that’s what’s wrong with Logan? He’s having some brain malfunction because the resurrection he underwent is experiencing a hiccup? Maybe all he needs is a good dose of mouth to mouth from yours truly, and he’s good to go.
A blue glow emits from ahead as I enter the carpeted hall. I round out the corridor and enter into the watery graveyard full of hundreds of floating Counts.
“Weird to be here on Halloween of all nights,” I murmur as I peruse the newest selections. It turns out Ezrina stores the corpses according to arrival.
“It is weird to be here on Halloween night,” a familiar girl’s voice purrs from the next row. I recognize that nasty growl. I turn the corner and see her long, brown legs perched on a stool, that familiar dark mane restored to its former length—wicked smile, evil eyes—Chloe.
“Fancy meeting you here,” I chirp. I couldn’t care less where Chloe spent her high holy day. “Did you finally get tired of being rejected by Gage and decide to troll the gallery of death for a new prospective boyfriend? Perhaps someone desperate who needs you just to survive? I mean you’ve got to figure they’d be mighty grateful for a second lease on life, but hey, who are we kidding? Nobody’s desperate enough to want to spend five minutes with you, Chloe, let alone a lifetime. I bet, if given you, or another decade marinating in Drano, I think they’d choose to chug blue lattes a little bit longer.”
She sags with disappointment as if she and I both know I could have done better in the comeback department. I never was good at launching a zinger.
“I’m not here trolling for ‘boyfriends,’ Skyla. I believe that would be you.” A satisfied smile stretches across her face, causing my chest to palpitate unnaturally. Chloe, on the other hand, does know how to launch a zinger, and everything about what she’s just said unnerves me. “I’m here mourning a friend.” She stands, staring wide-eyed at the elongated tube behind me. She’s mesmerized by what she sees, and I’m terrified to turn around.
This is it. This is the moment Marshall said would change my life forever. Facing in this direction, I’m still a girl, but once I spin around, I’ll cross that invisible threshold and be forced to grow up forever.
“I killed him, Skyla.” Chloe’s voice cracks with grief. “And now we can never bring him back.”
I spin slow on my heels, so desperately afraid of what I might see.
A body is suspended in the bright blue vial, a boy donning one of Ezrina’s complimentary wetsuits. I trace him with my gaze from the feet up, riding my eyes over him slow as Moses. It’s the hastily stitched together neckline that I see first, those all too familiar X’s that tread across his skin like an army of oversized ants.
Then I see it, the beautiful face of the first boy I ever loved—Logan.
I take in a breath and step toward the tank.
“God,” I whisper, lying my hand against the cool of the glass.
My knees give way as a harrowing cry rips from my lungs like some primitive tool to let the entire world in on this great misery.
“Why?” I howl it over and over like a simpleton’s refrain.
Tears fall like rivers, hot and searing, setting my entire body on fire. I wish I would burn. I wish I would die right alongside him—join him in paradise with my father.
Gage had prophesied a long life for Logan, but none of that would come true now. Perhaps it was his old life and this one combined that gave him the requisite number of years to qualify for such an absurd vision, but at this moment, in this agony, it wasn’t enough time. It wasn’t nearly enough time for Logan and me.
I sink to the floor, melting from the pain. Chloe comes in and leans me over her shoulder. I sob hard, bone rattling tears—torrents of grief explode from my being. There could never be enough tears, enough violent sobs, enough loud, harrowing cries to accurately convey what I’m feeling. It would take an entire lifetime to properly mourn Logan Oliver the way he deserved, and even then it wouldn’t be enough.
“You did this.” I wrap my hands around her neck and give a hard squeeze in an effort to mollify my tears. “What in the hell did Logan ever do to you?” I shriek in her face while choking the living shit out of her.
She pries my hands apart, gagging for air.
“Ms. Messenger!” Marshall picks me up and holds me back as if separating us from a common street fight.
“She did this!” I jump. “Chloe, you bitch. You’re damn right, you’re not going to be here come June because you will have died a slow painful death long before that.”
Ezrina scuttles over, her eyes bulging like a toad’s. So this was her secret—harboring the love of my life in a congealed membrane.
“Ezrina, we need to open the tube. I can breathe into him. It helped Laken, and it can help Logan. We can give him a full transfusion right now,” I say, struggling to break free from Marshall’s arms.
“No.” She shakes her head, full with remorse. Ezrina steps in toward Logan and bows her head. “Gone.”
“What do you mean, gone?” I demand. Marshall relaxes just enough for me to escape his grasp. “
This isn’t Logan’s first rodeo. Marshall’s here. We can make sure his spirit gets into the right body this time.”
“I’m sorry, love.” Marshall places his hand tenderly over my shoulder. “It only works once. He’s no longer with us, Skyla.”
The floor shifts beneath my feet. My stomach lurches like I might be sick as I try to absorb this horrific news.
“What happened, Chloe?” I glare over at her. “You didn’t think hacking his head off in Ahava was enough? You needed to replicate the effort on Halloween?”
“No.” She shakes her head. “That’s not what happened.” She steps toward Logan’s precious body, and I want to beat her with a baseball bat for simply looking in his direction. “I loved him. I never hated, Logan. If I ever felt a ray of genuine affection it was from him.”
“Logan said he almost loved you—that he wanted to. He gifted you that protective hedge you wear like a trophy, but your heart—all of your lust was geared toward Gage. You were using Logan just like you use everybody else.” My adrenaline spikes just being near her. I’m pretty sure she’s not getting out of the Transfer alive tonight.
“He almost loved me?” It comes from her weak as she plants her hand over his watery grave.
“Don’t you touch him!” I launch her into the wall of overgrown vials so fast and hard they knock over like dominos, and a wash of blue liquid floods the floor. Blood erupts all over Chloe’s arms from the flying shards, but I really don’t give a shit.
Ezrina growls like a cat on fire before speeding over to clean the mess.
“Skyla”—Marshall wraps his arms around me from behind as we gaze up at Logan—“he didn’t die this evening—he never came back from the war.”
“What?” I step into Logan disbelieving.
I blink up at the body in a whole new light. His hair wafts slowly in the thickened liquid, his eyes partially opened.
“Logan never came back from the war?” It tumbles from my lips like treason, like hypocrisy. “That can’t be possible. Both Gage and I have spent time with Logan since then.”