“Well, thanks for the heads-up,” I mumbled, practically leaping down the last few steps.
I moved away from Ruth as quickly as I could, seeking out the shortest path through the church parking lot to the woods surrounding it. I hadn’t made it more than a few feet toward the trees when Ruth called out after me.
“We’re coming for you in two days, when the moon is waning and our banishing spells are their strongest. So be ready.”
Without warning, a stabbing sensation shot through my head. Involuntarily, I hunched my shoulders and bent my neck against the pain. I whipped my head from side to side, uselessly trying to shake off the pain.
Then, like some awful companion to the ache at my temples, a blur of images filled my mind. The images moved at such a dizzying speed across my vision, I couldn’t make out their details. They flashed, relentless and brutal in my head, until I felt an actual wave of nausea rise up within me.
The force of the sensation was so disorienting that I stumbled, tripping over my own feet and falling to my hands and knees on the ground. My hands slapped hard against the graveled parking lot, and, suddenly, I could feel the sharp bite of the gravel. It cut into the skin of my palms and knees, breaking through my ghostly numbness at the worst possible time.
At that moment the pain dissipated—so quickly that I almost wondered whether I’d experienced it at all. Still bent over, I shook my head in confusion. I barely had time to ask myself what could have caused the pain before I heard a soft, feminine laugh behind me.
At that moment I knew exactly who had hurt me.
Pushing myself up from the gravel I could no longer feel, I didn’t acknowledge Ruth’s earlier warnings, or the cruel headache. At least not outwardly. Instead, I sprinted for the woods, waiting until I crossed into them before I broke into violent shudders of fear.
UNCORRECTED E-PROOF—NOT FOR SALE
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Chapter
Seventeen
Long after Ruth disappeared back into the church, I paced among the trees just along the edge of the parking lot. Ruth could probably still see me from a church window if she wanted to, but I wasn’t really thinking rationally enough to care.
In fact, for a while I couldn’t think at all. I could only feel the phantom clench of terror in my stomach, could only hear my wild gulps for breath. Eventually, though, I calmed down enough to try and make my brain function again.
Once freed from blind terror, however, I couldn’t help but imagine all the alternate futures I had in store: exorcism—and obviously, a painful one—at the hands of the ladies of Wilburton Baptist Church; entrapment in the dark netherworld forest, courtesy of a dead guy in skintight pants; or employment as some sort of grim reaper for the dead guy and his evil masters.
And, of course, the worst aspect of each possible future: no Joshua in a single one of them.
“I’m doomed,” I said aloud with a hysterical giggle.
“And why exactly are you doomed?”
At the unexpected voice, I spun around, my hands in defensive claws. A quick scan of black hair and midnight-blue eyes, however, made all my anger, if not my fear, evaporate.
“Joshua, I’m so sorry.” My arms dropped to my sides in defeat. “I thought it would help, but I just ended up making things a million times worse.”
“It’s okay, Amelia. It’s going to be okay.” He kept his voice low, soothing.
“How?” I asked, the hysterical edge creeping back into my voice. “How’s it going to be okay? How do you know I’m not evil and need to be destroyed? I don’t even know, and I’m me!”
“Because I just do, that’s all.”
Joshua stood with one foot on the asphalt of the parking lot, one on the edge of the grass that led into the woods. With his arms crossed casually over his chest, he didn’t look the least bit concerned. When he gave me a reassuring smile, the ache in my chest stirred slightly. But I had to ignore it, for now.
“You have no idea how much that means to me, Joshua, honestly. But even with what we found out about my home and my family, I still know so little about myself—too little to know where I belong or what I deserve.”
“What do mean, ‘deserve’?”
I dropped my head into my hands. “Basically, your grandmother just told me I deserve to go to . . . hell, I guess; and if I didn’t, she and her friends would send me there. In two days.”
“Wait—what?”
I sighed, still not looking up at Joshua. “Ruth and her little coven are going to exorcise me in two days.”
“No, they aren’t,” Joshua growled.
My head shot up from my hands. Before I could ask him how he intended to stop them, Joshua lurched forward and closed the space between us. He leaned over me, locking my gaze with those strange-colored, beautiful eyes of his.
“Come with me,” he murmured. “Now.”
I tried to focus, tried to ignore the intensity of his stare. “Where? Why?”
“To my house. We’re going to try and figure out a few things about you.”
“But Ruth said—”
“Screw what Ruth said,” he interjected. “I live in that house too, and I say you’re always welcome. More than welcome, actually.”
“Oh.”
A number of emotions warred inside me: fear, anger, uncertainty. But now, a jittery kind of happiness warred right beside them. Joshua just had that effect on me.
“So,” he said, holding out his hand. “Want to come home with me?”
I smiled and stretched out my hand to his.
During our car ride, I described my conversation with Ruth in greater detail. I finished the story just as we pulled into Joshua’s driveway and he killed the engine. Joshua stared silently out at the Mayhews’ garden.
Then, frowning, he rested one arm on the steering wheel and turned toward me. “I think I need to apologize for my grandma being such a—”
“Concerned relative?” I offered before Joshua could say something he’d regret.
Joshua just grinned, easily seeing through my effort at diplomacy.
“Concerned.” He laughed. “Right.” He leaned over me to open my door and then leaned back, lingering for a moment near me.
“Promise me something?” Joshua asked, still very close to me. I simply nodded, too befuddled by his proximity to say anything even remotely clever.
“Promise we’re just going to enjoy tonight? And not worry about Ruth?”
I grimaced. “She’s going to make that pretty hard on us, isn’t she?”
Joshua shook his head. “She’ll be at the church almost all night. After we make it past the rest of my family, it’s just you and me.”
I felt a slight flush at the thought. I didn’t waste more than a second wondering how a dead girl could feel so warm. How could I care, honestly, when anticipating an entire night with him?
“Let’s go,” I managed to say. Joshua nodded; and quickly we were both out of the car, walking through the garden toward the porch. Crossing the upper deck, Joshua came to the back door first and opened it for me.
As I passed through the open doorway, he pressed his hand against the small of my back to guide me forward. The mere pressure of his hand played havoc with the speed of my breath, but I only had a few more steps to enjoy the sensation. Within seconds we had stepped into the Mayhew kitchen.
Like the last time I saw it, the kitchen bustled with activity. To my immense relief, Ruth hadn’t joined her family for dinner, as Joshua had predicted.
To our left, Joshua’s father and Jillian stood over a half-constructed salad, laughing. To our right, Joshua’s mother hunched over a pot, pouring what looked like an enormous amount of pasta into a serving bowl. She set down the pot and absentmindedly ran a hand through her hair, a gesture I recognized well from her son. Then she crossed over to the kitchen island and began to sort through a small stack of dishes, arranging
them for the dinner table.
“Just three plates tonight, Mom,” Joshua said by way of announcing himself.
“Oh?” She sounded curious but not offended by her son’s request. “Not joining us?”
“Loads of homework.” Joshua shrugged, and gave me a covert wink.
“I’m not the only one who has to do the dishes after dinner, am I?” Jillian whined, looking first to her distracted mother, then to her father’s back. When both of her parents ignored her pleas, Jillian gave Joshua a small sneer and turned back to the salad, picking angrily at a few protruding leaves.
Joshua ignored his sister and crossed the kitchen to swat his father playfully on the arm.
“You know,” Joshua said in a light tone, “they’ve invented this magical thing called a dishwasher. I hear it’s life changing.”
His father chuckled. “Yeah. Her name’s Jillian.”
“Not funny,” Jillian protested, still facing the salad. With the palm of her hand, she shoved the bowl away from her. She spun back around toward her family, opening her mouth in what would inevitably be some petulant comment.
She closed it with an audible pop, however, when her gaze landed on the space where I was standing—on the space that should have appeared empty to her.
Like yesterday, her gaze didn’t fall on me. Not exactly. But she still stared in my direction and looked as if she were trying, with difficulty, to peer through a heavy screen of smoke. Still without the benefit of her grandmother’s powerful sight, Jillian’s gaze didn’t pierce me . . . couldn’t harm me. Yet it made me nervous, and caused me to cast my eyes around the kitchen in the fear Ruth would burst into the room at any moment.
As Joshua had promised, however, Ruth didn’t come barging into the room, shouting threats and dropping me to my knees in pain. And eventually, Jillian gave up the effort of peering in my direction. She turned back toward her brother, wearing only a slightly disconcerted expression.
“Nothing in this house is fair,” she complained. Joshua began to laugh, which would undoubtedly have angered Jillian further had their mother’s sharp command not silenced the entire room.
“Enough!”
Everyone, including me, turned toward the kitchen island where Rebecca Mayhew still stood. She nodded first to Jillian, then to Joshua.
“You, finish the salad. You, get upstairs and avert this crisis, before I make you.”
With a groan of protest, Jillian spun back around to the counter and began furiously rearranging the salad, muttering something about fairness under her breath. Joshua gave his mother a quick salute and then ducked, as if to dodge the displeased glare she aimed at him. Behind us, I heard his father choke back a laugh.
When Rebecca directed the glare at her husband, Joshua used his parents’ temporary distraction to catch my eye. He twitched his head to another archway on the opposite side of the kitchen. I took the gesture to mean we were leaving.
With as much grace as I could muster, I wove my way between Jillian and her father, careful not to touch either of them. Almost without thought, I paused next to Jillian, waiting for . . . what, I wasn’t sure. When her eyes didn’t flicker again in my direction, I crossed to the archway through which Joshua had already passed and turned to look at the kitchen one last time.
Rebecca had returned to setting the table, one hand continually brushing through her pretty hair. Jeremiah stood at the counter, staring down at his daughter with a surprising amount of patience as she finished the salad. When she began muttering angrily again, he picked a small piece of lettuce from the salad bowl and flung it at her. Jillian glared at him indignantly, but after only a beat, her expression softened. She smiled wryly and, without breaking eye contact, plucked the piece of lettuce from her shoulder and flung it back at him.
I smiled at them all and then gave them an impulsive little wave.
In that moment I wanted to join them so badly, it hurt. Aside from the ever-threatening presence of Ruth, the Mayhews represented something I craved, something I’d so obviously lost.
A family.
I pictured my own mother, sitting in that tiny house by herself; I pictured my father, wandering lost in the darkness of the netherworld. As I continued to watch the Mayhews, a melancholy fog started to sneak over me. My thoughts, then, were as sudden as they were dark.
If Eli gets his way, I told myself, you’ll never see these people again unless you’re trying to ruin their afterlives. And if Ruth is right, you’ve got less than forty-eight hours left with Joshua, anyway. So, dead girl, you can totally forget about joining his family; you weren’t even around to keep your own together.
I shook my head, hard, as if the movement could dispel the bitter thoughts. I didn’t want to think about those things tonight, and I’d promised Joshua I wouldn’t. So I spun around through the archway, eager for Joshua’s face to clear away the sadness for a while.
As I’d hoped, Joshua waited for me, leaning against a wall between the arch and a steep staircase. With a playful smile, he pushed himself off the wall and then crept closer to me. I kept quiet and still, although the rational part of my brain knew I didn’t have to.
Now only a foot away from me, Joshua leaned in, very close to my face, and hovered there for a second. After a few deliciously tense seconds, Joshua leaned to one side.
Though I couldn’t feel his breath on my ear, I closed my eyes and imagined I could. Warm and feathery, brushing along my skin. For the first time today, I shivered happily.
“Would you be offended,” he whispered, “if I asked you to come up to my bedroom with me?”
I opened my eyes and tried not to choke. I had no idea about my past life, but I was more than sure a boy hadn’t asked me up to his room since my death. Of course, there was a first time for everything. So I answered in the steadiest voice I could.
“That doesn’t offend me. And, yes, I’ll come up. But just this once; don’t expect it to become a habit or anything.”
“I wouldn’t count on it if I were you.” Joshua moved back and flashed me a wicked grin.
I rolled my eyes, all the while telling myself, Don’t let your jaw drop. Don’t giggle. Just be cool.
“Let’s go, Joshua,” I sighed, trying my hardest to project an aura of total nonchalance.
He laughed and turned to climb the stairs. Whatever amount of “cool” I demanded from myself, it wasn’t enough to stop me from shivering once more as I followed him.
UNCORRECTED E-PROOF—NOT FOR SALE
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Chapter
Eighteen
The first step into his bedroom transformed me into a mass of giddy, spastic fidgeting. Although Joshua left the door slightly ajar, the whole room was a heavy black except for my creepy glow. So while Joshua fumbled around, I forced my hands together behind my back and prayed that my nervous squirming wasn’t visible in the dark.
I heard a click, and the dim glow of lamplight bathed the room. Joshua stood across the bedroom from me, his hand on a small glass lamp that looked like an old miner’s lantern. He looked up at me with an expectant smile, but his expression quickly turned amused when he saw my stance. I stood with my hands nearly glued together behind me, rocking ever so slightly on the balls of my feet.
I flashed him a tense smile. Likely, an unconvincing one.
“You all right?” he asked.
“Yeah.” For some reason my answer came out as a high-pitched yip. I instinctively started coughing to cover the sound, and Joshua burst into laughter.
“You know, Amelia, I don’t think I believe you.”
“It’s just . . . it’s, well, my first time in a boy’s room.” Then I shrugged in a little gesture of qualification. “I think.”
He laughed again; and, in just a few short steps, he crossed the room and wrapped his arms around me. He laid his hands upon mine, which were still clutched behind my back, and pulled me to hi
m until we were pressed against each other.
We were now as close as we had been when we’d kissed. Maybe even closer. My whole body felt as if it might explode, gloriously and uncontrollably ignited. My breath quickened into a near pant; and when it did so, something entirely unexpected occurred.
I breathed in heavily and felt my head swim from the suddenness of an actual, physical sensation.
Scent. A fantastic scent—sweet and musky—rushed at me. Not delicate, but appealing nonetheless. And vaguely familiar.
It took me a moment to realize the scent was the same one I’d encountered earlier today when I’d nearly collided with Joshua in the cafeteria.
I stared up at him in delight. His answering smile was surprisingly shy. Gently, he unclasped his hands from mine and released me.
Immediately, the scent disappeared. I dragged in another heavy breath. Nothing. Empty. Void. I exhaled slowly, trying to retain the memory of the scent while also trying not to let my breath sound like the disappointed sigh it threatened to become.
Luckily, Joshua didn’t notice. He leaned back against one of the posts of his bed and crossed his arms against his chest. Once again he looked expectant, perhaps waiting on my assessment of his room.
I clutched my hands, this time less tightly, and began to look around me.
As one might expect in so old a house, Joshua’s bedroom was small, but cozy. The room was mostly dominated by his dark, four-poster bed. Across from me, a large window faced south, looking out onto the night sky. Beneath the glass, a broad window seat, covered in inviting blue cushions, beckoned.
Then there was the most striking feature of the room: the columns of black, wooden bookshelves that lined the walls. The bookshelves filled the room so completely that I couldn’t see an inch of wall space except for a bit above the bed and a narrow border around the window.
Despite the amount of furniture in it, the room felt strangely uncluttered. Its only real disorder came from within the bookshelves. The shelves were literally overflowing. They were lined with rows upon rows of books, then books stacked on top of the rows, then more books in front of the rows. Leather-bound leaned against paperback. Creased and much-loved covers sat next to fresh, ready-to-read ones. A lifetime’s worth of books crammed into the room of a teenage boy.