After we got back to our side of the Otherworld—Harlon Jameses and all—I didn’t go home. I left
Aunt Prue at her house and walked the streets—more like the rows—of His Garden of Perpetual
Peace.
Peace wasn’t exactly what I was feeling.
I stopped in front of Wate’s Landing. It looked every bit the same as when I left, and I knew
my mom was inside. I wanted to talk to her. But there were other things I had to do first.
I sat down on the front steps, closing my eyes.
“Carry me home.”
What was it?
To remember. And be remembered.
Ducite me domum.
Ut meminissem.
Ut in memoria tenear.
I remember Lena.
Not the water tower.
What came before.
I remember Ravenwood.
Let Ravenwood remember me.
Let Ravenwood—
Carry me—
I was lying in the dirt in front of Ravenwood, half-stuck beneath a rosebush and an overgrown
camellia hedge. I had crossed again—and this time, all on my own.
“I’ll be damned.” I laughed, relieved. I was getting pretty good at this whole being-dead thing.
Then I practically ran up the old veranda steps. I had to see if Lena had gotten the message—
my message. My only problem was that no one bothered to do the crossword in The Stars and
Stripes, not even Amma. I had to find a way to get them to look at that paper, if they hadn’t already.
Lena wasn’t in her room, and she wasn’t at my grave either. She wasn’t in any of the usual
places we used to go.
Not in the lemon grove or the crypt, where I’d died the first time.
I even looked in Ridley’s old room, where Liv was asleep in Ridley’s creaking four-poster bed.
I was hoping she’d be able to sense that I was there with her Ethan Wate–ometer. No such luck.
That’s when I realized it was nighttime in Gatlin, the real Gatlin, and there was absolutely no
correlation between time that passed in the Otherworld and Mortal time. I felt like I’d only been
gone a few hours—and here it was, the middle of the night.
I didn’t even know what day it was, come to think of it.
Worse yet, when I leaned over Liv’s face in the moonlight, it looked like she had been crying. I
felt guilty, since there was a strong possibility I was the reason for the tears, unless she and John
had had a fight.
But that was unlikely, because when I looked down, I was standing right in the middle of John
Breed’s chest. He was curled up next to the bed, on the worn pink shag carpeting.
Poor guy. As many times as he had screwed up in the past, he was good to Liv, and for a
while he believed he was the One Who Is Two. It’s hard to hold a grudge against a guy who tried
to give his life to save the world. If anyone understood that, it was me.
It wasn’t his fault the world wouldn’t have him.
So I stepped off his chest as quickly as I could, and vowed to be a little more careful where I
put my feet in the future. Not that he’d ever know.
As I moved through the rest of the house it seemed completely vacant. Then I heard the
crackling of a fireplace and followed the sound. At the bottom of the stairs, straight off the front
hall, I found Macon sitting in his cracked leather chair by the fire. True to form, where there was
Macon, there was also Lena. She was sitting at his feet, leaning against the ottoman. I could smell
the Sharpie she was writing with. Her notebook lay open on her lap, but she was barely looking at
it. Drawing circles over and over, until the page looked like it was ripping apart.
She wasn’t crying—far from it.
She was plotting.
“It was Ethan. It had to be. I could feel him there with us, like he was standing right next to his
grave.”
Had she seen the crossword? Maybe that was why she was so fired up. I looked around the
study, but if she’d read the paper, there was no sign of it. A stack of old newspapers filled a brass
bin next to the fireplace; Macon used them for kindling. I tried to lift a single page of newsprint, and
I could barely make a corner flutter.
I wondered if I would’ve been able to figure out the crossword without a more experienced
Sheer like my mom helping me.
Amma didn’t need to worry so much about the haint blue and the salt and the charms. This
whole haunting thing wasn’t as easy as it was cracked up to be.
Then I noticed how sad Macon looked, studying Lena’s face. I gave up on the newspaper and
focused harder on their conversation.
“You may have felt the essence of him, Lena. A burial site is a powerful place, no doubt.”
“I don’t mean I felt something, Uncle Macon. I felt him. Ethan, the Sheer. I’m sure of it.”
The smoke from the fire curled out from the grating. Boo lay with his head in Lena’s lap, the
flames reflecting in his dark eyes.
“Because a button fell onto his grave?” Macon’s voice didn’t change, but he sounded tired. I
wondered how many of these conversations he’d endured since I died.
“No. Because he moved it.” Lena didn’t give up.
“What about the wind? What about someone else? Wesley could have bumped it off,
considering he is not the most graceful of creatures.”
“It was only a week ago. I remember it perfectly. I know it happened.” She was even more
stubborn than he was.
A week ago?
Had that much time passed in Gatlin?
Lena hadn’t seen the paper. She couldn’t prove I was still here, not to herself or my family or
even my best friend. There was no way to explain about Obidias Trueblood and all the
complications in my life, not while she didn’t even know I was in the room with her.
“What about since then?” Macon asked.
She looked troubled. “Maybe he’s gone. Maybe he’s up to something. I don’t know how it
works in the Otherworld.” Lena stared into the fire as if she was looking for something. “It’s not
just me. I went to see Amma. She said she felt him in the house.”
“Amma’s feelings are not to be trusted when it comes to Ethan.”
“What’s that supposed to mean? Of course Amma can be trusted. She’s the most trustworthy
person I know.” Lena looked furious, and I wondered how much she actually knew about that night
at the water tower.
He didn’t say a word.
“Isn’t she?”
Macon closed his book. “I can’t see the future. I’m not a Seer. All I know is Ethan did what
needed to be done. The whole realm—Dark and Light—will always be grateful to him.”
Lena stood up, ripping the ink-stained page from her notebook. “Well, I’m not. I understand he
was very brave and noble and whatever, but he left me here, and I’m not sure it was worth it. I
don’t care about the universe and the realm and saving the world, not anymore. Not without Ethan.”
She tossed the ripped page into the fire. The orange flames leaped up around it.
Uncle Macon spoke as he watched the fire. “I understand.”
“Really?” Lena didn’t seem to believe him.
“There was a time when I put my heart above all else.”
“And what happened?”
“I don’t know. I got older, I suppose. And I learned that things often are more complicated
than we think.”
Leaning against the mantel, Lena stared into the fire.
“Maybe you just forgot what it feels like.”
“Perhaps.”
“I won’t.” She looked at her uncle. “I won’t ever forget.”
She twisted her hand, and the smoke rose up until it curled around her and took shape. It was a
face. It was my face.
“Lena.”
My face disappeared at the sound of Macon’s voice, fading away into streaks of gray cloud.
“Leave me alone. Let me have what little I can, what I have left of him.” She sounded fierce,
and I loved her for it.
“Those are only memories.” There was sadness in Macon’s voice. “You have to move on.
Trust me.”
“Why? You never did.”
He smiled sadly, staring past her into the fire. “That’s how I know.”
I followed Lena up the stairs. Though the ice and snow had melted away since my last visit to
Ravenwood, a thick gray fog hung throughout the house, and the air was colder.
Lena didn’t seem to notice or care what was going on around her, even though her breath was
curling up toward her face in a quiet white cloud. I noticed the dark rings under her eyes, the way
she looked as thin and as frail as she had when Macon died. She wasn’t the same person she had
been then, though—she was someone much stronger.
She had believed Macon was gone forever, and we found a way to bring him back. I knew
deep down she couldn’t hold out for any less of a fate for me.
Maybe Lena didn’t know I was here, but she knew I wasn’t gone. She wasn’t giving up on me
yet. She couldn’t.
I knew, because if I was the one left behind, I couldn’t have either.
Lena slipped into her room, past the pile of suitcases, and crawled into bed without even taking
off her clothes. She waved her fingers, and her door slammed shut. I lay down next to her, my face
on the edge of her pillow. We were only inches apart.
The tears began to roll down her face, and I thought my heart would break, just watching her.
I love you, L. I always will.
I closed my eyes and reached for her. I wished, desperately, that there was something I could
do. There had to be some way I could let her know I was still here.
I love you, Ethan. I won’t forget you. I’ll never forget you, and I’ll never stop loving you.
I heard her voice uncurl inside my head. When I opened my eyes, she was staring right
through me.
“Never,” she whispered.
“Never,” I said.
I wrapped my fingers in the curls of black hair and waited until she fell asleep. I could feel her
nestled up next to me.
I had to make sure she found that newspaper.
As I followed Lena down the stairs the next morning, I was starting to feel a) like some kind of
stalker and b) like I was losing my mind. Kitchen sent out as big a breakfast as ever—but
thankfully, now that the Order wasn’t broken and the world wasn’t about to end, the food wasn’t
so raw that the sight of it made you want to throw up.
Macon was waiting for Lena at the table, and he was already digging in. I still wasn’t used to
the sight of him eating. There were biscuits this morning, baked with so much butter it came
bubbling up through cracks in the dough. Thick slices of bacon crowded against an Amma-sized
mountain of scrambled eggs. Berries piled inside a big piece of pastry crust that Link, before his
Linkubus days, would have swallowed whole in one bite.
Then I saw it. The Stars and Stripes was folded at the bottom of a whole stack of newspapers
—from about as many countries as I could name.
I reached for the paper just as Macon reached for the coffeepot, shoving his hand right through
my chest. It felt cold and strange, like I’d swallowed a piece of ice. Maybe like brain freeze from an
ICEE, only in my heart rather than in my head.
I grabbed the paper with both hands and pulled on it as hard as I could. One edge slowly
peeked out from beneath the pile.
Not good enough.
I looked up at Macon and Lena. Macon had his head buried in a newspaper called L’Express,
which looked like it was written in French. Lena had her eyes glued to her plate, like the eggs were
going to reveal an important truth.
Come on, L. It’s right here. I’m right here.
I yanked the paper harder, and it slid all the way out from the pile and fluttered onto the floor.
Neither one of them looked up.
Lena stirred milk into her tea. I reached for her hand with mine, squeezing it until she dropped
the spoon, splashing tea onto the tablecloth.
Lena stared at her teacup, flexing her fingers. She leaned down to blot the tablecloth with her
napkin. Then she noticed the paper on the floor, where it had landed next to her foot.
“What’s this?” She picked up The Stars and Stripes. “I didn’t know you subscribed to this
paper, Uncle M.”
“I do. I find it’s helpful to know what’s going on in town. You wouldn’t want to miss, I don’t
know, the latest diabolical plan of Mrs. Lincoln and the Ladies Auxiliary.” He smiled. “Where would
the fun be in that?”
I held my breath.
She tossed it over, facedown on the table.
The crossword was on the back. The Sunday edition, just like I’d planned it back in the office
of The Stars and Stripes.
She smiled to herself. “Amma would do this crossword in about five minutes.”
Macon looked up. “Less than that, I’m sure. I believe I could do it in three.”
“Really?”
“Try me.”
“Eleven across,” she said. “Apparition or phantasm. A spectral being. A spirit from another
world. A ghost.”
Macon looked at her, his eyes narrowing.
Lena leaned over the paper, holding her tea. I watched as she began to read.
Figure it out, L. Please.
It was only when the teacup began to shake and fell to the carpet that I knew she’d gotten it—
not the crossword but the message behind it.
“Ethan?” She looked up. I leaned closer, holding my cheek against hers. I knew she couldn’t
feel it; I wasn’t back with her, not yet. But I knew she believed I was there, and for now that’s all
that mattered.
Macon stared at her, surprised.
The chandelier above the table began to sway. The room brightened until it was blindingly
white. The enormous dining room windows began to crack into hundreds of glass spiderwebs.
Heavy drapes flew against the walls like feathers in the wind.
“Darling,” Macon began.
Lena’s hair curled in every direction. I closed my eyes as window after window began to
shatter like fireworks.
Ethan?
I’m here.
Above everything, that was all I needed her to know.
Finally.
0 comments:
Post a Comment