Dead Rules (14 page)

Chapter Twenty-One

JANA SQUEEZED WYATT'S HAND.

The heat from pressing her palm against his was similar to holding hands with Mars. It moved through Jana in a wave, like drinking hot chocolate.

But it was different too. Jana's heart didn't race. Her toes didn't tingle. Wyatt was warm like an electric blanket. Mars was warm like the real thing. His was the heat of a large breathing animal about to leap.

Jana flipped open her cell phone and turned it on with her thumb. Soon Michael was staring at her from the lighted viewing screen. She punched Send.

He answered. A new warmth came to Jana's neck and face.

“Michael,” she nearly sang. “It's me. Michael . . .”

“Who are you?” he said. He could hear her. Jana flushed with excitement and relief.

He disconnected.

She squeezed Wyatt's hand as hard as she could. Jana's other hand was shaking when she pushed Send again. Six rings and it switched to voice mail.

She pushed Send again. Voice mail. She pushed Send again. Voice mail. Then dead silence.

Jana slumped. She let go of Wyatt's hand. Her lips trembled.

“He won't answer,” she said. The back of her throat clinched. Tears burned her eyes.

“He's scared,” Mars told her.

“So!”

“We'll go see him tonight. I promise. We'll find him for you.”

Jana tried to stop crying.

“Not right now, okay? We have to do something first.”

“Okay,” she said quietly.

“I've been thinking about what you want to do, Webster. I don't think you should become a Slider to get it done.”

“I think I should.” She sniffed. “I want to be a Slider. Tonight. I want to jump. Will you show me how?”

Wyatt swallowed his gum.

Michael didn't want to touch the thing. He stared at his cell phone for the longest time.

“Who was that?” Sherry asked.

“That's what I'd like to know,” Michael said. “I'm calling Nathan. Hey, get dressed. Let's go get a pizza or something.”

Jana recognized the road.

They were driving into the mountains. A fine mist appeared on the windshield as the elevation increased.

“What do you do when you jump?” she asked.

Mars didn't answer.

“We jump,” Wyatt eventually said from the backseat.

“I know it's not like jumping jacks in third-grade gym,” Jana said. “And I'm guessing it has nothing to do with hurdles. Do you jump over things? Do you jump on the backs of cars and go for rides? Do you jump on girls?”

“No,” Wyatt snarled. “We jump
off
things. You can't feel things on the Planet like we do. You wouldn't understand.”

“What sort of things?”

“Bridges, waterfalls, cliffs,” Wyatt recited for her. “You name it, we jump off it. As long as it's high enough.”

Jana thought he was joking.

“It's like flying,” Mars told her. He turned on the windshield wipers.

“Sure,” Wyatt said, “just like flying. Until you land.”

They
didn't
jump off cliffs, Jana decided. Or bridges or waterfalls. That would be suicide.

Mars turned on to a winding, climbing two-lane road. “Where's the ridge turnoff?” he asked.

“Two and a half miles on the right. Watch the odometer,” Wyatt said. “There's a sign, but she said you wouldn't see it.”

They'd risen above the fog. Jana could see glimpses of stars between the trees. They looked like shooting stars, flashing on then disappearing as the mountain trees slid by the window. Every-one came to Asheville to see the mountains. Jana didn't like them much. There were snakes. And spiders.

“Where are we going?” she finally asked.

“To a meet and greet,” Wyatt said. “With witches.”

Mars didn't talk much while he was driving, Jana noticed. He almost never looked at her.

“No way,” Jana said.

“It's for Christie,” Wyatt said. “You know, ‘Ouch, ouch'? These witches, they're picking on her. We're going to ask them to stop.”

“Witches, real witches?”

“Worse, actually,” Wyatt said. “Conjure men.”

He told her all about it. Up in the high hills, there were male witches. Most were called cunning men. Cunning men were healers and herbalists, like granny women but men. They could remove the heat, and sometimes the scar, of a burn by rubbing it with their hands. Cunning men could cure a sore throat by blowing in your mouth. They could make chickens lay eggs and cows give milk. They helped you find lost things.

“Do they make potions?” Jana said.

“Ointments mostly,” Wyatt said. “There are no doctors up here. People don't have money, anyway, or health insurance. They go to cunning men for everything. They can find wild honey by following a bee, and tell you where to dig your well to hit water.”

“What are they doing to Christie?” Jana asked.

Mars found the turnoff to the ridge road. It was gravel. And it was a climb. He switched the headlights to bright. They seemed to point up at the sky as often as they did the winding road in front of them.

“They aren't,” Wyatt said. “Cunning men are good witches. But the ones we're going to see tonight, these are conjure men.”

“They're evil,” Mars said, as if it was a normal thing to call someone.

Conjure men practice the black arts, they told Jana. They were the witches that put curses on people. They could make something catch fire. Or make a fire go out. People were deathly afraid of them.

“Sometimes people need them for one thing or another,” Wyatt said. “Christie's parents went to them when she died.” Wyatt pulled himself forward with his hand on the front seat. “For the right price, Webster, conjure men resurrect the dead.”

“At least they try,” Mars said without looking at Jana. He was leaning over the steering wheel, watching the road. It turned every which way now.

Wyatt laughed. He dropped back sideways in the seat.

“Really?” Jana asked. “Can they do that?”

“No,” Mars told her.

“Well, if they could . . .”

“They can't,” Wyatt said. “They're not very good at resurrection. But they try. Right now, they're bringing tiny little bits of Christie back to life for just a second or so when they cast their spells. She said it's like being pinched in different places or pricked with a pin. And for some reason, the conjure men are keeping at it.”

“What are we going to do?” Jana wanted to know. “Ask them to stop it?”

“They want resurrection. I'm going to give them a sample of the real thing. They ain't seen nothing till they get a look at me. They might stop conjuring altogether.”

“I would,” Mars said.

Jana smiled despite her fear of visiting conjure men. They probably had a house full of snakes and spiders.

“How did Christie die, anyway?” she asked.

“You don't tell that on other people,” Mars said.

“Your death is your last real story,” Wyatt added. “It's the one thing everybody gets to tell for themselves.”

She hadn't liked Wyatt in the beginning. He was always mean and snarly to Jana. That thing he did in the library didn't help any. Now, she realized, there was another way of looking at him. Wyatt had held her hand when she told him to. And he was the one who had talked to Christie in the hall. This errand belonged to Wyatt, not to Mars.

Mars pulled over to the side of the road and parked.

He and Wyatt got out of the car. Mars stood by Jana's window.

“We walk from here,” he said.

“Okay,” Jana said.

“Wait here.”

“No way!” Jana didn't want to be alone.

“Please?”

“They won't see me anyway.”

“They're conjure men, Webster. They'll see all three of us.”

“I'm coming with you,” she said. “And that's all there is to it.” Jana got out of the car with her door still closed. The Sliders had no choice.

Wyatt was already on his way. It didn't take Mars and Jana long to catch up.

“What are you going to do when we get there?”

“Shhh,” Mars said. “They'll hear you.”

“Really?” Jana liked the idea that somebody on the Planet could hear her, even if it was nasty old conjure men.

There was a light on.

“Keep her here,” Wyatt said. “I'll go in alone.”

Mars and Jana waited at the picket gate in front of the little house in the woods. A dog howled and wouldn't stop. The air smelled like pines. Jana looked up at the stars. There were a million of them.

She believed stars held wishes. Stars were tiny threads of light that reached to the earth. Like beads, dreams and wishes slid back and forth on each thread. One of the silver threads was tied to her, Jana thought. But which one?

Michael showed Nathan the gun that he'd taken from Marilyn Webster's bedside stand.

“What's this for?” Nathan asked.

“We have to protect ourselves,” Michael said. “Twenty-five caliber semiautomatic. The clip is fully loaded.”

“Do you even know how to use that thing?”

“It's fairly simple, Nathan. You turn the safety off.”

“Who cares?” Sherry said. “We didn't do anything wrong.”

Michael stared at her. Yes they did, he thought. And somebody had seen them doing it.

“So what are you going to do?” Nathan asked. “Shoot your phone the next time it rings?”

Wyatt was satisfied.

He was laughing as he left the house. “If they weren't crazy when I got there, they are now,” he told Mars and Jana when he reached the gate.

“Maybe you could do this for a living,” Mars suggested as the three of them walked back to the car. “Show up at kiddie birthday parties, things like that.”

“Good idea. And on Christmas Eve I could visit the houses of kids who were naughty.”

“Yeah,” Mars said, “Santa Burger.”

Wyatt chuckled. “Half burger, half man,” he said. “I think I should get my own comic book series.”

Jana had had enough. “You're good-looking, Wyatt. You really are,” she said. He was too. At least half of him was. Maybe more.

“Well, sugar,” he drawled, “I only have one eye that looks at all.”

Jana had her eye on an idea of her own. An idea that would change things. Mars didn't want her to become a Slider. That was the start of her new idea. She'd thought of it while looking at the swirling stars when she and Mars waited for Wyatt to come out of the witches' house. On the ride along the dirt and gravel ridge road, she thought it through again. When they reached the pavement, she decided to try it out on Mars.

“I was thinking I might not have to become a Slider, after all,” she said.

Mars looked at her with interest.

“Listen to this,” Jana continued. “If you hold my hand, Michael can hear me. I can talk to him, right? What if you and Wyatt both hold my hands, or Mars, you put your arms around me, something like that? I think he would be able to see me.”

“So?” Wyatt said from the backseat.

“You have to understand love, Wyatt,” Jana said. “When he sees me, he'll want to be with me. I'll be standing there. I'll be real. I'll ask him to join me and he will.”

“We can't bring him back with us, if that's what you mean,” Wyatt said.

“Not that. It's true love. Real love. Like in
Romeo and Juliet
. You know how that ends, don't you? If he sees me dead, Michael will kill himself to be with me. You don't understand what Michael and I are together. It's bigger than the world. It just is.”

No one said anything.

“So I don't have to be a Slider and we can do it tonight,” Jana finished.

“Won't work, Webster,” Mars said.

“But we can try. Maybe if he just hears my voice in person.”

“
Romeo and Juliet
is bullshit,” Wyatt said from the backseat.

“Is not!” Jana told him. “It's perfect. They're perfect. It's perfect love. And perfect love doesn't end.”

“Maybe they didn't have Dead School back then,” Wyatt suggested. “But it won't work now.”

“Yes, it will,” Jana insisted.

“If he kills himself, he'll be a Gray. What good is that?”

“He'll be with me, Wyatt. . . .” Jana said, then his words sank in. “He'll be here with me. . . .” she tried again, trying to not think about it.

“It wouldn't be him,” Mars told her. “Grays have no will.”

They were right.

“Fart, fudge, and popcorn,” Jana said. “I'll have to be a Slider, then. I don't want Michael to be a Gray. I'll have to be a Slider so I can kill him.”

Wyatt started to say something. Mars turned in the driver's seat and stared him out of it. Mars finished his soda pop and Wyatt smacked another piece of gum on the drive down from the mountains.

Jana believed Mars was being too quiet. Even if he had to concentrate to drive, he could still talk to her now and then and not hit a tree or turn the car over in a ditch. Maybe it was because she had kissed him. He hadn't tried to kiss her back. He should have, she thought.

Mars wanted to be with her, but he didn't seem to want more than that. He should at least want to talk to her while the three of them drove around on the Planet all night. He kept letting Wyatt do it for him.

The fog was on the windshield again. They were almost back in town.

“You don't talk much, do you?”

Mars glanced at her, but didn't answer.

“The smart ones never do,” Wyatt answered for him from the backseat. As always, she thought. Jana realized that Mars was holding something back. She didn't know the real Mars at all.

Wyatt laid out their plans. It was late now and everyone would be home, even seniors with cars. They'd start with Sherry, he decided. She was a sophomore and would definitely be home before the others.