Mommy told me that Scooter the Beagle had gone to Doggy Heaven. That he could play all day with all the other white-robed, ghost puppies, and never had to take a bath or go to the groomers or go to the vet ever again. That he could just chill out.
“Doggy Heaven sounds nice, Mommy,” I said to her, wiping the cold, used tears from my cheeks. “But it sounds kinda smelly.”
She said it was, and that all the Doggy Angels preferred it that way. That made sense, I thought. Scooter always did have his cute little nose jammed in the worst substances he could find.
I didn’t need any more explaining beyond that. If doggies went to Doggy Heaven, little girls went to Little Girl Heaven. There weren’t any mean boys in Little Girl Heaven, and there definitely wasn’t homework or chores or broccoli. The idea worked for me—I guess it works for all of us. It lends life a pleasant symmetry.
My idea of Heaven evolved, as I did. Suddenly maybe Little Girl Heaven had a few boys in it, the right kind, anyway. Okay, maybe it had a lot of boys in it. The homework and the chores thing pretty much stayed the same. It wasn’t a place I thought about often. I don’t think many fifteen-year-olds think of Heaven very often. Death doesn’t even have your address when you’re fifteen. Or at least, it only has the address of a small, unfortunate group. The rest of us float along, wrapped in a forgivable sense of immortality.
But I always knew I’d go there, when all was said and done. That God or the Force or the Flying Spaghetti Monster could forgive the little transgressions and find a spot for me. He’d wag his finger at the time I’d stolen a Twix bar from the Food Mart. Or the time I’d punched Bobby Petrino in the nose for calling me a
Cootie-Factory
. He was mean, and he deserved it, and I felt the allegation to be a serious, slanderous one.
He’d wag his finger, but the Pearly Gates weren’t padlocked.
I guess they were now. I didn’t have Little Girl Heaven…I didn’t even have Doggy Heaven—which I always secretly hoped was right next door to Little Girl Heaven, and that there was some kind of policy on visitation rights.
Now I’d fade away. I’d cease to be.
Forever.
I felt colder than I’d ever felt before.
“Please.”
That’s all I said. I didn’t have any more breath. I didn’t have lungs to draw more—they were gone. I was gone.
My eyes began to go dark, even though they were open. I felt like I had been floating on top of a swimming pool, and I was slowly…sinking…down.
…
…
“Lucy,” a voice said. It sounded warm. Loving. Maybe there
was
someone above…someone who—
“Lucy…no…please.”
That didn’t sound right. Floating in blackness, made of blackness, the sound faded. The voice did too.
“I love you, Lucy. Please…please just…stop.”
Dark.
Oblivi—
“Fuck it,” the voice said.
I felt warmth at first. A soft but balmy breeze, caressing dry skin.
Then it poured over me, like hot molasses. Thick and powerful and warm. Engulfing me and blasting away the darkness with a blinding ray of white hot light.
I could see the ceiling above me—the white spongy ceiling tiles and the florescent tubes. I felt something pressed against me, burning like a bonfire. It flowed through me, and it felt like some drug had begun to wear off. Hands came alive, and I felt my fingers flex on their own. The shattered bones in my wrist and elbow corrected themselves with little painful pops, glorious pops, for even pain felt like…felt like
feeling
.
The warmth penetrated me, burning my core and blasting away every ounce of the grave’s paralyzing chill. It was only when I sucked in a hot breath that my lips came alive.
There were lips pressed against mine. They had been gentle at first, but now they parted, and mine did, too.
Zack.
I looked up at him, his tanned—but bruised—face. His azure eyes were closed, but I pictured them anyway. I felt my body respond to the kiss, and it found a comfortable, complimentary shape to his. We fit together. We always would have, if I had been smart enough to act.
If I had just told her how I felt. If I had just…been a man. If I had just ignored my stupid friends and my stupid cowardice and walked over to her and said…I love you, Lucy Day. Or hell even…Go to the movies with me, Lucy Day. Hold my damn hand, Lucy Day. If I could have just told her. If I had told her a year ago. If I had grabbed her and kissed her and explained that there was no good reason we shouldn’t be together.
The way she smiled that goofy, unabashed smile. Like a little girl, without conscious effort to smile
right
. The way her eyes flashed when she made a joke. Hell, the way she always put her pencil behind her ear, forgot about it, and then asked if she could borrow mine.
And as I kissed her, as I felt her begin to solidify… My Ghost-Girl. The girl I’d…
Oh God
.
Zack folded up suddenly, and pulled his face away from mine. I, me, Lucy flashed out of my stupor of borrowed thoughts and dreams and blazing heat…
Oh God
.
Zack had never been so pale…no person I’d ever seen had been so pale. Blue veins glowed through his paper-thin skin, and his eyes were a pale powder blue. He gasped for air, his face twisted in a rictus of pain. Then he fell backward and crumpled against the wall.
I touched my lips…and pulled my fingers away fast. They felt like stove burners cranked high. My whole body thrummed. I could feel sweat beading all over my skin. A runnel of perspiration slid down my back. I looked at the still, crumpled form and felt my mind shut down.
Zack.
I crawled to his side and put my hand on his chest. It pushed against my fingers, but only just. Like my dad had been, only ten times worse. Alive but…cold.
Drained.
“Lucy…”
I snapped my head over my shoulder. Abraham jerked, coughed loudly, and pulled the huge splinter of wood out of his stomach. He tossed it across the floor. It left a little streak of blood on the tile.
I stood up. The hole in his stomach…wasn’t. Just a hole in his shirt now, showing a bare patch of bloody but intact skin. He began to stand, too. His eyes burned with anger.
I pulled off my jacket—it felt like a hundred and twenty degrees in that room—and tossed it over Morgan’s unmoving legs. I took a deep breath, looked down at the still form of my boyfriend, then up at Abraham.
“You killed him,” Abraham said.
“No I didn’t.”
“You will.”
I closed my eyes. I thought of Puck, then I thought of his journal. I thought of Isabelle, his Mors. And then how Puck had filled with rage. He thought of his little darling daughter, dying in his arms. A little daughter named Lucy—maybe life
was
that interesting—who had swelled up and died with nothing to save her. Of Puck’s darling Olivia at his feet. And how he had destroyed Isabelle.
The memories. His memories.
Abraham couldn’t be drained of essence. He was overflowing with it…he was a factory of it. And now, I was too. I could feel Zack in every molecule of my body, in every hair and drop of blood. His love for me. It burned like molten steel in my belly. It made the air around me vibrate.
Abraham couldn’t be emptied. But he could be overloaded.
Abraham began to pulse, trying to pour his poisoned essence into the air around him. I leaped at him, grabbed him by the chest, and thought of Zack. Or more, I thought what Zack thought. What he felt. The inferno he had dumped into me.
Light welled around my fingers, blue light. Azure, the color of Zack’s eyes. It went supernova through my fingers, pouring through me, ripping into Abraham. Filling him. Overflowing him.
It went quick. A sharp pulse of white light. Black smoke, thick and acrid, leaked out of his wide screaming mouth and the corners of his bright-white eyes. Another flash, too bright, and I shut my eyes against the intensity.
His weight slumped in my arms.
I opened my eyes.
The thin, black-haired man was gone. His face was riddled with wrinkles, and his hair had gone stark white. He was even more slender than he had been, and it didn’t take much effort to hold him up. The real Abraham, I realized. What Abraham would have been, if some Phantom hadn’t drained him to death fifty years ago.
Whatever power that had made him a Mors was gone. I didn’t know what he was…but he wasn’t
that
. I felt no sense of icy-fear spiking up my back. I felt nothing. Just pity. I let him go, and he stumbled back. His eyes were open, watery and red, as he slid down the wall.
I fell to one knee. Whatever Zack had given me…was mostly gone. I felt a cool breeze over my skin. I’d experienced worse. I moved to Zack’s side. I moved to kiss his forehead…and stopped. I settled for touching his cheek.
“Zack?”
I tried to suppress panic.
“Zack…please wake up.”
I heard a noise behind me. I turned around. Old, withered Abraham was on his feet. He had a scalpel clutched in his hand, and his face glowed with hatred. I sucked in a breath, but that was all. It was too fast. Too fast to stop him. He was too close. I threw myself in front of Zack.
Blam
.
Blam.Blam
.
The tiny room exploded with noise. It pierced my head, filling my ears with cotton and my head with ringing.
I looked up. Abraham clutched his chest, half-turned, and crashed over an instrument cart and down to the ground. I looked for the source of the gunshots…the source of the sulfur smell stinging my nostrils.
I looked up at my savior.
Morgan. Sitting up in her bed, the sleeve of my coat in one hand, Ophelia’s black revolver in the other. The revolver I’d picked up from the hallway table and hidden in my coat. The one with the silver bullets.
The last resort.
The gun fell from her fingertips. She covered her face with her hands.
The air rippled a little, and my ears popped, like I was descending from a high altitude. Abraham’s last bubble of
fascination
died. Whatever was keeping this a private show died with him.
The door of the room swung open, and the world poured in.
Chapter Twenty
Broke
“So what happened?”
“Um. Well. The door flew open. Officer Sykes, you met him—”
“Last week, I remember.”
“Right, yup. Officer Sykes and two other cops threw the door open. They had their guns out…all that stuff. It didn’t matter. Abraham…that man. Morgan shot him, with his own gun. He’d left it on the hospital bed. I guess…I guess he put a lot of faith in the drugs he was pumping into Morgan and Zack.”
“Mmm-hmm,” Marian Crane said, tapping a pad of paper lightly with the back of her pen. She wasn’t facing me. She never faced me when I was talking. Just stared at the blank wall to the left of her desk. Like there were subtitles there or something, “Then what?”
“Then the cops checked that we were all okay. Morgan was groggy…still is a little messed up actually, from the coma. They said she’ll be okay, the doctors. Just a side effect of the barbiturates. Zack is, uh, Zack’s, you know. He was fine.”
“Are you okay?” she asked me, not terribly concerned-sounding.
“Yeah, sorry. Just a catch. Um, he had gone into shock, after being knocked out by Abraham. But he’s okay too. Then, they took us out of the room. All of our parents were there. Even my dad, who—”
“Abraham had drugged?” she interrupted.
“Attacked, actually,” I said. “Abraham had attacked my dad in the parking lot. Apparently Dad can’t remember. Head injury.”
I tried to keep my voice steady. My dad had been just fine. Shaky, confused, with no memory of running into me. But just fine. A miracle.
“Right, right,” Crane said. “How were your parents?”
“Very…grateful. And very parent-y. They sort of took turns hugging me or holding me the rest of the night. Mom even slept in my bed that night. Pretty funny, huh?”
Crane shrugged.
Apparently not funny.
“And Morgan’s mom was there,” I said. “And her boyfriend. Morgan’s mom’s boyfriend, I mean, Morgan doesn’t—”
“Right, right,” Crane said again. “What happened with the police?”
“They asked my story,” I said. “When everything had settled. I told them what I told you. The old man…Abraham, had pulled up a car outside of Benny’s house—”
“Ben Krakowski? The boy who threw the party?”
I nodded sharply, a little annoyed at her interruptions. “Yeah. The old man pulled up in a car outside of Benny’s. He seemed kinda weird, but harmless. He came out and asked us how to get to the 91. Then he hit Zack in the head with something in his hand. Grabbed him. Said if me and Morgan didn’t get in the car he’d kill Zack. He drugged us…I guess he left Zack and Morgan, left them on the lawn. Then he, uh, he took me.”
I folded my hands over my lap. I plucked at my skirt, trying to make it settle properly across my knees.
“Right, right,” Crane said. She fiddled with the silver comb holding her hair up in a loose bun. “Then he drugged you?”
“Mmm-hmm,” I said.
“How do you feel now? Any after-effects?”
I frowned a little at her, but she wasn’t looking. Kept staring at that spot on the wall.
“No, fine, thanks,” I said.
“How’d you get into the hospital? In Morgan’s room?”
I took a shallow breath. “Well. I woke up in Abraham’s car. It was in the parking lot. I guess he was crazy enough to come back again and try to check on Zack and Morgan. I guess he had to…admire his work or something. Anyway I woke up and went in.”
“And you remember nothing? Where he took you, while you were drugged?”
“No.”
“Did he—?”
“No.”
“I assume the police. They sometimes collect evidence—”
“No. They asked. I told them no. I don’t feel like—nothing had changed. He hadn’t done anything to me.”
Crane paused for a long time. I stared at her plump but attractive face, trying to read some sign of emotion. She and Officer Sykes would have gotten along well, I realized. Probably did, during their robot maintenance sessions.