Lightbringer (15 page)

“Indeed. Their territories are close but they can only meet infrequently. With other Riders there to watch the Lost, they can spend a while alone.” He smiled. “I am very happy for her. She works much too hard and the loss of Dunn has been a blow for her. James will offer the comfort she needs.”

Pausing a moment to make sure she wanted to pose the question after all, Wendy casually asked, “What about you? Do you have anyone special over there? Anyone you need to be comforting right now?”

“Special?” Piotr looked at her blankly, confused, before he understood what she was getting at. Then he laughed, flushed, and clasped his hands together in his lap. “I have in the past,
da
, but not for years. Since the early thirties at least.”

“Thirties?” Wendy was stunned. “The nineteen-thirties?” How old was Piotr anyway?

“That sounds right.” Piotr began tapping one finger against the outspread digits of the other hand, counting off the years. “The thirties, possibly the forties. One of the world wars had just ended. And I was with Elle for a while. Not long. She's…a wild child. I dated Lily as well, though only for a short time.” His half-smile drooped. “James still hasn't forgiven me for that.”

Amused that the dead had relationship drama just like anyone else, Wendy laughed merrily and a touch unkindly. This was something her mother's training had never even hinted at. “They'd broken up?”

“I thought seeing Lily in such a manner would be acceptable,” Piotr complained, sounding eerily like Eddie for one brief moment. He waved a negligent hand. “But apparently
net
, it was not. I gave it my best, but it lasted a year. James,” he grinned, “is a very persistent rival.”

Hearing this guy, this boy who was her own age in physical years—if not actual years spent on the earth—sound just like her best friend, annoyed with some small fact of life, lifted an invisible weight that had been pushing Wendy down.

For the first time, she began really seeing Piotr—not just the peculiarities of him as a dead man, but as a person with quirks and foibles like herself. He was no longer simply a ghost she found attractive and would one day have to reap, but a guy near her own age, with his own problems and history, brimming with stories to tell.

Tension broken, they sank deep into conversation about the merits and perils of dating within one's social circle, what the dead did for fun, and talked the rest of the night away.

More than three weeks passed like this, each night spent deep in conversation, getting to know one another as only friends can do. After that first night, Wendy told Piotr to meet her at midnight and no sooner. Exhausted after her long nights and longer conversations, she sank easily into sleep with Piotr holding her hand. Despite his presence, her dreams grew worse.

The dreams weren't the only stressful change in her life. Determined to piss off the White Lady at every opportunity, Wendy now made a point of going out of her way to reap every Walker she saw instead of resorting to only self-defense.

At first, relaxing the personal ban on reaping ghosts had been utterly nerve-wracking—seeking them out was absolutely nothing like coming across them and defending herself. Trembling each time she dug inside herself and released the Light, Wendy forced herself to focus on taking every soul she spotted, returning to the habit of reaping with fierce concentration. She had to make up for all those souls she'd abandoned, Wendy reasoned. She couldn't let them continue to suffer.

Though she had to work back up to the regimen she'd been familiar with before, Wendy still felt a pang of fear every time she slid into the Light. Reaping ghosts was still excruciating, but dealing with the pain grew easier with every reap—as if spending time with Piotr was painting a spiritual target on her back, or as if she gave off a ghostly pheromone even when in her regular state.

Within a week, ghosts—Shade and Walker alike—sought her out at every opportunity: school, the diner, even on the bus. Since she couldn't become the Lightbringer around the living, being accosted in public was difficult to ignore. Wendy learned the art of ducking into alleys and running for the closest bathroom whenever a ghost was near. The ghosts generally followed.

Worried about what might be happening to her mother in the chaotic world of the Never, between the White Lady's threats and her Walkers, Wendy kept her searching patrols as close to home as she could easily manage. Eddie often drove her on patrol and did his homework in the car.

More than once on these whirlwind patrols, a ghost would approach, dim in the light, and Wendy would think it was her mother. She'd check her impulse to send the spirit on until it was close enough. Then, always, she'd feel the crushing disappointment.

Those reaps were always painfully quick.

Keeping to such a steady schedule soon made a major difference. In a matter of weeks, Wendy had Santa Clara swept clean of Walkers and Shades alike. There seemed to be more of the dead than ever before, and the Walkers grew crueler as the nights passed. Soon it became a struggle to reap them. The Walkers, originally loners, began traveling in pairs and then in packs. Perhaps they had other Walkers observing from the shadows, or maybe after so many encounters they were beginning to learn, but they began concentrating their attacks in the brief moment that Wendy took to become the Lightbringer. She could be wounded here, in that brief instant between physical form and ethereal. Despite their jabs, however, Wendy was still strong, even when outnumbered, and yet, as fast as Wendy was, she wasn't infallible. The smartest and quickest Walkers would attack and run, escaping her grasp before the siren song could lure them back, returning to report to the White Lady on a semi-regular basis.

Through it all, though she looked high and low, ducking into every building she could, Wendy never saw her mother's soul.

Ironically, during their discussions Piotr worried that the Lightbringer would stumble upon the Rider camp at Pier 31, never realizing that he'd ensured its safety by letting Wendy know exactly where it was located.

“It makes no sense,” he complained to Wendy. “A beast like that should be drawn to us. We are like a great feast for the likes of it! But there is nothing, not one sighting near the pier. It's all south of there. I'm starting to wonder if I imagined the thing.”

These comments both pleased and hurt Wendy, confusing her deeply. Though it was her duty, the duty her mother had instilled in her from the very start of her training, Wendy was unwilling to reap the souls gathered at the Pier yet, though she knew that one day, one day very soon, she would have to. The thought of this undone responsibility pained her. Letting them sit there, still absent from the Light, went against all her mother's teaching, but Piotr, she knew, would be heartbroken at their loss.

She kept away from the nest of Riders and Lost for him.

When Dunn is found
, she promised herself,
I'll send them all on.
She meant it, too. The moment the cap vanished, she'd finish them all off. But the hat was still whole, and Dunn's essence was still strong. It was a mystery.

“He must be hidden somewhere,” Piotr theorized one night, almost a month after they'd met. It was after midnight and the entire house was asleep, save Wendy. Her father was out of town again. Chel and Jon had also temporarily made up, and Eddie had a new girlfriend, though he swore if Wendy changed her mind he'd dump the new girl in an instant. Wendy, laughing, declined. Life had, for the most part, smoothed out somewhat.

Except for Dunn's continued absence.

Deep in contemplation, Piotr was sitting on her bed, legs outthrust, brainstorming out loud. It was a habit of his, she'd found. He liked to discuss what was on his mind and found her a safe repository for all his musings. After all, who would she tell?

“Dunn is being kept somewhere,” he repeated, hunching over and rubbing one finger along the edge of his shoe, smoothing away a scuff. Jabber, who'd grown to tolerate Piotr over the past month, darted and dodged at the shoelace he dangled along the floor with his other hand.

“Somewhere, somewhere…but the North Bay has been scoured high and low! Lily wants now to search south.” Piotr paused, and peered at her through a fall of his messy hair. Watching him shove the thick strands off his face, Wendy wondered if there were combs in the afterlife. “What of you, Wendy? Have you yet seen anything out of the ordinary during those walks you take?”

Only fourteen Walkers hanging out near the park tonight
, she thought to herself, but kept quiet and shook her head. Wendy had three more equations to pound out before she could quit and get ready for bed. Piotr, who she suspected had never had homework a day in his life, kept rattling aloud in the background.

“This is insanity!” Piotr continued. Wendy scowled at the cracked screen on her graphing calculator and wished she had the money to buy a new one. She'd fallen hard on her backpack a week ago during the most recent Walker ambush, and had crushed it. It was a miracle the calculator still turned on. There was no way she was going to ask her father to buy her another one. Recently they'd developed a truce of sorts—she stuck to jeans and tees around the house, he pretended that she didn't stay out to all hours of the night.

“I need a job,” she muttered under her breath. Jabber, ghostly bell tinkling, darted between her ankles.

“What's that?” Piotr peered over her shoulder. “You said something?”

Wendy slammed her book shut. “I said, ‘I need a job,’” she grumbled, burying her face in her hands.

“I don't understand.”

“My clothes are mostly ripped up, calculator's damn near broken, my bag's got a rip in it. Money's tight, Piotr, and it's a necessity for living. At least these days.” She rolled her eyes and added sourly, “Not like you've got that problem.”

Startled by her tone, Piotr was silent a moment, chastised. Then he brightened. “You need one of those for your schoolwork?” He pointed to her nearly shattered TI-86.

Forcing herself to keep her tone civil, Wendy sighed and nodded. “Yes. I do. But—”

She didn't get to finish her question—Piotr had dropped through the floor.

“Good going, Wendy,” she groaned. “Way to scare him away.” Upset with herself for her poor attitude, Wendy glumly returned to her homework, berating herself for the fact that Piotr would probably not be back tonight, if at all. So when his face appeared at her window twenty minutes later, Wendy jumped in fright, nearly falling off her chair.

“Pros`tite,”
he apologized, sliding through the wall and grinning sheepishly at her. “I was going to climb the stairs but the tree beckoned. It was fun!” Then he reached into his back pocket and drew out a package. “Is this the one?”

Wendy leaned forward, confused. “Is that…a calculator?”

“Da
! Since you can touch me,” he explained, setting the ghostly TI-86 on the edge of her desk, “and Dunn's cap, I reasoned that you might touch this too.”

Resuming his normal position, Piotr propped himself against the headboard of her bed. “The packaging must be removed,
pros`tite.
My apologies.”

“No, no, it's great. Thank you.” Wendy picked up the calculator, marveling at the way one moment she could easily see through it and the next it solidified in her hand, opaque to the eye. “Does it work? Where'd you get it?”

“If it works, that is a mystery.” Piotr shrugged and clucked his tongue at Jabber, trying to lure the cat to come play again. “Sometimes electronics do, sometimes they do not. Often it is not. No one knows why. I found them outside an electronic store…Costco? I was foraging for Dora's art supplies and learned that old merchandise is destroyed in the back. I go back frequently to check—I am the scavenger king!”

Stripping off the packaging, Wendy turned the calculator in her hands, stunned at the giving weight of it. “I wonder if I need ghostly batteries now,” she joked, pressing the ON button. Slowly, unbelievably, the calculator powered on.

“
Net
, it is solar powered,” Piotr said, grinning. “High tech. But which sun to work? Yours or mine?”

“This is absolutely insane,” Wendy mused, turning the calculator under the light. “I thought there had to be some sort of emotional attachment for an object to pass over.”

“Emotions help the process, but are not necessary. It is, what is the phrase…a crap shoot? Pass the cardboard please,” Piotr said, holding up a hand until Wendy, still marveling over the gift, threw him the leftover packaging. He held it between his hands a moment, staring darkly down at the remnants, until the packaging wavered, shivered, and faded away.

“How'd you do that?” Wendy set down the calculator to examine Piotr's hands, turning them over in hers to make sure it wasn't some sort of trick.

“It takes practice,” he said. “But flimsy things, you can make them—POOF—vanish.” He shrugged. “Keeps the Never clean.”

“Dead hippies,” Wendy laughed. “Now I've seen everything. But thanks. I bet I can't just throw the packaging away, anyway. It'd go right through the garbage sack.”

“It was no problem,” he said and then lapsed into silence. They sat together, neither willing to speak, for several minutes, glancing at one another as the silence stretched longer and longer between them.

Finally Wendy cleared her throat and nervously ran her new barbell against the back of her teeth. “Look, Piotr, I'm sorry that I snapped at you. I've just been extra tired and—”

Seeming glad that Wendy had made the first move, Piotr waved his free hand. “Bah, Wendy! Go, finish your work. I will wait.”

She took his hand and squeezed his fingers gratefully. “Thank you.”

With the new calculator, Wendy was able to finish up her homework in less than fifteen minutes. It turned off as easily as a real calculator and stayed exactly where she put it.

Hopefully
, she thought to herself,
I won't look like an absolute idiot using it in class.

“So,” Piotr said, as she joined him on the bed. “Last night I learned about the vagaries of the Internet. Tonight is your night for questions. What about the Never do you wish to learn? Pick my brain.”