Queen of the Dead (13 page)

They came to a stop right outside my door. Lily’s mom froze, her arms wrapped around a pink plastic version of the Ouija board. She jerked around in her chair, and I struggled to follow with my limited range of vision.

“What happened?” A ragged male voice asked from the door. “Is everything okay? Is she—”

“What are you doing here?” Mrs. Turner stood and turned to face him, blocking my view. “I didn’t call you.”

A too-long pause followed. “I asked the nurses to leave a note in her chart to call my cell phone if she—”

“What, died?” Mrs. Turner spat. “Disappointed, Jason?”

“That’s not fair! She’s my daughter, too.”

“Really?” She moved toward the door, out of my range of vision. “Then where were you this morning? When she was present and trying to communicate?”

He sighed. “Corrine, she’s not…” He took a deep breath. “Never mind. What happened?”

Mrs. Turner sniffed. “Her heart stopped. All of a sudden. No warning.”

“She looks different,” someone else said, also near the door. God, could everybody please move into the room so I could have a shot at telling what was going on?

This new voice had that squeaky sort of braying quality that I’d noticed in the freshman boys who’d attempted totalk to me. Lily’s younger brother?

“He should not be here,” Mrs. Turner hissed. “He doesn’t have to see this.”

“It’s his sister,” Mr. Turner, presumably, hissed back in that way parents have of arguing in front of their children. Seriously. Do they think we’re that stupid? Of course, my parents had graduated from loud, angry whispers to shouting, and then, even worse, stony silence, a long time ago, so this was nothing new to me.

It didn’t seem to faze Lily’s brother either. He left them hissing and snarling at each other near the doorway and came closer to me, his shoes squeaking on the floor as he approached.

He stepped into my field of vision, keeping a cautious distance from the side of my bed, but still close enough for me to get a good look.

God, geekiness must run in their family. He was twelve, or maybe thirteen, and tall and skinny with fine light brown hair that was sticking up in the world’s worst cowlick at the back of his head. He was wearing a polo shirt (points), but it was about three sizes too big and in a spectacularly bright shade of clearance bin yellow. Seriously. Did they not have a mirror in their house? From this and what I recalled from the pictures I’d seen of Lily, you wouldn’t think so.

He stepped a little closer, frowning. Behind him, his parents continued arguing in fierce but hushed tones.

“Corrine, you heard them. Even if she woke up, which is never going to happen, she won’t be the same person.”

“Not in here, not in front of her,” she snapped.

The brother waved his hand millimeters above my face, releasing the smell of antibacterial soap and sweaty boy, and I blinked in irritation.

He cocked his head to one side. “You should see this. She’s opening and closing her eyes.”

“It’s just a reflex, Tyler.” Lily’s mother sounded exhausted. “Remember, they explained that.”

He stared down at me with a frown. “No,” he said. “This is different.” He rested his hands on the side of my bed and leaned in for a closer look. Having him hanging over my face was, quite frankly, more than a little annoying, but it was further than I’d gotten with Mrs. Turner.

Now just get them to give me one of those damn boards.
I tried to tell him with my eyes. That would be a start at least. Even if I couldn’t quite get it right from the start, maybe they’d at least realize I was trying.

But his parents ignored him.

“I think it’s time to take her home,” Mr. Turner said.

That sounded like a good plan to me. If “Lily” came home, Will would have to come visit. Guaranteed.

“Take her home to die, you mean,” Mrs. Turner said scornfully.

Wait, what?

“Yes, to die,” he said. “She’s not getting any better. And you’re…” he sighed. “This isn’t good for you.”

“
Don’t
pretend to care about Lily or me.”

I wished I could see her. Mrs. Turner sounded like she was inches from snapping and throwing a punch. From what I’d seen of her, I bet she could probably put some force behind it, too.

“You’re willing to let her slip away just so you don’t have to live with your mistake,” she said.

“That’s not—”

“You gave her the car!”

This sudden shout from Mrs. Turner was a conversation stopper. Even Tyler half-turned from me to stare at his parents.

“Yes,” he said without hesitation. “I gave our sixteen-year-old sober and responsible daughter the car keys and permission to spend time with her friends. You would have done the same thing, but I’m the one who will have to carry the knowledge for the rest of my life that I could have done something.” His voice cracked. “I could have stopped her, but I didn’t know.” The sound of broken and hoarse breathing, half-repressed sobs came from his direction.

I turned toward the sound instinctively and found I could move my head on the pillow. Just a little bit. But enough to see them both now. Mr. Turner was this big guy with a beard, but his voice was gentle. And I’d forgive him for wearing a denim shirt. He was clearly grieving.

“I’m sorry,” Mrs. Turner said wearily. “I didn’t mean it.” She rested her head against his shoulder, and he allowed it, patting her back with one giant bear-paw of a hand.

“If we take her home,” Mr. Turner continued, forcing himself to talk through his tears, “she can be comfortable. She can be with us. No more tests, no more feeding tubes, no more doctors.”

Mrs. Turner leaned into him and shook her head. “I don’t know.…She was trying to talk to me, Jason, I know it.”

“Then why don’t any of the tests show improvement? Why doesn’t she communicate when we ask her to?”

“I don’t know, but—”

“Her fingers move on their own—muscle reactions. If you look hard enough, you can make meaning out of anything.”

“She told me not to be sad.”

“How much of that is what you wanted to see?” he asked gently. “How sure are you that she was reaching for the ‘s’ and not the ‘t’ or the ‘q’?”

I beg your pardon, I hit those letters with precision. Well, as much precision as I could manage using someone else’s hand.

“I know what I saw,” Mrs. Turner said, but her voice had lost its earlier conviction.

“We don’t have to forget, we never forget, but she can let go and so can we,” he said quietly.

And take me with her? I don’t think so.
I still wasn’t sure how I’d been pulled in here in the first place. If Lily died, would her body let me go? I could think of one thing way worse than being stuck in a living body I didn’t want, and that was being stuck in a not-living one.

I shuddered on the inside.

Lily’s brother was still by my bed, half sitting, half leaning against the edge, like he’d forgotten I was there in the drama created by his parents. Couldn’t blame him. I wasn’t exactly the chatty type these days, now was I?

This time, I didn’t even try to talk.

If I was going to stop them from letting Lily die longenough to let me out, I needed to let them know I was in here. I seemed to be having better luck with small motionsover talking, and the brother’s hand was resting on the bed, just inches from mine. If I could just tap him, that might be enough to get his attention and get him to make his parents
see
.

I focused all my effort on my right hand. I just need to move the fingers a little farther down and…

As usual, when I really put my mind to something, I win. Big time.

I watched as my hand shot forward and locked around Tyler’s wrist.

Tyler jumped up with a yelp, but my hand was still on his arm, so he dragged me with him until I was listing awkwardly to the side.

“Lily!” Mrs. Turner shrieked.

She shoved Mr. Turner away and bolted for the bed. Pushing past Tyler and breaking my now weakening grip on his wrist, she scooped my upper half up into a too-tight hug.

“I
knew
you would come back. I
knew
there was a reason to keep hoping,” she whispered in my ear, her tears wet against my face.

Crap. This was going to get complicated.

T
he smoke grew thick quickly. Choking on it, I dragged myself the rest of the way out of the hole, praying the rotten boards would still hold my weight.

Then again, the air beneath the stage was probably cleaner. Ghost smoke seemed to follow the same rules as the real stuff. The trouble would be surviving the fall.

Though my lungs were screaming at me to rest and catch a breath of clean air that would never come, I forced myself to crawl across the rough and ragged boards, staying low where the smoke was the thinnest. Splinters from the rotting boards tore into my palms, feeling more like insect stings, but I kept going.

Flickering light, like what I remembered from burning leaves in the fall, lit up the theater around me in a manner anything but soothing or nostalgic. I could now see out into the audience area, the rows of seats still in place and the gaping holes where some had already been removed. Through the smoke, I caught a glimpse of double doors, sagging ontheir hinges, at the top of the main aisle. That was where I’d seen that flash of light. That was where I needed to go. There had to be another way out of this building.

Behind me, a shriek of agony filled the air, so loud and piercing it stopped me in my tracks.

I jerked my head around to see something vaguely person-shaped, covered in writhing flames. Two arms waving in the air, two legs stumbling forward, all of it haloed in bright yellow-and-orange fire. A dark gaping hole in the blaze that encompassed the head might have been the mouth.

Move, Will, move!
I scrambled toward the edge of the stage.

The burning man followed me, lighting up the darkness as he moved. His screams were no longer even recognizably human. If I survived this, I’d never be able to go to sleep again without hearing those sounds in my head.

Frantic to get away, I half slid, half fell off the edge of the stage, landing hard and awkwardly in the debris. Above me, the burning man loomed, inches from falling and landing on top of me.

I scrambled backward, hands and feet scrabbling for purchase.

My fingers brushed the smooth edge of something that did not feel like decaying wood, a disintegrating chunk of plaster, or rusty metal.

The disruptor.
It had gone over the edge before me.

I fumbled for it, praying I was right. It took me a couple of tries to get my shaking hand around it. Yes, definitely the disruptor. I could see the gleam of the rough metal edges in the firelight.

The burning man above me wobbled, wavering on the edge.

I closed my hands around the disruptor, turning what I hoped was the open end away from me and started pressing buttons in desperation.

But nothing happened, and the man on fire tipped over the edge of the stage, falling toward me. I shut my eyes and threw myself backward, but I knew it wouldn’t be quiteenough. The entire pile of debris would be up in flames in seconds and me along with it.

Alona.
What would happen to her if I—

Then, behind my closed lids, I saw a burst of blue light. I opened my eyes to find a beam of light coming from somewhere behind me. It had caught the burning ghost in mid-fall and now held him in place just a foot or so above me.

The man was still covered in flames, but they no longer moved and writhed over what remained of his skin.

Against my will, my mind picked out features of the ghost’s mangled face. What was probably his nose, where his eyes had been…

Then he disappeared with a faint pop.

I sagged back on the floor, aware suddenly of a sharp pain in my side and an ominous-feeling trickle of warmth.

“Move in,” a man’s voice barked from behind me.

A rush of fresh air flooded over me. Dark figures, maybe a half dozen or so, moved past me swiftly, little more than shadows. I watched as they leaped onto the stage with ease, their faces disfigured and odd in the shadows of the dancing flames. They alternately wielded fire extinguishers and disruptors, coating everything with explosions of white foam and blue light. Members of the Order. Finally. Apparently I only needed to
almost die
for them to show themselves.

“Are you all right?” someone shouted.

I sat up gingerly and looked back to find two men and a woman hurrying down the aisle toward me. The one closest to me, a dark-haired man in a flannel shirt, jeans, and worn work boots, looked sort of familiar. The woman behind him appeared to be in her late thirties and looked like a Barbie doll come to life, all blond hair and boobs in a tight leopard skin shirt. Not, mind you, that I was complaining. She moved along as best she could in a skirt that cut her steps in half. The last of the three was an older, white-haired guy in a full three-piece suit. Portly might have been a kind description.

Beach ball in clothes would be more accurate
, I could almost hear Alona saying.

Was this possibly the almighty Leadership Mina kept going on and on about? They didn’t look like people in charge of a secret organization. They looked like part of the happy hour crowd at Buffalo Wild Wings.

The first man knelt next to me and held out something. A clear mask, attached to a metal bottle.

“Put it on.” He nodded at it. “You need the air.”

I could hear the air hissing out of the mask, clean oxygen that I could almost smell simply by the absence of smoke, dust, and everything else. I fumbled for the mask and held it against my face.

“Why didn’t you use the disruptor, boy? That’s why we have them,” the older man in the suit demanded, panting. He bent in half, hands on his knees, trying to catch his breath.

“You doing okay there, Silas?” the woman asked. She smiled at me, seemingly undisturbed by the chaos around her, other than occasionally batting away bits of ash before they could reach her hair.

Silas, the portly suit guy, nodded.

“He tried to use it,” the first man answered for me grimly. “He didn’t know how.”

The other two looked at me for confirmation, and I nodded, more than content to save speaking for later and concentrate on just breathing for now.

“Mina!” the man in flannel bellowed toward the stage.

Uh-oh.

I turned in time to see one of the figures on stage break off and head toward us…slowly. She drew the mask off and draped it over her shoulder as she reached the edge of the stage, staring down at all of us defiantly.

“Did I not make it clear what your assignment was this evening?” His tone was cold enough to send a chill through me.

Mina shifted her weight uneasily. “Yes.”

“You gave him the disruptor, but you didn’t show him how to use it.”

“He didn’t ask,” she snapped. “And isn’t that the first rule, never take a weapon you don’t know how to use? That’s what you always say.”

“You didn’t even give me a chance,” I argued, my voice muffled through the mask.

“It doesn’t matter.” She threw me a bitter look. “I knew they would save you. Can’t risk losing this one.”

“That daughter of yours is out of control, John,” Silas said with clear disapproval.

Daughter? Well, that would explain why he looked sort of familiar. Now, looking back and forth between the two of them facing off, I could see further resemblances. The same stubborn set to the chin; the way they both squared their shoulders.

“Mina, wait for me outside. We will discuss this later,” John said.

She flinched, more a hunching of her whole body, actually, and then she turned away and walked back across the stage. All of sudden I started wondering about the bruise I’d noticed on her face earlier.

“I apologize for my daughter. I sent her to talk to youbecause I thought she would be a familiar face, at least,” John said. “I didn’t realize her personal concerns would interfere.” He grimaced.

“All the more reason the boy should come with me for training,” Silas said quickly.

“Excuse me.” The Barbie woman put her hands on her hips.

“Now, don’t get your panties all up in a bunch, Lucy,” Silas said. “I’m just saying the—”

“He lives here. He should, by regulation, train with the Central Division,” John said.

“Yes, because your offspring has succeeded so wildly under your supervision,” Silas snapped.

I pulled the mask off. “Hey.”

They continued bickering.

“Hey! I’m right here.” I forced myself to stand up. Nothing felt broken, but I could feel a long scrape on my side even without looking. “I’m not going anywhere with anyone. I came here tonight for answers.”

The three of them turned to me surprised, and I waited for the outburst, for someone to lecture or shame me for interrupting.

Instead, Lucy burst into tears. “I’m sorry,” she said, flapping her hands at her face like she needed to cool down. “You just sound so much like your father.”

I froze. “My dad?”

Lucy didn’t answer. She just tottered down the aisle in her crazy-high heels and gathered me up in a warm, very bosomy hug.

“We didn’t know, not until now,” she said in my ear. “Danny registered you as a null a long time ago. Why would he do that? Why?”

So it wasn’t just that my dad hadn’t told me about the Order. He hadn’t told the Order about me, either. I mean, obviously they’d been aware of my existence, but not that I had ghost-talking abilities. Why would he hide that from them? Why would he keep me from people who could help? None of this made any sense.

I untangled myself from Lucy’s arms carefully and stepped back. “I think somebody needs to start at the beginning.”

So, it turns out the Order of the Guardians is divided into three sections geographically: Western, Central, and Eastern. They followed the time zone lines roughly, with Western and Central divvying up the states in the middle that would have been the Mountain region.

A leader is appointed to each division by a convolutedelection process I still didn’t understand even after Silas, Lucy, and John had each taken a crack at explaining it to me.

Each leader was responsible for managing the requests for help and services that came in through the 800 number for his or her appointed region, funneling them out to the members who worked for him or her. Occasionally, cross-regional cooperation was required, as in the development of new technology, a location with a severe haunting, or the certification test for a new full member. But for the most part, Silas took care of the East, Lucy the West, and John everything in the middle.

But the most interesting and shocking part in all of this bureaucratic info was simply this: John Blackwell’s predecessor, the previous leader for the Central Division, was none other than my father, Daniel Killian.

“I don’t understand. He never said anything.” I sat down heavily in one of the discarded chairs, ignoring the plume of dust that resulted.

We were in the lobby now, away from the last of the smoke and flames while the rest of the members that Lucy, John, and Silas had brought with them finished up. I’d seen lots and lots of those little metal boxes going in and couldn’t decide how I felt about that.

The three of them exchanged a glance, and then John finally spoke up. “Danny and I trained together. It was always harder for him because his mother, your grandmother, didn’t agree with his choice.”

“To serve the living,” Lucy spoke up.

“She didn’t understand the importance of what we do. She preferred to play at helping the echoes.” John made a face, as he paced back and forth in front of me.

Helping the echoes? Oh, the dead, ghosts. That would make sense with the story my mom had told me about my grandmother giving her a message from my mother’s grandmother. A member of the Order would probably never have done that.

“He was conflicted. It wasn’t his fault,” Lucy protested. “He couldn’t see the good we were doing except as harm to the ghosts, and vice versa,” she said to me.

“He started to pull back from his responsibilities a long time ago, right after you were born, but he didn’t actually resign until about five years ago,” John said.

“What about the ‘book club’?” I asked.

John looked startled. “You remember that?”

“No, it was something my mom said.”

He grimaced. “Danny didn’t want anyone else to know what we were doing on the weekends when we worked for the Order, so he started calling it that. Became like an inside joke, I guess.”

“We tried to talk him out of leaving,” Lucy said, pleading with me to understand. “And then he just…”

“Killed himself,” I said.

John and Lucy flinched.

“All of that is in the past. His choices don’t have to be yours,” Silas said shortly, stuffing his hands in his pockets.

“We could really use someone with your skills. We saw you interacting with them. It’s a smart move when you’re outnumbered,” Lucy said hopefully. She rolled her flashlight between her palms, making the light spin crazily on the ceiling.

“You had to save me in the end,” I pointed out.

“Training,” John said with a dismissive wave.

“Yes, training,” Silas said with a different emphasis on it. “As in, he needs it. Lots of it.”

“But you have the inherent ability to see them, track them, we could tell that,” Lucy said eagerly. “That’s rare, especially without the years of intense practice. You could be a full member in a matter of months.”