Authors: Apryl Baker
“We still need to ink you,” Caleb answers.
“No, it’s all good.” I wave him off. “Dan will be here any second.”
“Mattie, you need that tattoo,” Caleb starts, but I cut him off.
“No, actually, I don’t. It’s already taken care of.” I turn to head out the door, but Eli stops me.
“Taken care of?” Eli asks softly and I wince at the accusation in his voice. If he only knew.
“Look, it’s not a big deal,” I tell him.
“What did you do, Hilda?” he asks suspiciously.
A car horn honks outside. I almost fall down in relief at Dan’s timely arrival. Besides, this isn’t the time to have a Silas argument. “There’s Dan, gotta go!” I’m out the door before either of them can say anything and dive head-first into the truck. “Drive!” I order Dan. He gives me a confused brow-lift but pulls out. As we leave, I sneak a look to the right.
Eli is standing on the porch, staring. Part of me feels bad for running away from him, but another part of me is patting myself on the back.
Running is what I do best.
“What was that all about?” Dan asks, flipping the radio off.
He looks tired today, his eyes full of pain. It must be really bad for him at home. I feel another twinge of guilt, but push it aside. He’s right. I have to stop blaming myself for his mother’s mistakes.
“I just needed to get away from Eli,” I mutter and flip the temperature control in the truck from cold to warm.
“What? Why?” Dan asks, his expression murderous. “Did he do something to you?”
“No, no, nothing like that!” I hurry to explain. “Chill. He didn’t
do
anything to me, unless you count keeping secrets from me.”
“Secrets?”
“Can we go to your apartment first?” I ask. “I need to tell you about some stuff and I have a feeling Eli and Caleb will show up at the lake.”
“Sure.” Dan switches lanes and then turns around at the next available spot. After ten minutes, we reach his apartment complex. Once inside, I find
my fuzzy flannel throw and huddle up on the couch. I can’t ever get warm unless Eli’s around. This
can’t
be normal.
Dan makes me a cup of hot chocolate before he flops down next to me. “Okay, spill it, Squirt. What’s going on? Why were you so eager to get away from Eli?”
“Eli is the least of my worries right now,” I tell him, my voice trembling. I hate it when that happens. “Silas paid me another visit last night.”
“Silas? I thought Caleb demon-proofed the house?”
“Oh, he did and Silas is pissed he can’t just come over whenever he wants, but my dreams are something he has unfettered access to.”
“Well, hell, Mattie, I don’t know how to protect you from your dreams.” Dan sighs, aggravated.
“You can’t,” I tell him. “Silas wanted to make a deal…”
“You didn’t?” he asks, horrified.
“Of course not!” I smack him. “I’m not stupid…
but
I
was
tempted.”
“There is nothing worth…”
“He said I have a brother.”
That shuts Officer Dan up. He stares at me, his mouth hanging open for a moment. Exactly how I feel. “Your father would have told you if you had a brother.”
I shake my head. “No, Silas said Zeke doesn’t know about him, that only my mom does. She’s not in any shape to tell me, though.”
“What do you mean?”
“Zeke said he had to have her committed because she’d lost it from grief after I was taken. Silas said she’s catatonic. It fits with what Zeke told me about her. If that’s true, then I might never know who he is, Dan.”
“Let me guess, Silas offered to tell you who he is for…for what exactly?”
“He wanted me to take down the demon-proofing so he can just magically appear whenever he wants.”
“Mattie,” he says after a long moment. “Demon
s lie—”
“I don’t think he is,” I interrupt. “Silas has
never
lied to me, not once. He doesn’t need to. He simply gives people what they want most.”
“Why is he stalking you?” Dan gets up and starts to pace. “This can’t be normal, Mattie. Was that all he wanted? To try and bargain with you?”
“Well, no…”
“What do you mean
, no?” Dan asks, his voice sharp. He stops pacing and gives me his patented Officer Dan stare. I have the insane urge to squirm. I refrain, but just barely.
“Well, you remember Caleb saying he was going to come up with a tattoo so the ghosts can’t make me feel their deaths?”
Dan nods slowly.
“Silas saw Caleb’s design and told me it was rubbish. He inked me himself.”
“You let a demon give you a tattoo?” Dan explodes.
I cringe. “NO! I was
unconscious
at the time. I didn’t wake up until after he was done.” I frown. “Wait, that didn’t sound right.”
The death glare I get from Dan is enough to singe the hair off my head. “Did you show it to Caleb?”
“Why would I show it to Caleb?”
Dan closes his eyes and I get the distinct feeling he’s counting to ten, but then he does that a lot with me. “Mattie, Caleb would know if the
only
thing the tattoo does is keep ghosts from getting to you. What if it gave Silas a way to bypass the demon-proofing?”
“That doesn’t make sense,” I shake my head. “Why offer a deal if…”
“So you would believe he’s still trying to help you?” Dan suggests. “He wants you to trust him, Mattie. I just don’t know why. He needs you for something and we all know you won’t do anything unless you think you’re in control of the situation. By agreeing to a deal, you’ve still maintained control.”
My own eyes widen. “Fudgepops,” I whisper. How does Silas know me so well?
“Let me see it,” Dan demands. “We might need to call Caleb…”
“No!” I yell. I hadn’t meant to yell.
He raises an eyebrow.
“Look, if we call Caleb, he’ll bring Eli with him, and I don’t want to talk to him right now.”
“What’s going on with you and Eli?”
“Nothing,” I mutter.
“Mattie, when I mention him or Caleb, you look ready to jump out the window. Something is definitely going on.”
“Do we have to talk about it right now?” I ask petulantly and snuggle deeper under my fuzzy throw. If it weren’t for the warmth of the hot chocolate, my teeth would probably be chattering.
“Yes, we do,” Dan nods. “This is about your safety and you having a row with Eli…”
“We didn’t fight,” I whisper. “I just…”
“You just what?”
“Look, Dan, can we concentrate on what’s important here? I have Silas to deal with, a mob of angry teenage ghost girls trying to kill me, and maybe a brother out there somewhere. Oh, and let’s not forget Mary has developed the ability to suddenly hear ghosts. Isn’t that enough to worry about without adding a stupid boy into it?”
“Hold on, Mary can hear ghosts?” Dan asks, his mouth falling open again. He looks so much like Caleb in that second that I have to blink. I hope they can get past Dan’s mom and learn to be brothers. It would be good for all of them.
“Mattie!”
I blink and refocus on Dan. “Sorry, you just looked exactly like Caleb. It threw me for a second.”
“Yeah, well…when did Mary start hearing them?”
HA! Here he is fussing at me for dodging my problems, when he doesn’t want to deal with his own family. “I found out last night when another of the girls decided I had to pay for her death. Mary came into the room and could hear her. She had to concentrate, but she heard her.”
“You were attacked again?”
“Yeah, but I took care of it. Threw the little bugger into The Between.” Dan looks rather uncomfortable at that. “What’s that look for?”
“Maybe we should call Doctor Olivet,” Dan suggests.
“Not until you tell me about that look on your face,” I say. My stomach knots up in dread.
He comes back to the couch, falls on it unceremoniously and throws an arm over his face. He does not want to tell me this.
“Mattie, Doctor Olivet was concerned about you when we left New Orleans. It’s just easier if he explains it. I might mess it up.”
“What was he concerned about?”
“You throwing souls into The Between.”
“Why?”
Dan fishes his phone out of his pocket. “Let’s see if we can get him on the phone first, okay? If not, then I’ll do my best to explain it.” At my nod, he looks up the Doc’s number and then activates the speakerphone option.
Doc answers on the third ring. “Dan? Is something wrong with our girl?”
“Um, not unless you count the fact I’m being stalked by eight murderous teenage drama queens blaming me for their deaths,” I chirp, unable to keep from smiling.
I hear a chuckle and then, “Only you, Mattie.”
Pretty much sums it up.
“It’s a little more complicated than that
.” Dan glares at me. “Do you have a few minutes to talk, Doctor Olivet?”
I roll my eyes at Dan’s formality. He refuses to call him Doc, insisting on proper manners and all that nonsense.
“Of course,” he replies. “I was only doing a bit of reading, anyway. What’s up?”
“Mary’s hearing ghosts,” I blurt out. All of a sudden, I don’t want to hear why Dan is so worried about The Between. My stomach already hurts just thinking about that unease on his face. It can’t be good and I don’t know if I can deal with too much more. Dan’s expression says he knows I’m deflecting.
“She’s what?” Doc asks. I can hear a thud that sounds like a book hitting the floor. “Are you sure?”
“
Yeah, she heard the ghost in my room last night,” I say, ignoring Dan for the moment. “Mary’s been able to sense stuff for months, but only recently started to hear them. Could it be because of her having that, uh…what did you call it?”
“An out-of-body experience,” Doc mutters. “It’s possible she made more of a connection with the Ghost Plane than we originally thought.”
“Back up,” Dan interrupts. “Explain in layman’s terms please.”
“Do you remember me telling you that ghosts exist on a different plane than we do, one that runs parallel to our own?”
“Yeah,” Dan nods.
“When Mary was close to death, her soul left her body and traveled along that plane. It’s how she
found Mattie. When people die and then come back from that plane, sometimes they don’t come back the same as they were before. You’ve heard of people waking up and knowing things they shouldn’t? Or suddenly having psychic abilities? That is all a result of tapping into the energies on the Ghost Plane. I think Mary was there for so long, that maybe a piece of her soul is linked to it and therefore she has an ‘in’ the same way that Mattie does.”
“So she’s like a Reaper now?” I ask, frowning myself.
“No,” Doc says. “
That
is an ability that’s rare and must be inherited. Think of a Reaper as being the driver of a car, but Mary would be more like a passenger, there for the ride, but not really seeing the same things the driver does. The driver has to pay attention to everything around them and the passenger is the one who idles away the ride fiddling with the radio, and irritating the driver. Make sense?”
“So she only has a peripheral view?” Dan suggests.
“Close enough,” Doc agrees. “Is that all that was bothering you kids?”
Dan and I wince at the word ‘kids
’. Neither of us like being referred to as a child.
“Well, no,” Dan sighs. “There’s a lot that’s happened since we last saw you.” Dan goes on to explain about the dead girls, Silas popping up randomly, but when he gets to the part about my dad coming into the picture, Doc stops him.
“Her father?” he asks softly.
“Yeah,” Dan says. “My mom told us his name and her social worker contacted him. They ran a DNA test to confirm it.”
There is a long silence in which Dan and I both stare quizzically at the phone.
“Doc, something wrong?” I ask.
“No,” he says at last, his voice strained. He is
such
a bad liar. “I’m happy you found your father, Mattie.” Nope, he doesn’t mean that at
all
. But what does this tone of voice mean? Dan’s frown tells me he wonders, too.
“What else happened?” Doc asks, his voice almost back to normal, and then Dan finishes the story, from the ghost’s attempt to drown me, Silas’s tattoo
—and the fact I’d thrown another ghost into The Between.
Then Doc mutters softly. That can’t be good. There’s a creaking and then footsteps. It sounds like he’s pacing. “Mattie, how hard was it for you to open that doorway?”