Authors: Apryl Baker
Odd question. “Easier than before, but I still had to concentrate. Why?”
“How often have you opened that door since you got home?” he asks instead of answering my question.
“Just the once when she attacked me. I was sick and tired of that crap. I almost died last time and wasn’t about to do it again. It wasn’t hard to close it the next morning.”
“The next morning?” he asks, horrified. “You left it open all night?”
What, did I break some kind of unwritten Ghost Rule? “Just a thin circle. I felt safer with a barrier between me and the ghosts.”
“Salt would have done that!” Doc roared.
“Um, no, Dan forgot to mention that…”
“What?” he asks, resigned to hearing something even worse, I think.
“If we salt the doors, Mattie can’t enter,” Dan tells him.
Doc heaves a long sigh. “I hadn’t foreseen this. How is your temperature, Mattie? Are you colder than you used to be?”
“Yeah,” I say. “I freeze all the time, even if we crank up the heat to ninety.”
“
Your essence is becoming more a part of the Ghost Plane than this one,” he says. “You absorbed Eric’s soul. That, combined with your own energy was bad enough, but you died
again
, Mattie. You were on the Ghost Plane for a little while and your energy bonded with it. That’s why it’s getting easier for you to open the doorway to The Between. You’re becoming more Reaper than human.”
“Is that a bad thing?” I ask, fear lancing through me. It
sounds
like a bad thing.
“I’m not sure,” he answers, sounding somewhat reluctant. “I don’t know enough to even make a guess. You’re the first living
Reaper I’ve ever come across.”
“My dad says he can do what I can,” I say hesitant
ly. “Maybe he could shed some light on it?”
There’s another loud clatter. I think he dropped his phone because we can hear him scramble to pick it back up.
What is going on with him?
I mouth at Dan who just shrugs, as mystified as me.
“Sorry, dropped the phone,” he apologizes. “Mattie, I feel I must urge you to be cautious. What Dan’s mother said about your father’s family…”
“Zeke has a different story,” I blurt, with this insane need to defend my father and don’t know why. Maybe because when Ezekiel Crane looked at me, I saw how much he loved me.
“That’s my point, Mattie,” he sighs. “We don’t know who’s telling the truth.”
Dan gives me a ‘he has a valid point’ look, but then again it
is
his mother who…
Stop it
, I tell myself forcefully. Dan is just looking out for me, not his mother. “Doc, you said it yourself. You
don’t
know what’s happening to me. My father might. I mean, if Dan and Eli are with me when I talk to him about it, I’ll be perfectly safe.”
Another long sigh and then Doc, sounding reluctant, says, “Just promise me you’ll be careful.”
“I promise,” I answer, and mean it. No games.
“Now, back to The Between,” Doc continues. “Mattie, you have to be careful. You’re a Reaper, meant to ferry souls
through
The Between, not to
feed
them to the monsters there.”
That stung. “I was only defending myself! The ghosts were trying to kill me!”
“I know that, Mattie,” he replies in a strained voice. “But it doesn’t change what happens to you every time you kill a soul that is meant to be ferried through.”
“What do you mean?” I ask. He just said he didn’t know
what’s happening to me.
Dr. Olivet’s silence lasts only a moment. “You remember the research I did on human Reapers?”
I nod, then say “yeah” when I realize he can’t see me.
“There was a passage in one of the
books that describes what happened to a man who used The Between as his personal weapon,” the doc begins. “It started out innocently enough. Like you, he was only defending himself. The problem was, every time he did that, he destroyed a piece of his own soul. By the time he actually died, his soul was gone, totally eaten away by the murder he’d committed over the years. His friend documented that he believes the man became one of the creatures in The Between. One of the monsters.”
“What?” I whisper, my heart thumping wildly.
“No one really knows how the creatures came to inhabit The Between,” Doc says softly. “The current theory is that they are the remains of human Reapers, those condemned to kill for an eternity for abusing their gift.”
“That’s not possible,” I cringe. No way. I will never become one of those things. I won’t.
“How did you feel when you opened the door and pushed the ghost through?” Doc asks.
That’s a stupid question. “What do you mean, how did I feel?”
“I should have been more specific. Sorry.” He cleared his throat. “Let’s look at it differently. Was there anything in particular you did to open the door? Any thoughts or feelings you focused on?”
This
is hard to talk about, but I guess I have to if I want answers. “The door doesn’t just open. I have to think about all the bad stuff that’s happened to me,” I admit. “It takes me to a dark place where there’s nothing but pain and rage. Once I’m there, I go a little dead inside, cold.”
“Precisely,” Doc says. “You kill a little of your soul to do it, Mattie. You aren’t a
Reaper yet. You’re still human. Only a full Reaper is supposed to open that doorway.”
“I won’t do it again,” I whisper. Never, ever again. I am not becoming one of those things.
“Mattie, I’m not telling you
not
to open it,” Doc sighs. “I’m just saying
be careful
. There may come a time when you need to open it to defend yourself like you did with Jonas in New Orleans, but for a regular old ghost? Don’t do it.”
All I can do is stare blankly.
“I think she’s starting to freak out a bit, Doctor,” Dan says, the worry plain in his voice. “She’s gone all pale.”
“You know what? I think I’ll come to Charlotte. I have a speaking engagement I have to finish up here in Berkley, but I’ll catch the first available flight out Friday night. We can sit down and have a long talk and sort everything out, okay?”
“That might be a good idea.” Dan picks up the phone, turns off the speakerphone and walks into the kitchen. Then I hear the microwave. When he comes back, he swaps my cold hot chocolate for a new cup. “It’ll be okay, Squirt.” He smiles and gives me a brief shoulder-nudge. “I promise.”
“Will it?” I ask. Nothing ever seems to work out for me. Why should this be any different?
“Focus on the good stuff,” Dan says, sitting beside me. “You have people who love you, people you can call family. You’ve got me and Mary and you found your dad. He might not be on the up and up, but he loves you. Eli said even he could see that…”
“Wait, when did you talk to Eli about my dad?” I ask.
“Last night,” he says. “Remember I told you I had to swing by their place before I went home? Eli and I had a long talk about your father.”
“You two are trying
, then?”
“Sorta, kinda, maybe?”
“Isn’t that my line?” I smile at him.
He shrugs. “You ready to tell me what
’s going on with my little brother?”
“You’re like a dog with a bone, gnawing away.” I give him a grumpy glare.
“I just need to know if I need to beat the snot out of him or not.”
I laugh, snorting hot chocolate through my nose and onto the carpet, which only makes me laugh harder.
“The white carpet!” Dan wails and runs for the Folex. It’s the only thing we’ve found that could get stains out of his precious white carpet. He throws me a paper towel before soaking the chocolate spots on the carpet. “Now that you’ve ruined the carpet and cost me my security deposit, you have to spill the beans.”
“Dan
, I spilled red Fanta all over that carpet. If you got that out, a few drops of hot chocolate isn’t going to ruin it,” I say dryly. Really, it’s just chocolate.
“Spill, Mattie!” he barks. He really has been spending time with Meg. That
’s one of her favorite things to shout at me. I sigh. I really
do
miss her.
Giving up on the inevitable, I rehash everything I’d overheard Caleb and Eli talking about. Just hearing myself say it out loud makes me nervous.
“Let me ask you a question, Mattie,” Dan says after I’m done. “Do you like Eli? And don’t dodge the question. I know you like him, but is it more than that? Do you have real feelings for him?”
“I don’t know,” I admit miserably. “I haven’t known him long enough to even know what I feel.”
“Tell me what you
do
know,” he urges.
“I want to hit him on a regular basis.” Then I smile. “He makes me laugh and I get butterflies in my stomach just thinking about him. He feels familiar to me, like I’ve known him forever, but that doesn’t make sense. I feel safe with him too, not like I do with you, but safe nonetheless. When he looks at me, I blush and I
never
blush, Dan. And when he kisses me…‘Wow’ isn’t even close…” I close my eyes and shudder at the emotions washing through me at just the memory of his kiss.
“It sounds to me like you’ve got some very real, very serious feelings for Eli
,” Dan finally says in a low tone.
“But how?” I ask. “How can you have feelings for someone that quickly?”
“Mattie, remember you said that growing up without having people care about you
didn’t
teach you what it meant to be loved? You’re confused because…well, love is strange, difficult, and crazy. The feelings are a new experience, and you don’t understand them. I wish you could see your face when you talk about Eli. You’d understand.”
“He was really nervous when he realized I’d heard the whole conversation with Caleb.”
“What
did
you say?”
“Nothing.”
I look down sheepishly. “I ran.”
“Of course you did
,” Dan laughs. “You tried that BS with me a couple months ago, too. And what did I tell you?”
“That you were in it for the long haul,” I answer.
“That’s right, Squirt. Me and you, we’re in it for the long haul. I was nice about it, though.”
“So?” What’s he getting at?
“So…I don’t think my brother is going to be as nice about it.” Dan smirks.
‘What do you mean?” I ask warily.
“I mean Eli has a
very
possessive streak in him and won’t put up with your BS. He’ll corner you and tell you how it is.”
“Is that so? I don’t do dominant male drama,” I say flippantly, but inside my stomach
gets all fluttery at the thought.
Dan laughs. “I think you
’ll have to deal with it. Eli has it bad and he’s not going to just let you run from him. He’ll chase you and he’ll make sure to catch you.”
My eyes widen at the finality in Dan’s words. It sounds almost prophetic. I flash back to the images I’d seen of Eli’s eyes in those memories I’d had. Maybe neither of us has a choice.
“Still up for the lake?” Dan gave me another elbow nudge. “There’ve been enough deep discussions for one afternoon. How about some fun at the lake today and we’ll figure out everything with Silas and your maybe-brother tomorrow?”
That sounds like the best idea I’ve heard all day.
“At least until Eli gets there,” Dan chuckles and herds me out the door.
Eli
would
be there.
And then what?
Only one way to find out.
Lake Norman is one of the most beautiful places I’ve ever seen. It’s completely man-made, but that doesn’t matter. It’s gorgeous. Surrounded on all sides by woodlands, the water sparkles a clear, deep blue in the sunlight, making me want to drag out my sketchpad and spend hours drawing. Dan has a friend who let us borrow his boat. I was shocked that Dan knew how to drive it. That’s pretty cool, telling me there’s a lot about Dan I don’t know. I’ve never been on a boat before and can’t wait.
Dan parks his beat up old Chevy and then I help him unload our stuff out of the back. “Where to?” I ask.
“We’re walking for a bit. I know where Lacey hangs out so I want to check to see if she’s here yet.”
Ah, Lacey. I really hope she knows more than the next-to-nothing she told the cops. We’re basically clueless about who killed the drama queens. She was Addison’s best friend…so she
should
know something.
Dan leads us down the slope to where
the boats are docked. I stop and just stare. It’s not a big boat compared to other ones around us, but to me it looks huge.
Jessica Marie
is the name painted along the side. Where did the name come from? My mind then starts making up crazy scenarios. I’ve been doing this a lot since I started writing, and it comes as somewhat of a surprise that I really do have an imagination. It tends to rear its head at odd times.