The Year of Shadows (13 page)

“Yeah.” I forced my attention back to my sandwich. “I’m curious.”

“Well. If you
do
decide to help them—and I still don’t think you should—I’ll help them with you.”

My head shot back up. “Really?”

“Really.” Henry dug in for another glop of potato salad. “It’s not safe enough for you to do it alone. I don’t trust them.”

This hot, tingling feeling raced up my arms, but I remained professional. “Maybe it isn’t so bad being your ghost-hunting partner after all, Mr. Perfect.”

He smiled at me through a mouthful of food.

That night, after Nonnie went to bed, I camped out by the rehearsal room door to let Henry in. He wouldn’t be there until midnight, but I couldn’t possibly stay in bed. My skin crawled with nerves; I hadn’t decided what to tell the ghosts, and part of me was afraid of what they’d do if I said no. They’d promised they wouldn’t hurt us, but what did a ghost’s promise really mean?

As I was sitting there, huddled up in the dark with Igor in my lap and a flashlight under my foot, I heard someone stumble into the kitchen. The light buzzed on, bathing the hallway in harsh white light. I heard a heavy sigh—the Maestro’s sigh.

“I thought he was asleep,” I whispered to Igor.

Igor perked up.
Finally, something to do.
Then he leapt off me, darting silently into the kitchen.

“Olivia?” The Maestro poked his head around the corner. I tried to blend into the darkness. “What are you doing out there?”

I rolled my eyes and dragged myself over to him, arms crossed. “Nothing,” I snapped. I needed to get him into his room and asleep before Henry showed up.

“I’m making chamomile tea, if you want any.”

Chamomile tea. That was good. That would make him sleepy. “Great. I’m going back to bed.”

But when I walked past the kitchen, a pile of glossy papers on the kitchen table caught my eye. I peered closer. I saw
THE CITY PHILHARMONIC
and shining pictures of the Maestro and
the orchestra. The concert schedule for the rest of the year.

“What are these?”

The Maestro tried to scoop all of them into his arms, but the paper was too slick. The fliers slid everywhere, falling to the ground. “They’re nothing. Just a little something.”

I picked up one of the fallen papers. “They’re fliers about the orchestra.”

“I thought maybe if I put them around town, it could help. Even though it isn’t much.”

I stared at the paper in my hand. The ink was so bright, the paper crisp and shiny. “These must have cost a lot.”

“Yes.” The Maestro paused, hunched over, his arms full of fliers. He seemed afraid to look at me. “They cost a good deal.”

“Where’d you get
that
money?” I threw the flier to the ground. “Did you sell Nonnie and not tell me?”

“How could you say such a thing?” The Maestro stepped toward me, and the pile of paper in his hands tumbled to the floor, skidding into the corners of the room. Igor chased after it, yowling.

The Maestro stood there staring at the fallen papers like it was this mess he could never pick up. He was as skinny as I was. He needed to shave.

“I think I might be going mad, Olivia,” he said at last. He slumped into the nearest chair. “I think that I see things. I think that I see
her
. But when I look again, it is just a trick of the shadows.”

He looked up at me, wiping his face. It made him look so small, like a child, like Nonnie cuddling her scarves in her bed. Suddenly I couldn’t breathe.

“You’re pathetic,” I whispered. “Mom’s gone. She’s not coming back.”

The Maestro nodded. “You’re right. You’re right, of course.” Then he wiped his face again, and then he got on his hands and knees, picking up each flier one at a time, stacking them neatly, like they were pieces of glass.

By the time Henry knocked our code on the rehearsal room door—da da da-da da . . . da da!—the Maestro had gone to bed.

“Well?” he said, as I let him in. He had this big lumpy backpack on his shoulders. “What’s your decision?”

I kept thinking of the Maestro and his fliers, no matter how hard I tried not to. Hot lumps in my throat made it hard to breathe. He thought he saw Mom. He thought he saw her in the shadows. That wasn’t possible. Unless he was crazy. Or unless . . .

A horrible thought occurred to me, so horrible I couldn’t get the words out.

“Olivia? What’s wrong? You’re staring at me.”

I spun on my heel and ran out onto center stage, Henry hurrying behind me, whispering for me to slow down.

“Ghosts,” I hissed, once we got out onstage. I swung my flashlight around like a searchlight. “Get out here.
Now.
”

“Olivia,” Henry said. “You don’t order ghosts around. What’s the matter with you? What’re you gonna say?”

Before I could answer, Frederick, Tillie, Jax, and Mr. Worthington manifested right before our eyes. Henry staggered back.

I was too angry for surprise. I plunked a finger in the middle of Frederick’s chest. Cold shot up my arm, turning my skin white as snow and my veins purple. I didn’t care.

“You’re messing with the Maestro. You’re making him see things that aren’t there. Aren’t you?”

Frederick’s expectant smile disappeared. “I beg your pardon!”

“Don’t mess with him. I need him to stay sane. I need him to make money. Or else . . . or else . . .” I trailed off, shaking, with a fear so deep it was hard to stay standing. “I’ll do it, okay? I’ll help you move on. Just leave him alone. Leave
us
alone. And if you go anywhere near Nonnie, I swear I’ll make you sorry.”

Henry pulled back on my arm, and Frederick held up his hands. “Olivia, please! Slow down. We haven’t ‘messed with’ your father, nor with your grandmother. Nor with you, for that matter. I don’t know what your father saw, but it wasn’t us.”

I yanked my arm away from Henry, tears wobbling at my eyelids. My cheeks felt like they were on fire. “You promise?”

Before I could answer, Frederick, Tillie, Jax, and Mr. Worthington manifested right before our eyes.

Frederick floated down to my level. Tillie, Jax, and Mr. Worthington hovered solemnly behind him. “We promise you, Olivia. Cross my heart and hope to . . . well, stay dead.”

“Cross your human heart? The one you used to have?”

Frederick drew an
X
over his chest, leaving dark ripples in the grayness. “Absolutely.”

Henry was staring at the ghosts hard. “
Did
Olivia’s dad see something? Do you know what he’s talking about?”

The ghosts looked at each other uncomfortably.

“It’s possible we know,” said Tillie.

“We might know something,” said Jax.

“But you’re not going to like it,” they said together.

“What does that mean?”

Frederick’s shoulders rippled darkly; his head drooped. “I suppose I should show you.”

“Frederick, don’t!” Tillie said.

“No, Frederick,” said Jax.

“You’ll scare them away!”

Mr. Worthington shook his head, staring at the ceiling.

“They deserve to know,” Frederick said sharply. “Everyone, gather at the backstage door. Olivia, please switch off your flashlight. We’ll wait there.”

Henry grabbed my hand in the dark. I didn’t mind one bit; Frederick’s expression scared me. “Wait for what?”

“You’ll see.” Frederick shuddered; it felt like drizzling ice against my skin. “It won’t be pleasant, and it’s actually quite dangerous for us ghosts. But not with you close by.”

I didn’t know what that meant, but I was too afraid to ask. The darkness had swallowed up my voice. We waited in the doorway for what felt like hours, Henry’s hand crushing mine. Then the red exit sign at the back of the Hall flickered.

“There,” Frederick whispered, pointing at the ceiling.

In the moonlight streaming through the high terrace windows, I saw shadows. Solid, twisting, vaguely human-shaped shadows like the ones Henry and I had seen that day in the lobby.

The burn on my arm stung with sudden coldness.

“We’ve seen these before,” I said. “That day in the lobby, the first day we saw you.”

“Yes.”

“You said that was part of some test,” Henry whispered furiously. “Were you lying?”

“Yes, and I’m sorry for that. But I didn’t want to frighten you away before we could even explain ourselves.”

I followed the shadows’ flickering movement across the ceiling. It was mesmerizing. “What are they?”

Frederick exhaled, sending goosebumps down my back. “They are shades. Ghosts who could never find their anchors, who were never able to move on. Ghosts who were tempted into Limbo. We used you to drive them away, that day in the lobby. I apologize, but . . . they are much stronger than we are, and they wouldn’t leave us alone.”

I rubbed my burn. “They hit us. They left marks behind.”

“They hate humans. They are terribly jealous of you, and yet they love you too,” Frederick said quietly. “You have what they have forever lost: life. Mostly they stay away from you. The pain of remembering is too great. But sometimes they cannot help themselves.”

I inched my head a bit farther out the door. The shades scampered across the ceiling, darting in and out of the moonlight like spiders. Darkness trailed off of their bodies like black fog. When the light hit them, they glittered. Like my burn.

“You said something about Limbo,” Henry whispered. “What’s Limbo?”

“There is the world of Death, where the Dead go,” said Frederick. “There is the world of the Living, which holds the Living and the ghosts. Then there is Limbo, which is between the two. Once a ghost enters Limbo, it becomes a shade. It can travel back and forth between the world of the Living and Limbo. It can even touch things in the world of the Living, if it wants to. You see?”

One of the shades careened into a chandelier. The diamonds clinked and shuddered. Soft shrieks drifted down afterward.

“That doesn’t seem fair,” I said. “
You
can’t touch anything.”

“No, but at least I can perhaps move on someday. Sooner rather than later, if we have your help.” He smiled shyly. “Shades, on the other hand, can never move on. Or at least,
I’ve never heard of it happening. They’re not the best conversationalists, shades. I only know of them what we have managed to piece together through watching them. You see, in Limbo, their minds are clear. They remember that they have anchors, somewhere in the world of the Living. They remember that they would like to move on. But once in the world of the Living, they forget all of that. They become hardly more than mindless beasts, confused and vicious. Thus, they can never remember, and they can never move on. They can touch things, oh yes, but they can never find peace.”

“How do you know all this?” Henry demanded.

“We told him,” Tillie said, jutting out her chin. “And Mr. Worthington told us. And other ghosts told him. You have to study your enemy. We
know
shades.”

“So shades are shades for eternity?”

Frederick nodded, his eyes fixed on the ceiling.

Eternity
: forever, and ever, and ever; an endless amount of time.

I tried to wrap my brain around the idea. I’d heard that the universe was eternal too, spreading out in all directions, and if you tried to find the edge, you never would. You’d just keep on flying through space,
forever
.