Carry me—
I was lying in the dirt in front of Ravenwood, half-stuck beneath a rosebush and an overgrown camellia hedge. I had crossed again—and this time, all on my own.
“I’ll be damned.” I laughed, relieved. I was getting pretty good at this whole being-dead thing.
Then I practically ran up the old veranda steps. I had to see if Lena had gotten the message—my message. My only problem was that no one bothered to do the crossword in The Stars and Stripes , not even Amma. I had to find a way to get them to look at that paper, if they hadn’t already.
Lena wasn’t in her room, and she wasn’t at my grave either. She wasn’t in any of the usual places we used to go.
Not in the lemon grove or the crypt, where I’d died the first time.
I even looked in Ridley’s old room, where Liv was asleep in Ridley’s creaking four-poster bed. I was hoping she’d be able to sense that I was there with her Ethan Wate–ometer. No such luck. That’s when I realized it was nighttime in Gatlin, the real Gatlin, and there was absolutely no correlation between time that passed in the Otherworld and Mortal time. I felt like I’d only been gone a few hours—and here it was, the middle of the night.
I didn’t even know what day it was, come to think of it.
Worse yet, when I leaned over Liv’s face in the moonlight, it looked like she had been crying. I felt guilty, since there was a strong possibility I was the reason for the tears, unless she and John had had a fight.
But that was unlikely, because when I looked down, I was standing right in the middle of John Breed’s chest. He was curled up next to the bed, on the worn pink shag carpeting.
Poor guy. As many times as he had screwed up in the past, he was good to Liv, and for a while he believed he was the One Who Is Two. It’s hard to hold a grudge against a guy who tried to give his life to save the world. If anyone understood that, it was me.
It wasn’t his fault the world wouldn’t have him.
So I stepped off his chest as quickly as I could, and vowed to be a little more careful where I put my feet in the future. Not that he’d ever know.
As I moved through the rest of the house it seemed completely vacant. Then I heard the crackling of a fireplace and followed the sound. At the bottom of the stairs, straight off the front hall, I found Macon sitting in his cracked leather chair by the fire. True to form, where there was Macon, there was also Lena. She was sitting at his feet, leaning against the ottoman. I could smell the Sharpie she was writing with. Her notebook lay open on her lap, but she was barely looking at it. Drawing circles over and over, until the page looked like it was ripping apart.
She wasn’t crying—far from it.
She was plotting.
“It was Ethan. It had to be. I could feel him there with us, like he was standing right next to his grave.” Had she seen the crossword? Maybe that was why she was so fired up. I looked around the study, but if she’d read the paper, there was no sign of it. A stack of old newspapers filled a brass bin next to the fireplace; Macon used them for kindling. I tried to lift a single page of newsprint, and I could barely make a corner flutter.
I wondered if I would’ve been able to figure out the crossword without a more experienced Sheer like my mom helping me.
Amma didn’t need to worry so much about the haint blue and the salt and the charms. This whole haunting thing wasn’t as easy as it was cracked up to be.
Then I noticed how sad Macon looked, studying Lena’s face. I gave up on the newspaper and focused harder on their conversation.
“You may have felt the essence of him, Lena. A burial site is a powerful place, no doubt.”
“I don’t mean I felt something, Uncle Macon. I felt him. Ethan, the Sheer. I’m sure of it.” The smoke from the fire curled out from the grating. Boo lay with his head in Lena’s lap, the flames reflecting in his dark eyes.
“Because a button fell onto his grave?” Macon’s voice didn’t change, but he sounded tired. I wondered how many of these conversations he’d endured since I died.
“No. Because he moved it.” Lena didn’t give up.
“What about the wind? What about someone else? Wesley could have bumped it off, considering he is not the most graceful of creatures.”
“It was only a week ago. I remember it perfectly. I know it happened.” She was even more stubborn than he was.
A week ago?
Had that much time passed in Gatlin?
Lena hadn’t seen the paper. She couldn’t prove I was still here, not to herself or my family or even my best friend.
There was no way to explain about Obidias Trueblood and all the complications in my life, not while she didn’t even know I was in the room with her.
“What about since then?” Macon asked.
She looked troubled. “Maybe he’s gone. Maybe he’s up to something. I don’t know how it works in the Otherworld.” Lena stared into the fire as if she was looking for something. “It’s not just me. I went to see Amma. She said she felt him in the house.”
“Amma’s feelings are not to be trusted when it comes to Ethan.”
“What’s that supposed to mean? Of course Amma can be trusted. She’s the most trustworthy person I know.” Lena looked furious, and I wondered how much she actually knew about that night at the water tower.
He didn’t say a word.
“Isn’t she?”
Macon closed his book. “I can’t see the future. I’m not a Seer. All I know is Ethan did what needed to be done. The whole realm—Dark and Light—will always be grateful to him.”
Lena stood up, ripping the ink-stained page from her notebook. “Well, I’m not. I understand he was very brave and noble and whatever, but he left me here, and I’m not sure it was worth it. I don’t care about the universe and the realm and saving the world, not anymore. Not without Ethan.”
She tossed the ripped page into the fire. The orange flames leaped up around it.
Uncle Macon spoke as he watched the fire. “I understand.”
“Really?” Lena didn’t seem to believe him.
“There was a time when I put my heart above all else.”
“And what happened?”
“I don’t know. I got older, I suppose. And I learned that things often are more complicated than we think.” Leaning against the mantel, Lena stared into the fire.
“Maybe you just forgot what it feels like.”
“Perhaps.”
“I won’t.” She looked at her uncle. “I won’t ever forget.”
She twisted her hand, and the smoke rose up until it curled around her and took shape. It was a face. It was my face.
“Lena.”
My face disappeared at the sound of Macon’s voice, fading away into streaks of gray cloud.
“Leave me alone. Let me have what little I can, what I have left of him.” She sounded fierce, and I loved her for it.
“Those are only memories.” There was sadness in Macon’s voice. “You have to move on. Trust me.”
“Why? You never did.”
He smiled sadly, staring past her into the fire. “That’s how I know.” I followed Lena up the stairs. Though the ice and snow had melted away since my last visit to Ravenwood, a thick gray fog hung throughout the house, and the air was colder.
Lena didn’t seem to notice or care what was going on around her, even though her breath was curling up toward her face in a quiet white cloud. I noticed the dark rings under her eyes, the way she looked as thin and as frail as she had when Macon died. She wasn’t the same person she had been then, though—she was someone much stronger.
She had believed Macon was gone forever, and we found a way to bring him back. I knew deep down she couldn’t hold out for any less of a fate for me.
Maybe Lena didn’t know I was here, but she knew I wasn’t gone. She wasn’t giving up on me yet. She couldn’t.