The perpetrators scrambled to get back into their pickup, even as they taunted Evan on his late arrival. Infuriated and humiliated, he’d accelerated at them in his van, intending to brake and swerve at the last second. Except he didn’t.
He said his brakes had failed, but the police hadn’t been able to find evidence of that. Two kids had ended up dead, and a third one was badly injured. It didn’t help that one of the kids who’d died was the son of a prominent lawyer. Evan had been convicted, given the death penalty, and executed by lethal injection in 2002, right before they put a moratorium on the death penalty in Illinois, which still rankled him to this day.
“You’ve already tried apologizing,” I pointed out. He’d attempted to make amends to the affected families before his death, but it hadn’t helped. He was still stuck here, in between. “What else do you want to do?”
“I don’t know!” He folded his arms over his jump suited chest. “That’s your job to figure out.”
Like I didn’t have enough to do? Like my own problems weren’t already trying to hold my head under the water until I quit breathing? At least I was tryingto solve them instead of dumping them in someone else’s lap. So, blame it on frustration, momentary insanity, or just forgetting for a second that the guy was a killer—no matter what he said—but suddenly I couldn’t keep my mouth shut any longer. “How about telling the truth, for a change? You didn’t swerve because you didn’t want to, and that’s what’s keeping you here.”
Dumb, Will, definitely dumb.
He lunged at me, and the room exploded in noise.
The woman in the suit, the one who I’d noticed earlier, appeared in front of me suddenly, blocking Evan’s path. “Back off.” She shoved at him, and he stumbled, looking stunned. “And the rest of you, shut it already,” she said to the others. She glanced at me, as if expecting my gratitude and/or approval.
But I was too distracted. I recognized her now. It was Spring Break Girl from Malachi’s place…except she was dressed differently. She’d ditched her bikini top and shorts for a suit that clung to her curves and a fancy, twisty hairstyle, both of which made her look older than the nineteen or twenty she’d probably been. How was that even possible? Ghosts couldn’t change their appearances, not like that.
“Do you really think this is going to get you anywhere?” she demanded of the other spirits, hands on her hips. With her attention on them again, I got a better glimpse of the back of her head, which appeared slightly, uh, dented.
I grimaced.
“Who are you?” Evan asked her, sulking. Defeated by a girl—one more float for his pity parade.
She turned and beamed at me with determination and maybe the faintest hint of crazy. “I’m the help he’s been looking for.”
Oh. Crap.
I waited until Will’s car pulled away before I crossed back over to Sacred Heart. I wasn’t ready to be Lily Turner, even for pretend, at this exact moment. Fury and hurt burned in my gut in a potent mix.
I didn’t object to Will caring so much about her; my problem was more that he didn’t seem to care nearly as much about me. I was the spirit here, the soul. Lily, the realLily, not this body, was probably up on a cloud laughing her ass off at all of this. Or…since this wasn’t a cartoon, in the light, completely at peace, unaware and unconcerned about the corporeal struggles of the rest of us. That was more likely.
Bitch.
I’d been there once. In the light. I don’t remember any of it, other than fleeting memories of this sensation of overwhelming peace and acceptance. Then I’d found myself back here on this ball of dirt, stuck between the living and the dead once more, no explanation, no “thanks for playing,” nothing.
I’d told Will what I’d had to, what made the most sense—that I’d been sent back to learn more and to help him. It was easier than explaining that I’d been rejected—me!—and I didn’t even know why.
Actually, if I were being honest, it was even worse than that. Getting rejected without knowing why was one thing. But I’d been in the light for nearly a month before they’d decided to boot me. Like there was some flaw with my character that was visible only upon closer inspection. Or someone had decided I needed a further taste of karma, and offered acceptance only to yank it away, just as Misty and I had done on occasion to those petitioning for first-tier status. At the time it had seemed almost a kindness to at least let them believe they had a chance when most of them didn’t. But now…now I saw things a little differently.
I didn’t think the light was vindictive like that—it kind of went against the whole principle of what the light was supposed to be—but who knew for sure?
Everything since my return had been one big guess, including saving Lily last month when she was dying in that broom closet and I was disappearing.
And what did that get me? Nothing but more trouble.
Whatever.
It took me a while to find my grave again. I hadn’t spenta lot of time here since my funeral. To be honest, graveyards are kind of, well, dead. The only people who come here are the living, and they are always respectful and fairly boring when here. The dead who are stuck in between have only each other and watching the living as their entertainment, so they aren’t sticking around places like this. Cemeteries are, in that respect, a good place to go for some alone time, for those on both sides of the great divide.
The other problem, I eventually realized, was that I was looking for the temporary placard they’d put up immediately after the funeral to mark my grave. But when I found the right spot, it was only because I recognized the headstone my father had special-ordered. It had finally come in.
Made of Italian rose marble with weeping angels on top, the stone was big and beautiful and a little obnoxious, standing about six inches taller than the stones on either side. But that was my dad for you. He’d given me the headstone he thought his princess deserved. Which was pretty much the last thing he’d done for me, by the looks of it.
The marble was dirty with clean splotches from the last rain, and the built-in vase was empty, without so much as a dried leaf hanging around. The grass had finally grown in over the bare dirt, but it was a tough old summer green rather than the baby stuff of spring, and it was starting to rise above the base of the stone.
Had my dad even been here since they’d put up the stone? It didn’t appear so. He’d been busy with Gigi, my step-Mothra, and the new baby on the way. His replacement daughter.
Tired suddenly and my leg aching, I knelt awkwardly at the edge of the new grass, careful to avoid sitting above any portion of my former body. That would be just too weird.
Neglect I would understand—had understood for years—from my mother. She was not capable of focusing on anyone other than herself, even now that she was trying to get better. Maybe even especially now that she was trying to change. She needed every bit of willpower she had to keep herself on track, and I’d seen all too well what happened when she went off the rails.
But my dad? I was special, his favorite. The one good thing that had come out of his marriage to my mother, or so he used to say. He spoiled me, and I would have done anything for him. And I had done plenty—corralling my mom into resembling a reasonable human being when he needed her for legal meetings or whatever, not complaining when he’d left me to manage our bills and the money we received from his monthly check, keeping my mom from pestering him every thirty seconds, taking the calls from the neighbors when my mom was parked halfway on the front lawn again so my dad wouldn’t have to interrupt his staycation with Gigi, etc.