“We still have to walk to the front door,” I said, unbuckling my seat belt, “unless you’re planning some kind of ninja stealth attack.” I opened the door and got out.
She slid out after me, shaking her head. “Don’t be ridiculous. We don’t have to sneak up to the house. It was the car that would have attracted attention.” Alona stood and stretched her arms over her head, and I could have sworn I heard her joints pop. “Think about it. You notice when someone pulls into your driveway. But do you pay attention to people out walking around? No,” she answered for me. “Especially not here.” She nodded to the residents walking their dogs, chasing their kids, and watering their lawns.
She was right again. I raised my eyebrows at her in question.
“I spent years hiding my mom from people,” she said with a shrug. “The only ones who ever caught me by surprise were the neighbors when they walked over.”
Once again I felt a twinge of sympathy for her for the life she’d lived before. No wonder she was so concerned about the Turners. They’d actually been concerned about her in return. Well, what they knew of her.
I felt the last of my anger toward her evaporate. Yes, she’d lied about the light, but lying to protect herself was her primary defense mechanism. Should it have surprised me, then, that in a moment of fear and confusion she’d exaggerated to make sure things worked out to her benefit? And she was trying to change, trying to trust. That was huge for her.
She also maybe had a point in that it had been a little naive of me to assume that she’d been given specific instructions. Nothing about the afterlife, or at least my experience with it, worked quite that precisely. The only thing that seemed to have any definitive impact in the in-between place was action. Certain things a spirit did or said to get closure or resolution would bring the light. Being nasty would—eventually, depending on the spirit’s strength—make you gone.
So…if the light hadn’t wanted Alona to be Ally, perceiving it as a selfish move, maybe she would have disappeared already? She would have just depleted her energy and vanished, leaving Lily’s body as it had been before.
Maybe.
Except Erin was currently holding that position, without, as far as I knew, any ill effects. And the light surely couldn’t have intended for Erin to do what she did, right?
My head hurt just thinking about it. And somewhere in this whole debate, there had to be an element of that free-will thing, points for making the unselfish choice or something, but was it the selfish or unselfish choice for Alona to be Ally? I didn’t know. I couldn’t figure out how the system worked. And maybe that was the point. If you aren’t sure how it works, it’s a lot harder to game it. Okay, maybe. But it made me long for the days when I’d thought it operated as my dad had first told me. Simple. Exact. Which, in retrospect, struck me as the kind of explanation you gave a little kid when you weren’t capable of or didn’t want to give amore detailed and accurate answer. You know, thunder is just two clouds bumping into each other, and that sort of thing.
“Hello?” Alona waved a hand in front of my face. “What’s the plan?”
I slammed my door and put aside the deep philosophical ponderings to consider her question, which was far more relevant to the moment.
If Edmund had actually been able to see ghosts, it might have been easier to send Alona ahead through the walls for the element of surprise. But since he couldn’t, I wasn’t sure that ringing the doorbell wouldn’t be equally effective.
After a moment, I shrugged. “We see if he’s home and try to talk to him.” Actually, more like plead with him to help us, but I couldn’t see any point in being that specific with Alona right now. Maybe it wouldn’t come to that.
I started down the street, and she followed.
“That’s it?” she asked, when she caught up, skepticism heavy in her voice.
“What were youthinking? Hot pokers and broken glass?” I moved to the edge of the sidewalk, forcing Alona into the grass, to let a neighbor with schnauzer pass. He stared at me, the crazy unknown guy in his neighborhood talking to himself. I forced a smile and nodded at him. Whatever, dude. You can think what you like.
“We’re not trying to break him. We want his help,” I whispered to Alona, once the schnauzer guy had passed and we’d moved back to the center of the sidewalk.
“If everything you said is true, I think we might have better luck with the pokers and glass,” she said grimly. “He doesn’t want his sister back. And if we can find her and kick her out of Lily, that’s exactly what will happen. She’ll end up right back at his side.”
I shook my head. “I think it’s more complicated than that. If he wanted her gone, all he had to do was have my dad call in the Order. But he didn’t. And when he thought I was one of them, he was packing up and leaving town to protect her.” I hesitated, going more from a gut sense than from anything Edmund or Erin had said to me. “There’s more to it, whatever happened between them.” Which was going to make dealing with them much trickier.
And that wasn’t the only thing. Approaching the house from this direction, I saw something I’d missed before. In the yard, under the shade of a huge maple tree, was a fairly discreet real estate sign. What was less discreet, however, was a giant foreclosure notice plastered diagonally across it.
I stopped. “Crap.”
“What?” Alona asked, but then she followed my gaze. “Oh.” She shrugged. “So? His van is here. He has to be here.”
Yes, but in what kind of state? Probably not one prone to helping us. He’d been gone from his family for five years—thanks to the ghost we were trying to shove back in his direction—and in that time they’d evidently lost their home.
I sighed. “Come on. Let’s go.”
We made our way toward the house, dodging neighbors and their small children alike.
Up close, the home had a distinctly abandoned look and feel to it. The grass was longer than it should have been. The windows didn’t have any blinds or curtains, creating the look of hopeless eyes gazing back at us. And through the windows, we could see dark squares on the walls where pictures or paintings had been. The rooms, at least the ones I could see, were empty—no furniture visible.
I took a side trip to the driveway to check out the van. It was definitely Edmund’s. Even if I hadn’t recognized its battered appearance, the box full of half-melted purple candles on the passenger seat was a dead giveaway. But he wasn’t in it.
“His?” Alona asked.
“Yeah.”
“Still want to walk up and ring the bell?” She rested her hands on her hips, as if this plan had sucked the whole time instead of just the last ten minutes.
“No,” I admitted. If Edmund was inside, he certainly wasn’t going to be running to answer the door, that was for sure. “You want to—”
I didn’t even have to finish before she’d turned on her heel and marched up the porch stairs to the front door and then through it.
Suddenly, with her absence, I felt more conspicuous hanging around this house that was not mine, like someone was going to start pointing and shouting at me. Which was ridiculous. From the perspective of the living residents here, I’d been alone the whole time. It was just, I guess, that I hadn’t felt it until now.
I ducked my head and tried to look like I belonged here, trying to ignore the uneasy feeling growing in my chest.
Was this going to be what it was like if/when Alona vanished for good? Me, lurking around places alone, feeling even more like a freak just for being by myself in this mess? What if we couldn’t find a way to get Erin out…or if Alona was right and she was no longer strong enough to keep the physical form of Ally going? Or, if she simply chose not to? In the end, it was Alona’s decision, in the best-case scenario. Would she really intentionally choose to live as someone else, knowing it would be forever and that the person she’d been before would be gone for good?