Finally I was getting to him. “She fell off the porch roof,” I repeated. “And she probably would have been okay, maybe a broken bone or two, except there were these paving stones piled up from them putting in a walkway earlier that afternoon. She hit her head just right, apparently.”
Ed flopped back into his seat with a dazed expression. Apparently this was news to him. Not all that surprising, I supposed, given that he probably hadn’t been prone to reading articles about her accident back when it had happened. Maybe knowing there was nothing he could have done was all he’d needed.
Encouraged, I tried to return to my original point, the one I’d attempted to make way back at Ed’s parents’ house. “If you can let her go, it will be better for both of you. It’s true that, to you, she wouldn’t exist anymore. But this is not the end. At least, it doesn’t have to be.”
He turned his head and stared out the window, but at least he wasn’t arguing. That was an improvement.
“You can’t let her run you, man. It’s bad for both of you. You’ll still be alive, but you’ll be a shadow of what you’re supposed to be.” I knew that from experience, always living in fear of the ghosts cornering me. Having Alona as my spirit guide had helped, but until today, when I’d finally stood up to the dead on my own, I hadn’t realized how much it had weighed on me. I felt freer than I had in…well, forever.
I was about to launch into my the-light-exists-and-it-is-awesome speech when the music from the party paused, a three-second gap between songs, and I heard shrieking from somewhere behind the house. It was loud enough for me to hear it clearly even in the car, but not distinct enough to understand the words.
I did, however, recognize the voice and the note of outrage in it. Alona.
My chest contracted in fear. She was in trouble. “Crap.” I scrambled out of the car without waiting to see if Ed followed.
* * *
As should be obvious to just about anyone by now, I’ve never been to one of Rogers’s shindigs, nor have I ever had the desire to attend.
Still, it kind of surprised me, after rounding the corner at a run, to find it so…ordinary, at first glance. Nobody was snorting cocaine off anybody else’s chest. That I could see. Instead, the yard was filled with intoxicated people hanging out, eating chips, and listening to really crappy music. It could have been a night from the old days of me and my few friends hanging out, except it was outside, with about a hundred more people, and, well, our music hadn’t sucked.
It was kind of a letdown after all the hype, frankly.
Then, of course, I noticed that, despite the so-called music, no one was dancing. Most everyone was crowded around the open space between the deck and the woods, watching something.
I bet I knew what, too. The shrieking had stopped, but I could hear the occasional shouted word or grunt. Definitely Alona and Erin.
I lowered my head and started to shove my way through the crowd.
“She’s having a seizure or something,” someone whispered as I passed.
“Get her off me. Do something!” Lily’s husky voice held an uncharacteristic whine, and she sounded out of breath.
“No, dude. She’s, like, crazy or something,” another genius declared.
I elbowed through the last layer of my former classmates and tormentors and arrived to find, pretty much as I’d expected, Alona and Erin/Lily grappling for position and rolling around on the ground. To the crowd, though, it looked simply like Lily was throwing herself around for no reason.
Leanne Whitaker stood off to one side, doubled over with laughter. Some of Alona’s former cheerleading cronies looked vaguely concerned…or maybe vague was how they looked all the time. Ben watched impassively, like it was something on television that was maybe a little annoying but mostly boring.
Asshole.
None of them could see Alona, of course, but they could see a girl in obvious distress of some kind. And not a one of them had made a move to help.
Erin as Lily already looked fairly messed up, her lipstick smeared everywhere and her clothes dirty. But Alona was in worse shape, her body shifting between solid and see-through, like someone caught in the transporter beams on one of those old Star Trekepisodes.
Jesus.
I darted forward and grabbed Alona’s shoulder. She was, for the moment, on top. “Hey, stop it!”
She twisted to look up at me, startled but with fury still stamped across her features, like she might lash out at me for interrupting.
“Look at yourself,” I whispered to her.
She glanced down and stiffened in shock.
Erin/Lily laid her head on the ground and laughed with the abandon that comes with relief and total drunkenness. “Tol’ you,” she slurred.
Fabulous.
Alona looked back at me with panic.
“Just stay calm,” I told her, trying to follow my own advice. Clearly, our original plan was blown to hell. And now I didn’t know if Alona had enough strength to continue existing, let alone routing Erin from Lily’s body. I never should have let her go in ahead of me.
At the moment, I was torn between the urge to grab Alona and haul her out of there to someplace safe—which, of course, was an illusion in this situation, given that the threat of disappearing was not something that could be escaped by changing location—and kneeling down to help hold Erin so Alona could try to transfer in right then and there, if she wanted.
But as it turns out, I didn’t get a chance to do either.
“Will Kill?” Ben asked in disbelief and disgust from behind me.
I froze. Shit.
I forced myself to turn in his direction. I didn’t want him coming at my blind side.
He stumbled a step or two toward me, and I had to fight the urge to move back. “Who invited you?” he demanded.
It didn’t take much imagination to see Ben as a mean drunk.
“Stay calm,” Alona murmured. “He’s wasted.”
Oh, good, so he wouldn’t even feel it if I managed to hit him.
My heart pounding, I held my hands up. I was so very outnumbered here. It was worse than even that one time I’d gone into the first-tier section to talk to Alona. Add alcohol and I wasn’t sure what the results would be this time. Worse than a black eye, that was for sure. “I’m just here to get my friend.”
Ben snorted. “Should have known, crazy attracts crazy.”
Absurdly, someone in the crowd actually did that oooohsound, as though Ben had come up with some kind of magnificent burn instead of pretty much making up a nonsensical statement that contained only the insult of calling me crazy, which everyone had already assumed anyway. Whatever.
Alona yelped suddenly, and I turned to see that Erin/Lily had taken advantage of our distraction and scrambled out from underneath Alona and was running for the woods, her bad leg slowing her down only slightly.
If she got away now, we might never be able to find her again. I lurched after her, but Ben grabbed my arm.
“Where do you think you’re going, man? We’re having a conversation.”
Alona rose to her feet unsteadily, still flickering. I yanked my arm free of Ben’s grasp and focused on her.
She tipped her head to one side to look at me, her hair gleaming in the torchlight and her eyes bright with unshed tears. She reached out and touched my face, her fingers alternating between warm and solid, and cold and barely there.
And I knew this was good-bye.
I shook my head mutely, tears welling. “Don’t.”
“Are you going to cry, Will Kill?” Ben demanded.
She leaned in to me, pressed her cheek against mine, and whispered, “Be careful,” then slipped away before I could grab her.
“No!” I started after her, but Ben stepped around to block me. I caught a glimpse of her passage through the crowd, people moving involuntarily away from a strange cold spot near them. But then she was gone, beyond the reach of the lights, and into the shadow of the woods.