It didn’t sound like Shane at all.
She settled in next to him, wishing she could touch him, hold him, make it right.
Finally, Shane sighed, as if he’d made some decision, and took something out of his jacket pocket. She didn’t see what it was, not at first; it was just an angular shape in the dark.
And then, as he raised it to look at it, the shape turned into a gun. A semiautomatic pistol.
“Shane, where did you get a gun?” she blurted, and realized that was so not the question; his dad would have had them, and probably supplied him with an arsenal back in the bad old days. He’d always had a surprising amount of weaponry, but she’d never seen the gun before.
The problem wasn’t where he’d gotten the gun.
The problem was that Shane was sitting in the dark, with a gun, and he was holding her nightgown to his chest.
“No!” She bolted upright, as much as an insubstantial ghost could, and faced him straight on. “No, you listen to me, Shane Collins, you can’t do this. You can’t. You hear me? This is not you. You’re a fighter!”
He was staring at the gun, turning it to catch the dim light as if it were some beautiful jewel. There was no particular expression on his face, but she could sense the suffering inside him. This was real. As real as it got. He wasn’t trying to get attention and sympathy; it wasn’t some cry for help.
It was despair.
“I’m tired,” he murmured. “I’m tired of fighting. And I want to see you again.”
It sounded like he was replying to her. She knew he wasn’t, but she couldn’t stop herself from trying. Her whole insubstantial form was vibrating with terror and panic. “I know; I know you are. You’ve fought for all of us, for so long, and you keep losing us; I know. But you can’t do this. I’m still here, Shane. I’m still here for you and I will always be here—please. . . .”
“You’re not,” he said. This time, there was absolutely no doubt that he was replying to her, although he didn’t know he was—it was as if he was talking to himself.
He thought he was imagining her.
“You’re not here, and you’ll never be here again,” he was saying in that dull, empty voice. He checked the clip on the handgun, racked the slide with a harsh metallic click, and then sat quietly with it held in his hand. “You’re just in my head.”
“I’m not.” She knelt down facing him and concentrated on making him feel her presence. Believe her. “I’m here, Shane. I’m trapped in the house. Please tell me you can hear me.”
“It’s a bullshit lie. Just because Myrnin said it doesn’t make it true.”
“No, it is true, and as long as there’s even a chance that I’m here, that I can come back, you can’t do this, understand? You can’t.”
“Claire.” A very faint curve of a smile touched his lips, and his eyes shone—not with happiness, she realized, but with tears. “You got in my head, you really did. And my heart. And I’m sorry.”
He raised the gun.
“No!” She screamed it, and lunged at him, into him. “No, Shane, don’t!”
She felt a surge of white-hot power ripple through her, felt the same world-ending snap of lightning that had ended her life, and suddenly—
Suddenly she was sitting in Shane’s lap, holding on to his hand with both of hers, forcing the gun up and away from his head.
Sunset. It was sunset, and she had just . . . for a moment . . . become real again.
Shane yelled, and his hand opened. He dropped the gun, which bounced away on the carpet, and for a frozen second he just stared at her.
She let go of his arm, and he slowly lowered it, still staring.
And then his arms went around her.
Or tried to.
They went right through her.
She was fading again.
“No—” He grabbed for her. “Claire! Claire!”
“I’m still here,” she shouted. It came out as a thin whisper of sound, but she knew he heard it; she saw the flare of life and hope in his eyes. “Don’t give up!”
He reached out again, and she reached, too. Their fingers caressed. Hers looked like a faint outline in smoke. “God,” he breathed. “You are here. The crazy fool was right; you are here. Claire, if you can hear me, I’m going to get you back. We’re going to get you back. I swear.”
He lunged to his feet and realized he was still holding her nightgown. He kissed the fabric and put it on the bed, laid his hand there in the hollow where she’d slept, and then grabbed the gun up from where it had fallen on the floor.
He pulled the clip, racked the slide, and caught the bullet as it ejected. Then he opened the top drawer of her bureau, moved some things, and put all three things—gun, clip, and bullet—inside.
He shut the drawer and said, “You saw all that, didn’t you? Sorry. I’m sorry. I just—Claire, if you can hear me, can you do something? Make a noise?”
She concentrated. Maybe it was the fact that the sun was down that had changed things, but by working really hard, she managed to bump a small china cat that was sitting on her nightstand, a ridiculous yellow thing with a fake feather tail that Eve had bought her at a garage sale. It tipped over and rolled.
Shane turned that direction, and his fierce smile flashed like a blade. “Damn,” he said. “You really are here. I didn’t just make that up.”
She drifted closer to him, close enough that if she’d been flesh and blood, they would have been embracing.
And he shivered. The smile didn’t waver. “Oh God, Claire, I wish I could hold you. God. Look, I just—it was too much, with my dad and my mom and my sister. I felt—I just couldn’t—”
“I know,” she said. She wanted more than anything to be solid again, to hold him and kiss him and give him the hope he so desperately needed. “Can you hear me?”
“I—think so. It’s like I’m imagining you. Not words, exactly, but I hear you.” He laughed shakily. “Michael had this down, but I guess he had practice, right? You’re learning on the job.”
“You can’t live for me,” she said, and meant it. “It’s important, Shane. You can’t live just for me, and you can’t die because you lost me. I need you to be stronger than that. Do you understand?”
He was silent for a moment, and she wasn’t sure she’d gotten it across at all. There was a strange expression in his eyes, and his smile had faded to a memory.
“I know,” he finally said. “I’m sorry. I got tired of being strong, Claire. I don’t want to be alone.”
“You’re not alone. Michael and Eve are here, too.”
He nodded and took a deep breath. “And you’re here,” he said. “Somehow. You’re here.”
“I’m not leaving you.”
“Then that’s enough. We’re going to get you back.” He was silent for a beat, then said, “You—won’t tell them what I tried to do, will you?”
“Not unless you try it again.”
“I won’t,” he said. He looked down, just as he would have if he could have actually seen her pressed close. “You’re right there, aren’t you?”
“Yes.”
His arms slowly came up and around where her body would have been, holding her.
Holding air.
“Then I’m not letting go,” he said.
And despite everything that had happened in the past twenty-four hours, that felt . . . peaceful.
Convincing Michael and Eve of her continued existence was more difficult than Claire had expected.
“Oh, come on, dude, you were a ghost when I moved in here!” Shane said. They were standing downstairs in the dusty parlor, with Claire floating unseen in the corner (which, by the way, really needed vacuuming). “Totally missing during the day. And you don’t believe that I just saw her?”
“Shane—” Eve stepped forward, hands outstretched, looking distressed but determined. “Sweetie, you really have to understand that you’re under a lot of stress—”