“Why is that? Why are most newburies my age?”
Ellington propped his feet on the nearest chair. “I think young children are braver than young adults. They aren’t afraid of what is behind shiny door number two. They are willing to leave themselves behind. Adults, on the other hand, usually are not even presented with the option. Their spirits have become blemished by the stress and complications of life.”
“Stress and complications? Like going to school and finding a job? How is that different from what we have to do here?”
“Don’t confuse work with purpose.”
“Here we go.”
Ellington gnawed at his pen. “Have you put any thought into it? You need to find more than one thing in this world to live for. Potential drifts around you like a perfume, and yet you ignore it.”
“I can’t explain what pulls me towards Chase, but I’ve come to realize it isn’t something I can control.”
“I will negotiate with you. I’ll accept that Chase is half of you. You’ve been running after this love all your life and death. What do you do once you have it?”
“Live happily ever after.”
Ellington mimicked puking. “The modern spins on fairy tales continue to warp the impressionable minds of children. What will you do during your happily ever after? Sit there and stare at each other for all eternity? No matter how much you deny it, eventually you will resent him.”
“I don’t think so.”
“You’ll wake up one day with the air around you stale, in a rotting world, because your thoughts have done nothing except fester.” He glanced at the walls. “To believe that simply attaining companionship and nothing else would truly make you happy would be expected of someone with—as you termed it—daddy issues.”
“You said everyone has those here.”
“In the sense that everyone is looking for approval. Spirits arrive here alone and have to find their place. The aspects of our human nature do not fade away when we pass on, by our choice. One of those aspects being the need for acceptance.”
“Is that why the families stick together here?”
“I believe so, yes.”
“I don’t have family,” Alex said firmly, holding Ellington’s gaze. “Why doesn’t anyone care to discuss why?”
“Even if we had the time to address it today, is it worth discussing someone or something that is gone?”
The irony of that statement was enough to make Alex laugh aloud. Technically, that was the essence of Ellington’s profession. “What would be the purpose of history class, or even sitting here in this room, if we weren’t interested in the past?”
“Touché.”
“So what is this meeting about?” Jonas griped. “Besides hard labor.”
Thick brown paper and pumpkin innards blanketed the tables in Grandiuse Hall. The entire student body was put to work carving jack-o-lanterns to decorate the streets of the town. Eidolon always seemed to have a marvelous charge in the air, but the Halloween season made the excitement electrifying, and consequently the Hall stunk of burnt pumpkin seeds.
“Yeah, because carving pumpkins is such hard work,” Gabe joked.
Jonas sniffed. “Involuntary work.”
Alex couldn’t complain. This was better than another Grandiuse lecture on study habits, losing books, loitering in the courtyard, or new consequences for bullying Reuben and the Bond twins.
Reuben sat alone at a nearby table of chokers, a nickname for the newburies who still had difficulty coming to terms with their recent deaths. Jonas called them the “suicides.” They were the only spirits indifferent enough to allow Reuben at their table. He sat clutching a butcher knife in his pudgy hands, and his tongue stuck out from the corner of his mouth as he eyed his jack-o-lantern critically. Someone had dumped a mound of pumpkin guts on top of his backpack on the floor behind him. He hadn’t noticed it yet.
“Do you think there will be a lecture today?”
“I’m sure they’ll talk about appropriate behavior at the haunted house,” Kaleb replied. “You know, that we shouldn’t really be acting like ghosts.”
Alex analyzed the best angle to chip away at her pumpkin’s dangly tooth. In a way, it kind of resembled Jack Bond. “Isn’t the point of a haunted house to scare people?”
“In theory,” Kaleb said. “But the real purpose of the Mansion of Morgues is kind of reverse psychology. If the haunting is considered a joke in this town, our presence is safe.”
“A joke?”
“I guess the more suitable word is scapegoat. Some towns are infamous for supernatural activity, usually because there’s some lingerer hanging out and scaring people. Like our very own Parrish. Moribund has never been one of those towns. And ironically, the largest population of spirits in the United States is only a few miles away. The area is only known for superficial Halloween haunting. Pretty good diversion, if you ask me.”
“Ghosts pretending to be people pretending to be ghosts.” Gabe pushed aside his pumpkin and opened a book. “I wonder if we’ll get Chase back before then. They’ve kept him for a long time.”
Alex remained quiet on the subject. She’d been speaking with Chase regularly in her dreams, and he was still less than optimistic that his release would be soon. When she felt his presence in her mind, a distance remained. The previous night, for instance, her dreams had placed her in a rowboat, stretched out on her back, staring up at the clouds. When Chase entered the dream, his voice couldn’t have been more than a few feet away. She imagined he was in a similar boat, arms crossed behind his head, smiling at a sky as blue as his eyes. She asked him then, as she always did, when she would get to see him. He said when they were done using him, and she’d been too afraid to ask what he meant by that.
Kaleb picked out a sharper knife. “Romey told me this morning that he’s been cooperative. But that’s all. I think she’s missed him more than we have.”
“Weird,” Gabe said, “He’s been nothing but a pain since he got here.”
“What would a mother hen do without anyone to mother?”
The air around Jonas began to crackle softly. “Are you okay?” Alex whispered, but Jonas didn’t look at her.
“So, have they fixed the numbering on the classrooms yet?” he asked the group.
Kaleb groaned. “You know, that’s what they get for making every single door in every single hallway of the learning center look exactly the same. I’ve gotten so used to walking into the classroom for sociology that I should just take the aptitude assessment and get the credit for it.”
Gabe grinned. “I’ll do your homework for a week if you pass it.”
Kaleb twirled his knife through his fingers, considering the trade.
“At least the numbering prank was funny,” Gabe said. “The fountain and the lure birds? Not so much.”
“Don’t forget the furniture on the roof,” Kaleb added. “That one was pretty good. Oh, and the Bonds tied up in the broom closet.”
“I guarantee the broom closet was no prank. That was just a typical afternoon for the Bonds.” Gabe looked at his brothers meaningfully. “By the way, I heard another newbury blaming us the other day at the ball fields.”
Kaleb shook his head. “Whatever. They can’t prove anything.”
Alex picked the pumpkin guts from her fingers. “Blaming you for the pranks? Why?”
“Because for one, the pranks started right after we arrived here,” Kaleb answered. “For two, Chase was running around campus acting a fool and being as inconspicuous as the Hamburglar. For three, we haven’t been the targets of any of the pranks. That just looks incriminating.” He lowered his voice. “I heard why everyone was freaking out about the fountain on the day Alex arrived. It was contaminated with copper. If it had filtered into the air while we were all sleeping, everyone would have woken up completely stoned.”