Were these for Alex? She certainly wouldn’t admit it if they were. That girl could be so damn naive. Jonas could march into the Ex House wearing an I Heart Alex sandwich board and she would still deny his feelings.
The thing was, though, even if Chase saw the flowers, he wouldn’t do anything about it either. Hell, he would probably watch Jonas get down on his knees and give them to Alex and still keep his mouth shut. Kaleb didn’t understand it at all. Either Chase felt guilty, or he knew that never in a million years would Alex pick Jonas over him. This was exactly why Kaleb didn’t keep one girl around too long.
He watched Alex quickly close the bag, but not before the stench of moldy, wet dog reached his nostrils. He stifled a gag and swatted in front of his nose.
“Back so soon?” Chase called over the ruckus.
Jonas was pushing through the crowd again. Alex kicked the bag further away. It fell to the side, exposing a warped, brown water ring. She was a better person than Kaleb was. He wanted to call Jonas out on the flowers. Embarrass him. Knock him down a few pegs.
Jonas dashed through the maze of tables, his eyes bugged wide until he saw that his bag was lying on the floor, seemingly untouched. He breathlessly pointed to his property. “Oh good. I did leave it here. Can you hand my bag to me?”
When Chase passed it to him over the computer, Kaleb couldn’t help himself.
“You’re looking a bit yellow, brother.”
Jonas clutched his bag snugly against himself. “Huh?”
Alex smacked Kaleb across the chest, and he turned to smile mischievously at her. “Where are you going again?”
“The Grandiuse.”
“Back-petaling, are you?”
Jonas turned his heel. He didn’t get the joke. Moron.
Kaleb returned to his assignment and worked quietly for several minutes until something caught his eye. Parrish Park. The words were there on the page like old friends, waving and smiling. He kept reading. Civil War. Soldiers. Cove.
He shot back in his chair. “Holy—”
“Kaleb!” Alex cut him off. He fought the urge to say the word just to spite her. They weren’t sitting in church or anything.
“Things just got weird. This girl.” Kaleb pointed to the computer. “Guess where she died?”
Alex shrugged.
“Take a wild guess.”
Chase stretched his body around Alex to get a look at the monitor.
“I’ll give you a hint. There once was a girl who fell off a cliff because there were confederate soldiers chasing her. Well, actually, this says they pushed her. I never heard that before. She died when she smashed into the rocks below. She paces the beach and haunts the woods around it, digging up the ground. Ring a bell?”
“What does the Parrish Cove Ghost have to do with anything?” Chase asked.
“The Parrish Cove Ghost is all over the time period I’m supposed to research.”
“You’re kidding.”
“It gets better.” Kaleb’s voice shook in anticipation. “She died there twice. In life, soldiers chased her to the edge, and then in death, Syrus Raive found her there once the Restructuring War ended. That was where he killed her again.”
Chase laughed. “So we were afraid of those woods for nothing? She only haunted them from … ” He glanced at her death dates. “Eighteen sixty-five to nineteen-oh-one?”
“Guess so! Hey, don’t tell Jonas. If we ever go back there we can make fun of him for being afraid.”
“You’re sure this was our ghost?” Alex asked.
“Unless there were two of them.”
“Because that doesn’t explain why footprints still show up on the Parrish beach.”
“Oh, don’t ruin the moment, Alex. Half the time the people who attempt to see the ghost pass out in a drunken stupor. Any idiot could walk by and leave footprints.”
He’d never heard the name Josephine Anovark in Parrish, but then again, he’d never tried to uncover the true identity of the cove ghost. According to his research thus far, before Josephine was recruited to help the DeLyres, she assisted the Ardor Service. She’d spent years helping them track down spirits who became unstable or who broke the law in significant ways. One of the spirits she’d helped to imprison was Syrus Raive, the man who later killed her.
The creepiest part was that according to the statements following her second death, the two had been friends.
22
August 1866
Dear Sephi,
I worry so often about a world the mind engineers. Your gifts cause you to question your sanity, and I admit I have similar concerns.
Sanity. Insanity. The line between the two blurs in dreams. You can get away with so much in the dream world. What makes this world any different? What is real, and what is not? I’ve been inside your head. Are things really the way you see them or the way I see them?
I’m pleased you were invited to speak to the Ardor Service at the Dual Tower. If you are amongst the strongest in the city, the risks are diminished.
If all goes well, perhaps you can introduce me to the infamous Ardor Westfall.
The man was up so high Alex could barely see his shiny shoes. Due to the gaggle of girls huddled at the foot of the ladder, she wondered if the invisible man was the notorious professor, Dr. Darby.
“Some of the animals get distressed in bad weather,” she heard a cheery voice call down. “Best to calm them before they get too worked up.”
Oh, it was Darby, all right. Gabe called him the zoologist to the dead.
Darkness lurked behind the glass of Duvall’s aquarium. Storm clouds blocked what little sun could break through the massive cover of trees. Alex took her seat, pulling out several of Eviar’s letters. She carried them with her now, justifying her obsession with the idea that it was comparable to carrying around a novel. And even if she wanted to leave them behind, the box found ways to sidle across the room and wait patiently by the door like a faithful dog.
Eviar’s talents kept growing, the most interesting being his ability to persuade. He began by willing other newburies to give him their belongings or homework, but he grew bored and began to use his skill for amusement. Alex had laughed out loud when she read about the day Eviar persuaded Paul Bond to dive into the fountain and flail like he was drowning. He insisted to Sephi that he was just very influential. Sephi believed the ability would more aptly be termed mind control.
And that was just the tip of the iceberg. Eviar was a mover, but even that grew into something extraordinary. Typically, advanced newburies learned to elevate pencils and books. Natural movers were usually able to channel their energy into more substantial objects like furniture. Eviar, on the other hand, had taught himself to move clouds and treetops. With such gifts, there was no possible way that his life wouldn’t be documented somewhere besides his letters to Sephi. But no matter how much she searched, Alex failed to unearth any spirits with powers like his. She couldn’t find Sephi’s name in history either, which was even more frustrating because Eviar had said she was well known.
The more Alex read, the more she felt attached to the two of them. She would frequently find herself entranced by Eviar’s words, unable to move, losing track of time and responsibilities.
She was forced out of her reverie when a man slid down Duvall’s ladder, calling to order the giggling girls and irritated boys. Thin and lanky, yet polished and proper, he was the type of dazzling man one could call pretty and get away with it.
Alex searched for Duvall and found her hovering in the back of the room where she could freely cast the weight of her glare onto Reuben and the Bonds. She didn’t approach the podium.