Afterlife (27 page)

Not everybody could be as disciplined about waiting for the
right time to speak, though. As I settled back into the records room upstairs, alone
and ready to spend a little more quality time wearing my bracelet, someone else
decided to pay me a visit.

“Well, if it isn ‘t the prom queen of the dead,” Maxie said.
I sat up, startled; she’d materialized across the room, and I’d been so deep in
thought I hadn’t noticed. She was back in her flowing nightdress, like I was
back in my usual pajamas. “Tell me, what’s it like to be so special that the
rules don’t apply to youT’ “Awful,” I said. “It means even people you thought
were your friends don’t like you.”

Maxie hesitated. She ducked her head, so that her cropped
hair fell into her eyes, slightly blocking our view. “I like you,” she said in
a small voice.

“Sometimes you don’t act like it.”

“We have to make choices,” she said. For the first time since
I’d known her, she sounded more like an adult than a petulant child. “We have
to recognize that we’re dead.”

“I get that. Trust me.”

“Vampires are our enemies.”

“Maybe that’s true most of the time,” I admitted, thinking
of Mrs. Bethany, “but it’s not true for Lucas. Or for Baltl1azar, or Patrice,
or Ranulf.

Why do you keep trying to create these black — and — white
categories? Why are you looking at what everyone is, instead of who they are
?
”

“It helps,” she whispered. “When you’re not alive but not totally
dead — it can feel like everything is gray. You want black. You want white.”

“I know.” And I did.

At that moment, the door opened, and Vic and Ranulf walked
in. They had lunch period now. “Wait, wait,” Vic was saying. “You got Cristina
Del Valle to go to the Autumn Ball with you? How did you work that? She’s the
hottest girl in school.”

“I am wise in the ways of comely maidens,” Ranulf said. Then
they both stopped as they saw me — and, I realized, Maxie, who hadn’t made
herself invisible in time and now seemed to be too startled to do so, or
anything else but gape at them.

Quickly, I said, “Maxie, obviously you already know Vic, but
have you met Ranulf?”

“Still more wraiths,” Ranulf said. He’d been uneasy about
socializing with me at first, after my deatl1, but it only took him a second to
get past it now. “Welcome. Will you be here often? If so, please do not frost
too many of the seating places. Bianca often leaves them too cold to be of use
to others.”

“Hey!” I protested, but Ranulf suddenly seemed very
interested in the Elvis posters.

Vic just kept staring at Maxie. She’d interacted with him
throughout his life, but always invisibly; this had to be the first time he’d
ever actually seen her. “Wow,” he said. “Uh, wow. Hey there.”

“Hello,” Maxie whispered. I knew that was the first word she’d
ever spoken to him. She’d crossed the line — the one she didn’t want me to
cross, and I liked it. Was she starting to think for herself? To understand
that the lines between vampire, wraith, and human were as blurry as the ones
bet\veen life and death?

“Do you want to
.. .
hang
out for a while?” Vic looked around the room wildly,
obviously trying to figure out what might entertain her. “We could just talk or
.. .
I’ve got some music
— ”

“I should go,” Maxie said. But before I could be
disappointed, she added, more quietly, ““ll come back sometime.” Vic grinned.
“Great. I mean, that’s — That would be great.”

Maxie vanished, but I could sense her. She was.
drifting
out of the room very slowly, as if more reluctant to
leave than she’d let on. As she finally 174 rose through the roof, Vic turned
to me and said, “That was unbelievable!”

“Was it great? Finally meeting her?” I grinned up at him.
His mouth was parnvay open, half smile and half amazement. “I guess
.. .
I never
realized .
. . I mean,
I knew she was a she and all that, but I never realized my ghost was a girl.”
Ranulf said, “Vic has not yet learned the arts of interaction with females.”

“You gonna teach me your tricks, buddy?” Vic said.

“It is only a small matter of observation over several
centuries.”

“Great.” Vic sighed, throwing down his backpack.

Til be right back, okay?” I slipped off my bracelet and
dematerialized, drifting up through the roof. As I’d suspected, I found Maxie
high in the sky. We could see each other, mostly — misty outlines of ourselves
that would be invisible from the ground.

“I talked to Vic
!
” she said. Her
smile was part of the afternoon sunlight. “I talked to him, and he talked
back!”

“See how much fun it is, crossing the lines?”

“It’s not wrong to move on,” she said, more firmly. “You
know how much better it is there than here. But — as long as we are partly here
— ”

“I think our afterlives have to be about the people we
love.” I started drifting higher, mostly out of curiosity to see how high we
could go. “Nothing else makes any sense.”

“But I didn’t know Vic before. Not when I was alive,” Maxie
protested.

“If you ask me, it doesn’t make any difference when you
start to love somebody.
just
that you love them.”

Merely saying the word Jove reminded me of Lucas and the
news I wanted to share with him so badly that it burned inside me. But I had
half an hour to kHI. So I pushed myself higher; Maxie followed.

“How high up can we go?” I asked.

“Oh, crazy high. Above the troposphere. You can see the
stars during the day, if you want.”

“Really?” I could go stargazing right now — anytime, in
fact. I wouldn’t have a telescope, of course, but nevertheless, that view would
be something to see, like a picture from the Hubble. “Let’s go, okay?”

Maxie started to laugh, and I knew that this was what she’d
wanted all along. Not for me to choose sides — just for her to have a companion
in her in — between world. “Okay, sure.”

We rose up, farther and farther, until Evernight Academy was
only a speck on the ground, then obscured by clouds. The sunlight above was
brighter than bright. Blinding.

Then this enormous silver shape appeared in the distance,
coming closer, faster than I could imagine. “What in the world is that?”

“Hang on!” Maxie yelled.

Is that — is it an airplane?

A commercial jetliner zoomed straight toward us, until I
could see the outline of it — the front windows — the pilots inside — and then,
wham, Maxie and I slamming directly through the center of the plane, front
cabin, the long aisle, dozens of passengers, the little drink cart, the tail — and
it was gone. We’d gone straight through.

Maxie and I drifted there, dazed, for a long second. She
finally said, “Do you think anybody on the plane saw us? “We were going too
fast,” I said. “But maybe they hit some turbulence.”

She started to laugh, and I did, too.

 Although Maxie wanted to keep creating “air pockets”
for plane traffic out of Boston, I parted from her when I sensed that Lucas’s
class was probably over. We promised to go stargazing soon, and while that
prospect delighted me, the closer I got to earth, the more pressing my real
concerns seemed.

I found Lucas out at the gazebo, waiting for me as usual.
His backpack had been tossed on the floor, and he was resting his forearms on
his knees, his head drooping. “You look tired,” I whispered, becoming a soft
mist near him.

“I am tired.”

“Up late worrying about me
?
”

“Up late worrying,” he confirmed. “But I know you can take
care of yourself, so I also stayed up studying. And listening to music. And
surfmg the Internet. And doing whatever else I could think of to avoid going to
sleep.”

I didn’t have to ask why. “Charity.” Lucas didn’t reply, but
he swallowed hard, making his Adam’s apple bob in his throat. I brushed gently
against his cheek, hoping he could feel the cool touch. “Is she getting worse?”

“Worse? No. She started off making my dreams as bad as they
could be, and since then — well, you have to give her this, she’s consistent. It’s
horrible every night. Every single night.” Lucas stood abruptly. He braced his
hands against the cast iron of the gazebo, every muscle in his back so tense I
could make them out through his uniform sweater. “Sometimes it’s Erich again,
threatening to torture you with stakes soaked in holy water. 176 Sometimes
other vampires drink your blood, and for some reason it kills you instead of
turning you into one of them. Sometimes my mom cuts off your head. Or those
drunk guys — remember, our first date
?
In my dreams,
they’re not trying to take care of you. They’re trying to burn you. All the
dreams are about losing you, over and over again.”

The ragged pain in his voice made me wish I could risk
becoming corporeal.
so
I could put my arms around him.
“Charity only turned you to take you away from me,” I said. “It’s my fault.”

“It’s not your fault,” Lucas said. I wished I could be as
sure as he sounded. “But yeah, Charity likes the idea of me losing you forever.
Enough to have it on infinite replay in my head.”

“Please, let me come back. If I were in your dreams, I know
I could get through to you.”

Lucas shook his head. “Absolutely not. Anything she did to
you in there could really hurt you. That’s not a risk I’m willing to take.”
Even if the only alternative was his enduring pain? I hated this, but for now,
we had no better choice.

He said, “Bianca, I’ve been meaning to ask you about this
for a while now. What happens after Evernight?”

“What do you mean
?
”

“I can’t stay at this school forever, “Lucas said. “I mean,
I guess technically I could, but I don’t really see me repeating English Lit
every other semester for the next several centuries. And you can’t want to
spend the rest of eternity hiding in corners. Waiting on me.”

I hadn’t thought that far ahead — hadn’t let myself. Now
that I understood my own powers, the many places I could go and things I could
do, I no longer feared the eternity that lay before me. But it was different
for Lucas.

I said, “Vampires usually start
out …
wandering, I guess. Taking advantage of their immortality to explore the world.
Once you get a few decades of experience, apparently it’s not so hard to start
making money. And after you get rich, well, you can pretty much do what you
want.”

Lucas’s face looked pained at the words a few decades. He
said, “I don’t need to get rich. I don’t need to do what I want. Because right
now, I’m not sure I’d use that power well.”

“You have to stop being frightened of yourself. Of what you’ve
become.”

“I know what I’ve become,” he said. “That’s why I know I need
to be afraid.”

Fear gripped me as I realized that the next thing he was
going to say was something along the lines of “You should be free.” He still
thought he wa
:;
a uun.leulu me, w!teu !te wa:;
auylltiug uut. “Wital yuu’ve uecume i
:;
my aucltur,” I
:;aid. “Tite per
:;
uu w!tu cuuuecl:; me lu lith wurld.”

He couldn’t fully believe me. “Really?”

“Always.”

Lucas breathed out heavily. “I only wish I could believe I
could give you something worth having.”

“You do every day. Every second. Never doubt that.”

“Okay,” he said, but I knew he Wasn’t completely convinced.

Time to focus his attention on our real problems. “Listen,”
I said. “I want to talk to you about Mrs. Bethany.” He half turned, so I could
see his face. “Do we have to go over this again?”

“This is new.”

As quickly as I could, I told him who Christopher was, and
what he had revealed to me about her past. When I said that she’d been Black
Cross, Lucas’s eyes went wide, but he said nothing. Once I’d finished, I said,
“She’s not being sympathetic because she suddenly turned nice. She just hates
Black Cross as much as you do.”

“Why do those have to be two separate things?”

I stared at Lucas, stung. He seemed more frustrated than
before.

“Bianca, does being mad at Black Cross mean you lose the
power to think rationally forever? Or to care about other people? If so, I’m
screwed.”

“That’s not what I’m saying.”

“Isn’t it?” Lucas kicked at the iron scrollwork nearest his
feet, making the ivy rustle. “Why do you hate her so much?”

“She’s a killer.” I hadn’t realized I could speak so loudly,
or so sharply, while hardly more than a vapor. “She murdered Eduardo, remember?
And how many other members of your cell?”

“The Black Cross cell that invaded this place to try and
kill her? And Eduardo
— ”
His hands gripped so tightly
around the gazebo railing that I would’ve thought it would hurt. Lucas hadn’t
been very fond of his stepfather, but he worried about his mother being left
alone, even now. “That happened when she came to the New York cell to try and rescue
you. Or have you forgotten?”

“She wanted revenge for the attack on the school! That’s
what it was, revenge! And have you forgotten the traps she’s laid for the
wraiths?”

“You wanted to trap them yourself before you turned into
one!” Lucas realized we were starting to shout and took a deep breath, calming
himself. I couldn’t exactly breathe in this state, but I tried to be more
still. The few fights Lucas and I had had were always bruising, and besides, we
didn’t want anybody to start staring at us. More quietly, he said, “People can
do things for more than one reason.”

“If it’s Mrs. Bethany, it’s not a good reason.”

“Why do you believe that? Seriously, Bianca, do you have a
reason for distrusting her besides the fact that she’s a hardass in the classroom?”
That caught me up short. “The people she’s killed
— ”