Afterlife (35 page)

I tried to do what Maxie said, but I was too weak. Too lost.

At that moment in the fray, Mrs. Bethany ran for the door at
vampire speed, grabbing the smaller trap as she went. She opened it — just in
front of Maxie.

No
!
I thought, but it was too late.
There was just time to see the dawning terror on Maxie’s face before the vortex
swallowed her up, enclosing her 222 within the trap.

“Hey!” Vic yelled. For the first time ever, I heard real
fury in his voice. “That’s my ghost!”

Mrs. Bethany smashed Vic across the face with the trap,
which sent him sprawling to the floor. The human students began screaming and
shouting as Mrs. Bethany pushed through them.

“She’s getting away,” Balthazar shouted.

“I don’t give a damn!” Lucas arrow — staked another vampire;
the room fell quiet, but he hardly noticed. “We have to get Bianca out of here!”

“She’s got my ghost!” Vic started running down the stairs,
and Balthazar followed him. My parents and Lucas remained.

“Go,” I whispered. It was the only thing I had strength to
say. Maxie didn’t deserve to be destroyed like this.

“The trap — this room — olh, my God, it’s killing you,”
Lucas said. “Bianca, come on. The door’s open. You can leave.” So it seemed.
And yet even reaching toward the door was impossible.

“Sweetheart, please, “Mom pleaded. Dad’s eyes filled with
tears as he gripped her shoulders. “You can do it.”

“Your brooch!” Lucas fumbled in his pocket and held out my
jet brooch. For a moment I felt something like hope; if I could become
substantial again, even for a second, I could get out the door and maybe
recover. But the brooch just dropped through the blue smoke where my hand had
been I no longer had the ability to touch it, and so I could no longer call on
its power.

The jet black flower clattered on the stone floor, dark as
ink in this shimmering world, and I remembered the long — ago dreams that had
led me here. They had warned me that when I reached out for love, storms would
come. And in all my dreams, I hlad never made it to safety. To Lucas.

Lucas shook his head. “This isn ‘t happening.” His voice was
hoarse. “This can’t be happening. Bianca, come on. Come back to me.”

“Bianca?” said an unfamiliar voice. A female figure, wearing
a bright blue robe, standing in the doorway — “Skye, what are you doing here?”
Lucas said. “It’s not safe
!
Go downstairs!”

“Yeah, “Lucas said. He put his hand around my waist, the
better to steady me: he touched me gingerly, which I realized was because he didn’t
want to upset Skye. “We realized this morning you were missing, because there’s
no way you wouldn’t have been talking to us about the night’s plans “

“I was in that trap a whole day?” It had seemed to last
forever, and to end in a split second, at the same time. Lucas nodded.
“Apparently. We’ve been turning the school upside down looking for you.”

“When we stole her traps, Mrs. Bethany must have realized we
were on to her,” Dad said. “She stopped bicting her time. Went on the
offensive.”

After d1is is over
,Skye
thought,
will one of you explain what’s going on?

Sure, I replied. As soon as I understand myself. “What about
the traps? Mrs. Bethany’s got to be going after them.”

“Hopefully she won’t have the chance,” Mom said as we went farther
down the stone stairs. The entire student body seemed to be awake rnow, and
aware that something dangerous was going on; there was murmuring and shouting
on every floor. “Patrice and Ranulf should be taking care of that right
now….
”

Her voice trailed off as the stones of Evernight began to
scream.

That was the only word for it, though it didn’t sound like
any human scream. It was like the building itself had come alive, and hated it.
The sound was the grinding of the real versus the unreal, existing in
dimensions that had nothing to do with sound but echoed within us regardless.
We clapped our hands over our ears, except Lucas, who kept holding on to me but
grimaced in pain. “What the hell?” he shouted over the din.

I felt them, then — snaking their way up through the bones
of the school, climbing toward freedom. “The wraiths,” I said. “They’re free.”

They were free, and they were angry. Instead of flying
straight to the people who anchored them, or letting go of the mortal realm, or
wishing themselves back to the places they’d haunted before, they were
attacking Evernight Academy and everything within it. Before, I hadn’t been
able to understand why they wouldn’t be reasonable, why they acted purely on
instinct. Now that I had spent a day in a trap, I understood; those things
stole away your sense of yourself. It wouldn’t take long to turn into nothing
but fear and rage.

My breath had become foggy now, and frost began to lace its
way along the walls, the steps, the ceilings. My father nearly slipped on the
ice that was caking underfoot, so fast it stung my feet, nearly entrapping
them. The murmuring upstairs turned into shrieks.

“Hurry,” I said, feeling strength flow into me with a fresh
sense of purpose.

We ran the rest of the way, although it was difficult. The
ice now was thicker than in any other wraith attack I’d witnessed — as though
the school itself were made of ice. As stones creaked and cracked from the
pressure of ice in the crevices, we slipped and stumbled through a stairwell
that increasingly looked more like a cavern of snow.

At last we reached the great hall, and even if I hadn’t
already known this was the place the wraiths would be freed, it would have been
obvious that this was the heart of the storm. The entire great hall seemed to
be no more than a great maze carved from one block of ice. Shivering at the
sides, white with frost, were Patrice and Ranulf. Both of them slumped near the
entrance, apparently unable to move.

“Are you guys okay?” l said, hurrying to Patrice’s side. Her
hand was like ice in mine.

“I’m fine, Skye,” Patrice said through chattering teeth.
“You need to get out of here.”

“We’re all getting out of here,” Lucas said. He let go of me
to pick Patrice up in his arms; she hung stiffly in his embrace, but he was
able to get her out the door. Mom and Dad put their arms on either side of
Ranulf to help him out.

I ran out of the school onto the grounds. When I looked up
at Evernight, I gasped; it now looked as though it had been carved of crystal,
its outline blurred and fractal like the edges of snowflakes. Other students
had congregated outside, shivering in their nightclothes as they looked up at
the bewildering sight. Snow must have fallen that day, because some of them
were knee — deep in it.

It could take hours for help to get here, I thought. People
could die of exposure in that time. I have to do this now.

Do what
?Skye
thought, increasingly
worried. Given what I’d put her through in just the last couple of minutes, I
couldn’t blame her.

In the near distance, I saw Balthazar fighting with one of
Mrs. Bethany’s surviving guards. Their fangs extended as they roared and leaped
toward each other.

Skye screamed, momentarily taking her body back just by
sheer force of terror. What are they?

Vampires. Remember what Lucas told you? He’s a vampire, too.
Plus my parents. Plus — you know, a Jot of people. We have to go over this
later. Right now, I have something to do.

She repeated, Do what?

Don’t wony; I can only do this alone.

With that, I let Skye go. We both fell to the ground, and it
seemed as if the impact of her body against the ground snapped us in two. I
rolled over, semisolid, but leaving no impression in the snow; Skye sat up,
sputtering, icy flakes spangling her dark hair. Her expression was strange — horrified,
maybe as if she didn’t remember giving me permission. But she said, “I can feel
them.”

“Feel what?”

She clutched her hair in her fists, as if she were trying to
use pain to block some other sensation. “The ghosts — all of them — it’s like
they’re in my head
— ”

Had my possessing her for so long opened her up to some
other realm of perception? We’d have to find out later. “I’m going to take care
of them, Skye. I promise.”

From his place a few steps away, where he was trying to
revive Patrice to full consciousness, Lucas said, “Bianca, what are you doing?”

“I’ll be back soon,” I swore. “Did you get my brooch?”

He patted his pocket — then went still. “We’ve got trouble.”

Like we hadn’t had trouble already? But I followed his gaze
to see Mrs. Bethany’s carriage house, shutters fastened tight, with only
slivers of ulue — hullighl cuming lhruugh lhe :
slit:;.
They luukeu like knive
:s
culling upen lhe night. Mt.
Bethany wa:s uegimting her :
spell; :suun
, :she wuulu
have destroyed Maxie, and resurrected herself. Maybe a few of her cronies were
in there, too. I could just make out the outline of Vic, who was throwing
himself against the door again and again.
trying
to
save Maxie.

“Go help them,” I said. “I promise, I’ll be back soon.”

With one last look at Patrice, who finally seemed to be
sitting up under her own power, Lucas took off running toward Mrs. Bethany’s
carriage house.

I let go of my physical self and floated upward, pure energy
now. Evernight was below me, less something I could see and more something I
could feel as the collection of so many lost, desperate spirits, no longer able
to feel anything but fear. Before, when I had never been trapped, I couldn’t understand
what they felt. I hadn’t been able to communicate with them. Now I knew what to
do.

Remembering my time in the trap, I created around me the
memory of that dark, fathomless void. As strongly as I could, I sent that
downward, so that the wraiths would recognize it for what it was.
just
as I felt them react in pain and panic, I opened up
that brilliant circle of light — the way out.

And past that circle, I envisioned the land of lost things
in all its beauty and ugliness and chaos. It seemed to take shape in miniature,
like the magical castles at the center of a snow globe: an old Tudor mansion, a
mobile home, a brown horse with knobby knees and friendly eyes, a twisty dirt
road — not things I had seen there before, but the things these spirits were
bringing along with them.

The energy beneath me changed from fear into something like
hope.

I took hold of them. Every one of them. I couldn’t say how I
did it, but the power must have been within me from the beginning. In that
instant, I knew each of them, could envision their faces, their personalities,
sense fragments of the lives they must have led. They were as familiar to me,
in both their virtues and flaws, as my dearest friends, and I felt them
recognize me in return. More importantly, I felt them recognize themselves — the
people they had been before darkness and fear had taken them over. Then I
lifted us together, soaring upward into that sphere of light.

Then there was laughter, and cheering, and embraces. I stood
in a patch of sunlight near what looked like a version of the Taj Mahal, though
it was black instead of white, and even more beautiful. A crowd of perhaps a
hundred people milled around me, wearing clothes that varied from T shirts and
jeans to one woman in a full, hoop — skirted dress who carried a parasol.

“Thank you,” she whispered as she hugged me tightly. “You
got us out. You brought us here.”

I hugged her back, but I remained vividly aware of how
quickly time could pass here, and how badly I needed to return.

Christopher seemed to appear in the middle of us — no puffs
of smoke or bursts of light, but one minute he Wasn’t there, and the next he
was. His smile transformed him into the younger, happier man he had been in his
memories of his life. “Bianca. I knew you could do it.”

“Yes, and it’s awesome and tremendous and all of that, but
we have a situation,” I said. “Mrs. Bethany’s captured Maxie. She’s going to
destroy her. Is there anything we can do
?
” E His smile
faded. “That poor child. She must be terrified.”

“What can we do
?
Your wife — I know
you love her, but we can’t let her do this!” Beyond my fear for Maxie, I was
also terrified for Lucas, as well as for Balthazar, my parents, Vic — everyone
I’d left back at Evernight. She had fighters around her who knew she was their
only chance to live again. The battle going on now would be desperate.
and
for some.
fatal
.

“No, we cannot.” Christopher squared his shoulders. “We
shall return to the world below, together.”

“Can you get Maxie out of the trap?” I asked, though I felt
sure it must be impossible. “There is one way,” he said, surprising me. “Only
one way.”

He vanished. Apparently explanations would have to wait. I
thought of my brooch, the beautiful black flower from my dreams, and tried to
fold myself into the heart of it.

[
took
form — then fell bodily into
the snow, Lucas toppling beside me. Blood marred his face, streaking his skin
and making his green eyes seem unearthly. He glanced at me only for a moment
before raising his crossbow just in time to deflect an ax. One of Mrs. Bethany’s
loyalists was swinging at him, repeatedly, and from the looks of things, he’d
landed a few blows.

My brooch had tumbled out when Lucas fell, apparently; it
lay on the ground, stark against the snow. I grabbed it, grateful for the
ability to do so, and put it in my pocket. Now embodied, I tried to take in the
scene.

A battle raged around me. My vampire friends were locked in
combat with other vampires loyal to Mrs. Bethany. Across the grounds, Evernight
Academy was melting — or, at least, the ice that had encased it was vanishing.
Half — frozen students were already stumbling back inside for shelter and to
get away from the fighting. I couldn’t find Vic, and nobody seemed to have
breached Mrs. Bethany’s carriage house.