Arise (29 page)

I’d almost reached Gabrielle, who waited for me by the café entrance, when I hesitated. Then, like a fool, I reversed course until I stood only a few inches from Joshua.

Stupidly, recklessly, I leaned in close enough to feel the warmth of his presence, to breathe in the sweet, musky scent of his cologne. These were things I’d wanted to experience in full since we first met. And now I had to act like a thief, stealing this moment from him.

I’d just reached out to grab his hand—to see if our connection had in fact disappeared—when I heard Gabrielle choking behind me. Apparently,
I’d
shocked
her
this time. I dropped my hand, but that didn’t deter me from lingering beside Joshua … waiting.

Waiting for him to notice me. To sense me, even though he could no longer see me.

I wanted some kind of recognition from him, some proof that our connection withstood what happened last night. I wanted to know that, whether I ran from or fought against the demons, there would always be something of us that survived.

I didn’t get that reassurance.

Without so much as a glance in my direction, Joshua sighed once and then followed his enormous family to the back of the café, where a large crowd of people ate standing up outside at tall, chairless tables.

Watching him walk away, I sighed, too. Then I turned around and slunk back toward Gabrielle, who ogled me from the gate.

“What the hell was that?” she said through clenched teeth. “I thought we were avoiding Lover Boy?”

I hung my head, feeling embarrassed. “We were. We are. Let’s just go.”

Thankfully, she simply nodded, slipping on her sunglasses and moving quickly with me out of the café. She didn’t speak until we’d made it halfway down the sidewalk. Then she smacked me on the arm.

“Where are your sunglasses?” she demanded.

I reached absently for my face and found nothing. No glasses.

“Crap, I left them in the café.” I turned to go back, but Gabrielle grabbed my arm and tugged me to a stop.

“Don’t go back there,” she said. “It will only upset you more.”

I shook my head. “The Mayhews were moving to the back of the café. I probably won’t even be able to see Joshua. Besides, we need to get those glasses back in the actress’s closet—one less thing that could get Felix arrested.”

“Bah,” Gabrielle grumbled. “Who cares about the stupid glasses? I’m sorry I even brought them up.”

“You can’t tell me you don’t know the exact designer and cost of those things.”

She grinned sheepishly. “Fendi. Three hundred and forty-five dollars. Before tax.”

“Now tell me you want to leave them for a stranger to own.” When she didn’t respond, I shook her hand off my arm and began trudging back down the sidewalk. “See you in less than two minutes, promise.”

By the time I’d pressed my way through the line outside Café du Monde, I’d already admitted my ulterior motives to myself. Of
course
I wanted to catch another glimpse of Joshua; I wasn’t made of stone.

But when I ducked back into the seating area and angled over to our table—where a waitress now cleared our mess—I couldn’t see the Mayhews anywhere.

Maybe they went inside
, I thought as I covertly swiped the sunglasses off the tabletop.
Couldn’t hurt to check …

I spun around, more than ready to slink my way into the interior restaurant, and then stopped short.

Alex stood less than a foot from me—eyes wide, expression alert. I hadn’t seen him earlier, when the Mayhews entered the café; he must have been buried deep in the crowd. Now he searched, hunted the area where Gabrielle and I had sat only minutes ago.

It’s nothing
, I reasoned.
This doesn’t mean anything
.

But I went cold when he whispered, “Amelia?”

I pressed my lips together, held my breath, and kept so still I thought I could hear my phantom pulse pounding in my ears. Still, Alex inched closer. After another beat, he tried again.

“Amelia, are you there?”

I stayed silent, now biting the inside of my lips to keep them shut. This technique was especially effective when Alex leaned forward until only inches separated us.

“I know you’re here,” he whispered. “I can smell your perfume. Like peaches, right?”

Despite my resolve to stay silent, a tiny squeak escaped my lips.

I prayed that Alex couldn’t hear it above all the laughing and talking and plate rattling. But he immediately jerked backward, looking triumphant. Then his expression shifted to one of pleading.

“If you
are
here,” he said, louder now, “please stay and listen to me, just for a second. I think I know what’s going on with you. I think you’re afraid of something.”

I stayed motionless, silent, as he continued.

“I know I don’t know you that well, but I could see it written all over your face the other night. Something has you scared, and I think you’re trying to run from it.”

He took a step closer, and I jagged to one side. “I’m sure I look like a crazy person right now, talking to thin air; but I have to tell you: we can keep you safe. Me, Annabel, and Drew. Hayley and Jillian. Maybe even Josh. My group of Seers may be young, but we have the power to protect you.”

I started to move backward one step at a time, away from him. Perhaps Alex sensed my retreat, because he turned blindly in several directions, his arms flailing. I nearly shrieked when one of them hit me.

Or at least it
should have
hit me.

Like Felix’s this morning, Alex’s hand slid across me as if we hadn’t touched at all. I didn’t feel the pressure of the impact; and, judging by his expression, Alex didn’t, either.

“Think about it, Amelia,” he said, unaware of what had just happened. “Come back to us, and we’ll protect you.
I’ll
protect you.”

No
, I whispered in my head.
You won’t
.

Then I spun around, running out of the café before I accidentally answered him out loud.

Chapter

TWENTY-FIVE

I
didn’t speak to Gabrielle again for at least another twenty minutes.

When I approached her on the sidewalk, I complied with her request to go visible so that we could talk without sounding like disembodied voices. But otherwise I waved off her questions. Then I made some vague gesture, indicating that she could follow me on my blind quest to go anywhere that wasn’t Café du Monde. And if she didn’t … well, I didn’t particularly care at that moment.

Eventually, my quest landed us in a small park with a double alley of oak trees, where I found myself pacing frantically. Gabrielle silently watched me for a few minutes and then plopped onto one of the park benches that line the alley.

“Told you not to go back in there,” she stated bluntly. “I knew it wouldn’t turn out well.”

“What, so now you’re a Voodoo priestess
and
clairvoyant?” I snapped.

When she held up both her hands in a gesture of surrender, I stopped pacing and rubbed my temples. Cringing, I slouched over and plopped next to her on the bench.

“Sorry,” I mumbled, staring off in the distance at a small bandstand where a group of jazz musicians played Christmas music. “I just … I have no idea what I’m doing.”

To my surprise, Gabrielle wrapped one arm around my waist and gave me a brief half hug. After she released me, she laughed.

“Like I do? I totally destroyed your afterlife in some last-ditch effort to find my parents. And so I wouldn’t be … alone.”

“Alone? You’ve got Felix.”

She lifted one shoulder and then dropped it. “Felix is my brother, and I love him. Of course I’m glad we’re together through all of this. But at some point Felix has got to get on with his life. Without me haunting it.”

“Yeah,” I said softly. “I know
exactly
what you mean.”

“Like I told you earlier, I met those Faders once,” she said. “After I became Risen, I still haunted my parents’ graves at the St. Louis Number One, trying to figure out what to do with myself. One night last summer I ran into them, sort of aimlessly standing around what was probably one of their own graves. At first I was excited to meet them. I thought maybe they’d be—I don’t know—good companions or something. But when that pirate guy tried to cop a feel, I decided that they weirded me out too.”

I barked out an involuntary laugh, and she smiled slyly.

“Besides,” she added, “old Nathan Hale was more my type anyway. I just love a man in uniform.”

“The soldier?” I made a sour face. “You really
do
have bad taste in guys.”

“Okay, okay,” she said, laughing. “Let’s just agree that the whole crew is pretty unsavory. Anyway, the real point of this story is that I’d basically given up on finding someone like me. Then you and Lover Boy walked into Marie’s, and I thought, ‘Holy hell, this is someone I might be able to hang out with.’ And when you touched him? Forget about it—I was totally convinced that another relatively normal-acting ghost with special powers was
exactly
what I needed. But I really wasn’t trying to ruin your afterlife, or break the two of you up.”

“How did you know I left him?” I asked, frowning. “I mean, before Café du Monde?”

“You talked in your sleep last night. Believe it or not, Felix wasn’t the only one keeping watch over you.”

“Huh,” I murmured, leaning back against the park bench thoughtfully. For a while I just sat in silence, absentmindedly listening to the jazz band. Then I turned slowly toward Gabrielle.

“Look, Gaby,” I said, trying out her nickname, “I have no idea if I can trust you or not. To be honest, I’ve met so many people and been through so much in the last few days that I’m not even sure where to start. But if you’re going to hang around me for an extended period of time, there’s some things you should know.”

Gaby leaned forward, her expression intent. “Whatever you can tell me that will help my parents, I’m all for it.”

I gnawed at my bottom lip for a few seconds before nodding hesitantly. Then without further introduction, I told her
everything
: how I died and then reawakened when I met Joshua; how I fought off the wraiths when Eli sent them after Jillian; how I narrowly missed entrapment in the netherworld at the hands of the demons. I explained how ineffectual my attempts to reenter the netherworld had been since that dark night. Then I told her about all the things that I’d experienced in the last few days: Eli’s warning; the bizarre dreams; the brief sighting of a handful of demons at the club.

I left out only one detail: what the Quarter ghosts had said about using a middleman to hand me over to the demons.

Despite my better judgment, I’d started to like Gaby. Maybe even trust her, on some level. But I couldn’t be one hundred percent sure she wouldn’t trade me to the darkness the second I dropped my guard. After all, it didn’t escape my attention that the pirate had said “she” when referring to their intermediary.

By the time I’d finished my story, the sun had already shifted in the sky and the warm glow of late afternoon filtered through the trees. Gaby, who’d sat quietly while I talked, now leaned back against our park bench. She released a long sigh and began twisting a curl of her Afro around her index finger.

“Wow,” she muttered. “And I thought my afterlife was eventful.”

I snorted softly in agreement. Then, smiling just a tiny bit, I said, “Dude, you have no idea.”

Gaby laughed and once again wrapped me in a half hug. Then she let me go, leaping to her feet. Still rapidly twisting her hair around one finger, she began to pace just as I had.

“So, how do we do it?” she mused. “How do we reopen the netherworld? I mean, without tracking down Eli or the demons and basically asking them for an extra house key.”

I sighed and lifted my hands uselessly in the air.

“I wasn’t kidding when I said I’ve had no luck at all. I stood at that river for
hours
every day, with no results. So what’s the point? And besides, what are we going to do? Hitchhike back to Oklahoma to try again?”