Queen of the Dead (17 page)

He was leaving already? “What am I supposed to do while you’re figuring out your big plan?” I tried to keep calm. It had not escaped my notice that he hadn’t answered my question about Mina.

“Just keep doing what you’ve been doing.”

I nodded, wiping my face on the edge of the sheet.

He started for the door, and then he stopped. “Was it worth it?” he asked without turning around.

“What?”

“Doing this so you could talk to your parents? Force them back into mourning you?”

I flinched. He made it sound so cruel. I couldn’t tell him the truth. I hadn’t had many opportunities to even make the call with any kind of privacy, and the few I’d had…I hadn’t been able to convince myself to take them. It was one thing to send Will with a message and watch the fallout at a bit of a distance. But now that I had the fingers to dial the phone and the capacity to speak to them and be heard directly…I was kind of afraid to hear what they would say. Will was worried that hearing from me would send them into a tailspin of grief. I was worried it wouldn’t.

“Yes,” I lied. What else could I say?

“I hope so,” Will said. Then he left.

After a few seconds, Mrs. Turner stuck her head back in the door cautiously. “Okay if I come in again?”

I nodded, not quite trusting myself to speak.

She came farther in the room, moving toward her chair, but then she stopped, her head cocked to one side as she took in my expression and probably my tear-reddened eyes. I mean, what were the odds that Lily was attractive while crying when even
I
hadn’t been able to manage that?

Her shoulders sagged, and she looked at me with such sympathy. “Oh, honey. It’s just going to take some time.”

I knew that she didn’t even have a clue what was going on, but it didn’t matter. Hearing the genuine caring in her voice made my eyes burn with tears again, and then I started to cry. Sob, actually. Big gulping, loud embarrassing sobs. Ones I’d never allowed myself in front of other people when I was alive.

Get it together, Alona.
But I couldn’t seem to make myself stop. It was like a faucet somewhere had snapped off, and everything was pouring out.

She moved to sit on the edge of my bed, pulling my head to rest on her shoulder. “It’s okay. It’s going to be fine.” She repeated the words over and over again, which should have worked, except I knew that if I got what I wanted, it wouldn’t be okay, it wouldn’t be fine, at least not for her.

She stroked my hair. “You were friends with Will and then you weren’t. And then the accident…” She rested her chin lightly on top of my head. “It’s bound to be confusing for him. For both of you.”

There was a knock at the door. I looked over to see Mr. Turner standing in the doorway awkwardly, a bouquet of wildflowers in one hand and the hugest bundle of brightly colored balloons in the other. He was wearing another denim shirt, in a lighter shade of blue this time. Tyler hovered at his side, looking a little less freaked than yesterday, but still wary. He was twisting a piece of white fabric in his hands.

“Is now a bad time?” Mr. Turner asked.

I felt Mrs. Turner stiffen next to me. “What are you doing here, Jason? What about—”

“I took the day off of work,” he said quickly. “This deserves celebration.”

“Oh,” Mrs. Turner said in a small but happy voice.

He stepped closer, dragging the balloons across the ceiling.

“I didn’t know if you still liked this kind of flowers or not,” he said to me gruffly. “When you were little, you used to beg me to stop the car on trips to Grandma’s house in Wisconsin so you could pick the flowers on the side of the road. I think those were mostly weeds, but these reminded me of them.”

He thrust the flowers at me, and I took them. They were just cheap grocery store flowers still in the plastic, but they were pretty, and he’d picked them out himself. Whenever
my
dad had sent me flowers, they’d been huge, ornate arrangements and come from the most expensive florist in town…with a note in his assistant’s handwriting. I’d thanked my dad once, and he’d had no idea what I was talking about. I was just an item on someone’s to-do list.

Mrs. Turner gave a choked laugh. “They’re beautiful, Jason. Really.” She sounded like she was crying now, too.

“And Tyler has something for you, too.” He waved his son over, who was still standing on the edge of the hall.

Tyler approached slowly. “You know that place in your room I’m not supposed to know about, where you hide the stuff I’m not supposed to touch?”

So this is what it was like to have a sibling. I nodded and hoped he wouldn’t ask for details about said secret location or its contents.

“Here.” He tossed the fabric he’d been twisting in his hands at me. It fluttered down to land on top of my covers.

I picked it up. It was a piece of soft white satin, worn and tattered around the edges, and kind of grungy looking, but I knew that it was supposed to be important just by the way Tyler and Mr. Turner were watching me for my reaction. I picked it up carefully because it felt like it might fall apart. Whatever it was, it was either really old or really worn out, or both.

“You found Blankie,” Mrs. Turner exclaimed.

Oh, this sounded embarrassing. But also important.

Without thinking, I looked to her for explanation and another of those sad expressions crossed her face. I’d failed another question on the Lily exam.

“Oh, right, Blankie,” I repeated, feeling the heat rise in my cheeks. Clearly, there was some childhood memory associated with this thing. Logic would suggest it was, or had once been, an actual blanket, something Lily had evidently cherished enough to hide away from her brother. I liked the idea of having something with that kind of history. With my mother’s manic and occasionally alcohol-fueled redecorating sprees, I’d rarely had any bedding in my room last long enough for the newness to wear off, let alone for a sentimental attachment to form.

I ran my fingers along the torn edge gently.

“A lot of children keep a scrap from their security blankets,” Mrs. Turner said, her tone chiding yet approving. “You took it everywhere until about third grade, and even then you slept with it under your pillow, remember?”

I nodded. I could imagine it.

“I looked and looked for this when I was gathering up things to bring here to your room.” She rested her head against mine for a moment. “I thought maybe it had gotten lost or you’d thrown it away. I was so upset.”

Imagine that. A mom who wanted to keep things that had been important to her daughter.

Mrs. Turner folded the strip of fabric into my palm and closed my fingers over it, and then she kissed my forehead with a sigh that seemed to indicate now that Blankie and Lily had been reunited, all would be right with the world.

I looked away, staring at the far corner of the room so I wouldn’t start crying again when I’d barely stopped. It wasn’t fair. Why did Lily Turner get these parents, this family, and not me? She wasn’t even around to appreciate them. She probably hadn’t appreciated them even when she was around. Not as much as I would have.

A
lona Dare had stolen a body, and not just any body, though that would have been bad enough. No, she had topick
Lily
.

It really shouldn’t have surprised me. She always thoughtshe was entitled to take whatever she wanted, and damn the consequences. But my God, of all the selfish things to do.

She’d said it was an accident and maybe it had been, but that didn’t change the fact that she hadn’t considered anybody else in this mess except for herself. That was vintage Alona Dare, right there.

I stalked back through the hospital and out to my car, fury fueling my stride. I was half-tempted to call Mina, let her show up in the room with all of her clanking boxes, and maybe Alona would freaking learn something.

But that wasn’t my job. I wasn’t the one responsible for teaching her. The light had sent her back; the light would decide if that had been a mistake, not me.

However, that didn’t change the fact that I needed help.

I got to my car—it hadn’t been towed, thank God—and climbed inside. I needed privacy and a second to think before taking any kind of next step.

I was willing to bet someone within the Order knew more about what Alona had done, not specifically that she’d done it but how it had happened and maybe how to undo it. The trouble was what they’d do with Alona afterward. No matter what I’d let Alona think, I would not be calling Mina in on this. No way. Removing and boxing Alona would be too much of a trophy for her to resist.

But the Order was still my best option for information. The only trick was how to get it without them descending upon the hospital and Alona and Lily. Mina had claimed Mrs. Ruiz was a green-level ghost, whatever that meant, but it insinuated that there were levels higher than that. And if I had to guess, I would say they’d classify Alona as belonging to one of those more powerful categories. Which meant the Order wasn’t going to just let her walk away.

But that didn’t mean I couldn’t attempt a little subterfuge and see what I could learn. If I was careful, it would look like I was simply an eager student.

I reached into my pocket for the crumpled card with the 800 number on it.

Lucy seemed to be the most sympathetic among the Leadership and the most willing to overlook my dad’s peculiar concern with the dead instead of—or in addition to—the living. She might be more willing to give me answers the others would dismiss as information I didn’t need to know.

I pulled my mom’s cell phone from my pocket. She’d insisted that I take it so I could call her and give her an update after my visit with Lily, which I’d have to do immediately after calling the Order. Otherwise she might freak out and start trying to track me down.

I flipped the phone open and started dialing the number for the Order, trying to organize my thoughts into a coherent story that didn’t sound too suspicious.

It rang once and then a woman’s efficient but nasal voice said, “Answering service.”

I hadn’t been expecting that. Not that I thought the Order would be trumpeting their name and purpose, but this generic greeting made me wonder for a second if I’d misdialed. “Um, hey, can you connect me with Lucy?” I realized belatedly that I didn’t know Lucy’s last name.

But this didn’t seem to faze the operator. “One moment, please.”

The connection clicked in my ear and then it started ringing again, tinny and distant. Hopefully, the woman was transferring me to Lucy’s cell phone and not a desk phone out in California somewhere. I assumed that Lucy was still in town after last night, or maybe on her way back.

“Lucy Shepherd,” she answered, sounding more professional and crisp than she had at the theater.

“Hi Lucy, it’s Will…Killian,” I added quickly.

“Will!” she cried with delight, so much so that the phone vibrated against my ear with the reverberations of her voice. I winced.

“I’m not interrupting anything, am I?” I asked. If she was in a meeting with John and Silas, I wanted to know. That might affect the answers she’d be willing to give me.

“Of course not, hon. I’m just packing up for my flight back this afternoon. What can I do for you?”

“I just had a couple of questions, if you don’t mind.”

“Oh, sure.” Her voice softened. “I understand.”

And I realized she thought I wanted to ask about my dad. I did—badly—but now was not the time. Except I couldn’t help but think, what if there wasn’t another time? Who was this Danny Killian that Lucy and the others knew? Like, asa person, not just the secretive and unhappy guy who was my dad?

“Will, are you still there?”

“Oh, yeah, sorry, just got distracted for a second.” I needed to keep my focus on the immediate problem. Getting Alona free. “Listen, I know this is going to sound strange, but I’m just trying to wrap my head around everything, and I’ve been hearing some things I wanted to run by you.”

“Okay,” she said cautiously.

“Is it possible for a ghost to possess a person? Not what they show in movies, where everything is all crazy and split pea soup, but like almost undetectable? The person might seem normal or close to it.”

She was quiet for a long moment, a silence that dragged out way too long. Shit, had I just given myself away? “Lucy?”

“You’ve been talking to Mina,” she said with a sigh.

“What?” I asked, confused. “I mean, yeah, but not…”

“She’s insisting that we take this priest’s call seriously, but what she’s forgetting is that red-level manifestations are very rare. I’ve never even seen one before and—”

“Wait, what priest?”

“The chaplain at St. Catherine’s.” Now she sounded confused. “Didn’t Mina tell you that?”

Despite the heat in the car, I felt a sudden chill. Alona had mentioned a priest.

“Apparently, a girl who was in a coma for months and months woke up early this morning, and she’s already talking and moving around.”

Oh, no. No, no, no.

“That can be one of the signs,” Lucy continued, oblivious to my distress. “Red-level echoes like that tend to go after weakened targets and make them their own. Like I said, though, they’re incredibly rare.”

“What is the Order doing about it?” I forced myself to ask in what I hoped was a normal voice or the closest thing to it that I could manage at this point.

“Do?” She laughed. “There’s nothing to do. This is just that poor girl’s attempt to win one more chance at full membership with a containment. But I doubt they’ll find anything.”

I froze. “They’re looking to find something?” Looking was bad. Looking meant members of the Order with disruptors and boxes would be in the vicinity of Alona.

“I thought you said you’d talked to Mina,” she said with a frown in her voice. “John took her to the hospital to check it out, even though—”

I snapped the phone shut, dropped it to the floor, and bolted from the car.