Queen of the Dead (4 page)

“O
w!” I jerked out of Alona’s grasp and away from the tweezers she wielded with maybe just a little too much enthusiasm. “Are you trying to make it worse?”

“You have, like, half the bedroom floor back here,” she said with no sympathy. “Besides, even if I was, you’d deserve it,” she said.

She’d been beyond cranky with me since we’d left the Gibley Mansion grounds, and admittedly, she might be justified in that…to an extent. After the girl just left us standing there, it had been Alona who’d pulled it together and led me out, through the backyard and to the next block over, where I’d parked the Dodge. I’d been reeling still, torn between trying to follow the ghost-talker girl and just getting out of there before I got caught.

Alona had had no such qualms. She’d dragged me to the car and then, on the way to my house, made me tell her everything she’d missed while she’d been gone.

Unsurprisingly, none of those details—the silver that had been stolen and then restolen, Mrs. Ruiz’s attack on me, the weapon the girl had used against Mrs. Ruiz and almost Alona—had improved her mood.

Now in the bathroom at my house, where first aid was supposed to be happening, she was evidently still mulling over everything and blowing things way out of proportion, in my opinion. Thankfully, my house was currently empty. Mymom was at the movies with Sam, her semiboyfriend/boss from the diner where she worked.

“So, she could have killed me with that thing, whatever it was, in her hand?” Alona demanded. “Just wiped me out of existence because she didn’t like the way I was looking at her or something?”

I hesitated, beginning to reconsider the wisdom of this conversation when I didn’t have enough—or any—facts…and when Alona was obviously pissed and in a position to cause me pain. “I don’t know,” I said finally. “I don’t know what the device does exactly, but it definitely did something to Mrs. Ruiz.”

Alona removed another splinter from my back with brutal efficiency, and I winced.

“I stopped her before she hurt you,” I pointed out through gritted teeth. “It’s fine.
You’re
fine.”

“Oh, yeah, I’m great.” She waved the tweezers around. “Your new best friend is a homicidal maniac with mysterious weapons and hair that could be used to remove rust off a bumper.”

At least she had her priorities straight. I resisted the urge to point out that since Alona was already technically dead, it wouldn’t really be homicide. I do have some sense of self-preservation.

“Look, she didn’t know,” I said. “As far as she knew, you were another ghost who was going to try to hurt her.”

“So quick to take her side,” she muttered. She bumped past me to wash her hands at the sink.

I stared at her. “What is wrong with you?”

“You know nothing about her, why she was there, even what all that stuff she had with her does.” She scrubbed her hands ferociously under the water. “Do you even know what happened to Mrs. Ruiz? Where she ended up after your friend made her vanish?”

“I—”

“No, you don’t,” she answered for me. “This girl just waves around her cool toys, and you’re hooked. No questions asked.” She shoved past me to dry her hands on a towel.

“I don’t think it’s really an issue since I’ll probably never see her again,” I said. “She wouldn’t even give me her name.” Which sucked. Maybe I could figure out some other way to track her down, just to talk, exchange some information.

She turned to face me. “Seriously? You’re not actually falling for this, are you?”

“What? Why?” I felt like we were in two completely different conversations…or on two different planets.

“First of all, not telling you her name is a form of manipulation. It only makes you want to know it more.” She shook her head at me in disgust. “Classic girl move. How do you not know this?” She paused and then said, “Never mind. I forgot who I was talking to.”

Nice. Just because I’d spent most of high school avoiding social contact…

“Or, it’s possible she really didn’t want me to know,” I pointed out.

“Then why not make something up? How would you know?”

I opened my mouth and shut it without saying anything. That was kind of a good point.

She flipped her hair behind her shoulders and ticked another point off on her fingers. “Second, another ghost-talker, a rare and endangered species according to you, just happens to show up at the same place at the same time as you?” she asked.

“Well, yeah,” I said. “It’s possible.”

“Please. Do you have any idea of what the odds would be on that?”

“No, but it doesn’t matter,” I argued. “She would have had no way of knowing that I would be there tonight.”

“Uh-huh.” She sounded less than convinced. “Because no one knew about the demolition tomorrow and Mrs. Ruiz’s
issues
.”

Apparently, none of us had known the extent of Mrs. Ruiz’s issues, but her haunting the place was fairly common knowledge, and the impending demolition—as well as the Decatur Historical Society’s doomed efforts to prevent it—had been in the local news for weeks.

I shook my head. “This is crazy. You think this is some kind of elaborate scheme? To accomplish what?”

She threw up her hands. “How should I know? Ask your new girlfriend.”

I frowned at her. “She’s not my—”

“Anyway, it doesn’t matter now whether she meant to find you or not,” Alona continued.

“It doesn’t,” I repeated.

“No. The fact is, she did find you. And if there are so few ghost-talkers out there, do you think they’re going to let an opportunity like this pass them by?”

“Who?” I was beginning to wonder if one of us had experienced brain damage tonight. Honestly, I wasn’t sure which of us was the more likely candidate at this point.

“The people she’s working for,” Alona said with exasperation. “Weren’t you listening? ‘This was my third chance at a containment.’That’s what she said.”

I gaped at her. “We don’t even know what that means.”

“I can tell you it means someone else is judging her based on whatever she did or did not do with Mrs. Ruiz tonight. And I don’t think it’s an international committee of former figure skaters.”

She folded her arms over her chest and waited for me to respond.

“Do you think this hard about everything?” I asked, not even sure what else to say. It was distinctly possible Alona had missed her calling in life as a conspiracy theorist. Albeit a better-dressed one than most.

She leaned closer to me. “Homecoming Queen, three years in a row,” she said. “Do you think that happened by accident?”

She did have a good sense of people, I would give her that. Most of the time, she just didn’t give a shit unless it affected her. Which, in this case, I suppose it did, indirectly.

I waved her words away. “Okay, fine. If she shows up again, I’ll make sure to ask her all the dark and mysterious motives behind her appearance.”

“Good.” She nodded, satisfied.

Jesus.

She turned around and began putting all the first-aid stuff back in the box. “Did you like her?”

I tilted my head, not sure if I was hearing her correctly. “I’m sorry?”

“I said, did you like her?” She kept her back to me. She seemed to be rearranging the contents of the first-aid kit by alphabetical order or size or something. It should not have taken that long to put back tweezers, bandages, and antibacterial cream.

“I…” My God, there was no good way to answer this. “Yes” was obviously out. She’d detect “No” as a lie immediately. And “I don’t know her well enough to know if I like her” was just weak. “I was curious,” I said finally.

“How curious?”

Damn, another impossible-to-answer question. I was starting to sweat. “I don’t understand what you’re—”

“She didn’t seem to have a spirit guide. At least not right now.” Alona shrugged. “And if she ever had one, he probably deliberately made himself disappear just to get away from her,” she added, her mouth tight.

Okay…there was a question in here somewhere. I could feel it coming. I had no idea from which direction, though. Leave it to Alona, the most direct person I knew, to broach whatever this was in the most oblique manner possible.

“With that device she used against Mrs. Ruiz, she probably doesn’t need one,” she continued.

The silence that hung in the air after those words held a slightly different quality, like she was testing the verbal waters and waiting for a “too hot” or “too cold” response.

Ah, wait. Now I was getting it.

Maybe.

“I was just curious,” I said cautiously. “Not looking to change things.”

“She’s alive. Your mother would like that better.”

I let out a silent breath of relief. I’d guessed correctly. She was worried I wanted to replace her or get rid of her or something, but in true Alona fashion, she couldn’t just say that. Nope, that would be admitting that it mattered.

“My mom is still…adjusting,” I said.

The ghost-talker thing had been a hard reality for my mom to accept, especially once she got the full grasp of what it meant. A normal life for me…would not be so normal, even now. I’d applied to colleges, just like we’d talked about, but so far, nothing but a pile of rejections.

I couldn’t say I was surprised. You try explaining a spotty attendance record, more detentions than a reasonable person would bother counting, a half dozen or so in-school suspensions, and God only knows what kind of notes from a vindictive principal on your permanent record (which, by the way, really does exist and the school does send it out)
without
mentioning “ghosts” or “paranormal ability.” There were schools that would probably be fine with me telling the truth—if I wanted to major in crystals or something. But that was not what my mom had in mind.

Add to all of that, the person that I spent the most time with now was a beautiful girl who happened to be a spirit but who was still living (in her own way) and very touchable? Yeah. For some reason, that meant only one thing to my mom—the possibility of me having weird, undead, inter-dimensional SEX. Right.

I wish.

In any case, my mom had been a little less than welcoming the few times she’d been forced to acknowledge Alona’s invisible-to-her presence. But I hadn’t realized it had bothered Alona this much…or at all.

“She’ll get there,” I said. “She just needs time.”

Alona closed the kit and zipped it shut before turning to face me. “You know I’d find another way, if I had to. I don’t
need
you need you.” She met my eyes defiantly, daring me to contradict her.

“I know.” I wasn’t sure how she would help people—earn her points, learn her lesson, or whatever it was she’d been sent back specifically to accomplish—without me, her only point of access to the living, but I knew better than to underestimate her. I’d learned that lesson already. “But this is not…I don’t think…”
Blah, blah, blah. Get it together.
I forced myself to stop and start over.

I took a deep breath. “I’ve been alone with this ghost-talking thing my whole life,” I said, choosing my words carefully. This had serious potential to blow up in my face. “Even when my dad was alive, he wanted nothing to dowith it. So, yeah, finding someone else like me is kind of abig deal.”

She stiffened.

“But it doesn’t change anything,” I said. “Not like that.”

She looked unconvinced. I hesitated and took it a step further. I grabbed her hand, and she didn’t pull it free immediately. That was a good sign, right?

“I don’t want to do this—what we do—with anyone else, okay?” I said quickly. There. I felt dangerously exposed and kind of like an idiot, but at least I’d said my piece. God, no wonder Alona danced around these kinds of things.

Her eyes widened, and she pulled her hand from mine.

I winced in anticipation. It was entirely possible that I’d completely misinterpreted her concerns, and now I was so going to hear about it.…

She touched my face, her fingers light against my cheek, and then she was kissing me. Her mouth was warm and soft and, as always, tasted vaguely of vanilla lip gloss. Her tongue brushed across my lips, and I could barely think.

Huh. Maybe I should take a chance like that more often.

W
ill Killian is a surprisingly good kisser. I mean you’d never know it by looking at him. He’s perpetually pale with scruffy black hair, a seriously questionable wardrobe, and an attitude that makes Eeyore look like a ray of sunshine. One might think he wouldn’t have had a chance to get much kissing practice, especially what with most people considering him crazy. And yet…wow.

I stopped on the sidewalk outside of Will’s house, running a tentative finger over my mouth. His mom had come home before things could get too intense, and I had to get out of his room before she barged in. But my lips still felt puffy in that “I’ve been thoroughly kissed” way. Some guys seem to have the impression they should try to swallow half of your face. But—color me surprised—not Will. He was gentle and sweet, and yet not at all afraid to step up and take the lead.

I shivered in delight at the thought. At one point, he’d pulled me into his bedroom and…

“Just a cozy night in, huh?” a sarcastic voice asked from behind me.

I froze, startled, and then groaned inwardly when I realized I recognized the speaker. She’d found me again. “Jealous?” I asked, turning around.

Liesel Marks stood on the sidewalk a few feet behind me. The streetlight overhead turned her pink polka-dotted prom dress into a shade of white with brighter white speckles. Behind her, as always, hovering on the edge of the shadows, was her longtime prom date, Eric Hargrove. He was dressed in the best of powder-blue tuxedo finery. They looked exactly like what they were: escapees from a prom inthe late seventies.

But they hadn’t really escaped anything. They were stuck here, in between, just like the rest of us. Liesel and Eric had died in a fiery car crash on prom night, a cautionary tale for high school students everywhere. Well, living ones anyway. I personally couldn’t have cared less. Karma is a bitch, and you get what you get when you steal someone else’s guy.

“Right,” Liesel snorted. “Like I want to be the ghosttalker’s pet.”

On my very first day as Will’s spirit guide, Liesel had been the one to explain, very mockingly, all the downsides to the job. They weren’t so bad, mostly. I showed up wherever Will was at the time of my death or anytime I disappeared. And I could be “called” to him, if he concentrated on it. That was it. But I had no such powers over him, unfortunately.

It was something I didn’t like to think about, and since Will knew better than to try to make me heel, it wasn’t really worth consideration anyway. Except when Liesel brought it up just to rub it in my face, of course.

“What do you want?” I asked through gritted teeth. Damn it, my make-out high was wearing off.

“We need the medium to do something for us,” she said without so much as a backward glance at Eric. He rocked on his heels in the background, his hands stuffed into his pants pockets, looking uncomfortable. I almost felt bad for him, tied to this harpy for all eternity, or at least the foreseeable future, just because his hormones got the better of him. Once again, my rule about not dating someone unless they’re worthy of you proves true. You know…don’t go out with someone you don’t really like—or like only for one thing—because you could die and then be stuck with him/her forever. Talk about hell.

“Yeah, I know,” I said to Liesel. “I got it. Get Mrs. Pederson to forgive you for stealing her man and doing the nasty with him before getting him killed.”

Liesel and Claire LaForet Pederson, who also happened to be the Brit Lit teacher at our former high school, hadbeen best friends growing up, until Liesel had pulled herman-stealing crap and then died. Of course, none of that explained why Eric was still stuck here. Technically, from what I’d been able to gather from Liesel’s nonstop yammering at the various times she’d stalked me like this, Claire and Eric hadn’t actually been dating. Claire had just called dibs.

Look, I am…or I
was
a power player at Groundsboro High. I know the ins and outs of our social hierarchy likeI know the contents of my closet. Give me fifteen minutes, and I could probably do the same thing at any other school, too. You have to know who the competitors are, how to makefriends…and the right enemies. (A good enemy, or frenemy, for that matter, will earn you more cred than you could possibly accumulate with years of just the right clothes, hair, etc.)

But one thing you don’t do? Mess with another girl’s crush. Yes, it gives you a reputation boost temporarily, and if you end up in a relationship with him (see my best friend, Misty, and my ex, Chris), then most people will excuse it as “true love.” But that’s risky. And to do it just because you can? Because you’re bored, lonely, needing a self-esteem fix? When it falls apart, expect instant whoredom.

Because you’ve just announced, in so many words, to every girl in the school that you have no intention of respecting the unspoken, agreed-upon boundaries of dibs, and their crushes could be next.

Yeah. Not a good idea. Ever.

“You’re like nine hundred thirty-six on the list or something,” I said. I’d sent Liesel to the end, just for being a pain in my ass. “As they say, today’s not your day and tomorrow’s not looking good, either.” I was pretty sure Will had that on a T-shirt somewhere.

“You need to move us up,” Liesel said sharply.

I pretended to think about that. “No.”

“You did it for Mrs. Ruiz,” she pointed out in a shrill voice that was just so grating. “You put her right at the top.”

“And look at how well that worked out,” I muttered.

She frowned. “What?”

Evidently, the undead gossip train, which usually moved with bulletlike speed and accuracy, hadn’t reached her with the latest details yet.

I sighed. “Nothing.”

“We’re running out of time.” She touched her feathered and heavily sprayed bangs carefully, making sure everything was still in place. A nervous habit left over from life, most likely, when stuff like the wind messed with your look. Unless, of course, you’d used twelve cans of hairspray.

I narrowed my eyes at her and then at Eric behind her. “You look fine to me.” Neither one of them appeared to be in any more danger of disappearing than before. Their forms were as solid as ever.

“Claire started dating someone,” she said. “His name is Todd.”

I raised my eyebrows.

Mrs. Pederson’s divorce a couple of years ago had been legendary, especially after the day she’d shown up to teach, allegedly half-looped on some kind of mood upper. Fortunately, it had turned out to be a Saturday. Unfortunately, more than enough people were in the building—practices, yearbook, detention, etc.—for the rumor to be alive and kicking on Monday.

“So…you want to stop her? You can’t be happy, so she can’t be happy until she forgives you? Will would never go for that.” I turned away.

“Whose side are you on?” she called after me.

“Not yours,” I said over my shoulder.

“Yeah, I noticed. We’ve all noticed.”

I turned at that. “What’s that supposed to mean?”

“All you care about is what he does.” She folded her arms across her chest. “We don’t even matter to you.”

I assumed that the “we” she referred to was the general ghost population of the Decatur/Groundsboro area rather than just Eric and her specifically.

“I’m
his
guide,” I pointed out.

“But you’re one of us,” she shot back.

I shook my head.

“You think you’re better than us just because you work for the breather?” she demanded.

“Work
with
,” I corrected with an edge. “And no, I think I’m better than you because I
am
better than you.” I kept walking.

“You’re not alive anymore, you know!” she shouted after me. “Not like he is. And being his guide doesn’t make you any closer to it. You need to stop pretending. It’s pathetic.”

I stopped dead and spun to face her again. “I’m sorry?” She was baiting me, I knew that, and yet I could not stop myself. She didn’t know anything; she was just lashing out at what she thought might be a weak spot. And yet, tonight, that one particular area just happened to be larger and more vulnerable than usual.

She moved closer, her dress rustling loudly in the quiet summer night air. “You’re no different from the rest of us, except you think letting the medium use you makes you something special.”

“Any using going on is mutual, I assure you,” I said tightly.

She rolled her eyes. “Really? You think he’s going to want you around forever? Someone no one else can see? You
work
for him. The rest of it is temporary. You’re just conven—”

I suspected that would have been “convenient,” but I launched myself at her before she could finish. We went down in a tangle of tulle in Will’s neighbor’s yard. God, I hoped Will wasn’t watching. But even if he was, I couldn’t let this go.

“Don’t you see? It’s not right what he’s doing,” she insisted, even as we struggled and rolled in the grass.

“I’m not doing it for him. I was sent back from the light to—”

“You mean, you got kicked out!”

I reached for her throat, to shut off her words and her air. Unfortunately, we couldn’t really hurt each other.

“Hey, cut it out!” Eric reached between us and pulled us apart, one hand on the back of Liesel’s dress and the other on the collar of my shirt. “You’re disappearing.”

We both looked down at ourselves. Whole sections of Liesel’s torso were see-through, and my legs were gone from the knee down. Damn it.

“You seem very determined to make up for your mistake, which I admire,” I offered begrudgingly.

“I like your hair,” she said with equal disdain.

But it must have been genuine, on both of our parts, because the fading out stopped.

“Look, we don’t want Claire to be unhappy. Just the opposite,” Liesel said quickly as if she thought—correctly—I’d start walking again now that I had my legs back. “We have a very limited window here. She doesn’t date very often, and when she does, it hardly ever goes this well. Right now, she’s happy and excited about Todd. So, she might be more open, more—”

“Forgiving?”

“Exactly.” Liesel nodded like her head was loose on her neck.

Just considering this was breaking about every rule I had about the list of the dead who needed our help—it was totally first come, first served, unless you pissed me off and I sent you to the end, or extenuating circumstances bumped you to the top. No playing favorites.

I had to maintain strong, unbiased order, or they’d be walking all over me to get to Will, and I didn’t have the time or energy, literally, to fight them all off.

But Liesel maybe had a point—this time—about Mrs. Pederson’s potentially more optimistic mood.

The pissy part of me wanted to tell her to forget it, but the truth was, if I wasn’t a little flexible when needed, I’d lose control just as fast as if I were too relaxed about it. Besides, Daddy always said, the well-timed favor earned more respect than yet another example of being a hard-ass.

Plus, she’d said she’d liked my hair and meant it.

“I’ll think about it and let you know,” I said. Of course, inthe end, it wasn’t my decision at all, but I sure as hell was notgoing to say that now. I knew Will would be twitchy aboutthis one, as he always was when it came to dealing withliving people he knew. But he’d graduated. As his former teacher, Mrs. Pederson was no longer really in a position togive him trouble. I might be able to talk him into this one.

“Tonight,” Liesel said.

I glared at her. “Don’t push your luck. Tomorrow.”

She opened her mouth to object and seemed to think better of it, which, frankly, would be a first. “Fine,” she said with an eye roll.

“And do not even think about going in there to try to talk to him yourself.” I jabbed a finger at her. It would be awfully tempting for her, I knew, with him so close by. It was one thing for Mrs. Ruiz, someone we’d never met before, to approach Will directly with an immediate need. Something different for Liesel to continually harass him.

“I won’t,” she said with exasperation. “God.”

“Because I will put you even farther down the list, behind people who aren’t even dead yet.” I frowned at her. “How did you find me here?”

We were very careful about not meeting spirits at Will’s house. It was the one place where he could be guaranteed some peace and quiet. And since we weren’t omniscient after death any more than we’d been in life, and had significantly less access to a phone book or the Internet, most spirits had no idea where he lived.

“I followed you here a couple days ago,” she confessed.

Damn. I was going to have to start being even more careful. One more thing to worry about.

“Don’t do that again, and if you tell anyone where he lives, you’re off the list completely,” I said to her, though I wasn’t entirely sure I had the authority to make that decision. “Now go before I change my mind.”

But she didn’t scurry away as I expected.

She brushed off the front of her dress, though it held no dirt or grass stains. “I meant what I said…earlier,” she said, keeping her eyes focused on her task.

I bristled.

“You’re going to have to pick a side at some point, his or ours.” She looked up, a challenge in her gaze.