Rachel Caine & Kristin Cast & Claudia Gray & Nancy Holder & Tanith Lee & Richelle Mead & Cynthia Leitich Smith & P. C. Cast (5 page)

I sever her head with the blade and, shaking, drop the axe handle.

After a stunned moment, Ben climbs to his feet and puts a hand on my shoulder. “You okay, man?”

“Better now,” I say. “You?”

“She came after me on prom night,” he explains. “I've been trying to run her out of our town ever since.”

Our town. Ben is Spirit. I'm Spirit. God knows Sonia is Spirit.

Ginny was the new girl again, this time with a new name.

“I tried to warn her off,” Ben adds. “I tried to scare her off. I went to my family for help, but nobody believed me. She didn't seem like a vampire, you know?”

“Yeah, I know.”

What happened here will stay with Ben for a long time. He isn't the kind of person who can destroy someone else, even something else, without it weighing on him. I know how he feels and then some.

It's been two weeks since that night, since the last time I noticed any sign of Sonia. I already miss her. I'm sorry for
having doubted her goodness, and I'm glad that the monster who killed her will never hurt anyone again.

Ben and I burned Ginny's and her parents' bodies (heads too) behind my barn. We buried the axe, which he'd taken from the mayor's office, near my uncle.

“Come spring, you might sprinkle some wildflower seed on the graves,” he said. “I mean, they were human beings once.”

I said I would and made a mental note to sprinkle seeds on Uncle Dean's grave too.

The next day Ben fibbed to his aunt Betty that the Augustines had packed up and left in the middle of the night for some six-figure job that the mayor landed up north. Ben explained that Ginny told him her dad was too embarrassed to own up to running out on the town after all his big promises. He claimed that's what their spat in the ticket line had been about.

Betty repeated the story the next day at the beauty shop, and it's become common knowledge since. The deputy is circulating a petition to put his own name on a mayoral ballot. I signed it last week.

Turns out, Ben's not a bad guy. His granddad, Sheriff Derek Mueller, had been the vampire hunter who originally chased the Augustines out of town back in the day. The sheriff had passed on what he'd seen, what he'd learned, to Ben so Ben would know what to do if the homicidal undead ever swung back through town.

Ben has decided to work at the Old Love and save up for college. Apparently, being a good athlete by Spirit standards isn't necessarily the same as being scholarship material. Facing down the undead has grown him up a lot.

He doesn't know what I am, not yet, but he took it well when I explained about Sonia. I hope that when the day comes, when he realizes I'm not just another home-town boy, he thinks back on what happened and gives me the benefit of the doubt.

Tonight after the Ghostbusters save New York City, I thank Ben for a good night's work, lock the front door behind him, and once again hear Sonia singing “To Know Him Is to Love Him.”

When I look toward the voice, I see Sonia herself for the first time. She's taken over one of my jobs, wiping down the concession counter, like it's no big deal.

Sonia is a see-through figure in a uniform not much different than the one Ginny wore, except that Sonia's includes a red vest with a gold patch that reads “Love Theater.”

I didn't realize she was still here. I don't get it. With Ginny gone for good, why stick around? “Sonia?”

She raises her face, and I see the dimple, the laughing eyes. “Cody!”

“Sonia,” I say in case she didn't understand what happened, “your murderer has been destroyed. It's over. You can move on now. You can, uh, go into the light.”

Sonia tilts her head. “It wasn't all about justice.” Her voice has a hollow quality to it. “Tell me, Cody. Do you believe in love at first sight?”

Staring at her, God help me, I just might. I read on the Web that the more you believe in a ghost, the stronger your feelings for them, the more substantial they become.

With each passing second, Sonia appears more solid, more alive. And I have to admit, in some ways, we would be perfect for each other. We're both tied to this old theater, we'll both be teenagers forever, and we're both dead. Even better, I don't have to worry about physically hurting her. No flesh. No blood. No problem.

This could become more than the hope of love. It could become the real thing. But there's something she has to be told first. She may not know what happened at my uncle's ranch, but I thought she'd figured out what I am from the bottle of blood in the office mini-fridge. I guess Sonia didn't realize what the liquid was or maybe in her ghostly state, some details are fuzzy.

“Sonia,” I begin again as she floats toward me. “There's something you should know. I'm a monster, the same kind of monster—”

Her cool fingertips press against my lips, and in her gaze, I see complete understanding, total acceptance. “No,” Sonia says. “You're not.”

 

 

 

 

F
rom their place in the bowels of the Underworld, the Furies, Daughters of Night, summon their son. They are skeletal winged creatures, the black of rotting flesh thinly stretched across their hunched, quivering bodies, not much more than flesh sacks barely able to contain the power of each of their morbid talents.

“Alekossss, come.”

He was birthed eons ago from the womb of vengeance, conceived by jealousy, and grown in constant anger. Bred to defend mortals, he was sent from their underground realm to the world above, and there, away from their poison, he learned compassion. At first only so that he could mimic and blend. Later, after centuries, humanity took hold within him, causing the Furies unending confusion with their errant son, this man who grew up and away from them.

Alekos appears, his Herculean body glowing from the descent, the return home. “Yes, my mothers?” He steps down from the ledge he was summoned to, his torn jeans dragging through the souls of the doomed as he strolls toward the three creatures in the dark. He can hear their wings rustling with the excitement of his return. Although he had been there only weeks before, they had not seen him in years. Time ticks by slowly below. As he approaches, they gently grab him and lead him farther into the nothing, farther from the whines of the tortured.

“Ssssit.” They command. He sits and puts his feet nonchalantly up on the table.

“The longer you're up there, the more disgusting and human you become.” Their throats click and rattle as they speak as one.

He removes his feet and snaps his fingers. Oil lamps flicker on, revealing a cave wet and putrid with chaos and death. The three figures huddle together staring at their son across a crude stone table on which sits a bouquet of night-blooming moon flowers the delicate color of infants' flesh. Slowly they begin to rock back and forth as if they are one and not three. Their eyes are dark and endless, and drip with the blood of the tortured. The snakes in their hair alternate between attacking and caressing one another.

“The Fates have decided. Her cord isss being cut tonight.” At first they speak as one, then break apart, finishing each other's thoughts.

“You mussst find her,”

“give her life,”

“sssssave her,”

“sso ssshe can”

“give usss”

“vengeance.”

The Furies click with amusement as his mind is flooded with pictures of a beautiful young woman: long chestnut hair, chocolate eyes, olive skin, and a black dress. They have chosen her for him. He blinks and stands. Alekos knows he was only there for this—the gift of his mission. It is now time for him to depart, and for the first time in centuries he feels nervous, excited, alive.

“Thank you, mothers.” He turns to leave. “Oh! Furies, mothers.” He glances back to see them still swaying. “Where do I find her?”

They close the black holes that served as their eyes, grip each other tightly, and send their too beautiful son to the modern world with the sounds of their shrieks echoing their farewells.

Ryan Tedder's melodic voice came booming out of my black cell phone, waking me from a much-needed nap. I groped around my nightstand unsuccessfully for my glasses. Seriously blind as a bat, I quickly gave up on reading the glowing caller ID box. Instead I flipped open the phone.

“Hello?”

“Oh my God, Jenna. Were you sleeping?” The annoyed tone picked me up out of the dream world I was loitering in and threw me back into reality.

“Bridget? No! Sleeping, me? No!” I perkily pretended.

“Good! Well, I was just calling to remind you to bring your camera tonight. We're going to have so much fun at Taylor's hotel party! I can't wait! Being seniors is sooo much fun! What are you wearing?”

“Umm, I think my little black strapless dress with my mom's new gold shoes.”

Bridget sucked in air. “No way! Those new strappy heels from Saks? That is so not fair! We're going to look super hott, like always. Ugh, hang on, my mom is yelling at me.” She moved the mouth piece of her cell away and I could hear her muffled whines at her mom. “
Okay, Mom.
She wants me to tell you not to forget your cell phone because that gross serial killer guy just killed someone else. Well duh, he's a
serial
killer, jeez. Sorry, she is so protective and weird. But anyway, I have to go finish getting gorgeous. See you at the Ambassador at ten! Love you, and don't forget the digital!”

The line went dead.
How is she always so happy?

I stood up, stretched, found my glasses laying on the floor next to my nightstand, and looked at the clock: 7:57 P.M.
Crap. No time for a shower.

As I sleepily wandered the five feet from my bed to my ocean-themed bathroom, I could hear my mom screeching at me from her room down the hall. “Jenna! Do you know where my gold strappy shoes are? I just bought them and
they've already
mysteriously
disappeared.” She walked into my room and looked around.

I poked my head out of the bathroom door, my hair falling straight into the toothpaste I had just squeezed onto the brush. “Mom! If you're going to come in here anyway,
why
do you have to yell at me from down the hall?”

“Saves time. Which I don't have much of. Paul's going to be here,” she looked down at her watch, “in less than an hour. So?”

“Oh, umm, nope. Haven't seen 'em. Sorry.” I hardly ever lie to my mom, she's too good at catching me, but this was different. It was the first party of my senior year of high school, and I had to look the best. And I'm sure Paul had seen them already. She's been with the nerdy mortician for like six months. Besides, gold is hot right now, ask anyone.

“Hmm, well, if you see them let me know.” She wasn't looking at me; instead, she continued to take inventory of my room.

“Yeah. Okay.” I sighed trying to keep the annoyed
I'm running late too
tone out of my voice. I stuck the toothbrush into my mouth.

She started to leave, and her dark curls bounced around her shoulders, making her suddenly look a lot younger than a forty-something-year-old mom. She paused at the door. “And Jenn, don't forget to take Mr. Pepper. He's in his spot by the front door.”

I finished brushing my teeth, put my contacts in, and stood staring in the mirror at my messed-up locks. “Up-do!” I decided.

I began wrapping my fingers around my tangled hair in an attempt to turn it into an intentionally messy low pony when the cute Ryan Tedder again blared through the room. I quickly clipped up my hair and glanced down at the sink where I had set my phone. “Connor!” The picture of his goofy smile, sandy shaggy hair, and gray eyes made my stomach jump.