She Lies Twisted (12 page)

My dead twin was standing in my kitchen, a mirror image of me with bright blue eyes and blonde hair that shone like yellow copper. My first thought was demon, ghost, illusion.
She isn't anymore real than the Boyd that was in your bedroom this morning.

“
Tate.” Her voice was pitched low, so soft she was hard to hear. She'd always been like that. I'd always been accused of being too loud and yet we had the same voice. It was just a reflection of how different we had become before she'd died. I looked to James for help. He replied to my unspoken question.

“
I don't know,” he said, hands held out like he was surrendering. I marched past Jessica and my grandmother, careful not to touch my sister. The Boyd-demon had been hard enough. I didn't need to have my sister breaking my collarbone or gnawing off the tips of my fingers. I shoved open the busted front door and looked around for Ehferea or Nethel. Neither was there.

“
Tate.” I spun around, backing up so that I was far enough away from her that there wasn't a snowball's chance in hell that we would touch. Memories bombarded my brain like a wave of bullets from a machine gun, each one finding their target. Boyd had been dead a week, Jessica had been dead two years. Neither was a very long time but I had been able to block the pain of losing her with my friendship with him. Then, I'd kept that up by using the anguish of losing him to keep her memories at bay. Now, all of my walls were shattered and I was feeling anything and everything all at once. Suddenly, Abe's death was a fresh wound across my face. I could smell my mother's burning flesh. I saw images of my little brother Jason, face down in our swimming pool. There was Dad on the news with the flashing words,
Bungee Jumping Accident Takes Father of Four.

I threw up.

“
Oh, God, Tate.” Jessica tried to put her arms around me. I threw myself backwards. James stepped in front of me.

“
Let's take it easy, okay?” He said, using the type of voice you might reserve for a frightened horse.
Just stay away from the hooves and you'll be okay.
I reached for my hood and realized I didn't have one on. I began to gasp for air. James knelt down and took my hands in his. He leaned his forehead against mine and started to whisper.

“
Listen, listen here, Neil.” I struggled against his grip. He started to babble, either for my comfort or his, I wasn't sure. “My mother was always kind of neurotic, you know? OCD. She cleaned the bathroom like three times a day and refused to let me do my own laundry. She always checked my shirts for blood. She'd heard somewhere that nosebleeds were an early sign of cancer.” I swallowed a deep breath and nearly choked on it. James released my hands and pressed his against the sides of my face.

“
Just breathe, breathe.” I couldn't. It was like the breathe I'd taken when I'd met Boyd, the one that had allowed me live again, was being sucked right back out of me. “That's another reason why I didn't go home. It wasn't just about Sydney. My mother would've known. She was born in Athens so I've always been kind of dark. The pale skin would've just freaked her out. It was better this way. Her son died in a car accident. Neat and clean. Like she always liked it.”

I reached up and pulled his hands away from my face. I was starting to calm down again. Walls were being rebuilt, walls with James' pale face and stitched up lips. I swallowed a lungful of autumn air and nearly choked on it. It hurt going down but once it started to pump through my veins, crisp as apples, I started to feel more like myself.

“
I'm so sorry, Tate, I didn't mean to scare you.” Jessica bent down next to me and laid a hand across one of mine. I screamed, startling her and James both. She stared down at me, confusion wrinkling a complexion I'd always been just a little bit jealous of. Aren't twins supposed to share the same everything?

She continued to watch me but didn't turn into a giant bat or a dragon or a fucking leprechaun. She just stood there and waited as patiently as I'd never been. I let James help me to my feet and tried to wrap my mind around what was happening. Jessica had been dead. I had seen her body. I had seen her blood. I watched her sleeping face in the coffin Grandma Willa had picked out but I'd never liked. She'd been buried next to Grandpa and Mom and three thousand miles away from Abe and Jason and Dad. I couldn't articulate my feelings. My tongue swelled up and all I could say was, “What the fuck?”

Jessica smiled warmly and approached me softly, her arms held out in the question of a hug. I froze, stuck halfway between indecision and joy.
She was dead but now she's not. She hated me before but maybe she won't now?
I didn't move. Jessica's smile faltered.

“
What's the matter, Tate?”

“
Dead people don't come back to life.” It was harsh and terse and I didn't really mean to say it but I had learned my lesson. Boyd hadn't been alive at the trailer and by ignoring James' warning, I had turned him into a demon. I had wished for years that my mother would come traipsing through that door and whisk me away to our old house in Gresham. It hadn't happened and it never would. I walked right past her, into the house, and up the stairs. The progress I'd made with James and Grandma Willa seemed like nothing in the light of this, the worst cosmic joke ever played.

Jessica stopped me at the second floor. When I turned around, her eyes were swollen with tears. James was standing behind her, brow pinched with worry.

“
Tattle?” I had hated that nickname when I was ten, I hated it now.

The sound of it broke my heart.

“
Jessica?”

Jessica threw herself at me and knocked us both to the floor. She buried her face in my lap and told me she was sorry a thousand times over. James leaned against the railing and watched, trepidation tainting what was otherwise a happy smile. We stayed like that for a long time and all the while, as I brushed her hair back and she soaked my sweater with tears, I knew that something was wrong and I couldn't figure out what it was.

I hadn't stopped shaking since I'd seen Jessica but I had started to think more clearly. She hadn't revealed how or why she was here or even acknowledged the fact that she was dead. That was fine for her but I needed answers. I took the harp from my purse and left Jessica asleep in my bed. I hated to leave her there but I didn't have much other choice. Both harpies were waiting for me when I walked outside.

“
Explain,” I said, holding the instrument out in both hands. I wanted to know about everything; the poem, the assignments, my dead sister. I'd been patient but I couldn't wait anymore. “Tell me everything.”

“
We have another assignment for you,” Ehferea breathed, her words more like the rustle of the breeze in the trees than someone's voice. I dropped the harp to my side in frustration.

“
You already told me that,” I snapped and, remembering James' words, added, “And I'll do it so can you please just answer some questions for me?” Ehferea's black lips pulled back from her tiny teeth.

“
I have already briefed James on the previous assignment but something else has come to our attention.” Ehferea nodded and Nethel stepped forward, turning so that I could see the long, curving line of her back. Blood. Flesh.
Bone.

I turned away.

“
We have tracked a rogue spirit to this area.” My heart flip-flopped in my chest and began to beat crookedly against my ribcage.
It isn't.
“We can't be certain of the form it has taken but you can be assured that it has armed itself with a weapon from the Library.”
It can't be.
“I suggest you use caution when approaching this spirit as it has the ability to turn others against you.”

“
Why are you telling me this?” I asked, my voice hollow and tinny, far away. Ehferea and Nethel exchanged stone faced glances. They were giving nothing away. I vowed not to, either. Three could play at that game.

“
You and James have been assigned to dispatch the spirit to the appropriate realm. She has had an opportunity to study in the Library and has, regrettably, made the decision to use her time there in an inappropriate manner.” Ehferea spread her wings and shook them, shedding loose feathers across the lawn, before tucking them more tightly against her body.
She's nervous.
I realized as she stared down her pointed nose at me. Her eyes were dark with specks of light, like stars. I realized with a start that she was actually quite pretty.

“
So, all James has to do is touch her right?” I asked, keeping my voice steady.
I knew this was too good to
be true. It has to be her. It has to be.
Ehferea shook her head, the mane of feathered hair that sprouted from her scalp shimmering in the late afternoon sun.

“
You must use the harp to wrap her spirit. She will be sent to another plane for further assistance.” I had always told Jessica to go to hell and now I was going to have to send her there. For what? For stealing some stupid weapon?
They haven't actually told you who it is.
My unconscious mind whispered soothing thoughts but I knew. I'd known the moment I'd seen her something was wrong. I'd been right. I closed my eyes and fought down another panic attack. It's not like I had to do it. They couldn't make me.
But they could get someone else to do it. There must be other summoners around. Somebody sent Boyd to the Akashic Library and it wasn't you.

I opened my eyes.

“
What will happen to her there?” I asked, hoping I wasn't giving too much away. Nethel answered, her voice like a summer rain against the pavement.

“
She was wronged in this life and finds herself unable to move forward. It does happen occasionally but rest assured, no harm will come to her.” It wasn't really an answer, just a roundabout way of pretending they'd satisfied my question. I frowned.

“
What am I supposed to do with this harp?” I lifted the instrument up again. “I've never been particularly gifted when it comes to music.” Nethel smiled with her yellow lips and stepped closer to me. I watched her move slowly, fluid and graceful. If she wanted to hurt me, she could, no matter what I did. I stayed where I was and let her guide my fingers to the strings.

“
It's quite simple, really,” she whispered against my ear, pulling first my index and then my middle finger across a string. “It was made for you, after all.”

I felt myself being swept up in music while a beautiful voice tolled the lines of the poem like an old church bell.
Wrong'd and ruin'd, broken down, our twist'd gatekeep, we have found.
I opened my mouth and I sang a song I didn't know. Pretty words spilled from my lips and swelled in the air before coming to rest on my soul. The melody swirled around me as my fingers moved from string to string, strumming along with the words.

When the song was over, the harp tumbled from my hands and crashed to the grass, creating a divot and resting propped there, like the sword in the stone, just waiting to be picked back up.

I had crawled back upstairs and fallen asleep next to my twin. When I woke up, she was gone and there was a note.

Errands, Tattle. See you tonight for popcorn and a movie?

-Jessica.

The weirdness of the situation wasn't lost on me. I was aching for her, still shaking from the shock of seeing her again, and she, she was prancing around town in a sundress she was never supposed to wear again and kissing notes with lipstick that hadn't been touched since I'd found her with her wrists slit open and her head hanging in the toilet. She wasn't acting like someone that had just committed suicide. Then again, she'd been dead for two years. I guess she'd had time to get used to the idea.