The Reaping of Norah Bentley (38 page)

I opened my eyes. The night was back, and Luke was shouting my name, his hands on either side of my face, shaking me, trying to get me to answer him. Finally, the last traces of Eli’s memory faded from my mind, and I managed to collect my own thoughts and whisper,

“I know how to reach him.”

Luke froze. “What?”

I squinted, trying to get my eyes to readjust to the darkness. “I know how to get to the in-between. The Afterlife. I saw it, through Eli’s memories, I—I don’t really know how to explain. But I think I know the way there. I think I can get there.”

Luke watched me uncertainly for a minute, then his fingertips fell from my face and reached for my hand instead.

“…Why don’t you come up here and sit down for a second?”

He tried to drag me back up the beach, but suddenly I felt that hook in my chest again. Except it didn’t feel like a memory this time. This time, it was my own feeling—and I couldn’t ignore it.

I gently pried Luke’s fingers from mine and turned back to face the ocean. Luke was saying something, but his voice was lost in the hiss of the salty mist spraying over us. I felt his touch on the small of my back a second later and I stepped away, walked until I was knee-deep in the freezing water.

Out in the distance, I caught a glimmer of Eli’s memory again. Of me struggling, lost in the breakers. My head slipped below the surface, and that’s when I saw it: a flash of light above where I’d disappeared. It was gone in an instant, but it left behind ripples, almost like the heat-waves you see on a summer day.

I stared at the rippling air, unmoving, thinking about the last thing Eli had said to me. About
I love you
, and the warmth of those words against my skin. The way they warmed me even now, sinking so much deeper than that.

Then I decided what I had to do.

The tide was rolling, curling back into itself like a hand beckoning me to follow. And that’s exactly what I did.

#

The memory I got was hazier this time, a muted show played out on a fuzzy old TV screen.

Sam was there, flanked on either side by a half a dozen others. All of them were tall, majestic-looking in the same way Sam was with their upturned faces, and dark eyes that shimmered even in the dull glow of their surroundings. They all stood stiffly, their gazes leveled at Eli. Sam’s mouth was moving, but his voice was mostly garbled static.

Still, I caught bits and pieces of the conversation with a terrible clarity: words like ‘laws’, and ‘decision’, and ‘no other choice’. Words that made me want to shake my head and try to clear it of the vision, because I was afraid of what I might see next.

I didn’t, though. Because more than anything I was afraid of losing Eli, of letting go of this last link I had to him. It was my only hope of reaching him. So I fought to stay focused instead on the feeling of resolve in his chest, on the thoughts racing through his mind while he stood calmly in the face of his judgment.

There was nothing hazy about those things. About his thoughts. He was thinking about me, and the day he first saw me in the park. It
had
been Spring, just like he’d told me; the trees were blooming and the park was full of children, running and laughing. I was no more than twenty feet away, my guitar propped up on my knee, my head glancing down every now in then at the notebook full of lyrics at my side. Dogwood blossoms drifted back and forth in the air, like they were swaying in time to the sound of my playing. It was strange, catching glimpses of myself flashing brilliantly between the vision of Sam and the others. And then I felt, I finally heard, what Eli hadn’t been able to put into words—the answer to my question. What was it like, seeing my life that day? Feeling my memories?

It was everything. Everything. Everything beautiful and bittersweet about the world. She reminded me of everything I missed about being alive, and it was worth it.

She was worth facing this.

Those five words echoed over and over in his mind.

Suddenly, the park bench was gone. I was gone. And then, more slowly, the sound of my guitar was gone, fading out like I’d reached the end of a track. Everything was silent. Eli was firmly back in the moment with Sam, staring up into his cold eyes, unblinking.

And then, I heard what must have been his last, clear thought:

She’s going to live.

The scene started to flicker. I was losing Eli’s sight, while mine hurtled back and exposed the bleak situation around me: the in-between. It was pressing in from every side, suffocating me. The orange light from before was back, but it wasn’t as warm, or as peaceful. It was less like an illuminating sunrise and more like a dull, pulsing miasma—and it didn’t make me want to stay here.

I couldn’t stay here.

There was ground beneath my feet, parched and cracked, and every step I took sent more fissures splitting through it. Even when I stood completely still, I still heard the distant sounds of rock breaking. I started to run, chased by these horrible images of the ground opening up beneath me, swallowing me whole.

I ran. And I ran. Five minutes, ten minutes, an hour—and I still wasn’t tired. And I still wasn’t getting anywhere. So I stopped. I felt like I should have been tired, and so out of automatic reaction I bent over and rested my hands on my knees, took several deep breaths. I closed my eyes, trying to get back to Eli’s thoughts and memories, desperately needing some sort of idea of where to go next.

But I saw only darkness.

Then the ground—or maybe just my balance— started to sway, and my body pitched violently forward. I managed to catch myself though, and when I opened my eyes and looked up again, everything had changed.

The fractured, crumbling earth was gone. Instead, the path in front of me was covered in glittering white sand—the shoreline of a magnificent ocean that was calm, waveless, its glassy surface stretching endlessly into the distance. It was exactly how Eli had described it. And it felt familiar. But whether from his memories or mine, I wasn’t sure; they all seemed one in the same, now.

It didn’t matter one way or the other, though. I wasn’t thinking about
why
it felt so familiar, or about how it was suddenly here in front of me, or even what I was supposed to do about it. All I could think about was what had happened days ago, when we’d stood, staring together out over the Atlantic. About
>those
waves, and how in that moment I understood why Eli said he liked them better than these still, peaceful ones.

My body felt oddly weightless. I floated in my step without meaning to, and with a grace I’d never even come close to having on Earth. I could hardly feel the sand beneath me, and my feet left no tracks in it.

“If you’re looking for Eli, I’m afraid you’ve just missed him. And only by a matter of minutes—just plain unlucky, really.”

The dull orange light had given way to a soft white glow, and that softness seemed to have transferred into Sam’s voice; I didn’t recognize it as his until I slowly spun around and saw his brooding figure for myself.

Sam had always seemed out of place on Earth, but now his otherworldliness was painfully obvious. He towered above me, a body composed of shadow and muscle, and even the slightest move—the step he took toward me—was the definition of ethereal grace and power. For a long time I couldn’t speak, couldn’t even meet his eyes.

Why had I decided I could face him again? What was I
thinking?

“I’m not entirely sure how you managed to get here,” he said. “But it was foolish of you to come.”

I wasn’t sure how I managed to get here, either. And to say I was being only foolish seemed more and more like an understatement with every step he took toward me.

“I was going to let you live, you know.” His voice was a strange combination of a growl and that same musical softness from before. “I still might. Or I might keep you here. I haven’t decided yet.”

Somewhere inside me, I found the courage to look up. “I’m going to live.”

“Is that so?” He regarded me silently for a minute, a small sneer curling up the corner of his lips. “Well, the living have no business here, you know.”

“Well I’m not planning on staying long.”

“What
are
you planning on doing, exactly? Why are you here? Besides the fact that you’re incredibly dense, I mean.” He shook his head, looking almost sympathetic. “Even for a human.”

“I want to know where he is,” I said, my voice low, and as even as I could make it.

“Where
who
is?”

His attempt at an innocent tone wasn’t fooling either of us.

“Tell me where he is, Sam.”

“…Oh, you’re talking about Eli, aren’t you? Of course.” He pretended to look thoughtful for a minute. “You know, I don’t think he told me where he was going, exactly. Or even when he’d be back. He can be so inconsiderate, sometimes…”

“Knock it off,” I snapped. “I saw him. And I
saw
you, and those others—I heard what you were talking about. Who were they? What have they done with him? What have
you
done?”

Sam stopped smiling for a second and lowered his gaze. At first, I thought he was just taken-aback by the way I was talking to him—I guess because yelling at an archangel of death flew right past “foolish” and was terribly close to “insane”. I was sort of taken-aback by it, too. But then, right before he looked away, I thought I caught a glimmer of something like regret in his eyes. I must have been imagining it.

“Well?”

“What did you see, exactly?” he asked, after a minute. The stare he brought back to me was dark, intense. Demanding I elaborate. Denying him seemed like a bad idea.

So I tried telling him, but I had a hard time explaining exactly what I’d seen; it had all been so hazy—especially next to the clear images of me that had been going through Eli’s mind at the same time.

Somehow though, Sam took more from my stuttering explanation than I thought I was giving.

“That’s how you got here, then,” he said, his eyes lighting suddenly in understanding.

“I’m not really sure how I got here,” I said. “I…I saw a path, and I followed it. I felt this strange pressure on my chest—”

“He was thinking of you,” Sam interrupted.

“I don’t know if—”

“You saw those thoughts?” It sounded like an accusation, and I faltered under it for a minute before I could answer.

“I…I’ve been able to see them for a little while now.” The words tumbled from my mouth, hurrying, tripping over each other to get out before he could interrupt me again. “Just bits and pieces of them, I mean. And tonight I saw his memories of the in-between, and then yeah— of me. Of the pull of my soul, and where he was supposed to carry it to. Here, I guess? That’s why it all feels so familiar? Almost like part of me’s been here before—”

Sam nodded.

“I should have known,” he said. “He always got that same foolish, imprudent look on his face, whenever he was thinking about you.” He turned and walked toward the still water. “I should have known,” he repeated, quieter this time.

There was no denying it, now. He sounded upset. I couldn’t quite believe it, but I felt like the hard-shell of Sam’s exterior had cracked— hair-line fractures though they might have been. As he walked away, I got the impression that he’d rather be running. Flying, maybe. And I started to wonder if the reasons he wanted me dead really had anything to do with the laws of the universe.

It was almost impossible to wrap my head around, especially with everything else I was trying to sort through right now. But then I remembered what Luke had said, what I hadn’t really believed until now:
Sam hates dealing with this stuff.

“…You didn’t want this,” I called, my voice echoing weirdly in the stillness surrounding us.

He ignored me.

“You were really hoping Luke would be able to pull it off, weren’t you?” I asked, walking after him. “That he could get Eli to kill me.”

“It would have made things much… simpler,” he said with a half-shrug. “And Luke seemed to stand a better chance of it than I did, all things considered.” He tilted his head back toward me, just as I reached his side. “That boy was convinced you were in love with him, you know.”

I started to stumble, but that strange elegance that had possessed my body caught me, and my next step brought me to a graceful stop instead. There was nothing graceful, though, about the mess—the guilt—tearing through my insides.

“Yeah. I know he was,” I said.

“And if the two of you ended up together—like he was so sure you would—Eli would have had no reason to keep you alive.”

It was a sick, twisted way of viewing the whole thing—like it was some sort of equation. Let “x” equal my feelings, and let’s see what black and white answers we can get when we combine it with different factors. It was wrong.

“It wouldn’t have mattered if I loved Luke back,” I said. “It wouldn’t have changed the way Eli felt about me.” I was sure of it. I wanted to be sure of it.

Because if it didn’t matter, then it meant this whole thing wasn’t my fault—that there wasn’t anything I could have done to stop it from happening. That Eli would have chosen this end even if I could somehow have pretended I didn’t love him, and just stayed away.