The Shadows Trilogy (Box Set: Edge of Shadows, Shadows Deep, Veiled Shadows) (39 page)

“That would have been a good thing to know before now,” Ellie said faintly.

“Well, who knew you were going to be so damn good at your new job,” Lucy said with a shadow of a smile. “C’mon. We have work to do.”

CHAPTER SEVENTEEN

As Lucy escorted Ellie back into the library, Ellie found Katie and Will sitting silently on the couch with blank expressions. Their hands were in their laps and they were facing forward. They didn’t move as she approached them.

“What’s wrong with them?” she whispered.

“They can’t hear you,” Lucy said, raising her voice as if to prove her point. “I’ve got them under a spell that basically keeps them in this catatonic state until I pull them out of it. I’m going to guess that for them it feels like being in a coma. Comes in handy sometimes when I need to do something and don’t want to be seen.”

“But their eyes are moving,” Ellie said with a shiver. She wasn’t sure what was worse, feeling like invisible eyes were watching her or having the eyes of silent statues following her every move. She was distinctly uncomfortable. Then she looked over to the floor by the fireplace and was startled to see that Martin’s body was gone. She felt a moment of panic.

Lucy saw her face and pointed toward the back doorway that led into the hall by the kitchen. It was hard to see in the gloom of the room, but Ellie could just make out a low figure propped against the bottom of the wall.

“What exactly are we supposed to do?” Ellie asked.

“Look, I’m risking a lot by helping you do anything at all considering the mess you made for yourself,” Lucy said. “This isn’t what I signed up for.”

Ellie sighed in frustration, which helped mask the feelings of guilt that were bubbling up inside. “It would be so helpful if you would stop talking in code!  Do you realize that all of this happened because no one can give me a straight answer about anything? I’m tired of the secrets. I’m tired of the vague statements and talk about what I may be able to do. Stop and just tell me the goddamn truth!”

Lucy’s eyes widened as Ellie’s voice got louder and louder. Finally, Lucy nodded. “Okay, Ellie. Fair enough. Let’s get Martin downstairs and I’ll tell you what to do. Listen, nobody here wants to draw the wrong kind of attention. I’m here to help. Don’t worry about it.”

As she got closer and was able to make out all of his features, Ellie thought how peaceful he looked, like he was sleeping. Even though his skin was just a bit paler than it should be, she still expected to see his chest rising and falling. The fact that it wasn’t made her want to throw up. Lucy pointed at Martin’s torso, and Ellie wondered how between the two of them they were supposed to take Martin’s body anywhere. He had to weigh at least what the two of them did combined.

Ellie put her hands under his shoulders and pulled, and almost fell over as his weight lifted easily into her arms. She saw Lucy’s amused expression. “Did I become a bodybuilder in this place?” she asked.

“You aren’t
that
strong,” Lucy said. “Let’s just say that you will find there are some benefits to being stuck here.” She picked up Martin’s feet and cocked her head at the doorway. Straight across the hallway, Ellie could see that the door to the basement was open. Even when she had been living in the house as a mortal resident, the last place that she wanted to go was the basement. The idea of going down those stairs filled her with dread. But she didn’t know what else to do. She had to trust whatever it was that Lucy told her.

The two women carefully maneuvered the body out of the library and into the hallway.

“Are you sure we have to go down there?” Ellie asked.

“Yes,” Lucy said. “It’s okay. I’ll go first.”

Nodding gratefully, Ellie swung around so that Lucy was positioned to go down the stairs. It was as if the world ended right inside the door jamb. As soon as Lucy stepped down onto the first step, it was like the darkness beyond the door swallowed her whole. Lucy was pulling Martin’s body through the doorway, but as Ellie approached it, the opening seemed to get smaller and smaller.

“Everything okay down there?” she called out nervously.

“Yep!” Lucy’s peppy reply did little to reassure her.

Ellie had finally reached the top step. It was the moment of truth. A faint glow emanated from lightbulbs that appeared to be strategically placed at intervals down the staircase that were just close enough to give off faint light, but just far apart that no light was able to combine with its neighbor to truly light up the area. She was expecting to start feeling fatigued, but the weight from Martin’s body didn’t even wind her. Ellie was starting to wonder what other changes her body had in store for her.

The staircase wound in a tight circle down into the darkness. The stairs beneath her feet were concrete, which surprised her. There was a wrought iron railing that kept her from falling off the edge. She peered down toward Martin’s feet, trying to make out Lucy’s small frame below her. She couldn’t see a thing.

Down and down they went. Ellie knew that they should have reached the bottom of a normal staircase long ago, but nothing in this place was normal. This was the Bradford mansion. It was a waypoint for the dead and the near-dead. If time stretched itself differently, then it shouldn’t be a surprise that the physical aspects of the house twisted and changed as well. Ellie thought it was possible they were heading down into Hell.

“Why are you slowing down? Let’s get this over with, okay?” Lucy’s voice floated up to her.

There was no way to know what was waiting for her at the bottom of the stairs, yet she kept putting each foot in front of the other. What seemed like an eternity later, they finally reached the end of the stairs. Ellie looked around in shock. She had been in the room before. Lucy grunted and pulled Martin’s body over to the low rectangular concrete pedestal that sat like a table in the middle of the room.

All around on the walls, tiny candles glowed and gave off a faint light. But despite that, Ellie couldn’t see more than a few feet in every direction beyond the pedestal. Even the staircase that they had just exited was masked in shadows.

“I’ve been here before,” she said. She pointed at the pedestal where Martin’s body now rested. “This is just like a dream I had before...well, before. But it was David’s mother who was tied down to that table.” Ellie followed her finger from the pedestal to a spot on the floor. In her mind, there was a large symbol drawn in white chalk on the floor. Now there was nothing.

“There was a symbol there,” she said, not really expecting Lucy to answer. “And Lillian and Joseph stood on the edges with Mikel. David was in a bassinet in the middle of it.”

“I’m not trying to be a bitch here, Ellie, but can the trip down memory lane wait for a few minutes? That sounds intense and interesting, but we seriously need to get rid of the evidence here. The escorts could be here any time for Katie and Will.”

Ellie swung around and looked at Lucy closely. “How do you know that? Jeffrey said that the whole reason people are here in the first place is because the final decision about their fates hasn’t been made yet.”

Lucy’s eyes were sad and told it all. “It’s a nice story, isn’t it? Much better than ‘you’re dead but the Afterlife is too busy processing all of the souls coming their way so you are just going to have to wait here a bit,’ isn’t it?”

“Why?” Ellie hissed. “Why wouldn’t people just be wherever it is they are supposed to be? Why all the pomp and circumstance?”

Lucy started to pace around the pedestal. “Ellie, I don’t expect you to get this.” Seeing the outrage on Ellie’s face she quickly continued. “I’m not trying to be deliberately vague here. I’m just trying to give you the quick facts that are relevant right now while still keeping you moving. If you honestly believed that anyone gets to this point and Death doesn’t know where they are going then you are as naive as these kids. We all have a destiny and our name is on a list that gets checked twice; just like Santa Claus. But the Afterlife is a political place just like the Other Side. It’s going to take a bit more time than we have to explain it to you. So if you would please trust me for a few more minutes, believe me when I say that we have to get rid of this body NOW.”

It was the raw urgency of Lucy’s words that caused Ellie to believe her, at least about the part where they were going to potentially be in a lot of trouble. “Now what?” she asked.

Tapping her foot and then chewing on her fingernail, Lucy seemed to be considering. That worried Ellie even more.

“You have to tell me if anything is left,” Lucy said.

“Left? What does that mean?”

“Ellie, I believe you when you say that you never wanted to hurt him. I don’t want to hurt him either. But if we leave any trace of a soul inside of him, then what’s going to happen next is going to damn him to a hell far worse than the Afterlife. I know this sounds unpleasant, but you’ve got to scrub him out.”

Ellie looked at Lucy in horror. “Worse than this place?”

Snorting, Lucy shook her head. “If you think this place is bad, you’ve got a lot of learning to do.” She pointed her finger at Martin. “Do your thing. Root around in there. See what you can see. Point is, if you see
anything
, then take it. Believe me, eternity in Mikel’s little collection is going to be a mercy.”

Ellie was on her own again. It was becoming more obvious to her that no one knew exactly what to do with her. Whatever gift it was that she possessed, it was an anomaly even in the Afterlife.

She stepped forward and put her hand on Martin’s forehead. His skin felt dry and papery. It was slightly easier this time, emptying her head and letting the thing deep inside of her loose. This time, though, it was completely different as she reached into Martin’s body. It was nothing but a dark hole where before a vibrant, pulsing soul had lived within his skin.

It was like her entire body was turned into a divining rod. She let herself sweep his still form from head to toe. She thought that this would be what it was like to be pushing at the edge of a black hole. She didn’t dare delve any deeper; certain that doing so would result in something extremely unpleasant.

Just as she was ready to move her hand away and disconnect from Martin’s empty form, she felt it. It was a tiny pulse, and if she hadn’t been trying as hard to see what she could see, she would have easily missed it.

“Anything?” she heard Lucy ask.

Ellie ignored her. The tiny pulse was proving elusive. Ellie started to chase it, but every time she thought she was going to be able to close her mental fingers around it, it slipped away. “Damn,” she said out loud.

“What is it?”

“I can’t quite get it. If that is what
it
is. It’s slippery.”

“That’s it!” Lucy sounded relieved. “Even when the body is dead, the soul seeks self-preservation. Can you take it?”
Ellie hadn’t opened her eyes. She knew that she had a frown on her face. She couldn’t think about what she was doing. She just had to do it.

“Let me be,” she mumbled. In her mind, she tried something different. She called out Martin’s name. She remembered what it was like talking with David’s mother, Emma. Emma couldn’t see her, but had known that she was there. Emma’s mother had the ability to sense ghosts. But even she had been unwilling to ask for help from Ellie until she absolutely had to. For some reason, Ellie was starting to understand that souls didn’t want to give up their bodies, or their secrets, or their destinies. Who would? So they weren’t going to make things easy for her.

She decided to approach it differently. She let her mind wander and open up an image of sitting by the Lake of the Isles. The picture became so vivid that she could actually feel the late summer rays warming her skin. She almost forgot where she was and what she was trying to do in her delight. In the image in her mind, Ellie was sitting on a park bench by herself, just smiling and watching the ducks swim past. It was entirely peaceful. Everything else around her she blocked out.

A sigh escaped her lips. She was in her favorite place in the world and everything was going to be all right. Then she waited. And eventually, as she suspected, he came. Martin slipped out of the trees that lined the path behind her, and after he sensed that she wouldn’t move, he came closer.

“Where am I?” he asked.

Ellie had a fan in her hand and she moved it up and down to cool her face. “Does it matter?”

“Am I dead?” Martin asked somberly.

The question ripped at her heart, knowing that she had been the one responsible, but she knew that regardless of whether or not she had taken his gift, he would have been escorted somewhere else in the Afterlife. No matter what, Martin’s time on Earth had reached an end.

“Yes,” Ellie answered truthfully. “Walk with me around the lake. It’s so peaceful here. This place has such a calming effect when you are troubled. I know you’ll love it.” She was getting good at lying. Ellie needed Martin to trust her.

Standing, she held out her hand to him. She smiled confidently. He looked just like a little boy who had lost his way. But she didn’t let that sway her. His hand joined hers, but there was a hesitance before he gripped it.

“Is it going to hurt?” The question was so simple.

Ellie wanted to take all of his pain away. She reached up and brushed a lock of hair from his forehead. “No, Martin. There is no pain here.” She hoped it was the truth.

The boy’s face lit up and his smile was dazzling. Then it faltered ever so slightly. She saw that he was starting to fade. “Wha—?”