Ashes to Ashes (24 page)

Twenty-Three

IT'S HARD TO MAKE OUT WHERE
I am at first, in the darkness. The air is thick with humidity, and the only lights are the stars above. Before my eyes adjust, all I can sense are shapes and sounds—echoing voices that sound like they're muffled by shadow. But then I see the glimmer of the train tracks in the distance, and I know I'm back at Lyndon's Crossing.

I'm going to find her.
All this time I thought Leo was the dangerous one, but Reena was manipulating me so much more.

I felt confused for a moment, stunned, when Thatcher told me what he thinks Reena did. That she actually may have
possessed
Carson. But he was so weak that he had to go before he could tell me why, or what it meant. So after I made sure Nick was in good hands and on his way to the hospital, I created a portal.

Thanks for showing me how, Reena.

First I summoned all the pieces of her—the long black hair, rosebud lips, doll cheeks. Then I thought of the way her strong stance belies her height, the sideways hook of her smile, and the way her eyes flash gold sometimes.

The portal I traced pulsed with light, and I stepped through it.
I'm sorry, Thatcher.
I have to do this.

And now I'm here, by the tracks. As my eyes adjust, I see the glow of the poltergeists in the distance about twenty feet away—they haven't spotted me. The trees around them seem to wilt in their presence, bowing down in the humidity. I watch them for a moment, these ghosts I thought were my friends, wondering what they're capable of.

Just as I'm about to call out to Reena and face the poltergeists, I hear voices coming up over the hill toward the tracks.

“Oh, great,” says Leo.

“Gotta love a Southern Saturday night.” Delia rolls her eyes.

“I don't know.” Reena's face glows with anticipation. “This could make the evening even more fun.”

A crowd of people—mostly guys—emerges over the hill. I recognize them instantly. Tim McCann is here, and so are Eli, Brian, and Hunter—the soccer guys from the bonfire. I scan everyone's faces and spot Gina O'Neill and Molly Raider, who's been in love with Brian since third grade. This must be Tim's after-party.

They all settle at the edge of the tracks, where they stand around and take pulls on a bottle of vodka that they probably hoisted from Tim's father's stash.

“What was that kid's name again?” asks Eli. “Norbert or something?”

Norris throws up his hands. “Norbert?” The rest of the poltergeists laugh. They're nearing the group now, approaching the Living. I watch their glow start to flicker all around my classmates, and it must be a light that only those of us on the other side can see. No one reacts to it, even as Reena, Leo, Norris, and Delia surround them, standing outside the perimeter of the gathering. I stay back, watching, wanting to see how they'll interact, waiting for something bad to happen. I see them now the way Thatcher has seen them—poltergeists, enemies of the Living, and of ghosts, too.

“It was Norris,” says Molly quietly. “He was friends with my older brother.”

“Yeah, well, he must have been a total idiot,” says Eli, passing the vodka after a long drink. “Who doesn't have time to jump out of the way of a train? They only go, like, forty miles per hour.”

“The idea is to let it get as close to you as possible, big shot,” says Brian.

“Yeah,
without
letting it hit you.” Eli laughs.

Seeing them gathered here, I feel like I'm witnessing a moment from my former life. Sitting around, talking about nothing, but feeling on the brink of something exciting, some new possibility. Except now my life has taken this horrific turn—their circle is lit up with the ghostly glow of poltergeist eavesdroppers, and they have no idea.

I took nights like this for granted, found them boring even. When Carson would linger with other friends, talking and laughing and hanging out just to be out, I'd be the first who was ready to leave, wanting to get to something more exciting, some new thrill. I couldn't recognize the value of simply being with friends. My skin prickles with emotion, a wish that I were on the other side of this scene. But I'm not. I'm with the ghosts.

A soft rain starts to fall, but no one makes a move to leave, and when the lights from the next train beam in the distance, everyone's heads turn toward the
chug-chug-chug
.

Eli steps forward and stumbles a little. Without saying anything, he positions himself on the tracks with his arms folded across his chest.

“Dude, get down,” says Hunter.

Eli just smirks and continues to stare down the train, which is still about a minute away from where they're standing.

“Should I try it?” Leo's voice booms as he looks to Reena, and she smiles at him, the glow of her face lighting up the darkness around her.

“Doesn't it only work if we have Callie to draw from?” asks Norris.

Anger surges through me. They're talking about using my energy, just like Thatcher said.

“We've taken a lot of energy from her already,” says Reena. “Let's see what happens when she's not here.”

Immediately, Leo moves in. He positions himself behind Eli, standing with him.

I keep my distance, but the muscles in my legs tighten, ready to spring, and I lean forward to see more clearly.
What is Leo doing?

As the train draws closer, the engineer sees Eli's shape on the tracks. He blows the horn in warning, but Eli doesn't move.

“Come on, man,” says Hunter, moving closer with Brian. “You're drunk.”

Brian reaches out for Eli's arm, intending to pull him off the tracks, but Eli swats him away.

“Get off me,” he says. “You called me a wuss after the bonfire, but y'all are the real pansies.” He stretches out his arms like he's yawning, and he smiles at the train's headlights, which are getting closer and closer.

The bonfire.
When Reena scared him with her tricks. Thatcher's right—even joking around with them can have dangerous after-effects.

Eli's making no move to get down—he's drunk and full of bravado. He has something to prove.

The train is closing in now. The engineer has started to hit the brakes, and they're sparking on the rails.

Leo is still standing at Eli's back, very close, and he raises his arms to his sides slowly. He looks menacing, almost wild, like when I first saw him in the barn at Middleton Place.

“Eli, we all know you're not a wuss; now get off the tracks!” shouts Molly, her eyes widening. The rain starts to fall harder, in big fat drops.

Eli laughs and relents. “Okay.”

But when he moves to step down, Leo's massive arms encircle him, holding him captive.

Leo's eyes close—he's using all of his concentration to physically keep Eli in place. My phantom heart pounds in my throat.
Should I scream?

And Eli starts to panic.

“I can't get down,” he says, his voice breathy and clipped. Eli is flailing now, his legs lifting off the ground as he tries to escape the hold on him. Then, a crackle zags through my body and that sharpness is followed by a blind rage, because I know what's happening—they're using me, taking my energy. In the next moment, I see something straight out of another world—Leo's glowing figure moves inside Eli, taking over first one leg, then the other, then his arms, and finally his face. Inside Eli's smile, I see the glow of Leo. A shot of icy cold dread blasts through me—they're not just trying to scare Eli. This isn't a game of exhilaration. They're possessing him.

Just like Carson.

“Stop messing around, man,” says Hunter, his voice rising with every word. “Get off the tracks!”

Brian is shouting now, too, and Gina has started crying. Molly screams, and Hunter rushes up to Eli and tries to drag him to safety, but Leo stands strong, and a wide smile slowly spreads over Eli's overtaken face.

The poltergeists are watching with rapt attention. Reena's grin, the one that drew me in with such warmth, makes her face look evil in the rain, which is now pouring down on us all, soaking the Living.

“Stop!” My cry pierces the night even above the metal brakes screeching and all the frantic yelling.

Eli-Leo looks in my direction then and releases a laugh, a deep, angry chortle.

This time, I don't call for Thatcher. I've done so many things wrong—I have to make this right on my own while he regains his strength.
I have to save Eli.
The thought clicks in my brain like a bullet locked and loaded in a gun, and then I'm pure action. Energy pulses inside me, coming from the very core of my soul, catapulting me forward as if I'm propelled by an engine. It rumbles in my feet, like I'm standing at the center of an earthquake, and flies through my legs and into my chest—driving me, pushing me, as I rush at Eli's form. If I don't get there in time, he will
die
. I race up to Eli-Leo at what seems like the speed of light.

I collide with him in the split second before the train can take his body, and he flies off the tracks, into the woods. I know we're moving at a velocity that would be hard for the human eye to even comprehend, but to me, time has gone into slow motion. We fall together onto the forest floor, and when I stand up, Leo steps out of Eli like he's a snake shedding its skin. He stumbles as the wind of the slowing train rushes past us. The engineer is yelling and cursing, and Eli is crouched on the ground, coughing and sobbing. His face is stricken, shocked, but he's alive. Beautifully and gloriously alive. I feel a jealous sting at the thought that he came so close to this line, the one that I've crossed into death, and has a second chance on the other side.

Time returns to normal, and I shake out the excess energy that was occupying my body.

The Living rush up to Eli, asking him what happened, trying to figure out if they just witnessed a terrifying paralysis or the best train dodge in history. I stand close to them and hear Eli quietly repeating, “I'm okay. I'm okay.” Then I turn and face the poltergeists—I came for Reena.

But what I see is her retreating, moving quickly.
Is she afraid of me?
As I watch, she creates a portal, and Norris and Delia vanish into it. Then she helps Leo, who's crawling toward her, looking as beaten down as Eli does. As she's about to step through, she turns and meets my gaze with a defiant smile.

“No!” I run at her, fast, forcing my way into the portal behind her—and then I plunge into darkness.

Twenty-Four

WE TUMBLE THROUGH TOGETHER,
but this isn't like any portal I've been in—it's faster, more violent, twisting and turning and echoing with blackness punctuated by flashing white light and the sound of ghostly howls. I train my eyes on Reena's long dark hair, whipping around in front of me as she remains just out of my grasp. I reach out to catch her—I'm afraid that they'll be able to lose me and I won't know where they end up—but she eludes me. Still, I keep up, bumping and colliding with the edges of this celestial wormhole, a portal that feels like it's a bucking horse trying to throw me.

And then we stop falling. We're on the ground, on the side of a highway. The sky is clear and dark now, but the asphalt is slick from the summer rainstorm, and the puddles flash with an eerie light when a car passes by, spraying water in our direction.

The four of them stand quickly, and Leo motions for them to walk along the road. I think they might be trying to get away from me again, but when I move toward Reena, she opens her arms like she wants a hug.

Is she insane?
Judging by the expression on her face, she very well may be. Does she think that using me for my energy—taking over the bodies of the living—is okay? That I'll go along with them while they nearly extinguish a life? Out of everyone in existence, ghosts should understand that causing a death is the worst wrong imaginable—we
know
what it's like on the other side of life, watching our loved ones' anguish.

No matter how much we want to live again, she can't believe that it's okay to take someone else's life. Can she? Anger pulses through me, but I hold back because I want an explanation.

So I ask her: “What was that?”

“Just a little fun,” she says, dropping her arms and smiling. “Eli pulled off the best stunt ever.”

I call up to Leo. “Were you going to dodge?” I ask. He's walking ahead, but he turns back and shrugs. His voice is quiet, tired, when he says, “Of course.”

“You shouldn't have interfered, Callie,” says Reena, and now we're all walking along this road like they're trying to get somewhere. “Eli is weak. They all are.”

“What are you talking about?” I ask. “You were going to
kill
him.”

“Not
kill
,” says Reena. “Killing wouldn't leave us with much of a body if we let a train speed through it, would it?”

“We're trying to
take
,” says Leo from ahead of me. He doesn't look back.

“You can't just take someone's body,” I say.

“Ah, but you're wrong.” Reena's voice is controlled but intense. “I thought it was something from the movies, but recently we've been able to play with possession. It's the only way to maintain energy on Earth that we've found. And it's all thanks to you.”

“Thanks to me?”

“The energy you've shared with us has been enough—we've been practicing taking a body and staying on Earth without having to return to the Prism,” she says. She sounds enthusiastic, elated even.

Delia pipes up from behind me. “We think that if we can possess a body three times—one time for each level of the soul—we can truly take it over and live an entire life again. There's a precedent for these things, you know. Possession is real.”

Reena meets my eyes and smiles, but I don't return the warmth. “Callie, it's what we talked about,” she says. “You'll get a second chance at being alive. Truly alive.”

Her voice is friendly, encouraging. I think about the time we spent talking about our common wish for a life on Earth again, our shared experiences. But I'm no poltergeist—I would never value my own life over someone else's this way. It seems like they don't even know what they're doing—like they're experimenting with people's mortality. A chill races up my spine as that word crosses my brain.

“What happens to them?” My voice cracks. “To the souls whose bodies you take?”

Reena blinks and looks ahead down the road. “We can't worry about that,” she says. “We'll take strangers, people whose lives don't mean anything, people who won't be missed.”

“Like Eli?” I ask.

She grins wickedly. “After what he said about Carson, I made him my first pick.”

My heart drops. He was targeted because of me. “It's
murder
, Reena,” I say. “Thatcher would never—”

She starts walking away from me, moving faster to catch up to Leo, her dark hair whipping around in a circle.

“You're a rule follower after all,” she says. “That's too bad.”

“You can't just
possess
a living body,” I shout at her back. “It isn't right. It isn't fair.”

“There is nothing fair about dying young!” screams Reena as she pivots around, emotion etched in her face. “The Living don't appreciate their lives! They don't value what they have!”

Her words resonate with me—I spent my entire existence chasing thrills instead of appreciating the beauty of my world, the love that surrounded me. But that's the prerogative of the Living, to be blissfully ignorant and experience life in their own way.

“It's not up to you, or any of us, to say how people should live,” I say. “Do I wish I could go back? Of course. But not this way.”

Reena spins around again, striding forward so that I have to jog a little to keep up. A car passes us on the road, its headlights washing through us cleanly.

Delia falls into step with Reena, putting her hand on Reena's shoulder to calm her. “Callie, we can live their lives ten times better than they can,” Delia says evenly. “Because we know what it's like to lose everything.”

“Is that why you took over Carson's body?” I ask Reena, tired of their insane rationalizations, ready to call her out on what she did tonight. “So you could improve her life by making it seem like she betrayed me?”

Reena raises her eyebrows and slows her pace just as we approach a bend in the road. “What do you mean?” she asks me, but I can tell by her expression that she's playing dumb.

“I saw you. I know you took Carson.”

A smile spreads across her face then; she's impressed.

“Guys!” She looks around at the poltergeists, and everyone stops walking.

“It seems like our little Callie has another special skill,” she says. “She can see when a living body is hosting a ghost.”

“No way,” says Leo, his eyes wide as he walks back to where we're standing. “That's impossible.”

“I saw you, too,” I say. “I could see your face inside Eli, clear as day.”

“That's unusual.” Reena narrows her gaze on me. “It seems there's no end to your extra talents, Callie. Too bad Thatcher's been lying to you all this time.”

“You're wrong,” I say, looking at Leo, Norris, and Delia, who are standing behind Reena and watching us cautiously. “He told me why he lied about the portals—he was trying to protect me, and—”

“Protect you?” she interrupts. “Oh, how sweet. More likely he didn't want you to know why you're special.”

I shake my head—she's messing with me again. “
You
used me,” I say. “You've stolen my energy for . . . this. Taking over bodies, making me think my best friend would betray me.”

“I've never lied to you,” she says. “You can't trust the Living—don't you know that by now?” Her face flashes with sadness for a moment.

“Carson would never try to take Nick from me,” I say.

Reena laughs, and it's a bitter sound, tinged with pain. “Don't be naïve,” she says. “They move on, they forget you. Unless you're there with them, you might as well have never existed. I was only showing you what's bound to happen, sooner or later.”

Leo, Delia, and Norris stand behind Reena, nodding, and I can see the hurt flickering on their faces, too. What happens when people move on? For most ghosts it means merging with Solus. But for the poltergeists, it means waiting for everyone to leave you behind.

Reena says, “Of course, it's already happened with Nick. If not for me, you wouldn't know that. He was going to break up with you. Don't you want a chance to get even?”

“You've totally lost it,” I tell her.

Reena grabs my arm roughly, creating a zigzag of painful current, pulling me forward. “I'll make you understand,” she says, her voice a low rumble. “I know you're one of us.” She shoves me toward the curve in the road, and I stumble into the street.

Leo, Delia, and Norris are standing nearby, tense, waiting for something to happen. They're staring at me like I'm a bomb a couple of seconds away from exploding.

The rain starts to fall again, harder this time.

“I knew it,” whispers Reena. She's right beside me, but she's looking all around us.

“Knew what?” I ask.

She steps around me in a way that reminds me of a shark circling a swimmer in one of those summer horror movies.

“Thatcher did keep a secret from you,” she says, almost to herself. “Nothing's happening. This is the right spot, but nothing's happening.”

Before I can stop her, she brushes my hair aside, her fingers grazing my neck like little pinpricks of fire, trying to ignite into a full blaze. “You have no moon.”

“Because I've had no success at helping those I love move on.”

“No, you should have something. And it should be blackening now, but there's nothing.”

I feel a rush of anger—mixed with fear—shoot through me. “What are you talking about?”

“Look around, Callie,” she says. “Maybe you can even find a piece of your precious BMW as a souvenir.”

Then it hits me, and my world reels like I'm on a Tilt-A-Whirl. We're alongside Route 52, in the arm of the curve where I crashed. It's dark, the leaves overhead fluttering in the trees, and my head starts to spin. I hear my own laughter, I see the bright yellow bag where I grabbed my phone, I hear Nick's voice, I smell a hint of magnolia over burning rubber, I see the flash of the truck's metal grille in the setting sun . . . and I feel the crash. Spinning, snapping, banging, pounding, breaking . . . I'm up against the windshield, pinned in between my seat and the glass, which are just inches apart.

My brain is reliving my death, and instead of the jolt and tidal pull that moves me through a tunnel of white noise, this time I hear sirens and see flashing lights. Men shouting, a woman holding my hand. I look into her eyes. “Where's Thatcher?” I ask weakly.

“Callie!” Thatcher's voice breaks my reverie, strong and clear. He's standing by a portal on the other side of the road. There are no ambulances, no woman holding my hand. I'm just standing by the dark road, with the poltergeists.

“Come with me!” he shouts over the rain.

He reaches out to me.

“She's ours now!” Reena shouts.

Suddenly she and Leo grab me. Sharp pings arrow through me from my head to my toes, and I feel a huge pull inside of me. My strength is waning. I'm fading like fog dissipating before the sun.

“No!” Thatcher shouts.

I try to break free, to escape.

A great whoosh of energy hurtles past me and takes Leo with it. In that instant, I experience a surge of power. It's enough for me to wrench free of Reena's hold and stagger back. I raise my fists. I've never hit anyone, but I'm sure as hell not going down without a fight.

Thatcher must have lowered his shields, because he's grappling with Leo. Sparks are flying with each punch. Electricity is crackling in the air.

I swing around looking for Delia and Norris, but they're nowhere to be seen. Out of the corner of my eye, I catch sight of Reena barreling back toward me. I turn to face her—

I'm swept up into strong arms—

A high-pitched screech pierces the air.

“I figured it out, Thatcher!” Reena shouts. “I know why she's different.”

It's almost like we're flying as Thatcher dives for the portal.

“I know what she is! I know she's—”

Blessed silence as the portal closes around us.