Hereafter (Shadowlands) (3 page)

“I still can’t believe
you
asked
me
to go out,” Darcy said, hand to her chest as we walked down the hill toward the docks that night. My friend Aaron strolled along next to her, his dark hair spiked up and gelled in the front. He wore a blue-and-white-striped rugby shirt that made his tan look even deeper. “I mean, this is unprecedented.”

“You’ve mentioned,” I said wryly.

Up ahead, the calm water of the bay glittered in the light of a low-hanging moon. A buoy bell clanged, and I heard the faint sound of a boat motor chugging way out in the darkness.

“It’s just, you’re my antisocial sister. It’s been one of the constants in my life ever since you hit puberty,” Darcy said, pushing her fingers into her dark mane and fanning it out over her shoulders. “I’m sorry if it’s taking my brain a couple of minutes to wrap itself around the concept.”

“Try a couple of hours,” I muttered under my breath, crossing my arms.

She’d practically fallen over when I’d gone down to the beach and suggested that we round up Aaron and hit the Thirsty Swan after dinner. Not that I could blame her. She was right. I’d always hated parties. It was practically my motto. But Tristan had told me to meet him tonight at the bar where he worked so he could start walking me through this whole Lifer thing, and while I knew we’d have to do that alone, the very thought of leaving my sister behind stopped me cold. After everything Tristan had told me, I didn’t want to let her out of my sight. I would have even brought my dad along if he wasn’t so busy working on the latest draft of his long-ignored novel—and if it was socially acceptable to invite your dad to a bar. There was a real possibility I might not have that much more time to spend with them
or
Aaron—my one true friend on this island. That soon they might be moving on…forever.

Our feet had just hit the rickety boardwalk, and I reached out to grab the nearest pylon, the wind knocked right out of me.

“What’s wrong?” Aaron asked.

This was why I couldn’t allow myself to brood, to wallow, even to ponder too much. Because if I did, there might be no coming back. I had to believe that they would all become Lifers somehow. Aaron’s life had ended unnaturally, too, after all. Something I had realized after way too much pondering earlier. He’d told me all about it on the first night that we met, although neither of us had realized it at the time. There had been a fire at his uncle’s house in Boston. A fire he’d supposedly escaped unscathed. But now that I knew where we really were, how we’d all gotten here, I suspected that wasn’t exactly true.

“Nothing,” I said with a tight smile, trying not to dwell on whether he’d suffered, whether he’d been scared, whether the rest of his uncle’s family had survived. “I’m fine.”

Aaron reached his arm around my back. “I don’t know about this wallflower reputation of yours,” he joked, holding me close to his side as we caught up with my sister. “I’ve only known Rory for a week, and I’ve seen her at not one but
two
parties,” he said to Darcy.

When I turned to shoot him a grateful smile, I noticed a tall, solid man strolling along one of the paths in the town square. He wore a standard-issue blue uniform, polished black shoes, and what looked suspiciously like a gun in a holster on his hip. I recognized him instantly. It was Officer Dorn, the man who’d laughed me out of the precinct when I’d reported Olive missing last week. He paused for a second to talk to a man reading the
Daily Register
, Juniper Landing’s newspaper, under a streetlamp. When the two of them shook hands I could have sworn I saw a flash of white.

“Rory?” Aaron prompted.

I snapped back to the conversation. “Sorry, what?

Aaron nudged me good-naturedly. “I said, isn’t Darcy way too good for Joaquin?”

“Oh, yes, of course,” I said, glancing back at the park. Both the man with the paper and Dorn had vanished.

“God, I hope he’s not working,” Darcy said as we approached the life-size carving of a wooden swan outside the door of the bar. The sounds of drunken laughter, clinking glasses, and loud rock music made the screened-in windows that lined three of the dive’s four walls tremble.

“Why not?” Aaron asked. “You look totally hot and you’re going to flirt with other guys. I hope he
is
working so he can eat his own heart out.”

Darcy grinned. “I knew I liked you.” She smoothed the front of her glittery top and quickly ran her tongue over her teeth to clear away any residual lip gloss. “Okay,” she said with a nod. “Let’s do this.”

Then she lifted her chin and strode through the door, held open by a pockmarked gray rock at our feet. I expected Aaron to follow her first, but he stopped to pull out his cell phone, holding it up toward the sky. My stomach turned. He wasn’t going to be finding a signal anytime soon. Or ever.

“Still trying to call your dad?” I asked, shoving my hands under my arms.

“Just hoping I’ll catch that fifteen-second window when a satellite happens to fly over this godforsaken rock.” He sighed and pocketed the phone, then slung his arm around my shoulders. “Shall we?”

I swallowed hard, my guilt hot inside my chest.

“We shall,” I said with a tight smile.

The Thirsty Swan glowed with the brightness of a nonstop party and was packed from wall to wall. I tried to get a glimpse of the counter to see if Tristan was working, but the crowd at the bar was three people deep. The girl with the pixie haircut from that morning’s ferry was sitting at the end of the bar, sipping a soda and staring at Joaquin, who was slinging drinks like a pro, that big Cheshire grin of his charming everyone in the room. Darcy strode right past him without so much as a glance and took the empty stool between Fisher and some new guy with curly blond hair, an upturned collar on his polo shirt, and a pair of flip-flops with whales embroidered on the straps. The two of them were working together on a pretty serious shot-glass pyramid, and Fisher’s tongue stuck out as he concentrated on placing the next piece. Aaron was right behind Darcy and instantly started chatting up the prep.

“Rory!” Joaquin shouted, shooting beer into a mug and spraying froth over his hand. “How’s it hanging?”

The pixie girl turned to look at me, and her face fell. I hoped she wasn’t thinking I was some kind of competition for Joaquin’s heart. As far as I was concerned, she could have him. If she wanted the trouble.

“Can I get a Coke?”

“Don’t you ever get tired of being sober?” he asked me, tilting his head as he reached under the bar for a glass.

“It’s my only state of being, so…no. Is Tristan here?” I asked, fiddling nervously with the zipper on my jacket. Just the anticipation of seeing him was making me fidgety.

“Nope,” Joaquin replied.

I waited for him to elaborate, but he didn’t. “But he told me to meet him here.”

Joaquin gave a short laugh and tossed a glass up end over end, catching it casually. “Sorry, but I’m not Tristan’s keeper.”

I rolled my eyes.

“Look, if Tristan said he’s gonna be here, he’ll be here. He’s our resident Boy Scout,” Joaquin assured me. “This is Jennifer, by the way,” he added, nodding at the pixie girl. “She just got here today. Jennifer, Rory; Rory, Jennifer.”

“Hi!” Jennifer’s smile was somehow both eager and wary at once. She had a cute little birthmark above her lip, and as she held her straw between her fingers, I noticed her bubblegum nail polish was chipped. “How do you and Joaquin know each other?”

“Oh, we’re old friends,” Joaquin said, sliding the soda glass across the counter toward me.

At the far end of the bar, Darcy laughed. She laid her hand on Fisher’s arm and he smiled down at her, clearly enjoying her attention. To my surprise, Joaquin’s smile died. He plucked another mug from under the bar, filled it, and slammed it down on the counter.

“Sister’s moving on, I see,” he said.

“What’s the matter?” I asked as a round of laughter rose up from a nearby table. “Jealous?”

He leaned both hands into the bar. “Not in the least.” But I could tell by the twitch at the corner of his right eye that he was lying. “What’s there to be jealous of?”

“I don’t know. Why don’t you tell me?”

We faced off, each waiting for the other to blink.

“Um, I’m gonna go check out the jukebox,” Jennifer said, sliding off her stool.

I took a seat and rested my elbows on the bar, my head in my hands.

“So. You’ve had an interesting couple of days,” Joaquin said, his voice going quiet and uncharacteristically gentle. “You okay?”

“Do I
look
okay?”

He chuckled. “You look like you’re gonna be fine. It takes a little while to adjust, but there is an upside to being stuck here forever.”

“You mean the sense of fulfillment you get from ushering souls to their ultimate destinations?” I said.

Joaquin’s smile froze. “God! You sound like a Tristan Parrish disciple. No, woman!” He filled another mug with beer and slid it down the bar. “I was
going
to say that you get to hang out with me.”

I barked a laugh. “You’re such a jerk.”

“I’ve been called worse,” Joaquin said lightly. “But honestly, there are definite perks to being a Lifer. Other than what Tristan the Serious tells you.”

I raised one eyebrow. “Like what?”

Joaquin leaned into the counter to get closer to my ear and lowered his voice. “We can’t get sick, we can’t
die
,” he said, his eyes sparkling. “And we also get to stay young and hot forever.” He stood up straight and threw his arms wide as I rolled my eyes. “In Juniper Landing, there’s nothing to be afraid of.”

“Yeah. Except the concept of eternity,” I muttered.

He waved a dismissive hand at me. “Eh. You get used to that.”

Shaking my head, I looked over my shoulder at Jennifer. “So, I’m not really sure how all this works,” I whispered. “Do you know how she died?”

“Brain tumor,” Joaquin said matter-of-factly.

My stomach clenched. “Oh my god.”

He popped open a bottle of beer and took a swig. “Yeah, it was pretty quick, though. Only a month between diagnosis and
pffft
.” He made a deflating sound with his lips, like letting the air out of a balloon.

“Wow. How very respectful of you,” I said sarcastically.

“What? She doesn’t know she’s dead,” he said quietly. “All she remembers is that she was diagnosed. As far as she’s concerned, she’s on vacation, and she’ll be outta here in a day, anyway. Kid spent half her life volunteering with underprivileged children and the other half being polite. It’s just too bad she won’t be here longer so she could get a chance to sow an oat or two.” His eyes flicked over her like he was considering the possibility of helping her out with that particular situation. I shot him a withering look and turned my back on him.

“Hey! I’m just doing my job.”

“Whatever,” I said. “So how do you—”

But when I glanced over my shoulder, Joaquin was already gone. He’d moved down the bar to tend to the clamoring throng, leaving me with my unanswered questions. Like how, exactly, he knew all these things about Jennifer. Whether he was going to be the one to usher her. How these new souls were assigned to Lifers in the first place.
Were
they assigned? Or was I supposed to just start chatting someone up and see if they were ready to move on?

I took a deep breath and sighed, wishing Tristan would show up already.

“I know, sucks in here, right?”

Startled, I looked over and found myself staring into the dark brown eyes of one of the new arrivals—the guy in the ripped jeans who’d seemed so lost when he’d stepped off the ferry today. He had a tiny scar through his eyebrow and didn’t seem to know what to do with his hands; he touched the back of his neck, crossed his arms, then hooked his thumbs into the front pockets of his jeans.

“Totally,” I said.

“You live here?” he asked, standing next to me and gazing down at the drinks menu.

I hesitated for a split second. “Yep, uh…yeah. I’m Rory. Rory Thayer.”

“Brian Wohl,” he said, lifting a hand. “Just got here from North Carolina.”

“It’s nice to meet you.”

“You, too.” He looked up at Joaquin, who had reappeared in front of us. “Can I get a beer? Whatever’s on tap.”

“You got it.” Joaquin quickly filled a mug for him.

I wondered whether he had the same gut feeling about Brian that Tristan had had this morning, but he just went right along tipping bottles over glasses, digging ice out of the freezer, and chatting with the customers. Brian sipped his beer while the room around us buzzed and hummed and laughed and clinked.

“So, Rory. That’s a nice name,” Brian said eventually, leaning one elbow on the bar. I felt awkward, sitting while he was standing, but there were no seats to be had.

“I’ll tell my dad you think so,” I joked. He raised his eyebrows at me in question. “He picked it.”

“Oh.” Brian took a swig of beer, then sucked his teeth. “I don’t know who picked my name. I never thought about it.”

“One or both of your parents, I’d guess,” I said.

“The thing is, I can’t really imagine them doing it,” Brian replied. He ran one finger around the rim of his mug on the bar, his eyes downcast. “I can’t imagine them caring long enough to think about it.”