Of Starlight (16 page)

Chapter 16

“Psst . . . Megan!” I
hissed from her doorway.

She looked up from her terrarium, which she had been studying with pursed lips. Her confused gaze swept across me without seeing anything.

“Megan, it’s me,” I said.

“Who . . . who’s there?” she stammered, backing away.

“It’s me. Leona.”

“Leona?”

“I’m invisible.” I shut the door behind me, and she jumped a little. “Megan, it’s just me. Look—” I grabbed her hand, startling her again, and brought it to my face so she could feel me.

“
Leona?
” she said, feeling my face. “Where have you been? I was worried she’d gotten you. And why are you invisible?”

“She attacked me on my way over,” I said, collapsing onto her bed to rub my blistered feet. “But I have an idea—” I nodded to Sarah Erskine’s apparatus, still leaning against the wall, “
that.
”

Megan glanced around. “What? What are you referring to?”

“Sarah’s apparatus,” I said. “It can see dark matter. We can use it to find Ashley without touching her!”

A UCSB graduate student, Sarah Erskine, had built the thing a few weeks ago. We’d borrowed it—okay,
stolen
it—from her lab after she killed herself. From what I recalled, the device could detect the presence of an invisible object by splitting a laser beam, sending half of the beam through the object, and measuring the interference. The details were hazy.

Megan looked vaguely in my direction, unable to see me. “Can you take that stuff off? This is getting weird.”

“Nuh-uh. No way. You weren’t there. I’m keeping it on until Ashley’s dead, even if it takes a week.”

“You think that’s okay? Wearing it for a week?”

I lowered my eyes and fidgeted, even though she couldn’t see me. “I don’t know, I just . . . you weren’t there, okay? This is all I have right now. It saved my life.”

“At least put on a hat so I can tell where you are.” She tossed me a baseball cap.

“Kind of defeats the purpose,” I muttered, scooping my long hair back so I could slide on the hat. “There. You happy?”

“My best friend’s a talking hat, of course I’m happy. Okay, what happened?”

I told her the rest of the story, how Ashley had ambushed me in my car and chased me through my neighborhood, and with each new detail, Megan’s jaw fell open a little more.

“So she was just going to choke you out?”

“I think,” I said. “She didn’t have a knife or anything.”

Megan paced her bedroom and paused to peer into her terrarium. “Shouldn’t we tell someone? Your parents . . . or the police?”

“What are they going to do?” I said. “I tell them there’s an invisible girl who’s trying to kill me. That’s called schizophrenia, Megan.”

She peered at me. “Not if you show them . . . you know . . .” she gestured to where she thought my body was, “
this
.”

I bit my fingernails, wondering if she was right. “No, there’d be too much explaining. They’d all be focused on me, and they’d take me in somewhere, and I wouldn’t be able to hide if Ashley tried to attack me. That would give her the advantage.”

“And you’re absolutely certain she didn’t follow you here?”

“Positive,” I said. “She’s going to wait for me at my house. She knows I have to go back there eventually.”

Megan leaned over her terrarium and tapped a knuckle on the glass. “I think Salamander’s dying. She’s still not eating.”

“Yeah, because she’s not your snake,” I said. “Your snake’s dead. Dark matter took it and replaced it with that creepy-ass thing, like it did with Ashley.”

Megan rapped the glass again, but said nothing.

“I want to booby trap my house,” I announced. “She’s going to come for me again, and this time, I want to be ready. I want to set up tripwires and alarms and all that stuff. And we can use the laser thingy to detect her. We can take her down, Megan.”

“Okay, stop . . .
stop
,” she said. “I’m going to say it, because no one else is saying it. We killed Ashley on
accident
, Leona, and look what that did to us. Now you’re talking about doing it on purpose. I know we talk like we murdered her, but it wasn’t technically murder. It was manslaughter. But if we do it on purpose this time, with the intent to kill,
that’s
murder
.
You’re talking about murder.”

“I know.” A lump formed in my throat.

“Hasn’t it occurred to you that maybe that’s wrong? Like,
really
wrong?”

I closed my eyes and inhaled slowly. “Of course that’s occurred to me. I don’t want to kill anybody. She’s not human—
it
—it’s not human.”

“Uh-huh. Then what is it?”

“I don’t know. Dark matter. It’s not even Ashley’s real body. Her real body was still in the woods, remember?”

“Which I never saw, by the way. But fine, granted you’re telling the truth and this isn’t her real body, then what is it? What is dark matter?”

“I. Don’t. Know,” I said.

“That’s my point. We don’t know anything. If this stuff can assume the shape of any human, then how do I know
you’re
not dark matter? You’re
wearing
the stuff, for God’s sake.”

I picked at the invisible skin around my fingernails. “Not any human,” I said. “Just the ones whose souls it eats.”

“Where did you get that? Did it tell you that?”

I dragged my hands down my face. “Look, all I know is I need to do this. I’m supposed to do this.”

“Do you see what I’m saying? Where are you getting this?”

“We have to avenge her,” I said softly.

“We
did
avenge her.”

“No, we didn’t.” I shook my head, even though she couldn’t see me. “That wasn’t what we were supposed to do, Megan. We got it wrong. Me, I got it wrong. Avenging her doesn’t mean hunting criminals, it means killing the creature that ate her soul and possessed her body. That’s
avenging her. That’s what I have to do.”

“Ah.” She nodded grimly. “Then there’s that.”

“If you don’t want to help me, you don’t have to,” I said.

“Of course I don’t want to help you,” she said. “But we’re in this together, right?” Megan peered into her terrarium again. “We should probably kill this snake . . . since it’s a dark matter snake.”

“Yeah, probably.”

“What about Sarah? Maybe the same thing happened to her.”

The memory stirred my unease. Sarah Erskine had supposedly killed herself, but that night in Megan’s bathroom . . . those words written in the fogged up mirror . . .
help me
. Had her soul been eaten too? My insides recoiled at the thought.

“Look, it’s assumed the shape of Ashley,” I said. “It has a body now, which means we can kill it.”

“How, exactly, are we going to do that?” said Megan.

“Tonight,” I said. “We have to do it tonight. Now that Ashley knows I’m invisible, she’s not going to waste any time. I just need to do something about my parents. We’re going to need the house to ourselves. I can’t be running around invisible and laying traps while they’re around.”

“Your parents. That’s a tricky one.”

“And they’ve been watching me like hawks lately.”

“Wait . . .” Megan glanced up with a sly smile. “What if I told you I could get your parents out of your house for forty-eight hours, no questions asked?”

“How?”

She cracked her knuckles. “Leave that one to me.”

“Fine, just don’t hurt anyone—”

The floor outside Megan’s bedroom creaked, and my voice cut off. My heart gave an uneasy jolt.

Unaware, Megan said loudly, “Your mom works at home on Fridays, right?

“Shh!” I said, pressing a finger to my lips.

Megan looked around. “What?”

“Did you hear that?”

“Hear what?” she said.

I listened, but now the hallway was silent. “Is anyone else home?”

“No, my parents are at work—”

A quiet knock sounded on the door, jolting me senseless.

“—and my sister wouldn’t be here this early,” Megan continued, oblivious.

I gaped at her. Did she not hear the knocking on her door?

“Shut up!” I hissed, and she finally shut up. I crept to the door, took a shaky breath, and opened it a crack to peek out.

It was Ashley.

But it wasn’t dark matter Ashley.

I recognized that instantly. For one thing, she wasn’t invisible, although a glance behind me at Megan’s blank expression confirmed my hunch—Megan couldn’t see her or hear her, only I could. For another, her blue eyes were forlorn, not menacing. This was the Ashley that had asked me to avenge her, the
real
Ashley. The memory of her, at least, somehow shown to me by dark matter.

“This will be my final attempt to communicate,” Ashley began in a distant, sad voice, her eyes unfocused. “If there is anybody receiving this, please tell my brother I love him and miss him, and tell my family I’m sorry—”

“Ashley, wait,” I gasped. “Can you . . . can you see me?”

“Who are you talking to?” said Megan.

“Shh,” I said.

Ashley continued as if she was reading a script.  “I wasn’t as strong as you thought I was, and I let the monster in, I unleashed it. It was my fault. But I will never give up, and neither will you.”

It was a pre-recording, I realized. She wasn’t interacting with us, just delivering a message.

“I’m writing this down because I think I can keep a memory of myself alive that way,” she said. “Find my diary, and you will know what to do. I don’t know exactly how much time has passed—there is no light here, only darkness—but I estimate it is now June first. If you are receiving this, then hopefully I am already dead. A single tear dropped down her cheek. “Bye, Emory . . . avenge me.”

She turned and walked up the hall, turning into the den.

“Wait!” I ran after her.

But she was already gone, leaving only the chill slipping down my back.

“Surprise!” yelled Megan,
leaping into my mom’s office and scaring the crap out of her. “You and your husband are leaving this weekend for an all-expenses-paid vacation to Catalina Island, as a gift from me and Leona.” She laid out tickets and travel brochures and a printed hotel reservation.

I ambled in sheepishly behind her, nodding along. My skin was still pink and tingly from peeling off the dark matter, which really hadn’t wanted to come off. I’d only risked removing it after checking and double-checking every corner, closet, and window in the house.

My mom’s eyes widened. “Oh, wow . . . you guys . . . you guys shouldn’t have . . .”

“Leona and I wanted to do something nice for you.” She elbowed me in the ribs, and I mumbled some kind of agreement. My mind was still on my encounter with Ashley’s ghost, or whatever that thing was. She’d mentioned the date being June 1. It was now October 16. So those visions of her were in fact messages she’d recorded months ago,
before
she died.

“But . . . but I have to check my calendar,” my mom was saying, scrambling around her desk. She didn’t look happy at all. If anything, she looked to be slipping into full-blown panic mode.

“Already did,” said Megan. “You’re free.”

So Ashley had been stuck somewhere, trying to communicate with her family.

Stuck
where?

“What about Leona?” said my mom. “This means she’ll be home alone all weekend.”

“Already checked with my mom,” said Megan. “Leona’s spending the weekend at my house.”

“You’re . . . you’re sure?”

“It’s all taken care of, Ms. Hewitt.”

“Well, I don’t know what to say . . . um . . . thank you?” She forced a smile, which came out more like a grimace.

Megan checked her cell phone. “Oops! The boat’s leaving from the harbor at six p.m. That gives you forty minutes to pack up and pick up Mr. Hewitt. Dress warm. It’s cold there this time of year.”

Twenty minutes later, we ushered her out the door, bags packed.

“Done,” said Megan, dusting off her hands.

“It feels dishonest,” I said, watching her car back out of the driveway. Since this morning, ominously dark clouds had gathered over the mountains, casting the afternoon into an overcast gloom. Night would come early.

“Why? It’s a real vacation,” said Megan.

“It’s going to rain.”

“Not our problem.”

“It’s mean,” I said.

“I didn’t hear you come up with any ideas,” she said.

The moment my mom’s taillights vanished, I began stripping and dotting my skin with dark matter, frantic to get invisible again. “It’s only going to stress her out. She’s only going because she wants to be polite and we already paid for it—which, by the way, raises another question. How
did
we pay for it?”

“I paid for it,” she said.

“You don’t have money,” I scoffed.

She shrugged. “I had a little saved up.”

As dark matter advanced across my skin, leaving me see-through, I let out a sigh of relief. Safe again. “How much did it cost? I want to pay you back.”

She avoided looking at me. “It’s fine. It was nothing.”

“No, let me pay you back,” I pressed.

“Don’t worry about it. It’s fine.”

I peered at her, and suspicion crept into my voice. “Megan . . .”

“I kind of stole some money,” she blurted out. “When I was invisible. It was this rich guy who looked like a dick. I watched him type in his code at an ATM and I snagged his card afterward. It made me feel really bad, so I just hid it, but that made me feel even worse. But this seemed like a good thing to spend it on. A noble cause.” She peeked in my direction with a guilty expression. “You’re not mad are you?”

Even invisible, I couldn’t meet her eye, suddenly feeling ill. “It could have been me, I’m that way too,” I said. “Don’t you see? We’re those people, Megan. We’re those people who do messed up things, and it’s becoming a pattern. We need to work on that.”

“Deal,” she said quickly.

I turned back to my empty, dark house. “Let’s get ready for her.”

“Okay, these are
our weapons,” I said, adding a baseball bat to the growing pile on my bedroom floor, which contained a fireplace poker, a hammer, a pair of screwdrivers, and the heavy crystal bookend that had once fallen on my toe and broken it.

“Don’t forget the saw,” said Megan, flexing the blade with a twang before she set it on the pile.

“This is getting morbid,” I said, picturing myself hacking away at Ashley’s invisible limbs while she did the same to mine. We’d raided my dad’s workbench and turned up all sorts of grisly weapons.

Through my windows, the overcast sky deepened, and all we got of a sunset was a brown smudge on the gray horizon.

“There was a power saw out there too,” said Megan. “You might be able to cut off her head—”

“I’m not cutting off her head with a power saw,” I snapped.