Authors: Mary Lindsey

Shattered Souls (15 page)

BOOK: Shattered Souls

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I didn’t know what to do. I had a boyfriend. A great boyfriend, but something in me needed Alden.

“What is this we’re doing?” I asked, shifting my weight foot to foot.

“I don’t know,” he said. “You tell me.”

My mom opened the door and saved the day. Whew. A graceful exit.

“Oh, Alden,” Mom gushed. “Please come in.”

Forget the graceful exit.

“Thanks, Ms. Anderson, but I have to get home. I have a report due tomorrow. Good night, Lenzi. It was . . . fun.”

“Yeah. Thanks for dinner.”

Alden smiled and shoved his hands into his pockets. “You’re welcome. It was my pleasure.”

Mom put her arm around me as we watched Alden drive off. “I’m glad you are finally making friends,” she said.

A
friend
. Is that really what Alden was?

Zak’s set at the Last Concert Café wouldn’t be over until eleven. He was probably disappointed I didn’t come watch him play, and he’d go ballistic if he found out where I’d been, so I left my phone off to avoid having to lie . . . again. Guilt pinched the pit of my stomach.

After changing and brushing my teeth, I lay in bed waiting for my post-resolution jitters to settle. I’d finally done something that mattered—something significant. Alden was right. It made sense now. I
had
to be a Speaker. It was the first time in my life I’d felt completely right. I hadn’t been able to help my dad, but I could help the Hindered make things right so they could be at peace. And hanging out with Alden was a definite job perk. If only he would see
me
instead of Rose every time he looked at me.

Just as I closed my eyes, a sound came from my window, like when the June bugs knock against it in the summer months.
Tap. Tap-tap. Tap.

Were the Hindered drawn to light like bugs? “Go away. Ghost Busters Inc. is closed for the night!”

Tap. Tap.

Dang.
I was never going to get any rest. I got out of bed and shuffled to the window.

Tap tappity tap.

It wasn’t bugs or Hindered. It looked like . . . pebbles? I opened the window and stared down at Alden, who shot me a heart-melting grin.

“Took you long enough. I was about to start serenading if you didn’t notice me.”

I stared down at him, mystified.

“Please, Lenzi. Let me in before the neighbors call the cops.”

I wished I’d grabbed a bathrobe or something when the cool air gusted in the front door. The shorts and cami were fine as long as I was under my down comforter. Alden walked by me into the entry hall.

“Where’s your mom?” he whispered.

I pointed over my shoulder to the stairs. “Asleep in her room.”

“Perfect.” He brushed by me and started climbing to the second floor.

Oh, no! Not my room again! It was a disaster. In addition to the bathroom, there were three rooms upstairs: mine, at the top of the stairs, Mom’s bedroom at the far end, and a tiny bedroom where Mom stored her old client files and tax returns. Maybe I could steer him in there. “Alden, don’t—” Too late. He was in my room before I could finish my sentence.

“Don’t what?” he asked, sitting on the bed.

“You dare to enter the inner sanctum of the Speaker?” I joked, looking around.

“The oppressed subordinate is feeling brave.” He chuckled and patted the spot next to him. “If you’d leave your phone on, this would be much easier.”

And much less embarrassing,
I thought as I shoved a pair of underwear under the bed with my foot. “Is something wrong?”

He stared at me with his odd, gray eyes. “No. Well, yes, actually. I need you to leave your phone on all the time. Since we’re in the twenty-first century, we should take advantage of the technology.”

“Okay, I’ll leave it on.” I stood awkwardly near the doorway. I never felt this way with Zak. My attraction to Alden was unnatural. So intense it was painful.
Pain lets you know you’re alive,
Alden had said when we soul-shared. I’d been walking around numb for the last three months, and for the first time since Dad’s death, I felt truly alive. “Is that all?”

“No. I didn’t really get to say good-bye to you properly when I dropped you off,” he said, scanning me from head to toe.

Was he finally starting to accept me as Lenzi? I didn’t respond for fear my heart would be successful in its attempt to escape from the confines of my rib cage. I knew what
I’d
consider a proper good-bye. I took a step closer, hoping he had the same thing in mind.

“Well, we didn’t have closure to the resolution, and we didn’t make plans for the next one. I’m not supposed to leave business unfinished like that,” he explained. A peculiar look crossed his face. “Are you okay?”

Business. It had nothing to do with me. It was business. “I’m great. Finish it. Let’s have closure.”

He stood up. “What’s wrong? You feel off.”

Well, that was a good way of wording it. “I’m fine, Alden. Just get on with it. I’m tired.”

“I’m sorry. We can do the interview for the resolution report later, but we have to come up with a strategy to fulfill the promise tonight.”

“Report? I thought it was a school report.”

“No. I don’t go to school, Lenzi. I’ve graduated. IC training ends when the Speaker emerges.”

I leaned against the closed door. “But you told me you were taking a correspondence course.”

“No, I told you my parents
thought
I was taking a correspondence course. I’m doing the paperwork for us. It’s part of my job. The IC keeps track of resolutions. You know, trends in Hindered requests and duration of negotiations—stuff like that.”

I gasped. “You’ve gotta be kidding me. They keep bogeyman statistics?”

He sat back down on the edge of my bed. “Mm-hm. There’s an entire department at the IC devoted to it.”

“Why on earth would someone keep up with something like that?”

“As the population increases, so do the death rates, and logically, so do the Hindered. The Intercessor Council ensures that the Speaker-Hindered ratio is balanced. There are a lot more of us now than there were the last time you did this.”

Always Rose.
“I haven’t done this before,” I whispered. Ratios. Reports. What in the world had I gotten myself into?

“There are more of us than ever before.”

“I can just imagine the recruiting poster. ‘Ghost whisperers wanted: no experience necessary. Death wish and masochistic tendencies a must.’”

He smiled. “Yeah, something like that.”

“So, what else did you need to do to wrap up our little business transaction?” I asked, fidgeting with the bottom of my shirt.

He checked me out again before he answered. “We have to keep our promise to Suzanne. I’ll go to the hospital while you’re at school tomorrow and see if I can get an address on her. I doubt it, though. Hospitals are pretty tight with information like that. Sometimes I can chat people up and get them to tell me stuff.”

I raised an eyebrow. “I bet you can.”

He stood and strode the door. “Please leave your phone on. I’ll pick you up after school so we can close the file.”

“Is that an order?”

“No. It’s a request—an invitation. Lenzi, will you please allow me to pick you up after school so that we can close Suzanne’s file?” He gifted me with a gorgeous smile.

“I’d love that.”

I sat on my bed long after he left, staring at Dad’s guitar in the corner. The melody Zak wrote for me ran through my mind. When I closed my eyes, I could see Zak sitting on the coffee table with his guitar, giving me his heart in a song.

“What am I doing, Dad?” I asked. I held my breath, waiting for a reply that didn’t come. Deep down, I knew the answer.

SIXTEEN

T
he clock in my American history classroom moved in slow motion. I fidgeted, willing time to speed up so I could see Alden again. I’d hardly slept last night.

Maybe Alden was right. Maybe being a Speaker was a gift.

“Help me,”
a woman’s voice whispered in my ear.

A gift with drawbacks.

“She stole it,”
the disembodied voice continued.

“Not now. Go away,” I whispered.

“You must help me retrieve it.”

“Go haunt someone else. I said, not now!”

“Miss Anderson?” The entire class was looking at me. “Is there a problem?” Ms. Mueller asked.

“Um, no, ma’am.” I’d always done my best to be invisible and not draw attention to myself. I shifted in my chair as all eyes in the room appraised me.

“Who were you talking to, Miss Anderson?” Ms. Mueller waddled close enough for me to see the coffee stains on her lavender polka-dotted blouse. She appeared to enjoy my discomfort. “I thought for a minute you might be talking to a ghost or something.”

Titters and giggles erupted.

Apparently satisfied, Ms. Mueller resumed her mindnumbingly boring lecture about the Battle of Gettysburg, and one by one, my classmates stopped gawking. I relaxed and let my mind wander back to Alden. My snobby classmates might have lots of things I didn’t have, but they didn’t have anything like
him
—a hot, mysterious ghost boy. My feelings for Alden were intense and dangerous, just like the life he was encouraging me to embrace. So different from Zak, who represented everything I thought I wanted in a boyfriend—until now.

At last the bell rang.

It took no time at all to force my way to my locker, stuff my backpack, and fly out the front door. Alden wasn’t in the line yet, which gave me time to return Zak’s text. He’d sent me a message during trig asking me to hang out this afternoon.

I can’t,
I wrote.
I’m going to study with a friend. I’ll call you when I get home.

I couldn’t keep lying like this. Maybe Alden was right: it was easier not to be with anyone if you were in the ghost-hunting business—well, except for maybe another ghost hunter.

I pushed Send right as Alden pulled up. I took a deep breath, shoved aside my guilt over lying to Zak again, and dropped my phone into my purse. Alden grinned at me through the windshield, causing my heart to lurch.

“Sorry I’m late. The medical center traffic was a nightmare,” he said, opening the passenger door for me.

“She stole it. You must help me,”
the female voice demanded as I buckled my seat belt.

“Leave me alone! I told you to go away and leave me alone!” I shouted.

Alden closed his door. “Wow. I thought we were making some progress. I sure hope there’s someone else in the car with us and that ugliness wasn’t directed at me.”

I was certain Alden was the only person in the world who would wish a voice with no body was in the car with him. “Of course it’s not directed at you. This bogeywoman’s driving me nuts. I got busted in class because of her.”

He brushed my hair behind my shoulder. “Hi. It’s nice to see you too, Lenzi. I’m fine, thanks for asking.”

I laughed. “Sorry. Hi. She
is
driving me crazy, though.”

He started the car. “What does she want?”

“She says that someone stole something from her.”

“Cool! I love it when they’ve been wronged. The resolution can be exciting. It’s worth a lot of points. Not as many as a Malevolent, but not as dangerous, either.”

“Points?”

“There has to be some kind of grading scale, doesn’t there? If not, every Speaker-Protector pair would pick the easy ones to pump up their statistics.” He turned onto the freeway service road. “You and I had the highest score three cycles running.”

“I’ve never done this before, Alden.”

He grinned. “Yes, you have—you just don’t remember.” He pulled into a coffee shop parking lot around the corner from the school. “I want you to meet some friends of mine, and yours too, sort of.”

I pulled the handle on my door as Alden walked around the front of the car. “I can open my own door, Alden,” I said as he held the door open for me.

“Of course you can. Would you like to open mine for me, instead?”

I squinted as I stepped out into the sunshine. “No. It’s just old-fashioned, that’s all.”

“
I’m
old-fashioned, Lenzi.” He laughed, pulling a computer case out of the backseat. “I’m old.
Really
old. Humor me, okay?” He gestured for me to lead to the door of the small, trendy coffee shop.

“Wait, Alden. I really don’t want to meet your friends dressed like this.”

“They’re your friends too. And you look fantastic. I love the school uniform. You have great legs.”

BOOK: Shattered Souls

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