Spirited (12 page)

The visions don’t help.

My grandmother died five days ago, and yet I’ve seen her around the house several times washing dishes and knitting. She smiled at me once. Not a sweet grandma kind of smile. No, this was a creepy one that almost made me pee my pants. Her eyes are milky white, and the jerky way she moves sends my heart thumping every time she’s near.

One minute she’s at the sink, the next she’s standing over me making a weird slashing motion against her neck as if to say I’ll be the next one to die. Oh, and she visits my dreams every night. She’s trying to tell me something, but she only speaks Finnish, and I only
do
English with some Puerto Rican thrown in. All I understand is “Brynja.” That’s my name. Sort of. Everyone calls me Bryn, because Brynja is freaking lame.

My grandmother isn’t the only dead person I see around here.

There’s the Viking. At least I think that is what he is—a giant scary-looking guy with a big beard. He carries a sword and has a seriously mean face. From what my mom says, we’re the descendants of a powerful Viking family. I always thought the Viking part of my heritage was cool, until troll dude showed up. He keeps pointing to my neck like my grandmother does, and he’s very scowly.

I want to tell someone, but Mom and the great aunts are too busy sorting through my grandmother’s house. And I’m afraid they’ll think I’m crazy. Mom’s been through enough with the guilt about my grandmother. She hadn’t seen her mother in twenty years, and Grandma died two hours before we arrived from Miami. I’ve heard of people feeling as if their souls had been crushed, and that’s exactly what happened to my mom. I’ve never seen her so sad.

“Bryn, do you need an extra blanket?” Mom steps into the room she gave me when we arrived. It’s cheery with a huge, cushy bed and would be welcoming—except for the ghosts.

“I’m fine.” I try to smile, but my teeth are chattering—more from the fear of the dreams that will find me once I fall asleep than the cold.

She pulls out a heavy wool blanket from a trunk at the end of the bed and lays it over the eiderdown. “The house is warm, but I guess you’re taking a while to adapt to the weather here. Are you feeling all right? You look flushed.”

I’m scared to death, but other than that I’m great
.

“Do you have any idea when we’ll be able to go home? School starts in three weeks.” Luckily, or not, depending on how you look at it, my school took a month off for the December holidays. It’s the only reason my mom brought me with her. That and I think she needs the moral support.

A shadow crosses her face as she pushes her blonde hair behind her ears. People say I look like my mom, but she’s so beautiful that it isn’t anywhere close to the truth. She’s tall and model thin. I’m not.

“Sorry. I didn’t mean to push.”

She pats my arm. “No, you have every right to ask. I promise I’ll have you back in time, but we have a great deal of work ahead of us. And I need to find a renter for the house.”

“I thought you were going to sell it.” She’d said that a few days ago, and I was glad. I never wanted to come to this place again.

She shrugs. “I feel my parents here. It’s the last thing I have of them, so I don’t know if I can do that.”

I don’t just feel them. I see them, well at least my grandmother and the Viking
.

Every time the ghosts show up, the temp drops and a chill slithers down my spine. It’s a feeling I’ve come to dread.

Just tell her the truth. If you’re going crazy, you need help.

But the last thing Mom needs to worry about is her daughter being insane. I have no plans to sleep, but after cleaning all day I eventually pass out.

~*~*~

“
Havahduttaa jalkeilla apulainen
.” The words are so loud I jump out of bed and hit my head on the slanted roof. Groaning, I rub the top of my head.

Grandmother stands at the end of the bed pointing at me. “
Havahduttaa jalkeilla apulainen
.” She says it again.

“I am up,” I grumble. I can see my breath the room is so cold.

“Wait.” I sit back on the bed. “I understood you. You said, ‘Wake up, girl.’“

“He’s coming. Save me.”
Poof
. She’s gone. I mean, like I blink, and she’s no longer there.

“Who’s coming?” I whisper. I glance at the clock on the wall. Two in the morning. But I’m wired. No way I’ll be able to go back to bed any time soon.

I pull on one of the big sweaters mom bought me for the trip and go downstairs. It’s even chillier in the living room without the fire. The crazy thing about houses in Finland is that everything is white—the walls, the counters, the floors, and even the cabinets. The house reminds me of a hospital. In the kitchen I fill a glass of water from the tap and chug it down.

Thump
. The sound against the basement door sends the glass clattering into the sink.

My breath catches as the door opens. Screaming and moving seem like great options, but my body freezes. My reflexes take a hike.

Maybe this is one of my crazy dreams. And…

“Good, you’re awake.” A guy’s blond head pops out of the darkness. He steps into the kitchen, and I can see he’s probably only a year or two older than me. “I can use your help. We’re almost out of time.”

“Who-uh-who are you?” My voice sounds strangled. He’s more solid than the ghosts, so I assume he is real. Though, around here anything can happen. But how did he get in?

“Riku. I’m helping your grandmother. She won’t leave me alone. Come on.” He waves me toward the basement stairs and then disappears.

Bad things happen in basements. In every horror movie I’ve ever seen, people die when they go to the basement. Sometimes it’s the devil. Other times it’s zombies or evil spiders. But they always die. There’s a strange guy I didn’t know in grandma’s house, and the smartest thing I can do is tell my mother. Or call the police.

Do they have 911 in Finland?

Then something he says clicks in my brain.

Before I realize it, I’m halfway down the stairs.

“My grandmother is dead,” I say as I step into the small area where my grandfather used to have his workshop. He died when my mom was my age. The rest of the place is used for storage. Mom and I had been bringing up boxes the last few days and going through each one with the aunts. It’s cold and moldy smelling and the last place I want to be. Yet, I can’t make myself leave.

“Yes, and if we don’t help her, she’s going to be stuck here forever.” He has a slight accent, but his English is nearly perfect.

“I—what are you talking about?”

He stops sifting through a box to stare up at me. His right eyebrow is up.

“You know what I’m talking about. Your grandmother has been telling you for days what would happen to her if you didn’t find it. Haven’t you felt her growing weaker?” He frowns and gives me the
are-you-some-kind-of-idiot?
look.

I sigh. “I don’t understand anything, except that you must be as crazy as I am, because I see my dead grandmother too. But until tonight, I haven’t been able to understand her.”

The puzzled look on his face is exactly how I feel.

When he gazes at something behind me, I shiver and turn slowly.

My grandmother points at me spewing Finnish so fast I can’t pick up any of it.

Riku taps his temple with his forefinger. “Ah, she didn’t understand that you are on a different frequency until tonight.”

“Then why can’t I understand her now?”

He shrugs. “She knows I understand her, and it doesn’t drain her so much trying to communicate. She wants me to explain, so you will help her.”

This is all too much. My brain feels like I stuck my finger in a light socket and fried it. “I’m not sure I want to know,” I say as I pull myself onto my grandfather’s workbench.

“Your grandmother was a Draugar—you come from a long line of them. They have great powers.”

“And a Draugar is?”

He waves a hand to silence me. The lighting isn’t great, but if he wasn’t so arrogant, I might think he was cute. Maybe.

“Since the time of the Vikings, the Draugar have been responsible for protecting the treasure of the great warriors. Using their magic, they also find any stolen treasure. Each generation has taken on the duty. Now it is your turn.”

“Oh no.” I point a finger at him. “I can’t have a job. My mom won’t even let me work at the mall.” It’s an insane thing to say. The last thing I want is a job that involves taking care of ghosts or treasure. I have enough trouble taking care of myself. “And if it goes from generation to generation, then my mom or my Uncle Sig should be next up.”

“Your Uncle Marcus, who was killed many years ago, was a great Draugar. He died returning treasure that had been lost for more than eight hundred years. His death meant your grandmother had to return to her duties and protect the treasure.”

I never knew my Uncle Marcus. He died before I was born. “I don’t want to do this. I mean it. The Viking guy who keeps following me around will have to find some new Draugar.”

“You don’t get a choice. The magic has already been passed to you. That’s why you can see the dead. The other powers will manifest within you in a matter of days.”

I shiver. Magic?

No. No. No
.

“If you can see them,” I point out, “then you’re one of those things too. You can help them.”

“I have since my mother died five years ago.”

That stops me. “How old are you?”

“Seventeen.”

He’s been taking care of dead people’s treasure since he was twelve? I mean, I have a hard time dealing with this, and I turned sixteen months ago. I can’t imagine being twelve and seeing dead people.

“Luckily for me, I’ve been preparing for the job since I was born. When my mother died, her magic found me. I’m helping you, because your grandmother hasn’t been able to pass down her knowledge to you.”

“I don’t have any magic, and I don’t want any. You can tell her she’ll have to find someone else.”

He shakes his head. “If you don’t help her, she’ll be caught here on this plane until she fulfills her duty. She can’t do that if she’s dead. And your Viking will haunt you until you die.”

No freakin’ way would I let that happen.

Find the treasure and you’ll be free
. The message is loud and clear.

I take a deep breath. “So why are you digging through my grandparents’ things?”

“There is a necklace of fire known as the Brising. It has great powers and was stolen from one of the graves more than three hundred years ago. Your grandmother spent her life searching for it and finally found it a few months before her death. She became ill shortly afterward, so she couldn’t return it as she’d hoped. Now King Harald wants his treasure back, but it’s lost again. Your grandmother says it’s somewhere in the house, but she can’t remember where.”

“Who is King Harald?”

Riku points to the left, where the Viking’s giving me a mean look. The temperature drops even more.

As much as I want to, I can’t turn away from the scary dude. I’m his Draugar. I think the words, but they make no sense. I’m numb from my head to my toes, and my brain is a pile of runny scrambled eggs. I pray this is some lame dream. I’ll wake up, and the world will be normal again.

Normal? You see ghosts. That’s so not going to happen.

My gut tells me this is my crazy destiny whether I want to accept it or not. I hate my gut.

He snaps his fingers in my face.

“Rude.” I huff.

“Your eyes glazed over for a moment. I need to make sure you’re still with me,” he says.

I stop myself from snorting. He might be seventeen, but he acts and talks like some grumpy old professor.

“She left the necklace in one of the magical safes your grandfather built into the house, but I checked before you and your mother arrived, and I haven’t found it in any of the places she remembered.”

“Well, if she can still see what’s going on, why can’t she find it?”

“She wasn’t in her right mind the two weeks before her death. She was in and out of consciousness. She thinks she might have moved the piece when she was in a trance. She couldn’t have left the house without someone seeing her. That’s why we feel certain it is still here. If you tuned into your powers, you’d be able to sense it.”

I shift uncomfortably on the wooden bench. I feel guilty for not having some kind of spidey sense, which is ridiculous. “If you have powers, why can’t you sense it?”

“You have so much to learn. Your magic is tied to the families you protect. Mine is useless in this situation except for communicating with the dead.”

“Okay, so you want me to help you go through boxes?”

He nods. “But first, I’d like to try something.”

I eye him warily.

“Here.” He motions to a rocking chair in the corner. Using a rag, he dusts it off. “I want you to sit here and relax for a moment.”

“I’m comfy here.” That isn’t true. My body has long passed the frozen stage, and I’m fairly certain frostbite will destroy my hands and feet.

He frowns again. “Yes, but if you go into a trance, you might fall off.”

“Trance? Uh, no. I won’t be doing that.” I point at him. “I may have just found out I’m a—whatever the heck that Draugar is—but I’m not into your crazy woo-woo stuff. You can su–”

“You are in a calm place, Brynja.” The words flow over me like a soft rain shower.

The ocean is in front of me. Waves slide onto the beach, tickling my toes. The warm water relaxes me. I’m home. I take a deep breath and look back. Our white beach house is there with the deep blue chairs on the front porch. I love our house. No matter where I might live the rest of my life, this is home. I turn back to the water.

Grandmother yells at me and points a finger. The words are Finnish, but something clicks again. “He doesn’t understand. If he touches it, he will die. The power will corrupt.”

Boom!
A flash of fire burns my eyes. I’m fairly certain my brain has exploded.

Darkness consumes me. A chill settles over my skin.

So this is what happens when you die.