Unnatural Souls (3 page)

Hopefully very soon.

Besides, research was
literally all I could do until I
did
discover something substantial.
So I continued adding to the collection of books, hoping with every
fiber of my being that the next one would have an answer, a hint,
anything that could help me save my brother. Was this the book? Who
knew, but I would read every book ever written if that was what it
took.

I was desperate, but I was also
determined, and I let that determination fill my heart. Today, I
was going to find what I needed to help me save Ash.

I flipped the book open and started
thumbing through. It was one of the books I had bought and brought
here—a book of supernatural stories. Most of them were about
aliens, which was oh so helpful. I still read them, though,
thinking it was completely plausible for someone to have mistaken a
demon for an alien. Could be a false hope, but I didn’t want to
leave anything out. The first few stories were about crop circles,
abductions, and mysterious lights in the sky.

The next few chapters were ghost
stories, and I slouched down further, my heart hammering. The first
one was about a man who swore his wife’s dead mother was haunting
him. The next was about a kid who saw people who weren’t there, and
the last featured a woman who claimed to be able to talk to the
‘other side.’ I sighed; nothing demonic there, not that my one
experience made me an expert. None of the aliens or ghosts were
creatures with red eyes, which was really what I scanned everything
for. The one feature that I truly knew about the demon. The one
feature that would possibly stand out.

I shoved that book away. The next one
didn’t look much better, but I gave it a shot. It was the memoir of
a man who had died for ten minutes and claimed to have been to the
other side. I flipped through the pages, only half reading it
because from page one I could tell it was complete crap. He had
died and seen the ‘white light’—which I never saw, and I was dead
for eight minutes—after which he’d been greeted by the angels. He
had been shown his life, seen all his sins, and begged the angels
for another chance.

Apparently they agreed, and he had
turned his life around, spreading the story of his experience to
inspire others. Which was, presumably, how this book came to
be.

I’d already decided that his book was
pure bosh. And all of that aside, if you could beg your way back to
life—to fix what you did wrong—why weren’t dead people popping up
all over the place like daisies? Again, I wasn’t an expert, but if
it was that easy, wouldn’t everyone do it?

I let out a grunt and threw the book,
which hit the wall and fell to the ground with a thud. None of
these books were helping. None of them were what I was looking for.
Nothing about demons or deals. No one else—not in any of these
books—had died and watched their brother sell his soul to bring
them back to life. No one knew what I had gone through, what I’d
witnessed. So none of them had the answers I needed.

What else was I supposed to do,
though? Where else was I supposed to look?

As I had done many times, I ran
through what I knew to be fact. I didn’t really have a lot to go
on. I knew the thing Ash made a deal with was a demon, mostly
because it had said as much, but that wasn’t really useful. I
didn’t exactly have a friendly neighborhood demon to ask for
information, so I had no idea what to do about it. There had been
another girl in the clearing, who I had thought was an angel, or at
least an entity that was against Ash selling his soul. I thought
she might be willing to tell me what was going on—but I didn’t
really know who or what she was, and hadn’t seen her since. And
unlike with demon-summoning spells, there didn’t seem to be
anything to call an angel to you. I tried praying, but there was no
answer. And I really didn’t have a clue what else to do.

I was running out of time, and growing
more frustrated by the minute.

It had been months since
the accident—just over nine months, to be exact—and I had gotten
nowhere with it. Ash and this demon had made a deal, that much was
obvious, and they’d even shaken hands on it. But how did the deal
work? Could you break it? Could I track down the demon? How
did
you track down a
demon? And what the heck was I going to do with it once I
did?

That was generally where I ended that
particular line of thought. Coming face to face with a demon was …
well, not high on my list of things to do. There had to be
something else—something I was missing.

I had, of course,
researched occult bookshops and even tried a few witchcrafty
spells
that
did—surprise, surprise—nothing. I had gone to mediums, called
psychics … everything I could think of. Yet here I was, in a dusty
library on a Friday night after lying to my mom and telling her
that I’d be out with friends—yeah right—and still getting
nowhere.

I slammed my fist down on the desk.
This would be so much easier if I knew more about the demon, or how
Ash had come into contact with him in the first place. Oh course I
had tried to talk to Ash on a few occasions. The second I’d mention
the words ‘accident’ or ‘car,’ though, or asked if we could talk,
he bolted out of the room with a quick excuse and an even quicker
exit.

After the fifth time of trying to
breach that subject and being left alone in his room, I’d started
looking around. I wasn’t a snoop, normally—who had time for that
sort of thing?—but I’d needed to know what was going on. And I’d
lucked out.

There, under his bed, in the stupidest
possible non-hiding spot ever, I found his journal. Apparently I
wasn’t the only one keeping one. Must have been something to do
with near-death experiences, because my generation usually
preferred to put everything online, for all to see and judge. But
when I opened it, I saw that Ash’s book wasn’t a journal,
exactly.

It was nothing more than a list and a
note.

The first section was
labeled
Bucket List
. Not something most seventeen-year-olds kept, but it was
good to have dreams, right? It was followed by a note—a goodbye.
For me it was confirmation of what I already knew. In the note, he
said his death was for the best, and that his life— ultimately —had
meaning that he couldn’t explain to any of us. But I knew exactly
what he was talking about.

He’d saved my life, and he thought
that gave his own life meaning. Even if it meant his death, in the
end. And like me, there was no way he could tell anyone about
that.

He went on to ask everyone not to be
sad, said that he was happy to have had what time he was blessed
with. Then he asked that everyone realize that this had been his
choice.

It was a suicide note. Only it
wouldn’t be suicide at all. It would be something much, much
worse.

I CRIED LONG
and hard that night, holding his notebook to my
chest. At that moment I was glad Ash had run away every time,
because talking would mean admitting that I knew what had happened,
and probably admitting that he had basically ruined my life by
saving me. He was dying for me, though, and believed in it with his
entire being. The least I could do was spare him the pain of
knowing he’d sold his soul so that I could live, only to have me
slowly lose my mind. Let him think he had done a good thing by
saving his sister.

If I was lucky, I’d find a way to
break the deal and learn to control my powers. Then we could both
lead long, happy lives—free of demons and curses.

I’d started my research the very next
day. And I hadn’t had any luck. Now there was just over two months
left on his contract.

I didn’t know what would happen when
that time was up.

Would the demon take his
soul and leave him empty but alive? Would he die? He seemed to
think he would, from his note, but did
he
even know? No matter—he had his
schedule, and in case I … failed … I needed him to do all the
things on his list before his year was up. Until then, I wouldn’t
rest. As long as there was still a chance that I could save him,
just like he’d saved me, I’d keep working for it.

Preferably while keeping my own
soul.

Up to this point, I’d failed him. But
I had two months left. Seventy-five days to figure it out. And I’d
made a promise to myself—a promise to work harder, faster, longer
before I lost him forever.

I just didn’t know where
else to go for
answers
.

The rays of the sun began to grow
longer on the floor in front of me, then, and I realized that I’d
been in the library longer than I’d thought. Perhaps an hour or two
from sunset, now. Which meant I’d have to go soon—I didn’t like
walking home in the dark.

I pushed the books to the side and
turned to the computer, where I typed in “summoning demons.” And
this was why I used a school computer—I had enough to worry about
without worrying that my parents would find a search history like
this on my laptop. Can you imagine? They already thought something
was wrong with me.

If they found out that I
was looking for a way to summon a demon, I would
definitely
find myself
in a straitjacket.

This wasn’t the first time I’d
conducted this search. I scrolled to page twenty-three—the last
page I had looked at when I was here before—and opened the first
ten sites on the new page, scanning them for useful spells, then
jotting down the directions and ingredients needed in my journal. I
snorted again. My mental monolog was enough to make anyone think
twice about hanging out with me. Finding spells and jotting down
the directions, as if this was an everyday occurrence.

There was also an occult shop outside
of town that knew me all too well. They always had everything these
spells seemed to ask for, and they’d stopped asking questions about
what I was doing. But nothing ever worked. This new enchantment
probably wouldn’t, either … but it was all I had. I would spend
every night trying the incantations in the woods behind my house,
and praying something happened this time.

What would I do when I had
only one month left and they still hadn’t worked, though? One week?
One day? The pressure in my chest came back, but I pushed the fear
down. One of them
would
work. There were demons out there, I knew it, and
if the stories held true, they were just waiting for someone to
call out to them, wanting to make some sort of deal. Ash couldn’t
be the only person in the world to encounter one, which meant
someone somewhere had to have spoken to one. Hopefully survived it,
or at the very least written their experience down before they
died. Summer was only a month and a half away, and at that point I
could work on it day and night if I had to.

I refused to let Ash die in my
place.

Around me, the library had grown
darker, and the streaks of sun were almost gone. I shut the
computer down and jumped up, suddenly nervous. I seriously hated
walking home in the dark; for some reason there were always more
ghosts out at night, and my powers seemed to be heightened at
night, as well, which made it even worse. I grabbed my things and
jogged out of the library and toward my locker to get my bag, the
sound of my sneakers echoing through the empty hall as I passed by
the darkened cafeteria and rounded the corner to the locker
banks.

If I hurried, I could still make it
home before sunset.

The moment my fingers
brushed the padlock on my locker, though, the lock snapped, cracked
in half, and fell to the ground with a clang. The door crashed
open, banging off the locker next to mine, and I automatically
jumped backwards and slammed into the wall, growing still to listen
as the noise of metal hitting metal echoed through the
hallway.
Please, dear God, let everyone
else be gone,
I thought
desperately.
Please let no one have heard
that.

Books, notepads, pencils, pens, and my
sweater suddenly started flying out of the locker, rushing to the
right and left, up and down the hallway around me. My belongings
whipped around the clean white hall like confetti caught in the
wind tunnel of my powers … before abruptly falling to the
ground.