Текст книги "As Dead As It Gets"

Автор книги: Katie Alender

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Текущая страница: 2 (всего у книги 18 страниц)

I DIDN’T KILL LYDIA.

Yes, I was there when she died, but that’s totally not the same thing.

Just try telling her that.

She clearly blamed me, and she showed up every couple of weeks to make sure I knew it. Up to now, she’d just been annoying—taunting me, threatening to hurt me…which might have been scary if she hadn’t been such an obviously weak ghost. The most she’d been able to do was knock a textbook off my desk in class, after twenty minutes of trying.

But this—an actual attempt on my life—was new.

And it pissed me off.

I unfastened my seat belt and threw the door open, launching myself out into the rain. “Nice, Lydia!” I said, turning in a circle. “Trying to kill me? I guess you’re going to have to try harder next time!”

Cold rivulets of water streamed down my face. And I realized I was crying again, which just made me angrier. I wanted to kick something. So I kicked at the wet grass and almost lost my balance.

Perfect—to slide down the bank and land in the canal would have been the absolute icing on this ghastly cake of a day.

“Come on!” I yelled. “If you want me, I’m right here! Come and freaking get me, Lydia!”

I was on high alert, adrenaline pumping, ready for a fight. How a ghost and a human could fight, I don’t know. I guess I figured the force of my fury alone might bruise her a little.

I waited for her to show up, in all her ghostly glory, as she usually did—barely five feet tall, with long, straight black hair, wearing the clothes she died in: a torn, bloodstained, red cocktail dress and no shoes. Determined to wreck my day—if not my entire life. Slightly see-through and eternally whiny.

But she didn’t come. And as my adrenaline high faded to a post-adrenaline low, I began to feel not only sort of sheepish and humiliated, but also very cold and wet.

Adding to the splendor of the scene, Kendra had pulled her car up and rolled down her window. She looked more inconvenienced than concerned. “Alexis? Um…are you okay?”

Had she heard me yelling Lydia’s name?

“Yeah,” I said. “There was just…a squirrel crossing the road.”

Her eyes went wide. “Did you hit it?”

I could hear the whispers already: Alexis Warren ran over a squirrel—on purpose! “The squirrel is fine,” I said. “Thanks, though.”

I waved her off and got back in the car, shaking with anger and a fresh dose of mortification. As I was putting my seat belt back on, my phone rang, startling me.

It was Jared. “Hey. I forgot to wish you a Merry Christmas.”

“Oh, yeah,” I said. “Merry Christmas.”

“All right, well…be careful. The roads are kind of slick.”

So I noticed. “I will, thanks. You, too.”

Then we hung up.

Feeling even emptier than before, I did a three-point turn and headed home.

Lydia appeared as I was making the left into Silver Sage Acres, the master-planned community of town houses where my family moved after our old house burned down. (Two murderous ghosts ago—old news.)

She faded into view in the passenger seat, her filthy, bloody ghost feet resting on the dashboard. “Come and get me?” she asked. “Is that some kind of joke?”

Seeing ghosts in pictures? Totally my fault, and I’m the first person to admit it. (Never to another human being, of course. Just to myself.) I’m the one who re-took the oath to the evil spirit Aralt when Lydia splashed noxious chemicals in my eyes. I thought I could beat the system—take the oath, then read another spell—one that would release him from my body again. But that was before I knew that Lydia was planning to destroy Aralt’s book—his dwelling—so she could have him to herself forever.

My eyes absorbed a healthy dose of supernatural hoodoo, and I got stuck with the consequences. Totally, totally my bad.

At least it only resulted in my being able to see most ghosts. Not hear their despairing, wormy-mouthed, pleading whispers.

But Lydia? I straight-up refuse to take the blame for Lydia. She got selfish at the end and died in pain and in fear, which usually produces a ghost. In this case, it produced a ghost that walks and talks and annoys me just like Lydia did when she was a real live girl. Same attitude, just deader.

When she came into view, I tensed, tightening my grip on the wheel.

But she didn’t try anything. I pulled Mom’s car into the garage and hesitated before grabbing my camera—it would mean reaching right through Lydia’s semi-opaque body. I decided to come back for it later and headed for the door to the hallway, which was always unlocked.

Lydia passed through the car door and stood in my path, both feet planted on the floor. She—and most of the other undead spirits I’d seen—preferred to move like a living person, walking and standing on the ground. Some of them float, but only when they’re too angry or distracted to think about it.

She tossed her hair and sniffed. “What makes you think I’m at your beck and call?”

I almost walked right through her, but my nerve faltered at the last second. I hated the way it felt, like jumping into a freezing swimming pool—or being pushed in. Lydia hated it, too—which almost made it worthwhile.

But not quite.

“Move,” I said.

She came a half step closer. “Since when do I take orders from murderers?”

See what I mean? Passing the blame much? As if I’d forced her to start the Sunshine Club and fall madly in love with an evil spirit. As if it had been my idea for him to devour her life force. I’d tried to talk her out of it. I’d even tried to save her—and, rather pathetically, kept trying, way after the point where she was savable. But there’s no way to convey that to an angry ghost.

They just don’t listen.

“I get it, okay?” I said. “You hate me. You tried to kill me, and it didn’t work. But take comfort in the fact that you definitely ended my day on a low note, and move along, please. See you in a few weeks.”

Her eyebrows went up.

When she didn’t move, I held my breath and charged forward. The frigid rush of blood in my veins left me light-headed, with Lydia’s outraged yelp resonating in my ears.

What happened next took me by complete surprise.

A second blast of cold hit me from behind, and then Lydia was in front of me again.

The double dose was like a hundred full-body ice-cream headaches. I doubled over in pain, wondering if it was possible to die of ghost-induced hypothermia. My fingers were so frozen I couldn’t feel them. I stumbled, put my hands out, and sank to the floor before I could lose my balance and fall.

After a minute, the feeling of imminent freezing-to-death passed, and I looked up at Lydia. She stood on the step by the door that led into the house. The effort of passing through me had left her a little hunched over and slightly more see-through than usual. And when she spoke, her voice was weaker.

“I’ll leave you alone,” she rasped, “when I feel like it.”

She disappeared through the door, and I heard the light ka-chunk of the lock turning.

I got up a moment later, my legs like tree stumps being stuck with a million pins. The circulation gradually came back as I made my way to the door. I knocked a few times before giving up. My parents were probably in the kitchen with the TV on, so I went around to the front of the town house.

My little sister, Kasey, pulled the door open just as I was about to turn the key in the dead bolt. Her hand tightened on the doorframe when she saw me, soaked and shivering like a half-drowned rat. She, on the other hand, practically glowed, her long hair draped over her shoulder like a gold silk scarf.

Once upon a time, I’d been worried about Kasey fitting in and making friends, but that had proved to be yet another shining example of my general cluelessness about how the world works.

My sister was A-list. She’d growth-spurted over the fall, and now she was almost as tall as me. Her hair was long and caramel blond, just wavy enough to make every hairstyle look effortlessly natural. She had an innate sense of what to wear, what to say, when to laugh, how to stand, and how to tell jokes so everyone in the room would strain to hear the punch line. On top of that, she was smart. Way smarter than me.

It would have been completely insufferable, except she was so nice.

Even the niceness would probably have been insufferable if I hadn’t been so relieved that she wasn’t a total outcast.

One per family was plenty.

Most important to me, she’d been through hard times with ghosts just like I had—but she had moved past those times. She was free from worrying about evil spirits and power centers. Free to be normal and happy.

She was safe.

And I intended to make sure that she stayed that way.

“I got caught in the rain,” I said, before she could ask.

From the kitchen wafted the mixed scent of simmering spaghetti sauce and fresh-baked sugar cookies. “Get any good pictures?” Dad called.

Someone was chopping something. The thunk of the knife on the cutting board stopped as they waited for my answer.

“Not really,” I called, careful to hover in the shadows. “I’m getting a little bored with photography, to be honest. I might cut back.”

Kasey’s eyes widened almost imperceptibly, but she didn’t say anything. I walked past her toward my bedroom, trying to stay steady on my trembling legs.

* * *

The ridiculous thing was, I knew exactly how to stop Lydia.

All I had to do was get up the courage to go to her house and find her power center—whatever object was holding her to this world—and destroy it, and I’d be free. Free of her, and (though I only let myself hope for this in my most desperate and pitiful of moments) maybe even free of the ghosts that haunted my photos. Who was to say the two problems weren’t related?

The trouble was, when I contemplated facing Mr. and Mrs. Small, my hands began to sweat and my mind went all wobbly. Their daughter’s death had basically ruined their not-so-great-to-begin-with lives. Under the weight of their desolate gazes, there was no way I’d be able to play it cool enough to concentrate on finding something that had been precious to Lydia—much less obliterating it.

The whole situation was like an itch I couldn’t bear to scratch.

Lydia believed I was a murderer. The kids at school never came out and said anything, but I could see in their eyes that they suspected me, too. After all, when Lydia went running after me, she was totally alive. Five minutes later, we were alone in a fiery beauty salon together, and Lydia was dead. So her parents had to wonder.

And maybe what scared me most was that underneath all of my denial and nightmares and anger…some part of me might figure out it actually was my fault.

Here’s a hint of how my life used to be: all I had wanted from the day I turned sixteen was a car. I begged, I cajoled, I bargained. Amazing how when you have a cute boyfriend and a popular best friend and everything in your life is just one peppy, perky little party, something like a car can seem really, really crucial. After everything went down with Aralt, I finally forgot about cars. I forgot to care about them, forgot to nag Mom and Dad about them.

So of course I got one for Christmas.

It was an act of profound sympathy on the part of my parents, I guess, because God knows my behavior and grades thus far in my junior year hadn’t exactly been car-for-Christmas-worthy. I’d even gone back to my old habit of skipping classes on a fairly regular basis. But Mom and Dad were insanely excited, giggly and pink-cheeked. I tried to give them a little pink-faced giggling right back, but I think they saw through it.

I could tell Kasey did.

The car was six years old and ugly: brown, rounded off at the corners like a bubble or an egg or something—with a big splotch on the backseat that I’d just as soon never find out the cause of, thank you very much. But it was a car. It had windows and locks and seats and a gas pedal—and it was mine.

I fell in love immediately.

Grandma was off windsurfing in Australia with her women’s club for the holidays, so it was just the four of us—Mom, Dad, Kasey, and me. We finished opening presents in about ten minutes and ate our traditional holiday breakfast of scrambled eggs and a giant pile of artery-clogging bacon. I took my trying-too-hard parents on a drive around the neighborhood.

Then the house fell back into deathly silence.

Kasey retreated to her bedroom to talk to her boyfriend, Keaton Perry (could someone please tell me how on earth my little sister was old enough to have a boyfriend? And a senior, no less?), and I went to the living room and turned on the TV. The local news was playing, and the anchors were decked out in cheesy holiday sweaters. They were joking and jolly, talking about Santa Claus as if he really existed, that thing adults do to humor the kids who are mostly just humoring adults.

Then they turned serious.

“A Christmas tragedy,” the female anchor said, frowning. “Surrey police are investigating the disappearance of sixteen-year-old Kendra Charnow, whose parents reported yesterday that their daughter apparently left the house in the middle of the night. The Surrey High School junior’s wallet and winter coat were both left behind, and footprints found in the mud outside her window seem to suggest that she left the house barefoot.”

“What?” Kasey appeared from her bedroom and plunked down onto the sofa. “Kendra?”

The cameras turned from the front of the Charnows’ house to show the side yard, which was cordoned off with bright yellow crime-scene tape. A bunch of neighbors milled around as busy-looking police officers walked from the house to the street and back again.

Mom sat next to me. “You’re kidding me…and on Christmas.”

I was watching a woman in the background who had to be Kendra’s mother. She had short reddish hair and dark circles under her eyes, and leaned heavily on the arm of the man next to her.

Then they cut to footage of Kendra’s bedroom. There was crime-scene tape blocking the doorway, but they showed her unmade bed, her open window, and her dresser.

“Wait.” I grabbed the remote and skipped back to the shot of the bedroom. The end of the news camera’s pan settled on the surface of Kendra’s dresser. What you were supposed to notice was that her purse was still there, with her wallet sitting next to it.

I felt like I’d been punched in the stomach.

Because what I noticed was the single yellow rose.

COULD LYDIA REALLY BE BEHIND THIS? Did she hate me so much that she was going after not just me but random people I knew, too?

And then it hit me: Kendra had been in the Sunshine Club.

Yet another girl who’d survived when Lydia died.

Maybe it wasn’t just me Lydia was coming after—maybe she was planning to hunt all of us down, one at a time.

Unless someone stopped her.

Well, it won’t be me. The thought was like a command from my subconscious. I was done playing with ghosts. Done thinking I knew how to fight them.

But who else would—who else could?—if I didn’t? I was the only person who could even see Lydia.

It’s still not my problem.

Only…the longer I thought about it, the more it kind of looked like my problem.

“Police are searching the densely wooded areas nearby—both the Pelham Nature Preserve and Sage Canyon are within a mile of the Charnow home,” the reporter said. “Unfortunately, though, rescuers have told us that it could take days to canvas the area—and last night’s rain washed away a lot of important information.”

Pelham? That was the nature preserve where Jared and I had been. Where we’d run into Kendra the day before her parents reported her missing.

They cut to an overhead shot of the area, taken from a news helicopter.

In the upper right corner of the screen, among the trees, was a bright splotch of white. At first I thought there was something wrong with the TV, but when the camera moved, the position of the white light moved, too. So, its source was actually there in the forest.

“What is that?” I asked.

“What’s what, honey?” Mom asked.

It was a small, glowing spot of light—like someone was aiming a really powerful flashlight directly at the screen.

I’d never seen anything like it before…except for the brilliant white light in my car. Which came immediately before Lydia’s yellow rose showed up.

Because of my “special” relationship with Lydia, I could see, hear, and interact with her in ways that I couldn’t with other ghosts. So it was possible that she could appear as a bright glow in photos—and on TV—when regular ghosts didn’t. I didn’t actually have any idea—I’d never gone out of my way to photograph her.

The helicopter spun to reveal the thin line of the highway. The light glowed on, about halfway between the main hiking trail and the road.

“What?” Kasey asked. “What are you looking for? Did you see something?”

The camera panned a little farther to reveal a billboard bearing the logo of a car dealership.

“I thought I did, but I didn’t,” I said, getting up off the couch and going to my room.

A few minutes later, I came back to the kitchen and found both of my parents huddled protectively near Kasey, who was on the phone with one of her dozens of friends.

“What’s up?” Dad asked.

I held up my car keys. “I think I’ll go for a little drive.”

Kasey gave me a worried look. “Don’t you want to talk to anybody? Did you call Megan?”

“Why would I call Megan?” I asked, leaning against the doorway.

“She knows Kendra. She was in the—”

“Kase,” I said. “Trust me. Megan’s not waiting for my call.”

My parents looked stricken.

“It’s fine. Don’t look at me like that,” I said. “I’ll be home in a while.”

“Where will you go?” Dad asked.

“Just…out,” I said, leaving before they had a chance to ask me not to.

As I drove past the entrance to the nature preserve, I saw that the lot was choked with police cars and news vans. So I kept going, about a half-mile farther, until I came to an abandoned diner. I parked my car behind the building and backtracked on foot toward the billboard I’d seen on the news, staying close to the trees until I was directly below the sign. Then I plunged straight into the woods, my phone in my hand to keep track of my location.

I stepped over exposed roots and low, rough brush, dividing my concentration between not falling and looking for Kendra. The cold cut right through my sweater and bit into my skin. Added to that were the chills I got when I took the time to wonder what Lydia could do to someone who couldn’t see her, someone she caught off guard.

Kendra might already be dead.

I kept my eye out for Lydia, but I also had my camera strapped around my neck. Every once in a while I’d take a volley of photos and search them for any sign of the bright light.

Nothing.

Finally I came to a small, rocky cliff and paused, unable to go farther without climbing down. I lifted the camera and fired off a few shots.

Bingo.

The photo showed the white light directly in front of me, glaringly bright.

“Lydia?” I called.

My only answer was the distant chopping of helicopter blades.

Silent night, I thought.

“Boo.” Lydia had materialized a few feet away from me, eyebrow cocked.

At the sound of her voice, I hurried away from the edge of the cliff.

“Merry Christmas, Alexis,” she sneered. “Get lots of presents? I’ll bet you did. I’ll bet it was super awesome. So tell me: did you stop for a single minute and think about me or my family? I’ll bet anything you didn’t. You’re completely wrapped up in yourself, as usual. And I’m just a rotting corpse in the ground.”

But I did. Before I fell asleep last night, I thought about your mother sitting alone in the darkness, and it made me cry. Sometimes it feels like all I do is cry.

“I wish you were just a rotting corpse.” I put my hands on my hips. “Where is she?”

“Who?”

“Kendra,” I said.

She gave me a flat stare. “What am I, a bloodhound?”

Then she vanished.

I sighed and walked back toward the cliff, turning around and carefully edging my way down, scraping the bejeezus out of my hands and balancing precariously on wobbly rocks and slick piles of gravel.

When I reached the bottom, I started to go to the right.

Lydia appeared in my path. “She’s actually behind you,” she said, tossing her hair. “Better hurry. She looks dead.”

Then she gave me a nasty glare and disappeared again.

Just as Lydia had said, Kendra was about thirty feet away. She lay on the rocks, her eyes closed and her leg canted at a sickening angle; she must have fallen and broken it.

For a second, I really did think she was dead.

I lifted her wrist and felt a faint pulse, but when I gently patted her cheek, her eyes remained tightly shut.

I pulled out my phone and prepared to dial 911.

I was trying to look up my GPS coordinates when a filthy hand lifted off the ground and rested on my arm.

“Alexis…?”

“Kendra!” I said. “Are you okay?”

“I need water.” Her eyes fluttered from the effort of opening, and her mouth made a futile swallowing motion. “Please.”

I had a bottle in my backpack. I pulled the cap off and tipped it toward her cracked lips. “Just sip,” I said. “There’s plenty. Don’t try to drink too much at once.”

She took a couple of small swallows, then stared up at me. “I’m tired.”

“Don’t worry. You’re safe. I’m going to call the police,” I said. “They’ll come save you.”

She nodded stiffly, but I could tell by the glimmer in her eyes that she was still afraid.

“What happened? Why did you come out here? Was it—” I cut myself off before I could say Lydia.

“I was…trying to get away from something.” Her eyes grew hazier, more distant. “I was…trying to get away from…”

“From what?” I wanted to coax the name out of her. I didn’t want to say it myself, because if I was wrong—

Kendra’s eyes suddenly went wide with fright. “From you, Alexis.”

I blinked.

Trying to get away from me?

Then, before I knew what was happening, Kendra’s eyes rolled back in her head, and she was unconscious again.

I grabbed my phone, about to call for help. But suddenly I wondered how this would look. The police might believe I’d just gone out to hike, and take pictures…but would my parents?

Would Kasey?

Not a chance.

I backed a few steps away, trying not to slip on the mossy rocks. And a thread of fear wove up through my heart, like a snake being charmed.

I couldn’t face the police. I couldn’t spend another day trying to avoid my parents’ searching gazes, lying my way through the explanation everyone would demand.

Someone would save Kendra, I would make sure of that—but I didn’t plan to be there when it happened.

If I weren’t me (oh, to be some average girl living in an average place with average problems! The magic of it!), if I were some other person looking in on me and my messed-up life, I think the obvious questions would be—why did I bother trying to keep so many secrets?

And why didn’t I ask for help?

Like Carter said after the whole Sunshine Club disaster—why didn’t I turn to him, or my parents, or anyone? After all, there’s strength in numbers, right?

It’s more complicated than that.

This isn’t my first rodeo. I’ve dealt with ghosts before. And when you’re dealing with murderous spirits, more isn’t merrier. It’s not like Scooby-Doo. The amount of people you have on your side doesn’t matter. You can’t physically fight a ghost, so there’s no point in having an army of friends standing at the ready.

That just means there are more people who potentially could get hurt.

So I could go to my parents, yeah. But would they try to help me figure out what was going on? Would they help me get to the core of the situation?

No. They’d call Agent Hasan, the government agent who’d come in twice now to clean up our supernatural messes, and then they’d have Kasey and me packed into the car and on the road to some no-name town in North Dakota before lunch.

But that wouldn’t work.

I’ve learned something in my months spent inadvertently spying on ghosts: if you notice them, they notice you. If you’re aware of a ghost, it becomes aware of you.

And when a ghost is aware of you, you’re that much more likely to have ghost trouble. The kind you can’t drive away from. The kind that ends in pain and misery…or death.

Especially when the ghost hates you as much as Lydia hated me.

That night, while my family was sitting down to a festive Christmas dinner of delivered pizza, the local news report ran an update on the rescue effort. Kendra had been located and taken by helicopter to a nearby hospital. She hadn’t been able to say anything because she was in a coma.

Her whereabouts had been called in by an anonymous tipster from an old pay phone at an abandoned diner near the woods.

“It’s awfully strange,” my mother said. “But I’m so relieved they found her.”

I was relieved, too—

Relieved that they found her, relieved that she was alive…

And relieved that she couldn’t talk.