Текст книги "Body and Soul"

Автор книги: Стэйси Кейд

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Текущая страница: 13 (всего у книги 16 страниц)

I followed Will down the stairs after he stormed past me. He started pacing the empty living room, back and forth in front of the windows in the rapidly fading squares of sunlight on the carpet.

I leaned against the wall in the foyer and watched. The frustration rolled off him in nearly visible waves, and I felt a pang of sympathy for him. He was doing his best. That being said, I couldn’t leave it like this. We couldn’t just hangout in an empty house and hope for all of this to resolve itself. I mean, I guess we could have, but not without a lot of the collateral damage we were hoping to avoid. “So, what now?” I asked.

Will stopped to glare at me. “I don’t know, okay?” He rubbed his hands over his face. “You were right,” he said, his voice muffled. “This was a stupid plan.”

He sounded miserable, and it tugged at me in a way I normally would have worked very hard to ignore. Except…this was it. The end. In that knowledge, I felt a reassurance and freedom I’d never experienced before.

I straightened up and approached him cautiously, my steps soundless on the carpet. When I touched his shoulder, he jerked his head up, startled.

“It’s all right,” I said. “It wasn’t a stupid plan. There were just more variables than we counted on, is all.” Actually, more variables than hehad counted on. I’d foreseen that Ed might not be as easy to maneuver as Will had thought, and Will might have avoided some of this if he’d listened to me. But I saw no point in bringing that up now and making him feel worse. Hey, look at me, growing as a person.

He laughed bitterly. “You can’t fool me. You’re gloating on the inside. You tried to tell me, and I wouldn’t listen.”

That stung. Maybe I wasn’t perfect yet, but I was trying. I pulled back from him, but to my surprise, he reached out and enfolded me in his arms, pulling me closer and burying his face against my neck. “I’m sorry. I just want everything to be easier, like it was before,” he whispered, his lips moving against my skin.

For some stupid reason, this sparked tears in my eyes. I gave a shaky laugh. “Who doesn’t?” I smoothed his hair down; it was softer than it looked and shorter than it had been when I’d first been forced to take real notice of him. The idea that at some point he’d gone out and gotten a haircut without my knowing made my heart ache. He had a life without me, and he would continue to once I was gone. It was ridiculous to get upset about it, and I knew that, but I couldn’t quite stop myself, either.

I blinked a bunch of times, trying to get my emotions under control, and cleared my throat. “You know, it wasn’t so great before. I was kind of a bitch sometimes, and you were hiding from everything.”

He laughed, and I felt the vibration of it beneath my hand on his back. I would miss this. I would miss him.

“It just seems harder now because we’re not used to this,” I continued, swallowing the lump in my throat. “Not used to being something other than what we were.”

“You are so damned practical,” he said with another laugh, one that held more than a little sadness. He leaned back from me without letting go and reached up to touch my face, brushing his thumb across my cheek, maybe to catch a tear that had somehow escaped. “No one would have ever guessed that before, least of all me.”

I could see the warmth in his gaze and sense the words rising up inside him, words that not a single person had ever said to me and actually meant. My mom loved that she had had someone else to blame. My dad loved that he’d had someone else to clean up his mess. My ex-boyfriend Chris had apparently loved someone else entirely.…“Don’t,” I said quickly, pushing away from him.

He frowned. “Why not?”

Because Will knew me in a way those other people hadn’t, and I might have believed him. And that seemed way too dangerous, especially now. I stepped back from him and wiped under my eyes, as though my mascara would run. “It doesn’t change anything,” I said in my haughtiest tone.

Which rolled off him like I hadn’t said anything. “If things were different…” he began.

“But they’re not,” I reminded him.

“They could be.”

He meant being Ally again for good. If we could track Erin down, if it was even possible that that arrangement could last, if I wanted to literally be someone else for the rest of my life…if, if, if…“Maybe.”

He sighed and walked a few steps away before turning back to face me. “What do you want to do?”

“What?” I asked, certain I’d heard him incorrectly.

Will gave me a look that suggested I might have suddenly developed a severe mental impairment. “I’m asking what you want to do,” he said slowly.

I stared at him, still not sure if he was being serious. He’d neverasked me that before. For all that he’d tried to avoid being a ghost-talker, with the implications that went along with it, he’d always had very definite opinions about the right and wrong thing to do in any given situation. And getting him to see things my way had usually required some form of bribery or blackmail.

“We’re running out of options, and this isn’t working out like I thought.” He waved a hand toward the stairs and the second floor, from which loud snores resonated through the empty house. Ed had evidently passed out. Will hesitated, then said, “I’m not going to push you into something that’s not you.” He forced a laugh. “Literally.”

I didn’t know what to say. Someone thinking of me first—it was what I always tried to insist on, what I’d manipulated into existence when I could. And here Will was doing it on his own.

“If you want to let it go…let everything go, I’ll find another way to fix the Erin situation.” He grimaced, and I knew he was thinking of the Order. Who knew what it would cost him to enlist their help? But he would do it, if necessary. If I said so.

For a second, some part of me deeply wanted to say, Forget it all, forget everyone but me.If these were my last few hours, then why not spend them the way Iwanted? That was the one advantage of knowing you’re about to not exist anymore, a benefit I had not been afforded in my previous death.

We could take the Alona Dare greatest hits tour—visit all the significant places I’d be leaving behind, one last time. My bench outside our school. My former room in my mother’s house, which was now as empty as Ed’s parents’ house. Krispy Kreme. I couldn’t actually eat a doughnut, but I would be able to see them and smell them. That would be worth something, wouldn’t it?

We could listen to my favorite songs—most of which Will would probably hate—and make out on his bed—which he definitely wouldn’t hate and neither would I.

All of that…or spend more hours chasing a girl who we might not even be able to find or save. And even if we did manage to save her and I took Lily’s body back for good, I wouldn’t be me, not the me from the first eighteen years of my life.

This was not a small decision. But for now, all I had to do was decide to keep trying. And I could do that. Will deserved that much. Not to mention that I, for whatever reason, couldn’t stand the idea of seeing the disappointment on his face if I said no. It would definitely put a crimp in any potential make-out plans.

“All right, all right,” I said with a sigh. “We keep looking…as soon as we find another place to try.”

But Will didn’t move or burst into ecstatic applause at my decision. Actually, Will and “ecstatic” don’t really belong in the same sentence. Ever. Still, his lack of response left something to be desired.

“There’s no point in continuing to look,” he said warily, “if you’re not going to—”

“Don’t push me,” I snapped. “And I’m not the only one who should be thinking this through.” I stepped forward until I was inches from his face. “We’re talking permanent here. And that means more than changing hairstyles and trying new makeup. I’d be Ally Turner. I’d go to school as Ally Turner.” God save me. “I would dateas Ally Turner.” I poked my finger in his chest with those last words.

He flinched.

“Yeah, that’s what I thought.” I backed off.

His mouth tightened, and he made an unhappy face. “Let’s just do this.”

* * *

In the absence of some other, more productive activity, we decided to go back upstairs to retrieve Ed. We would need him, most likely, if we found Erin; and besides, leaving him to sleep it off in his abandoned, bank-owned, childhood home, only to be awakened by a screaming real estate agent, who would probably call the police, seemed kind of cruel.

Unfortunately, reviving him proved beyond our capacity, even with my skills and experience in that area.

“We’re going to have to carry him,” I said, out of breath from tugging at Ed’s arm to get him to his feet. He kept flopping over like a rag doll.

“Like that’s not going to look suspicious.” Will was bent in half, hands on his knees, in the same breathless condition. Ed wasn’t a particularly big guy, but in his current boneless, drunk condition, our attempt to move him was taking a lot more effort than it would have otherwise. With my mom, I’d often given up and covered her with a blanket where she lay. Way, way easier.

I waved his concern away. “You can pull the car into the driveway, and it’ll be dark soon. Unless you’ve got a better suggestion.”

Will shook his head. “No.”

“Fine. Get his arms.”

He stepped around me to grab Ed’s wrists, and I moved to his ankles. “Ready?” I asked.

“Not really,” he muttered. “You realize this is technically kidnapping.”

I shrugged. “One of our lesser crimes. It’s for his own good.”

“You can tell that to the police…Oh, wait. That’s right. You can’t.” He gave me a sour look.

“Ha-ha.” I gripped the cuffs of Ed’s worn jeans. “Ready? Lift.”

We stumbled toward the stairs with Ed swinging between us, hanging above the carpet by a mere fraction of an inch. “So, did she say anything else to you? Anything besides ‘burgers and beer’?” I asked through gritted teeth.

“We’ve been over this,” Will panted, as he backed toward the first step.

“Well, go over it again,” I said. I couldn’t help feeling that we were missing something. This girl was not that complicated. Yeah, she’d be smart to be hiding, but I was betting she wasn’t that smart. She was all about sensations and experiences—new boys to kiss, more chances to dance, more beer to drink.…She wasn’t going to waste any time finding those things. But she didn’t know anyone—or didn’t know that she, as Lily, knew anyone. And I couldn’t see her seeking out strangers for random experiences; though, maybe…

I stopped suddenly as a thought occurred to me, and Will stumbled forward, almost falling on Ed. “Did she kiss you?” I demanded.

Color rose in his already flushed face.

“Son of a bitch,” I said and dropped Ed’s feet.

“Look, it was no big deal.” He set his half of Ed down more carefully at the top of the stairs. “I already knew it wasn’t you, and—”

“That’s supposed to make me feel better?” I asked, crossing my arms over my chest. I wasn’t sure why it bothered me so much. I guess it didn’t seem fair that he’d already kissed that mouth—my mouth, sort of—without me present.

“It wasn’t like that,” he protested. “It didn’t count. She jammed her face against mine and—”

“Not helping!”

“Whatever. Can we have this discussion at a later point, like when we’re safely in the car?” he asked, grabbing Ed’s arms. “Let’s get him downstairs before someone decides to come over and find out why his van has been in the driveway for so long.”

Reluctantly, I scooped up Ed’s feet, but I let Will take more of the weight this time, even though he was going backward. He deserved it.

“Anyway…” Will frowned at me like I was the one in the wrong. Please. How could he have let her kiss him knowing she wasn’t me?

“I got to the house and Misty opened the door,” he said, carefully negotiating his way down the first couple of steps.

It took me a second to realize he was acquiescing to my previous request and going over the events I’d missed at Misty’s house.

“She seemed to know something was up with…Ally.” He shook his head. “But she didn’t say anything to me, at least not right away.”

“Or maybe not. Maybe she didn’t notice anything at all, since evidently we’re completely interchangeable in that body anyway,” I muttered, feeling the need to be a little nasty.

He looked at me pointedly, and I looked down, past Ed’s feet, to see my own, flickering. Sigh. “I realize you are just trying to be helpful.” Weak, in terms of a nice thing to say, but it must have worked, as I stopped flickering. For now.

“But then we walked into the kitchen,” he continued, “and I saw you…well, I thought it was you, all cozied up with Leanne Whitaker, which was weird.” He paused, waiting for me to feel my way over the edge of the first step down with my foot. “Even weirder, considering your fixation with germs.”

I glared at him as I took the next step. “It’s not a fixation. Do you know how many diseases you can get by sharing food?”

“No, but I bet you do,” he said under his breath, struggling as he started around the curve in the stairs.

“Fine. Make fun until you…” I stopped, pieces clicking together in my brain, creating a horrible new picture. “Wait. Wait a minute.”

Will looked up, concerned.

“I was…” I grimaced and corrected myself. “She was with Leanne, and Leanne was playing nice?”

He nodded.

My heart sank. “Oh, crap.” I dropped Ed’s feet, and gravity pulled him toward Will. Will stumbled down another couple of steps, Ed’s momentum pushing him backward.

“Hey,” he protested. “What are you—”

“I know where Erin is,” I said grimly.

“You can’t be sure,” I said to Alona. But I was beginning to think it might be wishful thinking, rather than a rational argument, that kept me fighting.

With Ed now safely tucked into the backseat of my car—without notice from the neighbors, as far as we could tell—we were heading out of town, but Alona and I were still arguing over her assertion that she knew where Erin was, or, rather, where Erin would be. Shocking, I know.

Alona rolled her eyes. “Oh, please. It’s simple deductive reasoning. Leanne wants the biggest train wreck she can find, and Erin is only too happy to oblige.” She slumped back in the passenger seat.

To be fair, Alona wasn’t particularly thrilled about the possibility of being right in this instance, either. But she wasn’t backing down.

“Leanne asked her to the party, just like she was talking about doing when I heard her, and Erin, in her quest to create her own personal version of Girls Gone Wild, said yes.” Alona shook her head. “There’s no other way this could have gone down.” Though she sounded like maybe she wished there were.

Ben Rogers’s back-to-school bash in the woods behind his McMansion was an annual tradition, a final good-bye for the seniors leaving for college, and this year, most likely, one last chance for skeevy Ben to hit on the vulnerable and naive underclassmen girls heading back to Groundsboro High. Yeah, he was thatguy.

It was also, quite possibly, the worst place in the world for Erin/Lily to be, given everything that had transpired the last time Lily had been at one of Ben’s parties. A humiliating and very public breakup with the king of the asshats, Rogers himself, followed by a horrible car accident. It was that accident that had sent her spirit on to the light but, in a quirk of fate, left her body damaged, though still functioning, and open to possession.

Of course, only Alona and I knew that. To the rest of the world, Lily had survived and had recently woken up unexpectedly from a nearly yearlong coma.

Which was exactly why Leanne Whitaker, gossip-monger and instigator galore, might want to engineer this particular disaster-waiting-to-happen. Everyone would be watching, if not openly mocking, the person they thought was Lily Turner, and God only knew what Erin would do in response or retaliation or by just not giving a damn about who she was supposed to be. She’d have no clue what she was walking into.

It might also be the worst conceivable place from which to rescue Lily and/or confront Erin. For Alona, it was okay. None of the partygoers would be able to see her, except for Erin. In fact, because Erin would likely be able see her—and probably deduce our plan from Alona’s presence—it would be better if Alona stayed hidden until the last possible second.

But me…I’d be the one who’d have to march in there and try to find Erin/Lily and drag her out. Dealing with Ben and his crowd—Alona’s former friends—at school was bad enough. Walking into one of their parties, though, struck me as potentially life threatening. We’d all graduated, yeah, but I wasn’t stupid enough to think that the lines that had divided us and the labels that identified us had gone away overnight. In terms of social status (and cafeteria seating), this crowd was first-tier—or desperately aspiring second-tier people—and I was off the chart, and not in the good way.

Walking into an event to cause trouble, where I’d be outnumbered, oh, about fifty to one, was not something to take lightly. Especially when Ben and his ilk had shown no compunction in the past about proving their points with their fists.

The thought made me queasy.

“It’s a leap, and not one I want to make unless we’re sure.” In addition to my own desire to survive the ordeal with the least number of broken bones possible, I also didn’t want to waste time unnecessarily in the search for Erin/Lily. Alona might not have it to spare.

“You don’t know them like I know them,” Alona reminded me.

“Thank God for that,” I muttered.

She sighed loudly over Ed’s drunken snoring in the back. “I can prove it.”

I snorted. “Right. How?”

She shrugged. “Call Misty.”

I laughed before realizing she was serious. “You want me to call your former best friend, the current commander in chief of the snob patrol, for help? Why would she want to help us on this?” Yeah, she’d tipped me off that something was wrong with “Ally” earlier, but I wasn’t sure if her generosity would stretch this far, especially if her friends—well, Leanne, at least—were heading up this scheme.

Alona glared at me, probably for the snob-patrol comment. “Because, as far as she knows, you and your strange friend ‘Ally’ saved her ass from me, the big, bad, evil spirit haunting her, remember?” She lifted a shoulder. “And she’s not that bad.”

A far cry from the evil incarnate she’d believed Misty to be only a few months ago.

“Trust me, she’ll do it,” she said, holding her hand out for my phone.

“What is that, exactly?” I asked, not making a move to give my phone to her.

“She’ll tell us for sure whether Erin will be there tonight,”she said impatiently.

I turned on to the highway, pointing us toward Decatur and Groundsboro. “And how is she going to do that? It’s only eight thirty, and you said his parties don’t get going until later.”

“Because if Leanne is up to something, she’ll brag about it to Misty. That’s just the way it works,” she said, in a tone that suggested I’d questioned the laws of gravity.

“Fine,” I muttered. I pulled my phone from my pocket and slapped it into her palm. At least, that was the plan. What happened, though, was it slipped through her faded and flickering hand to the seat below and then bounced to the floor.

Panic lit up my insides. I swerved to the side of the road, ignoring annoyed honks from the drivers around me, and stopped on the shoulder. “Are you okay?” I asked, hurriedly putting the car in park. Behind us, Ed continued to snore peacefully.

Alona wouldn’t look at me, focusing instead on the dashboard. “Just give me a second,” she said.

She whispered to herself, too quietly for me to hear over the noise of passing cars, but after a long heart-stopping moment, her physicality returned, shifting her from see-through and kind of blurry to solid once more.

I bent down and retrieved the phone, resisting the urge to ask once again if she was all right. The truth was, she wasn’t, and she wouldn’t be. And there was nothing she and I could do about it now, except all that we were already doing.

I silently held the phone out to her, but instead of reaching for it, she turned to stare out the window and rattled off Misty’s number. It sent a chill through me, seeing her remove herself from the action, like she’d already given up in some way.

I had to have her repeat the number so I could punch it in, and as the phone started to ring on the other end, I put it on speakerphone.

“Hello?” Misty answered, in the suspicious voice of one who doesn’t recognize the number on her caller ID.

“Hi, Misty, it’s, uh, Will Killian. From before?” I shifted in my seat and looked at Alona for reassurance.

She waved me on, impatient, but a weak imitation of what it would have been under other circumstances.

“Yeah?” Misty sounded wary.

“I’m sorry to bother you, but I’m looking for my friend, the one who was at your house today?” I wasn’t sure whether to call her Lily or Ally.

Misty huffed loudly. “Why are you asking me? She left here with you.”

“I know, but—”

“And her mom has been calling over here, all freaked out about her being gone.”

Crap. I’d forgotten about that.

“What did you tell her?” I asked. If she’d so much as hinted to Mrs. Turner that Lily was going to this party . . .

“Same thing I’m going to tell you. She left with you, and I haven’t seen her since.” Misty’s voice rose on a defensive note at the end.

I gave Alona an I-told-you-so look.

Alona shook her head. “She knows, though. She alwaysknows. Leanne can’t do anything without an audience.”

A rustling came through from Misty’s side, followed by a loud clatter and a stream of swearwords. “Look, I have to go. I’m trying to get ready and—”

I took a deep breath, banking on Alona knowing these people as well as she claimed to. “Leanne invited her to Ben’s party tonight, didn’t she?”

Misty sucked in a breath. “How did you know that? How do you even know there’s a party?” She made it sound like I’d somehow managed to crack the complicated code surrounding their supersecret elite activities. Like I’d been blind, deaf, and dumb through four years of high school.

I ignored her words and the insult behind them. “Did Lily say she was going?”

She was quiet for a long moment, and I thought we might have lost our connection, but just as I tipped the phone up to check, Misty sighed.

“Look,” she said wearily. “I don’t want any part in this. This last year has been hard enough—”

Alona gave me a satisfied nod. “Told you.”

“Just tell me what happened,” I said to Misty.

“Leanne invited her over to pregame and to go to Ben’s party together. But I don’t know if the girl’s actually going. I mean, everyone’s going to be there, including Ben. And they’re going to make fun of her. She has to know that.” Misty hesitated. “She’d have to be stupid…or crazy.”

Neither of which we could rule out in this situation.

“Thanks, Misty.” I moved to hang up.

“Wait,” she said quickly. “You’re not actually going to goto the party, are you?”

I didn’t say anything; better not to give anyone forewarning. Maybe I’d be able to get in and get Erin/Lily out without notice.

“Listen, I appreciate everything you did,” she said in a rush. “It helps me to know Alona is at peace.”

Next to me, the girl in question rolled her eyes.

“But you have to know that going to Ben’s tonight…that’s a bad idea.” She sounded almost worried. “Like, a reallybad idea.”

I grimaced. “Thanks, I’ll keep that in mind,” I said, and disconnected.

Unfortunately, bad ideas, really bad ideas, were the only ones we had.