Текст книги "Body and Soul"

Автор книги: Стэйси Кейд

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Текущая страница: 7 (всего у книги 16 страниц)

I couldn’t believe Alona. I pounded my fist against the steering wheel in frustration.

Though, really, shouldn’t you have known she was going to pull something like this?my logical side asked, deciding to put in a belated appearance. After all, Alona was not one to heroically suffer looking anything less than the best she thought she was capable of at any given moment. In fact, it was a little surprising it had taken her a month to get to this point.

And my reaction? You definitely could have handled that better.

Shut up,I told that censorious voice in my head.

That icy expression she’d worn before kissing me off had given me a sick feeling. It reminded me too much of the one she’d paraded around behind at school, back in her original body. That was Alona Dare—perfect, cool, untouchable. The irony was, of course, that it proved I was right in my long-running argument with her: it was more about attitude than actual appearance. But I didn’t feel I’d be helping myself by bringing that up today.

She looked good, and she knew it. For a second, I could see her stepping up and taking this life for her own, becoming the “Ally” she’d created in the space that used to be Lily’s.

True, she didn’t have her original body, and I was sure that that would have been her first choice if it had been remotely possible, which it wasn’t. But with what she’d done today—the clothes, her hair—it was clear she was growing more comfortable with being Ally, making that persona her own.

It was conceivable that one day she’d be comfortable enough with the new and improved Ally that she might not want to leave.

And if she didn’t want out anymore, she wouldn’t, in theory, need me any longer. There would be nothing keeping us together. That realization struck with cold, hard force, distracting me. A car horn blared, and I looked up to find myself crossing the yellow lines. Heart pounding, I jerked the wheel to keep the car on my side of the road.

I’d always considered, in the back of my mind, the possibility of losing her. To the light, to her own stubborn refusal to keep her energy level up by being positive. But the longer we’d been together, the less I liked to think about it, shoving it further and further down in my thoughts. I couldn’t imagine my life without her, in one form or another, and I didn’t want to think about her being taken away. I’d never thought about the fact she might walkaway.

I swallowed hard, fighting against the panicky feeling clawing at my chest. Yeah, in Lily’s body, she could hear and sort of see ghosts, which would make her life more complicated; but it wasn’t like I could help her with any of that. I’d needed herto help me.

Besides, she didn’t seem to need much assistance in that area. She was handling it better than I was.

No. I shook my head. I was being ridiculous. There was no way that she’d ever voluntarily stay in Lily’s body.

The only reason she’d even pulled this extreme-makeover routine was because she was unhappy with how she looked, finding Lily’s appearance inferior to her original body. Hadn’t we been fighting about that only yesterday?

So our problem was still the same as it had ever been: we had to find a way to get her out without hurting Lily.

I tried to feel as reassured by this line of thought as I had been over the last month, but it wasn’t working this time.

And then what?that pushy voice returned to ask.

Having started down this path of thinking, the conclusion was impossible to avoid. Assuming I could get Alona back as a spirit guide, things would go back to normal. We’d be helping ghosts between make-out sessions, and all would be great with the world…for a while.

But I was getting older and she wasn’t. I’d go to Richmond for classes and meet people who didn’t know her. If I wanted to go out and grab pizza with someone, either Alona couldn’t go or she’d have to tag along as a spectator and keep quiet, astate I couldn’t even imagine.

One day I’d be twenty-five and then thirty-five, forty-five.…She’d still be eighteen. At some point, that was going to get creepy, even beyond the living/dead issue we had going already. And maybe not now, or even in ten years, but I might want the possibility of a family. I couldn’t see any woman, even one cool enough to handle the fact that her husband talked to the dead on a regular basis, being okay with a spirit guide who looked like an eighteen-year-old cheerleader hanging around, especially if she knew there’d once been kissing. And, for that matter, I couldn’t see Alona being happy in that situation, either. I might not have been Chris Zebrowski, but sharing attention was not something Alona did well with anyone.

I imagined an argument with a wife or a girlfriend on one side, Alona on the other and me in the middle. I shuddered. No way.

Suddenly I was afraid that no matter what happened, I was going to be saying good-bye to her, one way or another.

As soon as I pulled into the strip-mall parking lot, I noticed with a rush of dread that Malachi’s window sign—a neon outline of a hand with an eye in the center—was dark.

Crap, crap, crap.

I parked as fast as I could and approached his storefront cautiously. I didn’t particularly want another run-in with Erin. But the lights were off and the waiting room was empty, of ghosts and living alike.

I pulled on the door handle. Locked. Malachi the Magnificent was closed, despite the decal in the lower part of the window proclaiming hours that would have indicated otherwise.

I resisted a stupid urge to punch the glass. Without any other way to contact him, I was out of luck if he’d holed up somewhere. Apparently, he’d been really scared yesterday, another piece of this that made no sense.

Putting my hands up to block the light, I tried to get a better look through the window. Most of the chairs were now stacked three or four high, and the receptionist’s desk had been shoved back against the wall. Either Malachi had a very dedicated cleaning team, or he was gone…for good.

And it keeps getting better.

But as I started to move away from the window, I caught a flicker of light. Pressing my hands tighter against the glass to block out more of the sunlight, I searched for what I’d seen.

There. Underneath the door to the private consultation area, territory Alona and I had not managed to breach yesterday, a fine line of light flashed and then dimmed. Like someone was moving around back there.

Malachi.

I considered knocking, hammering on the door in case he hadn’t heard me trying to open it a minute ago, but what were the odds he’d actually open it if he saw me standing there?

At times like this I wished for Alona to be here in spirit form. She’d have slipped through a window on the far end and unlocked the door to let me in.

But maybe there was another way.

One of my responsibilities during my short stint as a busboy at Sam’s Diner had been taking the garbage out to the Dumpsters in the alley. The strip mall on the block behind the diner had its back to us. If I remembered correctly, all the units had doors in the back. And on any given day, most of those doors remained unlocked or even propped open for the ease of employees’ coming and going.

I jogged around to the side of the building and then to the back. As I’d suspected, several of the green doors stood open, and a couple of employees from a cell-phone store stood outside smoking. The door corresponding to Malachi’s location was closed, but a battered blue van was parked in front of it, with the cargo doors open.

Score.

I approached the van cautiously, wary of Erin and afraid Malachi might bolt if he saw me.

But Erin was nowhere to be seen, and Malachi wasn’t in the van, at least as far as I could tell. Hastily filled cardboard boxes dominated the cargo area in the vehicle, and the driver’s seat appeared to be empty.

I stepped away and started toward the back door to Malachi’s storefront. Before I could reach it, though, the door opened, and the man himself emerged, carrying another worn-looking box. Minus his cape and with his hair sticking up in several directions, he looked more like a harried delivery guy than someone with “Magnificent” in his title.

He saw me and froze, the box slipping in his hand, like he might drop it and run. Then his shoulders sagged and he just looked exhausted. “We’re leaving, okay? In a matter of minutes.” He brushed past me, heading toward the van.

“Wait,” I said, hurrying after him. “I just want to talk to you.”

He shoved the box into the van and turned to face me, raking a hand through his already rumpled hair. “Look, we got the message the first time. We shouldn’t have stayed, but no one else came around.” He shrugged helplessly. “We were subtle, careful not to overdo it—”

“I know,” I said. “That’s what I want to ask about.”

He stared at me. “Who are you again?”

“Will Killian.”

He nodded slowly. “I think I met your—”

“My dad?” I ventured.

He nodded. “That was a few years ago,” he said, seemingly trying to piece something together. “You’re not a member of the Order.”

It was a statement, but I could hear the uncertainty in it, the question.

I shook my head. “No.”

“Well,” he said, “that’s a relief.” But he looked almost disappointed, which made no sense. “So, what do you want?”

“Just to talk,” I said again. “There aren’t many of us who can…” I hesitated, glancing at the cell-phone store employees, who were watching us with unabashed curiosity. “Not many who can do what we do.” Assuming he was legit, which I still wasn’t sure about. But if he was, he might have some major skills worth learning. Like how he’d managed to ignore the ghosts in his office so completely.

“No, no.” He shook his head. “If you figured us out, someone else isn’t far behind, and I can’t take that chance.” He slammed the van doors shut and headed for the front of the vehicle.

I followed him. “I didn’t figure anything out. Your name was on this paper my dad left, that’s all.” I pulled the page from my pocket, unfolded it, and held it out to him.

He glanced at it, his face tightening.

“I was hoping you might have some answers,” I said.

He laughed, but it sounded bitter. “Kid, the day I have anything other than questions, you’ll be the first to know.” He pulled open the driver’s-side door and levered himself into the seat.

Kid?He wasn’t even ten years older than me. I’d thought it was bad when the Order had been bent on recruiting me as some kind of prodigy. But it was infinitely worse, as it turned out, to be treated like a nonentity, someone not important enough to talk to. I’d expected that in high school, from people who didn’t understand. But from this guy? No way.

“Look, I don’t need the mysteries of the universe explained,” I said, getting pissed. “I just want to know how you keep from being overwhelmed.” I wanted to ask him about Alona’s situation, too, but I wasn’t stupid. He was a stranger with potentially shady business practices and an overly aggressive spirit guide. Caution seemed like the smarter route, at least until I got a better feel for his character. He might not be a member of the Order, but I couldn’t be sure that he wouldn’t trade information on us to save his own skin.

He shook his head at me again, like I was speaking Japanese despite having been told that he wasn’t fluent. “Don’t you have anyone else to ask about this? Where is your dad?” he asked.

“Dead.” I folded up the page from the phone book and tucked it carefully into my pocket. “Killed himself. Almost four years ago.” Those words came out more readily now, after so much time, but they were never easy to say.

Malachi sat back in his seat, startled. “I’m sorry,” he said after a long pause. “I didn’t know.”

It wasn’t something discussed openly at our house, obviously, and I doubted my mother had given much information publicly, in an obituary or anything, if at all. I didn’t like bringing it up now, feeling like I was somehow using what had happened to get sympathy or manipulate him into giving me answers. But it was, in fact, the truth. I couldn’t go to my father because he was dead. And he was dead because he’d wanted it that way.

So I made myself wait, squelching the intense urge to say, “Forget it,” and walk away.

Malachi gave a heavy sigh. “All right. He did me a favor once. I suppose I owe you the same.”

Guilt and relief competed for priority, with relief winning out only by a slight margin. “Thanks,” I said.

He stepped down from the van. “Five minutes. That’s it.”

The back room in Malachi’s storefront was decidedly utilitarian and boring, not at all what I’d expected. Walking through the door, I saw a small kitchen/storage area to the right and a tiny bathroom to the left. The main area, where’d Malachi had obviously performed his spirit “consultations,” was a wood-paneled room with cheap white shelving lining the walls and a table and chairs in the center.

There were signs, though, that the decor had once been more exotic, or at least aimed to be. Puddles of purple candle wax stained almost every square inch of the shelving. The metal curtain rod that hung behind the door to the waiting room still held a strand or two of dark beads.

“Crystal ball is already in the van,” Malachi said from behind me, as if all too aware of how mundane the space appeared now.

I couldn’t tell if he was kidding.

He pushed past me and dragged a chair away from the table and gestured for me to sit in it. “Ask. Let’s go.”

He hadn’t been joking about the five-minutes thing, evidently.

“Uh, okay.” I sat down, even though his nervous/twitchy energy was enough to make me want to pace instead. “When I was here the other day, you had me fooled. I would have sworn you were a fake. It was like you didn’t even hear or see the ghosts in the waiting room. Where did you learn to do that? To tune them out like that?”

He gave me a tight smile. “I’m not sure that’s something I can teach.”

“Seriously, you’re going to pull this ‘it’s a trade secret’ bullshit on me? This is my life. I’m just trying to survive.” Before he could respond, I pushed further, struck by a sudden idea. “Is it something Erin does?” She was powerful beyond anything I’d ever seen.

He paled. “Erin. You talked to her?”

Uh-oh.Maybe not the best idea to bring up disloyal spirit guides when I was trying to get the guy’s help. “Yeah, she came to see me, but—”

He stalked forward until he was right in front of my chair. “What did she say? Did she claim you?” He leaned over me, suddenly much too close.

Whoa. He’d gone from zero to crazy intense in the space of a few seconds.

I shifted away from him. “Look, I didn’t say yes or anything.” Not that it had mattered. But whatever; Malachi didn’t need to know that. “She was just—”

“You said no?” he asked in disbelief. “Did that stop her?”

My head was spinning, trying to keep up with this conversation. “Uh, no. But it didn’t work. I think the bond with my spirit guide might somehow still be active, even though she’s not exactly here anymore.” That was the only explanation I’d come up with that made any kind of sense.

He laughed, too loud and long. “It didn’t work?” He straightened up and raked his hands through his hair. “Of course not. The first one strong enough to tempt her, and it didn’t work. Unbelievable.” He dropped to his knees, as though his legs wouldn’t support him further, and rubbed his forehead as if he were in pain.

“Are you okay?” I asked cautiously.

“I’m great. Can’t you tell?” he snapped, his face still in his hands.

Okaaay, then.He wouldn’t be the first ghost-talker to have lost possession of his marbles.

Fighting disappointment, I looked past him toward the door. I could make a run for it, no problem. But that would be the end of this conversation, and any future conversation with him, guaranteed. I wouldn’t get this opportunity again. And the answers I wanted might be here, just buried under a few layers of whack job.

“Did you want it to? Work, I mean?” I asked carefully, digging a little to piece together what was going on without making him completely flip out. If Erin was the source of his ability to control what he heard/saw, why would he want to get rid of her? Yeah, she seemed to have that same attitude problem Alona occasionally had, but it would be worth it for the kind of peace he appeared to have.

He looked up at me, dark circles under his eyes clearly visible for the first time. “For the last five years I’ve been haunted every single waking minute of every day,” he said, and laughed, but it sounded weak and sad. “Hell, for that matter, sometimes she wakes me up.”

“I don’t understand.” Which was a massive understatement.

He stood up abruptly, pulled out the chair next to mine, and sat in it, leaning toward me. “You want to know how I ignore all those other ghosts? The ones you said were in the waiting room?”

Given the strange, almost fevered expression on his face, I wasn’t so sure I did want to know anymore. But I was in it too deeply already.

I nodded.

“I don’t. I can’t see them.”

It took me a second to catch on. “You mean you can only hear them.” It wouldn’t be all that surprising, given what I’d learned from Mina. There were varying levels of ability among ghost-talkers. Even Mina herself had trouble tracking ghosts when they moved.

“No,” he said with exaggerated patience. “I mean, I can’t see them, hear them, or even tell they’re there.”

I frowned. “I don’t—”

“I can only see and hear one ghost.” He held up a finger to illustrate his point. “That is, if I’m not completely crazy, which is always a possibility.” He threw his hands up. “Maybe this is all part of one giant hallucination. Maybe I’m lying somewhere in a drug-induced coma, and this is all in my mind.” He sighed and then shook his head. “Wouldn’t that be nice?” he asked, more to himself than me.

I gaped at him.

Malachi noticed before I could recover myself. “Happy now?” he asked. “Got all the answers you want?”

I shook my head. “That doesn’t make any sense.”

“If it’s any consolation, that’s pretty much the reaction the other guy—your dad, I guess—had, too.”

“You’re talking about Erin?” I asked, to be sure.

“The one and only,” he said with a bitter smile.

That wasn’t possible. You either had the gift or you didn’t, with varying degrees in between. It wasn’t localized to specific ghosts. It couldn’t be. It would be like being able to smell only one scent or see one color. “Well, she’s not a hallucination,” I said. “I can tell you that much. I’ve seen her, too.”

He just looked at me. “Reassurance from someone else who might be a hallucination doesn’t really help.”

I opened my mouth and closed it before trying again. “Maybe you should start at the beginning.” I was starting to think he might not be crazy; crazy people don’t usually bother to question their own sanity. “Has it always been this way? When did you start seeing her?” Maybe he’d suffered some kind of traumatic brain injury or something. That might explain why he could see only one ghost…or why he thought he might be hallucinating.

“What’s the point?” He laughed. “You’re going to help me? You came to mefor help.”

“Just…start talking,” I persisted. If there was ever anyone who could have been helped by the Order and their tactics, it would have been this guy. But he’d clearly been afraid of them tracking him down, even running from me when he’d thought I was one of them. So my curiosity was going to get the better of me on this one. And who knew, maybe I could help him. He looked like he needed it.

He sagged back in his chair. “I don’t…Everything was fine until Erin died.”

“You knew her before, then?”

He looked as if I’d asked the stupidest question possible. “She’s my sister. My twin?”

“Oh,” I said. I never would have guessed that. Maybe some resemblance around the eyes. Maybe. Her hair was a darker red and not nearly as wild as his. The features that made her look pretty and petite kind of gave him a happy-gnome appearance.

“My fraternal twin, obviously,” he said, sounding huffy.

“You’re twins and your parents named you Malachi and Erin?” I asked in disbelief. He’d definitely gotten the short end of the stick there.

“My real name is Edmund,” he said stiffly.

I grimaced. Not much better than Malachi. I thought about apologizing but figured it would only make things worse, so I stayed quiet and waited for him to continue.

“Erin had an accident at school. When we were freshmen in college.” He looked down at his hands. “When they called me to the hospital after she fell, she was already…gone. I was standing there, staring at this empty body that used to be my sister, trying to figure out how I was going to do this. You know, life. How I was going to be alone, you know? For the first time ever.” He rubbed his eyes as if the image was burned onto the back of his eyelids and he wanted to remove it.

He forced a laugh and opened his eyes. “When I was seven and joined the Cub Scouts, Erin would scream and cry until she made herself sick while I was gone at meetings. Eventually, it was easier not to go.”

That sounded a little unhealthy, actually.

“In the summers, our grandparents wanted us to visit for a week separately, part of that whole giving-twins-individual-attention thing.” He lifted his shoulders in a defeated manner. “She pulled the same crap, carrying on and screaming until they brought her home. After that, we always went together.”

Scratch that. A lot unhealthy.

“Erin was always the one who decided everything. What clubs we should join, who we should take to the prom, where we should sit at lunch. It was just easier that way. She’s three minutes older than me. She always knew what we wanted. Or,” he said with heavy sigh, “what she wanted and what I’d go along with.”

He looked up at me. “It was my fault, too. She was pushy and controlling, but I let her. She was the one who faced the world, and all I had to do was follow along in her wake. I didn’t have to stand up for myself, didn’t have to fight.”

I shifted uncomfortably in my chair. That sounded a little too familiar, maybe.

“I didn’t know what to do when she died,” he said. “It was like losing part of me, an arm or a leg or something.” He shook his head. “I didn’t know how to function without her. I needed her, so I wished for her to come back. Harder than I’ve ever wished for anything. I was desperate.”

I leaned forward in my chair, suddenly aware of where this story was headed.

He sighed heavily. “And then she just showed up…and started talking. Yelling, actually,” he amended. “Even after my parents got to the hospital, I was still the only one who could hear her. It freaked me out at first. I tried to ignore it—her—but she saw me, knew I was looking at her.” He shrugged helplessly. “After that, she never left. The doctors said it was grief or shock or depression. Then my parents got involved and tried to have me committed.”

Oh, I knew that feeling. I thought I’d had it hard, but to live an otherwise normal life for eighteen years and then to start seeing your dead sister everywhere…that was worse. What I could do was difficult, but at least it had the potential to be beneficial. What Malachi/Edmund had going on was torture.

Although I’d never heard of anyone developing ghost-talker abilities overnight like that. That was odd.

“Erin warned me about what my parents were planning, and we left in the middle of the night.” He lifted his shoulders heavily. “Haven’t been back home since.”

“What does she want?” I was ashamed to realize I hadn’t even bothered to ask her that myself, when she’d shown up at my house. Then again, she’d shown up at my house.

“What do you mean?”

“I mean, ghosts usually have unresolved issues, unfinished business keeping them from moving into the light,” I said.

He stared at me blankly.

“You’ve never seen the light.” Of course not. If he could only see one ghost, and she was still here, he’d have had no opportunity to do so. “Well, look, it’s there. It works, trust me. There’s a system. All you have to do is figure out what she wants, what issues are holding her here and—”

He shook his head with a harsh laugh. “You’re not getting it. Her unresolved business? She wants to be alive again. Isn’t that what they all want?”

I didn’t know what to say. If that was the case, there wasn’t much hope for Erin. She must have been holding on to her in-between state with sheer strength.

“As long as she’s with me, someone can hear and see her,” Edmund said wearily. “She can have indirect contact with the living world. I’ve tried to leave, but she always finds me.”

Erin was using her brother as a lifeline. I was beginning to see why he was stuck and why my dad hadn’t called the Order down on him. She was wrong to be taking advantage the way she was, but how could you ask him to turn on his sister?

“And from what your dad told me about his gift—and yours, too, I guess—with someone like you, she’d have the ability to touch stuff again, pick things up.” He sighed. “That’s one step closer.”

“That doesn’t happen with you?” I asked.

He shook his head. “Your dad didn’t understand it either.”

I was beginning to wonder if he was even a ghost-talker at all. The ability didn’t develop overnight, at least not that I’d ever heard of. He could see and hear only one ghost, and he didn’t have to deal with the added effect of giving her physicality, probably the most common (and dangerous) effect of our gift. It sounded more like he was being haunted by someone he was specially connected to. The twin thing, operating even postlife, perhaps? Like he’d pulled her spirit to him, and the bond between them allowed them to communicate still.

“Don’t worry. Now that she’s tried it with you once, and it didn’t work, she probably won’t try again,” he said, trying to be reassuring. “Besides, we need to be moving on anyway. We’ve stayed in one place for too long as it is.” He stood up and shoved his chair back in place at the table.

I shook my head. “If you stay, maybe we can find a way to—”

“Someone’s going to run the numbers soon, like the Order did when they sent your dad to investigate. Too many hauntings, too close together. It raises a red flag with the statistics they track, I guess. He covered for us last time, but it’ll happen again, and I’m betting we won’t be as lucky with whoever they send to investigate.”

Actually, given what I knew about the Order and the dwindling number of those qualified enough to be considered full members, he and Erin might be safer than they thought just from the Order’s sheer lack of manpower to investigate things like wonky statistics. But that wasn’t what caught my attention. “Too many hauntings? Why would you have any control over that?”

He looked uncomfortable. “I thought you understood. She’s the only one I can see.”

I still wasn’t getting it.

“I can’t go out and find business on my own,” he said with exaggerated patience. “She passes messages along from those she finds, but sometimes making a connection between a ghost and someone who lives locally and is willing to come in…It’s a bit iffy.”

In other words, Erin didn’t feel like doing the work, and without her eyes and ears, he couldn’t do it for himself.

“So, sometimes we have to help things along,” he said, studying the carpet with more intensity than it deserved.

Wait.I sat up straight in my chair. “Are you saying she haunts people to drive business?”

“Only when we need the money,” he said defensively. “And it keeps her busy.”

Jesus.Pieces of this began to fall into place. Misty thinking Alona was haunting her. The letter/coupon that his testimonials had mentioned. “You send Erin out to haunt someone if they know someone who died recently?”

“Depends on what the newspaper says,” he mumbled.

And Misty had probably been featured prominently in the articles about Alona’s tragic, untimely death, as her distraught best friend.

“What, like, if they have money?” Misty didn’t have money, but it wouldn’t take much research to figure out her parents were probably doing okay.

He didn’t respond, just shifted his weight awkwardly.

“And then once you’ve scared them, you send them that stupid letter and coupon, bringing them right to your door.” It was brilliant. And utterly creepy.

“Do you think this is fun for me?” he demanded. “I’d have a regular job if I could, but she won’t let me! Besides, it’s not your problem anymore,” he said pointedly. “As soon as Erin gets back, we’re leaving, remember?”

So they could inflict this scam on innocent people in some other town? No way. Not if I could stop it. “Where is Erin, anyway?” If she couldn’t stand to go a minute without being heard or seen by a living person, as he claimed, then she’d been gone for a while now.

He grimaced. “I couldn’t tell her we were leaving. It…it would upset her. She’s out visiting clients.”

“You mean, she’s haunting people.” I shook my head in disgust. “I can’t believe I was feeling sorry for you, and you’re—” I stopped, struck by a horrible, awful thought.

“Who is she ‘visiting’ today?” I asked, forcing the words out, caught in the inescapable conclusion that I could see barreling toward me.

He appeared taken aback by the intensity in my voice. “I…I don’t know.”

I stood up and shoved him against the shelving. “Think!”

“We don’t have that many on the line right now,” he said, his voice shaking. “Just Mrs. Baxter, the guy who owns the dry cleaner’s, and the girl.”

Misty.Which was exactly where Alona happened to be at this particular moment. Damn it.If Erin tried to claim “Ally,” that would be bad. I didn’t know what would happen. It would be worse, though—much worse—if Erin figured out what made Ally so different. A powerful ghost who wanted nothing more than to be alive again in the presence of a body she knew was currently occupied by a spirit?

Not good.

I let go of Malachi/Edmund and ran for the back door. “You stay here,” I called to him over my shoulder. “We’re not done yet.”

I just hoped the same could be said for Alona and Lily.