Afterlife (21 page)

“Maxie can do it.”

“At times, but not easily, save for when she is in your
presence,” Christopher said. “You are able to sense other wraiths, something
very few of us can do. Sometimes we are invisible to one another, particularly
for those who remain lost and frightened in the mortal world. Once we have
established communication with each other, it is easier, but it is never easy.”

I realized what he was getting at. “You want me to help you
find those people. To make them let go of the sickness inside before they get
permanently screwed up.”

“While they have a chance to come here and find
restoration.”

“You want me to help ftnd every ghost in the whole world?”

He shook his head. “Most can fmd their way here eventually.
But those who cannot — for their sakes, and the sakes of those they come to
torment on earth — you have the power to reach them. To guide them. To help
them ftnd their way here. You can travel between worlds, Bianca. You are a
bridge between the worlds of the living and the dead.”

Those distant clouds weren’t so distant anymore; the entire
sky seemed to me to be darkening, although sunlight shone down on everyone
else.

The cool, damp breeze that rushed through my hair didn’t
touch anybody else on the road. I realized that the skies above were, for each
person here, a reflection of their spirit; as I grew more afraid and unsure,
the storm came.

Christopher didn’t answer. “This work is important. It will
demand much of you. But the good you could do is beyond measure.”

I agreed with him. It sounded worthwhile — more than
worthwhile. Important. The kind of thing I’d wanted to spend my afterlife
doing. But the 137 idea of letting go of the people I
loved
!held
me back. “Why don’t you do it? You’re so super — powerful and
everything, according to Maxie.”

“I was not born to the wraiths. I have not your natural
power. My talents are meaner, and self — taught over time.”

“Why don’t you train everyone else here to do the same?”

“They are not as powerfully anchored to the mortal realm as
I have been,” he said. His gaze was distant. “My connection has lasted longer
than most, more intimately than most.”

Lightning flashed, and I felt rain begin to patter onto my
hair and jeans, despite the fact that nobody else was getting wet. “I can’t. I’m
sorry — I see that what you want me to be is a good thing — that it’s important
— but I can’ t.”

Christopher didn’t look as discouraged by my refusal as I
would’ve thought. “You have time to consider the matter,” he said. He was
right, of course; we literally had eternity to go over this. As I edged away
from him, already eager to leave, Christopher hurriedly added, “You need not be
entirely separate from those you care for, even here. Your powers would allow
you to hear them.”

“Really?” Not that this was that big a selling point for me —
l mean, I wanted to remain with the people I loved, not just able to reach
them. But knowing that those bonds survived here was encouraging, somehow.

Apparently encouraged himself, Christopher nodded. “Reach
into the depths of your own spirit until you find, within, someone that you
love.” What was that supposed to mean, reach into my own spirit? Then I
remembered what I’d thought about the skies overhead. They were a reflection of
my innermost self; I should concentrate on the darkening storm.

I closed my eyes but could still see the brilliance of the
lightning through my eyelids. Cold raindrops spattered on my face, but I held
out my arms, accepting the storm as part of myself.

And then my eyes flew open wide as I heard my name — as a
scream.

Someone’s in trouble, I realized. My first thought was
Lucas, but I realized that the voice in the thunder sounded familiar.

It sounded like my father.

“DAD,” I WHISPERED. I COULD HEAR HIM — THOUGH “hear” wasn’t
quite the right word. It was more a matter of sensing him, feeling his fear and
anguish through the sound of the thunder and the chill of the wind whipping
around me.

“Will you go to him?” Christopher didn’t seem to approve or
disapprove; he just watched, like he was taking my measure.

Could I face my father again? Face the risk that he would
reject me forever, or turn against me
?

Then the thunder rumbled one more time, and I felt the fear
in my father’s heart more strongly than the fear in my own. Something terrible
was happening, something much more important than the answers I needed. If
Christopher turned against me now — if he tried to trap me in this place — I
had to find Dad if I could.

“Yes,” I
said .
“I’m going.”

Christopher wasn’t angry; that was the first moment I felt
that perhaps I could trust him. “Then I shall hope for your return.”

‘Til come back,” I promised Christopher. “I want to know
more.”

“And I want to tell you.”

“How do I reach my father?”

“When the person you love wishes for you so desperately,”
Christopher said, “you will find it impossible to be anywhere else.”

His face looked sorrowful as he said it, so much so that I
wondered who had wished for him. But I couldn’t worry about Christopher for
very long, not with Dad in danger or despair or whatever it was that clouded
the skies above. I couldn’t worry about myself, either. My fears had been only
a kind of selfishness; I saw that now. This land of lost things gave
everything.
whether
seen or unseen, a brilliant
clarity.

I closed my eyes and thought of my father. For the first
time in months — since I’d died —
!
didn’t just think
of the idea of him. I let myself remember so fully that it filled my heart.
Tucking me into bed when I was a baby. Slow — dancing with Mom while Dinah Washington
played on his old hi — fi. Making small talk with our neighbors in Arrowwood in
an effort to fit in. Taking me to the beach because I loved it, though he hated
sunlight. Griping about having to get up early in the morning, with his hair
sticking out all over the place. Acting out his resurrection from the dead m
with one of my old Ken dolls, to an audience of one very interested little girl
and some highly surprised Barbies. Everything that made him Dad.

When I opened my eyes.
he
was
there.

Or rather, I was back with him, at Evernight. Night had
fallen — no telling how long it had been since I’d left. It had felt like
minutes but could have been hours or days. My father stood in the center of the
school library — The library! I thought, terrified, remembering the trap that
had been here. But Lucas had taken it away, and perhaps it hadn’t been
replaced. I felt fine. My father, on the other hand, seemed to be bracing
himself against high winds. No, not “seemed to” — a gale — force wind had
whipped up inside the room itself, each gust ice cold. I realized he was
trapped; ice had formed between the bookshelves, creating a ten — foot — high
frozen maze with my father in the center and no way out. A blue — gray
shimmering form could just be made out in the far corner, someone skinny to the
point of boniness, very old, almost bald. It could’ve been male or female. It
was certainly a wraith.

“It tries,” the thing wheezed, in a voice that sounded like cracking
ice. I recognized it: one of the Plotters. “It tries, but it’s too stupid to
know what it’s doing wrong.”

Dad said, “You’ll be pulled in. You can’t hold out forever.”
But he didn’t sound like he believed it. His eyes didn’t look angry or scared,
just sad — the way they had when I’d seen him on the couch when I first retumed
to Evernight. The way Lucas had looked when he went into his fatal battle with
Charity. I realized why Dad had been thinking about me, calling to me; my
father believed he was about to die his final death.

He’d been trying to lure this ghost into a trap, I realized —
I could see one of the coppery seashell boxes at his feet, cracked in two and
now apparently powerless. Why was Dad helping Mrs. Bethany?

The wheeze turned into a cackle. “Freeze it cold. Break it
in two. No more head, no more noise.”

Dad’s face didn’t change, because he probably didn’t know
what the wraith was talking about. But I knew. I’d used the power myself — the
ability to reach inside a vampire and turn its body to ice. I’d seen how
powerfully it could hurt vampires, and I didn’t doubt it could kill them.

The wraith swooped down, the malevolent spirit from my worst
nightmares, the embodiment of everything that still terrified me about ghosts.
I didn’t know what to do; I didn’t know if I had any power over other wraiths.
Could it destroy me as well as my father? What could I do
?

Instantly, I thought of my coral bracelet and the records
room, and my spirit rematerialized tl1ere. Vic, who was sitting on a beanbag
and reading a comic book, half snorted, half choked on a mouthful of soda when
I appeared. “Whoa! Bianca, you gotta warn a guy.”

I’d hoped for Lucas or Balthazar.
but
I’d take whatever help I could get; even a simple interruption might make the
wraith leave. “My dad’s in trouble — get to the library! Quick!”

just
as fast, I thought of the
gargoyle outside my old window — and I was there, hovering outside my old room.
It was worth scaring the crap out of my mother if that got her down to the
library to help Dad, but she Wasn’t there. Frustrated, I zipped down along the
stones, seeking a familiar face; luckily, Patrice was there, alone, putting the
fmishing touches on her manicure. I realized she was the one I’d needed all
along. I frosted the window so fast it shook, and she opened it to thrust her
head outside. “Bianca?”

“The library! Bring your mirror, now!”

I have to get back to Dad. But the tether I’d traveled along
before had snapped; that kind of connection didn’t seem to work here in the
mortal world. I’d have to take the long way. The only way to avoid leaving ice
in my wake was to calm down and slow down, but this was no time for that.

I zoomed through Patrice’s room and down the hallways,
ignoring the frost and the eerie blue lights that rippled around me, eve n when
the other students began to scream. Skye, emerging from the shower, nearly
dropped her towel, and I could see the wet strands of her hair freezing into
icy points. Sony, I thought absently. I couldn’t worry about anyone right now
besides my father.

My journey to the library probably took no more than a
couple of minutes, but it seemed like eternity. When I went through the doors,
a quick swipe of wood through my whole body, I cotuld see flickering blue light
reflecting on and within what was now an enormous cage of ice. Somewhere in the
middle of that crackling, sparkling prison was my dad. I pushed through the ice
to the center.

There, to my horror, I saw Dad — swaying on his feet,
leaning back at an impossible angle, pushing desperately against the fist of
ice that was buried within his chest.

The wraith cackled. “Stupid it. Stupid it.”

“Get away from him!” I screamed. Not knowing what else to
do, I threw myself into it from the side, as hard as I could. It simply went
filmy and let me topple thr — ough. But I at least provided a distraction; the
wraith pulled its icy hand from my father and turned toward me.

It was the ugliest thing I’d ever seen. At first I’d thought
it was only old, but old people didn’t look like this. The “flesh” that it
manifested didn’t seem to fit any longer — its lower eyelids sagged so far that
I could see the full eye socket, and its lips drooped over its jaws, down by
its chin. I backed away untilI touched the ice; I could’ve gone through it, but
that would have meant abandoning Dad.

I heard a soft voice say, disbelieving, “Bianca?”

Dad
!
But I couldn’t look at him
right now; this wraith needed to stay focused on me and not him.

The wraith’s round, eerie eyes lit up — literally, as though
they were gas flames. I had no idea we could do that and seriously did not want
to start. ··A baby,” it said.

“I might be new to this, but I promise you, I can
— ”
What could I do? “I can out — haunt you any day if you
don’t leave him alone.”

“You can take us there,” it said, shuffling forward with an
eagerness that was slightly childlike, and tl1erefore more disturbing.

Was this what Christopher had meant? That I was supposed to
help creepy things like this?

Then I felt bad. If I hadn’t been able to create a body, and
interact once more with the people who loved me, maybe I would have turned
creepy, too. If it could go to that land of lost things.
maybe
it would stop being so scary and start to look like itself again. If I’d
thought working with dead people was going to be pretty all the time — especially
given some of the dead people I’d already known — then that was stupid of me.

Til take you,” I promised. I didn’t exactly know how to do
that yet, but already I understood that if I couldn’t pick it up quickly,
Christopher could help me. “Just let this man go, okay? We can go there right
now.”

The wraith hesitated. Maybe it couldn’t believe its good
luck.

But then its flaming eyes narrowed, slits of unearthly ftre
blue. “It doesn’t get to run away,” it hissed. “Not after what it did.”

“I don’t care what he was doing. It doesn’t matter! You can
leave this place now. Isn ‘t that more important?”

It didn’t answer me. The wraith had to think, I realized — it
was divided between hope and hate, unable to choose one over the other.

Softly. I added, “Where we’re going
. ..
it
can be beautiful. It’s better than haunting a
school.
anyway
. You have to see it. Come on.” I forced
myself to offer my hand to the wraith, though its fingers were clawlike and
bony.