Arise (6 page)

The three figures on the bale, however, captured more of my attention. Well, two of the three figures anyway.

By now Kaylen had leaned forward again and placed one hand on each of the boys’ knees. But only her left hand, which clasped Joshua, moved. She ran it up his thigh and back down to his knee, talking rapidly as if to distract him from the uninvited touch.

“Josh, honey,” she slurred. “Does this mean we’re friends again?”

An involuntary growl escaped my lips.

Joshua shot me a worried look and tried to move farther away from her without falling completely off the bale. “Yeah, we’re all friends again. Aren’t we, O’Reilly? Why don’t you tell Kaylen how much you missed me?”

O’Reilly was more than happy to take over the conversation. He leaned around Kaylen, grinning widely at her. “Yeah, dude. I missed him so much, I couldn’t eat, couldn’t sleep … couldn’t shave.”

“Bah-da-dum-dum-ching,” Joshua sang, crashing his hand in the air against an imaginary cymbal.

Unfortunately for O’Reilly, Kaylen clearly wasn’t interested in the performance. She didn’t spare him so much as a glance. Instead, she pressed herself more firmly against Joshua’s side.

“Well, I know
I
missed you,” she said. Then she lowered her voice for just Joshua—and, unintentionally, me—to hear. “Can I show you how much?”

I felt an abrupt wave of heat from the bonfire, sharp and stinging against my back. The sensation was so strong I arched my neck against it. It quickly spread across my whole body until my cheeks flushed and I had to fan my face rapidly with one hand.

When Joshua grabbed Kaylen’s hand—to take it off of him, I’m sure—the heat intensified. Without thinking, I stepped away from the fire and closer to the hay bale. Close enough to hear Kaylen whisper, “Kiss me, Josh.”

My hands clenched, and I readied myself to shake the barn rafters, or maybe even cause an earthquake directly beneath Kaylen’s feet.

Kaylen, however, beat me to the punch. Joshua had just placed her hand back in her own lap when she darted in like a snake and planted her lips on his. She tangled her fingers in his hair so quickly I almost didn’t see her move, and she pulled him close to her.

Joshua made a small noise, in pleasure or protest I wasn’t sure. I didn’t have time to ask. At that incredibly inconvenient moment, the barn disappeared from sight.

Chapter

FIVE

F
or the second time that day I found myself gazing up at the ruins of High Bridge.

In the moonless dark it seemed creepier than it had this afternoon. More broken and hollow, like the skeleton of some giant, mythical creature. Above me the ribbons of caution tape fluttered in the wind. Otherwise the place was so quiet I could almost hear my nonexistent blood pumping from the surge of emotion I’d just experienced.

I’d accidentally materialized here the moment I saw Joshua kissing Kaylen. Or Kaylen kissing Joshua. Whichever. I didn’t exactly care about the specifics right now.

Gnawing furiously at my lip, I turned to stare at the darkened river. But instead of the water I could only see a wild blur of mental images.

Her hand on his leg. His hand on hers. Their lips pressed together.

Was I angry? Oh, yes. Angry, and jealous.

But the longer I stared at the river, the more quickly I realized my jealousy didn’t resemble that of a normal living girl. Not by a long shot.

After all, a living girl wouldn’t be jealous that her competitor could actually
feel
what she touched. A living girl wouldn’t be jealous that her competitor didn’t disappear when she kissed a boy. And a living girl wouldn’t worry that her boyfriend might—in fact, probably would have to—choose someone else because at least someone else could grow with him. Change with him.

A millennium could pass and I wouldn’t change with Joshua. I would never change, never again.

I felt my breath speed up, but I couldn’t seem to slow it. I couldn’t stop thinking these thoughts. Because, however much I disliked her, Kaylen was a normal, living girl. In fact, she probably wasn’t even that annoying once you got to know her. It’s not like she was
intentionally
going after someone else’s boyfriend, either. As far as she knew, Joshua was very available.

And however much Joshua might deny Kaylen now, she or someone like her would eventually break through his defenses. How could she not? Girls like Kaylen could touch him for longer than ten minutes, attend school with him, meet his family, laugh with his friends....

Girls like me couldn’t do any of those things. Girls like me just screwed things up for the living people we loved. One look at Joshua’s current social life proved it.

The evidence was everywhere: the way Joshua looked at me before telling someone “Sorry, I can’t talk right now”; the frequency with which he walked away from his friends, like he was afraid that even a minute spent around them might reveal my presence.

Joshua had intentionally limited our exposure to the living world. To keep himself from looking like he was crazy in case anyone caught him holding hands with thin air. To keep me safe from any unfamiliar Seers.

By turning away from the living people he cared about, Joshua thought he could protect us. And in the process he’d hurt himself.

I guess I should have felt grateful he hadn’t taken this mission so far as to start avoiding his family too. But would that day come? Would Joshua discover in five, ten years that he could no longer explain to his parents why they couldn’t meet his girlfriend? Why he couldn’t marry her and start a family?

Such questions didn’t matter, not today. I knew that’s what Joshua would say if he could have heard my thoughts.

But those questions would become reality soon enough. When you had a ghost for a girlfriend, you eventually had to choose between the living and the dead. Between a normal life and a haunted one.

He’d already started to make this choice with his friends. And I suspected he’d keep making that choice—with his family and his future—if I let him.

Which I couldn’t. I wouldn’t.

In the end I would have to do something to make Joshua stop choosing me.

I suddenly felt the ache in my chest pull into itself, smothering-tight. I had to stop thinking about this. I had to focus on something else, fast. Trying to distract myself, I looked up at my surroundings for the first time since I materialized here. Then I blinked back in surprise.

High Bridge stood directly in front of me, so close I could almost touch it.

Without meaning to, I must have climbed up the steep embankment and stopped at the edge of High Bridge Road. Now my toes rested on the asphalt while my heels stayed on the grass, as if they knew well enough to keep me away from this place.

Up close, any sane person would see the bridge for what it was: dangerous. I had every reason to fear it now as much as I did in the past.

But suddenly I didn’t. I didn’t fear this place at all.

As I continued to stare, I felt my eyes narrow. My feet began to pull themselves completely off the shoulder and onto the road. Slowly, mechanically, my legs carried me forward until I was walking across the bridge. Just taking a calm little stroll.

Inside, however, I was anything but calm. With each step I took my anger grew. Anger at Kaylen, at Eli, even at Joshua. Anger at my whole stupid existence. But especially anger at High Bridge. It had ruined my life, and the lives of countless others.

“You know what?” I said aloud, addressing the bridge, a hysterical smile twitching at one corner of my mouth. “You really piss me off.”

“Still?”

The word drifted toward me no louder than a breath. Yet the moment I heard it, I nearly jumped out of my skin. I spun around frantically, searching for the speaker; but as far as I could see, I was the only one there.

Except …

I squinted, peering at the path I’d just walked. Something about the look of a particular spot seemed … off. As I watched, the air began to shimmer and shift until, floating above what had been an empty road only seconds before, something took shape. At first it hovered like a mist: pale and not quite translucent. But soon it solidified, and I could make out the contours of a human figure.

A man, sitting hunched, close to the railed edge of the bridge. His arms lay across his knees, and his hands and head hung limp, lifeless. His long, curly hair had fallen forward, hiding his face.

But I didn’t have to see it. I didn’t even need him to whisper another word. Because I knew exactly who had just appeared less than four feet away from me.

“Eli,” I gasped, taking a jerky step backward.

“Wait,” he said in that same choked whisper. “Wait.”

I didn’t want to wait; I wanted to get out of here. But I stood transfixed as Eli turned his head toward me and, with horrific slowness, rolled his eyes up to meet mine.

A small, strangled noise escaped my lips.

The mist blurred the rest of his features, but Eli’s eyes blazed an electric blue, like centers of impossibly hot flames. Bright, and ghastly.

I felt a surge of phantom adrenaline telling me to run. But I couldn’t look away.

“Eli?” I repeated. “Is … is that you?”

When he nodded, the gesture looked labored. Painful.

My mind began to race. Eli should still be somewhere in the darkness beyond the netherworld, imprisoned there by the demons he once called masters. If he was here now, in the living world with me, then that meant his masters were …

My head swiveled frantically, searching the bridge around us.

“Where are they?” I gasped. “Tell me.”

“No.” From the corner of my eye, I saw him shake his head. “No, Amelia, not here.”

“Tell me,” I demanded, my voice jumping an octave. “Tell me now, Eli.”

“Not here,” he said. The words seemed to crawl their way out of him. “
There
.”

“‘There’?” I repeated, still hunting for any other sign of movement on the bridge. “Where’s ‘there,’ Eli?”

“The netherworld.”

I whipped my head back around to face him. “If that’s true, then how are
you
here?”

“I’m not here, either,” he said, still struggling to speak but gaining a little momentum with each word. “Not really.”

I twisted one corner of my mouth into a frown, confused. “What are you saying? That you’re … what? Still in the netherworld right now?”

“Yes. I’m projecting.”

“Projecting?”

He shook his head. “No time. They’ll find me soon, and—”

“So they
are
on their way?” I interrupted. “Then I guess you won’t mind if I don’t stick around to catch up. See ya, Eli.”

“Amelia, no! Please, wait—listen!”

I rocked forward, ready to jog, run,
fly
away from here if I had to. But the urgency in Eli’s plea made me hesitate. I paused long enough to see a glint of real fear in those unnatural blue eyes. Then I swore under my breath.

“Fine,” I said aloud. “Whatever you have to say, say it fast.”

He let slip a gravelly sigh that sounded almost relieved. “I’m here to warn you, Amelia.”

“About what?”

Eli’s eyes darted around, searching the bridge as I had. Then he met my gaze and lowered his voice even further.

“They’re weak right now, without a spirit like me to build their ranks. But they
are
coming, Amelia; and they’re coming for you.”

Something inside me clenched. “All the more reason to get the hell out of here, right?”

Eli nodded again. “Exactly what I wanted to tell you. It’s not going to happen tonight, but it will happen. Soon. I’ve heard them talking. They want you. And this time they’re willing to do their own dirty work to get you.”

“‘Dirty work’?”

“Killing,” he said. “They’ll murder everyone in this town if that’s what it takes to make you help them.”

I heard my own terrified whisper before I had time to think it.

“Joshua.”

Even through the shifting mist, I thought I saw Eli scowl. “Yes, him. And everyone else you care about. The more of your loved ones they take, the better. Think of them as hostages, to force your hand.”