Divided against Yourselves (Spell Weaver) (41 page)

“You can…talk now?” I asked stupidly.

“Yeah, I couldn’t earlier in the day, but now I can.”

“Definitely feeding off your connection to Annwn,” said Nurse Florence, her “scientific” interest piqued.

“Tal, haven’t I been through enough?” Jimmie asked plaintively. “I died at nine, and then I couldn’t figure out how to move on. I wanted to, but at first I wanted to stay with you and Dan more. Then, when I finally began to think I could move on, you went to the hospital, and then I had to stay to see what happened. You got better, but then you weren’t friends with Dan anymore, and I knew I couldn’t move on until you became friends again. But I was so happy when that finally happened that I wanted to stay just a little longer and enjoy it—and then it didn’t last! I stayed too long, and now you aren’t friends again, and I can’t stand it! You don’t know Tal; you just don’t know. It hurts! It hurts so bad!”

By this point I was trying to hold back my tears. “What hurts, Jimmie?”

“At first I didn’t notice it, but the longer I stay, the more I feel it. I keep feeling the accident. You know, the one that killed me.”

I couldn’t help remembering the pain I’d felt when I was first hit by the awakening of my previous lives. So many of them were dominated by the memory of violent death.

“This must be a side effect of his staying on this plane of existence for so long,” said Nurse Florence. “The only way to relieve him is to help him move on.”

“Please, please Tal!” said Jimmie. When he was alive, I could never say no to him. Was I really ready to start now?

Reflexively I reached out to hug him. Of course, I couldn’t hug a ghost—except that I did. I felt him in my arms. I even felt his warmth, warmth that had faded away seven years ago. Shocked, I pulled away.

“He’s not a ghost! He’s a shifter!” I had White Hilt out faster than he could move a muscle. Whatever this shifter wanted, it couldn’t be good.

“Wait!” yelled Nurse Florence. “He’s physical, but that’s not a real body.”

Jimmie looked at White Hilt’s fire, and I could swear I saw tears glistening in his eyes.

“What do you mean?” I kept my eyes fixed on Jimmie, if that was indeed who he was.

“Ghosts can occasionally assume physical form, normally only briefly. Apparently, Jimmie’s greater strength is allowing him to stay solid for a longer period.”

“Are you sure?” Having been fooled so often by supernatural beings, I was not taking any chances.

“You know how well I can read someone’s physical condition. He isn’t breathing. His heart isn’t beating. He doesn’t even have separate organs.”

“He felt warm in my arms!”

“And if you held him long enough, you might have thought you felt his heart beating too, but I can guarantee you it would not be a real one.”

Slowly I put away White Hilt. Then I hugged him again. After all, if it was Jimmie, I had never been able to say a proper good-bye to him, so I might as well take advantage of the opportunity. Sure enough, I could have sworn he was breathing and that he had a heartbeat. I wasn’t as good as Nurse Florence at reading a body, but I gave it a try, and sure enough, on the inside Jimmie was just a…mass—no distinct parts at all. No shifter could turn into that kind of form and live.

“Tal,” said Nurse Florence gently, “as far as I know, there is no record of a ghostly manifestation this strong. We are in completely new territory.”

“Not for the first time,” I quipped, patting Jimmie on the head. Actually, since this Jimmie was taller than I was, the gesture seemed a little silly, but I had a hard time not thinking of him as the nine-year-old he had been when he died.

“Nonetheless, we need to get him taken care of soon. It’s possible if he stays solid too long that it will interfere with his effort to pass on properly.”

“I can control it,” said Jimmie, who reached out and passed his hand right through me to demonstrate.

“Jimmie, we can’t take any chances,” insisted Nurse Florence. “Tal, you know what you have to do.”

Well, that was the problem. I did know what I had to do. I could not have loved Jimmie more if he had been my own brother. A few weeks ago, I would have said I would do anything to save him from pain. Now it turned out that there was one thing I wouldn’t—couldn’t—do.

I didn’t think I could forgive Dan and go back to being friends, not even for Jimmie.

My only hope was to prove Nurse Florence’s theory. Hell, if the memories were false, I would owe Dan the biggest apology in the world.

Of course, if they were real memories, if he had actually stabbed me in the back, taken Eva away from me forever…

Then what? Trap Jimmie here forever, in ever-increasing pain?

“Jimmie, let’s go find Dan,” I said in such a matter-of-fact way that Nurse Florence seemed not to quite believe what she was hearing.

“Tal, you really need to—” she started to say.

“I know what I need to do,” I replied quickly. “While I’m doing it, can you make sure someone tracks down Natalie Kim and explains Stan’s situation to her? We’ll need her later to cure Stan. Oh, and call Vanora and let her know I’ll want to visit Alcina later tonight.”

“What?” Nurse Florence was practically aghast.

“I’ve figured out how to get Carla back in control of her own body. Neither Stan nor Carla is going to be completely healed right away, but with time, we’ll complete the process. I’m a man on a mission today, and I’m going to damn well get some things crossed off the to-do list!”

Because then there will be time to find out the truth about Dan.

I was already late for soccer practice by this time, but I had the feeling Dan wasn’t there anyway. I could have found him easily enough, but I decided to see what other tricks Jimmie might be able to do.

“Jimmie, can you find Dan?”

Jimmie gave me a smile that reminded me of his nine-year-old mischievousness, despite the greater maturity of his current face. “I can find either one of you, and I can find my parents too!” His brow wrinkled in concentration for only a moment. “Dan is at home.”

As we walked down the hall, it did not take me long to realize that Jimmie was visible to everyone. I suppose from a girl’s perspective, he was a pretty hot-looking guy, but if that had not been enough to attract notice, his resemblance to Dan certainly would be.

“Jimmie, why are you making yourself visible to everyone?” I muttered under my breath.

“I didn’t realize I was visible to anyone but you and Nurse Florence.” Jimmie looked panicked.

“Don’t worry! We’ll be out of here soon.”

As we walked, I sent a quick mental message to Nurse Florence, asking her to excuse my absence—and Dan’s—with Coach Morton. Then I magicked a couple of teachers and a security guard who would have stopped us from leaving the school. Once out in the student parking lot, I got Jimmie into the Prius, and then I drove him to Dan’s on autopilot. The less I thought about things, the better.

“Jimmie, are your parents home?”

“No,” he said, sounding disappointed.

“It’s better that way. I couldn’t explain you to them anyway. I can explain you to Dan.” Jimmie sighed but didn’t argue.

Dan’s house was pretty much the same kind of Spanish-colonial-on-steroids monstrosity that I lived in, though, in an effort to avoid a tract-housing feel, no two of them had exactly the same floor plan. Still, pulling up out front gave me the eerie feeling that I was pulling up in front of my own house in some alternate universe.

Not quite as weird, of course, as having a seven-years-dead friend in my passenger seat, but everything was relative.

We moved quickly up the front path, and I knocked loudly on the front door. No answer.

“You’re sure he’s here?”

“Yeah,” said Jimmie, looking puzzled.

“Dan, get your butt out here!”
I thought loudly. He must have heard my knock and probably knew I was the one knocking. If I were him, maybe I wouldn’t have been exactly eager to run to the door either. Well, Dan might be a girlfriend-stealing scumbag, but he was no coward—I had seen proof of that often enough on the battlefield. He opened the door in about a minute, his face a deliberate blank.

“Yeah?” he said suspiciously. I stepped aside to give him a good view of Jimmie. Because Jimmie looked so much older now than he had when he died, it took Dan a minute. He immediately saw the resemblance, of course, but it only gradually dawned on him that he was looking at his dead kid brother.

“Jimmie?” Dan said, half-disbelieving. Then he grabbed him in a rib-crushing bear hug. “Tal, you…brought him back to life?”

Oops! It hadn’t occurred to me that Dan would reach that conclusion, but I should have known, considering everything else he had seen.

“Dan,” I replied softly. I wasn’t quite up to being gentle with him, but I suddenly did feel awful that he believed Jimmie was back to stay. “Dan, that is Jimmie, but he’s a ghost. Dan let go of Jimmie and stared at him again in disbelief.

“He’s solid!” He protested. “I can feel him, Tal!”

“He can assume the appearance and even the feel of a real body at times. Dan, we need to go inside.”

Understanding how odd having someone who looked so much like him show up would look to the neighbors—and what they might say to his parents about it—Dan ushered us in and had us sit down in the large living room that’s general layout was the same as mine, though Dan’s parents clearly liked leather upholstery more than mine did. I explained the mechanics of Jimmie’s reappearance and then got straight to the point.

“Jimmie’s a restless spirit now. He knows he should move on, but he can’t as long as we are in conflict. I have to forgive you for what you did four years ago, and we have to become friends again in order for Jimmie to find peace.”

“Why can’t he just stay with us, now that he’s back? His physical body may not be real, but it looks real enough to pass. We could make up some story that you could magick my parents into believing. He’s some distant cousin, recently orphaned, or something like that. He certainly looks related to us, so that part wouldn’t take much selling.” Dan was talking faster as he went along, his nervous energy barely held in check. “I’m sure my parents would take him in. They miss Jimmie as much as I do, and even though they wouldn’t know he was Jimmie, it would still help them.”

“Dan…” I started, not quite sure how to approach such a crazy idea. Actually, when I considered what we had all been through, I could see why Dan thought it might work. If the Sassanis could adopt a half djinn, why couldn’t his family adopt a ghost?

“Dan, I want to stay,” Jimmie cut in. “I want it more than anything, but I know I can’t. I hurt sometimes, remembering the accident, and the pain is getting worse. Don’t ask me how I know it will keep getting worse until I can’t stand it; I just do.”

Dan sat silently for a minute, his face twisted by conflicting emotions. He understood that Jimmie would have to go, but he didn’t want to understand. Fortunately, Jimmie stepped up and made him understand. Dan might not have accepted the truth if it was just coming from me. When he finally did accept it, he cried a little, though he tried to pretend he wasn’t. I understood he was probably just as emotionally raw as I was, though I didn’t want to sympathize with him. After all, he didn’t create Jimmie’s situation, but he did cause the end of our friendship and the breakup with Eva.

After Dan had finally collected himself, he looked me straight in the eye. As he did that, I realized he really hadn’t been earlier. “Well, Tal, the ball is in your court. Can you forgive me?”

“Yes,” I lied for Jimmie’s benefit. “I think I can.”

“Dan, listen closely!”
I knew he couldn’t respond to me, because he couldn’t broadcast his thoughts, but I just needed him to hear me. I had to deceive Jimmie, but it would be cruel to lie to Dan and then have him find out the truth later. Angry as I was with him, I didn’t want to play with his emotions like that. Then I would be no better than he was.

“Dan, are you paying attention?”
He nodded ever so slightly.
“All right. The truth is, I don’t know if I can ever forgive you. I do know I can’t right now. But if we stay visibly at odds with each other, Jimmie will be trapped here until his pain becomes uncontrollable. For his sake, I’m willing to pretend if you are.”

He nodded slightly again. He didn’t look happy, but whatever he had done to me and to Eva, I knew he wouldn’t consign Jimmie to hell.

“You’ll take back your sword and be my warrior again. We’ll hang out. Publicly we’ll be close again. Even the other guys have to be convinced for this to work.”

I wasn’t done, but Dan got off the couch and bear-hugged me, quite a bit harder than seemed to be necessary. “And after Jimmie leaves?” he whispered to me.

I had thought a little bit about that contingency. Perhaps Jimmie would disappear right away, perhaps it would take a while, but inevitably it would happen—that was the whole point. And once it happened, I couldn’t blame Dan for wondering what his status would be.

“I can’t guarantee I’ll ever forgive you, but I won’t ask you to leave to group. If we’re still not really friends, and we probably won’t be, that will just be between us. I’m sorry I didn’t handle the situation that way in the first place.”