Elegy (27 page)

“Help me up,” I croaked at Jillian, jerking my head toward the guardrail. She simply winced and then shook her head vehemently. Instead of arguing with her, I gripped the gun by its barrel and held it out to her.

After a long pause, she took the gun and tucked it into her belt, her hands trembling badly as she did so.

Trying not to tremble as well, I turned around so that my back pressed against the guardrail. Then I placed my hand on Jillian’s shoulder and began to climb, backward, up the railing. However unwillingly, Jillian boosted me and steadied me whenever I needed help. My movements tore through my shoulder like a gunshot, but I kept going until I could grab a girder and balance upright on the edge of the rail.

From that vantage point, I had a clear view of my companions. Kaylen, Hayley, and O’Reilly still lay motionless on the bridge; Annabel held tightly to my mother, who’d already started to sag under the weight of the chemicals in her system; and the boys . . . the second my eyes flitted toward the boys, I started tearing up so badly that all four figures seemed to blur together.

I squeezed my eyes shut, whispered, “I love you,” and prayed that Joshua heard my last words to him.

When I opened my eyes, I was startled to find that Jillian had already pointed the gun at me. But her hands shook so badly that I couldn’t tell exactly where she intended to shoot.

“You okay?” I asked her.

At first, she blanched. Then Jillian released a short, incredulous laugh.

“Are you kidding me, Amelia?”

Through all that horrific pain, I felt my lips lift into a faint smile. But it faded so quickly, I doubt Jillian even saw it.

“Do it,” I urged. “Please.”

Hearing me, Jillian took one shuddering breath. In the split second before the gun went off, I thought I heard her sob. But then the bullet pierced my chest, and I didn’t hear anything anymore.

The pain was so vivid, so hot
and
cold, that I stopped breathing altogether. I reeled backward, letting go of the girder. As I fell through the air, a single memory flitted through my mind: Gaby, clutching the gunshot wound in her abdomen and telling me that it didn’t hurt.

She lied
, I had time to think. Then utter darkness enveloped me.

Chapter
THIRTY-THREE

B
y the time I woke up somewhere cool and dark, all my pain had vanished. No throbbing, no burning, no searing. No physical sensations at all, actually.

I rolled over and pressed myself into a seated position, blinking as my eyes adjusted to the darkness. While they did, I patted my jeans pocket, relieved to find that the Transfer Powder had stayed with me. Then I performed a quick self-assessment. I was surprised to find that my glow had returned. Not the protective fire glow, but the one I’d had as a ghost—the one that Joshua used to tease me about, when I shined faintly in the dark.

It was done, then. I was truly, fully dead again, like Gaby had been after Kade shot her. And this place was hell.

I was surprised by how . . .
ordinary
it looked. No fiery cavern full of torture devices and gleeful devils. Just a tall, seemingly endless corridor, painted dark gray and lit overhead by a similarly endless line of metal light fixtures.

The only things that disturbed the monotony were the long rows of black metal doors that lined each wall, extending on into the distant horizon as though a million different rooms led off the same hallway.

“Where does this place
end
?” I asked aloud.

“It doesn’t.”

My head whipped toward the quaking, unfamiliar voice, which came from somewhere behind me. As I peered into the darkness, another figure emerged on the floor a few feet away from me. It gazed up at me with flame-blue eyes, and pulled back in horror. Although this thing wasn’t Eli or Gaby, it resembled their projected forms so closely that I knew it had to be some
shadow
of a ghost.

“Who are you?” I breathed, leaning away from the creature.

“A former reaper,” he replied. “I once gathered souls for this place. I trained an assistant as well. . . . You may have met him?”

I stared at him blankly, and then it hit me. “You’re Eli’s former master. The one he replaced.”

The old reaper gave a laugh that sounded more like a cough. “For all the good it did him.”

“Why are you here?” I demanded. “With me?”

“I’m here to guide you, obviously.” Despite his decrepit state, he managed to sound petulant.

“Where?”

“To your room,” he answered flatly, as if that was supposed to make sense. Seeing my confused frown, he waved at the endless row of black doors. “Everyone has their own room.”

I glanced around, feeling a slow chill creep over me.
That
was hell, then. Each soul confined to its own room, its own torture.

“Show me,” I whispered.

The old reaper bowed his head slightly and then began to move. But instead of standing up to guide me, he crawled along the floor, dragging himself inch by inch with his hands. Trying not to gag, I followed him down the hallway until he paused outside a door that was indistinguishable from all the others.

“Try this one,” he offered.

My hand shook as I reached for the doorknob. It felt an awful lot like that gunshot—hot and cold at the same time against my palm. Still shaking, I turned the knob and opened the door on a plain room that looked much like the outer hallway: simple, dark, and painted gray. But in its center, a middle-aged man in a suit sat in a straight-backed chair. He was crying and staring so intently forward that I couldn’t help but follow his gaze. There, hanging on the wall in front of him, was a picture of a woman. She wasn’t pretty nor was she smiling. But he still sobbed, watching her picture with that traumatized, wide-eyed stare.

I turned back to the former reaper, frowning. “I don’t understand.”

“You wouldn’t—it’s all very personal. Try another door, if you don’t believe me.”

So I did, closing that door and opening the one to the very next room. This room was far more interesting: it looked like the inside of a circus tent, with brightly colored silks hanging from the walls. Again, a person occupied the middle of the room, except this time it was a teenage girl in a pink tutu, sitting cross-legged on the floor. In her lap lay what looked like a wounded white rabbit. The poor animal continued to whimper and squirm . . . with no discernible change. Although I watched it for a long time, the rabbit never recovered or died; it just went on in that perpetual agonized state. At first, I thought that the rabbit was being punished, but when I saw the girl’s face—red and cracked from all the tears she’d shed—I thought otherwise.

For some reason, this room disturbed me more than the first. I shut the door quickly, moving on to view room after room in the hope that I’d find something better. But of course I didn’t.

There was the wrinkled old woman drinking from a bottle of whiskey that kept refilling itself after each swig; the man suspended midair, in what looked like a vat of water; the little boy who couldn’t seem to stop digging in a patch of foul-smelling mud; the gorgeous young woman applying and reapplying the same garish shade of red lipstick in front of a cracked mirror; the elderly man watching a single hanging lightbulb swing back and forth.

On and on the rooms went, each containing a person who seemed to be locked in some inexplicable moment, staring at the same scenery or repeating the same relentless tasks over and over for all eternity—scenes and tasks chosen especially for them, from some cruel place in their psyche.

Hell isn’t other people
, I thought, recalling something Melissa had said in the prairie.
Hell is yourself.

Finally, I’d had enough of this tortured voyeurism. And anyway, I had no idea how much time I’d passed down here—no idea how much time my mother had left.

“Can you show me my friends’ rooms?” I asked roughly.

For some reason, the old reaper grinned. “Of course.”

He dragged himself onward for a long stretch of hallway, until he stopped outside another nondescript black door. “Here you go,” he grunted, slapping one palm against the metal. “Eli Rowland.”

I approached the door slowly, hesitantly. I held the doorknob for so long that, when the reaper cleared his throat impatiently, I simply had to yank it open, almost like ripping off a Band-Aid.

This room was one of the largest I’d seen, and the most occupied. It appeared as though an enormous concert venue stretched out in front of me, full of a teeming mass of laughing, dancing, singing people. All of them faced a stage, upon which an outrageously dressed band played a catchy rock song. Everyone in this room seemed happy; joyous, even. Everyone except one person, who stood close to the stage. I almost didn’t recognize Eli, he looked so dorky in his plain khaki bell-bottoms, burgundy sweater, and horn-rimmed glasses. I would have laughed, were it not for the look on his face. He stared up at that stage with such misery, such longing, that it actually
hurt
me to see him like this.

So this was Eli’s real prison: exclusion and anonymity.

I slammed Eli’s door shut, closed my eyes, and leaned against it. Once I’d somewhat recovered my breath, I opened my eyes and whispered, “Gaby, please.”

My guide pointed at the door to my right. “She’s his neighbor. . . . Go ahead and have a peek.”

Trying to glare at him, I turned to Gaby’s door and then yanked it open like I had Eli’s.

I wasn’t too surprised by what I found inside. The entire room looked like it was underwater. In fact, when I brushed my fingertips along the shimmering wall in front of me, they drew away wet. Inside, buried beneath all that water, a car floated nose downward. And inside the car, I could see three figures, frozen with permanent screams plastered to their faces: an attractive older couple in the front seat, Gaby in the back. Gaby was staring wide-eyed at an empty seat beside her, as though there was an invisible person there, drawing her attention.

Was that where Kade once sat?

Gaby and her parents had died after crashing into a river because Kade had forced their car off a bridge. And now Gaby had to relive that moment for all eternity. There was no worse fate—I would know.

I slammed this door shut even harder than I had Eli’s, glancing back at the old reaper without even attempting to hide my tears. He watched hungrily as I cried, like he enjoyed it. So I wiped the tears away, as fast as I could.

“Why wasn’t Kade LaLaurie in there with Gaby?” I demanded, glancing up and down the hall. “Where’s
his
room?”

Finally, my guide looked less smug—he even trembled a little. “Doesn’t have one.”

I frowned, trying not to let myself show hope, or excitement. “Why not? Too important to the cause?”

“Because,” my guide spat, “you
ended
him. There is no Kade LaLaurie anymore.”

I couldn’t stop my small gasp of relief. My salvation—Gaby’s and Eli’s and Serena’s salvation—might happen as I’d planned. Assuming that Gaby, Eli, and Serena agreed to it, and that my tactics worked.

I straightened my mouth into a hard line, praying that my face gave nothing away. Luckily, the old reaper didn’t seem very observant. So I asked my final question.

“Serena’s room? Where is it?”

He made that laugh-cough sound again. “She doesn’t have one yet. The masters have . . . another purpose in mind for her, first.”

The reaper thought he was being so clever. So cryptic. But I already suspected what the demons wanted Serena to do: kill me all over again, once I’d arrived at my room; end my existence for good like I’d done to Kade. Only the demons could decide when that event would occur—tonight or a millennium from now, after I’d received some sufficient torture.

I took one shuddering breath, and then I turned back to the old reaper. “Well, why wait, then?” I asked. “Show me to my room, please.”

With an ugly smirk, the reaper bowed his head. “Whatever you say.”

I kept my steps steady as I followed him, even though we seemed to walk for hours down that monotonous hallway. Not for the first time, I wondered whether this was part of the torture too: knowing that you weren’t some special victim, escorted in grand fashion to your eternal punishment; you were just one door, out of countless millions.

But when we finally reached it, I took a shocked backward step. Unlike the hundreds—maybe thousands—of doors we’d already passed, mine lay open. Waiting for me to walk inside.

So I did just that, without a single glance over my shoulder at the nasty creature who’d obviously enjoyed his former job, even more than Eli.

My room was so dark, I couldn’t see anything in the instant after the door slammed shut behind me. But before the slam stopped ringing, a row of auditorium lights came on at the other end of the room. I blinked, momentarily blinded by their shine. When my eyes adjusted, however, I saw what I’d expected I would: a tribunal of demons were sitting in what resembled a jury box. My room even looked like a courtroom with its high ceilings and paneled walls—all in gray, of course.

The second I saw the demons, my glow flared bright; I doubted it would disappear the entire time I was in their presence. This was both lucky and unfortunate, since it made me appear far more rebellious than I would have liked.

The male demon with whom I was familiar—Belial—sat in the middle. Once he’d made eye contact with me, he stood to open his arms benevolently.

“Amelia Elizabeth Ashley,” he said. “Welcome home.”

Inexplicably, I laughed. Then I reminded myself of what I’d come here to do and composed my expression into something more serious. More reverent, even.

“Thank you,” I whispered, in my most respectful tone. “I’m sorry that it took me so long to make this decision.”

Judging by their frowns and whispers, the demons had expected defiance—not submission. I took advantage of the moment, falling to my knees and bowing low to the floor.

“What is the meaning of this?” Belial demanded. “Why do you bow?”

“Because I
am
sorry,” I said, my voice muffled. “I thought I could fight you, but tonight, I came to realize that you truly are more powerful. And . . . and I don’t want you to destroy me.”

When the demons began to chuckle, I allowed myself a glance upward. Belial caught my gaze, flashed me that sharp-toothed smile, and waved his hand at an empty corner of the room. There, a black shadow solidified into Serena Taylor, looking very much like the puppet I’d seen the week before.