I'd Rather Not Be Dead (19 page)

Finn makes a strangled sound
that tells me he's listening and I know his thought as clearly as
if he's spoken it. I don't take drugs with Cris on purpose. The 'on
purpose' part could be relevant. Even if it was an accident, being
killed by my best friend would probably be enough of a betrayal to
earn a ticket to Shadow.

Quiet as I think, I get to hear
Finn's friend suggest, “You should try banging that McKinney girl.
They say she has a lot of energy.”

If it weren't for me leaping to
grab Finn's arm as he started to shift stance, the guy would have
just found himself punched.

“Finn,” I hiss, trying to break
through the shield of anger that's slid over his eyes. “Finn!”

He goes perfectly still, not
even breathing until he's ready to say, “I'll keep that in
mind.”

The guy, eyes wide, nods quickly
and makes himself scarce.

“Shit, Finn.” I let go of him
and take a step back, my eyes glued to his face as he keeps up the
struggle for calm. “He's right, you need to channel that
aggression.”

He slams his locker door. Which
doesn't use up much of his energy and makes people who weren't
looking before stare but does seem to make him feel a little
better.

“Wow,” the other me says dryly.
“You almost hit that ape to defend my sister's honor. How
chivalrous. I'm almost impressed, Cooper Finnegan.”

He spends a second looking at
her as though she's sprouted an extra head, then snaps out of it to
mutter, “Whatever,” and try to walk away.

TOM doesn't let him leave
though, but moves just enough to block his path. “What stopped
you?”

He looks her straight in the
eye. “A poltergeist.”

“Well, it is Halloween.” She
smiles. An honest to goodness not-filled-with-loathing smile. Must
be the magic of the holiday.

Cris slides up behind her,
wrapping his arms around her waist and looking at Finn over the top
of her head. It's a gloating, taunting sort of look. “Who are you
supposed to be? Me?”

“No.”

Just one word, but it conveys an
epic's worth of hate.

Cris's eyes narrow and his body
responds to Finn's expression with tension. “I'm getting really
tired of your attitude.”

With a dismissive half-smile,
Finn shoots down Cris's posturing with the confidence of the
dominant. “Feeling's mutual.”

“Oh, please.” The other me says,
thus summarizing my own opinions on current events. Rolling her
eyes, she wiggles free of Cris and starts toward class. “Get over
yourselves.”

A deliberate twitch of her hip
makes her skirt flip up just enough to get Cris to give Finn a
parting scowl and rush after her.

Finn opens his locker again,
throws his books inside, and storms in the other direction.

Fray and I stand in a rapidly
emptying hallway.

“I should come here every day,”
he says. “This place could be on TV. It's way more entertaining
than those morning talk shows. Like Degrassi with Southern
accents.”

I stare in the direction Finn
disappeared in, wondering if I should follow. Fray shakes his head
at me. “Give him some space, luv.”

But at noon, when he still
hasn't come back and I have no choice but to leave, I seriously
regret not sprinting after him.

Chapter Eighteen

High stone walls form a
decent-sized dungeon, dwarfing the man who sits in the middle of
the room at a massive wooden desk. The desk could be from the
middle ages. The slick laptop computer in the middle of it, not so
much.

The back of the computer is
shiny black with a decal plastered on it. Death playing guitar. It
doesn't fit the room and it really doesn't fit the man behind the
desk, who wears clothes suitable for a concierge in an upscale
hotel and has a very noticeable bald spot spreading across his
head. He sighs at Fray and types in several things. “Alright,
you're here. Who's she?”

I leave off wondering about the
laptop long enough to feel miffed. “She knows how to talk.”

“But sadly, not how to shut up,”
Fray adds, giving me a smile I can only describe as proud. I don't
think anyone's ever been proud of my inability to keep my mouth
shut before.

“And your name, Miss?” The man's
tone is that of many a weary DMV worker.

“McKinney, Drew.”

“Very funny,” he pronounces, he
face pinching in an unamused way.

I squint at the guy. What's his
deal?

Fray intercedes. “Her name is
Drew Elizabeth McKinney. Place of death, Pine Ridge, North
Carolina. Date and cause unknown.”

“Unknown?” The man frowns,
annoyed. Like I've failed to figure out why I die just to spite
him. I can only assume there's extra paperwork involved.

“She's still alive,” Fray
answers easily, making it sound like it's normal to be walking
around living and dead at the same time.

“Ah.” The man would appear to
agree. He nods and types some more. Then he frowns very, very
deeply. “Her file's locked.”

News to me I'd have a file, let
alone a locked one. Now that I think of it, it's news to me there
are computers in Shadow. Was it made here? Can he use ones
belonging to the living? And if he can, why can't I?

“It's not really a computer,”
Fray says after the man excuses himself and slips out a door that
suddenly appears behind his desk. “Or, it is. But it's also a file
cabinet, a ledger, a stack of parchment, some cave paintings, and a
bunch of stuff in between.”

My face contorts as I try to
sort that out.

“The information is kept,” he
tries to elaborate. “What it appears to be kept in changes based on
what people expect it to be kept in.”

“Right...” I give the laptop a
frown. The idea makes some sort of weird sense. Yet, I can't help
but note, “I wouldn't have expected a computer.”

“You would if you'd been dead
longer.”

“Huh?”

Fray laughs. “You were expecting
something archaic because it goes with your idea of the ghost
world. Most people think that way at first. But once people have
been dead for a while, we grow out of that sort of thing and start
expecting our world to change because we're constantly watching the
living world do it in a maddening blur.”

This is bordering on something
that's going to make my head hurt.

My guide gives me a sympathetic
smile. “The only thing constant in the world is change. You get
used to it eventually.”

“Okay...” Folding my arms, I
lean against the desk. “Since you're going to be all informative
and philosophical just to distract me, care to tell me where we
are?”

He leans against the desk next
to me and looks at his shoes, a nice pair of biker's boots that go
with the black leather outfit he's changed into. “It's hard to
explain.”

“How did I know it would be?” I
sigh. “Can it possibly be more confusing than the stupid
laptop?”

Fray smiles again. “It's easier
than that. You know how some parts of the living world aren't in
Shadow? Like your house, for example.”

“This place is like that, except
it has no parallel in the living world?” I catch on.

“Right.” His nod is accompanied
by a pleased smile. “But if it did, it would be under the
mountain.”

“Like one of those nuclear
fallout bunkers?”

“Or a secret government
facility.” He grins. “Yes.”

Which explains why we had to
think our way here instead of walking. How deep is it though? “It's
inside my radius?”

“Not really.” Fray shakes his
head. “It's an exception to that rule. If your territory is
anywhere in our little cluster of hills, you can get here. And,
yes, we can come here anytime, but most people stay away as much as
they can because if you spend too much time here, you run the risk
of falling into The Spirit.”

“Why?”

Shrugging, he makes a sound to
indicate he doesn't know. “It has something to do with the energy
of the place. It's tied to The Spirit and The Shadow Lord somehow.
Sort of like the third piece of their trinity.”

“The Lord, The Spirit, and The
Holy Mountain?”

His foot kicks mine as he laughs
at me. “Something like that.”

The door creaks open and there's
an appalled gasp from behind us, followed quickly by a an
aggravated tsk. “Is it customary to sit on furniture in your
families?” the returning clerk asks.

Wonder if the librarian's coming
today. She'd be perfect for this guy.

Fray smothers a snicker at my
thought and grabs my hand to pull me off the desk.

“He says to let her in.” The
haughty look that comes along with the statement strongly implies
that if it were up to the clerk, we'd both be turned out.

“Terrific.” Fray grins and pulls
me to another magically appearing door. “Thanks for everything,
Russel. See you next time.”

The new room is a lot bigger and
more interesting than the last. It's another stone dungeon, but
this one's huge enough for the ceiling and far walls to be lost in
darkness. Torches burn in holders placed on massive support
columns. In the center, a very Goth looking band plays a soft and
haunting tune. The lead singer, dressed like Morticia Adams and
with black hair shimmering down to her knees, sways in rhythm while
lamenting that her one true love is alive.

Plush sofas are scattered around
the room in little groups, like in a coffee house. It's strange to
see people sitting around like this and not drinking anything.
Beer, wine, coffee... This sort of place makes me expect beverages.
And gourmet sandwiches. There are coffee tables, but the only
things on them are games and books.

I flop onto one of the sofas
next to Fray. “Nice joint. I could come here a lot if it weren't
for the whole loosing my individual identity thing.”

With a lazy smile, Fray spreads
his arms out, one along the couch's back and the other on its arm.
“That is a serious drawback.”

Closing my eyes, I focus on
listening to the music. It's good. I wait until the end of the
song, then ask, “Do you know her?”

Fray scoots closer to me so we
don't have to speak as loud to hear each other when the music
starts again. He keeps an arm on the back of the couch. His other
hand rests on his knee. “Her name's Colleen. She was burned for
witchcraft.”

“No.” I shake my head. “That
hardly ever happened in real life. There was only like a tiny
number of people who were killed for witchcraft in the US. ”

“But there were some,” he
counters. Then he sighs. “She didn't die during the witch hunts
though. Her mother went crazy in the nineteen fifties. Thought
flames would cleanse her daughter's beatnik soul.”

I stare at the woman. “Her
mother?”

“Yeah. She thought she was
making a sacrifice for her daughter's wellbeing.”

“What happened to her?” I
wonder, appalled. “The mom?”

“Nothing.” He watches the stage
with dull eyes. “They didn't suspect arson and they didn't find the
drugs in Colleen's blood that kept her from waking up.”

“Nothing,” I repeat. Nothing
Colleen could do about it either. When I figure out who killed me,
will I have the discipline to keep myself from returning the favor?
What do they do to ghosts who kill?

“The worst cases are exorcised,”
Fray says. “Others are locked into their Places of Power. And some
of us... Are just ignored.”

He's talking about himself,
obviously. I'd forgotten he held himself responsible for his wife's
death.

He nods at my thoughts. “I never
knew why The Shadow Lady didn't do anything. I think maybe she
thought I'd punish myself enough, or the town would. Or maybe she
just didn't think I'd hurt anyone else.”

“Or she didn't think you did
it.”

Opening my mind, I show him what
I saw when I was in his memory, drawing his attention to his wife's
expression, to the way she seemed to direct the thoughts he didn't
think she wanted him seeing, the fact the knife was sitting right
next to her hand in the first place... He shakes it all off though.
“No. That's just what you want to see.”

“Then maybe it's what The Shadow
Lady wanted to see.”

Hold on... “Shadow Lady?”

“We had a Lady back then.” His
smile is tinted with a nostalgic fondness. I poke at the feeling
the smile brings. It almost has to be jealousy.

“What happened to her?”

“She burned out,” he whispers,
then clears his throat. “It takes a lot of power to rule Shadow.
They get spread really thin and eventually just fade.”

“Then what?”

“Then they merge with The
Spirit.”

I shudder. “Why take the job
then?”

“Don't ask me.” He snorts. “I
don't have a clue. And no intention to contend for office.
Ever.”

“Glad to hear it.” My eyes drift
close again as I let the music wash over me. I wish I could get a
CD of it. Then I could take it home and play it for Finn. Would he
like it or think it's too soft? I wonder where he is and what he's
doing. And if he's alright. His mood didn't strike me as
particularly safe.

“He's fine, luv,” Fray breaks
in.

Opening my eyes shows me his
profile as he watches Colleen sway. “And you base this belief on
what?”

His mouth twitches. “Ever the
cynic, aren't you.”

“So, nothing?” I bite the inside
of my mouth, not as happy to be here as I was before.

Fray laughs softly at my
expression.

The laughter merges with a roar
and the music falters. The musicians miss a few notes, but they
refuse to stop playing while the sound blasts its way through the
room.

“What's that?” I hiss, sitting
up straight and looking around with a sense of panic no one else
seems to be sharing.

“Hard to say.” Fray's calm
nearly to the point of boredom. “No one's ever seen it. At least
not and been able to tell.”

I stare at him. “You're
kidding.”