Of Delicate Pieces (20 page)

The last childish piece of her, the distant memory harboring smells of baby blankets and the tone of love in a lullaby, finally broke away from the rest of her. “No one has ever given me a definite answer about that. How would you know?”

He slouched. “Because I buried some of her memories.”

Confusion mixed with sorrow smelled a lot like that damn baby blanket. She blinked, and she was sitting on the bench next to him.

He tucked his tangled hair behind his ears. “I own the memory mine at the edge of the gates. I know you’ve seen it. You left your presence all over the place.”

Questions. There they were again, each flashing in front of the other like pop-up ads on a computer screen.

“You can ask what you’d like. You have a curious mind.”

“What’s a memory mine?”

“Exactly what it sounds like.” He looked up at the sky. “When a body dies, whether the soul comes here or not, the energy has to go somewhere. Think about how strongly you love something, or how strongly you hate something. That doesn’t disappear when you die. The energy travels until it finds something to latch onto. When the bodied rushed to California for gold, the spirited rushed here for the memory stones. But my people, living and dead, we always knew the land better than anyone. We were here long before the others.”

“Is that why Eidolon was built here?”

Alex followed his line of sight up to the redwoods stretching so high they were like several paths converging into one location.

“There are many things about this particular area that draw us. The mine is one, for certain. The arrival is another. After all we’ve learned and discovered with these radical minds of ours, we still have no clue what makes the spirited in this area of the world show up in these woods after they die. Blame it on the pull of the universe; our world likes to make some decisions on its own, doesn’t it?”

“What do you do with the stones?”

He straightened his head in surprise. “Didn’t you see the field? I bury them. It wouldn’t be right to sell them.”

“I only saw a field of flowers.”

“The flowers sprout from the ground where the memory is buried.”

Alex frowned. “But you said they were valuable.”

“The stone begins like a cloudy diamond. When a memory finds its way to a piece of the stone, it turns black, and I chisel it away to bury it. Once the memories latch on to the stone, they aren’t as valuable. Would you want to walk around with a random stranger’s love for their dog around your neck? Or the sorrow of lost children? Or the greed of misers? However,” he said and held up a finger, “the empty memory stones are a different story. If a stranger died in front of you, a piece of their mind would latch on to the stone. One particular group of people used these stones as trophies.”

Alex’s knee bounced and she twirled a strand of hair.

“During that time of change when the cities were built, it was kill or be killed. The Havilahs ruled the living, and the Cinatris ruled the dead. Neither liked my kind. I traded the entire mine in exchange for the freedom of my people. The trade was worth it to keep my people safe. We had so many tribes indigenous to this area, and the hunters were forced to leave us all alone even during the gold rush when so many others were slaughtered.”

Alex hung her head. “I’m a Havilah, you know.”

“Yes.”

“Why are there so many coincidences between my life and my death?”

“I wouldn’t call it coincidence. You’re a Havilah, and Havilahs die young. Havilahs are also hereditarily spirited, so it isn’t unusual that you found yourself dead or that you found yourself here.”

A group of spirits exited the gym and gawked at Alex when they passed. A man with wild hair stopped to pat Yazzie’s back, and Alex recognized him from the banshee attack last year. He was one of the Patrol.

“Now your appearance.” Yazzie drew circles around her head and the shape remained in a silvery light. “That’s another story.”

“You think that’s coincidence?”

“Not at all.” He smudged the silver light until it disappeared. “I’d call that irony. Or karma.” His chin jerked upward. “Or fate.”

Memories were whack. They weren’t something Jonas valued because they reminded him of failure. Jonas never really liked himself. He’d come to terms with that a long time ago. So why should he even try? He wasn’t the youngest of his four brothers, but he still placed last in all categories. Likeability. Athleticism. Intelligence. Compared to the rest of the population, he was above the curve, but in his own family, he finished dead last no matter how hard he ran the race. Screw them.

When he learned that he could live after death, he’d been in that room alone, no brothers in attendance to cast their shadows over him. He clutched onto the opportunity and decided to continue being the person he’d hated for eighteen years because finally it was his chance to change, his chance to shine. How stupid of him to think death would be different. He’d ended up in a fool’s paradise, once again encumbered by the expectations of being a Lasalle.

Jonas plopped down on a park bench and took in the sights, wondering what the hell he was doing here. It seemed like a typical small town, nothing special: general store, bumpy sidewalks, oak trees, annoying children, and gray-haired bench dwellers.

A flustered-looking mother ambled to a stop beside him. Jonas lifted his feet and let out a loud curse when she nearly hit him with her double stroller. Of course she couldn’t see him. It took a ton of effort on both ends for the living to see the dead.

“Excuse me,” she said.

Jonas checked the grassy space behind him, but no one was there. She had spoken to him. He figured he should act normal, but the woman wasn’t paying attention to him anymore. She was busy digging into her bag and telling the kids to cool their jets.

He moved aside on the bench and tried to figure out which direction to take next. His instructions were vague, but his determination remained steady. He needed to find the importance of this place.

The mother threw her bag on the ground and crouched down to find whatever it was that she was missing. Her toddler whined, her baby cried, and her preschooler clutched hold of the side of the stroller. Three boys. Three. If his parents had stopped at three, he would have been the baby. It was wishful thinking to believe that if it had been the case in his family, his brothers might have loved him more. They would have protected him like they protected Chase. But if Chase hadn’t been in the picture, it’s possible that Alex wouldn’t have been either. A life without Alex didn’t seem right. Who would he pick on?

He’d been searching all his life for friends who didn’t worship his brothers, companions who didn’t overshadow him yet were still cool. Surrounding himself with duds would be too easy. Enter the brotherhood last year. Eviar had promised him exactly what he wanted. What a crock of shit that was. Jack Bond? Really? Reuben Seyferr? No wonder their identities were kept secret; they were the crap of the crop.

This time was different. His brothers would be categorized somewhere desirable, but Jonas would come out on top when this was all said and done. He consoled himself, saying his path might be unconventional, but what he was doing now was better than anything he could do in Eidolon. He had become a part of something major, something Brigitta workshops couldn’t give him. He was going to change the world. So what if he had to pretend like he sacrificed his family? After Gabe’s attack, he knew Eviar wasn’t what he hoped, and the very next day before he could back out of Eviar this group of spirits found him and offered him something better.

His brothers hated him, but he consoled himself by remembering something his mother used to tell him. Hate and love were the two most passionate emotions. If you take the time to hate something, it meant you secretly cared about it. No wonder he treated Alex like crap. If he beheaded her dolls or shoved her off a swing, it would make her hate him. And if she couldn’t love him, at least she could hate him.

What would she think about what he was doing now?

She’d get a thrill out of this
, his subconscious answered. Even when she was frail and sick, that girl held more life than her pygmy hands could hold. Her body couldn’t handle it, didn’t know what to do with it.

Beside Jonas, the mother with the stroller straightened up, clutched her back, and hung her bag from the handlebar of the stroller. The oldest boy, the one walking alongside, kicked his Batman shoe into the dirt. Jonas chuckled.

The boy gazed at him, causing Jonas to retract. No way. He lifted a hand and waved. The little boy waved back.
He
could see Jonas, too?

His mother grabbed his hand. “Come on, honey. We’re late.”

The boy twisted his body to catch one more peek at Jonas as his mother shuffled him past a sign that read,
Welcome to Astor, Oregon, est. 1839.

The group that recruited him gave him no instructions except to travel here; he had to figure out the rest on his own. This felt like less of a mission and more of a test, as if throwing his brothers under the bus hadn’t been enough.

What would his brothers say about this?

Didn’t you learn your lesson the first time?
They always hounded him. If his brothers knew whom he was working with, they wouldn’t question his path or his footsteps.
They’d be jealous
. They’d want to follow, and that was why he couldn’t tell them. He didn’t want to share it.

He rested his elbows on the back of the bench and inspected the town sign. The sensation of familiarity crept closer, choking him in comfort as though he should feel at ease here.

He’d never traveled to this Podunk Oregon town before, so how could it feel like he’d been here? Streets of shops and restaurants ahead, a school to the left, neighborhoods to the right, and behind him was a building with pillars like a courthouse, but no traffic moved in or out. A town museum, he assumed but how the heck would he know that?

Because that’s what it was in Parrish.

He gasped. Everything situated around this center square of land, right down to the sign proclaiming its name, was a replica of his hometown! What would Astor, Oregon have to do with Parrish, Maryland?

At home, the museum was stuffed with old Parrish artifacts. Alex’s mother, being related to the town’s founders, donated a ton of them. He drummed his fingers against his chin as a man came out with a stack of books. It was too good to be true. A library?

He stood up and dusted off his hands, hoping he could find what he didn’t even know he was looking for.

Wasn’t that how most journeys began?

He lifted a hand with the sudden urge to slap away such an idealistic thought. Jonas was many things, but idealistic was not one of them.

***

Sun streamed through the window of the library, highlighting dust particles. Jonas placed his back to the window and the distraction of the Parrish wannabe town.

Why me?
he’d asked the spirits who sent him.

Because we need a newbury. And because you’re the one for the job.

He held a stack of weathered books with cracks along the spines and nodded to the librarian staring at him. He figured he’d better act like one of the bodied and pretend to strain as he lowered the books to a table. Something about her felt familiar to Jonas, but everything about this place felt that way.
Twilight Zone
, his parents used to say, whatever that meant.

Jonas lifted the first book from the pile, beginning with the town’s history.
Westward expansion
, it read. He was surprised how strong the pages were. In comparison to the busted binding, it was misleading, and it reminded him of Alex, broken on the outside and strong on the inside. A lot of things reminded him of Alex.

He shook away his thoughts. Jonas had mastered the art of letting things go. The stack of books swayed, but he caught them just in time. If he was alive, he would need to skim; it would take him days to get through this information. With a mind free of his body, he should be able to get through these in an hour or so.

Between the snoring chapters about the western movement, government formation, and legislation, he found a few needles in the haystack of books. On the day of its founding, the town had an instant population of ninety-six people, but there weren’t any facts about their migration and very few facts about its creator, a man named Astor. One author mentioned Astor’s birth to a prestigious family that founded their own self-righteous cult on the east coast of the Chesapeake. As a young man, Astor left to escape his family burdens, creating an identical town, but he built it to “right the wrongdoings of a condemnatory family whom he despised.”

Bingo. Astor was a Havilah.

During the thirty minutes it took Jonas to find these crucial pieces of information, someone followed his every move. The librarian had flipped over the sign at the front door, and he heard the click of a lock.

Jonas sighed. “I promise. I’m only here for information,” he said. What an idiot she was. He was a spirit. He could go right through that door whether it was locked or not.

An elderly woman stepped out from behind a bookshelf. “I don’t have to ask if you’re dead or alive considering the way you read.”

Jonas tried to hide his surprise. “How do you know I’m not
gifted
?”

She put a hand over her heart. “If you were
gifted
, you’d know where you are. Besides, even the gifted can’t read like that.”

What did she mean by
where he was?
He put up his guard. “You would know, wouldn’t you? I don’t have to ask if you’re gifted or not since you can see me.”

“Seeing the spirited doesn’t make one gifted. You must be young. That might save you, considering the law you’ve broken.”

“What law?”

“The spirited aren’t allowed to enter a gifted territory.”

He shut the book in front of him, and a chill washed over him. Gifted territory? He knew little about the afterworld outside of Eidolon.

“What am I going to do with you?”