Queen of the Dead (10 page)

I leaned over the side of Lily’s bed, lining my hand up with hers. Then I took a deep breath, let it out slowly, and then placed my hand on top of Lily’s.

For a second, I didn’t think anything would happen. I could feel the warmth of her skin against my palm, but that was all. Then, like I’d broken through the surface tension in a pool, my hand slipped down into hers. At our wrists, the boundary between us smeared, becoming a blur of my still sun-darkened skin and hers, a pale hospital-bleached white.

Trying to ignore the sensation of heat crawling up my arm, even faster than it had the first time, it seemed, I forced my hand forward and Lily’s lurched in response. The plastic planchette dug into the wood of the board under the weight of her hand, but I could still move it. It had been easier when Will was here and I could just move the piece around on the board myself, but this would work, too, and it would, I admitted reluctantly, have more of an effect.

MOM

I grimaced. It felt wrong, bad to be using this word for someone who wasn’t my mother. Then again, my mother couldn’t even be bothered to hang on to my stuff, let alone relocate it somewhere else entirely. She was just trying to survive in the only way she knew how. I got it. But still.

The heart monitor next to Lily’s bed picked up a beat or two, but nothing too bad sounding.

MOM

It took a few seconds for Lily’s mother to recognize the sound she was hearing—the scrape of the planchette across the board. She jolted up, the tray slipping from her lap to the floor with a rattle of hard plastic and the crash of ceramic, to stare at the Ouija board on the other side of the bed.

MOM

Ugh. I was sweating already from the effort…and I
hate
sweating. The heat from Lily’s arm had crawled up my arm and into my shoulder, and a strange pulling sensation had started, like vacuum suction, yanking me downward. The muscles in my back ached with the effort of keeping me upright.

This time, though, Mrs. Turner understood. She paled, raising a shaking hand to her mouth, her gaze fixed on the board, like if she looked away it would vanish.

Okay, what now?

Um…

HI

Her mother began this weird laughing, crying thing, with her shoulders shaking and tears streaming, but no sound emerging. She came around to my side of the bed, and she touched Lily’s hand. The strange part is, I felt it on
my
hand.

DONT B SAD

IM OK

Her mom nodded wildly, tears flying off her face and splattering our arms and the bed below.

Yeah, I would definitely have to come back and say good-bye on Lily’s behalf. I couldn’t leave it like this with her mom. She didn’t deserve this.

She stroked our arms, and I shivered at the odd sensation. “Baby, I’m so glad you’re here. I need you to do me a favor,” she said.

Okay, I had not been expecting this.

“Your father needs to see this. Then he’ll believe me.” She whipped her cell phone out of her sweater pocket and began dialing. “I could record it, but you know your dad, he won’t believe anything until he sees it for himself.”

So I was just supposed to hang out here until Lily’s dad made it in from wherever? I don’t think so. I started painstakingly spelling out my message, hoping her mom understood texting abbreviations.

MSG FRM ALONA

“Just wait, please, baby? He needs to see this.” Her mother covered the phone with her hand. “You know he doesn’t mean anything by it, all that talk about taking you home to…to pass. He just doesn’t understand.”

What?

The strength of whatever was pulling me into Lily gave a great yank, tugging me down until my whole arm was part of her and my chin was melding with her shoulder. And I started to panic.

This force inside Lily’s body was slowly pulling me inside. I needed to get out. Now. My message would have to wait until later.

I tried to pull back and found I couldn’t even force myself into a standing position.

Crap.

“Jason, she’s here! She’s doing it right now,” Lily’s mom said excitedly into the phone. “You need to come see her.”

The voice on the other end said something I couldn’t hear over the roar of blood in my ears. The weak, light-headed sensation that usually accompanied my vanishing act was now cascading over me. By the strength of it, I was guessing I didn’t have much of me left below the knee. The power of my fear was dissolving me where I stood even as Lily’s body tightened its grip on what was left.

Lily’s mother frowned down at our hand on the board. “Nothing right this second, but she was just doing it,” she said into the phone.

The heart monitor in the corner beeped faster and louder now.

“Lily?” Mrs. Turner asked. “Are you still there?”

Calm down. Think happy thoughts.
I had to stop the disappearing.

The suffocating heat closed over my face then, drawing me down, filling my nose until I couldn’t breathe.

I freaked and lashed out with everything I had left, tryingto break free…and my fingers, inside Lily’s, spasmed. That was it.

I heard the planchette skitter off the smooth wood, and Mrs. Turner gave an anguished cry. The heart monitor shrieked…and then nothing.

“A
re you okay?” Sam, my boss and my mom’s semi-boyfriend, stopped by the booth I was cleaning on his way back to the kitchen. “You haven’t said much today.” He sounded concerned.

“I’m fine.” Nothing that about ten hours of sleep and way less frustration in my life wouldn’t solve.

I’d chased after Alona when she’d fled this morning, but she was too quick for me, what with me actually having to open doors to get outside. Then I’d driven over to her mother’s house, thinking I might catch up with her before she got there, but no such luck. Either she’d gone somewhere else, or she’d gotten there faster than I would have thought possible and was already safely ensconced inside by the time I got there. It wasn’t as if I could ring the doorbell and ask for her.

While I was there, I couldn’t help but notice the small mountain of black trash bags at the foot of her mother’s driveway, lending credence to Alona’s story. Ignoring the strange looks from the few neighbors who were out and about, I’d snagged a few bags at random for Alona and tossed them in my trunk. Here was hoping I’d managed to grab something other than a week’s worth of her mom’s takeout containers or whatever. I hadn’t been trying to hurt her this morning. It was just…everything was so confusing now.

Then I’d come back home and spent three fruitless, grainy-eyed hours searching on the Internet only to find virtually nothing about any Order of the Guardians—other than a few vague allusions on a conspiracy theory message board—and way too many Blackwells in the St. Louis area.

Now what? I had no idea.

And Alona was furious with me. That couldn’t possibly end well. It wasn’t like her to be gone for this long, even if she was angry. Especially if she was angry. Her theory when it came to conflict was that it was only effective if the other person was made painfully aware of your perspective—emphasis on “pain”—until he or she had no choice but to surrender. And Alona was all about winning.

But right now, at a little after nine at night, it had been more than twelve hours since I’d seen her last.

“Do you maybe want to move on to a different table then?” Sam asked, drawing my attention back to the conversation at hand.

I looked down to find the once crumb-covered and syrup-sticky table gleaming and shiny wet. The booths on either side of me, which I swore had been full of people just a second ago, were now empty except for the piles of dirty dishes and balled up napkins for me to take away. How long had I been zoned out? I needed caffeine. Immediately. “Right,” I said. “Sorry. I just need some more sleep, I guess.”

Assuming Alona would let me. I envisioned a mob of angry ghosts gathering at my house—knowing Alona, in my freaking bedroom—right now.

“Well, go home, then.” Sam grinned. “You were due to clock out fifteen minutes ago anyway.”

“Oh.”
Wake up, Will.

“I’m all for the extra help, but I think your mom’ll start getting nervous if you’re not home soon,” he said.

I nodded. He was right, as usual.

“Also”—he leaned a little closer—“just so you know, table sixteen has been staring holes through you for the last ten minutes.” His mouth quirked. “Whatever you did, I hope it was worth it.” He patted me on the shoulder and walked away.

For a second, my mind supplied the image of Alona glaring at me from the corner of booth, but I knew that wasn’t possible. Well, it was, but Sam wouldn’t have been able to see her.

I turned and counted tables until I reached the general vicinity of the teens. I still didn’t have the layout memorized, so I wasn’t entirely sure which one was sixteen.

Then again, it turned out not to matter because once I was close, I saw exactly who Sam was talking about. Mina. And “staring holes at me” was a polite way of phrasing it. It was more like if she could have set me on fire with a look, she would have done it and gleefully watched me burn.

What the hell? Like she had reason to be angry with me?
That
took nerve.

I dropped my washrag on the table and stalked across the restaurant to her booth.

“Thank God,” she said with an irritated sigh as I approached. “I was beginning to think I was going to need to rent a neon sign to get your attention.” She was still wearingthe clothes I’d seen her in last night, but she looked considerably more rumpled, and the faint stain of a bruise now darkened her left cheek. A half-empty cup of coffee sat on the table in front of her, surrounded by a half dozen empty sweetener packets.

“What are you doing here?” I demanded. “I thought you’d be home, celebrating your success and laughing at the dumbass you left behind to get caught.” Me, angry? No, of course not.

“Funny thing about that.” She smiled bitterly. “They were watching.”

“Who?” I reached for the knot at the back of my apron totake the thing off, so Rosalee, the lead server and technically my supervisor, wouldn’t interrupt us to bitch at me for “chatting” during work time. I hadn’t clocked out yet, but Rosalee would probably assume I had if I weren’t wearing the apron.

“Leadership.” Mina nodded tightly. “They said it was for my protection, but now…now I’m not so sure about that, considering they’re far more interested in you than theyare in the fact that I cheated.” She touched her cheek gingerly with an unhappy sounding laugh.

“I don’t understand,” I said slowly, and sat down on the opposite side of the table.

“It was a risk, one they couldn’t be sure would pay off, but it was only my life, my future at stake.” Mina shook her head.

“What are you talking about?”

She leaned forward across the table, her hair skimming the top of her coffee cup. “You should have told me who you were,” she hissed.

“I wasn’t the one who refused to give a name,” I argued back.

She laughed again. “Right. I should have just known. Sorry, but memorizing your family history has never been a top priority.”

I stared at her, baffled. Why would my family history be any priority at all? At some point between last night and now, one of us had stopped making sense. I was pretty sure it wasn’t me.

She cocked her head to one side. “You really don’t know, do you? You didn’t have to listen to endless tales of the infamous ‘book club’?”

He called it book club, though what kind of book club involves coming back exhausted and all banged up, I have no idea.
My mom’s words echoed in my head, and I felt a chill.

“What book club?” I asked cautiously.

Mina made a disgusted noise and slapped a business card down on the table. “Be at this address in an hour. They want to meet you, see what you can do. Let them answer your questions.”

“Leadership?” I hazarded a guess.

She stood up. “You don’t deserve this.”

I didn’t even know what “this” was, but I sensed arguing with her about it now probably wasn’t a good idea.

“You know the thing that would scare the crap out of me, if I were you? If they’re willing to go this far to get you, what do you think they’ll do to keep you?”

I might have been more worried if I’d understood half of what she was talking about.

“Here.” She pulled the disruptor from her pants pocket. “Just remember, this”—she tapped her finger on the open end with the exposed wires jutting out slightly—“is the dangerous end.”

She tossed it at me, and I caught it with fumbling fingers.

“And then I guess we’ll see if you’re worth everything they think you are.” She gave me a mocking smile and then walked away.

Well. That didn’t sound good.

“Yep, should be fun. Don’t wait up.” I juggled the phone between my ear and my shoulder and tried to check building numbers as I drove by. This area of town—one of the oldest sections of Decatur—was not the greatest, and the lighting was sketchy at best. This had once been a bustling downtown area and now consisted mainly of empty and papered-over storefronts like blind eyes staring out at me.

“Have fun, sweetie,” my mom said. “I’m so glad you’re out having a good time. I’ll see you in the morning, okay?”

My mother, unused to me having much of a social life, had been astonishingly easy to lie to, something I already felt guilty about. She was so eager for me to have friends that my story of bumping into some buddies from school who wanted to see a late movie didn’t raise a single red flag, when it should have hoisted several.

“Okay. Good night.” I waited for her response, then closed my phone and chucked it onto the passenger seat.

I could have gone home. I probably should have gone home instead of coming out here on what was probably at best a wild goose chase and at worst some other scheme Mina had cooked up that would get me into trouble.

But there were two things that bothered me about that conversation with Mina that I couldn’t quite dismiss: First, how much she really, really did not want me to come down here for whatever meeting this was. Given Mina’s previous lack of interest in my health and well-being, I was intrigued by what would cause such concern. In fact, I suspected she was more worried for herself than for me.

Second, could it really just be chance that both my mom and Mina had referenced a book club, one that clearly had nothing to do with reading, in the last twenty-four hours? I doubted it. And what was all that about my “family history”?

I had no idea what that meant, other than something to do with my dad. It was all too much to pin on coincidence. If all of this had something to do with him, I wanted…no, needed to know about it.

I squinted at the scrawled address—2600 Lincoln Avenue—on the back of the business card Mina had left for me. The front of the card was simply an 800 number. I hadn’t yet attempted to call it, but I might have to if I didn’t find the address soon.

I was on Lincoln Avenue already, and the numbers were descending the farther east I headed, so I should have been in the right area.…

There. At the corner ahead of me, a huge billboard announced new loft-style condos at 2601 Lincoln Avenue, and directly across the street…the boarded up remains of the Archway Theater.

Crap.
I braked hard. Fortunately, no one was behind me.

The Archway Theater topped my list of places (along with Ground Zero in New York) to never, ever visit. It was legend.

It had been built in the twenties, before the Great Depression. In theory, it had cultural significance for Decatur as one of the few former stage theaters converted to a movie theater still in existence, though it had been closed for decades. The historical society kept trying to bring it back to life, butpeople kept getting hurt or dying during the various renovation attempts over the years. Workers fell to their deaths from the old stage, had unforeseen heart attacks, or were electrocuted when the power was supposed to be off.

It was always written off as superstition and coincidence, but in truth, there was something fundamentally wrong with the Archway that any idiot could recognize and no architect or contractor could repair. Back in the twenties, when the plans for the theater were approved, some genius got the idea to build it on some prime abandoned real estate in the center of town…right on top of an old hotel that had burned down in the middle of the night a decade before.

Sixty-some people had died in that hotel fire, and some of the bodies had never been recovered. Then, less than ten years later, construction crews started tearing at the ground to build the theater. Not to go all
Poltergeist
on you, but you have to be a special kind of stupid to do something like that.

That kind of mass event, so many violent deaths all atone time in one place, created a unique energy of its own. Myguess was that the theater was caught in a reenactment loopof the hotel fire, the same events cycling over and over againand playing out just as they had that night. From what I’d read online, Gettysburg had a couple of big loops like that. Battalions of soldiers still fought for their lives there, evenafter they’d been dead for more than a century and a half.

Every year, some group of stupid kids dared each other to break in and spend the night on Halloween, and almost all of them came out scared, sometimes hurt pretty badly, and refusing to talk about their experiences.

And yet, here I was.

I shook my head. Why would a bunch of ghost-talkers want to meet at the most haunted location in town, possibly even the whole state?

Someone honked behind me, and I jumped. I let my foot off the brake and turned down Springfield to get a closer look at the building. The theater sat on the corner with entrances on both sides, though everything looked dark and boarded up tightly. Thankfully. I really had no interest in going inside.

Then as I was driving past, a flash of red caught my attention. A banner, hanging where the old marquee had been, read:
NOW UNDER RENOVATION. OPENING SOON!

Great. Well, that explained it. Assuming Mina had been telling the truth at least some of the time last night, this Order organization was involved with the Decatur Governance and Development Committee. I didn’t know anything about what that committee did—something about permits or permission or something?—but if someone on it was concerned about “cleaning” the Gibley property before the parking garage was built, then it would make sense that same person might be interested in making sure the theater was equally untainted before opening day.