Shine (24 page)

Dylan’s voice startled me. “Logan said it was really loud being a shade. It’s probably hard for them to hear.”

“Logan could hear me just fine at the spring equinox.” I tried again, louder. “Randall Madison! If you want to stop suffering, please find me.” That sounded weird, but honest.

Still nothing.

“Try another name,” Dylan said.

I shouted the four names after Randall, but no shades appeared. The woods had fallen silent—my yelling had probably scared away the animals. “Maybe Logan only came because
I
called him. Maybe it has to be someone the shades know.”

“But shades show up all the time around strangers,” Dylan said.

“I’ll try again. Randall Madison—”

“Oh, for God’s sake, these are shades we’re dealing with.” Megan snatched the list and flashlight from my hands. “Hey, Randall, Paula, Sloan, Gavin, and Latisha! We know you dickweeds can hear us, so get your shady asses over here. Now!”

Dylan cackled. “Awesome, but do you really think that’ll—”

A screech shattered the night. It was joined by another, then another. The shades swarmed us from all sides, buzzing like crushed locusts. Megan and Dylan collapsed, hands to their ears.

My head spun like it would twist off my neck. I knelt down on the reservoir bank so I wouldn’t stumble into the water, then forced my mouth open to speak, despite my nausea.

“I can help you! You can be a ghost again.” I reached for the closest shade, remembering what Logan had told Dylan about their ability to choose. “It’s your decision.”

Three shades hovered near the branches above me, making a gnashing noise that gnawed my brain. The other two floated in front, over the water.

“Aura, hurry!” Megan gagged. Dylan lay on his side in the mud, every muscle spasming.

In the middle of the maelstrom, I thought of Logan, and suddenly I knew what to say. I spoke softly into the whirlwind. “You don’t have to be alone anymore.”

The shades screamed louder—in protest or assent, I couldn’t tell.

I lifted my arms, opening my body to them. “Now!”

Two shades zoomed forward. Their dark energy entered my gut, then left through the small of my back, fast as a bullet.

My muscles turned to jelly. I fell forward, raising my hands too late to break my fall. My cheekbone hit a rock, sending a gong of pain ricocheting through my head. The other shades gave squealing laughs and swooped closer. It felt like they would devour me.

“Aura!” Dylan and Megan shouted from the ground nearby. The shades filled me with dark vibrations, until I felt ripped apart atom by atom. I couldn’t see through the blackness as I started to vomit.

Someone grabbed my shoulders and propped me up, while another pair of hands held my hair back. My body shuddered and
spasmed, trying to rid itself of the shades’ bitter rage.

“Unhhh.” I pushed myself back from the water’s edge. My throat burned, liked I’d puked a mix of grapefruit juice and hot pepper sauce.

“Here.” Breathing hard, Dylan held out his tie, which he’d removed. When I gave him an odd look, he said, “It’s either this or my undershirt.”

“Thanks, this is fine.” I wiped my clammy forehead, then my mouth, with the soft silk. “Is there a ‘Kill me, I’m stupid’ sign taped to my back?”

“You were trying to help them.” Megan was sitting beside me, holding her stomach. “You know what’s weird? As soon as they went through you, I started feeling better.”

I looked around, though turning my head made it feel like it would split open. “Does that mean it worked? Did the shades turn into ghosts?”

“They disappeared,” Dylan said. “Flew through you and came out the other side. They were violet for, like, a millisecond, and then they were gone.”

“That’s what I saw, too,” Megan added. “I remember seeing violet reflected in the water.”

My heart leaped. Whatever happened with Logan wasn’t just a Logan thing. Shading didn’t have to be a one-way trip to hell. Unless …

“Why’d they disappear? Did they turn back into shades and go somewhere else?”

“Oh.” Dylan looked at Megan. “Maybe.”

I groaned at the uncertainty, then saw the mess I’d made of myself. “Ugh, I can’t go home like this. Gina will think I got drunk.”

“I brought a change of clothes, because of this stupid suit.” Dylan knelt beside me and draped one of my arms over his shoulder. “Megan, get her other side.”

We wobbled up the trail to the car, where Dylan gave me a T-shirt and a pair of jeans that were about a foot too long. The back of Dylan’s dress shirt was muddy, but he put on his jacket to cover the stains. Megan had managed to fall down on the driest part of the reservoir bank, so she’d suffered only a scraped elbow.

The closest bathroom was at a Dairy Queen on York Road. I changed and washed up while Megan and Dylan ordered food we probably couldn’t stomach.

I staggered out into the fluorescent light, holding up Dylan’s jeans at my waist, the cuffs rolled to my knees. His Spiderman T-shirt fell halfway down my thighs. Dylan and Megan sat hunched side by side at a table next to the condiment stand.

Megan’s eyes glinted at me as I approached. “Aura, guess what? We—oh, wow, you look, um. Really, not too bad.”

“No worse than a refugee camp reject.” I sat across from them and rested my head against the back of the booth. “What’s up?”

“We were thinking,” Dylan said, chowing down on a burger despite having nearly had a seizure half an hour ago.

“
I
was thinking,” Megan corrected. “Shades can go anywhere, but ghosts can only go where they went during their lives, right? Remember that time Logan disappeared from the car when we drove down a street where he’d never been?”

I’d never forget that. He’d stood there in the intersection, forlorn and violet, while the car behind us drove right through him.

“Those shades tonight,” Dylan added. “When they were alive, I bet they never went to that reservoir.”

“So if they’d turned back into ghosts,” Megan blurted, “they would’ve disappeared.”

“Gone back to someplace they’d been before,” Dylan finished.

Megan reached across the table and grabbed my wrist. “Aura, you can cure shades,” she hissed. “Not just Logan.
Any
shade.”

I pulled my soda closer, desperate for sugar and caffeine. “We can’t know for sure unless someone sees one of those ex-shades as a ghost again.” My mind fought the lingering dizziness. “Wait—could we try to call them as ghosts?”

“Yes!” Megan pulled out the list of shade names. “I bet some of their obituaries are online, and if they died here in Maryland, they’ll be in the state medical examiner’s database.” She shimmied her shoulders in a triumphant dance. “Which I have access to at the funeral home.”

“Awesome.” Dylan picked up my burger. “Are you gonna eat this?”

I shook my head and sipped my soda, my stomach roiling.

Did I want to be the Secret Savior of Shades? After hearing firsthand of Logan’s hellish ordeal, how could I not help them?

Besides, this experiment wasn’t just charity work. Tonight had given me a big piece of the “Who Am I?” puzzle. One I planned to finally solve in Ireland, with Zachary.

E
arly the next evening, Megan got the scoop on one of our hopefully ex-shades, the ghost of a woman who’d lived in Baltimore and worked in Annapolis. We decided to try to reach her in the capital city next Friday night instead of screaming her name outside her old house.

I told Zachary all about it in that night’s video chat.

“If this worked,” I said in conclusion, “if I did change a shade to a ghost, I want to try it again on the winter solstice when we’re in Ireland. Is that okay? I know we’re supposed to be on vacation.”

“It’s not just a vacation.” He typed on his keyboard, his eyes searching the screen beside me. “This year the solstice is at two fifteen a.m. Ireland time on the twenty-second. We’ll find somewhere private for you to call the shades.”

I grinned, relieved I hadn’t had to convince him. “So how are you?”

Zachary waved his hand without answering, as always. “Thanks very much for the biscuits.” He reached to the side, then lifted a cardboard box so I could see it. “From your grandmother’s bakery, right? My mum loves them. She doesn’t have as much time to bake, what with taking care of Dad.”

“I like your parents. They seem to really love each other.”

“Aye.” He took a bite of almond cookie and chewed while he pondered. “They come from such different backgrounds. He’s working-class Glasgow, and she’s boarding-school south England. They’re like, em, what’s that Disney movie about the dogs?”

“101 Dalmatians?”

“No, the one with the cocker spaniel and the spaghetti. At the Italian restaurant, where the waiter sings ‘Bella Notte.’ ”

“Lady and the Tramp?”

“That’s it. They’re Lady and the Tramp.”

I laughed. “When they had puppies, some of them were little Ladys and some were little Tramps. Which are you?”

“Well, I’m no’ a lady, that’s for sure.”

The way Zachary looked at me made me wish we were sharing a single strand of spaghetti, like the dogs in the movie. Not that we would need that as an excuse to kiss.

“Did you see a lot of Disney movies growing up?”

“I loved them.” His eyes grew as animated as the films he was talking about. “I thought that’s what America must be like. Bright colors, singing and dancing. Heroes and villains easy to tell apart.”

I smiled, both at his words and at my realization that his face looked less gaunt than before. “Was America like you imagined?”

“It was almost as colorful. And God knows, people sing and dance on television constantly. But the good guys and bad guys weren’t as clear as I thought they’d be.”

His gaze shadowed, and I waited for him to tell me what the DMP had done to him.

Instead he brightened and dusted the sugar off his hands. “We’ve had a bit of drama, too. Martin, my best mate from round here—” He cut himself off and spoke bitterly. “My only mate now. He’s moved in with us.”

“ ‘Only mate now’? I thought you were hanging out with all your old friends.”

“Not after what they did to Martin last week. After he came out to them.”

“What happened? Did they hurt him?”

“Naw, it wasn’t as if he was doing something truly shocking, like supporting the wrong football club. But the bastards said stupid things. He got angry, rightfully so, and I was caught in the middle. It was an easy choice.” Zachary frowned and drew a thumb over one dark brow. “No, not easy. But simple.”

“That sucks.”

“It does, because on any other day, any of us lads’d take a punch—or a bullet—for any o’ the others.”

“So why’s Martin living with you? Did his parents kick him out?”

“No’ officially. But they decided that now he’s seventeen and not at university, he should start paying rent. My parents said he could stay here for free.” Zachary adjusted the collar of his light-brown T-shirt, looking embarrassed. “On the condition that he cheers me up.”

“Is he?”

He nodded. “I can’t wait for you to come and meet him.”

My belly warmed at the idea of visiting Zachary in Glasgow. That wasn’t part of our December itinerary, so it meant he was thinking beyond.

“Is he home?”

“He just got back from work at the pub, so he’ll pop round in a minute.”

A knock came from behind him. Zachary turned his head. “Aye!”

“A’right, mate?” A moment later a redheaded boy appeared behind Zachary’s chair. “You must be Aura.”

His bright grin provoked one of my own, and of course the accent made my eyes glaze over. “Martin?”

“Martin Connelly, pleased to meet ya.” He said to Zachary, “If tha’s what she looks like on a wee screen, I cannae wait tae see her in 3-D.”

Zachary kept his eyes on me. “Not as much as I can’t wait.”

Another knock came at the door, and I heard Fiona’s voice.

“It’s a whole crowd,” Zachary muttered. “Come in.”

“Oh, are you speaking with Aura?” She peeked over his other shoulder, wisps of dark hair in disarray around her face. “Hello, love. How are you?”

“I’m great.” I tried not to show my dismay at her obvious exhaustion, and wondered why she was up at two a.m. “How are you and Mr. Moore?”

“Ah, well.” She touched Zachary’s arm. “Can I have your help with your father for just one minute?”

“Of course.”

Zachary stood up, and Martin slipped into his chair. “I’ll keep Aura occupied till ya get back.” His gaze went past the camera as he watched them leave. Then his face turned suddenly serious, which didn’t seem like its natural state. “How is he, wi’ you?”

It took a moment to understand not only Martin’s meaning, but his words. His accent was ten times stronger than Zachary’s—not surprising, since Zachary had spent the last four years in England and America.

“Sometimes he’s normal,” I said. “Other times, he seems really distant. Is he mad at me?”