Elegy

  By the time I reached my first destination, both my heels and toes ached so badly that they’d almost—but not quite—gone numb; I’d been given a ride to this location for so long, I’d forgotten how long it actually took to walk here. Fortunately or not, the walk had also provided me with a lot of time to think, and now I hardly noticed the pain in my feet. Not in comparison to my brutal, panicky heartbeats.

  I can do this, I told myself. I can do this.

  Even so, my level of anxiety had reached new heights and I couldn’t help wishing with each step that I was back in the Mayhews’ kitchen, eating blueberry muffins and holding hands with Joshua. If nothing else, I wished that he was here again, urging me on like he’d done so many times before.

  But this morning I faced my mother’s house alone.

  The sight of it made me ache, like it always did. Today, the dilapidated house seemed prettier, framed by the lush, bright green of an Oklahoma spring. Even still, I stumbled slowly up the gravel driveway, wishing that I were anywhere but there.

  I was still throwing the pity party, working myself up to the knock that had eluded me for so long, when the front door flung open and my mother came charging out of house. She was carrying an overstuffed trash bag, and for a moment, all I could think was, Guess it’s trash day.

  I snapped back to reality in time to realize that the trash bag blocked my mother’s view of me. I was still safe, if I acted quickly. So I allowed the current of invisibility to run over my skin, just in time to see my mother shift the trash bag and casually glance in my direction. I’d gone invisible by the time the bag slipped from her hands, clattering to the ground and spilling its contents all over the porch. But by then, the damage was done.

  Although I knew she couldn’t see me now, I didn’t twitch a single muscle. She didn’t move either, even as several items from her trash rattled noisily across her porch. When an empty glass bottle rolled off the edge and shattered against a large chunk of rock on her lawn, both of us jumped . . . and both of us shrieked.

  I slapped my hand over my mouth, but it was too late: if my mother thought, for even a second, that I didn’t really exist, I’d just proved her wrong. But even after that slipup, we both remained silent, motionless, for an awfully long time.

  Finally, my mother stirred.

  “Wherever you went,” she called, “you can come out now.”

  I wavered, still so unsure of what to do or say next. Then, acting mostly on instinct, I ran the current back over my skin. At that moment, I was fully visible to her—no hat or sunglasses to mask my face, no black dress to hide my body. Just me, in clothes and last night’s makeup. Looking, for the most part, exactly like I did over a decade ago, on the night that I died.

  If I frightened my mother, that reaction certainly didn’t show on her face. In fact, her expression remained the same. She continued to frown thoughtfully, clearly taking in each element of my appearance: the pale, drawn face; the abused ballet flats; the designer clothes, now dusty from my walk. Then, inexplicably, she smiled.

  “Looks like you’ve had quite a night.”

  I blinked back, stunned by how calm she sounded.

  “Do you want to come up onto the porch, and talk?” she offered.

  Still pretty befuddled, I nodded and began to take slow, unsteady steps toward the house. I stopped before climbing the porch steps and looked up at her.

  “How did you know?” I asked softly.

  I couldn’t be sure, but I thought she flinched slightly—maybe at the sound of my voice. Of course, she’d heard me speak after Serena’s funeral, but that was when I could have been someone else. Someone who wasn’t her long-dead daughter.

  Even if she had flinched, I couldn’t see any fear in her second smile. All I could see was a sweet, crushing mix of sadness and love.

  “Don’t you think,” she asked kindly, “that I would recognize my own daughter’s hands?”

  “What . . . what do you mean?” I whispered.

  Still smiling, my mother shook her head. “Your hands—when you reached out to put that iris on Serena’s casket, I saw your hands. And I knew that it was you; that it had to be you.”

  “Oh.”

  My one syllable sounded flat and uninspired, but that was the best I could do right then. Without another word, I used a column to pull myself onto the porch—mostly so that I could avoid the steps, to which my mother stood too near. For some reason, I didn’t want to come too close to her. Maybe because I didn’t want to find out what would happen if she tried to touch me.

  “Do you . . . want to sit down?” my mother asked, gesturing to the two plastic lawn chairs that occupied the far corner of the porch.

  “Sure,” I answered roughly, and then followed her slowly to the chairs, keeping my distance the entire way. I waited for her to sit first before I took my seat, using one hand to sweep the dust off my jeans.

  We sat there for another long moment, staring warily at each other. She looked pretty in the early-morning light. Her dark hair, so close in color to mine, lay loose on her shoulders, free of its usual ponytail.

  “So,” she began, after awkwardly clearing her throat. “Maybe we should start with the basics?”

  “Okay. Okay, sure.”

  “First things first, then. Do you . . . you know about Daddy?” she asked haltingly.

  And with that question, I finally burst into tears. A flood of them, actually. They poured out of my eyes, stinging my skin and washing away any remnants of makeup I still wore.

  To my surprise, it felt good to cry, especially on a day like today. Even more surprising, my mother started to cry as well. I didn’t try to stop her. Instead, we sat there crying for nearly an hour, mourning my father together.

  Not for the first time, it struck me that although my mother had suffered my death with someone who shared her burden—my father—she’d faced his death alone. Now, she could finally cry with someone who missed him just as much as she did. And strangely, I felt a weird kind of relief that I could share this grief with her.

  After a while, however, my mother and I had both shed enough tears. So we began to talk—a decade’s worth of talking, in fact. Initially, the conversation consisted of her asking questions, and me answering them. What happened after I died? Did I know where Daddy was? Did it hurt, to die? I answered her questions as honestly as I could, although some almost caused me more pain than I could stand. Eventually, the conversation turned to her, and her life since my father and I left her. And eventually, the conversation turned to that night.

  She asked and, because she was my mother—because I loved her—I told her everything.

  I told her about Joshua and how I felt about him. I told her about the friends I’d made since my death, including the one I’d lost. I told her about all the things that the demons had done to me, and all that they promised to do. And then I told her about the light and how my father waited for me there; about Melissa’s offer to join him straightaway, before the demons had a chance to destroy my soul forever.

  Finally, I described my plan—a plan that I hadn’t fully shared with anyone until now. When I got to the part that she might play in it, I hesitated, just for a moment. Then I spilled my idea in one breath, running each sentence into the other so that the concept wouldn’t sound quite so crazy, or offensive.

  Even as I spoke, I questioned whether or not this was the right move. After all, I’d thought about this aspect of my plan since Ruth died, and I still hated it with every cell in my body. Yet I also knew it was the only way I could convince the demons to do what I needed them to. I’d run through the list of candidates for this particular job so many times in my head. Jillian, Scott, Felix, Annabel—I had tried and rejected each one. As much as I fought it, I knew that no one worked quite as well as my mother.

  Actually, there was another person who the demons would take just as seriously, but I couldn’t do it. I’d meant every word I said to him the previous night: that I wanted him to live a full life,
full of love and happiness and joy. That wasn’t to say that I didn’t want the same things for my mother. But then again . . . she was my mother; in the end, she was the only person in this world or the next that I could ask to do such a horrible, terrible thing for me.

  To her credit, she didn’t interrupt me while I talked. She just let me run through my plan—and her place in it—until I had nothing left to say. Then she let me catch my breath from all that hurried, desperate talking.

  After a long wait, during which I suspected that she would throw me off her porch, my mother nodded firmly and said, “I’ll do it.”

  I’d already been frowning—so hard my head ached, actually—but my expression only deepened. I should have been relieved. Instead, I suddenly didn’t think I could go through with my plan anymore.

  “Are you sure, Mom? Because this might not work. In fact, I seriously doubt this works.”

  She snorted lightly and then flashed me a smile, one that looked braver than she probably felt inside. “Lord, Amelia, you’re still a pessimist, aren’t you?”

  One corner of my mouth lifted into an involuntary half grin. “I prefer ‘realist,’ actually.”

  “That’s what all the pessimists say.”

  I barked out a laugh, but it sounded small and weak as it echoed off the porch columns. Neither of us said anything else for a while—we just stared out at the trees, listening to their leaves as they sang in the late-morning breeze.

  Finally, I broke the silence.

  “Mom, you have to understand: there’s a pretty good chance that you could end up in . . . in . . .”

  “Hell,” she finished quietly. “Or worse.”

  I didn’t answer; I couldn’t.

  “The thing is, Amelia,” my mother went on, “I do understand. And I don’t care.”

  I began to shake my head violently. “You can’t say that, Mom—you don’t know what it’s like down there. I’ve only seen the entrance to it, and that place is bad enough. Plus, Dad won’t be there—”

  “But you will,” she interrupted, her voice suddenly fervent. She leaned forward in her chair, so close to me now that I could’ve touched her, if I’d had the ability.

  “Wherever I go,” she said, “you’ll be there with me.”

  “No,” I whispered. “I mean, I will be, but you won’t know that. They’d probably make you a wraith, and as far as I know, the wraiths are mindless shells—just the demons’ puppets.”

  She smiled, this time sadly. “The risk will be worth it.”

  My mother leaned back and gestured to her peeling, crumbling house. “This isn’t any kind of life, Amelia: sitting alone in my pathetic little house, missing my family and waiting to die. If I can do something to help my daughter—if I have a chance to protect her, like I couldn’t do so many years ago—then the reward is definitely worth the risk.”

  “But, Mom—”

  “No ‘but,’ Amelia,” she interrupted again, sounding an awful lot like the woman who’d berated me into surviving years of math homework. “I’ve already made up my mind. Best-case scenario: I’ll be dancing with your father by Sunday morning. Worst-case scenario: I spend eternity in the same place that you do. Either way . . . I win.”

  I brushed furiously at the tears that had abruptly returned to the corners of my eyes. What could I say to that? Thank you didn’t seem like enough, so I merely sobbed, “I love you, Mom. I’m sorry for all the times we fought when I was, you know, alive.”

  She laughed softly, looking away from me and staring thoughtfully at the trees. “Honey, I lost those memories a long time ago. Now, all I see is your dad’s smile when we danced; all I hear is your laughter. Those are things I held on to.”

  Somehow, her words only made me cry harder. But this time, my mother didn’t cry. She didn’t look at me, either. She just kept her gaze trained on the tree line and gave a decisive nod.

  “I love you, too, Amelia. And I’ll see you tonight.”

  Knowing that was my dismissal, I pressed myself up from my chair, climbed down from the porch, and hurriedly made my way across her lawn. Just before I crossed onto the road in front of her house, though, I thought I heard her call out to me one last time.

  I swallowed hard but didn’t turn around—just kept walking steadily until, if I did turn around, I wouldn’t be able to see the house. Mostly because I just couldn’t bring myself to take that long, last look at the woman I loved most in the world, sitting near the place where she’d raised me.

  Chapter

  TWENTY-SEVEN

  I dreaded my next errand almost more than my first, probably because of where I had to conduct it. I probably could have tried to do this someplace different—a field of daisies perhaps, just for some symmetry. But in the end, I didn’t know of any location more supernaturally charged than here, on the riverbank beneath High Bridge.

  I paced the bank uncomfortably, avoiding any eye contact with the structure behind me. I’d seen it enough times to know that it still looked menacing in the daylight; and I’d seen it enough times in the past two weeks to know that I’d get my fill of it that night. Instead of looking back, I stared at the mud below me, watching as it squished around the ruined edges of my ballet flats.

  “Are you there?” I called softly, with my eyes still trained on the ground. “You said to call if I needed you. And I really need you right now.”

  Nothing answered but a few springtime crickets and the rushing water of the river. I supposed I wasn’t all that surprised by the lack of response; her instructions for calling had been pretty specific. So I stopped pacing, closed my eyes, and raised my head.

  “Melissa!” I shouted into the air. “Melissa, I need to speak to you. Please.”

  At first, nothing else happened. Then I heard a soft, whooshing breeze, which brought with it a pleasantly floral scent.

  It smelled like heaven.

  I opened my eyes, relieved. But I was surprised to find that I was still standing on the riverbank, and it was still empty. No prairie, no Melissa—just that soft, sweet-smelling breeze.

  “What’s going on?” I whispered, a little afraid of the answer. Was this the light, responding to my call? Or was this the dark, screwing with my mind—breaking down my willpower, before they broke me completely that night?

  As if in reply, the breeze blew stronger around me, filling the air with that lovely scent. It was gorgeous, intoxicating, but it was also maddening. Especially when unaccompanied by an explanation.

  I straightened my spine, cast a single glance back at High Bridge to make sure nothing waited there to surprise me, and then turned back toward the riverbank.

  “Answer me,” I demanded. “I called you. Now answer.”

  Amelia.

  The breeze called my name, soft but distinct. After another heartbeat, a faint, translucent form took shape in front of me. Although she was colorless and sheer, I could tell that the form was Melissa.

  “Nice of you to come,” I said drily.

  It’s not easy, Melissa replied in that breeze-like whisper, to appear to you on this plain. I prefer the meadow.

  I couldn’t help but snort. “Sorry I didn’t have time to pass out so I could talk to you.”

  When Melissa remained silent, I took that as my cue to speak again.

  “So I called you,” I began awkwardly, “to give you an answer. Sort of.”

  Melissa stirred. You’ve decided to join us, after all?

  “Yes. And no. Not exactly.”

  Even though she was sheer, I could still see the outline of Melissa’s frown. I don’t understand, she said, obviously prompting me to clarify.

  Here was my chance, then. Everyone’s fate hinged on what I asked right now, and what Melissa answered. I stood taller—as tall as I possibly could—and stared directly into what I assumed were her eyes.

  “I want to repeat what I asked you the other night: I want you to let me try to save the living people I love, before I join you. And I want you to allow everyone that
I save in the netherworld, and even in hell, to join me in heaven too.”

  Melissa began to whisper a protest, but I cut her off. “Please, just listen to my full request before you deny it. Please?”

  Melissa paused and, after another moment’s hesitation, nodded. So, like I had done for my mother earlier that morning, I told Melissa about each part of my plan. I described my first line of defense, which included the young Seers and their newly acquired glows, as well as my second, darker plot, which included my mother, Felix’s gun, and as much Transfer Powder as I could steal from Annabel’s jar before that night’s attack. And also like I had done that morning, I admitted each thing that could—and probably would—go wrong.

  Melissa listened just as patiently as my mother had, nodding occasionally without interrupting me. But unlike my mother, Melissa refused to give me a straight answer once I’d finished.

  An interesting plan, Melissa whispered. I look forward to seeing how it plays out.

  “‘How it plays out’? What is that supposed to mean?”

  Melissa didn’t really react to my shrill tone. Instead, she shrugged and then whispered, It means that we’ll be watching to see what you can accomplish tonight. Particularly with regard to this bridge and the hell gate.

  “You’re . . . you’re going to ‘watch’?” I gasped. “Without telling me whether or not you’ll take the people I try to save? Including myself?”

  Melissa tilted her head to the side but said nothing. I saw her gesture for what it was, though. This was her wordless way of telling me that the light intended to adopt the “wait and see” approach to my loved ones. To me.

  I sputtered, at a loss for what to say next. But I wasn’t stunned or even cowed by Melissa’s lack of an answer—I was furious. I felt so angry, so indignant, that I thought I would ignite right there on the riverbank. I was fairly certain that if I opened my mouth to speak, I might literally choke on my words.

  But as quickly as my anger built, it disappeared, as though something had simply drained it out of me. Where I’d previously felt fire, I now felt only a cold sense of numbness.