“You never came to Deer Creek.” I said the first useless thing that came into my head.
He stroked my cheek with his thumb, a gesture I loved. “Oh, Darina, I’m sorry,” he said with a sigh.
“I miss you so much. It hurts so much. More than an ache—a sharp pain.”
“I would give anything for it not to have happened,” he swore in a whisper, leaning forward to kiss my mouth. “I can’t bear to see how hard you’re hurting.”
I kissed his cool lips. I breathed him in.
“Where did you go? What’s happening?” I begged at last.
Phoenix kept on saying sorry and kissing me—my mouth, my face, my neck. I stroked his smooth hair then rested my fingers on the nape of his neck.
“Tell me,” I pleaded. I felt I’d stepped over an unseen brink, sensed that I was falling, though the ground beneath me was firm.
“I can’t explain,” he told me. “It’s against the rules. In fact, I shouldn’t be here now, talking to you.”
“Whose rules?” I was desperate for this to make sense, for me to be able to carry on touching him and talking to him. Now that I’d found him, I wouldn’t ever let him go.
“Hunter’s,” he replied, frowning and glancing over his shoulder. “He takes care of us. We don’t get to choose how to act. He tells us.”
I gazed at him a long time without speaking. Then I thanked him for breaking the no-speaking rule.
Phoenix’s face relaxed into a grin. “That’s what I like about us, Darina. We two never did stick to the rules, did we?”
“No,” I agreed.
“That’s what I always loved about you—that and your eyes. Did I ever tell you that looking into your eyes is like swimming in chocolate? I could drown in them and die happy.”
“Not funny!” I protested. And too confusing. Was the Phoenix I was talking with alive or dead? “What happened to you? Can you tell me?”
He shook his head. “I only know there was a big fight. I have no clue what it was about, only that Brandon was involved so I had to go in and help. I don’t know how come I got stabbed.”
I grasped his hands and made him look into my eyes. “Is that why you’re back—to find out exactly what happened?”
“Yeah, I was chosen.”
I saw pain behind his calm words, a flickering fear in his eyes. And I was still struggling with that weird mix of emotions myself. “So, did you really die?” I whispered. Hang on to his hands. Don’t let him go.
As he nodded, a lock of dark hair fell forward over his smooth forehead. “You’ve heard of limbo? It’s the place where dead souls arrive—a kind of waiting room, I guess. I was there for a while then I was returned, just like Jonas and the two girls. I can tell you, it hurt like hell.”
“This is so weird!” I broke in. “I’m hearing you and touching you, yet you’re saying you’re not alive anymore. But you’re not dead either…”
“Something in between,” he insisted. “Jonas, Arizona, Summer, and me—we all have unfinished business. We need to set the record straight. That’s why we’re here with Hunter.”
“Not ghosts then?” He was too real, too flesh and blood, though he was paler than before. His eyes were clearer, as if they saw for miles.
“More solid than ghosts,” Phoenix agreed. Standing up quickly, he pulled me with him then put both arms around me.
My head swam. I wanted never to move from this spot.
“Darina, I’m really here,” he promised. Then, as suddenly as he’d stood up, he let go of me and started to pull his black T-shirt over his head.
“What are you doing?” I cried. The sight of his naked torso stole my breath. It was as stunningly beautiful as the guys you see in TV ads, but this was up close and personal, this was flesh and blood.
Phoenix turned his back. “Look between my shoulder blades. What do you see?”
With a gasp I lifted my hand and touched his lovely pale skin with my fingertips. There was a small black tattoo to the left of his spine, only about as big as a lapel button, in the shape of a pair of angel wings. “This wasn’t here before.”
“It’s where the blade went in,” he told me. “We all have this death mark—Arizona, Summer, Jonas, the others—even Hunter.”
“What does it mean?” I asked. The design was delicate, perfect in its way. I traced my fingers over the area of skin.
“It’s who we’ve become,” Phoenix explained in that low voice I loved. A ray of light flooded the barn as the door swung open. “I’m one of the living dead, Darina. A revenant, a zombie. I’m here to get some justice out of this situation and to comfort you.”
I wasn’t crazy after all. I’d followed my heart and found my love. I held him and kissed him, and nothing else mattered.
“You know this is dangerous for you?” Phoenix murmured, gazing at me as if he was the one who couldn’t believe his eyes. He had one arm around my waist and was leaning away so he could see me more clearly. “We’re sworn to secrecy—me, Jonas, and the others.”
“Don’t tell me—Hunter makes you swear.”
Phoenix nodded. I’d guessed right. “You belong to the far side, Darina—to the living world. We have to keep you out.”
“Is that what the beating wings are about, and the skull heads?” I told him how scared I’d been to come back to this place. “But, Phoenix, I didn’t care,” I finished. “All I cared about was finding you.”
“And you did,” he whispered, holding me tighter. His lips were soft against my cheek. “You’re the only one who wanted it enough and was brave enough to fight through. But how do you feel about the zombie thing? Don’t you want to run the hell away from me?”
I held a chunk of his hair and gave it a tug. “Enough about leaving! I’m here, and I’m not going anywhere.” I couldn’t have broken free from Phoenix at that moment even if I’d wanted to.
He grinned and for a while he was his old, joking, laid-back self. “Listen. It’s not all serious revenge and justice stuff. From what Jonas tells me—and he’s been here longer than me—I do get to kid around.”
“Such as?”
“Number one, I can hypnotize you.” He backed off, pointed a finger at me as if he’d gotten me in his sights—bam!
“Why would you want to do that?” I lunged forward and grabbed his wrist. “I already only have to take one look in your direction and I’ll do anything you want me to!”
“OK, forget that.” Phoenix pried my fingers from around his wrist. I could see from the glint in his eye that he was enjoying teasing me. “How about this? I can disappear whenever I like.”
I clung on tight again, this time by wrapping both arms around his chest. “Don’t you dare!”
“Other stuff too. Mind games. Time travel if I want.”
“Wow, Superman.” I couldn’t really take this in, so I didn’t act like I was impressed. My heart was too full of surprise and joy for that, and I was bewitched by his presence.
“Are you sure you aren’t scared?” Phoenix turned down the corners of his mouth. He was still kidding with me and doing the stroking thing with his thumb. “You’re hanging out with a zombie!”
And he broke free, raised both arms straight out in front of him, and set off in a stiff-legged, shambling walk around the barn so that I got a good view of his slim waist, the curve in the small of his back, the tiny angel-wing tattoo, and the bunched muscles of his broad shoulders.
“Yeah, yeah, I saw the movies.” I sighed. “So where’s the graveyard and the rotting corpses, the dreaded flesh-eaters?”
Phoenix stopped clomping and kidding around. “That’s all just bad PR, shock horror. None of that is real. One thing the movies did get right though is that we do hang out in groups, and Hunter makes the rules. No free will. He holds the power.”
“OK, I’ve already got that. And I know he’ll get angry when he finds out about me.”
“He already knows, Darina, believe me. His senses, especially his hearing, are super sharp. He can
hear a leaf fall from the aspens by the water tank.”
“Scary,” I breathed. And I was serious.
Phoenix nodded. “There’s no way he didn’t hear you arrive.”
“So why didn’t he stop me?”
“He has his reasons. Maybe he wanted to test me, to see if I obeyed orders.” Phoenix’s eyes flickered, and he shrugged.
“Which you didn’t,” I reminded him, suddenly worried for his sake. “Is there some kind of punishment if you break the no-talking-to-outsiders rule?”
He gave another shrug, but this time not so careless. “We’re all here as a big favor. A whole heap of dead souls want to come back from beyond the grave, but only a few get chosen, usually the ones with a mystery hanging over them. So I guess there’s a bunch back there, each with an excellent reason to stand in my place. Hunter could blow me out and bring one of them out of limbo, no problem.”
I stood for a while, eyes closed, hit by a sudden, heavy sense of dread.
“Phoenix, you shouldn’t be here, talking to me,” I said. “If you go now and never see me again, maybe Hunter won’t punish you. I mean it, you have to leave.”
As I was pushing him backward toward the big barn door, Phoenix turned and took hold of my wrists. “You think it’s that easy?” he protested, his eyes sparking with anger. “You think I could just give you up? Look at me, Darina. It’s me—Phoenix. Wasn’t I always totally open with you? Look at me and read what’s in my heart.”
I saw nothing but a blaze of love there. The flames swallowed us both and I was helpless. “OK, we’ll face it together,” I whispered as the tears welled up. “Whatever Hunter’s punishment, he’ll have to do it to both of us—”
“Which is all very touching,” a flat voice interrupted.
Hunter. The man himself had obviously been listening to every word. He strode into the barn with Jonas and Arizona, not so much taller, but seemingly towering over the rest of us. And me. “Even my heart would be moved, if I had one.”
Phoenix heard Hunter’s voice and gritted his teeth. He put an arm around my shoulder then turned to face him. “You won’t hurt her,” he said firmly. “She didn’t do anything wrong.”
Hunter advanced into the deep shadows at the back of the barn. His arms were folded across his broad chest, his thick gray hair tied back from his face.
“Darina didn’t listen to the warnings,” he pointed out. “Too bad.”
“You don’t scare me,” I lied, and Hunter could see right through me. His smile was cold and cruel. “I’m not going to give up on Phoenix.”
“You won’t have any choice.” Hunter came close enough for me to see the telltale angel-wing tattoo on his temple. It was more faded than the one on Phoenix’s back, as if it had been there a long time.
“You don’t rule me,” I told him, feeling Phoenix’s protective arm as I defied Hunter. “I’m not one of your little gang.”
Hunter clearly didn’t like my choice of vocabulary. His brows knitted in a deep frown and he glared more angrily than before. “OK, Miss Big-mouth, I’ve listened long enough. Weren’t you paying attention when Phoenix warned you we can get inside your head and hypnotize you? Get this straight, Darina, I can wipe your mind clean, like a teacher in school wiping words off a whiteboard.”
I gasped and turned to Phoenix.
Phoenix nodded gravely. “It’s true. That’s how come we can hang out here all this time without anyone knowing about us.”
Jonas stepped forward to carry on the explanations. He came between me and Phoenix, his face earnest. “Darina, the Beautiful Dead need to be totally secret. We’ve been here almost a year, keeping that secret by using mind games, by wiping people’s memory clear, by hypnosis.”
“Exactly how?” I insisted, glancing from Jonas to Arizona. I felt alone and more scared than ever now that Phoenix had moved away.
“Easy,” Arizona interrupted. I remembered the quick, dismissive wave of her hand, which she’d always done when she was alive, like brushing away a bug. “Not many people from the far side come by this way—it’s too far away from the road, and they only walk over the ridge if they’re out hunting, or maybe some young kids might be fooling around, camping out overnight. Whatever. One or two might spot the water tower and come looking.”
“Then what?” I found myself staring at Arizona, searching for her death mark. I studied her face, with its long, straight nose and big dark eyes, the fine eyebrows arched and giving her a permanent, high-maintenance look, but nothing to suggest that she was a zombie.
“They might even see us working in the vegetable garden or the corral,” she went on. “That’s when one of us comes up behind and catches them off-guard. It just takes one special look.”
“To hypnotize them and wipe their memory clean,” Jonas added. He was half frowning, looking anxiously from me to Phoenix, and then to Hunter. “We get inside their heads and make them walk away, back over the ridge, into the aspens. Then we wake them up and they have no knowledge of what just happened.”
“They just get the hell out,” Arizona said with a slight smile. “They wake up with a sore head and a weird, uneasy feeling that something’s not right. Most of them don’t walk to their cars, they run.”
“Don’t tell me. They hear wings beating, closing in on them, starting to suffocate them. They don’t know where it’s coming from and it’s loud enough to drive them crazy.” I half laughed, knowing only too well some of the methods the group used to scare people on the far side. “Is that what you’re going to do to me now?” I asked Hunter, who was way too quiet and was still glaring at me. “Erase my memory?”
“Maybe,” he muttered. “Anyway, you’d thank me in the end. Life’s a whole lot easier if you don’t know we exist.”
Taking a sharp breath, I grabbed Phoenix. “Tell him not to do it,” I pleaded. “Now that I’ve found you again, I don’t want to forget.”
“Me neither,” he muttered, staring intently at me. “I want to remember everything about you, everything about us.”
Nobody spoke. I could hear my heart pounding. I wondered about their hearts, if they still beat inside their bodies.
“Darina, you know you’re putting Phoenix between a rock and a hard place.” Arizona’s dry tone broke the long silence. “You’re forgetting that he has no free choice here. As one of the Beautiful Dead, he has to obey Hunter, or else he gets sent back without sorting out his mess. But, on the other hand, if he’s a good boy and does as Hunter tells him, he loses you forever.”
“Catch-22,” Jonas agreed.
“But I don’t believe you could wipe all this away!” I gestured around the echoing barn then held Phoenix’s head between my hands to make him focus on my face. I spoke so the others couldn’t hear, or so I thought. But I overlooked their ability to hear the fall of an aspen leaf. “How could I forget finding you here and being held by you, kissing you again?” I whispered. “How—?”
“Tell her, Phoenix,” Arizona interrupted.
“Believe them,” he whispered back, his voice choking. “Your memories would be gone. You’d never see me again.”
I grew desperate when he said this. “But I won’t tell anyone!” I cried, running to Hunter and pleading like a little kid. “I swear I won’t tell a single person!”
Hunter’s expression didn’t change. It was the kind of face that could be carved in stone—you could almost see the sharp-edged chisel marks. “You think you won’t. You can swear on your life, but there’s always the chance that you’ll make a mistake, let the secret out—and then we’re finished.”
“Literally,” Arizona said. “If the far side gets to know about us, we’re all gone for good.”
“Without doing the job we came to do,” Jonas added, taking up the story again. “Listen, Darina, I’ve been here almost a year, trying to get some clarity about what happened that day—the Harley, the road, the crash—but it’s hard. I have no memory of it and it’s driving me crazy. I can’t get to Zoey either. She
hardly ever comes out of her house. And time’s running out for me. I don’t have long.”
“Zoey’s doing OK,” I told him. “She’s had operations to help her to walk. It’s her folks—they’re trying too hard to protect her.”
Jonas put up his hand to shield his eyes. He rubbed his forehead with his thumb and forefinger. “I was so scared she was going to die,” he confessed.
I shook my head. “I saw her for the first time just yesterday. She’s skinny now. And she still uses a wheelchair. But she’ll definitely make it.”
Jonas took away his hand to show that there were tears in his eyes. “I was so stupid. Me and my Harley, acting all cool. I thought I was king of the road! We set out that afternoon, heading out through Centennial onto the highway. Zoey was laughing. She’d told her folks she was visiting a girlfriend and they’d fallen for the story.”
“They didn’t like her riding the Harley with Jonas,” Arizona cut in. “They didn’t like Jonas, period.”
“She was holding me tight around the waist,” Jonas recalled. “We got to the neon cross on Turkey Shoot Ridge. The road bends there but not too much.” He lowered his voice to not much more than a whisper. “I rode around the bend and then nothing. Darkness. That’s it.”
“Jonas believes the accident was his fault.” Arizona baldly stated the facts. “He doesn’t remember the details but the autopsy showed he broke his neck and died on the spot. Plus he’s convinced he almost killed the girl he loves.”
“So does the whole of Ellerton,” Jonas whispered. “They brought a verdict against me—you saw the headline.”
Jonas seemed on the verge of tears. There was a choking feeling in my throat and I was halfway to crying myself. “Zoey doesn’t blame you,” I comforted him. “She doesn’t seem bitter or anything.”
“Darina, you’ve got to tell her sorry from me,” he cried. “Tell her I never meant to hurt her.”
Arizona, the voice of reason, stepped in again. “How can Darina tell Zoey anything after Hunter has wiped her memory? He’s going to press the delete button, remember?”