“That’s not half bad,” my mother said.
“So long as you don’t post it online,” I warned him.
Tommy glared. “I’m not stupid.”
Mom patted his hand. “No. You’re not stupid. And the suggestion’s a good one. You should start work on it as soon as we get home.”
But now he was too excited to wait, so he started telling us how his new game would be structured, and what kinds of characters he would design, and what random generation system he would use . . . we let him ramble on, nodding at intervals in the way we had learned to do long ago, enjoying the normalcy of the moment. Little in our life seemed normal, these days.
The sun was setting when we finally headed home, and the trees cast deep grey shadows across the street, lending the whole world a dream-like aspect.
“Whoa!” Tommy stopped short in the middle of the street. I almost ran into him.
“What’s wrong?” Mom asked.
But his attention was elsewhere, his eyes staring into the distance as if he was straining to see something. Or perhaps he was straining to hear something. “Don’t go home,” he murmured. Almost a chant. “Don’t go home, don’t go home, people are coming.” He looked at me. “I can understand them!” There was wonder in his eyes, but also fear.
“Understand whom?” my mother demanded.
“What people are coming?” I asked.
Tommy’d never told our mother about how he sometimes heard ghosts. Maybe because he was worried that she wouldn’t believe him, but more likely because he was afraid that she would feel obligated to help him if she knew. And how could she do that? Send him to a child psychiatrist? Better to just keep it to himself for now, he’d told me. In hindsight, maybe not the best choice.
“Hide!” Tommy whispered suddenly. His pupils were so dilated that his irises were barely visible. “They’re coming. Hide!”
I looked around, but the only things that we could hide behind were a few parked cars, and that wouldn’t do any good if we didn’t know what direction the danger was coming from. Then I saw that Mom’s car was only a few spaces down, and pointed toward it. Tommy started running that way immediately, but Mom hesitated, so I grabbed her by the arm to start her moving. As we sprinted toward the car she pulled her keys out of her pocket and I heard the doors unlock. Tommy pulled the front door open, I grabbed the back door, and somehow we all managed to fall inside and close the doors behind us before anyone—or anything—showed up.
Breathless, we crouched down below the windows. Tommy tucked himself under the dashboard until all I could see of him were two glistening eyes. Mom reached out a hand to reassure him. She was giving him the benefit of the doubt right now, treating his warning seriously, but I could see concern in her eyes. What if her son was crazy? I wanted to reassure her, but what could I say? Don’t worry, your son’s not crazy, he’s just hearing ghosts. Somehow I didn’t think that would help.
We waited in silence. Every second seemed like an eternity. Then Tommy whispered frantically, “Now! Now!”
Carefully I raised up my head just far enough to peek out the window. At first I saw nothing other than an empty street. Then, deep in the shadows behind our house, I saw movement. My mother, who was now peeking out the front window, drew in a sharp breath; clearly she’d seen it, too.
There were two men exiting out of the back of our building. They were dressed in dark clothing and keeping to the shadows, but the brief flash of a street light reflecting off a cell phone gave their position away, and once we knew where they were they were easier to see. The taller one spoke on the phone for a few seconds, then gestured for his companion to follow him to the rear yard of a neighboring house. We lost sight of them after that, but a few moments later we heard a motor starting, and a sleek black sedan pulled out of that driveway. Not until it was gone did I realize I’d been holding my breath.
“It’s okay,” Tommy whispered. He sounded exhausted. “They’re gone now.”
We were silent. Mom said nothing. I could hear my own heart pounding as I waited to see how she would react to all this. The concept that strange men might have been waiting to ambush us didn’t frighten me half as much as the thought of what could happen to our family if the next few minutes didn’t go well.
“We shouldn’t discuss this here,” she said at last, starting the car. “Get up in the seat,” she ordered Tommy. “And both of you, put on your seat belts.”
Like Gollum crawling out of a cave, Tommy slowly extracted himself from under the dash, settled himself into the seat, and pulled the belt across his chest. His eyes never left Mom. Even as she began to drive, taking us to some unnamed place, his eyes never left her.
The lot where our house once stood looked eerie in the dying light of day’s end. The last time I was there the ground had been covered in black ash and the aroma of stale smoke had clung to the place like a shroud. Now all evidence of the fire had been cleared away, and what little grass survived had been beaten down into the mud by the shoes of countless police detectives, insurance adjustors, and, most recently, construction workers. There were stacks of wooden planks piled everywhere, sorted by size, and several pallets of bricks blocked the driveway, forcing Mom to park on the street. A few items were covered by blue protective tarps, and as we got out of the car the breeze caused them to flap weakly, like tired birds.
For a moment the three of us just stood there, trying to come to terms with the recent changes in our lives. The destruction of our house felt strangely permanent now, in a way it hadn’t before. I wondered if Tommy and my mother found the clean, orderly landscape as disturbing as I did. Then Mom pointed to several stacks of wood in what had once been the back yard and led us there. They were the right height to offer convenient seating, and she settled down on one of them, with Tommy and I taking up places opposite her. The wood creaked beneath our weight.
She sighed deeply and looked at Tommy. “Now. Tell me all about the voices.”
He did, and this time he held nothing back. He told her about the soul shards that had surrounded him while he was in Shadowcrest—spirits so fractured by the trauma of death that they could barely be called sentient—and how they had talked to him constantly while he was a prisoner in the Shadowlords’ dungeon. He told her that since coming home he’d heard the same kind of voices in our world, but not until tonight had he been able to make out what they were saying. And he told her that he was terrified this was all happening because the Shadows had done something terrible to his mind. That last bit was something he hadn’t even confided in me. Now I knew the truth. Mom knew the truth. The sense of relief in him was visible, like some terrible weight had been lifted from his shoulders. Whatever happened after this moment, at least our whole family would be facing it together.
Mom said nothing while he talked, just listened. I thought her expression was strangely distant. When my brother was finally done he looked at her expectantly, and when she didn’t respond right away, added, “I’m not crazy, am I?” Of course, he knew that he wasn’t crazy, and I knew that he wasn’t crazy. The question wasn’t about his sanity but about our mother’s acceptance of him.
At that point Mom seemed to come back to us, and she reached out, took his hand, and squeezed it. “No, Tommy, you’re not crazy.” Mom’s tone was gentle. “There was a time when I might have thought that. But now that I understand more about how the world works, what kinds of creatures are in it, and what the two of you went through, I’m not so quick to judge.” Her voice caught in her throat for a second. “I just . . . I’m sorry you and Jesse had to face all that alone. But you’re not alone anymore.” She looked at me. “You are so strong,” she whispered. “Both of you . . . so strong . . .” Her words trailed off into silence. Her eyes seemed to lose focus again.
“Mom?” I asked. “You okay?” I’d never seen her like this.
She closed her eyes for a moment. “I guess t
his is the time for sharing secrets, yes? So I have something to tell you as well. Something that maybe we should have talked about a long time ago . . . But I hoped it would never become an issue. Now, apparently, it is.”
“What?” Tommy asked, anxiety creeping back into his voice.
“Your father.” She sighed. “Something happened to him when he was young. Apparently . . . he heard voices, too, Tommy. It happened many years before we met, and he never really wanted to talk about it, so I don’t know all the details—”
“Dad heard ghosts?” Tommy interjected. His eyes were wide. “Seriously?”
“Back when he was a teenager. I’m not sure exactly when; like I said, he never wanted to talk about it. All I know is that he told his parents he was hearing voices, so they sent him for a psychiatric evaluation. They were concerned about the possibility of mental illness—specifically, schizophrenia. No one was even thinking about ghosts back then. Then the voices suddenly stopped, and they never came back. The doctors observed him for a while, but eventually concluded that they didn’t have a clue what had caused the problem, but it seemed to be gone now. Since there weren’t any other symptoms of concern, they gave him a clean bill of health. Only now, with all you’ve told me . . .” She hesitated.
“You’re thinking the voices didn’t go away,” I said quietly. “That he stopped telling other people about them so the psychiatrists would leave him alone, but he kept on hearing them.”
“Maybe,” she murmured. A breeze blew a few strands of hair across her face; she pushed them back behind one ear. “It would explain a lot, wouldn’t it? Maybe he started drinking to drown out the voices that everyone insisted weren’t real. Or maybe he drank to deal with the stress of living a lie, of hiding such a terrible secret from his own family.” She wiped a hand across her face to deal with the tears that were forming there. “Dear God. I want to say that if he’d only trusted me with the truth, everything would have been all right. We could have dealt with it together. But the truth is, I never would have believed that his voices were real. And I certainly never would have imagined they were ghosts! I would have just thought that he needed help, and convinced him to go back to his doctors—or to some other doctors—and then where would that have led? They would never have been able to identify the cause of his delusion, because it wasn’t a delusion. So, what then? Drugs? Committed to a mental hospital? You can’t make voices in someone’s head go away if they’re real. But they would have kept trying.” She sighed heavily. “Maybe it was best he never told me.”
“You think that Dad was hearing the dead?” Tommy asked. “That I inherited this power from him?”
“It’s possible,” she allowed. I noticed that she didn’t correct his use of the word power.
“Jeez.” He looked at me. “You think maybe it’s some kind of Gift? They run in families, don’t they?”
I tried to remember all I knew about the subject. “Isaac told me that Guild families would arrange marriages to increase the odds of having Gifted kids. So that means that yeah, there’s some kind of genetic component. But if you had any power worth speaking of, they’d have detected it when you were being interrogated in Shadowcrest. Or way before that, when you were first born. They’d have been watching the whole family—”
I stopped myself, but not in time. Biting my lip, I looked at Mom.
“I know that they took my first child away because she was Gifted, which allowed them to leave you in her place.” There was a haunting sadness in her voice. “And if these powers run in families, they would probably have kept an eye on us after that, to see if any of my other children were born Gifted. Is that what you’re trying to say?”
I nodded.
She looked at Tommy. “But you’re still here.” She forced a smile to her face. “So that answers the big question, doesn’t it? At any rate, you can’t spend your whole life at the mercy of ghostly voices.” Lest you go down the same path your father did. The words weren’t spoken aloud, but I heard them clearly nonetheless. “We have to find a way to silence them.”
“Don’t you think I’ve been trying?” Tommy demanded. “There’s reams and reams of information online, but it’s all bullshit. Spells by wannabee necromancers, discussions from the fantasy gaming crowd, nothing real! The people who have real necromancy aren’t just out there, waiting for me to find them!” He spread his hands wide. “So what do we do? How do we weed through all that crap to find the one person who knows what he’s talking about? And could we trust him even if we did? If he’s Gifted, then Terra Prime probably has its claws in him. What are the odds I could get help without the Shadows finding out about it?”
I shut my eyes for a moment, fearing what I knew I had to say. “There’s someone who might be able to help. But contacting him won’t be easy.” Or safe, I thought.
“Someone on Terra Prime?” Tommy asked.
I nodded.
“Sebastian?”
“No. We need someone who knows how the Shadows’ Gift actually works. Someone who could tell you how to control it.”
“You mean Isaac?”
My mother asked, “The boy who helped you escape from Shadowcrest?”
I nodded.
“Jeez,” Tommy said. “You’re thinking about dreamwalking? To Terra Prime?”
“Do you have a better idea?”
“What about the reapers? Aren’t you afraid of them?”
Damn right I am. “They didn’t show up when I dreamwalked with Mom, so we know it’s possible to sneak a brief trip by them. And Isaac would know to wake himself up if they appeared. That worked in your dream, remember? That said . . .” I sighed. “Yeah, it’s risky as hell. But I don’t see any alternative.”
Tommy stared at me. The intensity of emotion in his gaze shook me to my core. “Have I told you that you’re the most awesome sister ever?”
Despite the seriousness of the conversation, I couldn’t help but smile. “Not recently.”
“Isn’t this boy Isaac a Shadow?” my mother asked. “Do you know you can trust him?”
Did I? I bit my lip, considering the question. Yes, Isaac had helped us escape from Shadowcrest, but that had been a very different situation. By then the Shadows had figured out that Tommy wasn’t the Dreamwalker they’d been searching for, and the rest of us were just intruders who needed to be dispatched. We were irritants, not threats. This time it would be different. If I told Isaac that someone outside the Guild was manifesting the Shadow’s Gift, would he be honor bound to report it? What if he thought the information could be used to get him back in favor with his family? That would be one hell of a temptation for anyone.
“I don’t know,” I admitted. “I’d have to feel him out.”
“You really want to do this?” my mother said. “You think it’s worth the risk?”
I looked into Tommy’s eyes. “Yeah. I do.”
“Okay.” She leaned back a bit, the planks of wood shifting audibly beneath her. “Then figure out how to do it as safely as possible, and we’ll help you.”
“Ask him about the electricity,” Tommy interjected.
I blinked. “Say what?”
“Ask him why their world has no electricity. They visit other worlds all the time, so they know about it. And it isn’t like it’s hard to generate. Two wires and a potato will run a light bulb. So ask him why they don’t use electricity on Terra Prime.”
“I seriously doubt we’re going to have that kind of conversation,” I said. “But I’ll bear the request in mind.”
“Cause if you go back there, you might need to know.”
“Go back?” Mom said sharply. “Go back where?”
Inwardly, I cursed Tommy. I shouldn’t have let him know about the tickets I’d bought. “Nothing, Mom. We were just throwing ideas around. I’d never do anything like that without talking to you first.”
“It
’s a mother’s job to protect her children,” she murmured. “Not the other way around.”
“I know, Mom.” I reached out and squeezed her hand. “It’s okay.”
She gazed into my eyes. I felt strangely naked, as though she was reading my mind. Then she nodded. “Come on,” she said. “Let’s go home and see if our apartment is still there.”
She headed toward the car. I slid down from my perch and started to follow her, but Tommy reached out and grabbed me by the arm. He waited a few seconds until Mom was safely out of hearing, then he whispered to me, “If the Shadow’s Gift runs in our family, then that’s what the mom’s original child would have had. The one they switched out for you. She’d be a Shadow, Jess.”
I froze for a moment, then pulled my arm away from him. “Don’t call her that,” I muttered. “Don’t ever call her that. Jessica is my name, not hers.”
I headed off after Mom before he could say anything more. I didn’t want him to see how much his words had shaken me. I shouldn’t care if Mom’s first child was a Shadow, or a Seer, or anything else. It shouldn’t bother me what she was.
But it did.
Our apartment was still there, and at first glance it looked undisturbed. But there were a few little things that were off. I thought the socks in my drawer might have been arranged a little differently. And the items I had hidden in Tommy’s game box were still there, but I thought I had positioned the map slightly differently. Both those differences were so subtle that I couldn’t be sure they meant anything, but I had a gut feeling that they did.
As we gathered in the living room to compare notes, I reached into my pocket to make sure the Gate tickets were still there. It was a good thing I had kept them with me, and destroyed the original Grey info and the glow lamp. I shuddered to think of what might have happened to us if someone found those. Thank God Devon had warned us in time.
Tommy confidently told us the place wasn’t bugged. He knew that because the ghosts said so. Apparently they were watching over him now.