Shanghai frowned but said nothing.
“Let’s drop it.” I shifted my body higher so I could get a better view of Sing and Shanghai. “We’d better focus on Colm’s family.”
“Do you have a plan?” Shanghai asked.
“Sort of.” I nodded at the computer tablet on my dresser. “Like the schedule says, the entertainment is supposed to take place in the jail yard. The prisoners will be locked in their quarters, and Alex, Peter, the guards, and the searchlights will be focused on whatever the entertainment is. No one will notice Sing working backstage getting Colm’s family out.”
Sing nodded. “I’ll arrange for them to be waiting for me at the door. Once I unlock it, I’ll pull them out and lock it again so the other prisoners don’t rush to join us. It’ll be hard enough getting four people across the compound without anyone seeing us. But two hundred?” She let out a short huff. “Impossible.”
I gave her a nod in return. “Right. You can only do so much.” A pang of guilt gnawed at my heart. My admission felt like a cowardly surrender, but I couldn’t deny reality.
Sing touched her weapons belt. “And when I get the family to a safe place, I can send up a flare to let you know.”
“Then we’ll need our own escape plan,” Shanghai said. “Once everyone sees the flare, we’ll have to fly like bats out of hell.”
Sing reeled out a few inches from her spool. “After I get Colm’s family to safety, I won’t be able to disable the alarm at the Hilton’s back door, so I’ll station myself on the roof. By the time you see the flare, I’ll have dropped a line for you. Just use your smoke capsules and run. Easy escape.”
“Easy?” Shanghai half closed an eye. “Ever tried to climb a line while guards are shooting at you? I don’t want a bullet in my backside.”
“Who would?” Sing grinned. “You’d better use an extra smoke capsule.”
While waiting for dinnertime, Shanghai, Sing, Tori, and I sat and talked once again, mostly about life before becoming Reapers. After nearly an hour, I mentioned the possibility of never seeing my mother and father again. Tori got up abruptly and hurried into the bathroom, saying she wanted to be alone for a while.
“Poor girl,” Shanghai said. “She misses her parents. I wish we could help her.”
“Maybe we can.” I slid off the bed and lifted my legs in turn. No dizziness. The energy’s negative effects had greatly faded. Now would be a good time to test the benefits. I grabbed my cloak from the bed and slung it over my shoulders. “I’ll check on her in ghost mode.”
“Want me to be your lifeline again?” Sing asked.
“Let me test it here and see if I need one.” I fastened my clasp, closed my eyes, and concentrated. I had partially crossed into the realm of ghosts a few times, but now I should be able to imitate a level three. Yet, no one had said exactly how to do it. We had talked to Tori about changing states by wanting it to happen. Maybe that was the trick, to focus on my desire to make the transition. I wanted to be with Tori, to touch her, hold her, comfort her as she grieved. She needed to know that someone cared.
I drew a mental picture of her. In my mind, she sat on the bathroom floor, her legs crossed and her head low as she fiddled with a loose string in her dress’s hem. After a few seconds, the sound of weeping reached my ears. Yet, the girl in my mental picture wasn’t crying. That had to be the real Tori. She was heartbroken.
With my eyes still closed, I lifted my arms and reached out. I had to be with her, dry her tears. Taking care of bodiless souls was my job, but for lost little girls like Tori, it was more than a job; it was life, the very reason I was born, to wrench away tragedy and transform it into joy. I had to help her. I just had to.
I reopened my eyes. Sing and Shanghai still sat on the bed, but now a thin haze covered them, as if fog had settled in the room. I spread out my arms. “Am I a ghost?”
Shanghai laughed. “Phoenix, you’re looking a bit pale. Are you sick?”
I touched my cheeks. They felt physical, though cold. “Are my eyes glowing?”
“Not a bit.” Sing slid across the bed and pushed a hand through my chest. “You’re definitely a level-three ghost.”
“Good.” I patted my torso. It felt as solid as ever. “Shanghai, maybe you could try going to ghost mode while I visit Tori. But you have to concentrate on really wanting it. It’s not that easy, but maybe it gets easier with practice.”
Shanghai nodded. “I’ll see what I can do, but you saw what happened to Peter. He came back off-kilter, like his brain was affected.”
“Another good point. It takes time to recover.” I walked to the bathroom and stopped at the closed door. I had never passed my body through something solid before, so this would be an interesting test.
Keeping my eyes open, I stepped into the dim bathroom, feeling nothing more than a slight drag on my clothes as I crossed the barrier. The partially open door on the other side provided a shaft of light from Shanghai’s room. Even that appeared misty, as if someone were blowing dry-ice vapor through the light.
Tori sat on the sink countertop, her hands covering her face as she rocked in time with spasmodic sobs, her whimpers not as loud as earlier. The steady dripping from the sink faucet added a gentle percussion to her sad song.
“Tori?” I whispered.
She lowered her hands, exposing a tear-streaked face. Her eyes no longer glowed. “Yes?”
“Are you all right?”
She nodded. Then, as new tears sprang forth, she wagged her head. “I’m not all right! I miss my mommy! I miss my daddy! I don’t want to be dead! I don’t want them to be dead! I’ll never see them again.”
“Yes, you will.”
“No, I won’t. You keep saying that, but I’m still here and—”
“Shhh.” I slid my arms around her, lifted her from the counter, and pressed her against my chest.
She gasped. “Phoenix? What’s happening?”
“I’m showing you what it will feel like when you see your parents again.” I held her close and swiveled back and forth. “This is what your daddy will do.”
Tori threw her arms around my neck and kissed me again and again. “Oh, Daddy! I missed you so much!”
Laughing between kisses, I rubbed her back. “And I missed you, too, sweetheart.”
She pressed her cheek against mine and held it there. After mutual sighs, I stood quietly with her in my arms. The sounds and odors seemed so odd. How could Tori’s breaths whistle across my ear? How could the scent of dirt in her dress enter my nostrils? How could we embrace? She had no lungs, no clothes, no physical existence. And neither did I, at least for the moment. This sharing of impossible contact defied explanation.
I pushed my fingers through her tangled hair. “I have to go for now, but soon we’ll be together and never part again.”
“Don’t go! Please, don’t go!” She drew her head back and pressed my face between her hands. “I know you’re not my real daddy, but I can’t stand being alone anymore.” As tears dripped from her chin, her voice altered to a lament. “I’m so lonely, Phoenix. Please stay with me. Just hold me until it’s time to go to the Gateway.”
I set her gently on the counter. “I can do that. You can ride in my cloak.”
She brushed away tears. “Are you going to reap me?”
Her hopeful tone sent a shiver through my body. “Yes. If you’re willing.”
“Oh, please do!”
“It might hurt.” I caressed her cheek. “But it won’t last long.”
She nodded, her brow deeply wrinkled. “I’ll be brave.”
“Very well.” I grasped her hand and pulled it close to my clasp. “Ready?”
“Ready.”
I wrapped my cloak around her and laid it over her shoulders. The fibers latched to her body and adhered like flypaper. As the cloak began absorbing her, she sucked in a breath, her face locked in a grimace, but she stayed quiet. Apparently the new energy was easing the transition process. Otherwise she would be screami
ng in pain.
My clasp hissed, indicating an energy leak, not unheard of during a ghost collection, but more noticeable than usual. A tingling sensation ran through the valve’s wires to my heart—not bad at all.
Tori flattened out against the inside of my cloak. Whimpering softly, she thinned to a mist and disappeared, her eyes the last to vanish.
My heart pounded furiously. Each beat sent tingling waves through every nerve. A new shimmer penetrated my cloak and spread across the outside. A halting voice emanated from somewhere near my shoulders. “I feel… funny.”
After taking a cleansing breath, I nodded. “That’s normal. Don’t worry.” A twinge lingered, though not as sharp as typical reaping pangs, more like the simmering hunger I felt after shaking hands with the Gatekeeper. It would probably pass soon.
Feeling dizzy again, I turned and walked toward my bedroom. My forehead banged against the door. I backpedaled, regained my balance, and shook my head hard. Somehow I had returned to the real world without knowing it. With wobbly legs and trembling arms, it seemed that I was standing in raging floodwaters.
I sat on the toilet. Maybe the dizziness would go away soon.
Crandyke’s voice broke through my mind fog. “Finally, some company. We can commiserate about how you handle souls like an unwanted litter of puppies. I’m surprised you haven’t tied us in a bag and thrown us into the river.”
I rested my arms on my thighs. “Crandyke, what put you in such a foul mood?”
“When you were hooked up to that Gateway contraption, you could have requested to send me through, but you kept me imprisoned. And when that new kind of energy came in, it carried a foul stench. It shook me out of my usual good humor.”
“A foul stench? That’s interesting. Did you notice it at the other Gateway station?”
“Nothing at all. That stench was the first odor I’ve noticed since I’ve been in here. It’s not like I have a real nose to sniff with, you know.”
I nodded. “I’ll have to think about that one.”
“Well, while you’re thinking, think about getting me out of your cloak. I’m tired of hearing excuses.”
I rose from the toilet seat. “But I didn’t give you an excuse this time.”
“Well, good. I’m glad you’ve come to your senses and… Wait a minute.”
“Talk to you later. Signing off for now.” I unplugged the clasp, opened the door, and staggered into my bedroom. “Whew! That transition is a beast!”
Shanghai lay on the bed, a hand over her eyes. “Tell me about it. I nearly fainted.”
“She did it, though,” Sing said as she finished sewing a stitch in her disguise. “She was a level three for more than a full minute.”
“Good. So was I.” I shook my head to cast off the remaining fog. “I think.”
Sing nodded at my cloak. “It’s fading now, but it looked like it was shimmering brighter when you first walked back in here.”
“I reaped Tori.” I twirled part of my cloak to the front. “I couldn’t stand seeing her cry.”
“I suppose it’s for the best.” Sing tied off the thread, broke it, and slid the needle into her belt. “Tori did a great job guarding the hallway, but we don’t need her there anymore.”
I sat on the bed and touched Sing’s handiwork. “Did you finish?”
“Yep.” She gathered her disguise and headed toward the bathroom. “I’m going to try it on.”
While I waited, Shanghai lay motionless, exhaling heavily from time to time. I put my socks and shoes back on and fastened my belt in place. The pressure of the weapons felt better than usual, as if I had put on a superhero costume. I was ready to go to war. Maybe that infusion of energy did some good after all.
A few minutes later, Sing emerged wearing a calf-length beige skirt, navy blue polo shirt, and a gray scarf tied over her head to keep her curls in check. Torn at the hem, stained with grime, and patched with ragged squares, the skirt looked like a hungry dog had gotten hold of it. The short-sleeved shirt bore some of the same flaws, though not as much dirt.
Sing touched the skirt. “I had to slice up my Reaper pants to make some of the patches, so I’m wearing what’s left of them as shorts underneath this skirt.”
Shanghai sat up and whistled. “Girl, you look positively chic, though you’re way too gorgeous for that grungy prison theme. The bruise helps, but you might want to ugly up a little more.”
Smiling, Sing dabbed at her bruise. “Maybe I’ll get into another fight.”
I twirled my finger. “Let’s see the whole outfit.”
Sing spread her arms and rotated slowly. “Do you like it?”
“You look…” As she continued turning, I searched for the right word. In one way she was a lost waif who needed protection. In another way she was a spy on a rescue mission—strong, confident, seductive. Again her medallion had slipped out and dangled in sight, though still not as lustrous as the first time. “You look fantastic.”
“Thank you.” She stopped her spin, tucked the medallion behind her shirt, and picked up her weapons belt. “Tori helped me find a place to hide my old suitcase, so you don’t have to worry about Alex finding that, and I buried the rest of my clothes under Shanghai’s in her dresser.”
“Good thinking.” I helped Shanghai to her feet, and the three of us walked slowly toward the room’s exit door. “Sing, are you going to try to blend in with the other prisoners during dinner?”
“That’s my plan.” She strapped on her belt. “I’ll hide my belt in a place where I can pick it up later. Then I’ll sneak out of this building while you’re eating. If I’m caught, they’ll probably just assume I’m a prisoner and send me to their dining area.”
“And Shanghai and I will go straight to the entertainment function after dinner.” I stopped at the door. “So I might not see you again.”
Sing’s lips drew a thin line. “That’s true.”
I clasped her wrist. “I just want you to know…” My throat tightened, but I managed to keep my voice from squeaking. “I think you’re an amazing Reaper. I know I can count on you.”
She gripped my wrist in return. “Thank you. Your trust means everything to me.”
Shanghai rolled her eyes. “What is this? Act two of Night of the Melodrama Twins?”
“No, Shanghai,” I said. “Get a clue. This could be the end of the line for all of us. We’re allowed a little melodrama.”
“If you plan to die, you will die.” Still standing near the room’s door, she laid an arm around each of us and pulled us close. “Listen. I’m all for hugs and smooches and sappy good-byes, but let’s save them for weddings and funerals. We need to get real. Sing’s about to risk her life by sneaking into death row. You and I are going to try to escape from an Owl, a Cardinal, and guards with guns. We’re kids with toothpicks trying to slay a fire-breathing dragon. If we’re going to survive this thing, we need to walk out there with some swagger, not with our tails tucked between our legs. This is serious business.”
“So what are you saying?” I asked. “No hugs? No kisses?”
She nodded. “Phoenix, when all of this is over, I’m going to plant history’s biggest kiss ever on that gorgeous face of yours, but until then, I’m not going to do anything that’ll make me think we might lose this battle. This isn’t good-bye. This is go-get-’em time. We can’t afford one second of doubt.”
“She’s right.” Sing slid from our huddle and backed away, her eyes wet. “Stay strong, Phoenix.” She kissed her fingers and blew across them. With a quick spin, she opened the door and hurried down the hall.
When the door to the stairwell closed behind her, the click resounded through the corridor.
“Well, Phoenix,” Shanghai said, holding the suite’s door open, “since death is stalking our every move, we’d better stay a step ahead of it.”
As I looked at her, dizziness again crept in, but I forced my body to stand erect. I had to display a confident pose. “What do you want to do now?”
br /> “No use waiting around here.” She hooked my arm with hers and pulled me into the hallway, letting the door close behind us. “We’ve got lives to save.”
As we walked toward the stairwell, Shanghai tightened her grip on my arm. “Just so you know, Phoenix, no matter who you choose, as long as you’re happy, I’ll be happy.”
“No matter who I choose? What are you talking about?”
She slid her hand down to mine and intertwined our fingers. “That’s good, Phoenix. Keep your mind on the battle. We can’t afford to think about anything else.”
I let her cryptic words sink in. Was she talking about choosing between her and Sing? Maybe. But with the new energy still in our system, it might be better to ignore the romantic notions it had ignited, at least until our minds cleared.
As we walked hand in hand, I focused on the energy’s lingering effects. Yes, it had created a spike in emotions that were hard to control, but it had also awakened something deep inside. Was it courage? Compassion? Love? Whatever it was, it burned like an inferno. Not even death itself would douse the flames.
When we reached the stairwell, I let go of Shanghai’s hand. “Maybe we really can do this.”
She blinked. “Do what?”
“The impossible.” I checked the stairwell through the door’s window. No one was around. “You know, climb Sing’s line before anyone can catch us. We’d get demoted, but maybe we can be roamers, you and me together, and we can barter for food and fight bandits. We could make it.”
“Now I know the joy juice is talking. That’s pure romantic pulp. If we pull this escape off, we’ll be on the run every day. We’ll be branded as criminals, and we won’t be allowed to go to the Gateway and recharge. Our energy will leak out, and we’ll die a slow and excruciating death. I’m not exactly keen on a Romeo-and-Juliet ending.”
“We could find a surgeon and get our valves—”
“Death penalty for any doctor who does that before a Reaper’s retirement. No one would dare.”
“A back-alley doctor might be willing—”