Queen of the Dead

9 Will

The smoke grew thick quickly. Choking on it, I dragged myself the rest of the way out of the hole, praying the rotten boards would still hold my weight.

Then again, the air beneath the stage was probably cleaner. Ghost smoke seemed to follow the same rules as the real stuff. The trouble would be surviving the fall.

Though my lungs were screaming at me to rest and catch a breath of clean air that would never come, I forced myself to crawl across the rough and ragged boards, staying low where the smoke was the thinnest. Splinters from the rotting boards tore into my palms, feeling more like insect stings, but I kept going.

Flickering light, like what I remembered from burning leaves in the fall, lit up the theater around me in a manner anything but soothing or nostalgic. I could now see out into the audience area, the rows of seats still in place and the gaping holes where some had already been removed. Through the smoke, I caught a glimpse of double doors, sagging on their hinges, at the top of the main aisle. That was where I’d seen that flash of light. That was where I needed to go. There had to be another way out of this building.

Behind me, a shriek of agony filled the air, so loud and piercing it stopped me in my tracks.

I jerked my head around to see something vaguely person-shaped, covered in writhing flames. Two arms waving in the air, two legs stumbling forward, all of it haloed in bright yellow-and-orange fire. A dark gaping hole in the blaze that encompassed the head might have been the mouth.

Move, Will, move! I scrambled toward the edge of the stage.

The burning man followed me, lighting up the darkness as he moved. His screams were no longer even recognizably human. If I survived this, I’d never be able to go to sleep again without hearing those sounds in my head.

Frantic to get away, I half slid, half fell off the edge of the stage, landing hard and awkwardly in the debris. Above me, the burning man loomed, inches from falling and landing on top of me.

I scrambled backward, hands and feet scrabbling for purchase.

My fingers brushed the smooth edge of something that did not feel like decaying wood, a disintegrating chunk of plaster, or rusty metal.

The disruptor. It had gone over the edge before me.

I fumbled for it, praying I was right. It took me a couple of tries to get my shaking hand around it. Yes, definitely the disruptor. I could see the gleam of the rough metal edges in the firelight.

The burning man above me wobbled, wavering on the edge.

I closed my hands around the disruptor, turning what I hoped was the open end away from me and started pressing buttons in desperation.

But nothing happened, and the man on fire tipped over the edge of the stage, falling toward me. I shut my eyes and threw myself backward, but I knew it wouldn’t be quiteenough. The entire pile of debris would be up in flames in seconds and me along with it.

Alona. What would happen to her if I—

Then, behind my closed lids, I saw a burst of blue light. I opened my eyes to find a beam of light coming from somewhere behind me. It had caught the burning ghost in mid-fall and now held him in place just a foot or so above me.

The man was still covered in flames, but they no longer moved and writhed over what remained of his skin.

Against my will, my mind picked out features of the ghost’s mangled face. What was probably his nose, where his eyes had been…

Then he disappeared with a faint pop.

I sagged back on the floor, aware suddenly of a sharp pain in my side and an ominous-feeling trickle of warmth.

“Move in,” a man’s voice barked from behind me.

A rush of fresh air flooded over me. Dark figures, maybe a half dozen or so, moved past me swiftly, little more than shadows. I watched as they leaped onto the stage with ease, their faces disfigured and odd in the shadows of the dancing flames. They alternately wielded fire extinguishers and disruptors, coating everything with explosions of white foam and blue light. Members of the Order. Finally. Apparently I only needed to almost die for them to show themselves.

“Are you all right?” someone shouted.

I sat up gingerly and looked back to find two men and a woman hurrying down the aisle toward me. The one closest to me, a dark-haired man in a flannel shirt, jeans, and worn work boots, looked sort of familiar. The woman behind him appeared to be in her late thirties and looked like a Barbie doll come to life, all blond hair and boobs in a tight leopard skin shirt. Not, mind you, that I was complaining. She moved along as best she could in a skirt that cut her steps in half. The last of the three was an older, white-haired guy in a full three-piece suit. Portly might have been a kind description.

Beach ball in clothes would be more accurate, I could almost hear Alona saying.

Was this possibly the almighty Leadership Mina kept going on and on about? They didn’t look like people in charge of a secret organization. They looked like part of the happy hour crowd at Buffalo Wild Wings.

The first man knelt next to me and held out something. A clear mask, attached to a metal bottle.

“Put it on.” He nodded at it. “You need the air.”

I could hear the air hissing out of the mask, clean oxygen that I could almost smell simply by the absence of smoke, dust, and everything else. I fumbled for the mask and held it against my face.

“Why didn’t you use the disruptor, boy? That’s why we have them,” the older man in the suit demanded, panting. He bent in half, hands on his knees, trying to catch his breath.

“You doing okay there, Silas?” the woman asked. She smiled at me, seemingly undisturbed by the chaos around her, other than occasionally batting away bits of ash before they could reach her hair.

Silas, the portly suit guy, nodded.

“He tried to use it,” the first man answered for me grimly. “He didn’t know how.”

The other two looked at me for confirmation, and I nodded, more than content to save speaking for later and concentrate on just breathing for now.

“Mina!” the man in flannel bellowed toward the stage.

Uh-oh.

I turned in time to see one of the figures on stage break off and head toward us…slowly. She drew the mask off and draped it over her shoulder as she reached the edge of the stage, staring down at all of us defiantly.

“Did I not make it clear what your assignment was this evening?” His tone was cold enough to send a chill through me.

Mina shifted her weight uneasily. “Yes.”

“You gave him the disruptor, but you didn’t show him how to use it.”

“He didn’t ask,” she snapped. “And isn’t that the first rule, never take a weapon you don’t know how to use? That’s what you always say.”

“You didn’t even give me a chance,” I argued, my voice muffled through the mask.

“It doesn’t matter.” She threw me a bitter look. “I knew they would save you. Can’t risk losing this one.”

“That daughter of yours is out of control, John,” Silas said with clear disapproval.

Daughter? Well, that would explain why he looked sort of familiar. Now, looking back and forth between the two of them facing off, I could see further resemblances. The same stubborn set to the chin; the way they both squared their shoulders.

“Mina, wait for me outside. We will discuss this later,” John said.

She flinched, more a hunching of her whole body, actually, and then she turned away and walked back across the stage. All of sudden I started wondering about the bruise I’d noticed on her face earlier.

“I apologize for my daughter. I sent her to talk to youbecause I thought she would be a familiar face, at least,” John said. “I didn’t realize her personal concerns would interfere.” He grimaced.

“All the more reason the boy should come with me for training,” Silas said quickly.

“Excuse me.” The Barbie woman put her hands on her hips.

“Now, don’t get your panties all up in a bunch, Lucy,” Silas said. “I’m just saying the—”

“He lives here. He should, by regulation, train with the Central Division,” John said.

“Yes, because your offspring has succeeded so wildly under your supervision,” Silas snapped.

I pulled the mask off. “Hey.”

They continued bickering.

“Hey! I’m right here.” I forced myself to stand up. Nothing felt broken, but I could feel a long scrape on my side even without looking. “I’m not going anywhere with anyone. I came here tonight for answers.”

The three of them turned to me surprised, and I waited for the outburst, for someone to lecture or shame me for interrupting.

Instead, Lucy burst into tears. “I’m sorry,” she said, flapping her hands at her face like she needed to cool down. “You just sound so much like your father.”

I froze. “My dad?”

Lucy didn’t answer. She just tottered down the aisle in her crazy-high heels and gathered me up in a warm, very bosomy hug.

“We didn’t know, not until now,” she said in my ear. “Danny registered you as a null a long time ago. Why would he do that? Why?”

So it wasn’t just that my dad hadn’t told me about the Order. He hadn’t told the Order about me, either. I mean, obviously they’d been aware of my existence, but not that I had ghost-talking abilities. Why would he hide that from them? Why would he keep me from people who could help? None of this made any sense.

I untangled myself from Lucy’s arms carefully and stepped back. “I think somebody needs to start at the beginning.”

So, it turns out the Order of the Guardians is divided into three sections geographically: Western, Central, and Eastern. They followed the time zone lines roughly, with Western and Central divvying up the states in the middle that would have been the Mountain region.

A leader is appointed to each division by a convolutedelection process I still didn’t understand even after Silas, Lucy, and John had each taken a crack at explaining it to me.

Each leader was responsible for managing the requests for help and services that came in through the 800 number for his or her appointed region, funneling them out to the members who worked for him or her. Occasionally, cross-regional cooperation was required, as in the development of new technology, a location with a severe haunting, or the certification test for a new full member. But for the most part, Silas took care of the East, Lucy the West, and John everything in the middle.

But the most interesting and shocking part in all of this bureaucratic info was simply this: John Blackwell’s predecessor, the previous leader for the Central Division, was none other than my father, Daniel Killian.

“I don’t understand. He never said anything.” I sat down heavily in one of the discarded chairs, ignoring the plume of dust that resulted.

We were in the lobby now, away from the last of the smoke and flames while the rest of the members that Lucy, John, and Silas had brought with them finished up. I’d seen lots and lots of those little metal boxes going in and couldn’t decide how I felt about that.

The three of them exchanged a glance, and then John finally spoke up. “Danny and I trained together. It was always harder for him because his mother, your grandmother, didn’t agree with his choice.”

“To serve the living,” Lucy spoke up.

“She didn’t understand the importance of what we do. She preferred to play at helping the echoes.” John made a face, as he paced back and forth in front of me.

Helping the echoes? Oh, the dead, ghosts. That would make sense with the story my mom had told me about my grandmother giving her a message from my mother’s grandmother. A member of the Order would probably never have done that.

“He was conflicted. It wasn’t his fault,” Lucy protested. “He couldn’t see the good we were doing except as harm to the ghosts, and vice versa,” she said to me.

“He started to pull back from his responsibilities a long time ago, right after you were born, but he didn’t actually resign until about five years ago,” John said.

“What about the ‘book club’?” I asked.

John looked startled. “You remember that?”

“No, it was something my mom said.”

He grimaced. “Danny didn’t want anyone else to know what we were doing on the weekends when we worked for the Order, so he started calling it that. Became like an inside joke, I guess.”

“We tried to talk him out of leaving,” Lucy said, pleading with me to understand. “And then he just…”

“Killed himself,” I said.

John and Lucy flinched.

“All of that is in the past. His choices don’t have to be yours,” Silas said shortly, stuffing his hands in his pockets.

“We could really use someone with your skills. We saw you interacting with them. It’s a smart move when you’re outnumbered,” Lucy said hopefully. She rolled her flashlight between her palms, making the light spin crazily on the ceiling.

“You had to save me in the end,” I pointed out.

“Training,” John said with a dismissive wave.

“Yes, training,” Silas said with a different emphasis on it. “As in, he needs it. Lots of it.”

“But you have the inherent ability to see them, track them, we could tell that,” Lucy said eagerly. “That’s rare, especially without the years of intense practice. You could be a full member in a matter of months.”

The silence held for a long moment, her hopeful words still hanging in the air.

“So what does that mean?” I asked finally. “What do you want from me?” My head was spinning, but not so much that I missed the distinct under current of tension in the room. There was an endgame here, even if I wasn’t sure what it was.

“Undergo formal training, see if you can officially become one of us,” Silas said with a shrug.

“If?” Lucy scoffed at him.

“If he stays in the Central Division,” John said, “he can continue to live at home and—”

“Except your last trainee has not yet completed her certification,” Silas said sharply.

John jerked around to glare at him.

“Silas, don’t,” Lucy said.

“There’s no sense in denying it.” Silas pulled a handkerchief from inside his suit coat and dabbed his face. “Besides, my division has the most extensive resources for—”

“So you keep saying,” John snapped. “But I have yet to—”

“Stop. Just stop,” I said loudly. “Yesterday, I didn’t know about any of this or any of you. And now you want me to make some kind of decision? I don’t even know what I’m choosing!”

“You need some time to think,” Lucy said instantly.

“Not too much time.” Silas tucked his handkerchief back into his pocket with a frown.

“This must be very overwhelming, I’m sure,” John said.

No kidding.

“You have our number,” he continued. “We hope you’ll be in touch with one of us soon.” He gave Silas a glare.

I nodded. Yeah, yeah. Right away. After I’d had a chance to sort through everything they’d just dumped on me…and maybe taken a look through the boxes and papers my dad had left behind in the basement. I wanted some independent verification on all of this. I got the distinct sense that they might have told me just about anything to get me to come with them.

I walked out through the theater front doors, after Lucy demonstrated they weren’t nearly as boarded shut as they had seemed at first glance, but I had to double-back to the rear of the building for my car.

Mina was leaning against her car when I slipped through the fence into the empty lot.

“Are they fighting over you yet?” she asked as I walked by.

I didn’t say anything.

“Yeah.” She smiled tightly, her face pale in the glare of the theater’s security light. “Thought so. You are cash money, my friend.”

I stopped. “What’s that supposed to mean?”

She straightened up. “The better the talent in your region, the more jobs you can take, the more money you make.”

“They didn’t say anything about that.”

“Of course not. It’s all about the mission, right?” She rolled her eyes at my apparent stupidity. “All of them work other jobs. My dad’s in construction. Lucy’s a real estate agent in L.A. Silas does something with a bank. The more they make for the Order, the less they have to contribute out of pocket to the cause.”

“There have to be others who—”

“We’re a dying breed. Every generation the gift gets weaker. The Order is going to have to relax their standards soon, or there’ll hardly be any full members after they’re gone,” she said, tipping her head toward the theater. “Except, of course, for you, the wunderkind, who actually ended up with real talent even with only one gifted parent. The rest of us…” She shrugged.

“You make it sound like you’re half blind. You can still see and hear the…echoes.” That term did not sound right. Just the taste of it my mouth felt…wrong.

“Yes, and if they hold perfectly still, I can catch them just fine,” she said mockingly.

“Catching them is not everything. You can help in other ways.”

“By being friends with them, like you?” She grinned at me. “Bet you didn’t tell them that, did you, superstar?”

I looked away.

“You’re going to have to choose, you know. The Order doesn’t exactly endorse free thinking like that.”

I edged closer to her, touched her chin to tip her face to the light. The bruise looked worse in the stark shadows. “And this is how they show it?”

She pulled away. “Training exercises.”

“Right,” I said. “Your dad?” John had seemed like a nice enough guy, except when he’d yelled at Mina. Then…it had been like a glimpse of someone or something else under the surface. I had a hard time seeing my dad, who’d been the most laid-back parent I knew, being friends with him.

She glared at me. “No. I told you. Training. I didn’t move fast enough.” She let out a breath. “I’m never quite fast enough.”

“You could leave,” I said. “You’re over eighteen, and—”

“And go where? Do what?” she demanded. “This is my whole life.”

“It doesn’t have to be.”

“No.” She shook her head. “All I need to do is pass this last test, and I become a full member. Then I can go anywhere,” she said. “I can move to Lucy’s territory or even Silas’s.” Mina rolled her eyes, but there was a wistful edge in her voice.

She seemed to hear herself then, and she straightened up, folding her arms across her chest.

“You worry about your own problems, Casper lover. Let me deal with mine.” She gave me a ferocious smile. “After all, I’m not the one who has to explain all of this to her majesty.”

That was a good point.