Queen of the Dead

12 Alona

I knew it would be bad when Will figured it out. That’s why I’d kept my call for help so general. I couldn’t take the chance he’d be so angry he wouldn’t come to the hospital.

And yet somehow, seeing him make the realization, put all the pieces together, it was worse than I’d imagined. Maybe telling him on the phone would have been better.

He went pale, except for two spots of red high up on his cheekbones, and he looked like I’d punched him. No, he looked like I’d punched his mother and then stomped on him for good measure.

Will pulled back from me and dropped my hand like it was on fire.

I’d been expecting this, and yet it still hurt to see that expression of disgust on his face.

“You did this to get back at me?” He wouldn’t meet my gaze, and his fists were clenched at his sides.

His accusation shocked me. “No!” Okay, I’d set out to prove a point, but it wasn’t that one. I’d just wanted toshow him I didn’t need him. Yet I’d accomplished the exact opposite.

He shot me a look brimming with fury and skepticism.

“Seriously, do you really think if I set this up to gloat, I’d be in a hospital gown?” I plucked at the loose pale blue fabric at my neck. “Things just got out of control.”

“I can see that,” he said tightly.

“Hey, this is your fault, too,” I snapped.

“This ought to be good,” he muttered, which kind of ticked me off. He really didn’t see his role in all of this?

“If you hadn’t gotten all caught up in G.I. Jane’s propaganda about the living being more important than the dead, and just delivered my message like I’d asked, I wouldn’t have been forced to go to these extreme measures,” I argued.

“So, I tell you no and that’s, what, a green light for you to start body-snatching my friends?” He scrubbed his hands over his face, and I noticed deep and angry-looking scrapes and cuts on the inside of his wrists and forearms. A twinge of concern made my chest tighten. When had that happened? Now was probably not the time to ask.

“First of all, it’s one friend, and it’s called body-borrowing.” I sniffed. “I was only using her hand. You know, like when I SAVED YOUR LIFE?”

He rolled his eyes.

“Except…” I bit my lip. “Something different happened this time.” I folded my arms across my chest, a gesture that felt both familiar and wrong at the same time. In keeping with her other curves, Lily’s chest was noticeably bigger than mine. No wonder Will had liked her. Yeah, okay, he was a leg guy — trust me, it was obvious — but boobs were still boobs.

“Clearly something very different,” Will said.

“Shut up,” I snapped. “You weren’t there. You don’t know what it was like.” I paused, shuddering at the memory of that complete and utter darkness I’d woken to. “Once it started pulling me in, I couldn’t stop it. It didn’t want to let go of me.”

“You ever notice how this is everybody’s fault but yours?” he asked.

I scowled at him. “Whatever. Just call me out of here, and then you can yell at me as much as you want, okay?” Well, not really, but whatever would get him to stop bitching and start summoning was a lie I could live with.

He hesitated and then shook his head slowly. “I don’t think that’s going to work.”

I felt the first pulse of true panic. “Why not?”

“Because if you were still my spirit guide, you would have shown up this morning in my room, like usual,” he pointed out. “Whatever you did…it changed things.”

I shook my head. “You don’t know that.” I refused to accept that idea or the growing fear in my gut that he might be right. “Besides,” I argued, “I didn’t do anything. It just happened.”

“You didn’t stick your hand in hers?”

“Okay, fine, yes,” I said with exasperation. “I did that, but I certainly didn’t set out to take her entire body.”

“No, that was just lucky,” he said.

“Do you think I want to be in here?” I shouted. “This is the last body I would have picked for myself. It’s short and fat and weak and—”

“I know at least one person who was pretty happy with it and might have enjoyed the opportunity to have it again,” he said quietly.

I remembered belatedly that this was his friend. Good, Alona. Piss him off further. That’ll help. “Look, I didn’t mean…” I gritted my teeth. “Can we please just stop arguing long enough to try to get me out of here?”

This had to work. It was my one and only plan. I didn’t have other ideas, which was not like me, but this wasn’t exactly a standard situation in which one could develop a backup plan or two, like what to do if you accidentally sit in spaghetti sauce in the caf.

Will’s mouth tightened, but he moved around the bed and sat down in the visitor’s chair that Mrs. Turner normally occupied. He took a deep breath and closed his eyes.

I waited a beat or two, but he didn’t say anything. “Are you trying?” I asked.

“I’m trying to concentrate, yeah,” he said, sounding annoyed.

I shut up.

A minute ticked by, and then another. I concentrated, willing the sensation of being pulled free to wash over me. I wasn’t quite sure what that would feel like, so I envisioned the resistance inside Lily’s body, the force that had drawn me in, clinging to me like black mud even as Will yanked me out with a loud suction-releasing pop.

But the trouble was, I didn’t actually feel anything, not pulled or tugged in any way. Not even a vaguely mystical tingle. Just the same tired, achy feeling that had been there since I’d woken up in charge of this body. Crap.

Will opened his eyes and met my gaze, though I thoughthe might have flinched a little in doing so. “It’s not working,” he said.

“Yeah, I noticed. Maybe you’re not trying hard enough.” I could hear the shrill edge of panic in my voice. “Can you try, like, reaching in and pulling me out?”

In answer, he reached over and looped his hand around my wrist, his touch warm and comfortingly familiar even though he was angry. “I’m not the one who could reach through people, places, and things, remember?” He waggled my captured arm at me.

“I can’t stay in here,” I whispered.

“You were certainly eager enough to get in,” he said.

Tears filled my eyes and slipped down my cheeks with virtually no resistance. Crap, Lily was a crier. “You were leaving me behind, just like everyone else!” Damn it, Alona, keep it together. “What was I supposed to do?”

He raked his hands through his hair. “I don’t know, but hijacking someone wouldn’t have been on the top of my list.”

“It wasn’t on mine, either!” I wiped my face, the back of my hand jolting and bumping over the unfamiliar terrain.

He let out a slow breath. “And I wasn’t leaving you behind. I hadn’t made any decisions about—”

“The fact there’s suddenly a decision that needs to be made kind of says it all, don’t you think?” I asked.

“That doesn’t justify—”

“I never said it did,” I said quietly.

His expression softened a little bit, but that was it. Hedidn’t hug me, didn’t make a move to comfort me. Not that I expected that exactly. I’d known he wouldn’t be in the forgiving mood anytime soon, if ever, but it didn’t stop me from wishing that he would be. I could have used just a little sympathy, even if I didn’t entirely deserve it. It wasn’t like this was easy for me, either. But he was cold and distant, maybe even more than he’d been the first time we’d ever talked.

“We just need to figure this out,” he said, rubbing his forehead like it hurt. “If you got in, there has to be a way to get you out.”

“What about your books?” I asked.

He looked at me blankly.

“You have all those books at home about ghosts and the afterlife and—”

“Yeah, I’m pretty sure I didn’t miss all the chapters on body-borrowing. And before you ask, I doubt there’s an instructional video on YouTube.” He shook his head. “I didn’t even know this was possible.” He frowned at me. “It must be something different about you. Or Lily, maybe. Or some combination. If ghosts could take bodies all the time, people would be nothing but a revolving door of spirits. We need more information on how this works.”

I bit my lip, and then stopped, feeling horribly self-aware. That was not my nervous habit. When had I started doing that? My go-to fidget was to bite my thumbnail, though I’d spent years breaking myself of the habit.

“There was a priest here earlier,” I offered finally. “He seemed to know something wasn’t right. Like maybe he thought I was…well, Lily…was possessed.”

He jerked back, as if considering this idea for the first time. “Possession.”

I knew what he meant. This wasn’t like any depiction of possession I’d ever seen, though Will had probably watched more of those movies than I had. But there was no struggle here, no violence, no head revolving backward. It was more like two seat-belt-buckle halves clicking together, just not necessarily the ones intended for each other.

“If I told Mrs. Turner to bring him back…”

“No,” Will said immediately, and if possible, he turned a shade paler. I guessed that answered my question about what happened to exorcized spirits. Oblivion. Nothingness.

“Are you sure?” I asked. “Maybe if we asked him just to kind of, I don’t know, do it halfway or not full power?” Maybe a mixture of holy water and tap water or something instead of the fully leaded version?

He stared at me. “Are you really so shallow that you’d risk being turned into nothing?”

“Are you really that determined to have your friend back?” I shot back.

He gave me a disgusted look. “Don’t make it about that. You couldn’t care less about her.”

Mrs. Turner poked her head in the door, startling both of us. “Is everything okay?”

“Just another minute…Mom,” I said, almost choking on the word.

She nodded and backed away, but I suspected she wasn’t going far. “They’re going to want to take her…me home soon,” I hissed at Will. “I can’t do that.” Pretending to be someone else was exhausting, and for some horrible reason, I felt compelled to get it right. Or as close as I could. I hated seeing the occasional flashes of hurt and confusion that crossed Mrs. Turner’s face when I behaved more like me and less like the daughter she knew. It made me feel like I was taking a test and failing with every question. I wasn’t used to failing at anything. The idea of sitting at their kitchen table or whatever, trying to act like I recognized things and remembered people…God, I couldn’t even imagine that kind of pressure.

“When?” Will asked.

“Tomorrow, maybe the day after.” God, what if I was still stuck here then? Three days as Lily Turner? The last twenty-four hours had been more than enough.

“We’ve got a little time, then,” he said, seemingly more to himself than to me.

“Time for what?” I asked.

But he just shook his head.

“You have an idea,” I accused.

“Not a good one,” he said grimly.

I sat up straighter, automatically correcting for my left side, which was weaker, thanks to the initial accident damage and the surgeries that had apparently followed. Lily had some serious scars, even beyond the one on her face. “I don’t care. I’ll do anything. Tell me.”

But he just shook his head.

“What, so now you’re keeping secrets?” I asked.

He glared at me.

Okay, so maybe not the best response in terms of avoiding hypocrisy, but this was my life at stake…sort of.

I had sudden flash of insight. “It doesn’t involve her, does it?”

“Who?”

“Mina, Little Miss Rambo of the spirit world.” I flungmy hands out to encompass the room and everything beyond it.

He made a face. “It’s a little more complicated than that.”

“Which means, what, yes, you’re going to tell her?” Panicked, I didn’t even wait for his answer. “She’ll box me for sure.” Not existing would be bad. Existing as little separate pieces, each perhaps aware and alert forever, might be worse. “She got rid of Mrs. Ruiz just for slamming a few doors, so—”

“And almost killing me,” he pointed out, turning to face me.

“—what do you think she’s going to do to me when she finds out about this?” I gestured down at myself.

“Maybe you should have thought about that before,” he said.

I stared at him.

He grimaced, started to speak, stopped, then tried again. “She was my friend, Alona, and you didn’t care. You did what you wanted, no matter who it hurt.” He shook his head. “I thought you were changing, that you were different now, but I’m not sure anymore.”

I felt tears sting my eyes again. “What are you saying?”

“I don’t know.” He lifted his shoulders helplessly. “I’m going to do my best to get you out of there because Lily deserves that, her family, too, even though it’s probably going to kill her mom. But after that…I think maybe we should go our separate ways.”

Even though I’d known this was a possibility, somehow it still took me by surprise and I couldn’t breathe for a second. Tears poured, hot and wet, down my face, splashing down on the front of my hospital gown.

Will was unmoved. He stood up.

“I’ll be back as soon as I can. Keep her phone with you.”

He was leaving already? “What am I supposed to do while you’re figuring out your big plan?” I tried to keep calm. It had not escaped my notice that he hadn’t answered my question about Mina.

“Just keep doing what you’ve been doing.”

I nodded, wiping my face on the edge of the sheet.

He started for the door, and then he stopped. “Was it worth it?” he asked without turning around.

“What?”

“Doing this so you could talk to your parents? Force them back into mourning you?”

I flinched. He made it sound so cruel. I couldn’t tell him the truth. I hadn’t had many opportunities to even make the call with any kind of privacy, and the few I’d had…I hadn’t been able to convince myself to take them. It was one thing to send Will with a message and watch the fallout at a bit of a distance. But now that I had the fingers to dial the phone and the capacity to speak to them and be heard directly…I was kind of afraid to hear what they would say. Will was worried that hearing from me would send them into a tailspin of grief. I was worried it wouldn’t.

“Yes,” I lied. What else could I say?

“I hope so,” Will said. Then he left.

After a few seconds, Mrs. Turner stuck her head back in the door cautiously. “Okay if I come in again?”

I nodded, not quite trusting myself to speak.

She came farther in the room, moving toward her chair, but then she stopped, her head cocked to one side as she took in my expression and probably my tear-reddened eyes. I mean, what were the odds that Lily was attractive while crying when even I hadn’t been able to manage that?

Her shoulders sagged, and she looked at me with such sympathy. “Oh, honey. It’s just going to take some time.”

I knew that she didn’t even have a clue what was going on, but it didn’t matter. Hearing the genuine caring in her voice made my eyes burn with tears again, and then I started to cry. Sob, actually. Big gulping, loud embarrassing sobs. Ones I’d never allowed myself in front of other people when I was alive.

Get it together, Alona. But I couldn’t seem to make myself stop. It was like a faucet somewhere had snapped off, and everything was pouring out.

She moved to sit on the edge of my bed, pulling my head to rest on her shoulder. “It’s okay. It’s going to be fine.” She repeated the words over and over again, which should have worked, except I knew that if I got what I wanted, it wouldn’t be okay, it wouldn’t be fine, at least not for her.

She stroked my hair. “You were friends with Will and then you weren’t. And then the accident…” She rested her chin lightly on top of my head. “It’s bound to be confusing for him. For both of you.”

There was a knock at the door. I looked over to see Mr. Turner standing in the doorway awkwardly, a bouquet of wildflowers in one hand and the hugest bundle of brightly colored balloons in the other. He was wearing another denim shirt, in a lighter shade of blue this time. Tyler hovered at his side, looking a little less freaked than yesterday, but still wary. He was twisting a piece of white fabric in his hands.

“Is now a bad time?” Mr. Turner asked.

I felt Mrs. Turner stiffen next to me. “What are you doing here, Jason? What about—”

“I took the day off of work,” he said quickly. “This deserves celebration.”

“Oh,” Mrs. Turner said in a small but happy voice.

He stepped closer, dragging the balloons across the ceiling.

“I didn’t know if you still liked this kind of flowers or not,” he said to me gruffly. “When you were little, you used to beg me to stop the car on trips to Grandma’s house in Wisconsin so you could pick the flowers on the side of the road. I think those were mostly weeds, but these reminded me of them.”

He thrust the flowers at me, and I took them. They were just cheap grocery store flowers still in the plastic, but they were pretty, and he’d picked them out himself. Whenever my dad had sent me flowers, they’d been huge, ornate arrangements and come from the most expensive florist in town…with a note in his assistant’s handwriting. I’d thanked my dad once, and he’d had no idea what I was talking about. I was just an item on someone’s to-do list.

Mrs. Turner gave a choked laugh. “They’re beautiful, Jason. Really.” She sounded like she was crying now, too.

“And Tyler has something for you, too.” He waved his son over, who was still standing on the edge of the hall.

Tyler approached slowly. “You know that place in your room I’m not supposed to know about, where you hide the stuff I’m not supposed to touch?”

So this is what it was like to have a sibling. I nodded and hoped he wouldn’t ask for details about said secret location or its contents.

“Here.” He tossed the fabric he’d been twisting in his hands at me. It fluttered down to land on top of my covers.

I picked it up. It was a piece of soft white satin, worn and tattered around the edges, and kind of grungy looking, but I knew that it was supposed to be important just by the way Tyler and Mr. Turner were watching me for my reaction. I picked it up carefully because it felt like it might fall apart. Whatever it was, it was either really old or really worn out, or both.

“You found Blankie,” Mrs. Turner exclaimed.

Oh, this sounded embarrassing. But also important.

Without thinking, I looked to her for explanation and another of those sad expressions crossed her face. I’d failed another question on the Lily exam.

“Oh, right, Blankie,” I repeated, feeling the heat rise in my cheeks. Clearly, there was some childhood memory associated with this thing. Logic would suggest it was, or had once been, an actual blanket, something Lily had evidently cherished enough to hide away from her brother. I liked the idea of having something with that kind of history. With my mother’s manic and occasionally alcohol-fueled redecorating sprees, I’d rarely had any bedding in my room last long enough for the newness to wear off, let alone for a sentimental attachment to form.

I ran my fingers along the torn edge gently.

“A lot of children keep a scrap from their security blankets,” Mrs. Turner said, her tone chiding yet approving. “You took it everywhere until about third grade, and even then you slept with it under your pillow, remember?”

I nodded. I could imagine it.

“I looked and looked for this when I was gathering up things to bring here to your room.” She rested her head against mine for a moment. “I thought maybe it had gotten lost or you’d thrown it away. I was so upset.”

Imagine that. A mom who wanted to keep things that had been important to her daughter.

Mrs. Turner folded the strip of fabric into my palm and closed my fingers over it, and then she kissed my forehead with a sigh that seemed to indicate now that Blankie and Lily had been reunited, all would be right with the world.

I looked away, staring at the far corner of the room so I wouldn’t start crying again when I’d barely stopped. It wasn’t fair. Why did Lily Turner get these parents, this family, and not me? She wasn’t even around to appreciate them. She probably hadn’t appreciated them even when she was around. Not as much as I would have.