Queen of the Dead

3 Will

“Ow!” I jerked out of Alona’s grasp and away from the tweezers she wielded with maybe just a little too much enthusiasm. “Are you trying to make it worse?”

“You have, like, half the bedroom floor back here,” she said with no sympathy. “Besides, even if I was, you’d deserve it,” she said.

She’d been beyond cranky with me since we’d left the Gibley Mansion grounds, and admittedly, she might be justified in that…to an extent. After the girl just left us standing there, it had been Alona who’d pulled it together and led me out, through the backyard and to the next block over, where I’d parked the Dodge. I’d been reeling still, torn between trying to follow the ghost-talker girl and just getting out of there before I got caught.

Alona had had no such qualms. She’d dragged me to the car and then, on the way to my house, made me tell her everything she’d missed while she’d been gone.

Unsurprisingly, none of those details — the silver that had been stolen and then restolen, Mrs. Ruiz’s attack on me, the weapon the girl had used against Mrs. Ruiz and almost Alona — had improved her mood.

Now in the bathroom at my house, where first aid was supposed to be happening, she was evidently still mulling over everything and blowing things way out of proportion, in my opinion. Thankfully, my house was currently empty. Mymom was at the movies with Sam, her semiboyfriend/boss from the diner where she worked.

“So, she could have killed me with that thing, whatever it was, in her hand?” Alona demanded. “Just wiped me out of existence because she didn’t like the way I was looking at her or something?”

I hesitated, beginning to reconsider the wisdom of this conversation when I didn’t have enough — or any — facts…and when Alona was obviously pissed and in a position to cause me pain. “I don’t know,” I said finally. “I don’t know what the device does exactly, but it definitely did something to Mrs. Ruiz.”

Alona removed another splinter from my back with brutal efficiency, and I winced.

“I stopped her before she hurt you,” I pointed out through gritted teeth. “It’s fine. You’re fine.”

“Oh, yeah, I’m great.” She waved the tweezers around. “Your new best friend is a homicidal maniac with mysterious weapons and hair that could be used to remove rust off a bumper.”

At least she had her priorities straight. I resisted the urge to point out that since Alona was already technically dead, it wouldn’t really be homicide. I do have some sense of self-preservation.

“Look, she didn’t know,” I said. “As far as she knew, you were another ghost who was going to try to hurt her.”

“So quick to take her side,” she muttered. She bumped past me to wash her hands at the sink.

I stared at her. “What is wrong with you?”

“You know nothing about her, why she was there, even what all that stuff she had with her does.” She scrubbed her hands ferociously under the water. “Do you even know what happened to Mrs. Ruiz? Where she ended up after your friend made her vanish?”

“I—”

“No, you don’t,” she answered for me. “This girl just waves around her cool toys, and you’re hooked. No questions asked.” She shoved past me to dry her hands on a towel.

“I don’t think it’s really an issue since I’ll probably never see her again,” I said. “She wouldn’t even give me her name.” Which sucked. Maybe I could figure out some other way to track her down, just to talk, exchange some information.

She turned to face me. “Seriously? You’re not actually falling for this, are you?”

“What? Why?” I felt like we were in two completely different conversations…or on two different planets.

“First of all, not telling you her name is a form of manipulation. It only makes you want to know it more.” She shook her head at me in disgust. “Classic girl move. How do you not know this?” She paused and then said, “Never mind. I forgot who I was talking to.”

Nice. Just because I’d spent most of high school avoiding social contact…

“Or, it’s possible she really didn’t want me to know,” I pointed out.

“Then why not make something up? How would you know?”

I opened my mouth and shut it without saying anything. That was kind of a good point.

She flipped her hair behind her shoulders and ticked another point off on her fingers. “Second, another ghost-talker, a rare and endangered species according to you, just happens to show up at the same place at the same time as you?” she asked.

“Well, yeah,” I said. “It’s possible.”

“Please. Do you have any idea of what the odds would be on that?”

“No, but it doesn’t matter,” I argued. “She would have had no way of knowing that I would be there tonight.”

“Uh-huh.” She sounded less than convinced. “Because no one knew about the demolition tomorrow and Mrs. Ruiz’s issues.”

Apparently, none of us had known the extent of Mrs. Ruiz’s issues, but her haunting the place was fairly common knowledge, and the impending demolition — as well as the Decatur Historical Society’s doomed efforts to prevent it — had been in the local news for weeks.

I shook my head. “This is crazy. You think this is some kind of elaborate scheme? To accomplish what?”

She threw up her hands. “How should I know? Ask your new girlfriend.”

I frowned at her. “She’s not my—”

“Anyway, it doesn’t matter now whether she meant to find you or not,” Alona continued.

“It doesn’t,” I repeated.

“No. The fact is, she did find you. And if there are so few ghost-talkers out there, do you think they’re going to let an opportunity like this pass them by?”

“Who?” I was beginning to wonder if one of us had experienced brain damage tonight. Honestly, I wasn’t sure which of us was the more likely candidate at this point.

“The people she’s working for,” Alona said with exasperation. “Weren’t you listening? ‘This was my third chance at a containment.’That’s what she said.”

I gaped at her. “We don’t even know what that means.”

“I can tell you it means someone else is judging her based on whatever she did or did not do with Mrs. Ruiz tonight. And I don’t think it’s an international committee of former figure skaters.”

She folded her arms over her chest and waited for me to respond.

“Do you think this hard about everything?” I asked, not even sure what else to say. It was distinctly possible Alona had missed her calling in life as a conspiracy theorist. Albeit a better-dressed one than most.

She leaned closer to me. “Homecoming Queen, three years in a row,” she said. “Do you think that happened by accident?”

She did have a good sense of people, I would give her that. Most of the time, she just didn’t give a shit unless it affected her. Which, in this case, I suppose it did, indirectly.

I waved her words away. “Okay, fine. If she shows up again, I’ll make sure to ask her all the dark and mysterious motives behind her appearance.”

“Good.” She nodded, satisfied.

Jesus.

She turned around and began putting all the first-aid stuff back in the box. “Did you like her?”

I tilted my head, not sure if I was hearing her correctly. “I’m sorry?”

“I said, did you like her?” She kept her back to me. She seemed to be rearranging the contents of the first-aid kit by alphabetical order or size or something. It should not have taken that long to put back tweezers, bandages, and antibacterial cream.

“I…” My God, there was no good way to answer this. “Yes” was obviously out. She’d detect “No” as a lie immediately. And “I don’t know her well enough to know if I like her” was just weak. “I was curious,” I said finally.

“How curious?”

Damn, another impossible-to-answer question. I was starting to sweat. “I don’t understand what you’re—”

“She didn’t seem to have a spirit guide. At least not right now.” Alona shrugged. “And if she ever had one, he probably deliberately made himself disappear just to get away from her,” she added, her mouth tight.

Okay…there was a question in here somewhere. I could feel it coming. I had no idea from which direction, though. Leave it to Alona, the most direct person I knew, to broach whatever this was in the most oblique manner possible.

“With that device she used against Mrs. Ruiz, she probably doesn’t need one,” she continued.

The silence that hung in the air after those words held a slightly different quality, like she was testing the verbal waters and waiting for a “too hot” or “too cold” response.

Ah, wait. Now I was getting it.

Maybe.

“I was just curious,” I said cautiously. “Not looking to change things.”

“She’s alive. Your mother would like that better.”

I let out a silent breath of relief. I’d guessed correctly. She was worried I wanted to replace her or get rid of her or something, but in true Alona fashion, she couldn’t just say that. Nope, that would be admitting that it mattered.

“My mom is still…adjusting,” I said.

The ghost-talker thing had been a hard reality for my mom to accept, especially once she got the full grasp of what it meant. A normal life for me…would not be so normal, even now. I’d applied to colleges, just like we’d talked about, but so far, nothing but a pile of rejections.

I couldn’t say I was surprised. You try explaining a spotty attendance record, more detentions than a reasonable person would bother counting, a half dozen or so in-school suspensions, and God only knows what kind of notes from a vindictive principal on your permanent record (which, by the way, really does exist and the school does send it out) without mentioning “ghosts” or “paranormal ability.” There were schools that would probably be fine with me telling the truth — if I wanted to major in crystals or something. But that was not what my mom had in mind.

Add to all of that, the person that I spent the most time with now was a beautiful girl who happened to be a spirit but who was still living (in her own way) and very touchable? Yeah. For some reason, that meant only one thing to my mom — the possibility of me having weird, undead, inter-dimensional SEX. Right.

I wish.

In any case, my mom had been a little less than welcoming the few times she’d been forced to acknowledge Alona’s invisible-to-her presence. But I hadn’t realized it had bothered Alona this much…or at all.

“She’ll get there,” I said. “She just needs time.”

Alona closed the kit and zipped it shut before turning to face me. “You know I’d find another way, if I had to. I don’t need you need you.” She met my eyes defiantly, daring me to contradict her.

“I know.” I wasn’t sure how she would help people — earn her points, learn her lesson, or whatever it was she’d been sent back specifically to accomplish — without me, her only point of access to the living, but I knew better than to underestimate her. I’d learned that lesson already. “But this is not…I don’t think…” Blah, blah, blah. Get it together. I forced myself to stop and start over.

I took a deep breath. “I’ve been alone with this ghost-talking thing my whole life,” I said, choosing my words carefully. This had serious potential to blow up in my face. “Even when my dad was alive, he wanted nothing to dowith it. So, yeah, finding someone else like me is kind of abig deal.”

She stiffened.

“But it doesn’t change anything,” I said. “Not like that.”

She looked unconvinced. I hesitated and took it a step further. I grabbed her hand, and she didn’t pull it free immediately. That was a good sign, right?

“I don’t want to do this — what we do — with anyone else, okay?” I said quickly. There. I felt dangerously exposed and kind of like an idiot, but at least I’d said my piece. God, no wonder Alona danced around these kinds of things.

Her eyes widened, and she pulled her hand from mine.

I winced in anticipation. It was entirely possible that I’d completely misinterpreted her concerns, and now I was so going to hear about it.…

She touched my face, her fingers light against my cheek, and then she was kissing me. Her mouth was warm and soft and, as always, tasted vaguely of vanilla lip gloss. Her tongue brushed across my lips, and I could barely think.

Huh. Maybe I should take a chance like that more often.