Authors: Shauna Granger
I knew Jodi and
Steven could figure out how to bring me back if only I could make contact with
them to let them know I was still around. If they knew I was trying to reach
out to them, get back to them, they would move mountains to help me. But so far,
I had no idea how to do that. I knew spirits could move things in the physical
plane, but the only way I had managed to affect anything was with extreme
bursts of emotion. Every time I did that, I felt thin after, as if I was fading
further away. I was a little afraid to find out what might happen if I used up
enough energy to fade away completely.
I heard keys jingling
just before the lock in the front door turned. The memorial at the beach must
have ended. Even from here I could hear a multitude of voices, not just my
mother and father’s.
I slipped
through my bedroom door, not feeling the fibers of the wood as I did so, and
stepped out into the hallway to see a pack of people crowding into the house.
My parents must have arranged for the reception to take place there. My stomach
flipped when I saw Jodi and Steven come through the door and stand at the
hallway opening. Steven looked as handsome as ever in his slim cut black suit,
black shirt, and black tie. So much black should have looked flat, but on him,
it looked modern, fresh, and just oh-so-Steven. But the dark circles under his
honey amber eyes belied the sleepless nights. Jodi was in just as much black. Her
shoes, skirt, and cardigan were all black, and the only color she wore came
from the grey blouse and matching tights. Anthony followed them, almost a
mirror image of Steven; he stood a foot back, giving them space to be together
in their grief.
Jodi nodded at
someone talking to her, but Steven glanced down the hallway. For a second, I
thought he would see me, but when his shoulders slumped and he looked away, I
knew he hadn’t. He bent his head forward and whispered something into Jodi’s
ear. She nodded, and as one, they turned and melted away from the crowd and
started down the hallway. For one frantic, ridiculous moment, I felt like I
should hide, as if I would startle them if they saw me. But they just walked
right through me
before slipping quietly
into my room.
“Dude, did you
feel that?” I heard Steven ask just before he closed the bedroom door.
“What? Maybe, I
don’t know,” Jodi answered vaguely. I stepped back through the door into the
bedroom.
“Like a cold
spot or something.” Steven’s eyes were on the door, but Jodi wasn’t listening.
She stood at my desk, staring down at my grimoire, her blond brows drawn
together in a frown. They hadn’t taken my mother’s nightmares with the proper
amount of warning either. We all found out we should have. Hindsight and all
that bullshit.
I moved closer
to Steven, wanting to feel his natural warmth, refusing to shy away from him
when he shivered and a pained look crossed his face, but just like everything
else, I couldn’t feel a thing. I finally accepted that, with death, I had lost
my empathetic abilities. I had nothing I knew of in life: no angelic powers, no
elemental powers, no empathetic powers. I was just another sad wraith wandering
the otherworld.
“Hey, don’t do
that,” Steven said, reaching around Jodi to close my grimoire with a thump.
“You’re just gonna make it harder on yourself.”
“Like that’s
possible,” Jodi said in a low voice before she moved over to my bed. She fell
to sit, bracing her arms on her knees, letting her head drop forward. Her short
blond hair swung forward in a curtain, hiding her face. Steven turned and
leaned against my desk, crossing his arms over his chest, uncharacteristically not
caring about wrinkling his suit. I expected Steven to sit beside Jodi and put
his arm around her shoulders, not stand away from her, letting her suffer
alone.
“Imagine how I
feel,” Steven said, looking down at his shiny shoes. “I mean, I was the one in
the fire. She went in there to get me.”
“No,
we
went in to get you, and we were
getting out.” Jodi’s voice became harder with every word. “That bastard dragged
her back in.”
“Whatever,”
Steven said, stopping the argument. It sounded like they had said these words
many times to each other already and both were tired of arguing about it. I
watched as Steven lifted his eyes, keeping his head down. “I’m losing more
power every day.”
“I know,” Jodi said
with a bob of her head, making her hair swing back and forth.
“But I feel like
I’m
fading away, not just my powers.”
“I know,” Jodi
repeated. She lifted her hands, slipping her fingers into her hair and fisting
them there.
“I felt your
power at the beach.” Steven kept his eyes on the top of Jodi’s head.
“I wasn’t
controlling it,” she said robotically.
“Your wind
always does that when you’re upset, like Shay’s earthquakes,” he argued.
“I wasn’t upset.
I wasn’t anything.”
“What?”
“I was just
there, Steven.” She finally lifted her face to look at him, letting her hands
fall out of her hair. “I wasn’t upset, I wasn’t thinking about Shay.” Her voice
broke on the syllable of my name. “I was just there, and it was happening. I
had no power over it. It was like I was five years old again.”
“Oh,” was all
Steven had to say. I looked from one face to the other and realized something
was wrong with the way they were together and it wasn’t just the shadows
looming over their shoulders. It wasn’t like it used to be. They didn’t look at
each other like they could share one consciousness, like they were two thirds
of a whole. They looked like being together in such a close space was awkward.
“You know, when
Shay talked about the possibility of us dying if one or more of us died,” Jodi
said, though she didn’t look at Steven when she spoke, “I thought she meant our
hearts would stop beating.”
“Not that we
would stop living,” Steven finished for her with a slow nod.
Jodi lifted her
chin, turning her head to look at Steven. “If I could kill that man all over
again, I would do it slower this time.”
Steven didn’t
respond. Technically, Steven had killed my murderer. Steven had laid his hands
on the man’s face and released his Wild Fire, setting the man on fire and watching
him burn, but Jodi’s Air had fueled the flames. Steven pushed away from my desk
and moved over to the dresser. He was so close to me, I should have smelled
campfires and roasting peppers. I didn’t.
“I still can’t
believe she kept this.” Steven picked up a hand braided bracelet he’d given me
freshman year. Jodi had one just like it. Mine was faded and a little frayed
after having been worn every day and night for a year, but it still held its
shape and was soft to the touch.
“Shay kept
everything.”
I watched Steven
cradle the bracelet in his large hand. He looked as though he would put it on
but knew it would never fit over his hand. “What do you think would’ve happened
if I had died in that fire?”
“Steven,” Jodi
sighed, “don’t do this, okay? I just can’t.” She stood up and started toward
the bedroom door, but he stopped her by touching her wrist.
“No, I mean, do
you think you and Shay would be fading away like we are if I had died?”
“I have no
idea.” She tried to push his hand away, but he clung to her arm, letting the
bracelet fall back to the dresser top.
“What do you
think Shay would’ve done if I had died?”
“You didn’t die,
Steven, so what does it matter?”
“Shay did
everything for everyone, you know?” Steven pressed. I saw his fingers curling
into the fabric of Jodi’s sweater, and when I looked into his eyes, I saw a
flicker of light there, like an idea blossoming to life.
“Yeah, she did,
and look where it got her.” Jodi fought against Steven’s grip, but he held
fast.
“No, listen to
me,” he said, bending closer to her face. “Even when people were on the very
edge of death, Shay fought to catch them, bring them back.”
“So?”
“So? So, don’t
you think if I had died, or you, Shay would be here right now trying to find a
way to bring us back?” Steven grabbed Jodi with both hands, turning her body toward
him and shaking her as he spoke. His eyes were wide and his lips were wet with
excitement, but Jodi just looked at him with fear. If I had a pulse, I think my
heart would’ve been in my throat. Maybe I could still reach Steven; maybe he
could hear my pleas.
“Steven, stop,
you know we can’t do that,” Jodi said, shaking her head.
“Why not?”
“We don’t do
that kind of magic,” she hissed. “We can’t bring Shay back. Whatever we brought
back wouldn’t be Shay; it would be a monster.”
“No, no, no,”
Steven rushed, “I’m not talking about blood magic, Jodi. I mean we need to find
her, bring her back. She’s supposed to be here.”
“How do you know
that?”
“Because of
what’s happening to us!” He bent over her, pushing Jodi backward in his sudden
frenzy. It said a lot about her trust in him that Jodi didn’t freak out and hit
him.
“You think
because we’re fading away, losing our powers, that means Shay wasn’t supposed
to die?” Jodi asked.
“Yes.” He
sounded relieved, as if he thought she believed him. I chewed on my bottom lip,
wanting to say something, but I knew they wouldn’t hear me.
“Steven,” Jodi
started to say, and I could see it in her eyes that she didn’t believe him. Just
like that, my hopes crashed around me. I balled my fists at my sides and
screamed, throwing my head back and letting the noise tear through me. My world
felt as though it was slipping away again and I was ready to fall, and then the
light on my desk flickered on and off and on again. Another pain shot through
my head, making me cringe.
Steven and Jodi
froze. Whatever Jodi was about to say died on her lips as they turned to look
at the lamp. Jodi stepped closer to Steven as if she was afraid it would come
to life.
“Did you see
that?” Steven whispered. Jodi nodded, her wide blue eyes blinking slowly. When
the lamp remained on and the light consistent, Steven turned his head this way
and that, his eyes searching. “Shay?”
“Shay?” Jodi echoed,
looking up at him. “You’re kidding, right?” She pushed away from his arms,
stepping back until she practically stood on top of me before she stopped. Her
face twisted, her brow pinching as though she was suddenly very uncomfortable
standing so close to me.
“What?” Steven
looked at her, his gaze passing right over me. I reached out a hand, letting my
fingers slip through his arm, watching him shiver again.
“Steven, it’s
enough already, okay? I can’t do this, I’m sorry.” She turned and left, leaving
me and Steven alone in the room. I stepped closer to him, looking up into his
open face, and wished with every fading fiber of my being that he would just
glance down and see me standing there. But he never did.
Shay did everything for everyone.
That’s what
Steven had said. I had never thought of it that way, but it did remind me that
a lot of powerful beings owed me a lot of favors. But how to reach any of them,
that was the problem. I couldn’t go to the angels. They were trying to rip me
from this reality and pull me into the next. The water nymphs had fled our
shores after the great battle, not wanting to inflict their presence on us
while wounds were still fresh. Even if they were still there, I had no idea how
I was supposed to get them to see me, let alone hear me. Then there was the
Fae, Iris of the Shattered Light, in particular.
That terrifying
queen had said flat out that she owed me. But I didn’t know where the
sithein
that would lead me inside the
fairy mound was. Iris had just summoned me with her foreign magic, and when I
opened my eyes, I was there, in her chambers. Tegan, my little fairy guide, had
said humans thought faeries were fallen angels. Maybe that meant the Fae could
see me. But I had paced the orchard behind my house for hours trying to make
contact with them only to be answered with silence.
Liam the vampire
couldn’t help me since the searching Light that was always just behind me,
reaching out for me, put his immortal life in danger. When he had walked me
away from the wreckage the night I died and the Light had appeared, his body
began to smoke and smolder, nearly bursting into flames. I screamed at him to
go, to run and get as far away from me as he could. I ran in the opposite
direction, pulling the Light and the searching hands of my guardian angel
behind me. I hadn’t seen Liam since. If I could find him, he could tell Jodi
and Steven I was still there, trying to get back to them. Maybe that would
repair whatever had fractured between them.
Hunkered down in
the shadows in my room, I cursed myself for not foreseeing this possibility. I
knew
something
would happen to the
survivors if one of the three of us ever died, but I thought the remaining two
would cling to each other, not slip apart. Steven wanted to keep Jodi close,
but something in particular had happened to her, making her shut him out. It
was as if she was only around him out of habit, not out of want or need.