Afterlife

Chapter Eleven

WATCHING LUCAS SHOWER DID THINGS TO MY brain.

I let him go to class, but seeing him again, with his muscled chest and legs, and water streaming through his dark gold hair and over his full lips — remembering everything we’ d had together during the short weeks we’d shared in Philadelphia — awakened my hunger to be with him again.

Desire was different for me now that I didn’t have a living body, but that didn’t mean I wanted Lucas any less.

And I wanted that closeness between us again. I knew that I helped tether Lucas to the world as much as he helped me; surely we didn’t have to be celibate forever, did we? We could find a way. As long as I had my bracelet on, I didn’t see why it would even have to be difficult.

Lucas hadn’t made any moves in that direction since our first terrible attempt. Given how traumatizing that whole time had been, I’d respected the fact that he needed some distance; I knew he loved me just as much. Maybe I’d taken it too far, though. Maybe I was the one who needed to make the first move.

As darkness fell, I slipped down the side of the guys’ tower and into Vic and Ranulf’s room. They were sharing a companionably silent dinner, Ranulf sipping blood from an Eagles mug, Vic wolfing down a Hot Pocket. When I appeared in their room, Vic grinned and waved. “Yo, Bianca! It’s good you dropped by. We were just gonna watch jackie Chan movies. The old ones, where he’s badass, not the American stuff where he’s funny.”

“His ass remains bad in all incarnations,” Ranulf interjected. “In the laudatory sense of the word bad and a rather nebulous sense of the word ass.”

“Ever and always badass,” Vic agreed. “just more badass in the Drunken Master days. You want to join us, Bianca? See for yourself?”

“Actually,” I began, “I was hoping you guys might ask Balthazar to join you. For a couple of hours or so.”

Vic nodded sagely. “A little necktie — on — the — doorknob time is called for, I see.” When Ranulf frowned, he added, “Bianca and Lucas want to be alone.”

“I see at once the symbolism of the doorknob and the necktie,” Ranulf: said.

“Wait — no,” Vic said. “That is not what that means. At least, I don’t think so — ” This conversation was about to derail. “Could you maybe go ahead and ask him? It would mean a lot.” Vic grinned. “Consider it done.”

About ten minutes later, when I went up to Lucas’s room, I found him alone; Vic and Ranulf had already collected Balthazar. Lucas sat amid a pile of schoolbooks, like he was cramming for all his exams at once. “Wow,” I said as I took shape. “Did you get hit with a homework tsunami or something?”

“Studying helps,” Lucas said quietly. “When I study, I can focus on something outside my head for a little while.”

The books and papers and laptop in front of him looked different now; at once I was reminded of him in his Black Cross cell, surrounded by his hunter’s weapons. His newfound drive for his schoolwork was one more way for him to defend himself — this time, against the demons within.

I hoped I had another way. “Do you think you could take a little time away?”

Lucas looked up at me, his green eyes so warm and liquid that I felt myself melt. “For you? Always.”

“We’re alone.” I brushed my hand through his hair; he shut his eyes, clearly relishing the touch. “You’ve got my jewelry, so I could be solid for a while. Maybe we could.. give being together anotl1er try?”

He remained silent for a long moment. His hand closed around mine, and I felt again the sparkly sensation of connecting when I wasn’t 100 percent solid — deliciously cool, sending ripples of pleasure through me. I bent to kiss Lucas, but just before our lips met, he said, “We shouldn ‘t.”

“Lucas — why not?” I didn’t feel rejected; his longing and love for me radiated from him. So I didn’t understand what kept us apart. “I know last time was bad, but we realize what’s going on now. What we can and! can’t do.” As far as I was concerned, the stuff we could do was a whole lot more interesting than what we couldn ‘ t.

“The need for sex and the need for blood — they’re so tightly linke·d, Bianca. They always have been, for us.”

“But they aren’t the same thing.” I kissed his forehead, his cheek, the side of his mouth. He breathed in sharply, and I knew he wanted this as 108 badly as I did — more, perhaps. “You know now that drinking my blood would hurt you. Maybe destroy you. So that means you won’t lose control and bite me.”

Lucas gripped my hands tightly and met my eyes. “I know that drinking your blood could destroy me,” he said. “And that’s why I’m afraid I’ll bite you.”

Silence fell over us, as heavy and horrible as the new knowledge I had to bear. I’d known that Lucas was struggling, but I hadn’t realized that his desire for self — destruction remained so immediate and strong.

My face must have looked crushed, because Lucas said, “Oh, God, Bianca, I’m sorry. I’m so sorry.”

“You told me the truth,” I managed to say. ‘That’s the main thing.”

Lucas embraced me as tightly as he could in my semisolid state. “I daydream about being with you all the time,” he whispered into my hair. “All the time. If I couldn’t remember being with you, I don’t know how I would go on. But sometimes I think — if I could end it, just end it, while I was with you, it’s as close as anything like me could ever get to heaven — ”

“Lucas, no.”

“I would never do that to you,” he said. “Never. But. . Bianca, we can’t.”

I nodded, accepting the barrier between us. It wasn’t forever; just until Lucas managed to control his blood hunger and the terrible self — loathing Black Cross had programmed into him. But how long until that day came?

Would it ever come?

As though he could hear my doubts, Lucas said, “Someday.”

“Someday,” I said, a promise to him and to myself.

Later that night, still dazed with disappointment and worry for Lucas, I drifted down into the main area of the school — deserted, this late at night. Even the vampires were asleep.

How many vampires don’t make the transition? I thought. How many give in to suicidal impulses or blood hu11ger, or both? I suspected the number was far larger than my parents had ever let on. Once again I felt a fierce surge of longing for them. Not only did I miss Mom and Dad just as themselves, but if we could talk — really talk, without all the lies between us — maybe I could learn how to help Lucas bear his burdens.

Perhaps ii was the intensity of my concentration as I wondered about this, the way it dragged me so deeply into my own mind rather tl1an the here and now — or maybe it was some trick of where I was at that moment, because Evernight’s traps and guards and passageways created a kind of spiritual architecture within the stone. Whatever it was, in that moment, I suddenly became sharply aware that I was not alone.

I could sense the wraiths.

They were more distinct at that moment than they had ever been. Instead of simply knowing that they were there, I could now tell roughly how many there were — dozens, at least. They seemed to stand out in my awareness, each of them distinct but part of a whole, like stars in the sky, maybe, different points of brightness that formed constellations all around me. It was like suddenly seeing the night sky for the very first time, as though I’d been blind to it my whole life and then been dazzled all at once.

Except that constellations were beautiful, peaceful — and what I sensed around me now was desperation and madness. Instead of being dazzled, I felt the cold grip of fear.

Some that lingered alone, crammed into tiny slivers between stones or at the edge of windowpanes. It was as though they were beating their heads against a wall, cramping and hurting themselves just to remind themselves they continued to exist.

The trapped ones were the worst, because I couldn’t feel anything from them but pure terror. They’ d become nothing but long wordless screams.

And then there were a few others, clustered tightly together, who, when I sensed them, sensed me in return.

Once again, the visions began.

I saw an image of Mrs. Bethany in my mind — not a product of my own imagination, but something projected into my head like a movie on a screen. Something was tearing her apart, literally, graphically, bone and sinew and blood and guts, more disgusting than anything I’d ever seen. My throat tightened, and I gagged, but the image filled my whole mind now, and I couldn ‘ t push it away.

The Plotters — that was what I called them — repeated, Help us.

Or what? Would they attack the people I loved like this? Or would they come after me? What could a ghost do to another ghost? I had no idea, 11o but terrible possibilities unfolded in my mind, becoming part of the gruesome destruction of Mrs. Bethany.

Her mouth was open, her jaw unhinging, but the desperate scream in my mind was my own — Then a shaft of light seemed to penetrate my dream. Mrs. Bethany vanished, and the “constellations” disappeared as though it were dawn.

When I could see again, I realized that Maxie was standing with me in the great hall. Her white nightgown floated slightly on some unseen breeze, so that she seemed to be part of the fog outside. “You saved me,” I said.

“I pushed them back. That’s as much as I can do.” She cocked an eyebrow, like it was weird that she had to save me from anything. “You’re the girl with the superpowers, if you ‘d just realize it already.”

What else could a ghost do to another ghost? That sharp new fear controlled me as powerfully as the Plotters had a moment before. I stabilized myself as best I could, becoming more solid. “Are those Christopher’s. . henchmen? Or henchghosts? Or whatever?”

“Christopher doesn’t have anything to do with them,” Maxie said. “They’d be better off if he did. They’re too tied to the human world to come to terms with the fact that they’re wraiths.”

“They hate Evernight,” I said. “They hate Mrs. Bethany. Why don’t they just leave?”

Maxie folded her arms. “You keep thinking all of us can do the things you can do. We can’t. Most wraiths can’t move around the way you can, or even the way I can. They followed their human anchors here because of the strength of that bond; every instinct they have tells them not to abandon it. And because they’re so screwed up now, they can’t think past instinct. They can’t think, period. They’re just emotions, going in every direction.”

“What’s wrong with them?”

“This is how we end, if we’re not careful.”

Cautiously, I said, “You mean, we end up … crazy?”

“Unhinged. Unstable. It comes from being in the human world but not of it.” She gave me a pointed look that suggested I was headed in that direction.

“You’ve spent time with Vic since he was a child,” I said. Vic was her biggest vulnerability; I wasn’t above using that.

She smiled softly when I said his name. “You can watch them. You can even — you can love.” Her voice broke on the last word. “But you can’t live. The damage comes from pretending that you can.”

“I’m not pretending,” I insisted.

“Aren’t you?”

“Bianca, if you would just come talk to Christopher — ” Fear swept through me again, and I shook my head. “Don’t.”

Maxie’s usual sarcastic demeanor had faded into genuine pleading. “Bianca, You’re important to the wraiths. Don’t you see that? The stuff you can do that the rest ·of us can’t — it’s not just so much smoke and fog. It means something. You mean something.” My curiosity began to get the better of my fear, but just when I wanted to ask her more, she grew desperate, almost scarily so, and said, “We need you.”

“You’re not the only ones who need me.” I swept out of the great hall, afraid she was going to chase me. But she let me go.

“You’re sure you want to learn how to do this?” Patrice folded her arms, studying me as severely as Mrs. Bethany had during midterms.

The real answer was that no, I wasn’t sure. This was, in its way, as scary as training with Black Cross had been — it never felt good, learning how to attack creatures like myself.

The only way to make myself free was to give myself power. And that meant learning how to strike back against the wraiths, if necessary.

“Let’s begin,” I said.

Patrice pulled out her compact. “To catch a wraith,” she said, “you first have to detect that a wraith is there.”

“Done and done.” When Patrice glared at me for interrupting, I said, “I’ve kind of got an edge there, okay?”

“I see your point. Now, watch.” She opened the mirror slowly, with exaggerated movements, like a preschool teacher. I would have laughed if the situation had been any less serious and the setting had been any less spooky. Outside, heavy cold rain had been falling steadily the whole day, draining the sky of any color besides gray. Although Patrice had turned on both of the lamps in her dorm room, they weren’t able to counteract the gloom outside. One of the lights danced on the open mirror, sending a little spot of brightness darting around the stones surrounding us. “You need 112 to open the mirror after you’ve sensed ilie presence of the wraith, but before you’ve actually confronted it. This isn ‘t like Mrs. Bethany’s traps — a wraith can resist a mirror, if she knows ilie attack is coming.”

My amusement got the better of the moment. When I started grinning, Patrice cocked her head in confusion. I said, “I’m sorry. It’s just so weird hearing you talk about attacking people.”

“Excuse me?”

“You know, aren’t you worried about breaking a nail or something?”

Patrice looked annoyed, until she realized I was only teasing. She raised one eyebrow. “Did you see me worrying about iliat while I kicked some Black Cross butt?”

“Absolutely not,” I said.

“Mind you, I’m a bit out of practice. I’ve done all the killing I ever intend to do. Drinking blood can give you skanky breath. If you ask me, Evernight Academy should add a hygiene class, because some people here? They haven’t gotten that critical message. I wasn’t interested in gossiping about who had blood — induced halitosis. “You’ve. . done a lot of killing?”

“Not so much,” Patrice said easily. “Just a few slave owners and redneck sheriffs, back in the day. Before the Emancipation Proclamation, if you were black in this country, there was always someone trying to take your freedom away. Literally, I mean; figuratively, it never stops. After I became a vampire, I didn’t have to put up with that anymore.”

Pretty much every vampire I’d ever known had killed sometimes — except my parents, iliough maybe they just hadn’t shared with me. Even the best of them, like Patrice and Balthazar, had drunk from, and murdered, humans. Balthazar’s kills had mostly taken place during wartime, and I couldn’t blame Patrice for striking back at anyone who wanted to enslave her. But just the same, they’d drunk human blood. Balthazar had even murdered his own sister, with consequences that continued to haunt us.

Did that mean iliere was really no choice for Lucas? That sooner or later, he would inevitably snap? Knowing him as I did, I was sure he’d never be able to forgive himself. No wonder he was desperate to find a way beyond the bloodlust. Mrs. Bethany was offering him the thing he 113 wanted most in the world.

“Can we get back to ilie lesson here?” Patrice tapped one perfect, lilac — tinted nail against the mirror. “Okay. It helps if you have some sense of a draft, or a breeze, some idea of which way ilie wraith is traveling. If iliey’re visible, easy. If not, you have to pay close attention to things like the chill in the air, any signs of frost, so on and so forili. And you want to angle the mirror perpendicular to that direction.”

“You just hold it out iliere like a catcher’s mitt, and ilie wraith flies right into it?”

“If only.” Patrice hesitated. “Essentially, you have to iliink of your own death.” Caught short, I said, “Why?”

“Not just think about. Be one with. It’s like you have to reach inside yourself and sort of.. resonate on a dead frequency, I guess. Find the way that You’re like the wraiths. That’s what pulls them into the mirror — they’re coming close to you, because of that resonance, and then that weird mirror mojo does its own thing.”

She didn’t have to explain “weird mirror mojo” to me. One of the unsolvable puzzles of being a vampire was why mirrors stopped showing reflections when a vampire had been too long without blood; the phenomenon didn’t make any sense, and yet it was true. The simple physical property of reflection had a power to it none of us understood, but aU of us respected.

Patrice continued, “It should work better for you than for vampires, as I guess you can resonate with other wraiths pretty easily. But this trick Wouldn’t be much use to a human.”

“Okay. Sounds simple enough.”

“Sounds simple,” she scoffed. “It takes a few tries to learn, or at least it did for me.” Our eyes met, and her mask of indifference fell. I must have looked terrified.

“They frighten me,” I said. “I am one, but — I don’t know.”

“You’re strong, Bianca.” Patrice spoke in a whisper. I’d never seen her this serious before, or this sincere. “Stronger than I ever would ‘ve thought. for somebody so young. If anybody can face them down, it’s you.”

“I don’t know ifl’m scared they’ll hurt me, or.. ”

“Or what?”

“Or if they’ll take me away from here, from Lucas and the rest of you. Keep me from ever coming back.”

Patrice shook her head. The lamp behind her made her curls seem to glow. “Not you. I know You’ll always find your way home.”

I wished I could be as certain.

Seeing my reluctance, Patrice sat up and smoothed her tailored uniform back into perfect order. “What we need to do is give you more of a home to come back to.”

114 “Where are we going?” Lucas asked as I led him up the winding stairs of the guys’ tower. “Is this more fun than astronomy?”

“You always acted like you were interested in my astronomy!”

“I was. just more interested in you.”

“It’s a secret,” I said, ruffling his hair as a cool breeze. “You’ll see when we get there.”

Samuel Younger came down the stairs as we went up, and I could sense Lucas tensing as they came close to each other. Samuel said, “Talking to yourself, freak?”

“Sometimes that’s what you’ve gotta do for some intelligent conversation,” Lucas answered. Samuel flipped him off but kept going down the stairs.

Once we were truly alone again, I said, “We’ve got to watch that.”

“We do okay. Besides, it’s crazy what IJeople won’t notice.”

By this time Lucas and I were almost to the top of the tower — the old records room. “Anyway, Patrice and I were thinking that it’s not good for any of us to be alone so much.”

“I’m never alone as long as I’ve got you.”

As Lucas said this, he opened the door to reveal the group gathered within: Patrice, who was smoothing a scarf on one of the dusty tru: nks before sitting on it; Vic and Ranulf, who seemed to have brought his movie posters and an inflatable chair; and Balthazar, who was blowing smoke from his cigarette out the window. Somebody’s iPod and speaker dock had been parked in the corner, turned up about as loud as it could be without attracting attention.

While Lucas gaped at this, I whispered, “We’ll always have each other — but we can have this, too.”

“Hey, guys!” Vic was the first to spot us. “We thought we’d try to cheer this place up. Nothing like some vintage Elvis movie posters to add a touch of class.”

“I could make some other suggestions,” Patrice said, in a tone of voice that suggested “a touch of class” was not what had happened here. But 115 she was smiling.

“Is this safe?” Lucas said.

Balthazar stubbed out his cigarette on the stone windowsill. “I don’t see why not. We might get caught, but they’ll probably think we’re just hanging out up here.”

“And we are going to do some hanging out,” I said, “but seriously, we need a place Mrs. Bethany doesn’t know about. A place to. . strategize.

Figure out what she’s up to. Find a way to communicate better with the wraiths. All of that. I can’t just keep muttering to you guys between classes.”

“There’s no reason for anybody to realize Bianca’s up here with us,” Patrice agreed. “And if someone overheard a lot of us talking, they wouldn’t think anything of it. She’s right. If we keep meeting up with her one on one, it sounds like we’ve started talking to ourselves, and that makes people wonder. Besides, Bianca can leave something here to help anchor her. It would be good for her to be hooked in to a place, as well as to people. ‘“ Vic’s initial cheer had faded somewhat, and he and Lucas studied each other warily. Lucas said, “I’m not sure about — about this.” About being around Vic, he meant. About being around any human for long.

Vic blurted out, “I’m daubed.”

“What?” Lucas looked confused; I couldn ‘ t blame him.

“I mean, I got my parents to send me some holy water, which took, like, some serious explaining, and now I think they believe I want to become a priest, which, come on, hardly, but they sent it. I keep it in a cologne bottle on my desk. And now I’m daubed.” Vic yanked open the neck of his shirt; his hula — girl painted tie swung slightly. “Holy water. daubed all over my neck. So even if you did lose it and bite me, which I’m hoping You’re not going to do, it would burn. Like biting into a — a. . jalapeno pepper. Me equals jalapeno pepper. So you’d back off immediately.” He glanced around at the rest of us. “Right?”

“Urn, maybe?” That was as much as Patrice could come up with; the rest of us had nothing.

Lucas obviously was as nonplussed as we were, but slowly, he nodded. “You know, weirdly, that helps. I don’t think we should be alone up 116 here, but — yeah. Okay.”

Vic relaxed a little. There was still distance between them, but less. Maybe Lucas could get the hang of being around a human if it was one he couldn’t easily bite; maybe their friendship could start to heal. “Come on, man. I haven’t kicked your ass at chess in more than a year. Time for you to learn some humility.”

Ranulf said, “He now challenges you because he can no longer defeat me.” Vic mock — shoved him away from the chessboard.

Lucas handed me my bracelet, and I slipped it on, taking form again. For the first time in what felt like forever, I could just spend time witl1 my friends like anybody else. It was as close to normal as I could possibly get. “This is going to work. You ‘11see.”

“Yeah.” Lucas said. But I knew he remained uneasy about Vic and the rest of it.

Give it time, I told myself, and him, too.

As dusk came earlier and the leaves began to cover the ground more tl1ickly than the branches of trees, Lucas gave me back my bracelet for good. He kept my brooch, so I could reach him at any time. But, at Patrice’s suggestion, I hid a small box beneath a loose stone in the wall, and I stored the bracelet there. That way I could reach it anytime I wanted to turn solid.

“If anything happened to me or my stuff, I wouldn’t want you to be stuck,” Lucas said as he placed it into my hand.

“Nothing’s going to happen,” I insisted, but I knew he was right. I just couldn ‘ t have guessed how quickly events would prove it.

Later that night, Lucas and I decided it was time for me to try entering his dreams again. “This time I’ll know you’re coming,” he said, obviously trying hard to psych himself up for it. “That’s going to help me break out of the pattern of the nightmare.”

His one assumption — the way he matter — of — factly said nightmar told me that all his dreams were nightmares, now.

“It’s going to be okay,” I said. Although I felt sure it was true, it felt a little like a lie. I hadn’t mentioned the mysterious scratches I’d received during his dream about the fight with Erich. They had stopped hurting very quickly and had completely vanished after only a few days. Besides, they were only scratches. How much could something like that injure me? 117 Lucas, I decided, was already too worried about me. If I got some kind of mystical bruise or scratch while visiting his dreams, it Wouldn’t mean much afterward — but if he was concerned about it before we began, it could infect his mind and maybe his dreams. He needed an escape from that anxiety, not another reason for it. I knew it was best to remain silent.

After hours, I drifted downward into Lucas’s and Balthazar’s room, where they were clearly in the last stages of getting ready for bed. I didn’t announce myself — I knew Lucas would sense my presence — but wished I had when Balthazar promptly stripped off his uniform.

His whole uniform.

“Uh, Balthazar?” Lucas said.

“Yeah?” Balthazar threw his boxers in the laundry hamper. I was trying hard not to look, but what sliver of a view I’d gotten was exactly the kind of thing that made me want to look more.

“You get that we’re not exactly alone, right?”

Balthazar froze for a second, then quickly grabbed a pillow and held it in front of himself. “When I said that about following me into the shower, I was joking. Bianca!”

I traced a shaky word in lines of frost across their window: Sorry!

Lucas scowled. “When were you two joking about her showering with you?”

Balthazar, trying to get his bathrobe on without dropping the pillow, scowled right back. “I’m going to the communal bathrooms for privacy. Which is pathetic, but that’s what we’re stuck with.” He grabbed his pajamas and hurried out.

Into Lucas’s ear, I whispered, “I wasn’t talking about showering with Balthazar.”

“I know,” he said, flopping back onto the bed. “I trust you. I just like giving him hell sometimes. It’s fun.”

“Ready?”

He nodded, taking a deep breath, as if already trying to calm himself toward sleep. “Yeah. Let’s try it.”

Within half an hour, Lucas was sound asleep, and Balthazar was apparently taking the world’s longest shower. I waited for the rapid movements of Lucas’s eyelids and thick lashes before gathering myself together and taking the long. deep dive into what I hoped would be the world of his dreams.

That world took substance around me. However, my triumph faded as I realized where we were: in the shabby, abandoned movie theater where 118 Lucas had been killed. He stood several steps ahead of me in the lobby. One hand clutched a stake, and the other covered his nose and mouth. I didn’t understand why until I smelled smoke and realized that was the reason for the haze around us.

From the movie screen came a warm flickering that I knew wasn’t a movie — it was a fire.

Yeah, it’s another nightmare, I realized. Now to see if I can wake him up.

Before I could speak, Lucas said, “Charity.”

“Hello, baby.” Charity emerged from the shadows. She didn’t say baby like it meant honey or sweetheart, more like she was talking about an actual infant. The firelight danced in her pale curls. Her long, lacy dress was clean for once — only in dreams. “How is my dear baby tonight?”

“Let me go,” he said. His voice broke on the words.

“Cuuldu ‘l ifl wauted lu.” Site wiled liiuwpltautly. “Aud I duu ‘l wautlu.”

“Lucas,” I said. “It’s okay. Don’t look at her. She’s just a dream. Look at me.”

But he didn’t look at me. I stepped between him and Charity, hoping to break the dream spell that kept him from fully recognizing me, but it did no good. He only looked through me, as ifl weren’t even there.

“Are you searching for Bianca?” Charity’s concern would have sounded genuine to anyone who didn’t actually know her. “She might be trapped in the fire. You must save her!”

Lucas ran from her, straight toward the flames. As I whirled to go after him, Charity said, “He’s mine now, Bianca. You’ll never have him again.”

How was it possible for Charity to see me when Lucas hadn’1 been aware of my presence, when she was only part of his nightmare?

Her eyes locked with mine. Her smile changed character until it was less defiant, more conspiratorial. Almost as if we were in on a joke together. How could that happen in Lucas’s dream?

It couldn’t.

I realized she Wasn’t part of his nightmare. She was the cause. This wasn’t a dream of Charity; this was the real thing. Here. In Lucas’s mind. She must have seen the realization on my face, because her grin widened, showing her fangs. “I told you. Lucas is mine.”