Hereafter

Another beautiful day

A merry morning birdsong tugged me from my sleepy state on Saturday. The first thing I noticed was that my face was not on my pillow, but stuck to something grooved—soft but grooved. I blinked open my eyes and looked around, disoriented. The living room. Right. I’d passed out somewhere between Ren getting his butt kicked and…whatever happens after Ren gets his butt kicked. I glanced at the end of the couch. No Darcy. I pulled the corduroy pillow I’d been sleeping on into my lap, then stretched my arms over my head, yawning as I gazed out the window.

It was another beautiful morning in Juniper Landing. Light breeze, sun shining, waves crashing in the distance…

Suddenly, I was sucked backward through the couch and thrown against the wall, all the air knocked out of my lungs.

Sun shining. The sun was shining.

I threw myself off the couch cushions, screaming, “Dad!”

I tripped over an ottoman as I raced for the stairs, and my big toe exploded in pain. Tears burned my eyes as I stumbled forward, shaking, trembling, gasping for air. He wasn’t gone. He couldn’t be gone.

“Dad! Daddy!” I screeched, fumbling up the staircase. I threw open the door to his room.

His bed was made. There were no slippers on the throw rug next to it. No worn novels on the nightstand. No glasses, no coffee mug, no piles of dog-eared manuscript pages. Tears spilling over onto my cheeks, I staggered to the closet and tore it open. Two dozen empty hangers stared back at me. Everything was gone. Everything.

“No!” I shouted, whirling around. “No!”

I ran over to Darcy’s door and reached for the knob, when it suddenly turned and the door swung open. Darcy, wearing a black nightgown, stood before me, her hair in a tangle.

“What are you shouting about?” she demanded through her teeth, her eyes at half-mast.

“Where’s Dad?” I yelled.

There was a long, silent moment as Darcy’s face slowly screwed up in confusion. “Dad?”

She pronounced the word as if she’d never heard it spoken before. Her eyes were a total blank.

My sister had forgotten our father.

“Omigod,” I said under my breath, turning around on knees so weak they buckled. I forced myself to breathe. How could this be happening? I was the one who was supposed to take him. And they’d all promised. No one else was to leave the island. They’d made a pact.

And just like that, it hit me. The pact. Nadia. Nadia had looked so betrayed when the mayor had agreed to my plan. She hadn’t wanted to stop ushering souls. Why? Because if we stopped ushering souls, there would be nothing else to frame me for. It was her all along. She was the one doing all this and trying to pin it on me.

That was why she’d been the only Lifer who hadn’t attended Krista’s party last night. She’d probably been off somewhere, plotting this—planning her ultimate revenge. She wanted Tristan so badly she was willing to betray the Lifers, usher my father before his time, and get me sent to Oblivion in the process.

Suddenly I remembered the pair of sinister eyes watching us through the window last night. The pair of dark, glittering eyes.

“Omigod,” I said again. “Omigodomigodomigod.”

“What the hell is the matter with you?” Darcy demanded.

I shoved myself up to my feet and ran, barreling down the steps. I stopped short when I saw the table by the door, bare. She’d taken the family picture. The only one I had of my mother, my father, Darcy, and me all together.

I was going to kill her.

Slamming the front door behind me, I ran for town. On Freesia, the guy on the bike with his surfboard swerved around me and crashed, but I didn’t care. I threw myself out onto Main Street and almost collided with someone’s chest.

“Rory!”

It was Joaquin. He held both my arms in a death grip as I bent toward him, heaving, gasping for air. At my toes, a long line of ants marched toward the curb.

“Where’s my father?” I begged. “Where’s my father, Joaquin? Where is he?”

I leaned past his shoulder, trying to get a look at the mayor’s house, needing to see.

“Rory,” he said, tugging me around in a circle, trying to put my back to the bluff. “Don’t. Just calm down. Just—”

“Get off me!” I screeched, shoving him so hard he fell to the sidewalk. For a split second, we both stared at each other, stunned. Then I turned to look.

There was the weather vane, gold and gleaming against the bright blue sky, sitting up with its proud swan, like its message was unimpeachable, like it had all the authority in the world.

And it was pointing south.