Only the Good Die Young

21

After a brief visit to my death spot, Scott, Twyla, and I made our way to the Edgett mansion near midnight.

We peered in the windows, but they were shuttered and curtained. Was it sleepy time for the Edgetts? Had the maid Constanza retreated to her quarters by now?

I could at least try to find out, and I went to my favorite mansion entry point, the chimney. Plus, I wanted to see if the cleaner had successfully banished me from the domain, after all.

After I dove down, then bounced out of the flue right away, Twyla and Scott were waiting for me on the roof, braying at the sight of me being expectorated, just like the chimney was hocking a loogie.

“I know,” I said while my head rang. “It’s hilarious to see a fellow ghost humiliated.”

Twyla was the most amused. “You looked like a special little child running into a sliding glass door.”

Ignoring. “Now that we know for sure that I can’t get in, how’re you guys going to handle bringing Gavin out here? I assume you have a plan.”

“We did come up with something,” Twyla said, cockily smoothing back the straight Goth side of her hair.

Scott was reclining on the roof, acting just like he wanted to catch some UVs, even if it was full night. “How would you like to have your own place to haunt, Jen?”

I didn’t get it at first.

“’Cause if you want one,” he said, grinning, “no sweat.” He jerked his chin toward the pool house down below.

My own place to haunt.

Using something other than the mansion would give me… oh, let’s just say some further intimacy with my dear Gavin. If I wasn’t barred from the pool house.

Just as I was about to float off the roof to go there and check it out a bit more, I shivered, because suddenly I felt… something. And it sure wasn’t Scott’s or Twyla’s essence. Whatever it was, it felt like eyes watching us.

“Do you guys feel that?” I whispered.

Scott glanced around, but Twyla just fluffed the teased side of her hair.

“Feel what?” she asked.

Maybe I had ghost nerves because of tonight’s activities. Maybe the dark spirit from earlier had shaken me more than I’d admitted before. Or maybe it had come back… ?

Paranoia, the destroyer.

“It’s nothing,” I said, focusing on the pool house below again. The creepy sensation was gone, anyway, and I wasn’t going to torture myself with oh-my-Gods and what-ifs. “You guys do know that the pool house is surrounded by a salt circle, too, right? I already checked when we flew by it earlier.”

Scott and Twyla glanced at each other, laughed, then darted up and coasted off the roof at the same time, down to the blue-lit lagoon pool.

I took one last look around the roof area, finding nothing out of the ordinary. No more chills for me. So I joined Scott in front of a shuttered villa window that had salt sprinkled on the sill, as well as around the rest of the pool house.

Behind us, Twyla had taken the scenic route, screwing around, and she zinged by us so fast that she caused some wind. A sill-bound potted plant toppled to the ground, shattering, spreading dirt and daisies over the concrete.

I was just about to yell at her when Scott whispered, “All part of the plan, baby.”

Twyla landed in front of the ornate wooden door. “A guy like Gavin will come out to check a noise like that, if he heard it. We can always graduate to something, like, more attention-worthy if we need to. Let’s see if this gets anyone out here first.”

“We don’t want to make any threatening noises,” Scott said. “No exploding pool houses or anything.” He looked sidelong at Twyla. “Got it, troublemaker?”

“Ha-ha. Your confidence in me touches my tender heart.”

“It’s just that you get a little excited sometimes, that’s all.” Scott slicked back his greased dark hair, totally in no hurry.

She merely bent to the foot of the door, then pursed her dark-shaded mouth, giving a great exhalation that disturbed the line of salt at the threshold, creating a slim opening. Without further ado, she zoomed through the lane and under the door.

“Hey… ,” I began.

Scott was having the time of his life, laughing at my surprise. “First of all, she got in because she’s not the one who was being banished from the dwellings here. You and the dark spirit were the focus of the cleaner’s energies.” He went back to his hair. “As far as the salt goes… see, humans have their nifty tricks that make them feel safe, so they use stuff like salt to keep us away. Basically, though, it works on ghosts who just fell off the turnip truck and don’t know to pucker up and blow. And it works way better on demons than us.”

This really was a game to these two. Luckily, they were good players. “Don’t cleaners know how easy it is for experienced ghosts to bypass salt?”

“Jen.” Scott made a clicking noise with his tongue. “It’s pretty obvious this cleaner is sparky, but untried. She’ll learn, though.”

I put my hands on my hips. “You think you could’ve told me about this earlier? You know, before I was bounced out of the chimney?”

Scott offered a smile that told me that he was a fan of practical jokes in any form. “Twyla and me knew about the salt when we saw it around the mansion earlier, but you wouldn’t have brought us if you didn’t think you needed us.”

Then he got back to haunting. “We’ll go into this little house here after Twyla finishes frying any silent alarms inside. She’s quick about it, too, so nothing should’ve gone off at all. We don’t want anyone to think anything spooky is happening out here.”

“We just want to attract mild attention.”

“You’ve got it.”

I was about to ask him how he and Twyla had become experts at break-ins, but what was the point? They could probably take over the War Games computers or whatever the government used nowadays for national defense, if they wanted to.

When a sharp series of knocks sounded on the door—bump, bump-ba-bump-bump… bump-bump—Scott went to it and swept his arm out.

“After you, milady,” he said, bowing.

Cute. “The salt’s gone, but what if I can’t get in because of the cleaner’s incantations or whatever?”

“If you’re susceptible to them, we’ll find out right away. But you gotta get in there to find out.”

What doesn’t kill you makes you stronger, right?

I went for it, slimming myself to a pencillike proportion and streaming under the door, into the pool house, filling out to my regular shape once I was in.

I waited, but nothing happened to make me explode or wither away or fly off to ghosty Never Never Land. Rad.

As I felt Scott entering through the same route, I took in my surroundings. It’d be dark in here for a human with the windows shuttered and the lights off, but I could see just fine. And I could surely say that, for a pool house, this was gnarly. But what else did I expect from the Edgetts? It wasn’t marble and palatial like the mansion, but it had a big old leather couch in front of a huge, flat TV, a kitchen, a bar, and a hallway that seemed to lead to a bedroom.

Scott was surveying me. “Looks like either someone has an immunity to cleaner tactics or the Edgetts didn’t bother safeguarding the pool house all the way.”

“No one lives here,” Twyla said, stepping out of nowhere in front of me. “So, like, why not just salt the outside and spend incantation time on the big house instead?”

The sound of a door opening and then shutting outside made us all look at each other. Through the barely gaped slats of the shutters, the security lights came on, creating minuscule lines on the far wall.

“A human,” Scott said, flying to the window and attempting to peer through the slats. “From what I can see, it isn’t Gavin, either. It’s one of the girls.”

Farah or Wendy. But Farah was a chicken compared to the younger Edgett. She wouldn’t be out here inspecting anything.

“Can you see what she’s doing?” I asked.

“She’s looking at the pot Twyla destroyed earlier. And take a listen to what she’s saying… .”

I definitely heard Farah’s voice outside.

“Tugger? Is that you? Come here, little boy. Mama’s missed you.”

Well, well. “When she heard the pot go down, she thought her kitty did it, but she probably waited to see that everything was clear out here,” I said. After all, Eileen Perez had told the family that their pet might come home, now that the house was clean.

The Edgetts were feeling really safe, weren’t they?

Scott and Twyla exchanged a smug glance. They’d been there to hear the cleaner talking about Rum Tum Tugger, and I had the feeling they were going to run with that.

Twyla had slimmed the front part of herself, slipping through a shutter slat. It gave her the appearance of a gray ghost with no head. “She must’ve been up, drinking coffee in the kitchen. It’s all over the front of her nightgown, like she spilled it when she heard the crash here.” She pulled out of the slat and grew back her head, talking excitedly to Scott. “You ready?”

“For what?” I asked.

“Ready to get Gavin out here instead of this useless skank.”

Something told me to slow all this down. I’d never been able to go into Farah’s mind. Why not now? Why not get more than just Gavin’s puzzle pieces?

“Wait,” I said. “Let’s bring her in here first. Then we’ll go for Gavin.”

Without questioning, Scott gave me the okay sign, then flew to the door and under it. But Twyla sent me a daredevil glance, then got real close to the door. Even though she didn’t open her mouth, she threw out some sound.

A loud, long meow.

Electricity pumped through me, because I knew what she was up to. She was luring Farah into the pool house with the bait of her missing phantom pet cat.

Twyla slipped under the door just before Farah tried the knob. But the door was locked.

Picking up where Twyla had left off, I threw sound toward the door.

Meow.

The night seemed dead as I waited for Farah to either stay or go.

Just come in, I thought. I only want to invade your mind for the good of the world.

I heard a scraping sound, like a pot being moved over concrete. A spare key?

When the tumble of the lock rang through the room, I hovered. The plan was working.

With a long groan, the door opened, and Farah stepped inside, almost looking like a ghost herself, wearing a spaghetti-strap nightgown with a coffee stain marring the white material. Her long dark hair was in a side braid, dipping over her shoulder, and she was carrying a phone in her hand, like she was still worried about what was out here… and a phone was going to help.

Just her presence gave me a rush of trembling energy.

“Rum Tum Tugger?” she whispered. “Is this where you’ve been hiding out?”

Perversely, in anticipation of her fear, I meowed again.

“Tugger?” she asked, leaving the door open a crack behind her.

Pretty, but not very smart. In Friday the 13th, she’d be toast by now.

I projected a purring noise to a dark corner where the slats of light from the shutters and the sliver of illumination from the door didn’t bleed into the black.

Farah laughed nervously. “Tugger, Mama’s missed you. Just come out now. Come here, kitty kitty.”

A trace of fear had started to hum inside her, and I reveled in it. Her fear even made me forget that I liked to take it easy on the innocents, and I went a little further than usual.

I threw another purr to the corner as Farah sauntered toward that darkest part of the room. I eased my essence over there, too, as more energy rustled through me, making me light-headed and greedy from her growing fear.

As I got closer, closer, still redirecting those purrs, I smelled her soft perfume. Jasmine. Saw how her pale skin darkened in the shadows.

“Tugger… ?” she said as I came up behind her.

She reached toward the wall, obviously for a light switch. I kept purring.

Her growing fear had put ideas into me: I needed to do more than just look into her mind. The Edgetts were such a cold, unfeeling family that I had to get a rise out of them to get information.

They needed to remember Elizabeth, needed to think of her death so I could tap in to any memories they might have of what Gavin could’ve done to her. And they needed to be scared enough to do that.

I cut off the purrs and sprang at Farah, skipping the empathy reading and going straight for a hallucination as I pressed against her cheek and, not knowing what kind of images would come, brought her to a scene that would definitely make her think of the night Elizabeth had died…

Cold. Shivering.

We have to find Tugger.

Darkness in front of us. Can’t see the cat.

Can’t see anything.

Still reaching for the light switch, we feel the wall under our fingertips. Paint, bumpy and smooth at the same time.

We run our hand over the wall, trailing our fingertips, grasping for the switch that we know is there.

Then we feel… something.

We don’t know what it is at first. Smooth, but not like the wall. Bumps, but not like the wall, either.

When we realize that it’s skin under our hand, we can’t even scream. We can’t do anything but drop our phone.

Slick, wet skin, like there’s something all over it.

God, there’s a nose… a mouth… and the mouth’s open because we feel the teeth, like something’s smiling—

As our hand pulls away from the wall, the lights flash on by themselves for an icy, thrusting instant.

Then we see it.

A face.

A woman with red-matted blond hair, wide blue eyes, and a grotesque smile.

Elizabeth?

We scream as the lights go out. We fall to the floor, scrabbling backward, full of coldness, away from the face as the lights go on again, showing only a head mounted on the wall.

As the lights slam off, it’s not our screams we hear now, but Elizabeth’s—

Farah’s mind went blank.

Stuck in sheer blackness, I jammed out of her, then floated above her body, seeing her lying like a used rag doll on the carpet. She’d fainted, for God’s sake.

I gave myself a quick check, too, but instead of being drained or scared by that awful, uncontrolled hallucination, I was fizzing, nearly giddy with the rush of what I’d been able to do.

Mainly, though, it’d been her fear that pumped me up.

But damn it, I couldn’t get an empathy reading from her now. Would I be able to get inside her subconscious for a dream, though? Or for anything since I’d gotten her mind on Elizabeth and could now witness what Farah might know about her?

I didn’t have the chance to find out, because the door opened wider behind me, bringing slightly more light into the room.

Noah came in, dressed in boxers and a T-shirt. “Farah?”

I zoomed toward the corner, letting him run to her and get to his knees. As he shook her, Scott and Twyla entered, floating near the doorway.

“We didn’t stop him,” Scott said casually. “We thought you might want an interview, but I have to say it looks like the last one didn’t go that swell.”

Twyla hopped up and down. “Check you out, Murph! You made that chick faint! What did you do to her, you exquisite bitch of terror?”

Twyla’s excitement gave me a reality check. As the high from Farah’s fear mellowed in me, I looked at her splayed on the floor, looked at Noah lightly slapping her face. Maybe I shouldn’t feel so good about doing this to anyone but a real suspect… .

“I’ll tell you the gory details later,” I said. “Just keep an eye out for Gavin. I suppose Noah heard Farah scream and that’s why he came.”

“We saw him rushing out of the house when she started up,” Scott said. “He must’ve come downstairs for a glass of water or midnight snack or to see if Farah was still up.”

Twyla said, “Any way you slice it, Gavin wasn’t with Noah. But I volunteer to try and go in the house to see if he’s there, you know?”

“No.”

Scott was shaking his head, but Twyla simpered away from him.

“I already know the layout, loser,” she said, “and I couldn’t care less if I get belted out of there because of that cleaner’s incantations or purified water or… whatever. They’re not directed at me, like, anyway. You can come with me if you want, but you’re not keeping me out.”

Twyla was unstoppable, and telling her no just made her determination flourish.

Scott sighed. “Just don’t go overboard in there. You remember what happened a couple years ago when we came across that converted church… .”

“Oh, eat my shorts,” she said, turning on her heel and swishing out the door.

Noah was still trying to awaken Farah, and he’d started to panic. His fear warped me, addicted me. And I couldn’t resist it.

“Just keep an eye on Twyla,” I said to Scott.

“Roger that.”

He paused, giving me a welcome-to-Boo-World-for-real look, then grinned. But there was more to this for me than just being a ghost and amusing myself.

Elizabeth needed this. I needed this.

The door stayed gaped as Scott flew off, leaving me with Noah.

He’d stood up, going toward an antique phone, probably to call an ambulance. His dark hair was wild after digging his fingers through it in fright.

I positioned myself at Farah’s side and threw some sound out.

Her voice.

“Noah?” I imitated.

Right away, he forgot the phone, dropping it as he went back to his sister. “Farah… ?”

Then he realized that she wasn’t moving.

When he got to his knees next to her, I smiled, feeling his unadulterated fear, as pure as iced volts. In my state of highness, I wallowed in his mounting quivers. I couldn’t stop it. I wanted to really scare him, getting this mystery solved. I wanted to know what he knew about Elizabeth.

“Noah?” I said again. But this time, it was in Elizabeth’s voice.

His eyes widened in incomprehension, then terror, and I leeched hard to his cheek, scaring him even more.

Someone is in the room with us.

And we aren’t sure where.

We scan the near darkness—the unlit corners, the spot behind the sofa that we haven’t checked yet, the gnarled shadows from the wavering pool water light that’s coming through the door, like fingers clawing down the wall.

“Who’s there?” we ask.

The spirit from earlier? Had it hurt Farah?

Should we be running away?

Our heart beats so hard that it slams our chest, wailing to get out. Our limbs feel cold, like if we moved them they would crack like icicles.

“Is anyone there?” we say, louder.

Silence. The sound of our short breathing.

Then, little by little, the sound of someone else’s breathing.

Move, we think. Why can’t we move?

As we hold our breath, we see something rise from behind a kitchen counter in the faint trail of light from the open doorway.

It has blond hair wetted down by fresh blood.

A demonic, smiling face that we should recognize but don’t, because its skin is blue, and who has blue skin?

Even worse, a red-soaked rope is tied around its neck so tightly that we can’t help thinking that this thing must’ve been choked to death.

As we watch in frozen horror, its tongue lolls out of its mouth.

Before we can yell, it flies at us, the tongue whipping out, wrapping around our neck, squeezing, cutting off oxygen. We fall to the floor, grabbing at that tongue, but there’s nothing there.

Nothing at all.

Still, the face is hovering over ours, and the thing is laughing, and the laugh sounds so familiar. Musical. A song.

Elizabeth Dalton’s laugh… ?

Before Noah could faint, I pulled out of him, having the presence of mind to lighten the pressure against his cheek for an empathy reading.

And memories came through strong and clear.

“What the fuck did you do?”

A white scarf in his hands, throwing it back into the dirt that was surrounded by tall grass in the night.

Dragging his gaze from that scarf to the body next to it.

A long-legged woman in a white dress, her eyes staring at him blankly—

Blackness came crashing at me, and I shot out of the images like a silver bullet, my essence surging with electricity as I ripped out of Noah and over the floor, scabbed by the contact. But I quickly mended as I scrambled upright, still buzzing crazily.

Noah was on the floor, next to Farah, just as passed out as she was now. I wasn’t sure if it was because he’d been overcome by the hallucination and then the empathy, or if it was because I’d had a power surge in him when I’d seen Elizabeth in that car trunk.

Jesus, I thought as my essence thudded. Noah had seen her dead… or at least unconscious. But she’d looked pretty dead to me.

I realized that I was even more excited from the hallucinations and the empathy than I’d been with Farah. Was that a good thing that I wasn’t getting scared back into a time loop, as Amanda Lee had feared?

I didn’t have time to think about that, or more important, whom Noah might’ve been talking to or whose car that was, when a loud roaring came from outside.

Scott came thundering to the door. “Get your butt out here!”

I zipped out of the pool house to find the mansion’s outside lights flashing. And when a chair came crashing through a window and into the pool, I instinctively ducked as another followed it, sailing over my head.

“It’s Twyla!” Scott said. “I knew this might happen when she encountered the cleaner’s remaining energy. That Goth side of her always did hate religious stuff… .”

As he trailed off, Gavin busted out of the mansion, carrying Wendy in his arms like she weighed nothing.

Was she okay? Shit.

“Take care of the girl,” I shouted to Scott as a huge screech came out of the mansion. “Make sure she’s safe.”

And the only reason I requested this was that, without any preamble, I set upon Gavin, pounding against him with such determination that he dropped Wendy to her feet and went to his knees.

He yelled, just like he was angry at a force of nature. “What do you want?”

Belligerent. But that was fine. It filled me up with even more strength than his fear.

I had to catch him off guard, so I improvised. With a burst of materialization, I showed myself to him—an angel.

Just as he sucked in his breath, stupefied, I screamed like the devil, then bashed against him, pressing hard against his cheek, making sure his mind was on Elizabeth’s murder.

“Gavin?”

We hear her in the pool, splashing.

Her laughter. Then she appears, hoisting herself up and over the ledge to sit down, her bare legs still dangling in the water.

She’s as normal as we’ve ever seen her, blond hair slicked back, beaded water slipping down her skin. Her smile is just as sunny, too, even at night.

But her words aren’t.

“Why did you kill me?” she asks us conversationally. “Just tell me and I’ll go away.”

Our heart twists, just like it’s trying to turn away from the sight of her, so healthy, so alive.

We try to say something… God, how we try, but our lips are glued together. Literally.

Then she begins to crawl all the way out of the pool, dragging herself over the concrete, leaving a trail of blood behind her.

We choke, unable to look, even though we can’t stop looking.

“Gavin… ,” she moans.

One of her legs slides off, like it’s been suddenly sliced, then the other.

Still, she pulls herself toward us, her expression devastated.

“Tell me why, Gavin… .”

One arm falls away from her, leaving her with a lone limb that she still uses to crawl toward us.

Our stomach roils. Tears fill our eyes.

Then the other arm rolls away from her, left behind.

Even so, she keeps coming to us.

“Gavin… help me?”

The hallucination started fritzing, so I must’ve automatically lessened the pressure on Gavin’s cheek, turning to an empathetic state in his mind. But it was almost like the hallucination hadn’t stopped at all as I saw into his thoughts… .

A view from a balcony. A body on the ground.

Not Elizabeth’s.

Blond hair had turned to black, the body lying facedown on a patch of bloodied concrete at night.

A man?—

I was jerked out of Gavin then, pulled back into the world, twirling until I regained balance, already gearing up to go back into him to get more.

But what I saw on Gavin Edgett’s ravaged face stopped me.

Complete devastation. A thrashed man, his shoulders rounded as he pressed his hands over his face, like he couldn’t bear any more from me.

“Liz… ,” he said, shaking his head. “My God, Liz…”

He didn’t say anything about the dead man I’d seen in his thoughts, and I couldn’t just let it go.

As I reared up in the air, I could see the lights in the mansion flashing. Twyla, turned on and out of control. At the same time, I realized that Gavin’s sadness had left me weaker. But believe me, I still had a lot left.

Then I heard a voice behind me. “Stop hurting us, please!”

When I turned around, I saw Wendy standing there, her blue nightgown catching the crazy lights from the mansion. Behind her, Scott was hovering with a stunned expression.

But Wendy was just as stunned as he was while she looked at me, not through me.

She could see.