Body & Soul

I broke speed limits retracing familiar streets and flying past landmarks on my way toward Groundsboro High.

This was my one and only brilliant idea: if Alona was still my guide, as Erin had said, and she was back in spirit form, I might be able to “call” her to me. Theoretically, I could call her from anywhere, but the dead who meet their ends violently/unnaturally are always drawn to the places of their death. Calling her from that location might provide enough added pull to drag her back from wherever she'd vanished. It might have even been better to try it at the time of her death, but there was no way I could make myself wait almost a whole day for 7:03 a.m. to roll around again.

Despite my best efforts to focus on the positive, my mind created images of me sitting on the curb next to the spot of pavement where she'd died and calling her… only to have nothing happen.

I shook my head, pushing that thought away. No, she was strong. She had to be okay. She'd survived this long. She'd been sent back from the light, for God's sake. That couldn't have happened only for things to end this way. That couldn't be right. It didn't make sense.

A tiny voice in my head reminded me that in addition to being unfair, life could also be nonsensical. Messed up. Like my dad killing himself without first giving us the slightest hint that that day would be different than any other. In some ways, I'd thought it would have been better if he'd tried to warn us, even if we'd missed it initially. Then at least maybe it would have seemed more logical. Or maybe it would have simply made my mom and me feel worse for not understanding what he was trying to say.

Either way, one day he was just gone. So quickly it seemed like the air should have rushed in to fill the vacuum where he'd once stood, brushed his teeth, slept.…

I couldn't lose somebody else like that, without even the chance to say good-bye. Not again. Not her.

“Come on, Alona, don't do this to me, please,” I muttered, and then stopped, clamping my mouth shut in the fear that those words somehow counted as a call.

But if they had, the passenger seat next to me remained empty. And my heart sank a little further.

I made myself focus on the road ahead of me, dimly aware of the refrain—please, please, please, please—pulsing through me and ticking off the seconds.

The school finally rose up in the distance, and I pulled to a hard stop by the fenced-off tennis courts, the Dodge's tires screeching on the overheated asphalt.

I jammed the gearshift into park and flung the door open, stumbling out in my hurry. The kids on the tennis court — a couple of boys, too young even to be freshmen, it seemed — stopped hitting the ball around to watch me run.

The trouble was, it had been four months since Alona had died. There was no longer any sign of the violence that had occurred, the life that had ended somewhere here on the double yellow lines.

Was it here, closer to the corner, or farther down the street? Suddenly I wasn't sure, and I found myself pacing back and forth in the middle of the road, desperate to get this right.

A passing car honked at me.

“Hey, are you okay?” one of the kids shouted.

I ignored it all, aware that my eyes were stinging with tears only when a drop rolled off my chin and splattered on the yellow painted line that I was studying so intently.

I swiped a hand over my face. Stay calm. She's fine. Erin took over Lily's body, so she's the one caught in the cycle now. Alona should be fine. The ache in my chest told me even I didn't believe this.

The Order had said the two of them would become dependent on each other. After a month in Lily's body, did Alona have enough energy to survive on her own anymore?

That was the question, and there was truly only one way to find out. I took a deep breath, forcing it past the lump in my throat. I had nothing to lose by trying, except all hope of her ever coming back. If she didn't answer now, I'd keep calling her; but the odds that her energy level in this situation would improve with time were slim to none.

Another car swerved around me, with the driver honking and shouting through his rolled-down window.

All right, enough delaying, I told myself. Time to try this before someone actually stops and tries to pull me out of the way. Or calls the police.

But I felt like I was ripping away a bandage long before the wound was healed.

I finally picked a place as close to exact as I remembered it and shut my eyes.

I pictured Alona as I'd seen her that first time after her death. Stalking the grounds in the red gym shorts and white shirt she'd died in, her face flushed with fury and hurt at the people she'd once called her friends turning on her, only days after her death. The way she pushed me to deal with Principal Brewster, helping me until I could manage him on my own, more or less. The silk of her hair catching on my fingertips when we were behind the bushes at the Gibley Mansion. How she refused to accept pity or help unless she had no choice. Just this morning when she'd stood in front of me in her new clothes with the new look she'd created, tilting her head up toward me with that vulnerable smile.

It occurred to me for the first time that while she hadn't said so, she'd been looking for my opinion. My approval… No, my appreciation.

She didn't need it. She wasn't like that. But that didn't mean she wouldn't have liked to have it. Spirit or no, she was still human. And all I'd been worried about had been my own too-strong reaction and what that meant for me.

I concentrated harder, funneling my fear and anger at myself into force behind my thoughts. I willed her to appear.

“You're my spirit guide,” I said through clenched teeth. “You have to come when I call, and I'm calling. Get here. Please?”

That last word sounded dangerously close to begging, and I didn't care. It wasn't for Alona, but for whoever else might be listening. God. The light. Someone was running things, and I needed whoever that was to hear me.

Please don't do this. Don't send her to me and then take her away. Please don't. Just don't. Please. I need her.

I kept repeating those words over and over again, distantly aware of the kids resuming their game and another car or two passing me.

But I didn't stop until I felt a strange shift in the air, like the world had moved around me, water flowing around a rock.

I opened my eyes, and Alona — a beginning outline of her, anyway — stood a few feet in front of me, looking around with a startled expression.

I let out a breath I hadn't realized I'd been holding. Thank God.

But that brief moment of dizzying relief quickly dissipated, replaced by a growing sense of panic. She wasn't filling in the way she should have. I could still see through her. For the first time, she actually looked like a traditional ghost, at least the way they were most often depicted on television and in movies.

No, no. Not good. Her energy was low enough that she couldn't even fully appear.

“Say something nice!” I shouted at her, fighting the urge to grab her and hold on. I wasn't sure what would happen, what I would do, if my hands passed through her.

Her lips moved to form words, but no sound emerged, and her eyes widened. She knew something was wrong. She looked down at herself, her blond hair sliding forward over her shoulder as she took in the extent of her nonexistence. And when she lifted her head to face me, tears sparkled in her eyes. She took a deep breath and straightened her shoulders before raising her hand slowly and turning it palm out. Stop… or good-bye.

“No!” I moved closer to her, within touching distance. “You have to do something.” I'd never felt more helpless in my life. I couldn't do anything to help her. Then a flash of brilliance — or utter idiocy — struck. “Claim me again.” A stronger tie to me, one with a firmly held position smack in between the living and the dead, might help, even if it was only reinforcing a connection that already existed. I refused to blink, my eyes burning with the effort, as though my gaze would hold her here. “Claim me again,” I repeated, hearing the plea in my voice and praying she could, too.

Her gaze met mine and held it as she said the words. I still couldn't hear her, but I caught a few of the words on her lips. “Will Killian.” And then last, so slowly that there was no doubt what she was saying. “Mine.” Tears slipped down her face, and I knew that no matter what differences there were between us, this wasn't the way either of us wanted it to end.

She closed her eyes and repeated the words over and over again, just as I had earlier.

The air around her wavered, like when you open the door to a car that's been closed up for hours on a hot summer day. And then suddenly she was there… fully there.

I reached out for her hand at the same time she grabbed for mine. We moved toward each other, narrowly avoiding banging heads in our hurry. She wrapped her arms around me, and I buried my face against the side of her warm neck and in her hair. I could feel her trembling… or maybe it was me.

“It's okay. You're okay,” I murmured against her skin, but I wasn't sure which one of us I was talking to. Maybe both of us.

“You're right. I think he's crazy,” I heard one of the tennis court kids declare loudly in a tone that suggested a great debate had been resolved. And for once in my life, I did not care in the least.