Only the Good Die Young

19

I’d had so much energy sucked out of me tonight that this latest experience had reduced me to a thin mass of coldness that could only inch over the carpet.

The doorbell rang again as I slid into the hall, then down the stairs, pushing myself to my limits, just like I used to when I played sports or went surfing with real Dean.

Faster. Faster!

But I moved more like I had a hangover, which I supposed I did.

Halfway down the stairs, I remembered a toy I had played with when I was a kid—the Slinky—and I let my essence tumble end over end down the steps. I was almost at the bottom when the door opened and a woman walked inside.

“Hello? Constanza? Is everyone all right?”

Under the lights that were blaring, the petite woman—it had to be Eileen the cleaner—seemed shiny and new, even if she was middle-aged. She had rosy tan skin like Noah’s that glowed from good health, a delicate nose and cheekbones, and dark brown hair that flipped into a Jackie O do. Her pristine light pink two-piece suit hugged her skinny figure, and her small feet were tipped by pink-and-white pumps.

She carried a big white vinyl bag that bulged. “Constanza!”

I heard the maid’s voice from the kitchen. “We are in a salt circle in here!”

“Good. Stay there for a moment while I get a feel for what’s around me, all right?”

“Yes!”

From the second story, Gavin’s footsteps thumped on the floor. I couldn’t summon the energy to look at him. I just rested, hoping my strength would come back. Wishing I could move.

Eileen looked up at Gavin, smiling, her teeth white. “You must be Gavin. I’m Eileen Perez.”

“Thanks for coming over,” he said. He didn’t seem put out that she was here, because he knew I was back and that I couldn’t stay.

I focused on the door that was still cracked open behind the cleaner. Have to get out before she traps me…

I pushed myself over the marble as she reached behind her, giving the door a push. Going… going…

It shut while I was only a couple of feet away from it.

I remained as still as untouched water. Could cleaners see ghosts? Or did they just sense them? Was I fucked here?

I rested my head over the floor, waiting for her to address me, to sprinkle holy water on me or whatever cleaners used. Then I remembered Twyla talking about iron daggers in the gut and how that was the way to “kill” a ghost.

When nothing happened, I turned my head to glance at Eileen, but she was only looking around, her dark eyes narrowed. She rubbed one hand over her opposite arm while addressing Gavin, like she felt a chill.

“I tried to make it in better time,” she said, “but I hadn’t charged my car up enough yet. So much for trying to save the environment, huh?”

I wasn’t sure what she meant by charging up a car, but I was concentrating on the fact that she was so damned nice and casual instead. Also, I was praying that her inexperience would cut me a break.

She added, “Constanza told me everything she could. Has the spirit returned?”

“I’m not sure.”

“What do you mean by that?”

“The spirit that went out the window earlier was dark, but there’s a ghost here now that’s… I want to say light, but I’m not sure that’s a good description.”

“She feels different from the other spirit?”

“Yeah, but I want all of them gone for my family’s sake.”

Eileen reached into her big bag, taking out a small device. She turned it on and lifted it up to Gavin.

“Do you mind if I set this recorder down on a table?” There was an antique white one by the door. “It’ll capture sounds, and I can replay the tape to see if this ghost is trying to communicate through channels that we don’t hear. And I have a few more I’ll put throughout the house. But I might be able to expel your spirit or spirits before we get any EVPs.”

“Electronic voice phenomena?”

He had been studying.

“That’s right.” She seemed pleased as she put down the recorder. Then she brought out a square, boxy thing that looked like the phones everyone was using. When she turned it on and waited, then slowly moved it around her, I guessed it must’ve been either a temperature gauge or something that read electricity in the air. Either way, I was screwed. But she still hadn’t seen me, so I guess that was good news.

“I’m getting a high reading,” she said. “Your spirits could be biding their time, watching us even now. I certainly feel their coolness. This happened in the other house I visited.”

“Constanza said you chased a ghost out of that one.”

“Yes. He was a sad man who’d overdosed. Helping him to move on was a blessing. I’m part of a group who studies these things, so we knew just what to do for him.”

Hell, she just might get to chalk up another ghost banishment tonight.

Gavin was finally coming down the stairs. “As far as these two spirits are concerned, there’s been one in particular that’s been at me. The other psychic who was here said it was a poltergeist, so I thought the dark spirit that we all saw fly out the window was it. But then I got to thinking—why didn’t it look like the spirit in Wendy’s pictures?”

“Constanza told me about the photos.” Her voice was sweet, and I imagined that she could get just about anyone to talk to her. Even screwed spirits. “May I see those pictures?”

“I’ve got them right here on my phone. I’ll also tell you about the experience I just had… and what’s gone on with one of the spirits before.”

He reached the bottom of the stairs, and I decided that it was now or never to attempt an escape.

The door was pretty tightly shut, but if there’s one thing I was learning, it’s that there’s always an opening, no matter how small. As a ghost, I recognized the wispy needle of light on the side of the door, where age had warped the wood and left an opening that maybe a microorganism could fit through.

I could change my shape, but would I be able to get that thin? And how long would it take me to get my entire, snaking essence through? God, why hadn’t I been an anorexic?

I didn’t have a choice about what I was or wasn’t now, because Eileen was walking toward Gavin, getting ready to stride straight through me, her heels clicking on the marble as she put that reader into her purse and Gavin handed her his phone.

The last thing I needed was to be stabbed.

I don’t know how I did it, but I rolled out of the way just as she stepped right where I’d been, her pump heel slicing down until it touched marble instead of me.

Have you ever been so damned sick that you had to literally drag yourself out of bed so you could throw up in a toilet? Charming, I know, but that’s exactly what it felt like as I didn’t look back at Eileen and made my eternal way to the door, keeping my gaze on the hairbreadth of light at the edge of it.

But the door seemed so high up, and with every passing second, I was getting weaker. It felt like it was a continent away.

What I needed was some death spot energy. Obviously, a few minutes on the power lines had only gotten me so far after that dark spirit had messed with me, and Gavin’s dream had sucked out more of my juice.

In the background, the cleaner and Gavin talked about the pictures, and I gathered everything I had in me, then eased up the door, sighting that slim line of welcoming light and nothing else. Don’t stop. Don’t get caught. Just go, go, go… .

When I got to the line, I shriveled into the tiniest thread I could, and that made me dizzy, even nauseated. But it didn’t matter. All I saw was that light from the lamp outside.

Gotta get there…

It was like trying to squeeze into a pair of jeans that didn’t fit anymore, but I was making it.

I didn’t know what I’d do on the other side yet. First things first. But at least I wouldn’t have a cleaner’s iron dagger in my belly.

I oozed through, slipping down the door on the other side, using gravity to pull me through the slit. An hour seemed to pass. Maybe one had passed. But I made it. I couldn’t move as I lay on the stoop and my essence sucked back into its regular form, yet at least I was out of that mansion.

Nearby, power lines stood against the night sky, but I couldn’t reach them.

Minute by minute, I waited for my energy to return, but I realized it wasn’t happening. I probably even looked as gray as smog. Hell, I could even feel myself flickering.

I tucked into a ball, not knowing what to do, until Louis the ghost’s words came back to me from the night of the party in the cabin.

“You’re rushing into haunting,” he had said.

Maybe I’d needed more help.

Louis, I thought, feeling drowsy, disconnected from the sound of the driveway’s fountain, the near-distant hiss of waves climbing back from the beach, the pound of new surf on the sand, each wave taking the place of the one before it.

He’d told me something else important. But what? Why was it so hard to remember right now?

But then I did remember.

“All you have to do is shout our names, and if we’re in range, we’ll hear.”

I wanted to cry. I didn’t have the strength to shout.

I was barely able to roll to my side, locking my gaze on the fountain and the water that played out of it. And there was a funny, cartoonish white car in back of it that resembled a bubble.

The future, I thought dizzily. Jetson cars, Logan’s Run, Star Wars Land Cruisers.

And I had hardly seen any of this future yet. I hadn’t gotten to live this second life that’d been given to me.

The thought shook me. God, I couldn’t let myself go back into a time loop. There was too much to see, so much to explore in this new chance at existing…

“Louis,” I moaned. “Twyla.”

Was she still on the beach, or had her ghost ADD carried her to another place way earlier in the day, after she’d left me?

I flickered brutally, my sight stuck on that strange car. Battery. That thing had to have a battery…

With one last zipt, my sight went still.

• • •

“Oh, this is some double doo-doo.”

In the gray matter of my mind, I heard a voice. Young. Worried.

Then another voice. Older. Wiser.

“She’s sure in a bad way.”

It took me a sec, but… Louis?

Whoever it was continued, his voice clearer now, and I’d never heard anything so wonderful.

“Give her some room, Scott.”

I groaned, trying to make my eyes work again. I barely could, only seeing the world through a frozen picture, like I was a zombie and I couldn’t move. But it was enough to see Louis come into my view in his ’forties factory worker uniform, plus Scott, the nineteen fifties greased-up kid. They both were bending down to peer at me while they kneeled.

I wanted to tell them I loved them, that I would marry them and have their ghosty babies if they wanted me to. But I couldn’t utter a word.

“She’s so gray,” Scott said.

I gave it the All-American try. “Bat… ter… y…”

Scott grinned as Louis stood, glancing at that space-age car behind the fountain. “That’s exactly what I’ve been thinking since we landed. What we have there is an electric car, and it’s got a huge battery pack to propel the engine.”

I imagined Scott probably had a hot rod when he was alive, and he’d probably been lusting after every car model that had come along for decades, wishing he could go to one last drive-in movie with a girl in each one of them.

Louis shook his head. “We can’t take her over there ourselves.”

Scott proved that point when he tried to grab my arm. His hand went straight through with a faint buzz.

Louis sighed. “You know better than that. She doesn’t have the energy to harden herself.”

Huh?

“This is my first rescue, so cut me a break,” Scott said. “All these years, and I’ve never seen something like this.” This close, Scott had long lashes, big blue eyes, and a full mouth. “What’re we gonna do? She’s a nice chick. I don’t wanna see her in an imprint.”

Louis smiled down at me, like he had an idea. Next thing I knew, I heard a car starting up, quietlike, not like a regular engine, and Scott and Louis weren’t next to me anymore.

Now I was flickering every few seconds, coming to a bad end, getting colder and colder, like I was freezing up.

I was barely aware of the Jetson car rolling to a stop by the steps.

When Louis materialized from under the hood and Scott seeped out of the crack in the driver’s-side window, I laughed in my head. I couldn’t manage to do anything more.

Ghosts in the machine.

“Jen,” Louis said, bending down to me. He seemed winded, his essence blipping. “You’re going to have to take it from here. Slide under the hood, just like I did, and you’ll find the promised land.”

“A battery pack really is in there,” Scott said, equally weakened. “I don’t know who drives this turd, but I’ve got the feeling they won’t be able to leave after you’ve sucked out this thing’s energy source.”

A cleaner owns it, I wanted to tell them, warning them. But I couldn’t.

Maybe the danger nearby gave me extra incentive. I’d pulled them into a dangerous place, and they’d come. I owed them.

“Come on, Jen,” Scott said, his essence getting grayer. “Moving this car took a lot out of us. Get your keister under the hood so Louis and I can take a sit on those power lines.”

I could feel the buzz of those batteries so close that I could almost taste the charge in them. I strained, making it an inch off the stoop.

“That’s the way,” Louis said, waving me on. “A little more.”

Another inch.

They encouraged me all the way, until I’d slithered up the car and, after making myself into a Slim Jen again, in between the crack of the hood to the battery pack.

Lying on it, feeling the zmmmmmm of energy, I sighed. I was pretty sure I passed out again, too, because the next thing I knew, I was awake and ready to rock.

This time, when I made myself thready enough to slip through that hood crack again, it didn’t take much out of me, and I came to stand by the car, looking up at the nearby power lines to find Louis and Scott balanced on them. As they sent me chipper waves, I saw they weren’t alone now.

Twyla was there, too, her petticoats hanging down. Just in time for the party, huh?

They all flew to me, checking me out on the way.

Louis said, “You look right as rain. You gave us a scare, Miss Jensen.”

“I didn’t mean to. God, I owe you everything for coming. If it wasn’t for you guys…”

“We were at a bash nearby,” Scott said. “No big thing.”

Twyla snorted. “You are sooooo lame. Total amateur move, Jen.”

Scott didn’t look at her as he threw out an insult. “And who was the flake who needed Cassie’s help once upon a time?”

“Oh yeah.”

Airhead. Twyla must’ve just remembered that she’d told me about her embarrassing possession screwup earlier in the day.

Then she gave me a sassy glance. “Were you doing what I think you were doing in that mansion? Is that why you almost went imprint again, because you overhaunted?”

I couldn’t believe we were just hanging out, nattering away, while there was a cleaner nearby.

When I nodded at her question, Twyla and Scott thought my adventures were supercool, and he gave me a thumbs-up; she did a pivoty dance move that brought out her Lauper. Louis just crossed his arms.

I rushed to speak. “I’ll tell you everything after we put some space between us and this place. There’s a cleaner in that mansion right now.”

Twyla just about jumped out of her petticoats. “No way!”

Louis and Scott flew to the windows, pasting themselves against them for a look-see.

What?

“Death wish, anyone?” I asked.

Twyla was floating toward another window, a little more cautious than the guys. “Cleaners are, like, pop stars.” Then to the others, “Can you see them or what?”

“Nope,” Scott said.

I’d done what I could to warn them. “Maybe you should be asking if she can see you?”

“Okay,” Twyla said. “Can she?”

“No,” I said. “At least, she couldn’t see me. But she had this gauge thingamabob in her hand that read the temperature or whatever. And she sensed me, so she knew I was around.”

Louis flew to yet another window, almost like they were playing peeping leapfrog. “She might’ve been using an electromagnetometer. It’s one of the tools of the trade. Measures electrical conductivity variations.”

I shifted on the steps. “You guys, you’re making me nervous. This is a chance we don’t have to take. I guess she’s not super experienced, but who knows?”

I was cautious, not scared. And certainly not dumb.

Scott laughed and followed Louis to his new viewing spot. “We’re not in the house, Jen. And we’re all powered up besides. If the cleaner comes this way, we’ll take off in a jiff. She can’t exactly expel us from the earth like she can a domain.”

Still.

I said, “Then maybe you’ll listen to reason when I say that she was called to this place because one of those bad spirits you guys pooh-poohed the other day invaded the mansion.”

Twyla made a frustrated sound. “I knew I should’ve stayed with you today.”

Boredom. It made even ghosts yearn for ridiculous things, like getting into it with a baddie they’d taken the time to warn me about.

They made me tell them all about the séance and everything. Suddenly, Amanda Lee was even a pop star to them, too, and they asked every question in the book about her.

“You’re gonna show her to us, aren’t you?” Twyla asked in the end.

Oh, brother. “I wasn’t planning on it.”

Then Louis started asking a lot of questions about Gavin’s latest dream that I’d entered, and I realized that I hadn’t had a second to even figure out the meaning of all those symbols.

And would you believe it—one of the things that was bugging me the most about that dream was the random appearance of that pool guy. His cameo niggled at me even more than the spider and Elizabeth’s chilling walk-on.

I would figure it all out later, though, because right now the front door was opening, and we all flew back to it, taking cover behind the car. Such brave souls.

Eileen appeared in the doorway along with Constanza, who was still in her gray maid uniform. When they hugged, Constanza clung to her.

“Gracias,” she said, her cheek against the woman’s flipped-up hair. She smiled through her tears as she pulled away from Eileen, still holding on to her arms.

Next to me, Louis let out a low whistle. He was looking at Eileen like she was a foxy woman who’d caught his eye.

“Careful,” I whispered, just in case she had supersonic hearing. Also, having a crush on a cleaner wouldn’t be cool.

Eileen smoothed back Constanza’s brown hair. “The purified water, salting, and incantations should work. And if I didn’t help the spirit or spirits to cross over, you call me at the first sign of anything strange. I can bring my group next time, if I have enough time to gather them.”

Sounded like a quilting club or something.

“I feel a change already,” Cosntanza said. “No bad energy in there now.”

“There was a lot of residue. Female and male. One of them has a deep determination, holding a belief that she’s doing something right. The other one, though?” She exhaled. “That’s the spirit who has an anger that goes beyond the pale.”

The dark spirit. Male. Got it. But I wished she’d found out more.

Eileen patted Constanza’s arm. “See you at church this weekend?”

“Yes. God bless you, cariño. I owe you a big dinner at Mr. A’s.”

“You don’t owe me a thing. This is what I was born to do.”

Gavin appeared behind them, and I bit my lip as all my ghost friends glanced at me. I shrugged, because I knew they were thinking what Twyla had thought earlier.

I liked being around the hunk, even while I was haunting him.

Wrong.

Eileen looked at Gavin. “Are you ready to go to your office now?”

He nodded.

Naturally, they were going to clean that out, too, since I’d done my share of haunting there.

As he and Eileen came outside, Constanza stayed on the lamplit stoop. Noah, Farah, and Wendy appeared behind her to say their thanks.

Eileen smiled. “Your cat should be home soon, too. Animals are very sensitive to spirits, and he didn’t want to be around them.”

Then, as she went to her car, she slowed, looking at it, then at the fountain, where the vehicle had been parked before. But she didn’t seem rattled up. She only glanced around, as if reading the area, looking for spirits. And when she reached into her bag of tricks to extract one of her toys, I took off. Same with the others.

We slowed halfway down the road, near a turnoff that led to the incline of a foliage-shaded driveway with a looming iron gate and gas lamps in front of it.

Even though we were laughing, Twyla managed to say, “Did you see her face?”

Everyone cracked up harder. Who thought I’d have been laughing at anything just an hour ago?

My laughter stopped first, and I glanced around the circle of my new friends. They trailed off, too.

“You guys came for me,” I said. “I still can’t believe it.”

Louis and Scott just kind of shuffled in manly embarrassment while Twyla rolled her eyes.

“Whatever,” she said. “I didn’t have anything better to do on the beach anyway.”

Like, sure.

Even Scott and Louis bit back smiles until Twyla said, “So, you gonna show us Amanda Lee now? Your haunting is over, so why not?”

Hearing her say this about the haunting made it real. But it couldn’t be over. It would never be over for Elizabeth and Amanda Lee, so why for Gavin or whoever the killer really was?

“I suppose I could take you to her place,” I said. “I need to figure out what comes next anyway.”

Louis said, “She should get you to your death spot, just so you can juice up properly.”

In agreement, we all rose into the sky as one, ready to conjure our travel tunnels. But I stayed behind just a millisecond longer, looking back at the Edgett mansion’s red tile roof in the near distance.

Thinking that there was no way this was over.