Afterworlds (36 page)

“Oh.” It struck me that Yama had appeared at the airport, just as eighty-seven people were being murdered. He probably hadn’t been there to catch a flight. “So when lots of people die, psychopomps just show up?”

He shuddered a little. “Psychopomps. Such an ungainly word.”

“Can’t argue with that. Do you have a better one?”

“I think of myself as an artist.” He patted the pockets of his patched jacket. “One day I’ll show you what I mean.”

“No thanks.” But at least the old man was telling me things I
didn’t know. I would be
called
one day, it seemed. What else was Yama hiding from me?

“But maybe a different word for a pretty girl like you,” he said. “Where I come from, we called them ‘valkyrie.’ It means ‘chooser of the slain.’ ”

I didn’t answer, but I liked the sound of it. It must have shown on my face, because the old man smiled again.

“I can help you with your murderer. I was a surgeon once.” The old man took a step toward me, his slow smile fastened to his lips now. He opened his hands wide, coming closer through the darkness. “I’m very good with scissors and thread.”

My hand went to the knife in my pocket. “What are you doing?”

“Showing you this.” He straightened his patched jacket. He was only an arm’s length away from me now, and I could feel him like a cold spot in the room. “I sewed it together from scraps. As you can see, it fits me very well.”

“Why do I care?” My fingers clenched around the metal handle of the knife.

“Because I can cut his ghost to pieces.”

“That’s not what I . . .” My voice faded. I hadn’t really known what I wanted him to do.

“Trust me,” he said. “It’s what you need to make your little friend happy again. I have only one condition.”

I took a few steps back from him, and my shoulders brushed the cold things that had gathered around me in the darkness. I forced myself not to shudder.

“What?”

“Kill him yourself. Then I’ll do the cutting.”

I stared at the old man, trying to measure his smile. Was he kidding? “I can’t do that.”

He smoothed his jacket with a slow glide of his palms, as if it were of silk instead of scraps. “You can. You’re a valkyrie. A warrior-maiden.”

“No.” It was true, the last time I’d been at the bad man’s house, I’d wanted to end him. But really killing someone? “I don’t even know how.”

“He’s just a man. All the usual ways apply.”

“I can’t travel with my real body, not yet. I’m just a ghost when I’m there.” I shook my head. “This is a stupid conversation. I can’t kill anyone.”

“How disappointing,” the old man sighed. “You’re not the valkyrie I thought you were.”

I stared at him. “So you’re not going to help me?”

“I’m trying very hard to,” he said carefully, then slipped his hands into his pockets. “But I see more work needs to be done.”

A moment later he was gone.

*  *  *

I walked back toward home from the ghost school, hands in pockets, breathing in the cool fresh air of the overworld. Part of me was relieved that the old man had asked for something I couldn’t give. Every moment with him was like standing in wet socks; all I’d wanted was for it to end.

Maybe Yama was right, and helping Mindy would only push me farther into the arms of the afterworld.

But then I saw something across the road. It glowed with bright fluorescent light, a garish white column in the darkness—an old
roadside pay phone with scratched and battered plastic sides. There weren’t a lot of pay phones around anymore, and for a moment I wondered if it was a ghost of some kind. If school buildings and sounds could have ghosts, why not phones?

This late there were no cars, no joggers, just the wind and the smell of the ocean. So I crossed the road, curious. The receiver felt hard and plastic in my hand—the phone was real. I half expected to hear nothing, but a dial tone buzzed in my ear.

I pressed zero, as if making a call was what I’d intended all along.

“Operator?” came a voice. It was small and tinny, like something heard from the flipside. For a moment, I expected it to ask what my emergency was.

“I’d like to make a collect call,” I said. Before I could stop myself, I reeled off the bad man’s phone number. It tasted acid in my mouth. But I had to do something, no matter how futile.

“Your name, please?” the operator asked.

“Sorry?”

“Who should I say is calling?”

It took me a second. “Mindy.”

“Hold please while I connect, Mindy.” Buzz and crackle, and the muffled sound of ringing. Then another distant voice said the word “hello.”

Every muscle in my body flinched, and I jerked the phone away from my head. I was suddenly breathing hard, my sweat cold in the breeze. A bitter taste filled my mouth, and the phone felt slick in my hand. Hearing the bad man’s voice had made him that little bit more real.

It took me a long time to bring the receiver back to my ear,
so long that I was sure he’d hung up. But I heard breathing.

“Is this you?” I said.

“Who the hell is this?” His voice was ragged, like he’d just woken up.

My tongue was stuck. It was all I could do to breathe.

“I don’t know any Mindy,” came his voice. “Why are you calling me?”

“I know what you did,” I managed. “I know what you are.”

It was his turn to be silent.

“And I’m coming for you.” The words were spreading a strange calm through me. “You can’t stop me. I can walk through walls.”

“Who
is
this?”

“Even your death can’t stop me. I have a friend who cuts up souls.” I didn’t know where these words were coming from, what piece of me had made them. But they tasted sweet in my mouth. “I’m going to feed you to the cold things in the river. And those little girls in your front yard are going to watch.”

He didn’t answer, so I hung up on him. As I walked away, the pay phone’s fluorescent lights flickered inside their plastic column, the darkness jittering around me. I’d just wanted to scare him, to make him pay a little bit for everything he’d done. At least the bad man knew there was someone looking for him now.

And then almost a minute later, at the edge of my hearing, the phone started to ring.

*  *  *

Mindy met me in my front yard, arms crossed. “You snuck away! That’s not very nice.”

“I’m sorry.” I hadn’t told her what I was trying to do. I didn’t
want her thinking about the bad man, or psychopomps, or any of this. “I had to do something important.”

“Really?” Her expression softened. “You look sad.”

“Just tired.” I hadn’t slept in almost two weeks now. Sleep wasn’t a part of me anymore. When I lay on my bed, the darkness behind my eyelids was full of fluttering shadows, my brain full of undreamt dreams.

Mindy snorted. “Pomps don’t sleep. You should play with me! I’m
super
bored.”

I smiled down at her. At times when the fear lifted from her, you could see how happy a child she’d been before the bad man took her.

“Okay. What do you want to do?”

“Let’s go to New York. Like you said.”

I stared at her. “You want to go see the Chrysler Building? I thought you were afraid of the river.”

“Well,
you
want to. And it’s been really nice since you started . . . seeing me.” Her voice went softer. “Like I said, it’s boring around here.”

I couldn’t believe it. Maybe ghosts could change. Maybe Mindy had just needed to escape from her ghostly invisibility, and she could start to grow again. Maybe she’d just needed a friend.

“I won’t be scared with you there,” she added. “My own personal psycho-bodyguard. Just don’t leave me alone.”

“Of course not.” I smiled as her cold little hand closed around mine. “I’ll always bring you home.”

*  *  *

The River Vaitarna was kind to Mindy on her first voyage. Only a few cold, wet scraps of memory brushed against us, and the trip to New York was swift and calm. Maybe I was getting better at this, or maybe my connection to the Chrysler Building was strong.

Or so I thought, until we left the river.

We were in New York City, but the neighborhood was all wrong. Instead of skyscrapers, we were surrounded by apartment buildings and a big department store. Only one tall, curvaceous tower stood before us, wrapped in reflective glass. It took me a moment to recognize it—my father’s building.

“Whoa,” Mindy said. “You were right. It’s huge!”

“That isn’t the Chrysler. I think I messed up.”

She looked at me. “Are you sure? It’s so
big
.”

“The Chrysler Building’s, like, five times taller. This is where my dad lives.”

Mindy gave a disbelieving laugh. She’d never been to New York before, or much of anywhere, I supposed. She’d spent most of the last thirty-five years within a stone’s throw of my mother’s closet.

“Where are the houses?” she said, looking around. There were piles of gray snow everywhere. The winter up here was ten times colder than back in San Diego, but the flipside air was its usual indifferent cool.

“They don’t have houses here. New Yorkers live in apartments.” I took her hand. “Come on, I’ll show you one.”

She pulled me to a halt. “That whole building’s full of people? And they live there?”

“Yeah. So?”

“That means they
die
there.” She planted her feet. “There must be tons of ghosts inside!”

I sighed, wondering if we should just walk up to the Chrysler. But I was curious about why the river had brought us here. Did I have that strong a connection to my father’s apartment? I’d never felt comfortable staying there.

“Don’t worry, Mindy. They built this place a few years ago. My father only likes new and shiny things.” She still didn’t move, and I scented the air. It was rustier than San Diego, but nothing like the bad man’s house. “Do you
see
any ghosts?”

She peered into the marble lobby, checking out the doorman, then swept her eyes along the streets around us. It was three hours later here in New York, not long before dawn, but there were still a few people strolling past.

“Just livers.” Mindy’s fingers tightened around mine. “But what if that’s because there’s lots of pomps to grab them?”

I sighed. “My dad said he likes New York because he doesn’t have to talk to his neighbors. So ghosts probably fade, right? Or maybe they head back to their hometowns, where someone remembers them.”

“Maybe. But stay close, okay, Lizzie?”

“Of course.” I drew her gently across the street.

Here on the flipside I couldn’t even press an elevator button, so we took the stairs. My dad lived on the fifteenth floor, but I wasn’t breathless when we arrived. Walking around on the flipside didn’t burn any calories, it seemed.

My nerves began to tingle as we stood before my father’s door. I’d been a lot of places on the flipside, but this was the first
time I’d used my invisibility to spy on someone I knew. It took a moment’s concentration for me to pass through the solid wood.

Inside, the apartment was as I remembered it from a few weeks ago—chrome and leather furniture, floor-to-ceiling windows full of moonlit skyline. It sparkled like the icicles dangling from the veranda rail outside, as elegant and cold.

My father’s giant TV was on, but I kept my gaze averted from the screen. From experiments at home, I knew that televisions looked very strange from the flipside. Turns out that cats, with their ghost-seeing eyes, are staring at TVs in abject horror. Or maybe cats are just weird.

“Who’s that?” Mindy asked.

“Rachel, my father’s girlfriend.” The two were curled up together on the couch, focused on the screen.

“It’s funny that he’s here with someone else. I kind of miss him, even if he was a butthead.”

“Me too,” I said, surprising myself a little.

Mindy had never talked about my father before, though of course she’d known him for longer than I’d been alive. She probably knew more about my parents’ breakup than I did, and yet she stared at the couple on the couch as if puzzled by the concept of divorce.

Sometimes I wondered if my mother also missed my father. She always seemed so tired these days, as if losing him had chopped some vital spark out of her. Or maybe it was just those extra shifts she had to work.

My hand went to my cheek, to my scar that was shaped like a tear. For a moment, I wanted to step from the flipside and show my father how badass it looked, and how I didn’t cover it with
makeup. And maybe ask him why he hadn’t flown down to Dallas three weeks ago.

That was when I realized that anger had brought me here. Lately it seemed like I was anger’s puppet, moving where it wanted. I’d lost patience with a lot of my friends, and everyone except Jamie was scared of me. Anger had made me call the bad man, in a feeble attempt to scare him.

I could still hear the pay phone ringing as I’d walked away. He probably knew where that pay phone was by now.

I sighed and turned away from my father to gaze at Rachel. I’d never mentioned to Mom how beautiful she was, and had expunged it from my memory out of loyalty. Her face glowed in the light of the TV, her large eyes drinking in the movie with the intensity of a child.

“He never tells her about that gun,” my father said, pointing at the screen.

“Hush!” Rachel cried. “I told you, no spoilers!”

I rolled my eyes. This was my father’s favorite form of entertainment: watching a movie he’d seen before with someone who hadn’t. Like he was some kind of movie expert, and you were an idiot for not predicting what was going to happen.

“That’s not really a spoiler,” my dad said. “But it’s something you should pay attention to, if you really want to understand his motivation.”

Rachel groaned, and I wondered again why she was with him.

My father had lots of money, of course, and my friends at school used to say he was good-looking, for an old guy. But both of those reasons seemed too shallow for Rachel. She was smart, and fun to
be with, and knew everything about art history. Visiting museums with her had been my favorite thing about my trip here. And she’d always known when I needed to get away from my father.