Arise (24 page)

“If it’s not the ocean,” I said in an oddly detached voice, “then what is it?”

Still watching the waves, the girl shuddered. “It’s the river.”

“What river?”

“
The
river.” She nodded toward the shoreline. “Maybe not the biggest in existence, but the biggest one I’ve ever seen. So wide that when you’re sitting beside it, you think it’s the ocean.”

I looked back at the supposed river, searching for another side. Another bank, matching this one, somewhere far across the water. No matter how hard I searched, I found none. Only black waves undulating into the horizon.

Glancing back at her, I shrugged. “Well, it sure looks like the ocean.”

“It looks like anything they want it to. Same as our place. They can shift and change it all they want.”

“They …?” I said, but she cut me off with a soft
shh
. Wordlessly, she pointed to the shoreline directly in front of us.

At first I didn’t see anything. Then, while we watched, a small, dark shape appeared, hanging in the air without support. It was moving too, swirling and spinning around itself like a mote of dust in the wind. As it moved it expanded, stretching and widening until it eventually took the shape of a small house.

For a few seconds it hovered several feet above the ground, and I wondered whether the strange building process had stopped. But then stilts began to form beneath it, anchoring the house to the sand. Next, a steep roof appeared, supported by evenly spaced columns instead of walls so that we could see through to the ocean. Finally, in this state, it settled.

And I gasped.

The structure wasn’t a house—it was the dark pavilion. The one I’d hallucinated last night before Joshua and I left for the cemetery. The only difference was, now I sat outside of it. But I would have recognized it anywhere.

We were in the
netherworld
.

“We have to get out of here,” I breathed, scrambling backward in the sand. “Any second, High Bridge will show up, and then the demons, and then—”

“High Bridge isn’t going to show up,” she said. “This is a different part of their world, one that they’ve intentionally designed to match the living world—or, at least, parts of it. They traditionally stick to moving bodies of water. Transitional places. You know, ‘crossing the River Styx’ and that whole bit. But don’t be fooled; their world is completely interconnected. They can get from Oklahoma to here in a matter of seconds. Besides, every portal—whether in Oklahoma or New Orleans—leads to the same dark place.”

Before I could tell her
Thanks for the info, but we should probably still be running
, she spun around to face me. Her bright green eyes were suddenly fervent, wild.

Without warning, she grabbed my wrists and jerked me toward her so hard that the wet sand slopped over my skirt.

“Amelia, you have to stop doing this,” she pleaded.

I shook my head and tried to pull away from her. “Let me go. Now!”

My command only made her hold on tighter. “I can’t, Amelia. Not until you understand that you have to stop.”

“Stop what?” I growled, tugging harder. The longer she held on to me, the more my wrists began to ache. “I don’t know what I’m doing wrong!”

Finally, she let go. The moment her hands released mine I clutched at my wrists and tried to massage feeling back into one, then the other. The girl, however, seemed totally unconcerned about my discomfort. Wearing that same fanatical expression, she gestured with one hand down the length of my body.

“This,” she said flatly. “This is what you need to stop.”

I followed her gesture and then blinked in confusion.

“My … dress? Look, I get that it’s outdated, but that’s no reason to—”

She cut me off with a violent shake of her head. “Not your dress.
You
, Amelia.
You’re
the problem. What you’re doing is unnatural, and we won’t put up with it for very long.”

“I don’t … I haven’t
done
anything,” I sputtered, now totally lost.

“But you have. You’re doing it right now.... You just don’t know it yet.”

“I … I’m sorry?”

The girl sighed and tugged at her copper curls. “I know. Trust me, I know. I’ve seen this coming for a while, and I’ve been trying to warn you, with all the visions. I’ve been trying to keep you
away
from this place. But you are so …
damn … stubborn
.”

She pronounced each of her last words individually, as if to emphasize her frustration. For some reason that rankled me. By now my zenlike feeling had completely vanished. So I sat up straight, stopped massaging my wrists, and looked her directly in the eyes.

“Maybe—now, this may sound totally nutso—but maybe you should have tried to make the dreams easier to understand. How about that?”

She groaned. “I have to work within the parameters they set for me, okay? This guardian thing has rules, and I can’t just—”

“They?” I quoted. “You keep saying that like I’m supposed to know who you mean. And what’s a guardian? Are you my guardian angel or something? Because, if so, you’re a really
bad
one.”

She waved both hands in front of her, looking distraught.

“No!” she cried. “God, no. I’m just … I’m a … crap, I can’t
tell
you what I am. Just trust me when I say you have to figure out a way to undo this.” She gestured down the length of my body again. “Then go home.”

I arched one eyebrow. “Home? To Oklahoma?”

“Yes, Oklahoma. Perfect.”

“But the demons are waiting for me there.”

“They’re waiting for you
everywhere
, Amelia.”

When I blanched, she rushed on: “Don’t worry, though—we’ll take care of it. Just go home, stop talking to the living, stop hanging out around that bridge … just go back to your old existence.”

“You mean … the wandering? The fog?”

She nodded vigorously. “Yes, exactly. The fog. You think you could do that again?”

I puffed out a long, frustrated breath before answering her. “Okay, let’s just say for argument’s sake that I thought going back home was a good idea
and
that I wanted to reenter the fog. Do you know any ghosts who’ve done it before? And if so, could you give me some tips? Because I have no idea how to unremember everything at this point.”

The girl groaned again and flung her arms up in the air. “Truthfully? I have no clue. Almost every soul gets claimed right after death.... There are only a few ghosts who wander, and even less of you who wake up.”

She surprised me by flopping back onto the wet sand as if she didn’t fear the netherworld at all. Lying flat, she released a heavy sigh. “You were doing just
fine
on your own, staying off their radar and ours. But then I just
had
to give in. And things got too complicated, with the living guy and that fire glow, and Eli not doing what I thought he’d do—”

I cut her off. “Wait. You know about the glow? You know
Eli
?”

She darted a guilty look at me and pinched her lips shut, like a little girl who had just divulged someone else’s secret.

“No,” she said weakly. “Of course not.”

“Are you going to give me any useful answers? Like, what my glow is, and how I can use it again?”

Her subsequent silence didn’t surprise me, not at all.

I abruptly shifted my legs under me and pressed myself up so that I towered over her. “Look, I don’t need any more supernatural beings mucking around with my afterlife. So thanks for your … help, I guess. I have the feeling that you’re part of whatever the
opposite
of the netherworld is, and I appreciate the fact that you guys have finally noticed that I exist.”

She looked a little stricken by my bitter tone, but when she didn’t respond, I went on.

“That being said: I don’t want your help anymore. Not unless you can keep the demons from going after me and—”

“We can!” she interjected, right as I finished with “And the living people I love.”

Her face fell.

“We
can’t
do that,” she said. “Rules are rules; they get to make their choices, just like we get to make ours.”

“Then I’m making mine, right now. Your help isn’t worth anything if it doesn’t extend to the living people I care about. I’m not like those ghosts back in the French Quarter—I wouldn’t trade someone else to save myself.”

She frowned up at me from the beach without commenting; apparently, she didn’t like how I’d summarized her offer. And that was just too bad.

“Okay,” I said firmly. “Since that’s settled, stay out of my business. And stop giving me creepy dreams and hallucinations—my afterlife is weird enough. I mean, making me imagine my dad’s voice in the prairie? That was below the belt.”

The girl opened her mouth to object but then popped it shut. When I felt certain she didn’t have anything more to add, I turned away from her and examined the endless stretch of water and sand around us. Other than the eerie pavilion—still unoccupied, thank goodness—I didn’t see any other structures or objects. No doors or windows or cars or boats … nothing to take me back to reality.

I looked down at the girl. “I don’t suppose you’ll tell me how to get out of here?”

She shrugged—a gesture that looked strange, considering she still lay flat on her back. “Close your eyes tight and say ‘There’s no place like home’ a couple times.”

I snorted derisively. “Are you going to tell me I need to click my heels next?”

Even through her scowl, the girl laughed. “Okay, okay. But you’ve still got to close your eyes.”

“Why?” I asked, justifiably suspicious.

“Because I’m going to end this dream, and I can’t do it while your eyes are open.”

I quirked one corner of my lip in disbelief, and she sighed. “Please, Amelia. Just close your eyes.”

I studied her for a moment longer—lying back in the sand like she didn’t have a care in the world except for me: a stubborn, anomalous dead girl. Then, against my better judgment, I lowered my eyelids.

Of course, I didn’t close them
fully
until she chided, “Stop peeking.”

After I obeyed, I heard the soft whoosh of air. When I reopened them, I no longer saw the beach. But my new surroundings weren’t exactly comforting, either.

Mostly because, almost immediately, I recognized the small, dark room in which I’d woken. The slatted windows, the slipcovered furniture, the rainbow of pills on the coffee table in front of me—all elements of one of my darkest dreams.

The one in which I saw myself alive.

And dying.

Chapter

TWENTY-ONE

I
tried to sit up, but almost every inch of my body shrieked in protest at even the slightest movement. So instead, I lay perfectly still, gazing around with bleary eyes.

Dawn was breaking here, too—I could tell from the light creeping in between the heavily slatted shutters across from me. As the room lightened and my eyes began to clear, I could see more than just the elements I recognized.

Now free of the dream haze, I realized that this room was actually far nicer than I’d first thought. The walls were painted a rich purple and hung with what looked suspiciously like original canvases of priceless art. The furniture (at least those pieces not covered in white sheets) had an expensive sort of feel to it, all highly polished wood and lush fabrics and gilt accents. Even the coffee table with its collection of spilled narcotics was inlaid with gorgeous mosaic tiles and decorated with clusters of lit, luxe-smelling candles.

Despite the candles, however, the place still smelled … odd. Almost palpable, even. Like rich food and humidity overlaying the sweet scent of decay. The longer I lay there, the stronger the smells grew.

But that … didn’t make sense. I dragged in a deeper breath through my nose, and the scent followed, strong and continuous. It didn’t fade like it was supposed to. I just kept right on smelling it.

Even weirder, I felt other things, too: a bitter taste in my mouth, dryness in my throat, and an itch just begging to be scratched on my arm. Sensations I’d never felt long enough to fully experience.