Arise (25 page)

Until now.

I did another self-assessment, noting the raw ache in my legs, the pounding at my temples, the strange heaviness in my chest.

Not a single part of my body was numb. Not anymore.

I was trying to make sense of all this, trying to reason through it, when I heard a soft snore from somewhere near my feet. I gritted my teeth and hazarded some movement, using one elbow to prop myself up on the couch. Although everything—and I mean
everything
—hurt, I craned my neck so I could see over the rolled arm of the sofa.

There, sitting in a dark corner a few feet away from the couch, was a boy. He’d slumped forward in his chair, with his arms dangling over its sides and his head flopped down to his chest.

I listened to one more snore and then I did the only thing I could think to do.

“Hey!” I shouted. “Who are you?”

Except I didn’t actually shout. I tried to, but the sound came out scratchy and dry, like I was recovering from a nasty cold.

Still, the boy must have heard me. He stirred, shifting backward in the chair and releasing a final, rough snore. Half yawning, half groaning, he shook himself awake and then wiped one hand from his forehead to his chin.

For that brief moment I couldn’t see his face. But when he removed his hand and opened his eyes, I sucked in a sharp breath.

The boy looked
exactly
like Gabrielle, the Voodoo girl. The same coffee-and-cream skin, the same flawless bone structure. Their only difference, aside from gender, might have been age. His stubble and the frown lines around his mouth made him seem older … but not by many years.

His luminous blue eyes caught mine, and I suddenly felt dizzy. I swayed for a second; and though I tried to stay upright, my elbow gave out, and I dropped back to the couch.

The boy, however, didn’t move. If I angled just right, I could still see him, sitting awkward and stiff in the chair. It didn’t look like a comfortable place to wake up, and his handsome face showed the burden of sleeping there all night. Like he’d been keeping watch.

Or watching over me.

I hadn’t made up my mind which option seemed more likely when he called out in a voice almost as rough as mine.

“Gaby, she’s awake.”

I heard a muted curse from somewhere deep in the apartment, followed by the sound of footsteps. Within seconds, Gabrielle emerged from the archway next to the boy’s chair. She wore a long, embroidered kimono, and although she didn’t look half as tired as he did, she still yawned as she plodded into the room.

Even tired, she was still prettier than the last time I’d seen her: covered in blood and possibly possessed. In fact, compared to last night, she looked positively cheery.

She flopped into a nearby chair, used her fingernails to muss her Afro into shape, and then turned to me with an affected sigh.

“Don’t you think you could have let us all sleep for a few more hours?”

I grabbed an arm of the couch and fought through the pain to pull myself upward. While I moved, the weight in my chest grew heavier, stronger. I tried to ignore it until, finally, I managed to get myself into a seated position. From there I shot Gabrielle an angry glare.

“Who are you people, really?” I demanded, panting from my efforts. “Where am I? And what the hell did you do to me?”

“That’s a lot of questions for seven a.m., Princess.”

“Amelia,” I corrected automatically.

“Fine. That’s a lot of questions for seven a.m.,
Amelia
.”

“Gaby,” the boy scolded, still not rising from his chair. “Stop taunting her—she’s been through enough.”

Gabrielle rolled her eyes. “Like I don’t know.”

“Yeah, but you got to
choose
. From what you told me last night, you weren’t exactly forthcoming with this girl, were you?”

“Choose what?” I croaked. “Would someone please start explaining things? I’m grateful you guys saved me from the other ghosts, but—”

“The Faders,” Gabrielle interjected.

“The what?”

“Faders,” she repeated in a blasé tone. “That’s what I call the ghosts who tried to trap you.”

“So … you’ve had experience with them before,” I said slowly. My brain began to pluck memories and phrases from last night’s attack. One word in particular came to mind: “intermediary.” When I spoke again, I did so carefully. Guardedly.

“
How
do you know the Faders, exactly?”

Gabrielle and the boy shared a look. When she turned back to me, her eyes seemed decidedly less flippant.

“We’ll … get to that,” she said haltingly. “But maybe we
should
start with the basics. You already know I’m Gabrielle.” She placed her fingertips on her chest. Then she pointed to the boy. “That’s my brother, Felix. We’re the Callioux twins.”

I raised one eyebrow. “Twins?”

“Fraternal,” she said.

“Yeah, I got that part. It’s just … you two look like you’re different …”

“Ages?” Felix offered, grimacing. “Well, we look like that because we are.
Now
, anyway.”

“Now?”

Felix didn’t respond but instead shot his sister another pointed look. She sighed heavily and met my eyes.

“Felix is twenty,” she said. “But I’m seventeen and, like, ten months. I have been, for a little over two years.”

I waited for her to tell me she was joking. When she didn’t, I balked.

I knew the implication of what she’d said better than anyone. Still, I had to ask the important question out loud. Just in case.

“You’re … dead?”

“Yup,” she said, popping the
p
. “A little ghostie ghost, just like you.”

I remained silent for a moment. Then, in a hushed voice, I asked, “How?”

“You mean, how did she die?” Felix said. “In a car accident. The same one that killed our parents.”

He spoke plainly enough, with no emotion registering on his face. And yet—even from across the room, even though I hardly knew him—I could see a glint of pain in his eyes. It made my stomach clench, that glint. How on earth did someone lose his entire family in one fell swoop? Even if part of it had obviously returned to him?

“Yes, yes, it’s all very tragic,” Gabrielle said, drawing my attention back to her. “My boyfriend accidentally jerked the wheel out of my dad’s hands, and our car went over the Crescent City Connection Bridge. We haven’t seen him or our parents since.”

I shook my head in disbelief. “You died falling off a bridge?”

She scrutinized me for a second. Then her eyes widened in genuine surprise. “You too? Seriously?”

When I gave her a dry, close-lipped smile, she barked out a mirthless laugh. “Wow. Of all the dumb luck.”

“Tell me about it,” I said dismissively, wanting to get back to the subject at hand. “So, you died, Felix survived, and you came back to haunt him?”

Felix shifted forward in his chair, nodding. “Pretty much, yeah. I must have been thrown from the car or something, because the emergency crews found me on the shore a couple hours later. Everyone else in that car died, though, including her jackass boyfriend.” Gabrielle made a noise of complaint, but Felix cut her off: “That’s too good a word for Kade LaLaurie, and you know it. I don’t care if he was some frat boy honors student; that guy was a total freak. I’m still not convinced he didn’t intentionally cause that crash. Sorry, Sis, but you had the
worst
taste in guys.”

After she shot her brother a withering glare, Gabrielle continued the story.
“Moving on,”
she emphasized. “It only took a couple days for Felix and me to find each other again. Actually, he found me, looking all lost and confused outside our family crypt the day of the funeral.”

“At first I thought she’d survived, too,” he said, shaking his head sadly. “I mean, I’d never seen a ghost before, so I didn’t really know what I was looking at.”

“You are a Seer but didn’t know it until you almost died,” I concluded.

Felix nodded. “Guess so, although I didn’t learn what that word meant until we started researching why she didn’t have any senses, and no one could see her, and she couldn’t touch anything.”

“Nothing?” I asked, trying to keep my tone as bland as possible. I didn’t want to reveal the reason for my curiosity to the twins. But since the first moment I touched Joshua, I’d wondered whether the electricity we experienced was specific to all ghosts or just specific to … us.

I frowned heavily. Right now I didn’t want to think about the fact that “us” didn’t exist anymore.

Felix noticed my expression and gave me a curious glance. Fortunately, he didn’t press me about it but instead answered, “Nothing. That’s what finally made us realize she was dead.”

Gabrielle snorted. “Yeah, that and the fact I could send myself to Michigan and back in two seconds.” She shifted forward in her chair, rearranging the kimono around her long legs. “Too bad that was around the same time we also realized that our folks were in major debt when they died. The bank sold off our house in Metairie to pay the bills. By the time all the legal stuff was done, Felix was of age and no one was too worried about where he’d live. So after that … we were homeless.”

I frowned, letting my eyes circle the interior of the apartment. “Looks like you’re doing pretty well now.”

Felix’s gaze followed mine, and he began to squirm. But despite her brother’s obvious discomfort, Gabrielle grinned wickedly, clasped her hands, and leaned forward.

“Did you know,” she said conspiratorially, “that a lot of Hollywood stars have bought town houses and apartments in the Quarter? Would you believe that some of them don’t put in alarm systems? Would you also believe that most of these people hardly ever visit, especially when they’re about to go bankrupt
and
a court orders them to six months of rehab?”

She cocked her head toward a framed photograph sitting on one of the side tables. There, flashing a high-wattage smile at the camera, was one of the most famous actresses in the world. Even
I
knew who she was, and I’d been dead for more than a decade.

“Oh, my God,” I gasped. “This is
her
apartment? You’re
squatters
? Aren’t you afraid of getting arrested?”

Gabrielle cackled. “Me? No. But Felix obviously is.”

“Hell yes, I am,” he chimed in gruffly. “Especially since I’m the one who busted the lock on the downstairs door so you could carry out this epically stupid plan.”

His sister, however, just rolled her eyes. “Live a little, Felix. Besides, if you believe the tabloids, the bank’s probably going to foreclose on this place before she gets out of rehab. Other than some clothes and the bedding, we haven’t touched anything. The sheets on the furniture, the pills on the coffee table—it looked like that when we got here, it’ll look like that when we leave.”

I shook my head, incredulous at her daring show of courage and stupidity.

But really, the saga of the Callioux twins wasn’t the most important thing in my afterlife right now. Ultimately, I wanted to know why my fingertips could touch the rough slipcover beneath me; why I could still smell the strange scents of the French Quarter; why my body felt beaten and tired long after those sensations should have faded.

“Okay, so now I’ve got your backstory, breaking and entering and all. But what about me? Why do I feel so weird? Why do I
feel
at all?”

Once again Gabrielle and Felix exchanged wary glances.

“Tell her, Gaby,” he urged.

She held his gaze for a moment longer, clearly drawing upon his strength for what she had to say next. After a disconcerting silence, she turned back to me.

“Put your fingers on your neck, Amelia,” she commanded softly.

“Put … what?”

She demonstrated by taking the fore- and middle fingers on her left hand and pressing them to her neck, just below the jawline. I frowned in confusion but then followed her lead.

After all, what could it hurt?

Only a few seconds after I’d done so, however, I jerked my hand back and shot up to sit rigid-straight on the couch. My eyes widened uncomfortably as I stared at Gabrielle. When she nodded in confirmation, I let out one hissing breath.

Because, although I hadn’t experienced it in a very long time, I recognized what I felt in the tender skin of my neck.

A pulse.

Chapter

TWENTY-TWO