Indelible (29 page)

“I didn’t think you’d want me to.” My voice cracked. “Brent, when I said no it wasn’t because of you. I didn’t trust them. I still don’t, but I’ll work with them if it will help you.”

“No!” his fingers dug into mine. “I’m glad you’re not involved. You were right to say no.” He brought our entwined hands to his cheek. “I’m sorry. I’ve been such an—”

I brought my fingers to his lips. “Yes, you have been.”

“I’ve missed you.” He kissed my finger pressing against his mouth. “I’ve needed you.”

“Me too.” My body warmed as love flooded through it.

He leaned in just as I did and suddenly we were kissing. Brent pulled me to my feet and I pressed against him. I kissed like him like parched earth soaked up rain after a drought. I had missed him, needed him, and I never wanted to let him go. The air grew hot and humid around us. I twined my fingers in his hair and his hand pressed into the small of my back. When we finally pulled apart my breathing was ragged.

“We should fight more often if that’s how we make up,” Brent said with one of his lazy grins.

I appreciated the joke but I had no desire to even kid around about the emotional torture of the last few weeks.

I held his hand in mine and I traced the lines on his palm. “Do you wish you’d said no?”

“Yep. But I don’t want to talk about it. I want to forget.” His neck muscles tightened. “Please. I can’t deal with this right now.”

“Just one question.” Finally, I asked the thing that had been troubling me the most. “What did they ask you to do for them, Brent?”

His thumb that had been brushing the back of my hand stopped. “I’m not telling you.”

“Did they forbid you from telling me? Like they did with DJ.”

He shook his head and closed his eyes. “I just don’t want you to know.”

“Why?”

He rubbed his eyes with the palm of his free hand. “Because I don’t want you to know what I’m willing to do. I don’t want the way you look at me to change.”

“It wouldn’t Brent,” I insisted.

“That’s only because you don’t know.” He pulled his hand away. “I . . . I have to go. I’ll call you soon.” He vanished, the familiar blue flash and electric volt letting me know he had reconnected.

After my sprit went back to my body, I felt heartsick. I was glad Brent and I had made up, but I was now more worried about him than ever. His association with the Clutch was changing him.

I was lost in troubled thoughts when my mom and grandma returned. On our way out of the hospital, I was surprised by who we ran into: Detectives Roberts and Velasco.

“Hey. Remember me?”

“Hello, Yara.” Velasco’s smile turned troubled when her eyes took in my wounds. “Does your trip to the E.R. have anything to do with the people following you, or the burglary?”

“Nope. This,” I motioned to my head, “was done by a ghost.”

The stunned look on the detectives’ faces would have made a fantastic snapshot.

Mom gave a wry grin before interjecting, “She has a concussion. But she’ll be fine.”

The detectives both laughed. I guessed they wanted to blame my ghost theory on my head injury.

“Well, we’re glad you’re alright.” Roberts folded his hands together behind his back. “Anything else suspicious happen to you?”

“No,” I lied.

Velasco gave me a measuring once over. “Okay. You still have our number?”

“Yes.”

“Good,” she said. “Call if you need us.”

We exchanged goodbyes. I really hoped I’d never have to see them again.

In the car, I told Vovó my theory about what was wrong with Brent, and she promised to start researching it right away. She stared out the window, her eyes unfocused.

Vovó clicked her tongue. “Maybe all we need to do is banish Thomas. Maybe his lingering essence is making Brent sick. Do you still have the vial?”

“I can get it. Steve has it.” I thought for a moment. “I thought you didn’t like to banish spirits. I thought you said it was a last resort.”

“When you see it happen, you’ll understand why. But it still needs to be done, even if it doesn’t help Brent.” That was it, no justification, no explanation, but I understood. She knew Thomas was beyond saving.

v

The next night I stood in my backyard, surrounded by my mother’s flowers, the patio lit by my grandmother’s special candles made from lavender, chamomile and a third substance she still hadn’t told me about. The smells of sandalwood and frankincense added to the aroma that danced around me. It felt peaceful and soothing, a complete contrast to the brutal work of banishing a murderous soul, which we were about to perform.

On the ground, a line of grainy powder formed a four-foot circle broken only by the half-dozen candles interspersed around the ring. The thought of releasing Thomas from his prison made my knees knock together, even though it was to banish him forever. I didn’t want to see his evil green eyes and remember again all he had done to me last year.

Vovó stood beside me, her long gray hair flowing down to her waist. She was whispering words that were quiet with reverence but thick with authority, a mixture of chant and song. She continued her words in a blend of Portuguese, English and other languages I didn’t know while she held the vials above the circle. She uncorked the outer vial, removed the smaller, original one, and set aside the larger container. The cracks in the small vial had grown and were visible even by candlelight.

Making sure her hands were inside the ring, she grasped the cork firmly and pulled. Black smoke billowed out. Vovó tilted the glass tube and Thomas’s inky essence poured onto the ground, spreading to the edges of the circle. The black fog coalesced in the center, settling into Thomas’s form. His face was a sea of wrinkles, his back hunched, his frame gaunt.

Emaciated and weak as he appeared, the sight of him chilled me. Fear gripped my throat, squeezing it closed, and I backpedaled until my spine pressed flat against the sliding glass doors. My head bumped against the glass and my stitches groaned in protest. Pain lanced through my skull but I held back a moan, not wanting to draw his attention.

His blank, green eyes darted around until they landed on me, then they opened wide, hardening into a glare. His mouth twisted, the veins in his neck bulged. “You!”

He slunk closer to me. Goose pimples erupted on my arms. Closer. Little gasps escaped my throat. Closer. My hand dove into my pocket, grabbing a handful of the pankurem and salt powder my vovó had prepared. Closer. And then he stopped. But not by his own choice. The smoky walls of the protective circle held him prisoner. His aged features twisted and snarled like a caged animal.

I rubbed my tongue against the roof of my mouth trying to get enough moisture to speak. “I have some questions for you.”

Vovó sent me a surprised glance. I hadn’t told her of my desire to interrogate him. It hadn’t occurred to me that I wanted to until I watched her preparing the circle. He knew more than anyone about what had happened to Brent and what the consequences might be, seeing as he had started the whole problem. Perhaps if I knew how it was done, I could figure out how to fix it.

He cracked his bony knuckles one at a time but didn’t say anything.

I licked my lips and played with the powder in my pocket, letting the granules glide between my fingers. “How did you know you could take over another body, that first time, when you stole Henry’s body?”

He didn’t talk, but his eyes spoke volumes of things I didn’t ask, and didn’t want to know, of loathing, evil and anger. He opened his mouth and let out a puff of air, drenching the backyard in the reek of chlorine. Gone were the comforting scents of the candles and flowers. All I could smell was his chemical stench. I broke into a cold sweat. The sliding glass door was the only thing that kept me standing. Images of my drowning raced through my mind in an endless loop. My stomach rolled and I tried to swallow down my fear. I forced myself to hold his gaze.

“How did you learn you could take over Henry’s body?” My voice was a whisper.

He ignored me as he stalked the edges of the protective ring my grandma had made.

“You will answer her question.” The steel in my grandma’s voice surprised me, penetrating to the marrow of my bones.

“No.” Thomas’s nostrils flared and his eyes narrowed.

His face turned red, his lips started to part, his bony hand reached up to press his mouth closed.

“Put your hand down.”

He hissed at Vovó as his hand dropped to his side.

“Speak.”

His whole body shook and his eyes rolled back. “I had been searching for a way to prevent my death. An old book I found at school told me how. The rest of the Clutch had been. . .” his head thrashed from side to side. “Researching how to . . . ” he howled, the words being ripped from his throat. “to control others, and to make them . . . obey. I combined what I had learned with what they knew.” He gasped. “I convinced them to command Henry to . . . to kill himself. I volunteered to make sure it worked.” His body trembled. “It did. But they . . . didn’t know it. They thought it failed. They thought he had lived, but it was me.” His balled fists shook. “I had outsmarted them and found a way to live. And I kept the true recipe for the power . . . for myself.”

He bent over, panting.

“That’s not what you said last year.” I wiped my hands on my jeans and moved closer to him. “You only said you wanted to live!”

“You honestly thought I told you the truth?” He sneered up at me.

I had believed him. I’d felt moments of pity for him.

“So trusting. I killed you and yet you believed me.” He laughed, a frightening sound. “I played your sympathy like a fiddle.”

It had worked. Anger slashed through me, but I wasn’t sure if I was mad at his deception or my own naiveté.

I didn’t care about his friends’ stupid quest for world domination. I wanted to find out how to help Brent. “Did any of the bodies you stole . . . did any of them have side-effects or carry-over’s from the other spirits?”

Thomas chuckled and it felt like battery acid to my soul. “Oh, yes. I would guess Brent is feeling not completely himself. Having strange cravings, unusual illnesses.”

“How did you know?” I almost leapt toward him, but Vovó held me back. He snarled at her.

He raised an eyebrow. “You really think I was the first person to have done what I did? I learned about it in a book, remember? You think Brent was the first to suffer the consequences?” He curled his fingers and examined his claw-like nails. “I know how to help.”

“I don’t believe you.”

He gave me a wolfish grin. “I can save him.”

“I think if we banish you, he’ll be cured,” Vovó said, opening a book she had resting on a table.

“Then you’d be wrong. Without me, Brent won’t make it.” The wrinkles on his face lifted. “Without my help, you’re going to fail and Brent will die.”

And something inside me tore loose. A desperate thought burned in my head, its flames fanned by my panic. What if he were telling the truth? The thing that scared me the most was the thought that I might give up a chance to save Brent, and let him down. Again. I reigned in my fear and slammed the brakes on that train of thought. I knew better than this. I wouldn’t let my fear force me into a stupid choice. I knew better than to trust him. And yet I was tempted, so I looked away.

“Enough of this.” Vovó said and his mouth snapped shut. “You’ve said something that interests me. Tell me, how did they control people?”

“The drugs.” He glared at her. “You need the right amount in your system.”

“Tell me more.”

“Christopher always lamented to me how disappointed he was in his sons. But they were brilliant. The Pendrell sons knew how to exploit the pankurem plant, to use it as a weapon. But the recipe died with them because they wouldn’t share their secrets. The other members tried to recreate it. Year after year, the research continued, until we rediscovered it. But no one else knew it had worked. Only I did.”

“Lamented to
you
?” My voice was firmer. “Christopher died decades before you ever went to Pendrell.”

“This from a woman who can see ghosts?”

“You’ve seen his ghost?” I asked. I’d never seen Christopher’s ghost or even heard of him haunting anywhere.

“Yes and he was a drag. In life he tried to hold his sons back, in death he tried to stop us, those who shared their vision. He stole something from his sons and hid it from them. He thought it would end there, but it was bigger than even his sons. They may have been the first inspired by the dream, but they weren’t the last.”

He spoke like a fanatic, his green eyes shining with passion.

“In my day, the clutch continued the search for what had been lost. Christopher’s ghost haunted us. Whenever we left our bodies he would come to us. He wanted to hold us back too, the keep us from achieving the greatness he would never be able to accomplish. He lied about how it had ruined his sons.”

“Maybe he was telling the truth,” I couldn’t help but point out. “His sons were murderers.”

“No! We knew better than to believe his lies. He even tried to scare us off, but playing with the wiring was all he could manage. As if those childish games could scare us away from what we all wanted. That power, that control.”

“Maybe he was trying to help.”

“I should have known a simpleton like you would fall for the rubbish he spouted.”

“This simpleton defeated you last year.”

He had been walking but at my words he stilled. The night was quiet except for the sound of his cracking knuckles. He faced me, his nostrils flaring, his green eyes burning with malice. The salt in my hand stuck to my suddenly sticky palm.

“Yes, you did, but if you think this—” he poked the translucent smoke wall, “will protect you from me, you’re wrong. With the drug in my system and your spirit under my control, I will be unstoppable.”

He licked his lips. “I’ll teach you just like I taught Christopher. It will be fun to break you.”

His eyes looked delighted by the ways he could imagine hurting me and I was unable to hold back a whimper. I cowered back into Vovó. She moved beside me and blew a handful of something that glittered in the candlelight. When it touched the smoke ring, Thomas screamed and his body jerked.