All the Pretty Ghosts (The Never Alone Series Book 1) (21 page)

“Why would she do that? It had to be someone else.”

“Maybe she’s changed. She’s been gone for a long time. We don’t know her anymore.”

“Nobody changes that much.”

“It’s only been a few days.”

“More than a week.”

I closed my eyes, trying to drown them out. It was comforting hearing those same voices, the ones I had heard chatter about nothing for almost a year. On the other hand, they were also a stark reminder about why I had left in the first place.

But I hadn’t left because they annoyed me. Even though they did.

I had left for Oliver.

I thought he was hurt, I worried about him being in the city alone, without a friend. A laugh escaped my lips, despite the horrible feeling growing in my gut.

My fears had been right. He wasn’t safe in the city. Oliver had died. Without me. Without anyone. He was all alone when he perished without his best friend. I didn’t know how I was going to live with that guilt.

“Ah, it’s the boy.”

“What boy?”

“The one who used to visit all the time.”

“Oh, the one she wouldn’t let in?”

“That’s him.”

“Everly…” Oliver said. He was here. I would recognize that voice anywhere.

My eyes flew open and I saw him straight away. He was standing in front of me, the other spirits giving him some space. He looked just as sad as he did when I left him outside the factory.

I took a breath as I tried to steady my voice. I needed to say some things to him and I couldn’t do it if I was in a puddle on the floor. Now was the time to be brave or I would regret it for the rest of my life.

“Oliver,” I started, finding my voice not too terrible after all. “You lied to me.”

“I didn’t know how to tell you.”

“It was going to hurt no matter what you said. I deserved to know. You let me fall-” I cut myself off, unable to finish. He let me fall in love with him, knowing full well I could never have him.

The image of our almost-kiss flashed in my head. Now I understood why he had pulled away so suddenly. He knew my lips would go straight through him. All I would have felt was coldness as I passed through his spirit. He didn’t want to give his lie away.

I should have been able to work it out sooner. A part of me knew I was also to blame for being kept in the dark. I never considered he was no longer with the living. I had fooled myself despite what my eyes had seen.

He never touched anything. I never saw Oliver eat. He hadn’t been beaten up by the guys in the alley. He disappeared and reappeared on a daily basis. He had gone unseen by Jet’s gang when they tied me up the first time and he helped me escape.

There were no spirits in the underground and Oliver knew that. He hadn’t insisted on coming down to see Jet with me. I thought he was helping me. But he was really concealing his secret. I had let him get away with it.

All the clues were there.

I was just too blind to see it.

“I didn’t want to hurt you. The thought of having to tell you… it was making me ache,” Oliver said.

I wanted to stay angry with him. I desperately wanted to hold onto the rage that had helped me run all the way to my house on the hill. If I could just hold onto that, the pain and hurt couldn’t take over.

But I couldn’t.

Oliver was dead. I could never bring him back. He would never get to live the life he deserved. That opportunity was taken away from him. Too soon. Far, far too soon.

“How did it happen?” I asked quietly. I was still holding onto the door behind me, using it for support. I swear, it was the only thing stopping me sinking to the floor and curling up into the fetal position.

“I was walking back from the shelter one night, I’d just helped them close up, and I was attacked. Two guys jumped me, I didn’t even see it coming.”

“They killed you?”

He nodded and it was so like the Oliver I had known my entire life that I almost lost my composure. “One guy held me down and the other… he hit me. Hard. My head hit the concrete and I was gone.”

“Did you see who they were? Have you seen them again?” I hated them. Whoever they were, I wanted to hunt them down and hurt them just as badly as they hurt Oliver.

I wanted
them
dead.

“I haven’t seen them since.” He took a cautious step closer to me, like I was an illusion that might vanish at any moment. It was hard to believe this was my best friend, the one I had shared so much with over the course of our lives.

“How long?” My voice hitched in my throat. “How long have you been… gone?”

“It happened a few months before you came into the city.”

“That’s how you knew I could see ghosts. I could see you,” I said, it wasn’t a question but a statement. His head nod confirmed it was true. “You said you always knew I could.”

“I’m sorry I lied,” Oliver confessed. “I wasn’t ready to tell you yet and there was no other way to explain how I knew about the spirits.”

He had lied a lot to me. I never thought that was possible.

But I didn’t think my best friend would die either.

“I forgive you,” I said, really meaning it. I didn’t mean just for that particular lie, but for them all. It must have been so, so hard on him going through the crossover alone.

“Thank you.”

“I’m sorry I wasn’t there for you, I should have been.”

He shook his head, taking another step closer again. I could have reached out and touched him if my hands wouldn’t go straight through his body. “There was nothing you could have done. It happened, I’ve accepted it.”

“You didn’t deserve to die.” The bitterness was back in my voice, but it wasn’t directed at him this time. He knew that, he knew me too well to think otherwise.

“Nobody deserves to die, Ev. But I’ve made peace with it. It was my time and we all have a purpose.” His eyes were nothing but sincere, he really had made peace with his death.

Another reason why Oliver was a much better person than I was.

I would have been out for revenge.

“And what’s your purpose?”

“I’ve been helping people,” he replied, shrugging like it wasn’t a big deal. “So many kids are dying, they get scared crossing over. I’ve been comforting them to try to make it better. Some are really young, they don’t understand what’s going on.”

“That’s where you’ve been going every day?”

“When I’m not with you, yes.”

My hands twitched, they wanted to reach up and cradle his head so badly. If ever there was a time when I just wanted to hug him and make everything better, it was right now.

But that was never going to happen.

Not now, and not ever.

“Why did you keep coming to see me?” I asked. I needed to know, I needed all the details until my mind stopped spinning. If that was possible anymore.

“I couldn’t leave you.

“Why? Why would you stay for me?” My tears were on the verge of brimming over my eyelids and falling down my cheeks. Even the door wouldn’t hold me up for much longer. Not with the pain in my leg starting to become real again.

“Because I love you, Ev. I’ve always been in love with you from the moment we first met.” His gaze went to the floor, leaving me for the first time since he had shown up. “There was no way I could leave you.”

My heart clenched in my chest. I had been wanting him to say those three little words for so long, and now it was happening, it was nothing but heartbreaking.

I pushed off the door, standing up to my full height in front of him. His attention came back to me, our eyes locking on one another instantly. Those brimming tears were now staining my cheeks, weaving little rivers through the black soot.

“I love you, too,” I said.

I had imagined that moment so many times in my fantasies. I always thought it would be different. That I would jump into Oliver’s arms and he would carry me off into the sunset. We’d find Faith and then live somewhere remote for the rest of our lives, letting the rest of the world fade into nonexistence.

Never in my wildest dreams did I imagine it with Oliver being a ghost.

“I love you,” I started. “And you’re going to have to leave me. You’ll cross over and I’ll be all alone again. I don’t know how I’m going to live without you, Olly. I really don’t.”

The hand he had been fighting to keep at his side came toward me. He brushed my cheek. I didn’t feel the soft warmth of his skin like I should have. It was just a cold breeze, a feeling that would normally send a shiver down my spine.

It didn’t help the tears.

Or the ache deep within my ribcage.

“I’m not going to leave you,” he promised. “I’m always going to be here for you for as long as you need me. I’m not going anywhere without you telling me I can first. Not until you’re ready.”

Not until I’m ready
.

Which implied he would still leave me one day. He was just allowing me to choose the day that a part of me died and disappeared with him.

Was it selfish of me to keep him here?

Chapter Eighteen

A
t Oliver’s insistence, I found a bandage in the medicine cabinet in the bathroom and thoroughly cleaned my leg. There was no cream to put on it so I loosely wrapped the burn and hoped the open wound wouldn’t stick to it too badly.

Agatha had given me a few hints on keeping it clean, the entire time slipping in comments about how I shouldn’t have been in a situation to get burned in the first place.

All I knew was that the minute the burn got an infection, I would be a dead woman walking.

Perhaps that wouldn’t be a bad thing anymore. If I died, that is. I kept that to myself, knowing Oliver wouldn’t want to hear it.

The spirits that had been listening to us earlier were still quiet. If I knew Oliver would be able to make them shut up, I would have invited him in months ago.

Oliver waited for me in the living room, giving me the privacy I needed to collect myself. I found some clothes in the closet before returning to him.

“Is your leg okay?” he asked, staring at me carefully.

“It’ll be fine,” I replied, taking a seat on the sofa. Oliver sat on the floor at my side. Still so painfully close that I could reach him but not touch his skin. He could only sit on the floor, it was the only thing he didn’t go through.

“I’m sorry I couldn’t do anything back in the factory. I wanted to, you have to know that.”

“I do.” I didn’t want to remember what had happened back there. If I could erase it from my memory, I would have done. At least all the black soot was no longer covering my skin, and my clothes no longer smelled like smoke. It was a start.

The first step toward forgetting.

The spirits were filling the room, some lingering by the door. “All these spirits I’ve been seeing, you can see them too, can’t you?” I asked.

“I can.”

“So you know how bad they are, what they do to me.”

He nodded. “I’ve tried talking to them but nobody wants to listen. They want their opportunity to speak with you.”

“They’re a bit pushy,” I said. Despite ourselves, our lips both quirked up into a smile. I repositioned my leg so it was up on the sofa. The bandage didn’t pull that way and the pain wasn’t as bad. I would have killed for a pain relieving pill.

Oliver opened his mouth to speak but closed it again. His brow wrinkled in conflict. He wanted to say something but wasn’t sure if he should. I had seen that look many, many times before.

“Just say it,” I insisted. “Whatever it is, I can take it.”

Except, I wasn’t sure if I could.

He pursed his lips together, as if he could physically stop himself from saying the words he wanted to. A knot formed in my stomach over what it could be.

But I had to know.

“Come on, Olly. Just say it, please. You’re scaring me by keeping it from me.”

He took a breath. “The spirits are trapped here. Nobody can leave.”

Now it was my turn to be completely confused. “What do you mean?”

“Nobody can cross over into the afterlife – whatever is meant to be after this world. That’s why all the spirits want to speak with you. We’re all trapped.”

“But… you can’t be. I saw…” What had I seen? I thought I saw David enter the hereafter but he had turned up again at the shelter.

Besides him, I hadn’t seen one spirit disappear never to be seen again. But I also hadn’t been looking very hard either. Mainly, I had done my best to ignore all the spirits. I assumed some unfinished business was keeping them lingering in limbo. I hadn’t considered they might not be here by choice.

“They’re really trapped?” I said.

Oliver’s brows were knitted together as he explained it to me. “When I… died, I woke up as a spirit as I was leaving my body. There were some adults there, telling me it would be alright if I remained calm. After a few days they started telling me how they had been stuck as ghosts since the Event.”

“So they’re all here? Why can’t I see them all?” I was thinking of my parents, of all the reasons why they hadn’t been around me since they died. Why they didn’t think it was important to return to their daughter.

“They’re all stuck in the spirit world, but they can move anywhere they like on earth. If they don’t know about your… ability, they won’t know to come to you.”

It seemed plausible, but my own parents? Surely they would want to visit me even if they thought I couldn’t see them? What about my grandparents? My aunts? My uncles? Why didn’t any of them care enough to check on me occasionally?

I didn’t voice those fears, they were mine alone to lock away and stalk my nightmares while asleep. I wasn’t going to start to air them in public, not when I was surrounded by gossiping ghosts.

“So what does this all mean?” I asked instead.

Oliver didn’t have a chance to speak before all the spirits watching us chose to speculate. The voices swam around me like a school of fish in the ocean.

“It means we’re never going to get any rest.”

“We’re always going to be here, unable to move on.”

“What is the hereafter, anyway? Maybe it’s not better than here.”

“I didn’t want to go anywhere. I like it here.”

“You’re just scared.”

“Am not. Who wants to die anyway?”

“We are dead, you idiot.”

“I want to go to Heaven. I didn’t go to church every Sunday for nothing. I deserve to cross over.”

“Going to church doesn’t guarantee you entry into Heaven, sweetheart.”

“What’s the girl going to do about it? She’s just a girl.”

“She might be a girl, but she’s strong.”

“I didn’t mean it like that. I meant she’s so young.”

“They’re all young, they’re the only ones left.”

“The boy knows what to do, he seems smart.”

“He knows nothing.”

“He knows more than you.”

I couldn’t take it any longer. As fast as my burned leg could let me hobble, I ran into the kitchen. The familiar strangle I felt before was quickly enveloping me, threatening to take all the air out of the atmosphere.

Leaning over the sink, I drunk straight from the faucet. Afterwards, I splashed some of the ice-cold water on my face. It helped – marginally. At least it drowned out the voices for just a moment. I had forgotten how to tune them all out, not that I was particularly good at it in the first place.

One voice broke through them all. “Everly, I’m really sorry you have to go through all this.”

I laughed, the chuckle of a girl on the edge of insanity. “You’re the one who died and you’re sorry? This is nothing compared to what you’ve gone through.”

“I wish I could stop them,” Oliver said, never averting his gaze from mine. There was no doubt in my mind he was being sincere. He wasn’t lying about this.

He wouldn’t.

Neither would I.

“It’s not up to you to stop them,” I replied. “It’s not your problem.”

“Anything that hurts you is my problem.” He gave me a small smile.

I leaned against the bench, crossing my arms. “What are all the spirits going to do?”

“They need help.”

I knew that look in his eyes but he was wrong. I couldn’t help the spirits even if I wanted to. I didn’t know why they were trapped in some sort of sick purgatory. Let alone begin to know how to find a solution to the problem.

My head was shaking before I realized I was doing it. “I can’t do it, Oliver. I’m not the one to help them.”

“You’re not going to do it alone. I’ll be there every step of the way.”

“But I don’t know where to start.”

“So we’ll figure it out, just like we have always done.” Oliver sounded so sure but I just couldn’t believe him. No matter what pretty words he used.

“Figuring out how to juggle Chem. homework with Sarah Mason’s party is a bit different to this, Olly,” I pointed out. Our problems used to be so much simpler, we’d never tackled something this big before.

It seemed so stupid now to remember how big our problems used to seem.

We didn’t really know what a problem was until the Event.

“We’ve got to try, Ev,” Oliver said, his voice more like a sigh.

I knew what he was saying was true. I knew the spirits needed help to find some kind of eternal peace. They didn’t deserve to be ghosts forever. They hadn’t asked to die and they certainly didn’t ask to be restless spirits for all of eternity.

I also knew it was my duty to do something about it. I was given the ability to see them for a reason. If there was something I had learned, it was that nothing was random in this world. I had an obligation to help wherever I could, this wasn’t something I could merely ignore.

But if I did help them, if the spirits somehow found a way to crossover, what would that mean for Oliver?

He would go, too.

Along with a large chunk of my heart.

It was selfish and horrible. I was a selfish and horrible person for even thinking about it. But I
was
thinking about it. It played on my mind like fingers down a chalkboard. When I thought about being without Oliver, even in spirit form, my chest ached. The pain was so bad I knew it would consume me whole, turning me into something grotesque and shriveled.

Helping the spirits meant I would lose the one man whom I loved more than anything else in the world. I had already lost so much, I couldn’t lose him too.

But it was as inevitable as death itself.

“Everly…”

Tears streaked down my cheeks when I looked up into his beautiful face. He seemed so real, it was so difficult believing he wasn’t alive anymore. In many ways, he was more alive than I was. He still had hope.

I didn’t.

This time, my head was nodding. “Promise me you won’t leave until we say goodbye.”

“I told you, I’m not going to leave until you tell me to.”

A sad smile spread across my lips. “I might never be ready to let you go.”

“Then I’ll stay forever.”

“You promise?”

He held a hand across his heart. “I promise.”

With that same hand, he held it up between us. I took a few cautious steps closer, my own arm rising to be the same height as his.

Carefully and slowly, I moved my hand to rest against his. Perhaps, if we wanted it bad enough, we would be able to feel each other. He could materialize into a solid form so we could forget all about his death.

Surely, the world owed me that.

Our hands met in the air and I held my breath.

I couldn’t feel anything but coldness.

My heart contracted in my chest and I didn’t think the pain could get any worse before that moment. But it did. I wanted to rip out my traitorous heart so I didn’t have to feel anymore. It burned a lot worse than my leg wound.

My eyes flicked up to Oliver’s. His green eyes to my blue ones. He was looking at me with such love that it took some of that pain away.

Perhaps it didn’t matter that we couldn’t touch. I loved Oliver and he loved me. Maybe that was enough for now. He was here and that was the main thing.

“I love you, Ev.”

“I love you, too.” The words choked in my throat but I wasn’t going to cry anymore. It was time to be strong. I trusted Oliver not to leave me, he wouldn’t do that to me.

A promise was a promise.

The nosy spirits still watching us had plenty to say about our declarations of love. The general consensus was that they knew our hearts were going to be broken because a human could not be with a ghost.

But I didn’t care.

I continued to hold my hand against Oliver’s, feeling the cold sensation on my palm and relishing it. The feeling wasn’t the touch of death now, it was a part of Oliver.

A sharp knock on the door interrupted us. The spirits all hurried to the foyer, keen to see who was visiting our refuge. Oliver and I exchanged a worried glance as the knot twisted in my stomach.

Nobody visited me except Oliver. And it definitely wasn’t him. The only people that cared enough to track me down were the gang. They might have traced me, Taz ready to finish what he started with me at the factory.

All I knew for sure was that whoever was on the other side of the door were foe and not friend.

They pounded on the door again, louder this time.

I did not want to answer.