Beyond (Afterlife book 1) (7 page)

I nodded; it made sense.

Mick took his plate and got up from his
seat. He leaned toward me while talking in a low voice. “Try to
enjoy your time here. You will get to the rest soon enough. Just be
patient,” he said and pushed his chair back in its place. He left
us with a “See you.”

He had barely left before someone far less
friendly turned up. It was Portia flanked by Acacia and
Mai.

“
Talking to the maid, are we?”
she asked.

I sighed. “What do you want
Portia?”

She sat down at the table with her two
friends next to her. She leaned over and whispered. “Some of us are
going out tonight,” she said with a low voice.

“
You can’t,” I said
shaking my head. “They lock the doors and windows at night and none
of us are good enough to go through brick walls or double-glassed
windows yet.”

Portia smirked. I knew at that moment she
had something planned, and it wasn’t good.

“
I have found a way out,”
she whispered.

“
Oh no, Portia, you will
just get in trouble.”

She looked at me with contempt. “I forgot,
you’re the teachers’ pet,” she said while her two friends giggled
next to her.

“
Well if it keeps me out
of trouble, then yes I am.”

“
Don’t you want to see
what it is like to be near humans?”

I have to admit I was tempted. But I
pretended not to be.

“
No. Why?”

Portia smiled. Her green eyes lit up.

“
Portia has learned something,”
Acacia said. “A friend from the second year told her how to mess
with the humans.”

“
Mess with humans,
but—?”

“
They told us a lot of cool
stuff,” Mai interrupted me. “Like how to move things around in
their houses so they get all confused and uh … uh … how to go into
their flat-screen TVs. They have done it a million times. And they
get in their computers as well. They mess up everything. It is so
awesome!”

I was stunned. Where did all this come
from? “But that is not our purpose! That is not what we
do!”

Portia rolled her eyes. “Told you she
would be boring.”

The two other girls nodded.

“
I will go!”

I closed my eyes. It was Abhik.

“
No you won’t,” I said. “You
heard what Mick said. It’s too dangerous.”

Abhik looked at me.

“
I have been doing nothing all
of my life. I need to do something. I need to go on an
adventure.”

I looked him in his eyes.

“
Please don’t do this,” I
said.

“
I am going no matter if
you come with us or not.”

I sighed deeply. I couldn’t let him go
alone.“Then I guess we will all go.”

Chapter 8

“I can’t believe you are going with
them!”

I was sitting on my bed alone with
Jackline, the only other girl in our dormitory. She looked at me
like I was the one who had come up with the whole idea.

“
You are going to get in so much
trouble for this,” she said while shaking her head. That was when I
realized for the first time that she was wearing a camouflage
uniform. It was covered with bloodstains. I felt a stab in my
heart. She had been a child soldier when she died, I thought. It
was weird that I hadn’t noticed before, but we hadn’t been spending
much time together since Jackline kept mostly to
herself.

She saw me staring at her.

“
See anything you like?”
She asked with a harshness to her voice.

I shook my head.

“
No, I am sorry. It is
just this thing tonight …”

“
So why are you going
there anyway?”

“
I need to go to keep an
eye on Abhik and help him if he gets into some kind of
trouble.”

“
He can take care of
himself.”

“
I’m not so sure about that,” I
said.

At that moment Portia stepped into the room
still flanked by her two friends Acacia and Mai.

“
We leave as soon as the
lights are out and everybody has fallen asleep,” she said. “Abhik
will meet us in the common room.”

Later I lay awake listening to Jackline
breathe deeply. I had been wanting to ask Mick for advice but
didn’t dare. What if he told some teacher or, even worse, Rahmiel
and Salathiel with whom he seemed pretty close? Now I regretted not
talking to him about it. After all, he had been to the human world
as a spirit before. None of us had. We had no idea what it was
like. I kept thinking about what we had learned in our self-defense
class. Hjalte Havskäg had told us the Se’irims wanted to come after
us and try to lure us on their side. Were we an easier target when
we were away from the school?

I sighed deeply and stared out the window.
The full moon shone and made everything bright outside.

“
It is time. They are all
asleep,” Portia whispered in the darkness of the room. “We’d better
go now.”

We rose from our beds and began to float
through the room. Jackline kept sleeping heavily as we left the
room in the tower. We went downstairs into the common room where
Abhik sat waiting for us. He got up and looked at us with
anticipation.

“
Are you ready for this?”
Portia asked with a harsh voice.

Abhik nodded eagerly. Too eagerly if you ask
me.

“
Okay, listen. There is a
mirror in the cellar, next to our Transitions classroom. Not many
in this school know this, but it is a two-way-mirror. That means we
can go through it and enter immediately into the world of the
humans.”

“
But where do we end up?”
I asked.

“
That is the beauty of it. We
don’t know. I heard about it from the second-year students. They
told me that you can go right through it and it will take you
different places.”

“
That sounds a bit
dangerous. Not knowing where we will end up,” I said
anxiously.

Portia rolled her eyes at me.

“
No one is forcing you to go.
Stay here if you are scared,” she said, knowing that it would make
me want to go even more. Just to show her.

“
Come on,” she
said.

The cellar was scary enough without the
dripping sounds and the long shadows creeping along the walls. I
had only been there during the day for Transitions class, and even
then it was a creepy place. Maybe it was just Mrs. Ohayashi and her
narrow eyes that were always looking at me, but I really hated
being down here.

We flitted along the rocky corridors of
the cellar and edged along the walls, keeping our eyes on every
door and wall we passed, hoping that no teacher would suddenly come
through it. At every corner we took, I expected to find Mrs.
Ohayashi waiting for us. But she wasn’t there. Portia found a small
path leading even further down into a small room with low
ceilings.

There was nothing in the room except a
body-sized mirror at the end. It was lit up but there were no other
lights in the room. The magnificent mirror had a frame plated with
gold, with small sculptures of praying Angels all around. It was
quite striking.

We all stopped and stared at it in awe.

“
It is beautiful,” Acacia
said reaching out to touch the frame.

Portia pushed herself in front of it. The
mirror showed nothing but the empty cellar room, since we as
spirits had no reflection.

“
I will go first,” she
said.

“
How do we know if we all
will go to the same place?” Mai asked.

“
Adrian, who told me where to
find it, said it stays tuned in to the same spot for quite awhile.
Sometimes even months at a time.”

“
What is it used for?” I
asked.

Portia looked at me. “Why should we
care?”

Portia didn’t even wait for my answer before
she put the palm of her hand on the mirror and it went straight
through. With a small gasp she pulled it back.

My heart was racing. Not because I had to
go through the mirror. We had all gone through mirrors in class. It
was one of the easier tasks, although I had a tendency to get a
hand or a foot stuck in it. But it was mostly because I was scared
of what was waiting on the other side. It could, after all, be
leading us to a dangerous place. Who knows, maybe that second-year
student was only pulling our leg?

“
I will go through and
make sure the coast is clear,” Portia said. “Everybody will wait
for me here.”

Portia didn’t even think about it twice. She
took one look at the rest of us who were all staring at her.

“
See ya!” she said before
she stepped out toward the mirror and disappeared into
it.

We all gasped with excitement. And then we
waited. It felt like an eternity, but still no sign of Portia. I
felt a little anxious. After all not one of us knew anything about
where she had gone.

“
Do you think she will
ever come back?” Acacia asked nervously. “Oh no, what if she
doesn’t? We will get in trouble for this, I just know
it.”

Abhik looked at me with fear in his
eyes.

“
It will be okay, don’t
worry,” I whispered to him.

Acacia was still rambling on. “What if she
met one of those … dark creatures, those … Se’irims … what if she …
how will we explain that?”

“
Maybe we should go before
anyone knows we were here …” Mai started but never
finished.

She was interrupted by Portia who suddenly
stuck her head out through the mirror and stared at us with her
green eyes.

“
Boo!”

Acacia and Mai jumped. Portia laughed.

“
Ha! You should’ve seen
your faces. You look like you have seen a ghost. Ha, ha,
ha!”

“
It is not funny,” Acacia said.
“We thought something had happened to you. Something really
bad.”

“
Pah,” said Portia. “You
were just afraid you would get caught.”

She was right; that had been the two
girls’ only concern when they thought their friend wouldn’t come
back. For once I agreed with Portia.

“
What took you so long?”
Abhik asked.

“
I had to check everything
out and make sure that there was nothing for you chickens to be
afraid of. And now I have. You are safe to go. What are you waiting
for? Come on!”

Portia’s head disappeared again through the
mirror. We were all staring at each other before Abhik stepped
forward.

“
I will go next,” he
said.

I looked at him. “You sure you want this?”
I asked.

He nodded while staring with determination
into the big empty mirror in front of him.

“
The little sick boy is
gone, Meghan. I feel more alive than ever. Kind of ironic isn’t
it?”

I had to admit it was. Here he stood in
front of a mirror that didn’t show his reflection and in a way it
manifested that he had ceased to exist. But yet he was next to me
and so full of life. I had felt that way lately too, like this was
only the beginning.

“
Then go,” I smiled. “I
will follow you.”

Abhik smiled at me before he put both his
hands on the mirror and pressed them through. Soon the rest of his
body followed and he was gone.

I took in a couple of big breaths and
stepped in front of the mirror. I had to hurry up. For all I knew
Portia could have gotten Abhik into trouble already.

I put my palms on the mirror, exhaled deeply
and pressed my body through. I had no time to think or be worried
that I would get stuck like in the classroom, and therefore I went
straight through.

I felt like my body was ripped to pieces and
put back together again on the other side. I came out of a mirror
and tumbled onto the floor.

Portia stood right in front of me.

“
Quite the entrance,” she
said with a smile.

I caught my breath and got on my legs
again. It still drained my energy to go through solid objects. I
wondered if I would ever get used to it like other spirits who did
this all the time.

“
Are you all right?” Abhik
asked.

“
I will be,” I said and
looked around. We seemed to be in a bathroom.

“
Where are we?” I
asked.

Portia hushed me.

“
We are in a human house,”
she whispered. “The mirror led us into a human
bathroom.”

“
Who is living here? Are
they out there now?”

Portia shook her head.

“
They are all sleeping. I
checked.”

“
Okay, so the important part is
not to wake anyone up. How many are they? And where are
they?”

“
There’s a woman in the bedroom.
Her husband has fallen asleep downstairs in front of the TV. And
then a son is sleeping in his room next to the woman’s room,”
Portia said.

“
Okay, so all we have to make
sure is—” I didn’t get any further before Portia interrupted
me.

“
Here comes another one! Move
over!” she said motioning that I needed to move aside.