Catch Me When I Fall (11 page)

Seth continued, “I also think you deserve a chance at happiness.”

I dropped my arm. “What?”

“Kayla. Screw the first Law. You broke it anyway.”

“You
want
me to pursue her? You’re insane. Giovanni would have me ‘terminated.’” Which was a nice way of saying he’d end my afterlife.

“I’m your best friend, and I’m looking out for you because I know you’ll wish you
were
dead if you have to spend the next forty or fifty years watching her with some other dude. So, do you wanna take a chance at somethin’ real?”

Something real? It’d never be real. Eventually she’d want something more—someone to grow old with, to start a family with. But Seth had a point. I
wouldn’t
be able to stay away forever. Tonight had made that painfully obvious.

“Did I ever tell you how I died?” Seth asked.

“No. You said you were from Alabama. That’s all.”

“Yeah. I was at the bank. My girl worked there as a teller, and I was visiting before work. The bank got held up and the bastard put a gun at my girl’s head. She starts crying, filling the bags with money and starin’ at me like she wished I wasn’t there to see this. But there I stood, watching her, knowing I couldn’t stand by and see her be treated like that. I jumped him. Took a bullet to the chest, but damn it, I took him down. I wasn’t letting him hurt the one girl I cared about most in the world.”

To be a Catcher, one must have sacrificed his life for the sake of others. Seth’s story made my chest tighten. He died to save the woman he loved. There was no sacrifice greater.

“Look, I know you ain’t ‘in love’ yet or whatever, but you could be. And then all this”—he opened his dark arms wide—“would have meaning again.”

For seconds I stared at him, lost for words. I doubted Kayla would do anything but scream her head off when she saw me again. Was she worth dying for?

I sighed. “What’s the plan?”

This was a stupid plan.

Dressed in dark jeans and a blue dress shirt, I evaporated into Kayla’s room. She lay on her bed, a book propped against her knees. After taking a deep breath, I walked through the wall to stand outside her room. Then I snuck down the hall, corporeal, and grabbed a “visitor” badge off the nurses’ station when they weren’t looking. I clipped the I.D. to the pocket of my shirt and returned to Kayla’s doorway, letting out a deep sigh.

“I should never have let Seth talk me into this.” I knocked once like the nurses did and opened the door.

Kayla jumped off her bed with a yelp, holding her pencil out toward me like a sword. “You! I thought I imagined you!”

I held my hands up. “My name’s Daniel Graham. I’m not going to hurt you.”

“Get out of my room right now before I call the nurses and have you arrested!” She moved toward the button on her bed.

“Kayla—”

She pressed the button. “Please, I think I’m seeing things. I need—”

Grabbing her wrist, I pulled her hand off the button before she could continue. “Hey, look at me. You’re not seeing things.” I put her hand on my cheek. “See? I’m real.”

She snatched her hand away as the door opened. I forced myself to stay visible, not wanting Kayla to continue thinking she was imagining me. Maybe she’d believe I was real once the nurse verified my existence.

The nurse gasped. “Who are you? What are you doing here?”

Kayla’s eyes widened.
Good.

I held up my hands. “I’m a friend from high school. Just visiting. We pressed the button by accident. Sorry.”

The nurse, seeing my visitor badge, calmed. She frowned at Kayla. “Well don’t push it again unless you really need something.” The nurse left the room with a scowl on her face.

Kayla stepped away from me. “But last night… last night you were here. I swear you were here.” Her eyes glistened.

I pursed my lips together before speaking. “I was. But it’s not what you’re thinking.”

She stepped away from me, her face pale. “So you
were
watching me while I slept? What kind of sick monster are you?”

My stomach tightened. This was going so badly. “No, nothing like that. I’m—”
Damn it. I might as well say it.
“I’m your Dreamcatcher. Everybody has one.”

“My
what
?” She reached for the call button again.

“Dreamcatcher. Each of us is assigned to someone to watch over them while they sleep and protect them from Nightmares.”

She gaped. “This is insane.” Kayla sat on her bed with a whimper and closed her eyes. “Oh god, you’re still there,” she said when she opened them again.

“I promise I’m real. Even your nurse saw me.”

A tear rolled down her face. I paused, racking my brain for a way I could get her to believe me. No matter what lie I could come up with today, eventually the complete truth would make itself known, and then I’d be in worse shape than I was now. Getting it all out on the table now was important, and either she’d believe me or she wouldn’t.

“Okay, I’ll show you. Does this building have Wi-Fi?”

“I don’t know. Probably.”

“Good. Don’t move.” I evaporated back to my flat, grabbed my laptop off my desk, and then evaporated again to her room. Kayla jumped when I re-appeared and clutched her stomach.

Okay, maybe disappearing and reappearing wasn’t such a good idea.

“Here.” I handed her the computer. She stared at the laptop like it was a bomb ready to explode. Sighing, I nodded toward the bed. “May I sit?”

When Kayla didn’t say anything, I sat anyway. She stiffened but didn’t move.
That’s one step in the right direction, I suppose
. I typed in the address to my favorite ancestry site—a site I knew housed England’s records—and pulled up my family’s.

The page displayed both certificates of birth and certificates of death. And underneath was a family portrait, scanned in by whoever owned the painting now. When I turned the screen so she could see, Kayla’s eyes scanned the picture until she found what I wanted her to see. Me.

She pointed at the portrait. “Wait, you’re not… this isn’t… is this you?”

I nodded. “That’s me in 1812. It’s the last family portrait we had painted before my brothers and I left for the war.”

She pressed the back of her hand against her forehead. “Okay. So, now you’re telling me not only are you real, but you’re dead? And you were born in”—she looked at the screen—”1797?”

“Yes.”

Kayla shot up and paced, her hands shaking at her sides. “Oh god. Ghosts are real.”

“We’re not ghosts. They’re different. They don’t still have their bodies.”

She whimpered again. “That doesn’t make me feel any better. Wait, does this mean there
are
other supernatural creatures out there?”

“I wouldn’t worry about that.” Just about every story about a supernatural creature was grounded in something real, but I wasn’t going to tell her
that
.

She gripped her stomach. “So, you stand guard over me while I sleep and protect me from nightmares. Like, you invade my mind and stop them from happening?”

“No. They’re actual creatures. Contrary to scientific belief, a Nightmare isn’t developed in the human brain. They’re the result of demonic creatures that grab hold of you while you sleep and force the images into your head.”

Kayla stared at me, her eyes wide and her face pale. Then, to my surprise, she covered her mouth and laughed. “Oh my god. This is insane.” She paced the room again. “I’m crazy. I have to be crazy.”

“You’re not crazy.”

“Only crazy people have randomly appearing people telling them they’re not crazy. I am definitely crazy.”

“Stop saying that word.”

Her eyes squinted, as if she was sizing me up. Then she grabbed a pastel off her rocking chair and chucked the crayon at me. I caught it, and her eyes widened again.

She held up her pointer finger, opening then closing her mouth. My eyebrow raised.

“First,” she said, “you have freakishly good reflexes. Second, if I was imagining you, that would’ve gone through to the wall, right?”

“Yes.” I set the pastel on the bed.

Slowly, she walked across the room and poked me, hard, in the chest. I rolled my eyes when hers widened. What would it take for her to believe me?

“Okay, let’s say I believe you,” she said, backing away. “Then, no offense, but you’ve done a pretty crappy job of protecting me.”

“Well, I have only been your Catcher for a few days.”

“Yeah, and last night was probably one of the worst ones I ever had.” Her eyes flicked from me to the floor then back to me, filling with tears.

She might as well have kicked me in the stomach.

This had been a mistake. I never should’ve attempted to be anything other than I was—a spirit. “You’re right. Last night was brutal, and I wasn’t able to keep you safe. I simply wanted you to know that I was the one responsible and to apologize for the fright my misstep gave you. I promise you’ll never hear from me again.” I stood.

She stepped toward me before I had the chance to evaporate. “No, don’t leave.” Her face whitened. Was she afraid to be alone?

Kayla wiped her forehead with the back of her hand. “I’m sorry if I insulted you. I’m just not used to… you know.”

“What?”

“Knowing that something I’d seen was actually real.”

I shifted my weight, aching to tell her how she
had
burned her attacker alive and how she was not a loon, but the words wouldn’t come out. It felt like too much after all I’d shared already.

Kayla watched me like she was trying to put together a puzzle. Her eyes framed with red, and I stared into them, lost in the sunlight glow of the gold around her pupils.

“So, you said
everyone
has one of you?” she asked.

I nodded, her voice breaking me out of my stupor. The really evil humans, like Jeffrey Dahmer didn’t, but there was no point in getting into technicalities.

“And you’re usually invisible?”

Again, I nodded. “We can choose to show ourselves, but our battles with the Nightmares are on the other side of the veil.”

“On the other side of the what now?”

“The veil. It’s like a curtain that separates the living world from the dead. If you have the power—like me—you can go from one side to the other.”

Her eyes widened again. Any more talk of dead things and I was going to scare her away for sure.

“Look,” I said, “I need to meet up with the other two Dreamcatchers who will be with me tonight. But, can I meet you for lunch tomorrow? Maybe we could eat in the garden?”

She bit her lip and gripped the hem of her shirt. “Um… yeah, I guess that would be okay.”

I nodded once. “Cheers, then.”

“But do me a favor and sign in at the desk downstairs as one of my friends from high school? I don’t want word getting around that I sneak boys into my room.” Then, to my surprise, she smiled.

I couldn’t help but return the gesture. “As you wish.”

atching was easy that night. Bartholomew finally cleared Tabbi to return to work, and I watched her pull memories of
Veronica Mars
episodes out of Kayla’s head. Tabbi weaved together Kayla’s very own episode of sleuthing alongside Veronica, laughing at inside jokes and stopping a criminal mastermind. She looked so blissful.