Hereafter (19 page)

Eli shrugged, not fooling me with his forced nonchalance. “According to Melissa, she’d been someplace . . . else. Better. She asked me to go with her, but I refused. There’s too much for me here. I’m too important. I’m
obeyed
here.”

The prideful glint returned to his eyes, sparkling with an almost unnerving intensity. I could read his thoughts perfectly in those eyes: Eli was obsessed with this place. He would do anything his masters asked, capture and command any soul, to retain his supposed power.

“What happened to Melissa after that?” I asked carefully.

Eli sneered. “She vanished for the last time. I haven’t seen her since, not that I’d want to.”

As he spat out the final words, his lips curled into a snarl. He now looked savage, almost feral. But I saw human emotions skirting the edges of his mouth and his eyes. Buried beneath his sneer were desolation and deep, profound loneliness.

Lost in thought, I ran my fingertips in circles on the strange moss beneath me. So many details from Eli’s story were important. So many things cast light upon what I was, and what kind of choices I had.

But another aspect of his story saddened me—the part of it that had absolutely nothing to do with me. Because, however much I might dislike him, I couldn’t ignore an important theme in his narrative: despite Eli’s fervor for this world and its dark imperative, he didn’t want to be alone.

Seeing the misery in his face, I felt another surge of pity for him. I felt the strangest compulsion to help him, to pull him out of his mood, so I asked the only diversionary question I could think of.

“You kind of implied that you moved on after Melissa disappeared for the last time. So, what did you do next?”

His eyes flitted up to mine, and the ghost of his old smirk twitched at the corners of his lips.

“Well, I found myself another pretty assistant.”

“Me, right?”

Eli nodded slowly, still smirking.

“So, what did you do: find me after I died and decide you wanted me to help you?”

“No, Amelia.” His grin widened into something foreign and slightly wild. “I chose you
before
you died.”

Chapter
Twenty-one

I
felt my vision narrow to a black pinpoint and then expand uncomfortably.

“You were there when I died?”

Eli moved suddenly, lurching off the tree branch toward me. His eyes were fierce, once again filled with that fervor. He spoke in a dizzying rush of words.

“I was, Amelia. I was there when you died, but I didn’t wake you up like I did Melissa. I didn’t even take you into the darkness like I do all the other souls. Don’t you see what that means? Don’t you see what I’ve done for you? I let you escape for a while. I allowed you your freedom. And you owe me for it.”

Eli grasped for my hand, but I yanked it out of his reach. I couldn’t think, couldn’t breathe. Yet, somehow, I forced the words from my lips.

“What do you mean, you were ‘there’? How . . . how long were you there?”

“Just like with Melissa, I was there even before you fell,” he said with a tender smile that made me go cold. “I saw you hit the water and go unconscious. I saw your eyes open and saw you struggle against the current. And later I heard your heart stop. After the last beat, though, I left. I couldn’t let you see me. I had to materialize somewhere else so your death would have meaning.”

“Meaning? What meaning?” I stared at him, enthralled and horrified.

“Obviously, something went wrong with Melissa, otherwise I’d still have her. I had to behave differently with you in order to keep you. If I woke you up immediately, like I did with Melissa, then you might miss the significance of my mercy in letting you be my assistant; you’d have remembered your life, maybe even missed it. So you had to experience the fog to truly appreciate when I brought you out of it.”

The image of Joshua’s face flashed into my mind again.

“But you didn’t bring me out of it,” I whispered.

Eli smiled widely, his expression suddenly animated. “No, I didn’t. I didn’t even need to. You did it yourself.”

I shook my head, uncomprehending.

“I was on High Bridge last week, waiting for a new soul to acquire,” Eli explained, “when I saw you in the river beneath me. Just as a car approached, you started to flail, distracting the driver so I could spook him into the water.”

I nearly gagged.

Joshua. Eli was talking about Joshua, and his car accident.

“You . . . you did what?” I finally managed to gasp.

“No,
we
did something. Together,” Eli said with an excited gleam in his eyes. “Like a team. I mean, we obviously weren’t successful, since I saw the boy make it out of the water. But even so, I watched you follow him, still trying to go in for the kill.”

Eli beamed as if his misinterpretation of my actions actually made him
proud
of me. “You were a natural, Amelia. A perfect lure.”

My head swam, and I had the strangest suspicion that I might just pass out if I didn’t keep it together.

So . . . what? Eli thought I’d intentionally lured Joshua off High Bridge when I was really just reliving my death in the river? And then, while encouraging Joshua to swim for safety, Eli thought I’d actually been exhibiting some innate signs of evil?

I had to remind myself to focus on the most important detail of this revelation: all along, the real watcher—the real villian—had been Eli himself.

The thought of Eli playing an active role in Joshua’s accident made me reimagine my own death scene, inserting Eli’s figure above the greenish black swells of the river. Eli, watching me choke and struggle, grinning his arrogant grin. Perhaps a crowd of black shapes at the periphery, watching him watch me.

The reimagining made my death seem even more horrible, if that were possible. But really, I shouldn’t have been surprised, considering what he’d just told me about his role in Melissa’s death.

“You said . . . you s-saw my death too,” I stuttered, swallowing back the great wave of rage that threatened to pour out of me. I had to. It was the only way I could learn about my death, from the only person—the only creature—who had witnessed it. “Did I jump, like you did? Or did I fall, like Melissa?”

He raised one pale eyebrow. “You don’t remember?”

I simply shook my head.

Unexpectedly, Eli sat back upon the curve of the tree. The hint of fanaticism left his eyes, and the familiar smirk crawled across his face. Now I could see the expression for what it really was: the look of someone who believes he holds all the cards.

“Maybe I’ll tell you about your death someday,” he said. He leaned forward and traced his narrow fingers across the air above my cheek. “But I want that to remain a mystery for now. So you’ll understand how much you need me.”

I shuddered and then jerked away as if he’d tried to touch me with a branding iron.

“I’ll never ‘need’ you again, Eli,” I growled.

Eli’s smirk vanished. “What do you mean, Amelia? We’ve been called together. We’re fated.”

“We. Are. Not. Fated.” I pronounced each word carefully, individually, so he couldn’t miss my meaning.

“But I . . . I saved you,” he sputtered.

That one word—“saved”—demolished whatever small amount of self-control had been holding back my fury. I flattened my hands against the ground and shoved myself up into a standing position.

“
Saved
me?” I screamed. “You didn’t save me! You did the exact opposite of saving. I know for a fact that you could have helped me. You could have done something before my heart stopped. But you didn’t. You let me die.”

Eli started to speak, but I went on, furious and loud.

“I don’t care if it was part of your supposed ‘mission.’ Because that’s not all you did to me. Even after your sick part in my death, you didn’t stop there. You’ve been waiting the whole time I wandered lost and scared, ready to pounce on me. All because your masters told you I could be yours?”

“Amelia, I—”

“And I bet you didn’t try to ‘save’ my father, did you?” I cut him off with a growl, my rage growing. “I bet you threw him into this forest with all your other victims.”

Eli had the audacity to look confused. “Your father?”

“Spare me.” I laughed. “You can’t pretend to be innocent any longer. And I couldn’t care less about whatever grand plans you had for our future. Oh, pardon me—my future. Whatever your plans are, they have nothing to do with
my
future at all.”

“Our future,” he snarled, the tenderness now absent from his voice.

“No. My future.”

It was now Eli’s turn to jump to his feet.

“You’re mine!” he shouted into my face. His hand shook violently as he reached for me, but I took two quick steps backward.

I didn’t even take a last look at him before I spun around on my bare heel and ran into the woods. I had no idea where my feet led me, nor did I care. I only cared that my feet slid across the icy purple moss with a speed they’d never shown before.

Unfortunately, no matter how fast or how far I ran, the sinister landscape around me never seemed to change. I kept passing what looked like the same mangled shrubs, the same glittering trees.

As I ran, I saw other things too: dark shapes in the forest, flitting among the trunks and branches like wild animals following my path. Maybe I was so scared I’d begun to hallucinate, but I could swear the shapes had
faces
. Human faces, watching me run through the woods but not moving to stop me.

Were these the lost souls, biding their time until Eli gave them the order to attack? Was my father among them, watching me too? Part of me wanted to stop and hunt for him, but another part kept my legs moving, dragging me forward in terror.

Then, at the moment I was about to give in to full panic, the gray began to shimmer and shift. Like some massive drape over a theater set, the dark netherworld floated and fell away until I stood, panting, in the middle of the sun-filled woods of the living world.

Something about a hundred yards ahead caught my eye. I squinted and realized it was the river, glinting orange in what looked to be the late-afternoon sun.

I started running again, moving as though my very existence depended upon my speed. When I crested the hill above the river and stepped onto the asphalt of High Bridge Road, I paused only long enough to say a prayer.

“Please, God,” I begged aloud. “If you like me at all, please, please, show me the way back to the Mayhews’ house. I could really use the help.”

I nodded once for an amen and then tore off again down the road.

My sense of direction would be the death of me. Metaphorically, at least.

By sunset I’d made one too many wrong turns, and my confidence unraveled a little more with each inch the sun dipped below the horizon.

At last, at the end of what felt like the hundredth road, I saw the front porch of an unmistakable house. I raced down its driveway toward the backyard, my feet flying over gravel. But as I left the gravel and crossed onto the grass, I found the Mayhews’ backyard empty and dark. All the lanterns, now unlit, looked gray in the night. No light shined from the back windows of the house, nor did Joshua wait for me on the darkened porch. I slumped against the trunk of a cottonwood, exhausted and defeated.

“Amelia?”

The hushed voice came from somewhere farther back into the yard, away from the porch.

“Joshua?” I whispered. I heard a tiny click, and a small circle of light appeared more than fifty feet behind the house. Within the circle was Joshua, standing in the entrance of the gazebo I’d noticed the first night he’d brought me here.

Without another sound I was running across the back lawn, leaping up the gazebo steps, and throwing myself into his arms, all before Joshua could even move.

After only a second’s hesitation, he pulled me to him, wrapping one hand around the nape of my neck and weaving his fingers through my hair. Just like when we’d kissed, I could feel it all: his arm around my waist, his fingers against my skin.

“Thank God you’re here. It’s late. I was worried . . . ,” he murmured. He lowered his head to my neck and ran his lips across the skin just below my jaw, all but igniting a fire there.

“I’m sorry. I’m so sorry,” I panted. “It took forever to do what I had to do, and then I couldn’t find your house. I think I walked down about a million wrong driveways.”

Joshua chuckled—a rough, low sound that reverberated off the base of my throat.

“You’re not mad at me for kind of disappearing again, are you?” I asked hesitantly.

Joshua shook his head, the tip of his nose brushing across the soft skin of my neck. “No. God, no. I’m sorry about the other day, I really am. I was so stupid. If I’d just taken the time to think about what you are, and what you have to go through—”

“No!” I cut him off. “Don’t blame yourself! It was my fault, too. I could have—”

Now it was his turn to interrupt me by moving his lips to my ear. “Let’s just agree to make it up to each other, okay?” he whispered.

“I could live with that,” I whispered back.

Joshua’s fingers ran slowly up and down my spine, and I held him more tightly, relishing the tingles that seemed to have found their way over every inch of my skin. The sensation obscured every other thought in my head, made me trail off as I said, “You know, I really have so much to tell you about today. . . .”

“I want to hear it all, I do,” he said fervently, pulling his head back and looking into my eyes.

In this position—one of his hands still woven through my hair and the other wrapped around my waist, both of my arms thrown around his neck and our bodies pressed together—our lips were only inches apart.

We must have noticed this fact at the same moment, because we simultaneously began to tremble. Joshua’s breath sped; and I could actually feel it, warm and soft, on my lips. Our eyes were still locked, and I started to feel a little dizzy.

“I . . . I still want to kiss you,” he whispered hoarsely.

“Me, too.”

“Can I . . . ? Can we . . . ?”

“I think so,” I nodded. “I just really have to concentrate, so I don’t disappear.”

Joshua’s fingers tightened in my hair, and he pulled my face closer to his.

“Concentrate, then,” he murmured, and pressed his lips to mine.

Just as it had before, our kiss threatened to melt every part of my body. Waves of hydrogen-fueled flames unfurled like petals in my brain.

But this time I paid close attention to more than just my passion. When I felt the blackness creep along the edges of my joy and when a tiny place in my core felt as though something were tugging on it with an invisible string, I fought back. I anchored myself to the present, holding on to Joshua and concentrating on the immediate feel of his mouth.

I didn’t disappear. I didn’t sink into the water. Instead, I kissed Joshua back, more ferociously than I could have imagined possible. I parted my lips and moved them against his, breathing him in, almost tasting him.

Eventually, we had to stop so he could breathe. We reluctantly pulled away but stayed pressed against each other.

“That was amazing,” Joshua panted.

Even if I’d wanted to speak loudly, I couldn’t. I could only whisper, “That was—”

“Beautiful,” a voice spat from behind us.

Still wrapped in each other’s arms, Joshua and I whirled around to face the same spot in the black tree line. The speaker remained invisible, hidden by the darkness.

“Who the hell . . . ?” Joshua began, but I already knew the answer.

“Eli,” I said flatly.

“Who’s Eli?” Joshua asked, turning back to me.

“My errand this morning.”

“Oh, I’m an errand, am I?” Eli stepped out of the shadows, his skin oddly bright against the black of the night.

“That’s far more than you deserve,” I said through clenched teeth. “And you know it.”

“I know no such thing,” he hissed.

“How did you follow me without me knowing?”

“I stayed far enough behind you. Then, at the right moment, I materialized.”

“I told you to leave me alone.”

“And I do not now, nor will I ever, take instructions from you.” As Eli continued to walk forward, the dead white of his skin left traces of light in the darkness around him.