I'd Rather Not Be Dead (32 page)

Biting my lip, I watch Ricky
pathetically yank the other me along the ground in a series of
short bursts and try to think through what I've learned since he
arrived. The late Mrs Woodman isn't in Shadow. Yet Ricky honestly
believes he's been in touch with her. He could simply be crazy, but
I think Fray would have diagnosed it instead of going enigmatic on
me.

Fray said Ricky thinks his mom
is an angel, not that she is one. He then said she wasn't in
Shadow. So I'll toss out the notion that Ricky is talking to
someone who he thinks is his mom, but it isn't her. He's sure she
told him not just to bring me here, but how things would go down
once he did. Which might mean she was lying, but could mean she can
see events before they happen.

“Elza?” I whisper.

Fray stays silent, but his head
waves up and down.

Elza. She came across a grieving
child who had lost his mother and she subverted his desperation to
have his mom back. Either whatever magic allowed her to be seen by
someone who can't see other ghosts let her alter her appearance or
she came up with a way to explain to Ricky that her face might have
changed, but she was still Mommy on the inside.

Then she convinced him Mommy
really, really wanted him to drug a girl from school, drag her out
into the middle of nowhere, and “save” her. What's going to happen
to Ricky when he finds out how badly he's been duped? Do you get
over that kind of thing or does it just drive you crazy?

Squaring his shoulders, Ricky
gives TOM a tight, sad, smile and latches hold under her shoulders.
My pants scrape along the ground, through leaves and dirt and
rocks. They're probably ruined.

TOM's head lulls with the
jerking of her body. It yanks to the side a few times as her eyes
slit open. She's definitely awake, but she's saving her energy or
waiting for her captor to get distracted rather than trying to
battle him just yet.

“When do we barge in?” I ask
Fray.

He gives my head one last pat
and starts to stroll slowly after the pair without answering.

“Fray,” I call after him, having
to say his name twice before I get him to acknowledge me enough to
stop walking. “I'm sorry.”

With great deliberation, he
turns to look back at me.

“I got paranoid for a few
minutes. I'm sorry.”

His eyes track me as I cross to
him.

“I trust you,” I tell him. “But
I was thrown off by the sociopath who appeared out of nowhere to
point out things you really shouldn't have been hiding from
me.”

Fray lets out a long breath.
Light bounces off of his hair as he moves his head from side to
side. Under the sun, reds flare up like licks of flame. “I'm not
angry, Drew. I'm sad.”

My shoulders slump and my eyes
go off to the distance. If he goes on to say he's disappointed in
me, I need to decide if I'm going to curl up into a wad of misery
or bellow until my screams echo off the mountains for eternity.

“I'm going to miss you,” he
whispers.

Looking up at him again, I get a
glimpse past the wall he has up to hide his emotions and the
feeling I see is grief.

He'll still be able to see me if
I live today. At least for as long as I'm willing to stay in Pine
Ridge. Which might not be too long if I don't remember I've almost
started liking it. Or at least liking some of the people. But even
if I remember the last month with perfect clarity, I'm going to
lose Fray. I'll know he's there. I'll be able to talk to him if I
want. But I'll never know what he wants to say back. And
self-centered twit that I am, I hadn't even realized it before.

My friend hugs me tight. “I'll
miss you,” he repeats. “And if you remember any of this, I want you
to remember I'll be looking out for you as best I can. No matter
what.”

Tears stream from my eyes as I
bury my face against his shoulder and hug him back. “You're the
best big brother I never had.”

He laughs softly. “I'll pretend
I think that's a compliment.”

“Do that.”

We trade an extra squeeze and
shuffle apart.

Fray runs his hands over my
cheeks, smearing the moisture into my skin. “No tears, luv. We're
going to get you your happily ever after.”

I nod, wishing we could grab one
for him while we're at it.

Snaring my fingers with his,
Fray pulls me into a trot, quickly catching us up to the other me
and her kidnapper. Ricky's made it most of the way to the pool now.
He alternates between saying smoothing things to TOM and calling
for his mother's attention.

“Where's Elza?” I ask Fray, who
shakes his head and shrugs. “She's invested a lot of time in this,
shouldn't she be here?”

“She'll be here.”

But she isn't now. Because I'm
not the one she cares about, am I? It doesn't matter to her if I
live or die. Not really. The only reason she wanted me dead was she
knew it would rip Finn to shreds. And that's where she is, watching
him. Getting high off his pain and desperation.

“He's fine,” Fray says, breaking
into my thoughts a second before I decide I need to go look out for
Finn.

“You sure?”

His nods firmly. “She'll want
him to see your death.”

“Hmm.” Yeah. What would hurt
Finn worse than going into school Monday morning and learning
through gossip the girl he'd secretly loved was dead? Letting her
spirit go back and tell him he could stop it, then having him fail.
If I die today, he's a lot more messed up than he would have been
before. No way Elza's going to let him miss it.

We're still waiting on Ricky to
get TOM all the way to the water when Bess pops up beside us. At
some point she grabbed a pair of sneakers and she's hauling her
hair up with a large scrunchy when she appears.

Note to self: if she helps you
get through this, buy the woman some thank you scrunchies. And if
she gets you killed, make sure she never has access to hair ties
again.

She gives me a maternal smile as
the new ponytail falls into place and graces Fray with a
considerably less affectionate nod.

Attention tuned to tracking
Ricky's progress, she stands with one hand on her hip and the other
tapping against her thigh. Though it's nonthreatening, something in
her stance makes me think of a huntress. The sort of huntress who
hunts with a bow, arrow, and flight of hounds. Artemis or Diana.
Most men receiving the look she's giving Ricky would tremble under
the intimidation.

Fray accepts her continued lack
of fondness for him with a melancholy lounge against the nearest
tree trunk. His arms folded across his chest, he takes his eyes
away from Bess Finnegan and sticks them back on the circus act by
the pool.

“That's the boy who's going to
kill Drew,” Fray says, as though it wasn't obvious. “But Elza won't
let that happen before Finn gets here.”

“And you're just watching the
foreplay?” Bess asks, contempt riding a sneer. “You know, if you'd
kill the bitch instead of putting her in prisons she always
escapes, my son wouldn't have to deal with her.”

I expect anger in response to
the goading, but Fray doesn't react at all. It's an argument
they've had before. And I'm betting it's one that they're going to
have again.

“Why don't you kill her?” I ask
Bess. She certainly looks scary enough to take Elza on.

“I'm not strong enough,” she
admits. “I have the heart, but not the ability. He's got the
ability, but not the gumption.”

Somehow, I don't think it's as
simple as that. “I don't think he can kill her.”

“Right. He-”

“No,” I interrupt. “I mean, if
he kills her, then she goes into the Spirit. But she can come and
go from the Spirit, can't she?”

“It doesn't work that way,”
Finn's mom responds quickly.

Yet, Fray gives me a look of
astonishment blended with pride. Like a teacher who taught a
preschooler to write an hour before the child scribbled out a
sonnet.

“That's why the fog kept
following me,” I realize in a sudden burst of clarity. “She was
following me, snickering over the way Finn was breaking down. It
was tagging along after her.”

“She can ride it,” Fray
confirms, the cavernous depths of his voice sending chill bumps
across my skin. “It's how she inevitably escapes those prisons
we're always putting her in.”

That last bit is said with a
heavy dose of sarcasm and a mocking roll of the eyes.

“But...” Finn's mom frowns
furiously. “How is that possible?”

“She was a Walker,” Fray says
softly. “That's were you got it from.”

Bess spends a second looking
thoughtful before reverting back to her protective mode and
striding up to the edge of the water, where Ricky has managed to
get my feet wet.

The Crusader's looking lost.
He'd expected help by now. He turns TOM's body, moving her to lie
lengthwise against the edge of the pool without appearing to care
about her shivering. Maybe he thinks it's the demon quivering in
fear.

He winces as water hits his feet
and halts with his eyes closed for several seconds, whispering
what's likely a prayer as he fortifies himself to get deeper into
the icy mountain spring.

“He's not going to drown her,”
Fray says as Bess inches forward. “She falls off the cliff.”

She stops moving, but keeps her
attention on Ricky's attempt at exorcism. Or Baptism. Or whatever
he thinks he's doing. “How are we stopping her?”

“I'm not sure,” Fray admits with
no small amount of reluctance. “But The Shadow Lord's involved.
He's her granddad.”

A look of skepticism meets the
assurance. She's not questioning my relation to The Shadow Lord,
but she's not buying that it's worth anything either.

The pool steals all of our
thoughts as the living me launches into a scramble, trying to move
away from Ricky while he's psyching himself up. Unfortunately,
she's not quite ready to move yet. Her limbs flounder and the
result of her escape effort is that she sprays mud all over the
place before plunging back into the pool with a large splash and a
loud shriek.

Ricky chides her to be more
careful with Drew's body, then pins her shoulders to the mud and
kneels in the shallow water at her side. He makes a contorted face
at the cold where a normal person would have been cursing.

“Mom!” he calls out, putting his
weight heavily onto TOM while his gaze casts around for Elza.

“He's Teresa Woodman's son?”
Finn's mom asks me.

“Yeah, I guess.” Not that I know
what his mother's name was. “That's Ricky Woodman. He thinks his
mom came to him as an angel and ordered him to cast a demon from
me.”

“I see.” She starts to grind her
teeth together while Ricky tries to figure out how to submerge a
half-conscious and unwilling girl without hurting her or soaking
himself, but when she notices what she's doing and reaches a hand
up to grab her jaw for a second. “Sorry,” she apologizes, letting
the hand move up to mess with her hair. The ponytail didn't need
retying, but at least what she's doing now is quiet.

“Guess I know where Finn gets
that from,” I tell her, trying to smile when she looks over at
me.

She smiles back. “Tell him
you're under orders to smack him next time he does it.”

“Yes, ma'am.”

Abruptly, Fray straightens and
turns his face up the path. “Incoming.”

Beyond the trees, a door slams
shut.

Seconds later, the sound of feet
crunching over broken leaves carries across the mountainside.

But something's wrong with the
footsteps. They're too slow, too relaxed. Finn should be running.
And if he's not, his steps should still be heavy and
aggressive.

By the time he comes into sight,
I'm getting seriously worried.

I take a look at his face and
nearly weep.

“Ah, shit,” mutters Fray.

A heavy fog whirls in Finn's
eyes as The Spirit looks out.

Ricky's exorcising the wrong
classmate. Cooper Finnegan's the one who's possessed.

Chapter Twenty-Eight

Fray leaps across my vision,
slamming into Bess and knocking her onto the ground. He forces her
hands over her head, pins them onto the ground, and snarls, “Calm
down. Think. If we rip The Spirit from him, it'll take his mind
with it.”

Her struggles stop in an
instant.

Numb, I watch Finn stroll closer
to us. He smiles at me with Elza's smile and my eyebrows draw
together at the unsettling sight. Elza's hijacked The Spirit again,
used it to commit an act that she's not capable of doing on her
own. But what is that? Did she steal Finn's control of his body, or
did she kick him out of it?

The mist parts for just a
second, allowing a flash of brown. For that one instant, I can see
Finn in his eyes and it makes me want to cry. His personality's in
there. But he's hurting.

The urge to shed tears fades,
lost in a tsunami of intense anger. My resolve gathers as my temper
flares. No way am I going to stand by and watch that bitch torture
him. No freaking way. You're going down, Elza.

“Drew...” Fray cautions.

“Yeah, I got it.”

The Spirit's wrapped itself
around the spark of life that's Cooper Finnegan. If we kick it out
of the body without disentangling them, we kick Finn out too. The
body becomes a vegetable and Finn gets to be just another nameless
component of The Spirit. Not acceptable.

Elza smirks from Finn's lips.
Taunting. Trying to get us to do something rash.

“Finn...” Ricky sputters as he
notices that he isn't alone. “What are you doing here?”

“I was guided by an angel.” The
words are wrong. Not just phrasing that Finn wouldn't use, but
wrong in cadence and accent. The voice they come in hardly sounds
like his at all. But Ricky doesn't notice any of that. He just sags
in relief. “Do you know what we're supposed to be doing?” he asks.
“I can't remember any of the things she told me to say.”