Spirited (11 page)

“Go ahead, try it,” Elijah said, his breath like a soft kiss on her cheek.

“But I have no material, no thread. And it’s so old. I don’t even know if it works.”

Elijah positioned her hands on the wheel, his body pressed against her back. The warmth of his skin awakened a memory. “Close your eyes and pretend,” he whispered over the rising crescendo of the organ’s song.

Its final note ended with the shattering of glass and a piercing scream from below.

~*~*~

Letitia gripped the staircase and whirled down the steps, one hand pressed against her heart.

Elijah begged from behind, “Please, Letitia, stop. You
must
stay with me.”

Another anguished scream pierced the night. A classmate, a blonde girl whose name she couldn’t recall, ran past Letitia. The girl covered one side of her face with her hand. Blood dripped between her fingers, over her chin, and splattered her pale yellow dress.

“Nobody move,” someone shouted. “Remain calm.”

Letitia crossed into the darkened ballroom.

“Is everyone okay?” she asked. “What’s going on?” Her questions went unanswered.

“Someone turn on a light,” Carter’s high-pitched tone called.

Letitia ran her hand along the wall in search of a switch. Her fingers brushed the edge of a knob. She turned it, but instead of light, the room filled with deafening music. Quickly, she turned the dial back.

“What the hell was that?” someone called. “Is this a joke? I’m not laughing.”

“Turn on your phones,” suggested another faceless voice.
Isabella
. Letitia would recognize that quaver anywhere. “We can use them to find our way out.”

Pockets of glowing smart phones emerged from the dark, providing enough light to highlight a pile of broken glass in the middle of the room. The giant chandelier had plunged from the twenty-foot ceiling and shattered.

Beneath the rubble, lay the outline of a small female body. Blood speckled her frilly pink dress.

Ava?

Letitia’s hand flew to her mouth, but not in time to stop the scream. She lifted her gaze, searching the confusion for another light switch or something to further illuminate the room. Instead, she spotted Elijah in the corner. His entire body appeared translucent, nearly glowing in the dark shadow of chaos.

She waved at him, motioning for him to do
something
, to help Ava
.
But he remained still, staring at her with such intensity her soul burned.

Why wasn’t he doing anything?

She ran to the center of the room and knelt before Ava’s scratched and bloodied body. Ava’s chest heaved, signaling life, though the girl’s thin face was milky white. Letitia smoothed a strand of hair from Ava’s forehead and whispered, “It’s going to be okay.” But she didn’t know how true her words were. Blood dribbled from Ava’s mouth, outlining her lips.

“Somebody call an ambulance,” Letitia shouted. She wrapped her hand around Ava’s cool wrist, covering the scars she knew all too well.

“Call 911,” David echoed. He rushed to his girlfriend’s side and pushed away the glass surrounding her. Other classmates lifted the broken chandelier and heaved it aside with a grunt. But its imprint remained on Ava’s dress, leaving a permanent dent in her ribcage just below her heart.

“Baby, stay calm. I’m going to carry you downstairs,” David said.

“Maybe we should just wait for the ambulance,” Letitia began, but her words were drowned out by the deep monotone of an unfamiliar voice.

Leave this place.

The warning echo brought the sound in the ballroom to an abrupt halt. The words vibrated in Letitia’s eardrums.

Leave. Now!

“Letitia, come with me.”

Not a request. She shrugged Elijah’s hand off her shoulder. How had he crossed the room so quickly? “Do you hear that voice? We should all go.”

He pulled her to her feet, spun her around, cradled her face in his hands. “The ghosts of Franklin Castle are unhappy. Please, follow me. I know where we will be safe. There’s no time to waste.”

“I can’t leave, Elijah. These are my…”

Friends?

No, that term was too generous. Not one of her classmates had called out to her, responded to her questions. To most of them—maybe all of them—she was as good as invisible. What had caused the chandelier to fall? If Elijah was right, the spirits would not stop until everyone left—or died. That realization clawed at the back of her throat.

Elijah offered her safety.

She couldn’t accept it. Letitia turned back to Ava. A crowd of people now blocked her view, confused and concerned voices merging into one indiscernible buzz.

Elijah wrapped his hand around her wrist, covering her own scars borne out of loneliness and confusion. His touch seemed to erase the pain, leaving only unanswered questions. “Help is on the way for Ava. For all of them,” he said. “There is something I must show you before you leave.”

His eyes pleaded for trust, and her heart dared her to resist even as her mind begged her to retreat.

“But Ava—”

“Will be in good hands,” he said, locking her within his gaze. Desperation shone in his eyes. “You can’t even get close to her. Please. Come with me.”

After another glance at the crowd surrounding Ava, Letitia nodded for him to lead the way. In the light of the hallway, she stopped and inhaled. Once. Twice. Again.

Elijah pushed aside a bookcase to uncover another secret door. “This way, Tish. Please, I will not hurt you.”

His use of her nickname gave her pause, but she continued to follow him. The hole was too small to walk through, so she sank to her knees, bunched up her dress, and crawled after him. Slowly, and then faster as the panic of claustrophobia bubbled in her throat. Elijah was already well ahead, but a dim glow guided the way. Only when she almost bumped into him did she realize the light emanated from his body.

Her stomach roiled and turned. This couldn’t be happening.

But it was real, as real as the human bones her hands brushed against as she groped through the muted light. As real as the fear building in her esophagus, blocking her own scream. As real as the scent of burning flesh that hovered in the air.

Oh God, what now?

So confused by the vividness of her senses, Letitia didn’t realize she’d crawled to the end of the tunnel.

Elijah stood and faced her, his expression so sincere and caring, her apprehension almost melted away. He held out his hands and lifted her to the cold cement floor, the space empty save for a chair spotlighted by a single light bulb. Something was silhouetted from behind. A hanging form…

Letitia moved toward it, covering her mouth with one hand. The smell of death was ripe, so overpowering she gagged. With each step she saw more details. Blonde hair. A pale yellow dress. A long, crooked neck within a noose and dangling feet capped with high heels.

Emma.

The girl’s name came to her.

Letitia let out an anguished cry and shook the lifeless body. “Help me,” she pleaded as tears slid down her face. She worked tirelessly at the rope above. Her fingers grew raw.

Elijah laid a hand on her shoulder, his touch calming the panic inside. “There is nothing you can do,” he said. He spun the rope so Letitia could see the girl’s face, the lifeless eyes that stared back. “Your sister has been dead a long time.”

“My sister?” Letitia shook her head. “No. I don’t have a sister…”

She backed away, her palms, pressed against air, rippled with fear. “Why did you bring me here?”

How stupid to have followed him. She’d trusted Elijah to protect her, to lead her to safety, not to…

“I didn’t know how else to tell you, how else to make you believe…”

“Stay away from me,” she said.”I don’t believe your lies. Just stay away.”

Letitia spun and ran back toward the passage. Hazy flashes of memory glided past her eyes, now stinging with tears. She pushed them away, dropped to her knees, and groped through the darkness. Without Elijah’s light, she relied only on touch and smell to guide her. Her nostrils filled with the pungent scent of dust and mold. She rolled her tongue along her teeth to prevent grit from settling in her mouth.

“Holy hell,” shouted a muffled male voice. “Fire!”

Panic pressed Letitia forward. Her hand struck something damp. She stifled a scream and focused on getting to the blaze. The mansion was a web of hidden passages and trap doors. If the exits were blocked by smoke and flame, would she and her classmates be able to leave the mansion before it was engulfed by fire?

She cursed at her stupidity. Why had she followed Elijah?

At the other end of the passageway, she pushed open the hatch and spilled into the hallway. People stormed toward her, racing for the stairs, screaming, crying, desperate for escape. Vines of smoke chased behind them.

“Yes, run. Get out of here,” she shouted. “Be careful on the stairs…” Her classmates stampeded past, not even acknowledging her as she pushed in the opposite direction to enter the ballroom.

A curtain at the back of the room had ignited. Flames wove upward toward the ceiling, flickering with each gasp of oxygen.

She snatched the punch bowl from the buffet table and rushed toward it. The flames hissed and roared but did not fan out. The scent of peaches and ginger ale sailed on the tendrils of smoke that burned her eyes. Balloons and streamers lay in a tangled mess. Shards of glass littered the floor, smeared in blood.

Ava’s blood.

In the center of the room, David remained hunched over his girlfriend’s limp body.

Letitia ran toward them, dodging flecks of ash that swirled around the room. “Let me help you,” she said. “We have to get out of here. We can carry her together.”

David looked up at Letitia through tear-streaked eyes, but he did not acknowledge her presence. He stared past her—perhaps
through
her—toward the door. His lower lip tightened with grief, and then slackened as two emergency workers charged into the room carrying a stretcher.

“Get to safety, young man,” one of the EMTs said. He laid the stretcher on the floor next to Ava’s body and patted David’s rigid shoulder. “We’ve got this.”

Letitia reached for David’s arm. “They’ll take care of her.” But her fingers closed into a fist around air.

David glanced backward with longing and then disappeared through the exit.

The emergency crew seemed to move in slow motion as they loaded Ava onto the stretcher and covered her body with a blanket. One of the men withdrew a walkie-talkie. Through the crackle he said, “Clear.”

Clear?

Letisha ran after them while they carried Ava’s body down the stairs toward the exit. She called out for them to wait, but neither spared even a backwards glance. Through the windows, she saw her friends scrambling onto the bus. An ambulance was parked at the front entrance, lights flashing.

Elijah waited in the foyer, standing beside the double wooden doors.

Letitia yanked on a handle, but the door wouldn’t budge. “I have to get out of here. The whole house will soon be on fire.”

Elijah didn’t move. She pulled on the handle again, cursing as it refused to open. In the side window, she glimpsed the bus and ambulance pulling away from the street. Isabella’s tear-streaked face peered out from the back, her boyfriend’s arm wrapped protectively around her shoulder.

“No,” Letitia shouted, banging on the glass with both fists until her hands were bruised and her throat raw. “Doesn’t anyone realize I’m missing? Am I invisible to them?”

Elijah pressed his hand on her back, comforting. This time she didn’t push him away. “I’m afraid you are invisible, my darling Tish.” His voice was thick with emotion. “And you can’t leave, my love. Not now. Not when you’ve finally come home to me.”

Present

The Cold One

Bone-chilling cold and secrets.

Those are the two things I’ll take with me when I leave Finland.

If I leave.

I have serious doubts about my future. From the moment we stepped into my grandmother’s house, I’ve had a strange feeling. Something weird is happening, but I don’t have a clue what it might be. I just know I’m in danger. Maybe I sound like a paranoid freak, but that curling anxiety living in the pit of my stomach is a sign I’m not wrong.