The Year of Shadows (12 page)

It wasn’t a nice thought, and for all I knew, it could happen.

I forced myself to feel braver than I wanted to. I didn’t know what would happen to me—to Nonnie, to the Maestro and his orchestra—but maybe I could do something about these ghosts. Maybe I could help them.

“I have a question,” Henry said. “You say you’ve been here for years. Why are we just now seeing you?”

“People only see ghosts when we allow them to see us,” Frederick said. “It’s a sort of built-in safety precaution, if you will.”

“Why did you let us see you? We saw you a few weeks ago in the lobby, with those shadow things, and now today.”

The ghosts looked at each other. Then Frederick chuckled sheepishly. “Oh, in the lobby. Yes, that was a . . . how shall I say it? A preliminary test. We had to show ourselves to you,
see how you responded. Congratulations! You passed, and now here we are today.”

“And these burns on our skin?” I held up my arm.

“An unfortunate side effect of communicating with ghosts, I’m afraid,” Frederick said apologetically. “They should fade in time.”

“Okay, so we’re all talking now. What do you want from us?”

The ghosts seemed suddenly shy, their cheeks darkening. Were they blushing?

“We thought maybe you could help us,” Jax said softly.

“We thought it was time to ask you,” Tillie said.

“To find our anchors,” they said together.

I frowned. “And how would we do that, exactly?”

“I’m afraid there’s only one way for us to move on,” Frederick began slowly. “We must first remember what our anchors are. Then we must remember
where
they are. And finally, we must find them and reunite with them. Then, and only then, can we enter Death.”

“But you said you don’t remember any of that,” Henry said.

“In order to remember these things, we will need to be more alive. We will need to live through our last memories, relive our deaths.” Frederick paused and looked straight at me, and in that second, I knew what he was going to say before he said it. “We will need to relive our deaths . . . through
you
.”

F
OR A MINUTE,
no one said anything. Then Henry totally lost it.

“What?” He backed away until he hit the wooden wall of the choir loft. “You mean possession, don’t you? No way. No
way
.”

Frederick clucked his tongue. “Henry, do calm yourself. You’ll wake everyone up.”

Possession.
It made me think of scary movies and dolls that could talk.

“
Possession
is such an ugly word,” Frederick continued. “It implies that we would own you, and that’s not it at all. It would be a . . . sharing. You would see our memories, and we would use your minds to remember them.”

“That’s just ridiculous,” Henry said. “Why couldn’t you just, I don’t know, think harder or something, and remember everything yourselves? Why would you need us?”

“Henry, Henry. We ghosts are only just floating! We can hardly keep all the bits of ourselves together, much less put our
memories
back together. Memory building is hard work, and I’m afraid ghosts just aren’t very good at it. We’re so
very close to
un
being, to nothingness. We’re not in your world, and we’re not in the next one either. If we put our concentration into finding our memories and piecing them back together, we’d simply . . . drift away.”

Henry shook his head against the choir loft wall, his eyes wide. “I am so freaked out right now.”

“And I can’t say I blame you for that. I understand this is a bit much to take in, but . . . what do you think?” Frederick turned to me. “Olivia? Are you still interested in helping us? You haven’t said a word.”

My mind spun around all kinds of questions and countless sketches. More than anything, I wanted to draw. I didn’t want to forget anything that had happened that night.

“If we help you, you’d be inside our minds?”

Tillie and Jax nodded. “That’s right.”

“Would it . . . hurt?”

Mr. Worthington wrung the ends of his long smoke-coat in his hands. He shook his head, staring at the ground.

“It could,” Frederick admitted. “We’ve seen . . . others do it to other humans. The results are not always pleasant. But it works so much better for everyone involved if the humans are willing. We would never share without your permission. We are not that type of ghost.” Frederick drew himself up tall, ghost smoke quivering around him. “I promise you that.”

“But it
could
hurt,” I said. “Even if we give you permission.”

“I’m afraid it very well might.”

“And it’s worked before? The other ghosts you knew who
did this, who shared with humans and found their anchors. They moved on?”

Frederick nodded excitedly. “Not all of them, but a good many, yes!”

Mr. Worthington jerked his way over to Frederick and tugged at his sleeve. He pressed his face against Frederick’s ear, his black smoke and Frederick’s gray smoke blending together.

“Olivia, this is insane,” Henry said. “You’re not really going to do this, are you?”

“Stop grabbing me, Henry.”

“But,
Olivia
—”

“Mr. Worthington says,” Frederick said, “that he also doesn’t know if the sharing will hurt or not, the actual part where we get into your mind. But he does know that the dying . . . that will hurt.”

“The dying?” Henry repeated.

“As I explained, you will relive our last moment with us, and you will die with us. You will feel what it is like to die.”

“Are you
crazy
?”

“Quiet, Henry,” I said. “After we die, then what? What happens after that?”

“Then we all return here, back to normal. You as humans and us as ghosts.”

“So we wouldn’t actually die, for real.”

Frederick’s jaw literally fell off. “Of course not.” He
scooped up his jaw and patted it back into place. “I told you we wouldn’t hurt you, and we won’t.”

“Except for the part where we’re going to
die
,” Henry snapped.

“Well, yes, except for that. But it’s not really dying, just feeling like you are.”

“Oh. That’s much better, then.”

“And what would we get out of this?” I said. “We fake-die and help you . . . for what?”

“Well, you would be helping us, first of all, which would be very kind of you,” Frederick said carefully. He glanced at the others, clearing his throat. “Secondly, you would no longer have, shall we say, unwanted beings in your Hall. And it would be an adventure, wouldn’t it?”

“You don’t have to, Olivia,” Jax said. He placed his fingers on mine, a brush of ice cubes. “We won’t make you.”

Tillie chucked me on the shoulder, a snowball’s direct hit. “I wouldn’t blame you if you didn’t do it, Olivia.
I
wouldn’t want to.”

Mr. Worthington shoved his hands in his pockets. I wondered if he was trying to tell me something with those black-hole eyes of his. I wondered if he’d ever been as scared as I’d been lately.

I put up my chin like I knew what I was doing. “Henry and I need a moment.”

Frederick nodded. “As you wish.” Then he floated across the stage, taking the others with him.

“Well?” I whispered to Henry. “What do you think?”

“I think that if you’re considering helping them, you’re insane.”

The word stung. “A freak, you mean? A psycho?”

“Come on, you know I don’t think that. But how can we trust them? And how we do know ‘sharing’ with them won’t . . . I don’t know, scar us for life or something?”

I hugged myself. Henry made good points. “I guess we don’t know any of that.”

“And we barely know these ghosts, anyway,” Henry continued. “I mean, I’d risk all that for
you
, but I don’t think I would for them.”

I blinked. “You’d risk getting scarred for life . . . for me?”

“Duh. That’s what friends do.”

“But I thought . . .” For a minute, I forgot the ghosts were even there. “I thought we were just partners. Strictly business.”

Henry threw up his hands. “Sure. Fine. If that makes you feel better.”

I wasn’t sure if it made me feel better or not, though. I didn’t know how to process the sudden calm I felt after hearing Henry say, so matter-of-factly, “That’s what friends do.”

Could partners be friends?

Igor patted my leg with his paw.
Your ghost friends are waiting, you know.

I tried to shake my thoughts clear, but they were too muddled. Death. Ghosts. Broken memories. I couldn’t
make sense of it, not enough to make a decision.

“We need some time to think about this,” I said slowly. Then I turned to the ghosts. “Meet me back here tomorrow at midnight, and you’ll have your answer.”

“Midnight.” Frederick smiled dreamily. “How poetic of you. Important things always happen at midnight.”

Henry muttered something angry and turned away.

Abruptly, Tillie kicked the Ouija board. Her foot went right through it, of course, but she didn’t seem to care.

“What was that for?” I asked.

“Don’t ever bring that board in here again,” she said, looking around into the shadows. Beside her, Jax did the same thing; they were almost touching, but not quite. “They attract the wrong sort of spirits.”

T
HE NEXT DAY
at school, right after Henry sat down across from me with his lunch, I said, “So? Are we going to help them? What do you think?”

He shoveled a chunk of potato salad into his mouth and glared at me. “The same thing I thought yesterday. No. Way.”

“Because you’re scared.”

“No, not because I’m scared. Because I don’t really feel like fake-dying for ghosts who might turn us over to the Devil or something if they decide they don’t like us.”

“So . . . you’re scared, then.”

He stabbed his chicken patty. “Maybe.”

“Me too.”

“Really?”

“Yeah.” I opened my sketchpad, turning past page after page of scribbled ghosts to find a clean sheet. “I’m not sure it’s such a good—”

My stomach lurched. Five pages. Five clean pages left in my sketchpad, and I didn’t have the money to get a new
one. My vision narrowed to a blurry tunnel, centered on those precious five pages. Soon, I’d have to start drawing on whatever paper I could find—napkins, scrap paper from school, newspapers. The thought was humiliating; artists didn’t draw on napkins and newspapers. They drew on fine paper in sketchpads.

I didn’t let myself start crying, though. It would have messed up the paper, and I didn’t have any to waste.

“You okay?”

I slammed the sketchpad shut and avoided Henry’s eyes. “Yeah. It’s fine.”

“Ahem” came a quiet voice. It was Joan. She sat farther down the table than usual, right at the edge of the bench. She kept looking at us and then back at her lunch tray. “Ahem.”

“Yes, Joan?” I said, irritated.

“I was wondering, please, if I could have my doll back.”

“Can’t hear you.”

“I
said
,” she almost shouted, frantically, “I want my doll back! My doll, Magda!”

People at nearby tables turned to stare.

“Oh, right.” I took Magda out of my bag and slid her across the table. “Here. I threw the Ouija board away, though. The ghosts said it was bad—”

“Don’t,” she whispered through clenched teeth, “say—anything—about those—those
things
.” She grabbed Magda and hurried away, dumping her whole untouched lunch tray into the trash can.

“For a
séance expert
,” Henry said, “she sure does scare easy.”

But I just stared after Joan, frowning. “That’s right. She saw them, didn’t she?”

“What?”

“Joan saw the ghosts just like we did. I guess that means they trust her, too.”

“So what are you going to tell them tonight?”

I turned back to my lunch, picking at my bread crusts. “I don’t know. It probably isn’t a good idea, but . . .”

“But you’re curious.”

I looked up at Henry, and noticed a startling thing. His eyes were clear and open, like pools of blue water. Like the sky. Sky eyes. I’d never looked hard enough to notice before. Looking at them gave me the floaty, flippy feeling; I’d never felt that for anyone but Richard Ashley before.