Friday evening found Wendy forgoing patrolling for her mother in favor of staying inside. Part of her knew this was pure lunacy—Wednesday afternoon and the disturbing dream that followed must have been some sort of delusion. But the touch of Piotr’s hand, the bittersweet wariness in his eyes, and the obvious insanity of the White Lady convinced her differently. Piotr was real and so was his dilemma.
Come hell or high water, Wendy intended to help.
When they got home after school, Wendy gathered an armful of cleaning supplies from under the kitchen sink. Ignoring Chel’s incredulous look and Jon’s curious questions, Wendy marched upstairs and gave her room a quick but thorough onceover.
“Is Eddie coming over?” Jon asked from the doorway around the second hour of her frantic whirlwind spree. He wrinkled his nose theatrically and snagged a handful of M&Ms from the candy dish on her desk. “It smells like Mr. Clean hemorrhaged to death in here.”
“Very funny,” Wendy grunted, shoving the last of her (now stuffed) shoeboxes under the bed. The box slid through Jabber, who territorially hissed and took a swipe at her with his claws. Wendy snatched her hand back just in time.
“Can’t a girl just want a nice room every now and then?”
Pouring an entire handful of M&Ms into his mouth, Jon struggled to chew and swallow before answering. “Using you and Chel as examples? No.”
“Beat it,” she replied, not unkindly, and threw him the shopping bag full of rags she’d dirtied. “And throw those in the washer while you’re at it.”
“Yes mon capitan!” Jon saluted, tapping his heels together. “Anything else your highness desires? Cake, perhaps? Possibly a virgin to sacrifice?”
“For you to stop being so nosy,” Wendy said and tossed the final rag his way. “Shoo!”
Shrugging, Jon left, taking the bag of rags with him along with another handful of candy. Maneuvering around Jabber, Wendy straightened the throw pillows on her bed, made sure her abundance of ratty stuffed animals were out of sight, and turned once around, examining the room. Everything looked okay, but that didn’t mean she hadn’t forgotten something important, like panties poking out of a drawer. Piotr seemed relaxed and his clothing was very nondescript but there was no telling when he’d died or what might offend him. He could come from some super-repressed century for all she knew, and Wendy was unwilling to risk chasing him away.
The room passed inspection, however. At a loss for something productive to do in lieu of her normal routine, Wendy sat down to finish her homework early. An hour passed. Two. She completed the last line of her geography paper, stretched until her back crackled, and sighed in relief.
“I don’t remember going to school. It looks tedious.”
Stifling a shriek, Wendy started out of her chair like a frightened cat. Every hair felt as if it were on end, every nerve tingling with shock and surprise. “What the hell are you doing here?!”
Piotr rose from her bed, where he’d been sitting. He flushed, embarrassed, looking as if he was worried that he’d done something wrong. “Yzveenee, my apologies. I did not mean to startle you, but you asked that I visit you and I thought—”
Wendy held up a hand for silence, shushing him. They heard footsteps pad down the hall and a gentle tap on the door. “Wendy?” It was Jon. He opened the door a crack, letting in a waft of sugar-scented air. “I thought I heard you yell. Are you okay?”
“Leave her alone, Poindexter!” Chel yelled from across the hall. She was breathless and the speedy beat of her feet on their mother’s treadmill almost drowned her out.
“I’m fine, Jon,” Wendy said. “Just stubbed my toe.” She raised her voice. “And don’t call Jon ‘Poindexter,’ Chel! It’s not nice!”
The whirr of the treadmill paused and their parents’ bedroom door slammed.
Shaking her head in annoyance, Wendy glanced at Piotr and belatedly realized how ridiculous it was to shush one of the dead. It wasn’t as if Jon or Chel would be able to hear Piotr talking anyway, not even if he’d shouted at the top of his lungs.
Jon shrugged, set a fresh-baked sugar cookie on the vanity, and shut the door. Wendy waited until Jon’s footsteps had faded to smile apologetically at Piotr. “I’m sorry, I didn’t mean to be rude.” Grabbing her stereo remote, she flipped it to her favorite station and turned the volume just high enough that it would drown out her low-pitched voice. “You just sort of snuck up on me. I was expecting you to come up the tree.”
Piotr glanced out the window. “I can, if that would make you feel better. But the door, it is very thin, and this home is very new. Easy to walk through.”
“Right,” Wendy agreed. “I should have thought of that before.”
Shrugging, Piotr sat on the edge of her bed again. “Net, it’s understandable. It’s not something the living must think about.”
“No. We don’t.” Wendy hesitated beside her desk, uncertain whether he would find it weird if she sat beside him on the bed or if she should just sit back down on the chair. But it was her bed. She could sit where she wanted!
As if sensing the train of her thoughts, Piotr pushed further back so that he was almost resting against the headboard. “My apologies. I am stealing up your space.”
“No,” she said, flushing, “it’s cool.” Collecting the sugar cookie and nibbling on the edge nervously, Wendy drifted towards the edge of the bed, obliquely glad that she’d taken the time to neaten up. Piotr looked strange but somehow right in her room, with his dim shoulders outlined against the hot pink puffy pillows and the chipped black headboard. It was as if her life had been leading up to this moment—a ghost among her private things, as casual as if he belonged there, as if he were alive.
Wendy wondered if she were truly going crazy.
“So,” she asked too brightly, searching for some topic to break the odd awkward tension. “Any word on the hat? Or the holes in it?” No longer hungry, she set the cookie aside.
At first it seemed he wouldn’t answer, and Wendy began scouring her mind for some other topic, when Piotr said, “None of the others knows what it means. Lily is frantic.” He reached to pet Jabber but snatched his hand back when the cat aimed an ill-tempered swipe at his wrist.
“Aren’t there any, I don’t know, ghostly acids or something that could have done it?” Wendy asked.
“Things, objects, sometimes pass over into the Never but I have never heard of such a thing.” He grimaced. “It is possible, I suppose. But unlikely. It is a blessing, I suppose. Such an acid in the wrong hands would make…a deadly weapon.”
His choice of words struck Wendy as strange and scary. “You know, I never thought to ask this before, but…Piotr, what happens when ghosts fight one another? If a Walker doesn’t eat you, you can’t kill each other, can you? You can only, you know, hurt one another, right?”
“That is wrong. We can destroy one another. And some do.”
Gaping, Wendy pressed cold fingers to her lips. “But that’s crazy. You’re already dead!”
“That’s what being a ghost is like. Death, existence, and death again.” He smiled sadly. “Unless you find the Light. Then, salvation.”
Wendy shuddered. “I’d imagine there’s nothing worse than dying after you’re dead.”
Piotr disagreed. “Net. The Lightbringer is worse.”
“Really?” Curious, Wendy sat up. “What’s a Lightbringer?”
Standing now by the window, Piotr leaned forward and gazed out into the early evening, eyes searching and expression grim. When he turned to face her, Wendy was stunned to see how drawn his features had become, how pale he’d grown. He was still, steady, but the haze of his very essence seemed to be shaking, as if he were trembling. Piotr, she realized, was terrified.
“It’s a—” Piotr struggled for the word, “a figure? A figure made of pure light, blinding light, and it sings a siren song that draws us. It’s new, a snare like nothing you’ve ever seen.” Piotr half-laughed, a broken, battered sound. “It has tentacles of light that it uses to spear us with.”
“Tentacles.” Wendy was starting to get a bad feeling about this.
“Thin, flexible. The light is bright. If we get too close…” He glanced under his lashes at her and hesitated, quieted.
The anticipation burned in her gut, a roiling mass of nerves, but Wendy didn’t dare show Piotr how his words unnerved and frightened her. “If you get too close?” Wendy prompted, with a fake, sunny smile. The grin wasn’t quite appropriate, but he was hardly looking at her, lost in his own dark thoughts.
“Since the light is like fire to us, if we get too close to it, the light burns us to cinders. It just starts eating away at what we are until we…until our very essence is stripped into nothing.”
Coldness coiled in her gut. Wendy straightened, clasping her hands together to keep from shaking. A being of light that broke apart essence until it was no more. Surely he couldn’t mean…her?
“Have you seen it?” she asked, studiously staring at a snarl of thread on her comforter. Her fingers, restless, stole out from her lap, picked at the snarl, working the knot until it had come undone. She smoothed it, pressing hard into the fabric. “This…this Lightbringer?”
“Da.” Piotr shook his head, body sagging with the memory. “The other night. It was the most horrible thing I’ve ever seen.”
As Piotr outlined his meeting with Lily and their encounter with the Walkers and the Lightbringer, Wendy remained calm and quiet. There was no doubt in her mind that Piotr had seen her on patrol that night, had spotted her when she’d been forced to reap the nosy Walkers that had scented her and tried to chase her down.
He’ll never understand, she realized, sucking the ball at the end of her barbell between her front teeth. He’ll think you’re after him.
And wasn’t that, in part, the truth? Hadn’t she told herself just the other day that when all this was over, she’d reap him and release his soul into the Light? So who was in the wrong here? Piotr for being frightened of her or Wendy for doing her job in the first place? The job she hadn’t even asked for? The job she didn’t want anymore?
He thought she was a monster! Called her ribbons of Light “tentacles” and her glowing “horrible.”
Piotr hated her. He just didn’t know it yet.
Wendy felt ill.
Desperate to change the subject, she searched for something, anything to talk about. “I just realized that I forgot to tell you about this crazy dream I had earlier this week.” Wendy settled on the edge of her bed, drew her legs up under her, scooted in. She could feel the coolness banking off him in waves, like the errant breeze from a weak fan. He even smelled cool—evergreens and mint and the slightest hint of something earthy just underneath. The scent of death, his death, which separated them.
“A dream?” Piotr leaned forward, curious and smiling. “Please tell. There are some that say dreams are gateways for the dead.”
“So I found out.” Wendy explained how she’d met the White Lady in her dream, but carefully kept their conversation streamlined, never mentioning why exactly the White Lady had chosen to single her out. “She’s threatening my mother’s soul,” Wendy finished. “I think…I think that maybe she’s upset that I’m meddling.” It was close enough to the truth, Wendy reasoned. She was meddling, after all, just more than Piotr could ever know.
“This is no good,” he declared when she’d finished, pounding a fist into his palm. “She cannot be allowed to do this!”
“I don’t know how I’m gonna stop her from it,” Wendy replied dryly. “But at least I can wriggle away if I need to.”
“Spies,” Piotr said softly. “This makes sense. If she had eyes and ears other than the Walkers, it would be much easier to time the kidnappings.” He frowned. “I shall have to take this news to the others.”
“That won’t be easy. Aren’t you guys spread all over?”
“Net, no longer. Once it was this way, but now all the Lost in the city have gathered together,” he explained. “Close to the humans, safe. But this arrangement cannot last for long. Squished as we are into one little building…tempers are already simmering.” He shook his head. “In truth, I should be there now. I’ve been shirking my patrol shifts and letting the others pick up the slack, trying to pick up traces of Dunn instead.”
“Then why’d you come tonight?” She hesitated, tapped one finger on her temple as if searching for a memory. “I thought you wanted to bring, um, what’s her name? Lily?” Wendy was proud of the way the name rolled flawlessly off her lips.
“Lily, in all her wisdom, believes I can learn more about Seers on my own.” Chuckling, Piotr ran aimless fingers across her bedspread. “Besides, James arrived earlier today. Lily wanted time with him.”
“Time?”
Piotr raised his fingers in air quotes. “‘Time.’”
“Ooooh. Wow.” Wendy relaxed, relieved. “I didn’t know you still did that sort of thing.”
Finding a loose thread in her comforter, Piotr ran his fingers through it over and over again. The thread wavered after several seconds of intense effort. “Why not?” He shrugged. “We’re dead, not… uh… dead. Da?”
Wendy couldn’t help but laugh. “Yeah, I think I get it. So, wow. This Lily chick sounds sort of like Eddie. She really likes this James guy, huh?”
“Indeed. Their territories are close but they can only meet infrequently. With other Riders there to watch the Lost, they can spend a while alone.” He smiled. “I am very happy for her. She works much too hard and the loss of Dunn has been a blow for her. James will offer the comfort she needs.”
Pausing a moment to make sure she wanted to pose the question after all, Wendy casually asked, “What about you? Do you have anyone special over there? Anyone you need to be comforting right now?”
“Special?” Piotr looked at her blankly, confused, before he understood what she was getting at. Then he laughed, flushed, and clasped his hands together in his lap. “I have in the past, da, but not for years. Since the early thirties at least.”
“Thirties?” Wendy was stunned. “The nineteen-thirties?” How old was Piotr anyway?
“That sounds right.” Piotr began tapping one finger against the outspread digits of the other hand, counting off the years. “The thirties, possibly the forties. One of the world wars had just ended. And I was with Elle for a while. Not long. She’s…a wild child. I dated Lily as well, though only for a short time.” His half-smile drooped. “James still hasn’t forgiven me for that.”
Amused that the dead had relationship drama just like anyone else, Wendy laughed merrily and a touch unkindly. This was something her mother’s training had never even hinted at. “They’d broken up?”
“I thought seeing Lily in such a manner would be acceptable,” Piotr complained, sounding eerily like Eddie for one brief moment. He waved a negligent hand. “But apparently net, it was not. I gave it my best, but it lasted a year. James,” he grinned, “is a very persistent rival.”
Hearing this guy, this boy who was her own age in physical years—if not actual years spent on the earth—sound just like her best friend, annoyed with some small fact of life, lifted an invisible weight that had been pushing Wendy down.
For the first time, she began really seeing Piotr—not just the peculiarities of him as a dead man, but as a person with quirks and foibles like herself. He was no longer simply a ghost she found attractive and would one day have to reap, but a guy near her own age, with his own problems and history, brimming with stories to tell.
Tension broken, they sank deep into conversation about the merits and perils of dating within one’s social circle, what the dead did for fun, and talked the rest of the night away.
More than three weeks passed like this, each night spent deep in conversation, getting to know one another as only friends can do. After that first night, Wendy told Piotr to meet her at midnight and no sooner. Exhausted after her long nights and longer conversations, she sank easily into sleep with Piotr holding her hand. Despite his presence, her dreams grew worse.
The dreams weren’t the only stressful change in her life. Determined to piss off the White Lady at every opportunity, Wendy now made a point of going out of her way to reap every Walker she saw instead of resorting to only self-defense.
At first, relaxing the personal ban on reaping ghosts had been utterly nerve-wracking—seeking them out was absolutely nothing like coming across them and defending herself. Trembling each time she dug inside herself and released the Light, Wendy forced herself to focus on taking every soul she spotted, returning to the habit of reaping with fierce concentration. She had to make up for all those souls she’d abandoned, Wendy reasoned. She couldn’t let them continue to suffer.
Though she had to work back up to the regimen she’d been familiar with before, Wendy still felt a pang of fear every time she slid into the Light. Reaping ghosts was still excruciating, but dealing with the pain grew easier with every reap—as if spending time with Piotr was painting a spiritual target on her back, or as if she gave off a ghostly pheromone even when in her regular state.
Within a week, ghosts—Shade and Walker alike—sought her out at every opportunity: school, the diner, even on the bus. Since she couldn’t become the Lightbringer around the living, being accosted in public was difficult to ignore. Wendy learned the art of ducking into alleys and running for the closest bathroom whenever a ghost was near. The ghosts generally followed.
Worried about what might be happening to her mother in the chaotic world of the Never, between the White Lady’s threats and her Walkers, Wendy kept her searching patrols as close to home as she could easily manage. Eddie often drove her on patrol and did his homework in the car.
More than once on these whirlwind patrols, a ghost would approach, dim in the light, and Wendy would think it was her mother. She’d check her impulse to send the spirit on until it was close enough. Then, always, she’d feel the crushing disappointment.
Those reaps were always painfully quick.
Keeping to such a steady schedule soon made a major difference. In a matter of weeks, Wendy had Santa Clara swept clean of Walkers and Shades alike. There seemed to be more of the dead than ever before, and the Walkers grew crueler as the nights passed. Soon it became a struggle to reap them. The Walkers, originally loners, began traveling in pairs and then in packs. Perhaps they had other Walkers observing from the shadows, or maybe after so many encounters they were beginning to learn, but they began concentrating their attacks in the brief moment that Wendy took to become the Lightbringer. She could be wounded here, in that brief instant between physical form and ethereal. Despite their jabs, however, Wendy was still strong, even when outnumbered, and yet, as fast as Wendy was, she wasn’t infallible. The smartest and quickest Walkers would attack and run, escaping her grasp before the siren song could lure them back, returning to report to the White Lady on a semi-regular basis.
Through it all, though she looked high and low, ducking into every building she could, Wendy never saw her mother’s soul.
Ironically, during their discussions Piotr worried that the Lightbringer would stumble upon the Rider camp at Pier 31, never realizing that he’d ensured its safety by letting Wendy know exactly where it was located.
“It makes no sense,” he complained to Wendy. “A beast like that should be drawn to us. We are like a great feast for the likes of it! But there is nothing, not one sighting near the pier. It’s all south of there. I’m starting to wonder if I imagined the thing.”
These comments both pleased and hurt Wendy, confusing her deeply. Though it was her duty, the duty her mother had instilled in her from the very start of her training, Wendy was unwilling to reap the souls gathered at the Pier yet, though she knew that one day, one day very soon, she would have to. The thought of this undone responsibility pained her. Letting them sit there, still absent from the Light, went against all her mother’s teaching, but Piotr, she knew, would be heartbroken at their loss.
She kept away from the nest of Riders and Lost for him.
When Dunn is found, she promised herself, I’ll send them all on. She meant it, too. The moment the cap vanished, she’d finish them all off. But the hat was still whole, and Dunn’s essence was still strong. It was a mystery.
“He must be hidden somewhere,” Piotr theorized one night, almost a month after they’d met. It was after midnight and the entire house was asleep, save Wendy. Her father was out of town again. Chel and Jon had also temporarily made up, and Eddie had a new girlfriend, though he swore if Wendy changed her mind he’d dump the new girl in an instant. Wendy, laughing, declined. Life had, for the most part, smoothed out somewhat.
Except for Dunn’s continued absence.
Deep in contemplation, Piotr was sitting on her bed, legs outthrust, brainstorming out loud. It was a habit of his, she’d found. He liked to discuss what was on his mind and found her a safe repository for all his musings. After all, who would she tell?
“Dunn is being kept somewhere,” he repeated, hunching over and rubbing one finger along the edge of his shoe, smoothing away a scuff. Jabber, who’d grown to tolerate Piotr over the past month, darted and dodged at the shoelace he dangled along the floor with his other hand.
“Somewhere, somewhere…but the North Bay has been scoured high and low! Lily wants now to search south.” Piotr paused, and peered at her through a fall of his messy hair. Watching him shove the thick strands off his face, Wendy wondered if there were combs in the afterlife. “What of you, Wendy? Have you yet seen anything out of the ordinary during those walks you take?”
Only fourteen Walkers hanging out near the park tonight, she thought to herself, but kept quiet and shook her head. Wendy had three more equations to pound out before she could quit and get ready for bed. Piotr, who she suspected had never had homework a day in his life, kept rattling aloud in the background.
“This is insanity!” Piotr continued. Wendy scowled at the cracked screen on her graphing calculator and wished she had the money to buy a new one. She’d fallen hard on her backpack a week ago during the most recent Walker ambush, and had crushed it. It was a miracle the calculator still turned on. There was no way she was going to ask her father to buy her another one. Recently they’d developed a truce of sorts—she stuck to jeans and tees around the house, he pretended that she didn’t stay out to all hours of the night.
“I need a job,” she muttered under her breath. Jabber, ghostly bell tinkling, darted between her ankles.
“What’s that?” Piotr peered over her shoulder. “You said something?”
Wendy slammed her book shut. “I said, ‘I need a job,’” she grumbled, burying her face in her hands.
“I don’t understand.”
“My clothes are mostly ripped up, calculator’s damn near broken, my bag’s got a rip in it. Money’s tight, Piotr, and it’s a necessity for living. At least these days.” She rolled her eyes and added sourly, “Not like you’ve got that problem.”
Startled by her tone, Piotr was silent a moment, chastised. Then he brightened. “You need one of those for your schoolwork?” He pointed to her nearly shattered TI-86.
Forcing herself to keep her tone civil, Wendy sighed and nodded. “Yes. I do. But—”
She didn’t get to finish her question—Piotr had dropped through the floor.
“Good going, Wendy,” she groaned. “Way to scare him away.” Upset with herself for her poor attitude, Wendy glumly returned to her homework, berating herself for the fact that Piotr would probably not be back tonight, if at all. So when his face appeared at her window twenty minutes later, Wendy jumped in fright, nearly falling off her chair.
“Pros`tite,” he apologized, sliding through the wall and grinning sheepishly at her. “I was going to climb the stairs but the tree beckoned. It was fun!” Then he reached into his back pocket and drew out a package. “Is this the one?”
Wendy leaned forward, confused. “Is that… a calculator?”
“Da! Since you can touch me,” he explained, setting the ghostly TI-86 on the edge of her desk, “and Dunn’s cap, I reasoned that you might touch this too.”
Resuming his normal position, Piotr propped himself against the headboard of her bed. “The packaging must be removed, pros`tite. My apologies.”
“No, no, it’s great. Thank you.” Wendy picked up the calculator, marveling at the way one moment she could easily see through it and the next it solidified in her hand, opaque to the eye. “Does it work? Where’d you get it?”
“If it works, that is a mystery.” Piotr shrugged and clucked his tongue at Jabber, trying to lure the cat to come play again. “Sometimes electronics do, sometimes they do not. Often it is not. No one knows why. I found them outside an electronic store…Costco? I was foraging for Dora’s art supplies and learned that old merchandise is destroyed in the back. I go back frequently to check—I am the scavenger king!”
Stripping off the packaging, Wendy turned the calculator in her hands, stunned at the giving weight of it. “I wonder if I need ghostly batteries now,” she joked, pressing the ON button. Slowly, unbelievably, the calculator powered on.
“Net, it is solar powered,” Piotr said, grinning. “High tech. But which sun to work? Yours or mine?”
“This is absolutely insane,” Wendy mused, turning the calculator under the light. “I thought there had to be some sort of emotional attachment for an object to pass over.”
“Emotions help the process, but are not necessary. It is, what is the phrase…a crap shoot? Pass the cardboard please,” Piotr said, holding up a hand until Wendy, still marveling over the gift, threw him the leftover packaging. He held it between his hands a moment, staring darkly down at the remnants, until the packaging wavered, shivered, and faded away.
“How’d you do that?” Wendy set down the calculator to examine Piotr’s hands, turning them over in hers to make sure it wasn’t some sort of trick.
“It takes practice,” he said. “But flimsy things, you can make them—POOF—vanish.” He shrugged. “Keeps the Never clean.”
“Dead hippies,” Wendy laughed. “Now I’ve seen everything. But thanks. I bet I can’t just throw the packaging away, anyway. It’d go right through the garbage sack.”
“It was no problem,” he said and then lapsed into silence. They sat together, neither willing to speak, for several minutes, glancing at one another as the silence stretched longer and longer between them.
Finally Wendy cleared her throat and nervously ran her new barbell against the back of her teeth. “Look, Piotr, I’m sorry that I snapped at you. I’ve just been extra tired and—”
Seeming glad that Wendy had made the first move, Piotr waved his free hand. “Bah, Wendy! Go, finish your work. I will wait.”
She took his hand and squeezed his fingers gratefully. “Thank you.”
With the new calculator, Wendy was able to finish up her homework in less than fifteen minutes. It turned off as easily as a real calculator and stayed exactly where she put it.
Hopefully, she thought to herself, I won’t look like an absolute idiot using it in class.
“So,” Piotr said, as she joined him on the bed. “Last night I learned about the vagaries of the Internet. Tonight is your night for questions. What about the Never do you wish to learn? Pick my brain.”
“Anything?”
“Anything at all.” He relaxed against her pillows. “Go.”
“Okay.” Wendy curled her fingers in her bedspread. “Well, uh, you did promise to tell me about the Riders.”
“The Riders?” Piotr smirked. “What is it you wish to know?”
“Everything.”
He threw his head back and laughed. “Ask for something difficult next time?”
Wendy ducked her head, disappointed. It had taken a lot of nerve to finally work up to this subject, this deep and intricate part of Piotr’s life that he constantly hinted about but never outright explained. “We could start with something else, I guess.”
Shifting in place, Piotr shook his head. “Net, net, this is fine. It’s just…it’s fine.” He cleared his throat. “The easiest explanation sounds bad, do you understand? But it is a good word to use. The Riders are like a gang. A sort of posse?”
“A sort of posse.” Wendy raised one eyebrow and settled herself in for the explanation.
Sighing, Piotr adjusted his angle against her headboard and held his hands up, grasping for an eloquent explanation. “A group. A crew…people.” He sagged. “It is complicated.”
“It can’t be that complicated. You all hang out, right? So what else? Who’s the leader? Why do you call yourself Riders? I’m not asking you to solve the mystery of pi here, Piotr, just give me some background on where you go when you’re not, you know, here.”
“You speak…” he smothered a smile. “You are a strange one.”
“Stalling,” she replied with a wide grin. “Ahem. So, you all hang out, right?”
“Da,” he laughed. “We ‘hang out.’ Infrequently. Often, though, it is a Rider and a few Lost, like a family, but there are times when we congregate. Now, for example.” He smiled and his gaze was far away. “Once, before Lily and I had our time together, the Lost and Riders for miles around would gather every decade. Take trips together. Lily called these meetings tu’wanasaapi.”
“Tu’wanasaapi,” Wendy repeated, liking the way the word rolled off her tongue. “Fancy stuff. What was that all about?”
He shrugged. “It was a meeting of elders, I suppose. A time when we gathered and spoke, shared news and gossiped like old women. Now it would be considered…what was that word you used before? About flower children?”
“Hippies? New age?”
“New age! That is right! Our meeting for the tu’wanasaapi would be considered very spiritual; sitting in a circle and centering ourselves.”
Wendy snorted. “Centering, huh?”
“You laugh,” he replied seriously. “But many of the Lost were visited by the Light during those meetings. Many souls went on.”
“I wouldn’t dream of laughing at you,” Wendy said, holding up her hands placatingly. “Not when it comes to the Light. That stuff is serious business.” Moody now, Piotr had withdrawn and Wendy didn’t want him to be in a huff. “Okay, so that’s it then? You all just find a bunch of kids to hang out with—”
“To protect.”
“To protect,” she amended, “and then what? You just hang around until all the Lost have entered the Light? What then, do you get a prize? Maybe a cookie?”
He scowled. “If you cannot take this seriously—”
“Piotr, come on, please. You know me. I’m sorry. It’s just…I don’t understand why you guys would throw away your afterlives watching a bunch of kids you’re not related to. Don’t get me wrong, I think it’s awesome; more people should take care of each other that way. But what do you guys get out of it? There has to be something, right?”
“You are not wrong. There is a reason.” Piotr crossed his arms over his chest and, sliding off the bed, began pacing tight ovals around her room, stepping over Jabber as he paced. “But first, there is something you must grasp: Riders are not common. This may seem strange to you, but teenagers are new. Historically speaking.”
Slightly annoyed that he was treating her like a child, Wendy rolled her eyes. “Well, duh. In the Middle Ages a girl became a woman as soon as she had her first period. You bleed, you breed, ’nuff said. No spot in between kid and adult.”
“Exactly!” Momentarily taken aback at her fast understanding, it took a second for Piotr to smile appreciatively at her quick mind. “It was the same thing for boys. There was a rite of manhood—jump a horse, kill a deer and you are a man.” He clapped his hands sharply, trying to explain without words the abrupt nature of the concept.
“And that ‘Monday you’re a kid, Tuesday you’re an adult’ idea bled over into the Never?”
“In a way.” Piotr ceased pacing and knelt near her, the cadence of his words increasing as he warmed to the subject. “To clarify: Lily has been around many centuries. She is fond of saying that, for most people, there is defining moment when they grow up.”
“Like…?”
“Your heart is broken for the first time. Or perhaps you learn there is no Easter Bunny. You wake up one morning and decide there’s no God. But one day, child; the next, adult. It is like a switch. In your head.”
Convincing Jabber to slink near with a wiggle of his fingers, Piotr stole a few quick pets off the back of Jabber’s head before the cat tired of the attention and hissed, darting away. “Elle calls it the real loss of innocence.”
“How so?”
“Once you have had it, there is no returning. A seed of doubt begins to grow. You are corrupted.”
Wendy could see where he was going, and thoughtfully tapped her tongue ring. “But not for everyone?”
“Not for all.” He shrugged. “With some people, that switch isn’t set to ‘child’ and ‘adult,’ ‘on’ or ‘off.’ There is a period of wonder… a middle space.”
“Like a gradient?”
“You understand. These gradient-people, maybe they don’t believe in Easter Bunny anymore, but they still believe in the Tooth Fairy. Or their first love burned but they are completely able to trust the next person just as much. They can separate the bad things and not grow cynical. There is still some innocence.” Clasping his hands together, Piotr smiled to himself and rocked back and forth on his toes, getting into the subject now.
Wendy laughed and Piotr looked at her strangely. “This is funny?”
“No, it’s not that. I was just remembering…when I was a kid, you could just go up to another kid on the playground and say ‘Want to be my friend?’ and play. Within a week, you’d have a new best friend. No worrying if they thought you were weird, you just ran off and had fun.” She grinned. “I can’t imagine doing that now.” Wendy leaned back and thought briefly of Eddie. She couldn’t remember a time when he hadn’t been a part of her life.
Piotr ran his hands through his hair, pushing the long hanks off his face. “You know this, but many adults pass into the Light with no fuss. Children are the same—most of them go into the Light easily, the remaining become the Lost. But those like me…” Piotr’s hands curled into loose fists. “We died when we were in-between child and adult. Those like me become the Riders, the protectors.”
“Eternally seventeen,” Wendy murmured. “Wow, suck.”
“It is not so bad.” He winked. “I eternally look this good.”
Wendy snorted and buried her face into a pillow to keep Jon or Chel from hearing her laughter. Finally, when her chuckles had subsided, she sat up and wiped the tears streaming from her eyes. “Well how many Riders are there, anyway? Just to know what your competition is, understand.”
He ignored the last. “In all the city? Perhaps ten of us, watching fifty or so Lost. Then there are hundreds if not thousands of Walkers, the White Lady, and now the Lightbringer.” Piotr grimaced. “These challenges that face us…it is difficult to stay upbeat these days. Even together we are outnumbered.”
Slowly, wanting to make sure she had all her facts straight, Wendy turned the conversation away from the Lightbringer and toward the Lost. This was a conversation she’d always wanted to have with her mother, but it had never been the right time. Piotr was filling some rather large holes in her knowledge. “If they need protection so badly, how can the Lost exist so long? Especially with the Walkers hunting them?”
Piotr gave her a look that said come on, you’re smarter than that. “They died with much life ahead of them. The unused years sustain them, give them strength. And should they choose to share some of this life, to strengthen the will to keep going…”
“Share…oh!” Wendy understood. “You guys take care of the Lost and they take care of you. Quid pro quo.”
Smiling crookedly, Piotr shrugged. “As I have said before, protecting the Lost has its benefits. Shaking hands in greeting will tide an older ghost over for weeks. It is a contact high. It’s why the Walkers need them to exist. That energy, that will to keep going on, is what stops the Walkers from fading away. Even those completely rotten from within.” He frowned. “I tire of this subject. It is distasteful. I don’t wish to discuss this anymore.”
“Okay.” Wendy stretched out beside him and Piotr, face grave, absently took her hand. Feverish and excited after learning so much about the world she brushed only peripherally, Wendy welcomed the electric chill of his touch. It soothed her and, despite his attempt to hide it, she noted his initial wince quickly smoothed away.
“Still burns, huh?”
“Always a little,” he murmured, running his thumb over her knuckles. “The calm surety of you is enough to make the pain worthwhile.”
“Why do you think this is?” Without releasing his hand, Wendy indicated their joined fingers. “I mean, there’s got to be some reason, right?”
“I do not know.” Stretching, Piotr laid beside her, still holding her, and wrapped his other hand around their joined fists so that he was cupping her hand in his. His eyes strayed to the intricate Celtic knots tattooed across her collarbone and he winced, glancing away. “I wish I could describe what it is like.”
“You could try.”
Piotr’s lips quirked. “I would fail. This is…this is different. It hurts, but it’s not insistent. When I touch you everything is brighter. The grey isn’t so grey.” Absently Piotr ran his thumb over the base of her thumb, tracing the line there. “What’s it like for you?”
Sleepily, Wendy yawned. She could never explain it, the comfort she got when she and Piotr lay on her bed and held hands like this, how the electric chill subsided into soothing, numbing cool. She was thrilled by the paradox of his touch, since holding his hand inevitably sent her to sleep before long. With the White Lady regularly haunting her dreams, Wendy knew she needed every second of sleep she could get.
Adjusting until she was comfortable, Wendy curled on her side and switched hands, letting Piotr caress her other hand so she could tuck her arm under her head. “It’s nice,” she murmured, eyes slowly closing. “I need to turn off the light.”
“It’s not harming anything,” he said. “Stay.”
“Mmm,” she sighed and nodded, sinking deeper into her bed as tightly wound muscles relaxed and her light breathing finally steadied, slowed as she drifted towards sleep. “Okay.”
“So this is just ‘nice’ then?” Piotr’s voice was low, almost indistinguishable from the steady rush of blood in her veins, the soft whoosh of her own breath. She could have dreamed it; could have imagined the soft, cool press of his fingertips brushing along her cheekbone, the gentle feathering of his hair against her forehead as his lips faintly followed the line his fingers had taken. He was a perfect gentleman.
“Piotr?” she murmured, nearly asleep, not wholly conscious. “Stay?”
“Net, Wendy, dorogaya. Not tonight,” he replied, as he had done every night for the past month, disentangling his hands from hers. She heard the real regret in Piotr’s tone, the subtle desire to heed her wishes indicated only by a slight thickening of his accent. Piotr, she knew, rarely showed regret. “Not tonight,” he repeated, “but someday.”
On the edge of dreams, Wendy frowned. “Spoilsport.”
The last thing she heard as she drifted into dreams was his laughter as he slid through the door and walked away.
In her dreams Wendy walked and walked.
This time she found herself not at the beach or the park but standing in the woods outside the house of her first reap. The house had begun to fall apart, the back porch spongy with rot, the lawn overgrown with grass and weeds that brushed Wendy mid-thigh. Wendy drifted closer to the house, running tentative fingers over the rusted legs of the swingset, and wondered why her dream had brought her here.
“Maybe it wasn’t your mind that brought you,” said the White Lady, stepping through the shattered patio door of the house. “Ability to blast ghosts into the afterlife notwithstanding, you don’t rule the dreamspace, you know.”
“You again.” Wendy scowled, eyeing the backyard for potential Walker hiding spots. “Didn’t I tell you that I wasn’t going to call a truce?”
“I remember.” She looked around the porch and tsked. “This place used to be so nice.”
“Right,” Wendy drawled. “I’m sure you even have a clue where this place is in real life.”
“Near Middlefield and San Antonio Road,” the White Lady rapped out. “Though, in the living world, I’m told those trees were torn down some time ago. Not that I’d know. I haven’t been back here in a while.” She rested one hand on the porch rail.
“What, did you live out here?” Wendy rolled her eyes. “I find that hard to believe.”
“‘When we are dreaming alone it is only a dream. When we are dreaming with others, it is the beginning of reality.’ Camara. Not quite apt for this discussion, but close enough for government work, I suppose.”
“You’re talking crazy again. Or are you just trying to creep me out again or something?”
“I’ve found that ‘creeping you out’ is rarely worth the bother unless I want to make a point. Much to my chagrin, I see that quite clearly now. I shouldn’t have bothered trying to scare you the last time we spoke. All that effort for nothing.” The White Lady squeezed and the railing beneath her hand disintegrated.
“Why are you even bothering with me? I mean, come on. I know you’re dead and all, but don’t you have some sort of life?”
“Let’s say that I have a habit of following the antics of your kind and keeping an eye on their whereabouts. It’s good policy, after all, to know what your enemy is up to.” The White Lady touched her throat with one hand, plucking at her stitches. “Your sort is a big deal here. You’re like Bigfoot, but real.” She chuckled. “You don’t think about the effect what you do has on the Never, do you? How large an impact you make? Or how the Never affects the real world.”
“I was taught that the Never can’t influence the living,” Wendy said. “The whole lot of you are just ghosts.”
The White Lady chuckled. “Just ghosts. That’s rich.” She pointed to the swingset. “Do you remember the woman you reaped here? What was she doing when you found her?”
Wendy stiffened. “How did you know about that?”
“Answer the question. What was she doing?”
Shrugging, Wendy glanced at the swingset. “Pushing her granddaughter on the swing.” She stopped. “Wait, that can’t be right. She was dead. That can’t happen.” Wendy chewed her lower lip and tried to remember more about that day. Surely she’d imagined the old woman pushing the girl. To think otherwise was to start entertaining ideas she wasn’t prepared to handle, especially without her mother to answer the questions that were bullying their way to the forefront of Wendy’s mind. “Can it?”
“You tell me.” The White Lady sounded as if she were smirking, but the heavy shadow of her cloak hid her face. She gestured back toward the house. “Don’t you ever wonder what happened to the mother of that little girl? What sort of mother would leave her child to an abusive stepfather and a sick grandmother? Especially after that grandmother had kicked the bucket?”
“A real mom wouldn’t. She’d be back home right away.”
“True! ‘A mother’s love endures through all.’ Washington Irving. So, my dear girl, why would a mother have to let someone like you intervene on her child’s behalf?”
“She wouldn’t. Unless she was kept away or, I don’t know, was dead,” Wendy said. Then she frowned, taking in the overgrown yard and rotting home. Pale white lace curtains fluttered in the windows, long white sheers hung behind the shattered patio door. Even the buckets of flowers by the patio stairs, overgrown and wilted, browned in the hot sun, had once been white. “Wait. Are you telling me that you’re—”
“I’m telling you nothing,” the White Lady interjected smoothly. “All I’m doing is pointing out that you’ve been taking too much at face value for some time now. Listening to one’s mother is all well and good, but at some point you have to learn to think for yourself. I was watching you that day.” She drifted down the stairs past Wendy and, with a slight gesture, sent the rusting swing rattling in an arc. “You were so intent on ripping that ghost to shreds on your momma’s orders, you didn’t even think to ask the right questions.”
“Oh yeah? What should I have asked, then?” Wendy stiffened and stepped away from the White Lady. She was too close for comfort; a horrid odor of moss and rot permeated the air around her. “Let me guess. I should’ve made the grandma tell me how she was pushing the little girl?” She sneered. “Right.”
“It would have been a good start.” The White Lady caught the swing in one mottled hand. Her nails were long and yellow and curling, Wendy noted. Her bones peeped through the flesh as she slid into the seat of the swing and gently pushed off, letting the swing creak and groan as it carried her higher and higher. The edges of her hood fluttered in the breeze but didn’t push back as she pumped her rotting legs harder, gaining momentum and height.
“Look, did this conversation have a point or something? Because if the only reason we’re having this little chat is over something I didn’t ask four years ago, well, that ship has sailed. It’s not like I can go stomping into the Light, find Grandma, and ask her how she did her fancy magic trick.” Wendy crossed her arms over her chest and waited patiently as the White Lady, at swing’s apex, pushed off the seat and floated to the ground. Gravity was on break in this dream; the White Lady hung in the air for a moment too long and reached the high grass several seconds too late.
Despite herself, Wendy smiled. “Nice jump.”
“Thank you.” The White Lady wiped one hand across the hip of her pristine cloak as she passed a rotting barbeque grill. “So messy! Honestly, some people just can’t have nice things.”
The White Lady dusted her hands and crossed her arms over her chest. “The point of all this is that I thought that perhaps, after sharing my wisdom with you, you might actually be able to look past the terrible rumors that’ve been circulating about me and think for yourself for once. Make up your own mind.”
“I’m listening.”
“I thought that, perhaps, we trade instead of fight. A deal.”
“And now I’m leaving.” Wendy turned and began to head back toward the woods.
“Hear me out!”
“Go to hell, lady. I don’t deal with the likes of you. We covered this already, remember?”
“Listen to me!” The White Lady darted in between her and the woods. “You’re making more of a nuisance of yourself than usual. And I know for a fact that you haven’t found your mother yet.”
“You haven’t either. If you had, you’d have let me know by now. Rub it in my face, demand something impossible.” Wendy smirked. “Not really trying, are we?”
“Oh, believe me, I’m keeping my eyes peeled. All of them.” The White Lady laughed darkly. “I saw her once or twice. She moves quickly. And she knows the city well.”
“Oh yeah? Where?”
“That is for me to know, my dear, and you to find out. I may not have her in my hardworking but oh-so-delicate hands just yet, but I will. Mark my words, I’m closing in, and when I do you will beg me—beg me!—to have your mother’s soul back.”
“Getting bored.” Wendy stepped around the White Lady and headed for the woods. “Good luck with all that. You just let me know if you can catch her, hmm? Until then, where was I? Oh yeah. Go to hell.”
“I may not have your mother’s soul,” the White Lady called behind her, “but I sure as hell have Dunn’s.”
Wendy froze. Sweat broke out all over her body as she struggled with the urge to turn and dive at the White Lady. Knowing her, she’d vanish and Wendy would end up with a face full of dirt for her troubles.
“You. Bitch. I will end you.”
“No, dear, you just wish you could end me.” The White Lady chuckled. “Here’s the deal. You walk away from my Walkers and I won’t rip the boy to shreds and send those shreds to the Riders in a pretty paper package. How does that sound, hmm?”
“What are you keeping him for anyway, you horrible cow?” Wendy turned around to find the White Lady less than a foot away. The smell of rot was blinding this close up; Wendy’s eyes immediately watered. “You aren’t feeding the Lost to the Walkers or you would’ve done it by now. You’re keeping him for some reason. Why?”
“That, my dear, is for me to know and you to fret yourself over. Do we have a deal?”
Wendy stiffened. “I can’t do that. I can’t.” Her fists tightened. “But you better pray to whatever god you believe in that I don’t spot your pasty ass on my rounds, lady. You’ve officially stepped all over my last nerve.”
“Ah, yes, I think I understand now. You’re trying to protect the rest of them.” The White Lady chuckled. “I understand. It’s a complicated choice. If you give in to me, then you’ve saved one soul but damned the rest. But if Dunn is sacrificed then you can still run free and attempt to stem the tide, maybe even keep my Walkers away from the other Lost. But it’s already too late. My Walkers are numerous and growing by the day. I’ve already won, you and those pathetic Riders just don’t know it yet.”
“I swear—”
“You swear nothing. You understand nothing.” The White Lady waved a hand. “I’m bored of this. This will take time for you to decide. I’m feeling particularly reasonable tonight. You have two weeks. Fourteen whole days, that’s how generous I am. Sort out which is more important to you. The boy or,” she laughed, “the Rider.”
“I wish I could kill you twice,” Wendy said through gritted teeth. “And if I ever get to really lay hands on you, you’ll regret it. I promise you that. You’ll regret it.”
“Hmm. We’ll see. I’ll see myself out.”
Wendy woke moments later, drenched in sweat and crying angry tears. She didn’t know what to do. Should she tell Piotr or should she handle the White Lady alone? And, more importantly, should she sacrifice Dunn?
Wendy flopped back on her pillow, wiping her tears away. She wished her mother were there. Mom would know what to do.
“Mom,” she whispered to the ceiling. “Where are you?”