The day spun its hours out the way days do. Twilight found Wendy unlocking her front door and stepping into the foyer. In the living room Chel was sprawled out on the couch, arms pillowed beneath her head and snoring as some reality show droned on low in the background. Wendy covered her with a light blanket and went into the kitchen for a snack.
There was a good smell of cooking there: tomatoes and garlic, onions, and a hint of something spicy and sharp. A pot squatted on the back burner, simmering, and when Wendy lifted the lid and leaned over it she was hit with a cloud scented with rich, creamy garlic. It smelled heavenly and Wendy’s mouth filled with water, stomach grumbling.
“The sauce is okay, but we have to eat it over spaghetti since I messed up the ravioli,” Jon said, entering the kitchen from the back yard. His basketball was clutched under one arm and he was limping, supporting his weight on his right leg. The knee of his jeans had been torn out; gravel and grass flecked the spongy, raw wreck that had been his knee.
“What happened to you?” Wendy snatched the paper towels off the kitchen counter and hurried to the sink, dampening a handful under the cold tap. Jon slid onto one of the high kitchen stools at the counter and provided his knee for inspection, wincing each time Wendy dabbed the damp edge against the bloody flesh.
“My lay-ups suck now,” he admitted as Wendy flicked on the kitchen light in order to better see his wound. Mournfully he plucked at the fabric on his thigh. “Nana just bought me these jeans, too.”
“Well, it’s just a scrape,” Wendy replied, gingerly pulling the shredded jeans away from his knee when she was done, verifying that it was the only wound on him. “A nasty one, but it doesn’t look like you need stitches.” Rising, she patted him on the shoulder. “Hang tight, there’s some knockoff Neosporin and gauze in the bathroom.”
When she returned to the kitchen, Jon held out his hands. “Give me that stuff and go stir the sauce, will you? I don’t want the bottom to scorch.”
“Aye-aye, Cap’n,” Wendy agreed. “Anything else?”
“Turn the heat down to low. It needs to sit for fifteen or so.” While she did so, Jon thumbed the lid off the antibiotic ointment and slathered a largish dollop across his knee with fussy precision. “When you’re done, can you hold the gauze while I tape it down?”
“Gladly.” Wendy ended up applying the gauze for him and it reminded her so strongly of the prior times she’d done this very chore for Jon that she found herself growing misty eyed.
“It’s just a scrape, you big baby,” Jon admonished as Wendy applied the last stripe of tape and straightened, wiping her eyes with the back of her hand. “I’m not gonna die.”
“It’s not that,” she sniffled, ripping a paper towel off the roll to use as a tissue. “It’s just, I don’t know, you haven’t come to me with a scrape in, what, five years? Six?”
Uncomfortably, Jon shrugged. “When he was here, Dad usually handled that stuff. You and Mom were always busy, you know, at the park and stuff.”
At the park. Wendy sighed. “At the park” had been the code she and her mother used to mean “out reaping.” She hadn’t had to use that excuse since their mother’s accident. So long as Dad wasn’t around, saying simply that she was going “out” usually sufficed, and these days the few times a month Dad was home he was generally at the hospital. Thanks to their sort of truce, Wendy felt little need to explain her whereabouts to him.
“I guess you’re right,” she agreed. “I was at the park a lot.”
Jon shrugged. “Whatever. We got used to it. Mom and Dad didn’t care, so what’s the big deal, right?” He limped to the stove and dipped a long wooden spoon into the sauce, smacking his lips and smiling widely at the taste. “Momma mia, the sauce, she is perfecto!”
“How are the calories?” Wendy asked and then kicked herself for asking. Jon had enough stress in his life as it was; the last thing he needed was for her to get on his case about his weight, especially since they hadn’t yet talked about her bitchiness over the past few months.
But Jon didn’t seem to care. He rolled his eyes and licked the spoon elaborately, running his tongue far past the point where the sauce ended. “Ish’s gweate,” he declared around his mouthful of spoon.
“Sorry I asked,” Wendy cried, throwing up her hands and chuckling as her brother slobbered all over the spoon. In the living room, Chel stirred and sat up, her curls sticking up every which way and frizzy at the top.
Wendy affected an outrageous accent. “My apologies, good sir!”
Discarding the damp spoon in the sink, Jon wiped his mouth with the back of his hand. “Naw, no worries. It’s got a skim milk base, I promise, and it’s going over whole wheat pasta.” He patted his gut and grinned, waggling his eyebrows wildly. “This baby’s goin’ away slow, but yes, ma’am, she is a goin’.”
“Smells tasty in here,” Chel yawned, staggering to the refrigerator and grabbing a plastic bottle filled with some thick, milky-looking liquid. Flush with sleep, Chel caught Wendy’s eye and shook the bottle. “Protein shake,” she said coolly. “Want some?”
“I’ll pass,” Wendy said, waving her hand in front of her face. “Especially if it’s from Dad’s can. That stuff is foul.”
Chel shrugged and took a deep gulp of the stuff. “Add some fruit, it’s no big deal. It stays down, too.” She wiped her thumb against the corner of her mouth, checking for stray drops of shake. “I saw you go out with Eddie this morning. You done being a bitch yet?”
Amused at how casually Chel asked, Wendy couldn’t help but smile. “No guarantees, but I think I’m over my bitchy phase, yeah. You done puking after every other meal?”
“Working on it,” Chel said mildly and took another sip. “It’s a little harder than I thought it’d be.” Her head dipped down and she scowled, fingers tapping in rapid rhythm against the plastic sides of her bottle. “Okay, a lot harder.”
“She quit the squad,” Jon explained. Chel scowled and shot him a dark look. Jon returned her scowl with a calm smile, shrugging as if to say she had to find out sometime.
“But you love cheering!” Wendy protested. The idea that her bright and vivacious sister would quit cheerleading was as foreign to her as the idea of ceasing the search for their mother’s soul. “What about Dad? Does he know?”
“Nana does,” Chel said, belligerent. “She said she’d pay Dad back for all my gear for this year as a Christmas gift. You know, in case he flips about the money.” Nervous now, Chel gnawed her lower lip and lifted the drink up once again. Looking at her trembling hand, Wendy realized that Chel’s perfect nails, always manicured and glossed to a high shine, were now ragged and blunt, ground down nearly to the quick.
She’s chewing on them, Wendy realized, examining her sister closely for the first time in months. Chel’s nails were now too short, her hair starting to show glossy red at the roots, and even her makeup was barely there, only a one-two swipe of lip-gloss and eye shadow, leaving her forehead shiny and cheeks pale.
“You’re a mess,” Wendy breathed, hardly able to get the words past lips gone numb with shock. Guilt clawed at her chest, making breathing tough. “Did I do this? Make you a mess by picking on you over the diet pills?”
“I did this to me,” Chel retorted, draining the last of the protein shake and throwing the bottle in the sink for Jon to rinse out. “You just gave me a wake up call.” She snorted. “But don’t congratulate yourself just yet; you’ve still been a mega bitch and if I were smart, I ought to tell you to go to hell.”
“But you’re not smart?”
She shrugged. “No one’s smart when it comes to family. Blood is thicker than smart.”
“Before we all break down and group hug like the bunch of sissies we are,” Jon interrupted, “Eddie stopped by earlier, Wendy. He’s going out of town for the holidays after all. He said you’d better text him back later and he dropped off a box. It’s on your bed.”
“A box?” Wendy straightened up from the counter and started toward the stairs. Though she’d seen Eddie just that morning, the idea that he’d taken the time to stop by her house made her a little nervous. They may have made up, but things were still tense between them and she wasn’t sure what to expect.
“Probably a Christmas gift,” Jon called. “Food’s almost ready, though. You coming down for dinner?”
“Yeah,” she called back, mounting the stairs two at a time. “I’ll be right down.”
The box was compact and papered in old national geographic pages. Wendy lifted it and shook. There was a small rattling noise within, albeit muffled.
Careful of her fingers, Wendy used the nail file rattling around her pen cup to slice through the scotch tape layered around each edge of the box. The lid lifted off and fluffy cotton balls puffed over the edge of the box in a white cloud. Wendy set these aside.
“What the hell?” she murmured, shaking a seatbelt buckle and a piece of folded black construction paper out of the box. Holding the buckle up to the light, Wendy depressed the bright orange button on the front but the buckle appeared stuck in its clasp. The strap it had once been connected to was gone but a tough, thick beige thread was pinned within a crack in the clasp. The end of the thread was darker, rust colored, and stiff.
Blood, Wendy thought, and thumped to the floor. Dried blood.
Running her fingers over the buckle, Wendy wished that she’d been there to greet Eddie when he’d brought this gift. She didn’t need to be told what it meant to him, or what lengths he’d probably gone to in order to get his hands on it after the accident. Instead Wendy turned the buckle over in her hands and tried to recall Mr. Barry’s face, the face she must have seen hundreds—if not thousands—of times before the accident.
“Oh Eddie,” Wendy sighed, squeezing the buckle tightly. “I’m so sorry.”
Eddie’s note was written in his familiar looping cursive—silver ink shone bright against the black paper:
Wendy,
I know you think it’s a joke, all the times I’ve said that I love you or that I’d do anything for you. But the thing is…it isn’t. I am in love with you. I have been for years. What’s not to love? You’re smart and funny and fun to hang out with. More importantly, you’re my best friend, my amigo, the only person who gets me and doesn’t think I’m some weird freak.
I know that Miss Manners would probably frown on a missive of undying affection added alongside a Christmas gift. It’s probably rude or something. But I’ve been wanting to say this stuff to you for years. And I have been. I’ve been saying it all along but you always blow me of for think I’m joking and the one time I got you to even halfway consider it, back at the start of school when I kissed you, you thought I was just blowing off steam cuz of the crap I said about your mom or the crap you said about my dad. Either way, you forgave me for the kiss. But the thing is… I didn’t want your forgiveness Wendy; I wanted you to kiss me back.
Because I love you.
So a few months ago I made this deal with myself. I said, “Self, if she doesn’t take you up on the next offer, say goodbye. Do your own thing for a while. See how she likes life without Eddie the Great hanging around, slobbering after her affection like a dog waiting for scraps.”
Well… you know the rest. I started dating Gina and you started falling apart. At first a big part of me was sort of thrilled—you loved me back, you just didn’t know it yet!—but then I realized that it wasn’t about me. Something else was going on. But by then it was too late. You weren’t answering my calls or texts and you were avoiding me at school.
I was a shitty friend, Wendy. I am so sorry about that. I decided to make up for it. I talked with the twins and we decided an intervention was in order. Obviously my declared love for you would heal you! This time I wasn’t going to take no for an answer. This time I was going to honestly figure out what was going on in your head without projecting all my hopes and wants onto you. This time I’d be a friend first and a wanna-be-boyfriend second.
It worked, sort of. You’d just started to open up and then WHAM, you had to go. So I waited. And waited. And waited. I expected you to be like normal when you came back to the car—tired, cranky, maybe angry, the way you normally are after a reap—but you weren’t. You were glowing, Wendy. And just like that, I knew.
You were in love… but not with me.
So all during that talk we had this morning at the diner, I knew. Every single time you said his name—Peter, all gooshy like—it was like you were stabbing me in the leg with your fork. Before, when you talked about your new “ghost friend” I figured you’d picked up a human equivalent of Jabberwocky, except not so grouchy, and probably around our age. But I had no idea you’d fallen in love.
Suddenly everything made sense. And I hated him. I don’t even know the guy but I wished him dead…again!
I’ll admit, Wendy, I love you but the idea of you being head over heels for some dead guy grosses me out a lot. I know, I know, it’s not like that, ghosts aren’t like their bodies, they’re not rotted or anything unless they’ve let themselves go bad, but still… honestly, Wendy, what do you know about this guy? I mean, you couldn’t even tell me when he freaking DIED. “He’s Russian,” that’s all you could say about who he was before. Is that a good basis for a relationship? He could be, like, Rasputin’s bastard stepson or something! He could have been some peasant farmer that beat his wife daily! He could have been a vodka-obsessed alcoholic…or worse!
I’m getting emotional. I’m sorry. Anyway, the point of all this is… hell, if you want to be with this Peter dude, I’m not going to stop you. I’m going to caution against it, I’m not going to like it, I might even tease you for it, but I’m not going to bother you about being with me anymore. You are my best friend. You are the most important person in my life. You were the only person who really got how tore up I was when my dad died, and you were the only person who knew exactly how much I loved Dad when he was around.
He was my hero, Wendy. And even though I’m still a little pissed at you… what I’m trying to say is that you’re my hero too. What you do, going out and helping the dead, it’s dangerous and it’s crazy and it’s not safe and part of me really, really wishes you wouldn’t do it anymore because you’re right, you could get hurt… but I’m also proud of you.
The world would be a sadder place without you in it, that’s all I’m trying to say. You’re amazing and wonderful and I’m always going to be deeply in love with you, but other than this note I’ll never mention it again.
I hope you can find happiness with this Peter dude. And if you ever doubt what you’re doing, if you ever think, “Huh, maybe I should stop,” I want you to hold that buckle. Because I know that if Dad were around he’d be proud of you. And I know that it was Dad’s death that started you down this path.
I love you, Wendy. Be happy. Merry Christmas.
Eddie
Dropping the note, Wendy wiped away the tears coursing down her cheeks.
It had been so long since Wendy had thought of Mr. Barry as anything more than the man who she’d seen die, the one whose death had unlocked something deep inside her and allowed her to see the dead. But before that he’d been a special man, her best friend’s father, and one of the few fun neighborhood dads. He’d had gentle eyes, she remembered, and a slow, kind smile. Eddie didn’t resemble him much, he took after his mother, but the eyes were the same, especially when something tickled him. Mr. Barry, like Eddie, had loved a good laugh.
She wondered what Mr. Barry would have done if she’d had to send him into the Light. Would he have fought it the way that girl’s grandmother had?
Wendy had a sneaking suspicion that, if Eddie were in trouble, he might have.
Learning that Piotr and his kind thought of her as a monster, well, that had been a rude awakening. Once upon a time her mother had claimed that all ghosts were glad to see her coming, that they welcomed the embrace of the Light. But her own experiences these past few months with the Walkers and the White Lady had taught Wendy differently. At the end, when they were bathed in the fiery Light, the Walkers struggled and cursed and it was only the sweep of siren song that kept them at her side as she went about the deadly business of tearing their essence apart.
The Shades though, and Specs, the ones who saw it coming…the few who knew their death in the Never was at hand, they saw the Light as a blessing. So which was it?
Now that she’d taken the time to think about it, to get to know Piotr, reaping without consent felt wrong. It was as if she were forcing herself on the ghosts, sneaking up on them unawares and sending them on without their blessing, but until now Wendy had never really considered stopping. Staying out late, roaming around town in a ceaseless hunt for the dead—until now Wendy had done as her mother had always instructed her to do, ambushing most of the Shades in the dark, never really considering that maybe her mother had been the one who was mistaken, that perhaps her mother had been the one taught improperly. Maybe there could be another way.
If not, Wendy could certainly try to make another way herself.
The thought itself was sobering. After Piotr had left she’d swung from one extreme to the other, gone from reaping only in the most dire of circumstances to reaping because she felt like it. She’d done everything but the thing that felt most natural, most right.
Did Wendy have to reap every single ghost she came across? Just because her mother had done so, as well as the countless other Lightbringers before her, didn’t mean that Wendy had to follow in their footsteps. This wasn’t a job she’d taken, after all; it wasn’t as if she’d applied for it. It had been thrust upon her without her consent, a duty and a burden dropped in her lap by Mr. Barry’s death.
Wendy held the buckle to the light.
“I have a choice,” she said aloud. “I don’t have to be her kind of Lightbringer anymore. Not unless I want to.” It was freeing, admitting that fact out loud, and the stress began to drain from her shoulders, her neck, leaving Wendy feeling lightened for the first time in ages, possibly since her mother’s accident. Wendy was giddy with the realization that all the horror of her daily drudgery could end as she saw fit. Once the White Lady had been taken care of, once the Lost had been freed, then she could finally relax. She could be the right kind of reaper, the volunteer kind.
She almost sobbed with relief.
“Wendy!” Jon called from downstairs. “Are you coming down to eat?”
“Go ahead without me,” she called back. “I’m kinda worn out.”
“Ok! I’ll set some aside for you!”
Hugging the buckle close, Wendy flopped on the floor, her hair spread in a halo and her eyes drifting closed. Sleep had been a rare commodity and the subtle sounds of the house around her—the twins downstairs eating, the distant hum of the TV—soothed her to sleep. Grateful for the respite, Wendy drifted into slumber. As she slept, she dreamed.
In her dreams Wendy walked and walked. The familiar stretch of beach wavered before her, bathed in glaring sunlight and hazy from the heat. The sea murmured to her left, the craggy hillside loomed to her right. Seashell doors marched in a ragged line on the sand.
Over the past months, when Wendy visited the beach, she had learned to glimpse the names of the dream doors out of the corner of her eyes, to read them with a swift glance but never look at them straight on. Sometimes the doors opened easily at her hand, leading out of terrible nightmares and into kinder climates. Other times the shells scattered with a touch, trapping her in terrible hellscapes that she had to endure until morning came and brought the buzz of her alarm clock.
Then the mist came, quenching the heat and blotting out the fierce and glaring sun. When the first tendrils lapped at her toes, Wendy’s arm itched and burned; confused, she glanced down at the four open slashes, surprised that she had brought her real-world injury into the dream with her. When tiny white maggots began squirming from the gaping holes she knew the White Lady was near.
“That doesn’t scare me anymore,” she called, pitching her voice as loud as she could. “It’s gross but it’s not like it’s real or anything. And besides, I thought you were done with stupid shit like this. It was too juvenile for you or something?”
“Isn’t it?” The White Lady’s boat drifted out of the mist, mooring itself in the usual place. It took several minutes for the White Lady to struggle out of her small skiff, her movements stiff and slow. The past months had not been kind; her robes were ragged now, worn through with large, moth-eaten holes that allowed nauseating glimpses of the extent of the rot. Where she stepped on the sand black puddles like oil slicks formed, sticky dribbling ichor that sank slowly into the earth and emitted puffs of scent that smelled like rotten eggs. “You’d be surprised the things that cross over from dreams into the real world.”
“You’re falling apart,” Wendy noted, stepping away from the White Lady and shifting so she was upwind. “What the hell is happening to you?”
“One of the mysteries of life… or death,” the White Lady replied, coughing so that Wendy could see the bellows of her lungs fight to squeeze in and out. “Death for the dead, Lightbringer. It comes to us all.”
“Not like that, it doesn’t,” Wendy protested. “I should know. Not that I’m complaining. I wouldn’t care if you rotted down to dust after all the crap you’ve been putting me through.”
“You’ll care,” the White Lady said. “One day you’ll die and you’ll see.”
“You know,” remarked Wendy, keeping her distance, “for a crazy lady, this talk’s been awfully sane so far. Find a good dead psychiatrist? Freud himself, perhaps?”
The White Lady shrugged. “Eh, it comes and goes with the strength of the decay. As I said before, just wait. One day you’ll see.” She clapped her hands. “But enough chit-chat, I don’t have time to fuss with your nonsense today. I’m here to talk about our truce.”
“You mean the truce I told you to ram up your ass? The truce we agreed wasn’t going to happen? Open war and all that?” Flicking her wrist until her wounds were free of squirming bugs, Wendy crossed her arms across her chest and leaned against the bow of the boat. It was like leaning against a clammy wall, and black slime from the hull worked its way down her back. Wendy grimaced and straightened, annoyed that everything even remotely surrounding the White Lady had to be so unbelievably foul. “Real or not, ugh, this is so disgusting.”
“Yes, that truce. Though perhaps calling it a trade now might be more to the point.” She coughed again, a horrid rattling sound that hurt Wendy’s ears.
“A trade?” Wendy rolled her eyes. “Right, sure. I’m listening.”
“I’ve got something you want, Lightbringer. You’ve got something I want. So we trade.”
“I sincerely doubt that you have anything I want.” Wendy ran her hand along her shoulder, cleaning off the clinging remains of the muck. “Unless it’s a clean towel or maybe a shower.”
“A shower can certainly be arranged as a gesture of goodwill,” the White Lady said and snapped her fingers. “I always like to clean up before beginning negotiations.”
Above the beach, forked lightning flashed and thunder boomed, nearly atop them. A two second beat passed and then rain pounded from the sky, soaking Wendy to the skin almost instantly and obliterating the chilly mist within seconds. Though the foul White Lady had called the rain, the water was clear and cold and wonderfully cleansing, raising huge gooseflesh across every inch of skin. The slime washed away within seconds and the itching eased shortly after.
“Yeah, I guess that works!” Wendy shouted over the downpour, the drumming rain filling the world with noise. She hunched over and rapidly rubbed her hands over her slick arms, seeking friction-warmth.
“I haven’t many tricks left,” the White Lady said, her voice pitched low but still reaching Wendy’s ears, “but the ones I have are powerful.”
“I can see that.” Wendy straightened, determined to not show the White Lady that the chill was getting to her. “Want to turn off the waterworks now?”
“If you like,” came the negligent reply, and just as suddenly as the rain arrived, it was gone. Clouds dashed across the sky, revealing the hot afternoon sun once more, and rainbows glinted all around the beach, reflecting every direction she looked.
“I’ve got to learn how to do that,” Wendy mused. “Is that trick super handy or what?”
“Dreams are not the absolute realms of the Lightbringers,” the White Lady said, reclining on the damp sand and drawing her moth-eaten shift carefully across her legs, “but they can learn a trick or two. Prophecy, a nice neutral zone for a talk, a little spying, or even a bit of glamour; your kind can become quite adept here if they need to be.”
“You say that like you’ve met people like me before.” Now that she was clean and no longer revolted by the way the dreamscape bent in horrifying ways when the White Lady was near, Wendy was back on her guard.
“I told you that I’ve been watching for a long time,” the White Lady said, irritated. Where the hood slipped back Wendy could see long strips of essence that had been sewn together with wide, thick-stitched loops of thread. Where the strips tapered off, darker patches of skin had been carefully set with a crosshatch stitch. Examining these marks, Wendy realized that they had to have once been tattoos, but were now too badly marred to make out.
Her fingers brushed her own collarbone tats. Would the same happen to her designs when she passed over? The White Lady noticed the gesture. “Protective ink only takes you so far in the Never.”
“It’s worked pretty well so far.”
“That’s because a Walker is the worst thing you’ve come across. There are much, much worse things out there. Things that don’t even blink at your ink.”
“Yawn. Bored. Is there a point to all this?”
“My point is that your mother didn’t train you well enough. In fact, she hardly trained you at all. Letting you reap only Shades for years? Until her little accident, your mother had you only reap one ghost. One. So why do you think you are coming to this talk from any sort of position of power?”
“I’m strong enough to tell you to go to hell. And I go through your Walkers easily enough. Or did you forget all that begging you were doing on their behalf earlier?”
“So you can reap a few Walkers. Yippee. I’m much worse than a Walker and I know that, for all your bluster, you’ve figured that out by now. And there are beings far, far scarier than I am wandering the Never.” She held up her rotting horror of a hand so that the light filtered through it, casting a holey shadow on the sand. “Did I ever tell you that I knew your mother? In the living world? I knew what she was.”
“Shut up,” Wendy whispered through lips gone numb from shock. “That’s impossible and I don’t have to listen to this bullshit.”
“It’s not bullshit if it’s true.” The White Lady clenched her fist, skin flaking down. “And you? You are really starting to irritate me, Wendy.”
“Good!” Wendy snapped. “Anything that gets your panties in a twist is fabulous!”
“Stupid, idiot child,” the White Lady snapped. “Normally the ones like you, the Lightbringers, are sent on their first dream-walk at seventeen. But your mother was gone by then, wasn’t she? She never even bothered to tell you that you woke too early. Just thirteen,” she sneered. “It’s a miracle you didn’t go insane from the shock.”
Shoving against the sand for support, Wendy started to rise. The White Lady waved a hand. Hard pressure pressed against the tops of Wendy’s shoulders and she toppled back down, her tongue ring popping smartly against the back of her teeth when she hit the ground.
“I said, sit down.”
Pressing her hand to her mouth, Wendy drew back fingers dark with blood. The sudden jolt had ripped the hole in her tongue wider open. It would heal by tomorrow but until then her mouth would be filled with the copper-rust-salt taste of her own blood. Wendy leaned to the side and spat a wad of bright red that sank into the sand. “Haw doh yah now all thish?”
“Oh for god’s sake,” the White Lady groaned, exasperated. “You just had to get a tongue ring, didn’t you?” She crawled to Wendy’s side and grabbed Wendy by the face. Wendy tried to struggle but the White Lady, rotting apart or not, was still far stronger in this dream realm than Wendy could ever be. Her long and bony fingers, the last flaps of skin flaking apart at the knuckles, forced past Wendy’s teeth.
Then the White Lady grabbed for the barbell and ripped it out.
Shrieking in pain, Wendy gripped the White Lady’s wrists and tried to force the filthy hand away from her face. It was like trying to push a brick wall.
“Stop struggling,” the White Lady snapped and pinched the tip of Wendy’s tongue. Immediately an icy chill filled her mouth, so cold her teeth ached and the molars with silver fillings began to protest the sharp shooting pain.
“To answer your question,” she said, fingers probing the wet, open meat of Wendy’s wounded tongue, “I just know. Do you think I was always like this? Falling apart, piece by piece? I told you that Lightbringers were a hobby of mine. I watched your mother call Walkers from three miles away. I knelt at the knee of your grandmother in these dream realms, learning how to manipulate the ether. Compared to the likes of them you are alone, a toddler wandering in the woods. You know nothing of what your kind can do.” She released Wendy’s tongue and crawled back, wiping her hands against her shift. “That should do it. I know that you won’t say thank you, so you’re welcome.”
A gritty taste like rotten milk and salt permeated her mouth. Wendy staggered to the shoreline and scooped up dipperfuls of saltwater in her hands. It tasted fishy and rank but was better than the texture and taste of the White Lady that lingered foully through several rounds of rinsing and spitting.
“You bitch,” Wendy gasped, spitting out the last mouthful of gritty, salty beach water. Tender probing of her mouth revealed that her tongue had closed up and the blood had ceased its sluggish flow. “You ripped out my ring!”
The White Lady, ignoring Wendy’s outrage, held the hood close to her face and tipped her face to the sky, gauging the sun. “We’re almost out of time. I must conclude my business.”
“What business is that? Being a crazy bitch?”
“Our trade. Will you meet with me in the Never or not?”
“You’ve got nothing I want.” Wendy turned her face away, running the tip of her tongue along the back of her teeth. Her entire mouth felt swollen and sore, tingly in all the wrong places. She just wanted this obnoxious dream to end.
“Oh really?” The whisper of her cloak was all the warning Wendy got as the White Lady snuck up behind her and grabbed Wendy by the back of her neck. “Does this look familiar to you?” She shoved an object in Wendy’s face. At first Wendy couldn’t make out what it was but then she gasped, both confused and furious. It was Eddie’s phone.
“What the hell is this? Is this some sort of dream trick?” Then she laughed. “What the hell am I talking about? Eddie’s alive. He’s fine. You can’t touch him.”
“Oh, the things you don’t know about your own power or mine,” the White Lady sneered, throwing Eddie’s phone into the surf where it sank beneath the surface with a quiet plop. “I was quite surprised when my spy reported in last night. Despite how badly you were wounded, you simply bandaged your arm and didn’t think twice about it, did you? Even after what I told you at that decrepit old house. It didn’t matter what your memories told you; you brushed off my words just because they came from me.”
“Last time…”
“I can’t touch your friend Edward? Oh really? If I can’t touch your dear Eddie, how could my Walkers have harmed you? You’re alive, after all.”
“But when I’m like that…I’m not exactly alive,” Wendy protested. “I’m in between.”
“Even in between, it shouldn’t hurt your physical body as deeply as it did,” the White Lady chuckled. “Poor, poor lost child. So very ignorant, even after I warned you, even after I damn near handed you the answer at that house. Some spirits can reach into the living world, Lightbringer. Some spirits can interact with the living. The Rider does. My Walkers did.”
“When I find my mom—”
“Enough of this. Your precious mother? She’s with me,” the White Lady snapped.
“No.” Wendy shook her head. “No-no-no.”
“I warned you what would happen if you mucked around with my plans and my people, didn’t I? And I always keep my promises. Always.” Her hand on the back of Wendy’s neck clenched tighter, bone tips digging in. “I finally caught her last night. Trapped her not four blocks from your school. While you were busy with him.” She waved something in front of Wendy’s face. It took her several long seconds to comprehend what her eyes were showing her and when she did, it was the most horrible thing she’d ever seen in her life.
A flap of essence with tribal tattoos carved into it; ink that matched Wendy’s own.
“No!” Wendy shrieked and struggled in her grip but the White Lady was impossibly strong. Raising Wendy high, the White Lady shook her by the back of her neck like a kitten until all the fight drained away. Wendy hung loosely, weeping silent tears.
“There’s still a way to get your mother and your boy Eddie back,” the White Lady said, her voice dim and quiet behind the ringing in Wendy’s head. “I’ll even show you how.”
“You’re lying,” Wendy whispered. “You always lie.”
“I’m not,” she replied. “I want your mother back in the land of the living almost as much as you do. Think I want a Lightbringer walking around the Never? Even dead, your kind is a bother. If you knew even half of what your mother knows you’d be like a dangerous wolf loose among the sheep. I can’t have your mother here. So I’m sending her back…if you help me. If you agree to my trade.”
“Fine,” Wendy whispered. “Anything. What do you want?”
“Bring the boy,” the White Lady said. “Piotr. Tomorrow night at the park. You know the one. Around midnight. I’ll take care of binding him, just bring him. Alone, if you please.”
“What are you going to do to him?”
“Do?” The White Lady threw her head back and laughed. “What do you think I’m going to do? Serve him tea and cakes, of course. Impress him with how my watercolors have improved. Maybe take in a show.” She shook Wendy again, lightly this time, and Wendy moaned. “It doesn’t matter what I’m going to do. If you ever want to see Eddie’s soul again, or see your mother out of that bed, you’ll do as I say. Do you understand me?”
“Yes.”
“Good,” the White Lady snapped, dropping Wendy to the ground in a tangle of limbs. “Now wake up.” She reached down and before Wendy could react, the flat of her palm cracked against Wendy’s cheek, snapping her head to the side.
Wendy awoke on the floor with a stinging cheek and damp, fishy-smelling hair. The sun had just breached the top of the trees and down the hall Chel’s alarm blared to life. Running her tongue along her upper teeth, Wendy winced at the sudden and unexpected pain.
Her tongue had closed up; the barbell was gone.