Thirty-three

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I WONDERED WHETHER, AFTER our escape, I’d find time to sleep. Because I certainly hadn’t been getting much at Lyle House.

That night I was so exhausted I didn’t even have a chance to lie there, raging about Derek or fretting about the step I was about to take. I hit the bed and fell straight into dreams of wailing police sirens and baying tracking dogs. Of a boy trapped in a hospital bed and a boy trapped in a group home and ghosts trapped in rotting corpses. Of zombies screaming for mercy and a girl screaming, “But I didn’t mean it,” and a boy saying, “I didn’t mean it either. Doesn’t matter.”

The dreams spun and melted together until one slid free. An image buried by the stronger, louder ones, separating and saying, “What about me?”

I bolted awake and sat there, suspended in the dark, reeling in that tangled memory, the questions it raised, the answers it promised.

Then I leaped from bed.

***

I tapped at the bedroom door.

“Derek?”

Rough snores answered.

I rapped at the door again, raising my voice as loud as I dared.

“Derek?”

My toes curled against the icy hardwood and I rubbed the goose bumps on my arms. I should have grabbed a sweater. And socks.

I shouldn’t even be here. I’d told the guy off, made the perfect exit … and was now creeping back, begging him to talk to me.

Talk about ruining a scene.

As I lifted my hand to knock, the doorknob clicked. When the door creaked open, I lifted my gaze to eye level, an apology on my lips, and found myself staring at a chest. A bare chest… and not a boy’s chest. Broad and muscular, a scattering of angry red acne dots the only sign that it wasn’t attached to a grown man.

Around the house, Derek always wore oversized sweatshirts and baggy jeans. If I’d pictured what he looked like under them—which I hadn’t—I would have guessed stocky, bordering on overweight. All that food he scarfed down had to go somewhere. And, apparently, it did—just not to fat.

My cheeks heated and my gaze dropped from Derek’s chest … only to see he was wearing nothing but boxers.

“Chloe?”

My gaze shot—gratefully—to his face.

He peered at me. “Chloe? What—?”

“You owe me.”

“Huh?” He rubbed his eyes with his thumb and forefinger, snarled a yawn, and rolled his shoulders. “What time is it?”

“Late. Or early. It doesn’t matter. I need your help and you owe me. Get dressed and be downstairs in five minutes.”

I turned on my heel and headed for the stairs.

***

Would Derek follow me? Probably not, considering I’d ignored his “meet me in five minutes” command that afternoon.

I’d planned to not leave his doorway until he agreed to help me. But I hadn’t expected him to be nearly naked during the conversation. It also reminded me that I was wearing only pajama pants and a tank top. When I got downstairs, I found the sweatshirt Rae had shucked in the media room earlier. I was pulling it on as I walked into the hall, and nearly smacked into Derek.

He wore sweatpants and a T-shirt and had stopped in the middle of the hall, furiously scratching one bare forearm.

“Fleas?” I said.

The joke was an admittedly lame attempt to lighten the mood from earlier, and I didn’t think it deserved the glower he gave me.

“Let’s just get this over with,” he said. “I’m not in a good mood.”

I could have asked how that was different from normal, but bit my tongue, motioned him into the media room and closed the door. Then I cocked my head, listening.

“We’re fine here,” he said. “Just keep it down. Someone comes, I’ll hear.”

I moved across the room and stopped in a patch of moonlight. When he followed, I got my first good look at him in the light. His face was pale, his cheeks flaming red, and not from the acne. Sweat plastered his hair around his face and his red-rimmed eyes glittered, struggling to focus.

“You’ve got a fever,” I said.

“Maybe.” He raked his hair back. “Something I ate, I guess.”

“Or some bug you picked up.”

He shook his head. “I don’t…” He hesitated, then pushed on. “I don’t get sick. Not often anyway. Part of my … condition. This seems to be a reaction.” He scratched his arms again. “No big deal. I’m just off. Crankier than usual, Simon would say.”

“You should go back to bed. Forget this—”

“No, you’re right. I owe you. What do you need?”

I wanted to argue but could tell he’d made up his mind.

“Hold on,” I said, and hurried into the hall.

He whispered an exasperated, “Chloe!” after me, followed by a halfhearted string of profanity, as if he couldn’t work up the energy to even curse properly.

***

I returned with a glass of cold water and handed it to him, along with four Tylenol.

“Two for now, two for later, in case you—”

He tossed all four in his mouth and drained half the water.

“Or you could just take them all now.”

“I’ve got a high metabolism,” he said. “Another part of my condition.”

“I know a lot of girls who wouldn’t mind that.”

He grunted something unintelligible and drained the glass. “Thanks, but…” He met my gaze. “You don’t need to be nice to me just because I’m not feeling great. You’re mad. You’ve got a right to be. I used you and I made it worse by pretending I hadn’t. If I were you, I wouldn’t be bringing water unless it was to dump over my head.”

He turned away to set the empty glass on the table, and I’m glad he did, because I was pretty sure my jaw had dropped. Either that fever had gone straight to his brain or I was still asleep, dreaming, because that had sounded suspiciously like an admission of guilt. Maybe even a roundabout apology.

He turned back. “Okay, so you need …?”

I waved him to the love seat. Annoyance flickered across his face—getting comfortable was a distraction he couldn’t be bothered with—but when I sat on the opposite chair, he lumbered to the couch. If I couldn’t get him to return to bed, at least he could rest while I talked.

“You know something about necromancy, right?” I began.

He shrugged. “I’m no expert.”

“But you know more than me, Simon, or anyone else I can talk to at this moment. So how do necromancers contact the dead?”

“You mean like the guy in the basement? If he’s there, you should see him. Then you’d just talk, like we are right now.”

“I mean contacting a specific person. Can I do that? Or am I restricted to those I just stumble across?”

He went quiet. When he spoke, his voice was uncharacteristically soft. “If you mean your mom, Chloe—”

“No.” The word came sharper than I intended. “I haven’t even thought—Well, yes, I’ve considered it, for someday maybe, of course I’d like to, love to—” I heard myself rambling and took a deep breath. “This is connected to our situation.”

“You mean Liz?”

“No. I—I should try to contact her, I guess. J-just to be sure. But that’s not it. Forget why I want to know.”

He leaned back into the sofa pillows. “If I knew why, I could answer a lot easier.”

Maybe, but I wasn’t telling him until I had enough facts to confidently lay out my theory.

“If I can contact a specific person, how would I do it?”

“You can, but it’s not easy and it’s not guaranteed at your age. Like Simon and his spells, you’re at the … apprenticeship level.”

“Where I can do things by accident, like raising the dead.”

“Well, no.” He absently scratched his arm, the skritch-skritch filling the silence. “From what I heard, raising the dead is the toughest thing to do, and it needs this complicated ritual.” He shook his head and stopped scratching. “I must have heard wrong. Like I said, I’m not an expert.”

“Back to how, then. How do I call up a specific ghost?”

He slouched, head resting on the sofa back, staring at the ceiling before nodding, as if to himself. “If I remember right, there are two ways. You could use a personal effect.”

“Like with a tracking dog.”

A small noise that sounded like a laugh. “Yeah, I guess so. Or like one of those psychics you see in movies, always asking for something that belonged to the person.”

“And the second way?” I tried not to show how much I wanted this answer, how much I hoped I’d already guessed it.

“You need to be at the grave.”

My heart hammered, and it was a moment before I could speak. “At the grave. Presuming that’s where the body is buried. It’s the body that’s important, not the grave site.”

He waved off my petty distinction, the old Derek sliding back. “Yeah, the body. The ultimate personal effect.”

“Then I think I know what that ghost in the basement wanted.”

I explained how the ghost had urged me to “make contact” to “summon them” and “get their story.”

“He meant the buried bodies. That’s why he wanted me to go into the crawl space. So I could get close enough to the bodies to contact those ghosts.”

Derek reached back to scratch between his shoulders. “Why?”

“From what he seemed to say, it’s about Lyle House. Something they can tell me.”

“But those bodies have been down there way longer than Lyle House has been a group home. And if this ghost knows something, why not just tell you himself?”

“I don’t know. He said…” I strained to remember. “He seemed to be saying he couldn’t make contact with them himself.”

“Then how would he know they had anything important to tell you?”

Good questions. This was why I’d gone to Derek. Because he’d challenge my assumptions, show me where the holes were and what I had to learn before jumping to any conclusions.

“I don’t know,” I said finally. “However they got there, I’m pretty sure they didn’t die of natural causes. You’re probably right, and it’s completely unconnected to us, and this ghost is confused, losing track of time. Or maybe he wants me to solve their murder.” I stood. “But, whatever he wants me to hear, I’m going to listen. Or at least try.”

“Hold up.”

He lifted a hand, and I braced for more arguments. It was a waste of time. Dangerous, too, after we’d been caught down there earlier. And, don’t forget, last time I tried to contact these ghosts, I’d returned them to their corpses. Do that again, and I’d better not call him for reburial duty.

He pushed to his feet. “We should take a flashlight. I’ll grab that. You get our shoes.”