eager to make something right, to send a little light back into the world.
“Swear. Swear on her life,” he pointed at Summer, “that you’ll deliver the message, then come back and tell me what my daughter said.”
“I swear it.” They were only words. I would have sworn anything to get Summer out of there and away from him.
He nodded, satisfied. “Now, what do I do?”
“Push me,” Summer said. “Finn—is she still sitting in the chair?”
“Yes.”
“Push me toward that chair.” She motioned with her eyes.
The soul eater grabbed Summer by her ankles and dragged her.
“You’ll feel a pull,” I said. “Go with it. Reach for it.”
She was gone before I finished the sentence. I wondered if she even got to speak to her brother. Not likely.
“Well I’ll be damned,” the soul eater said, staring at the spot where Summer had been. “You still there, Mister Finn?”
“I’m here. Do you believe us now?”
“Don’t forget your promise.”
“I won’t.” I would never forget it. That didn’t mean I would fulfill it. “Before I go, can I ask you something? How long do you plan to stay here?”
“As long as I can,” he said. “Forever, if possible. Who wants to blow away?”
There was no way to signal Mick that we were done, that we wanted to go home now, so Mick, Lorena, and Grandpa sat in the hospital room watching the news.
I had a hunch that Summer would be the one to signal we could leave, that I would remain imprisoned behind Grandpa’s eyes for a good while longer. The pattern of progression made it likely I’d be lost for somewhere between twelve and twenty-four hours.
That sensation of being loose, that I might slip out of my body into Deadland, had not vanished when I turned to face front. It was vaguer, less pressing, but it terrified me that it was there at all.
CHAPTER 34
When I finally regained control of my body two days later I was shaving in a room at the Hilton, and I had a raging hangover. I put the razor down and toweled off my face. Grandpa hadn’t finished, so parts of my face would be whiskery, other parts smooth, but finishing was a waste of my precious time. I grabbed my phone and keys, and ran. Running made my head pound even worse.
When I had watched that Bears game, when I had chatted with Grandma about the weather, I hadn’t understood just how little time I had, just how precious every minute was, how I should make every one count. Now that I was aware, I wondered how I should spend my precious moments.
I was no closer to shaking Grandpa than I’d been the first time he took possession of me. There was nothing in Deadland to help me. During my latest internment I’d considered one crazy plot after another: drag another soul in with me to oust Grandpa (only one ghost to a customer, after all), or lure a soul eater who would somehow eat Grandpa instead of me. Fantasy. Pure fantasy. There was only one way to exorcize the dead, and that was to take away their drive to return. With Grandpa that wasn’t possible.
Maybe I could save Mick, or Summer, though. I could think of no better use of the precious moments I had left than to help my friends.
Friends. Was Summer just my friend? If so, why was the worst part of this the thought of never seeing her again?
I had loved Lorena, had lost her and mourned her and finally let her go and moved on. The memory of love is not the same as love. Summer had been right all those weeks ago: we weren’t meant to speak to our loved ones again once they leave this world.
I dialed Summer’s number as I cast about in the parking lot under the Hilton, trying to remember where Grandpa had parked.
“Where are you?” It was Lorena.
“Just leaving the Hilton.” I tried to mask the disappointment in my voice. “What’s going on there?”
“Gilly is working. I’ve been trying to find you, waiting by the phone, worrying.”
“How long has Mick been gone?”
“I haven’t been keeping track, but almost as long as you.”
“How is Gilly doing on the album?” I finally spotted the Maserati, tucked behind a minivan. I dragged the key along the side of it, really grinding it, before getting in.
I caught pieces of her muffled conversation with Gilly before Lorena came back on the line. “Gilly says he’s about halfway through ‘Love Two Sizes Too Small,’ then he’s got ‘The Winds of Change.’ But he’s stuck, because he feels rushed to finish before Mick disappears and there’s no longer any point in working on it, and he doesn’t work well under pressure.”
The Maserati’s tires squealed as I backed out of the space. “Well that’s just terrific. Can’t he just cut the last song? It’s a double-CD, for God’s sake. What difference does one song make?”
Another pause and muffled conversation.
“It’s a themed composition. It all links together, and the final song is crucial.”
I muttered curses under my breath. “If Mick comes out, don’t let him go anywhere,” I said. “I’m on my way. I’ll see you in a couple of minutes.” God dammit, Mick needed to help him. I had to find some way to make that happen.
As I sped to Mick’s I tuned to the news on the radio. It made me crazy that Grandpa had no interest in knowing what was going on in the rest of the city. Maybe he was afraid they would discover a way to exorcise hitchers and didn’t want me to hear it.
More people were massing outside the perimeter, and a lot of them were armed. NPR reported it as a loosely organized group; at least three people claimed to be leading it. More people were arriving every hour; the National Guard was getting uneasy.
When I got to Mick’s I brought Gilly some iced tea from the fridge and made him a sandwich, gave him a pat of encouragement, and left him alone to work.
Lorena and I talked quietly on the couch until we heard Mick curse softly and rise.
“All right, Mick?” I said.
“Yeh,” Mick said noncommittally as he pulled a beer from the fridge. The top popped with an angry hiss as Mick went out of his way to avoid going near Gilly’s work.
I didn’t understand him. He was acting like Gilly’s project was radioactive. “Come on, Mick, you’ve got to help him finish.” I went over and checked Gilly’s compositions. It didn’t look like he’d made any further progress. I swept up the pages from the table and held them up to Mick. “He’s down to
Mick shook his head slowly. He looked awful, his eyes half-closed and ringed with red, his skin grey.
I didn’t know what else to do, so I shoved him in the chest. Beer splashed over his wrist as he was jolted backward.
“Hey, piss off!” Mick flung his bottle sidearmed, sending it spinning over my head spitting beer in a wide arc. “I already told you, but it didn’t get through your thick skull.” He poked savagely at his own temple. “I can’t write any more. My brain is a bleeding fried egg. Gilly had to write ninety-nine percent of my last album, and that was twenty bloody years ago. I’m done. Washed up.”
That’s what all his foot-dragging was about? I put my hands on my head, shook it in disbelief. “Can’t you at least
