Radiance

A room so incredibly bright and yellow, just looking at it made my eyes hurt.

“Back so soon?” Bohdi called, lounging on the banister in that slouchy way of his, chewing on a long, green straw, like the kind they give you at Starbucks, instead of his bottom lip which he was chewing on just a few moments earlier. Looking me over carefully and seemingly not the least bit surprised to see that I’d caved so early in the game.

Only I hadn’t caved.

Not even close.

If anything, I was totally on to him.

He was still trying to mind-game me. Going so far as to send me to the wrong room.

Some coach he was turning out to be.

But no biggie. It’s not like I actually needed Bodhi’s guidance anyway. I mean, what kind of help could he possibly provide when it was so painfully clear he was actually trying to sabotage me?

So afraid I’d succeed at where he so miserably failed, he’d stop at nothing to doom me.

That’s it, I decided. As soon as I got back, the first thing I would do was find Aurora, or even one of the other Council members if she wasn’t available, and I’d demand a new guide. Or, better yet,I’d become Bodhi’s guide. And the first thing on my agenda would be to give him a head-to-toe makeover.

Insist he ditch the glasses, the clothes, start over with the hair — and that was just for starters. Then, once that was settled, once he wasn’t so completely embarrassing to be seen with, well, then we’d see. . .

“Sit tight. We’re not out of here yet,” I called over my shoulder as Buttercup and I made our way down the hall. “You sent me to the wrong room, as I’m sure you already know. But don’t get up. You’re gonna need all of your energy for that flight to London, so stay right where you are. It won’t be long before I track down this scary little ten-year-old and send him on to the Sweet Here After so that we can be on our way.”

I poked my head through a long series of doors, and after spying a green room, a white room, and a pink room, I’d finally found it.

Not the Radiant Boy, mind you; from what I could see, he was nowhere to be found. But there was an abundance of blue. And I mean, lots and lots of blue. Like an ocean. Yard after yard of the same blue fabric used to make up the drapes, the pillows, the blankets, even the little antique couch-and-chair set, what I think is called as ettee, was upholstered in the stuff, while the walls were painted in an almost identically matching hue.

Blue, blue, I was drowning in blue. And when I gazed over at Buttercup, who was busy sniffing all four corners and then some, I couldn’t help but wonder how all those earlier rooms had looked to him. If being dead somehow cured him of that canine inability to see most of the colors in the spectrum.

But even though we were clearly in the right room, there wasn’t a single ten-year-old Radiant Boy to be found. Nor was there anything that even remotely resembled one.

Aside from Buttercup and me, the room was completely cleared of all earthbound entities.

But that’s the thing with ghosts. They don’t always stick to one place like most people think. Sure they have their preferences and their steady routines, places they like to hang in more often than others where they repeat the same acts over and over again. But for the most part, they have no boundaries. They can go anywhere they want, whenever they want. It’s all there for the taking. All they have to do is choose it.

And I should know, I was once one of them.

Though that’s not to say I was about to go on some kind of big hunt for him, ’cause from what I could tell, there were at least a hundred more rooms in the place. And since it was close to being nighttime, and since Bodhi had said something about the boy liking to scare the beejeemums out of people, I pretty much figured the best, most energy-efficient thing to do would be to just wait it out until the sun went down, the sky went dark, and he’d begin his nightly fright fest.

Because if there’s one thing I knew for sure, it’s that all ten-year-old boys were the same.

Dead — alive — it didn’t make the least bit of difference. They were all annoying, all disgusting, all of them royal pains in the bums who just loved to torment people. And from everything I’d heard, this one was no different.

I climbed up onto the big canopied bed that was situated so high they actually provided a little step stool to get onto it, arranged all the pillows just the way that I liked them, then patted the bedspread, inviting Buttercup to leap up and join me. Then we sat back and waited. Waited for so long we both fell into a nice, deep, soundless sleep.

Until someone had the nerve to crawl in beside us.

At first, when I felt the mattress kind of dip, shift, and roll, I was so deeply involved in my dream state I didn’t really think much about it. But then, when the snoring started, coming at me from both sides, my eyes snapped wide-open, and I turned my head to the right to find a large, bushy-browed man practically vibrating with his own snores. And when I looked to the left, I was greeted by the sight of a slightly (but only slightly) less bushy-browed woman doing the same.

I was sandwiched.

Sandwiched between two rather sizable, loudly snoring people I’d never seen before.

And I was so discombobulated that, well, I couldn’t help it — my mouth popped open and a long, loud scream jumped out. Instantly waking Buttercup who pointed his nose toward the ceiling and started howling and barking like mad. Peering at me with his ears all perked up, his tail thumping like crazy, as he awaited further instruction, sure that it was some kind of game.

Only it wasn’t a game.

Not even close.

I’d been rudely awakened, and shaken to the core, but more importantly I’d screamed so loudly, I could practically see Bodhi standing in the hall, doing a lame little victory dance, straw bobbing crazily in his mouth while he gave himself a high-five.

“Great,”I mumbled, patting Buttercup on the head, trying to get him to calm down again, even though I knew the sleeping couple couldn’t hear us unless we wanted to be heard, and truth be told, most of the time not even then. It was the rare person who could truly tune in to the dead, though they did exist, of that I was sure. “That’s just great. ” I shook my head and slid out from between the snoring couple, wishing this radiating kid would just hurry up and show himself already so that I could cross him over and be done with all this.

I moved toward the dressing table and peeked at their stuff, trying to get a handle on just what they were doing here. Lifting the top off a bottle of cologne that smelled just like dead pine needles (blech), before sniffing from the perfume just beside it and inhaling a nasty combination of mothballs and old, dried-out shrubs (double blech). A scent so startlingly bad the bottle accidentally slipped from my fingers and landed with a horrifying thud.

Well, make that a series of thuds, as I watched, frozen in panic, as it tumbled across the floor with Buttercup chasing behind it.

I peered at the sleeping couple, knowing that even though they couldn’t hear us or see us unless we wanted them to, unless we tapped into their own energy supply in order to manifest before them, there was nothing to stop them from hearing the sound of an inanimate object crashing to the ground. And seeing the way they both shuddered and stirred, I knew that on some level they had heard it, but were determined to sleep through it.

I moved on to their overflowing suitcases, curious to see what kind of clothes they’d packed for their haunted castle weekend getaway, when Buttercup, still entranced with the perfume bottle, hit it with his paw so hard it went spinning across the room and slammed into the wall where it cracked into a million little pieces of foul- smelling shards.

“Good one, Buttercup.” I shook my head and rolled my eyes at him. “Way to go.” I sighed, watching as he tucked in his tail and bowed his head low, knowing he was in trouble and unwilling to come anywhere near me. And I was just about to manifest a leash, which I knew he would hate but was obviously becoming necessary, when I heard a click.

Followed by a soft whirring sound.

And then a nervously whispered:

“Did you get it?”

I glanced over my shoulder, clutching a white T-shirt featuring a picture of the Union Jack tightly in my hand, only to find myself face-to-face with the dynamic duo — otherwise known as the husband and wife team who’d sandwiched me earlier. The two of them dressed in matching his and hers forest-green sweatshirts, with the words