Queen of the Dead

The disruptor. It had gone over the edge before me.

I fumbled for it, praying I was right. It took me a couple of tries to get my shaking hand around it. Yes, definitely the disruptor. I could see the gleam of the rough metal edges in the firelight.

The burning man above me wobbled, wavering on the edge.

I closed my hands around the disruptor, turning what I hoped was the open end away from me and started pressing buttons in desperation.

But nothing happened, and the man on fire tipped over the edge of the stage, falling toward me. I shut my eyes and threw myself backward, but I knew it wouldn’t be quiteenough. The entire pile of debris would be up in flames in seconds and me along with it.

Alona. What would happen to her if I—

Then, behind my closed lids, I saw a burst of blue light. I opened my eyes to find a beam of light coming from somewhere behind me. It had caught the burning ghost in mid-fall and now held him in place just a foot or so above me.

The man was still covered in flames, but they no longer moved and writhed over what remained of his skin.

Against my will, my mind picked out features of the ghost’s mangled face. What was probably his nose, where his eyes had been…

Then he disappeared with a faint pop.

I sagged back on the floor, aware suddenly of a sharp pain in my side and an ominous-feeling trickle of warmth.

“Move in,” a man’s voice barked from behind me.

A rush of fresh air flooded over me. Dark figures, maybe a half dozen or so, moved past me swiftly, little more than shadows. I watched as they leaped onto the stage with ease, their faces disfigured and odd in the shadows of the dancing flames. They alternately wielded fire extinguishers and disruptors, coating everything with explosions of white foam and blue light. Members of the Order. Finally. Apparently I only needed to almost die for them to show themselves.

“Are you all right?” someone shouted.

I sat up gingerly and looked back to find two men and a woman hurrying down the aisle toward me. The one closest to me, a dark-haired man in a flannel shirt, jeans, and worn work boots, looked sort of familiar. The woman behind him appeared to be in her late thirties and looked like a Barbie doll come to life, all blond hair and boobs in a tight leopard skin shirt. Not, mind you, that I was complaining. She moved along as best she could in a skirt that cut her steps in half. The last of the three was an older, white-haired guy in a full three-piece suit. Portly might have been a kind description.

Beach ball in clothes would be more accurate, I could almost hear Alona saying.

Was this possibly the almighty Leadership Mina kept going on and on about? They didn’t look like people in charge of a secret organization. They looked like part of the happy hour crowd at Buffalo Wild Wings.

The first man knelt next to me and held out something. A clear mask, attached to a metal bottle.

“Put it on.” He nodded at it. “You need the air.”

I could hear the air hissing out of the mask, clean oxygen that I could almost smell simply by the absence of smoke, dust, and everything else. I fumbled for the mask and held it against my face.

“Why didn’t you use the disruptor, boy? That’s why we have them,” the older man in the suit demanded, panting. He bent in half, hands on his knees, trying to catch his breath.

“You doing okay there, Silas?” the woman asked. She smiled at me, seemingly undisturbed by the chaos around her, other than occasionally batting away bits of ash before they could reach her hair.

Silas, the portly suit guy, nodded.

“He tried to use it,” the first man answered for me grimly. “He didn’t know how.”

The other two looked at me for confirmation, and I nodded, more than content to save speaking for later and concentrate on just breathing for now.

“Mina!” the man in flannel bellowed toward the stage.

Uh-oh.

I turned in time to see one of the figures on stage break off and head toward us…slowly. She drew the mask off and draped it over her shoulder as she reached the edge of the stage, staring down at all of us defiantly.

“Did I not make it clear what your assignment was this evening?” His tone was cold enough to send a chill through me.

Mina shifted her weight uneasily. “Yes.”

“You gave him the disruptor, but you didn’t show him how to use it.”

“He didn’t ask,” she snapped. “And isn’t that the first rule, never take a weapon you don’t know how to use? That’s what you always say.”

“You didn’t even give me a chance,” I argued, my voice muffled through the mask.

“It doesn’t matter.” She threw me a bitter look. “I knew they would save you. Can’t risk losing this one.”

“That daughter of yours is out of control, John,” Silas said with clear disapproval.

Daughter? Well, that would explain why he looked sort of familiar. Now, looking back and forth between the two of them facing off, I could see further resemblances. The same stubborn set to the chin; the way they both squared their shoulders.

“Mina, wait for me outside. We will discuss this later,” John said.

She flinched, more a hunching of her whole body, actually, and then she turned away and walked back across the stage. All of sudden I started wondering about the bruise I’d noticed on her face earlier.

“I apologize for my daughter. I sent her to talk to youbecause I thought she would be a familiar face, at least,” John said. “I didn’t realize her personal concerns would interfere.” He grimaced.

“All the more reason the boy should come with me for training,” Silas said quickly.

“Excuse me.” The Barbie woman put her hands on her hips.

“Now, don’t get your panties all up in a bunch, Lucy,” Silas said. “I’m just saying the—”

“He lives here. He should, by regulation, train with the Central Division,” John said.

“Yes, because your offspring has succeeded so wildly under your supervision,” Silas snapped.

I pulled the mask off. “Hey.”

They continued bickering.

“Hey! I’m right here.” I forced myself to stand up. Nothing felt broken, but I could feel a long scrape on my side even without looking. “I’m not going anywhere with anyone. I came here tonight for answers.”

The three of them turned to me surprised, and I waited for the outburst, for someone to lecture or shame me for interrupting.

Instead, Lucy burst into tears. “I’m sorry,” she said, flapping her hands at her face like she needed to cool down. “You just sound so much like your father.”

I froze. “My dad?”

Lucy didn’t answer. She just tottered down the aisle in her crazy-high heels and gathered me up in a warm, very bosomy hug.

“We didn’t know, not until now,” she said in my ear. “Danny registered you as a null a long time ago. Why would he do that? Why?”

So it wasn’t just that my dad hadn’t told me about the Order. He hadn’t told the Order about me, either. I mean, obviously they’d been aware of my existence, but not that I had ghost-talking abilities. Why would he hide that from them? Why would he keep me from people who could help? None of this made any sense.

I untangled myself from Lucy’s arms carefully and stepped back. “I think somebody needs to start at the beginning.”

So, it turns out the Order of the Guardians is divided into three sections geographically: Western, Central, and Eastern. They followed the time zone lines roughly, with Western and Central divvying up the states in the middle that would have been the Mountain region.

A leader is appointed to each division by a convolutedelection process I still didn’t understand even after Silas, Lucy, and John had each taken a crack at explaining it to me.

Each leader was responsible for managing the requests for help and services that came in through the 800