The Ghost and the Goth

better than to explain it in those terms.

“You said you thought I went straight to hell,” she pointed out.

Damn, she was definitely sharper than I’d thought. “I meant gone for good.”

She lowered her hand with the receipt, staring down at it. “When I disappeared this morning, both times, I don’t know where I went. I don’t remember anything. Time passes, I guess, based on when I wake up back here. But I’m just … gone.” Her green eyes met mine defiantly, but they sparkled a little more than normal, like she was close to tears.

“Are you saying I’m in hell when I’m not here?”

“I don’t know.” I folded my arms across my chest. “Does your hair smell like brimstone when you get back?”

Her forehead furrowed. “How do I know what …” Her eyes widened as she caught on. “Oh, you’re an ass!” She tossed the receipt back at me. “I’m being serious here.”

“I don’t know, okay? People disappear in Middleground all the time. Sometimes they come back, most of the time they don’t.” I frowned. “Usually, though, the ones that stick around have unresolved issues, things they need to work through.”

“Yeah, and …?” Her eyes flashed dangerously, like I was perilously close to saying the wrong thing.

I shifted uncomfortably. “What kind of issues could you have, anyway?” Other than being a bitch. I kept that little gem to myself, but it didn’t seem to help.

Her head jerked back like I’d slapped her, her mouth falling open slightly. Then her green eyes narrowed, and she pushed herself off the bed, her feet landing with a thump on the hardwood. “I don’t have issues? I don’t have issues?” She grabbed for the closest thing at hand — which was, unfortunately, my half-packed bag — and chucked a T-shirt at my head. “You don’t even know me, you … freak.”

“Hey!” I held my hands up in a defensive position.

“I’m dead, and I’m stuck here. I totally have issues!” A pair of jeans sailed at my face.

“Just because everything looks okay on the outside”—she paused to reload, stepping forward to grab from the bookcase this time—“doesn’t mean”—several books flew at my head, and I ducked—“that it is.”

Tobin’s Spirit Guide thwacked into my headboard and tumbled off, landing on the floor with a solid thump. “Watch it,” I said. “You could have taken my head off with that thing.”

“Would anybody have missed it?” she taunted, grabbing another armload of books.

“Stop!” I slid off the bed, under her line of fire, wincing at the resulting throb in my head. “I’m sorry, okay?”

“Not good enough,” she said from between clenched teeth, each word punctuated by a book. At least she’d moved on to the paperbacks.

Marshaling what remained of my strength, I grabbed her around the waist and hauled her away from the bookcase, trying to ignore the fresh flowery smell of her hair and the way she squirmed against me. Then, she lashed out with one of those long legs I’d been admiring earlier and caught me behind the ankle.

We crashed down onto the bed, which gave off an ominously loud crack and thump as we hit it. Again, not exactly part of the fantasy.

7Alona

I sat up, tossing my hair back from my face in a single movement, and found Killian beneath me. In the tangle — all his stupid fault, by the way — I’d ended up sprawled across his chest, which was actually broader than it looked. Navy blue is a slimming color, I guess.

His hands, also bigger than I’d thought, rested lightly on my legs, and I felt the heat of his skin and the soft fabric of his T-shirt rubbing against the inside of my knees when he breathed.

Three days isn’t that long to go without human contact, unless everyone you touch turns your insides into a cold, shaky mess. Then it feels like forever … and touching Will Killian actually felt pretty good.

He stared up at me, and I noticed that his creepy pale blue eyes had a darker ring of blue around them, like the edge of some mountain lake that’s not quite frozen yet. He licked his lips nervously, revealing white and even teeth that I’d never really seen before because — hello? — he wasn’t much into the smiling thing. Yeah, I have a thing for good teeth, so what? It’s not like a foot fetish or something nasty like that. Just because I happen to like the work of a good orthodontist doesn’t mean I have to like the person who has the teeth or anything—

“Um, Alona?” he asked tentatively.

I snapped back into myself and the moment. What was I doing? This was Will Killian, for God’s sake. I slapped at his shoulders. “Get off me.”

He yelped. “You’re on me!”

“You planned this.” I tried to push myself off him, but his body pinned my left foot to the bed beneath us.

“Oh, yeah, I set it all up, starting with you throwing books at me—”

I stopped struggling for a second to glare at him. “I wouldn’t have thrown books at you if you hadn’t—”

His whole body suddenly tensed under mine. “Do you hear that?” His eyes going wide, he sat up. His movement freed my foot but sent the rest of me sliding toward the floor. He caught my arms just below the shoulders and pulled me upright, so now I really was sitting in his lap.

“Killian,” I warned.

“Shut up. I’m trying to listen.”

The urgency in his voice seemed genuine, so I clamped my mouth shut. If that black shadowy thing was back …

But all I heard was a car outside. It sounded like it might be turning into a driveway nearby. Nothing supernatural about that, but Killian sure seemed freaked by it.

He lifted me off his lap and set me to one side — fine, so he was stronger than he looked — before pulling himself the rest of the way onto the bed and standing on it to peer out the window, high in the wall behind his headboard. He craned his head hard to the left, looking toward the driveway. “Shit.” He lowered himself down carefully, first to the bed and then the floor.

“What’s going on?” I demanded. “My ten minutes aren’t up yet.” He wasn’t seriously going to walk away from me, was he? “I only got to ask one question, which you didn’t even really answer. You were just guessing.”

He ignored me, bending over to scoop up the clothes I’d tossed at him and jam them back into his bag.

I stood up on his bed, wobbling a little, and made my way to the window to see for myself. A car, total blah- brown sedan of some type, pulled to a stop in Killian’s driveway. As I watched, the two front doors popped open. A tiny woman with Killan’s same dark hair climbed out on the passenger side. Her eyes were visibly red, even from this distance, and she was twisting something white, a handkerchief or a wad of Kleenex maybe, in her little hands. A short, thick man with a full beard and one of those jackets with the leather patches on the arms came around from the driver’s side to put his arm around her.

“Your mom and your stepdad,” I guessed. “What’s the big deal?” Other than his stepdad’s excruciatingly bad fashion choices. He was wearing those old man dress shoes with the thick rubber soles. I didn’t know anyone actually wore those — I thought they were just the shoe equivalent of the bogeyman. Ugly, horrendous, reported in legend but never clearly seen in real life.

“My mom never remarried.” He zipped his bag shut and threw it over his shoulder.

“Okay, so …” I hopped down off the bed and followed him as he left the room.

“You have to go. Now.” Killian ignored me. He moved down the hall, past the kitchen to a door that I’d missed seeing the first time. Probably the front door to the house.

“We had a deal!”

He stopped so abruptly I almost ran into his back.

He turned to face me, bright spots of color in his otherwise pale face. He was sure worked up about something. “That guy out there?” He jabbed a finger toward the driveway. “That’s Dr. Miller, my psychiatrist. He wants to lock me up for seeing things that aren’t there. Get it?”