elevator, which also happened to be both people- and ghost-free, had taken me directly to the fifth floor. And then my luck had changed with a vengeance.
Rooted to the spot, I watched the shadow ghost collapse over Alona and tear through her, her green eyes going wide with the pain before she vanished.
“No!” I shouted, furious. Why hadn’t she run? She knew what this thing could do to her, knew that every time she disappeared there was a growing chance she might not come back.
My throat grew tight, and the hallway blurred before my eyes. Maybe that unselfish action would be enough to send her to the light, though I’d seen no sign of it before she’d vanished. Either way, I wouldn’t let it be in vain.
“Joonie, get out here!” I forced the words out past the lump in my throat.
Rushing footsteps sounded behind me as the nurses’ abandoned their station and raced down the hall toward me. “Sir? Sir, you can’t yell in here. This is a hospital.”
“Joonie, I said come out,” I repeated.
The black shadow ghost, having long since dissolved Alona, just hung there in midair as though waiting and watching to see what I would do next.
“Joonie …”
“Sir, you’re going to have to come with us.” Strong female hands grabbed at my arms and shoulders. “Somebody call security, please.”
All up and down the hallway, doors started to open, and pale and somber little kid faces poked out to see what was going on. Then Lily’s door opened and Joonie stepped out.
“J,” I said. “Call it off, you don’t know what you’re doing.”
She shook her head, eyes bright blue and red-rimmed. “I can’t, Will. I just … can’t.”
Then she backed up into the room and shut the door.
“Sir, you have to come with us.” Those hands on my shoulders and arms began pulling me backward, but it wasn’t enough. I knew it wouldn’t be.
The shadowy ghost poured over me, surrounding me in deathly cold and tearing me from the nurses’ grasp. I struggled, pulling back with all my strength, but it … he? …she? … easily overpowered me, slamming me face-first into the wall. Something in my face, possibly my nose, possibly a cheekbone, cracked, and someone screamed. It might have been me.
“What do you want?” I squeezed the words out.
It gave no response, only a vague howling sound, like wind rushing through a broken window. Then it hauled me away from the wall and tossed me down the hall. I tried to regain my footing and stumbled, bashing my head into the side of a medicine cart left abandoned there, and everything went mercifully black.
I woke up in restraints, my hands pinned to the bed beneath me with Velcro and fabric straps. Never a good sign, really. Before I even opened my eyes, I recognized the antiseptic smell unique to hospitals. So I wasn’t in jail — that was a plus, at least.
My whole body ached, and my head throbbed with an intensity that I suspected would only grow worse when I finally decided to brave the light and crack my eyelids open.
“Will!” A vague whisper from my right. “Wake up. I know you’re in there. I saw you pulling against those skanky armbands. I mean, seriously, do you think they clean those after every use? I doubt it. You’re, like, sharing skin cells with the last sweaty and depraved lunatic they locked up. Sick people are so gross.”
Alona! The disgust in her voice was as distinct as the antiseptic hospital smell. I braved the light enough to squint in the direction of her voice. When my eyes stopped watering and focused, I found her sitting in the visitor’s chair next to my bed, her knees pulled up to her chest as if she didn’t even want her ghost feet touching the floor. She looked pale and tired, and for the first time, a line of bruises decorated the left side of her face. That meant either she didn’t have the energy to project herself as flaw free, or she was really feeling beat up.
“Are you okay?” I asked, my mouth feeling stuffed full with cotton.
She straightened up and flipped her hair over her shoulders when she saw me watching. “I’m fine,” she said quickly. “But I’m not the one locked up with a cracked face.”
Automatically, I tried to reach up to touch my face, but my effort only tightened the restraint on my arm.
Alona unfolded herself from her chair and moved to sit on my bed. Her deft fingers worked the Velcro and straps until my hand was free. “I’ll have to refasten that, you know, or else they’ll be locking you up tighter next time they come to check on you.”
“Yeah, I know.” I traced the swollen lines of my cheek carefully with my fingers. Puffed up like a pincushion and hot, the right side of my face felt like it’d been microwaved.
“They did X-rays or an MRI or whatever about an hour ago. You have a hairline fracture in your cheekbone. I heard them talking about it before you woke up.”
I groaned. Well, that explained the pain radiating down to my jaw and up to my temple.
She pulled her legs up on the bed and curled in closer to me, her hip and backside a steady warmth against my waist. “Why didn’t you run? I told you to run.”
“I thought Joonie would listen to me, that she’d stop it when I confronted her,” I said.
She rolled her eyes. “Good thinking.”
“Hey,” I protested.
“I’m serious. Now you’re stuck in here.” She shook her head, and the scent of her shampoo drifted toward me. “They’re all convinced that you’re schizophrenic and possibly epileptic on top of it. You’re on a regular floor for now, but they’re going to move you as soon as a bed opens on the psych floor. And the chin-rubber is back.”
“No.” I struggled to sit up.
“Yeah. He has hospital privileges here or something. Your mom’s trying to get rid of him.”
“My mom is here?” I reached for the remaining strap to undo it.
“Don’t.” Alona pushed on my shoulder, forcing me back. She gestured to the mostly closed door. “They’re in here about every fifteen minutes. I don’t know if I can get you all the way tied up again without getting caught. I’m good, but maybe not that good.” She gave me a wan smile, the likes of which I’d never seen from her before, and it startled me.
Over the years, I’d seen all kinds of smiles from her. The kind designed to make all the blood drain from your head and gather behind your zipper. The kind given with cold, cold eyes, showing she was mad as hell but wasn’t going to break form to show it. The superior smile was a particular favorite of hers in recent years, like she couldn’t help but find it funny that you, a petty, insignificant being, would try to interact with her. None of those even looked related to her current expression. She looked … defeated.
“What happened in there?” I asked, not entirely sure I wanted to hear the answer.
Alona lifted a shoulder in a shrug. “She had candles and that stupid board. And she kept talking to coma-gir … I mean, Lily.” She hesitated. “I think she’s trying to fix her.”
I frowned. “What do you mean, fix her? Lily is—” I paused to take a deep breath, needing it to force the words out—“brain dead. She has been since the day of the accident.” Fifty-four miles per hour around a curve that has a thirty-mile-per-hour speed limit. One tree. No seat belt. Lily, as we knew her, wouldn’t be coming back. It never got any easier, that realization. I kept thinking it would, but no.
Alona shook her head slowly. “I don’t think she’s talking about brain surgery here, Killian. Lily’s empty, you know? The lights are on but nobody’s home?”
I grimaced but nodded. Alona had quite a way with words.
“So first, I’m wondering what Joonie’s trying to do with all the candles and spirits and everything.” Alona waved her hand dismissively. “I mean, hello, even I recognize some kind of creeptastic ritual when I see it.” She paused, her sharp green eyes focusing in on me as though trying to will me into believing her words. “I think she’s been trying to call up Lily’s spirit.”
That was … possible. Joonie had not been the same since Lily’s accident. She’d blamed herself for it, a crazy line of thinking that went something like this: if she and Lily hadn’t had a fight, Lily would have been with us instead of the first-tier crowd and she’d still be alive … in more than just the technical sense.
“But then, I’m like, what does any of this have to do with Killian? I mean, she could try to call up Lily’s spirit
