“No way,” Fisher put in.
I spun the saltshaker between my thumb and forefinger, hesitant to make my next suggestion. “What if we stop ushering souls?”
For a second, Krista, Joaquin, and Fisher just sat there, looking at one another.
“We can’t do that,” Krista said finally. “If we do, then the fog will roll in and never roll out again.”
“Plus, it’d get pretty crowded around here,” Fisher added, sipping at his smoothie.
“What’s a little overcrowding compared with sending a bunch of good people to the Shadowlands for all eternity?” I said harshly.
Ursula placed two plates heaping with food in front of Joaquin. Steam rose from the omelet plate as if the eggs had just been removed from the pan, and the smell of the fried onions and spicy peppers filled my nostrils, making my empty stomach growl. As Ursula turned away from the table, she let out a huge sneeze.
The shop fell silent. Krista tensed up next to me. I looked over at Joaquin. His face had gone ashen.
“Bless you,” one of the visitors called out.
Joaquin got up and put his hands on Ursula’s shoulders. “Are you…what are you—?”
Then Ursula burst into tears and fled the restaurant. Some of the diners exchanged baffled looks. Krista and Fisher stared at each other as if they’d just seen a news report of a terrorist attack.
“What just happened?” I asked, flattening my palms against the edge of the table.
“Ursula sneezed,” Krista whispered, looking up at Joaquin warily.
“So?” I asked as the conversations around us started up again.
Joaquin turned and pressed his hands into the side of my bench, leaning all his body weight into it. “So Lifers don’t get sick, remember?” he said through his teeth. “We can get hurt by, like, falling off a bike and scraping our knees—”
“Has to look authentic for the visitors,” Fisher interjected.
“But we don’t cough, we don’t sneeze, we don’t even hiccup,” Joaquin finished.
“Maybe it was just a random itch,” I suggested.
Fisher shook his head. “Doesn’t happen.”
I shakily folded my napkin in my lap. Another facet of Juniper Landing life gone awry. Another hitch in the system that was supposedly hitch-free.
“Do you think that she’s really…sick?” I asked quietly, looking up at Joaquin. “I mean, do you think that’s why she wanted the tea?”
Realization swept over Joaquin’s face. “That’s why she’s been so weird. She didn’t want to tell me.”
“Poor woman’s probably terrified,” Fisher put in.
Joaquin laced his hands behind his head, his elbows out like wings, and took a deep breath. “I’m going after her.”
Fisher looked toward the door, and his face dropped. He rose slowly from his seat. “You guys, the fog.”
I turned around in my seat, pushing myself up on my knees. Sure enough, the fog had slipped into town lightning fast, blotting out the park and the library and all the buildings on the other side. The room grew hushed as everyone stopped to watch.
Joaquin walked toward the door. The rest of us followed. Some visitors eyed us curiously as Joaquin shoved open the door, making the bells ring, and stepped out into the mist. Krista, Fisher, and I joined him one by one, huddled close together under the general store’s striped awning. The fog was so thick it instantly wet my skin and hair and clogged my lungs.
“What do we do?” Krista asked.
“We wait,” Joaquin replied.
He stepped to the edge of the sidewalk and looked to the left, in roughly the direction of Tristan’s house. My breathing was shallow as I silently recited the entire periodic table. Then I counted to one hundred, then counted again. And again. Fisher tapped his fists against one of the pillars holding up the awning while Krista paced behind us. After what seemed like an eternity, the gray cloud all around us began to thin.
“This is it,” Joaquin said, staring at the retreating wisps of fog. “If the weather vane turns south, there’s definitely something wrong with it. There can’t have been four evil souls in a row. There’s no way.”
“If it turns south I’ll climb up there myself and fix it,” Fisher said grimly.
The last fingers of fog pulled across the park, leaving behind their wet trails and a clear blue sky. Atop Tristan’s house, the weather vane turned slowly. And turned. And turned. The wind was blowing in from the east, whipping the flags on the flagpoles all along Main Street toward the west, but the weather vane paid it no mind. It took one last turn, and stopped, pointing due north.
“Okay, so that’s good,” Krista said.
“No, it’s not,” Joaquin snapped. “If the problem isn’t the weather vane, if it’s not telling us people are going south when they’re not, then that means Jennifer and Aaron and Grant all ended up in the Shadowlands when they shouldn’t have.”
Krista turned pink around her ears. “Oh.”
“What the hell is going on around here, J.?” Fisher asked, squaring his broad shoulders. He looked like he was ready to beat the crap out of someone and was just waiting for an opponent to show himself.
“That’s it,” Joaquin said. “I’m calling a meeting. Tell everyone we’re getting together at the Swan at midnight. I want to know if this has happened to anyone else and how many times. If we get enough people together, the mayor will
“Good luck, man,” Fisher said, clasping Joaquin’s hand. “I’ll hit the beach. Pete and them are probably down there.”
“No,” Joaquin said, glancing over at me. “Don’t bother with them.”
“Why not?” Fisher asked, drawing his head back.
“They’re not… They don’t want to hear it,” Joaquin said. “But get Bea, Lauren, and Kevin.”
Fisher screwed up his face in confusion, and he knocked his fists together. “Um…okay,” he said dubiously, as Joaquin jogged away. He looked over at me and Krista, as if waiting for an explanation. I just lifted my shoulders. “All right, then. Kevin’s probably sleeping one off at the cove, so I’ll go there.”
“I’ll find Lauren and Bea. Wanna come with me?” Krista offered.
“What about Tristan?” I asked.
“I’ll tell him when I get home,” she said with a shrug. “Unless you want to go do it.”
I glanced over my shoulder at the huge blue mansion on the bluff, where Tristan, who didn’t believe in me, lived under the same roof with the woman who could send me straight to Oblivion. My throat was suddenly dry.
“Actually, I think I’ll go home and check on my family,” I said.
“Okay, well, then, I’ll see you later?” Krista asked hopefully.
I blinked, confusion written all over my face.
“We’re baking cupcakes?” she reminded me, knitting and unknitting her fingers. “For the party? Two o’clock.”
“Right. Right. Sorry,” I said. “I’ll be there.”
“I’ll walk with you,” Fisher offered, putting his large hand on the small of my back. “I’m going that way anyway.”
“Okay.”
We left Krista, turning north up Main Street and headed for Freesia Lane. We’d only taken two steps when I saw something out of the corner of my eye—something that stopped my blood cold. Darcy.
She was standing near the fountain at the center of the park in her favorite sundress, glaring at me. Me and Fisher. The boy she was falling for had just put his arm around me.
“Darcy!” I called. But she just turned on her heel and disappeared over the crest of the hill.
Pills
