Lightbringer

“Eddie,” Chel sneered, grabbing Jon’s water bottle and chugging several quick gulps to wash down the vitamin, “why don’t you just get in her pants already so she’ll lay off the rest of us? Being that frigid just can’t be good for her health. Also? Way annoying.”

“Here we go,” Jon muttered and sank as deeply as he could into the corner of the seat.

Wendy’s jaw dropped and it took all her willpower not to slap her younger sister across the face. She turned in the seat and gripped the headrest so hard her knuckles turned white. “Excuse me, you little—”

“Hey, what-do-ya-know,” Eddie broke in, pulling into the parking lot and angling towards a space in the back row, “we’re at school! Look everyone, an educational institute!”

“Thanks for the ride, Eddie,” Jon gasped, grabbing his backpack and flinging himself over the edge of the car before it had completely stopped. Pulling out his wallet, Jon hurried towards the cafeteria doors, jogging in his haste.

“Get out,” Wendy said tightly to Chel as Eddie parked the car. “Get out and get to class before I forget you’re my sister.” She turned back to the windshield, squared her shoulders, tilted her head back, and closed her eyes. Licking her lips, she ran over her schedule for the day in her mind. Meanwhile, in the parking lot, car doors slammed and students cat-called. The Cabriolet vibrated when Chel, pushing roughly past Eddie, made her exit, slamming his door as loud as she could. The engine cooled, ticking loudly.

Eddie shifted in his seat. “She’s gone.”

“I know.” Wendy sucked the top of her tongue ring in irritation, rolling the ball at the end against the roof of her mouth.

“It’s just a phase…I think.”

“I know that, too.”

He touched her shoulder gingerly, brushing a few of her curls off her cheek. “Wendy—”

“Don’t. We’ve been over it.” Wendy leaned forward, eyes still closed, and pressed the heels of her hands into her temples. “She has no idea what’s going on. All she knows is Dad’s not here and Mom’s in the hospital and Jon can’t get two words out around her without pissing her off. She’s a nightmare and I’m getting to where I’ve had enough, you know?”

“She doesn’t mean it.”

“I know.” Wendy took several deep, cleansing breaths, and sat back. When she opened her eyes Eddie was still there, hand on the armrest, fingers curled upward. Wendy settled her hand in his tentatively, and he gently closed his fingers around hers, as if she were a delicate creation he might crush if he held her too hard.

“You’ve always got me,” Eddie reminded her.

She sighed. “No I don’t. Not really. Not the way I need…someone. But not you.”

“I do love you, you know,” he offered, almost off-handly. Wendy glanced at him but his eyes were trained at thin clouds puffing across the sky. “You’re totally hot. And my best friend. Two birds and all. Plus you’re kinda awesome.”

“We’ve been over this,” she said again but it came out more of a question, hesitant and soft. “It wouldn’t work, remember?”

Eddie slanted a look at her and Wendy’s heart thrummed for just a moment, a quick staccato beat against her ribs. He was handsome, there was no doubt about that, with a quicksilver smile and even features, a wrestler’s compact muscles and hair silky against his neck. Due to the most recent batch of dye, the black had faded to silver, giving him an ethereal look, and the few blond highlights that remained caught the sun like molten gold.

“Have we?” He squeezed her hand. He twisted so that he was facing her and reached out, stroking her right cheek with fingertips calloused from years of rough work in his uncle’s garage. “You decided it wouldn’t work and we’ve never even kissed. How do you know for sure?”

Chest throbbing, Wendy leaned her cheek into his touch, loving the warmth of him and the delicate way those talented fingers stroked a path from the cup of her ear to the curve of her chin, cupping her face and drawing her forward. His breath fanned across her lips, smelling of citrus and honey and Wendy trembled, hesitating on the brink of what she’d wanted for years.

“I can’t,” she mouthed and then, with more force, said aloud, “I can’t.”

“You won’t,” he corrected, sitting back. He seemed mellow though, unoffended at her refusal. “Not the same thing.”

“Eddie, I go out and look for my mom’s soul every damn night.” She held up her scraped hand and the opposing wrist, exposing the deep scratch left over from the tussle with the two Walkers from the night before. “It hurts me, okay? I get hurt.”

“Wendy—”

“This job, this thing I have to do, it’s not fun or easy or romantic. What in the hell makes you think that a relationship between us would do anything but complicate my life?”

“First of all, I’m not asking for a relationship, you are.” Eddie held his hands up to stall her reply. “And before you get on your high horse, it’s not that no one wants to date you. Lots of guys totally do.”

“Right, whatever.” Wendy rolled her eyes, but felt the flush work up her neck. “Everyone wants to date the class freak. Sure they do.”

“Oh please. Shut up. I’m making a point here.”

“Oh yeah? And that point is?”

“The point is that you don’t have to date, Wendy. This is the real world, right? There doesn’t need to be some intense connection. You don’t need to be wearing some guy’s jacket or whatever to, you know, blow off steam, have a little fun. Especially not with me.” He reached out, captured her fingers again, and squeezed her hand. “I am more than willing to consider less…permanent…options. For now.”

“Blowing off something,” she muttered under her breath as she sat back.

“I heard that, you perv. Secondly, maybe Chel’s got a point. You’re really wound up. I mean, okay, I’ll admit, if you went for one of those losers I’d be jealous as hell, but…but it doesn’t have to be me, I know that.”

Wendy slouched in the seat, turned her face away. “Oh yeah? If not you, then who?”

“Please. You’ve got that whole bad-girl gothette vibe going for you, and some people—not me of course, because I myself am a goth god—but there are some dudes who find that vibe, likewise you, sexy as hell. They’d stick around even if shit got a little weird. Who doesn’t like a little mystery?”

“Reaping. The. Dead. Eddie.”

“So? They don’t have to know about it.”

“Right, like I’m supposed to Bruce Wayne my way through a relationship? I see a soul, maybe my mom’s, and then I’m supposed to be all, ‘Excuse me, honey, I just remembered that my house is on fire. Gotta go!’” Wendy snorted. “Not bloody likely.”

“Do you have to go send every soul you see into the Light?” He slapped the wheel, exasperated. “I mean, can’t you just let a couple of them slide?”

“I do let them go. I told you, I don’t reap unless I have to now,” Wendy snapped. “It’s not like I’m in this for the glory, Eddie, and I don’t want them noticing me any more than…any more than they want me noticing them, but sometimes…sometimes there’s no choice. Some of them,” she shuddered, “some of the ghosts aren’t right. Some of them scare me.”

Though she’d tried to explain before, Wendy knew she’d never have the words for the horrors Eddie couldn’t see. He’d been in the operating room after the accident; he hadn’t been there when she’d spotted her first Walker.

The ambulance came shortly after Piotr left her, shivering and lonely, hunched in the back of the police car. The paramedics looked her over and escorted her into the back, driving quietly to El Camino Hospital, where they left her in the ER to await medical attention. Her mother was an EMT so most of the ER nurses knew Wendy on sight. After she’d been declared bruised but intact, the nurses sat her in a corner bed and pulled the curtain, giving her privacy while she waited for her mother.

It was spooky sitting there, shrouded behind the green fabric. Wendy hopped down and opened the curtain a large crack before crawling back onto the table. Bored, she began watching ghosts wander by. Piotr had promised that the ability to see ghosts would fade but so far it hadn’t. The shock of the accident had peeled back some protective layer in Wendy’s mind, leaving her exposed to a different level of the world—a darker, colder place.

It didn’t take Wendy long to figure out that only a small fraction of the ghosts seemed to realize that they