Lightbringer

tummy sort of feeling, but stronger, hotter. It was as if she could suddenly feel the heat the old woman had been complaining about. She felt unexpectedly flush and warm, her eyes drying in their sockets as if she were baking with fever. The ghost shimmered before her; Wendy blinked rapidly to keep her centered in her sight.

Her tone changed, softened. “Please…Wendy. I don’t know what you are, but please, please, don’t do this. Please. I need to stay.”

“I can’t,” Wendy whispered, marveling at the bizarre heat pooling in her gut, straining to expand. Controlling the heat was incredibly difficult; Wendy felt her tongue begin to dry, making her next words clumsy and hard to say. “I don’t know why but I can’t stop.” Wendy bent double, the heat throbbing out through her chest and belly now, insistent and fierce. “I’m really sorry.”

“Then do me a favor,” she said urgently. “You have to get Lacey out of here.” The ghost pointed to the house. “I was the last blood relative Lacey has left. Her stepfather isn’t a very nice man, he…” she stopped short, blushing. “How old are you?”

“Old enough,” Wendy snapped, uncomfortably aware of the direction the conversation was turning. Her palms felt like they were blistering. She dropped to her hands and knees on the cold, muddy ground, feeling the earth beneath her knees simultaneously squelch and bake under her heat. It was as if the backyard were shining through some dark prism—one moment, the world was light and sweet, the backyard small but well-kept, and the next it was decaying in front of her face, the neat late-season roses lushly overgrown and rotting on the bush.

“The Never,” Wendy whispered. Her mother had described the world of the dead to her, but this was the first time she’d seen it for herself. Wendy held up one hand, marveling at the tiny buds of Light beginning to illuminate the tip of each finger. “You want me to call the police.”

“Please.”

“Okay. Done,” Wendy whispered and the Light unfurled within.

When she opened her eyes again, the old woman was gone and a pair of scuffed up boots were in front of her at eye-level.

“Kid, I’m giving you thirty seconds to get off my property,” slurred the man standing over her. He had a beer in one hand and a baseball bat in the other. “And if you come around here jumping my fence any more, I’m calling the cops, you hear me?”

“Yes sir,” Wendy murmured, pushing off the ground and staggering towards the woods.

“Hey! Idiot!” The man grabbed Wendy by the shoulder and spun her sharply around. “You can’t walk through those woods. Not at night. Go by the street.” He shoved her toward the side gate and Wendy, embarrassed, let him push her onto the sidewalk.

It took her an hour to find her way back through the winding neighborhood to the high school. “It’s done,” she said, sliding in the passenger seat.

“What did she make you promise?” Her mother wiped a hand across her mouth and Wendy realized that she’d been drinking.

“To call the police on the little girl’s stepdad.” Wendy reached for her mother’s cell.

“Oh, hell no.” Her mother snatched the phone out of reach.

“But, Mom, I promised.”

“What did I say, Wendy? I said ‘cover your back,’ didn’t I? Or did I imagine that?”

“Yeah, but—”

“NO BUTS, WINIFRED!” Her mother pounded the steering wheel. “We don’t owe that family anything, you understand me? How would you explain yourself to the cops, huh? ‘A ghost told me to call?’ No. Absolutely not. That’s not how we work.”

“But—”

“Wendy, you listen to me.” Her mother swiveled in her seat and grabbed Wendy by the face, squeezing her cheeks painfully. “You listen to me and you listen good. Okay? Are you listening? What we do? What we do is the ultimate sacrifice for these people. Those ribbons of light that come out of your fingers, out of your chest? Every one of those is a second of your own life. You are giving up your life to help them, to send them on. You are wrapping up a ticket home with your own life for these people. So if even one of them asks for anything more, you tell them no. Do you understand me? You tell them NO, Wendy.”

“I can’t,” she cried. “I can’t not help that little girl.”

When her mother’s slap cracked across her cheek, Wendy sank against the passenger side door and wept.

“You gave that woman a gift tonight, so that’s my gift to you in return. That’s your reward,” her mother breathed, looming over her. “You’re a Reaper now. Neither one of us wanted it like this, but what’s done is done. It took the death of your best friend’s father to make you this way. I love you, but the coddling is officially over!”

“Momma—”

“No. No. I’m done arguing. You aren’t putting our family and everything I’ve worked for in danger by reporting that man. I don’t care what the ghost said. I can’t risk my cover for some stranger’s kid. I’m sorry, I really honestly am, Wendy, but I can’t.”

“Then I don’t want to be a Reaper,” Wendy whispered, wiping her tears away. “I quit.”

Her mother snorted. “Good luck. You think I didn’t try that, too? You can’t quit being a Reaper. It’s who you are now. The best thing for you to do is learn how to do it right, how to cover your back in the living world, and how to keep yourself safe. You will be trained as my grandmother trained me, the same as her grandmother trained her. You will reap when I say to reap and you will do it over and over again until I’ve seen that you’ve done it right. As of this moment you’re an adult; it’s time to start acting like it.”

Wendy thought she was heartless. They didn’t speak on the way home and her mother said nothing when Wendy pounded up the stairs to her room, slamming the door behind. But later that night, while her mother was on her cell talking to Nana, the kitchen phone rang. Wendy answered; it was her mother’s boss.

“Winifred, hi honey, is your mom there?”

“No, she’s on the other line. Do I need to go grab her? Is she on call?”

“No, honey, nothing like that. I don’t have time to talk right now anyway. You just tell her that I got her message and I pulled some strings. The SFPD already sent a unit out to fetch…well, they got someone out of a bad situation. That’s all you need to know to let her know, that it’s all been taken care of, okay? That’s all, and you write it down if you need to. Quote: ‘It’s all been taken care of.’ Unquote. I’ll talk to her next week. G’night, honey.”

Wendy wrote the message down, heart in her throat. She never brought it up again, but the next time her mother wanted to go reaping, Wendy went without comment and listened carefully to every instruction she was given. She owed her that much.

Pulling away from the memories before she started tearing up, Wendy grabbed her soda and gulped it down. The carbonation burned enough to clear her mind and she fought back a loud belch, pressing her hand flush against her lips and letting out a series of tiny burps instead. Setting down the glass, Wendy let her eyes wander around the restaurant, seeking anything to take her mind from her mother, her duty, her life.

CHAPTER EIGHT

Late afternoon found Piotr hesitating in the bushes outside the Dew Drop Diner. The living heat within was immense, baking through the brick as the dinner rush built. Inside, waitresses twisted through the crowd with beautiful confidence, serving coffee and ringing up orders with an efficiency he envied. The bustle of life was intoxicating…but painful.

Still, there was nothing to do but get the job done. This was the last place Dunn had been seen. Dora, Specs, Tubs, he thought to himself, drawing courage from the thought of them taken like this, from a place they felt safe and comfortable. He had to find a clue, any clue, to help Dunn, and he had to do it now! There was no room for fear here.

Taking a deep breath, Piotr centered his will and stepped through the wall. When he entered the diner, Piotr was expecting a mess—Walkers in feed were like rabid wolves; if Dunn had been devoured, the walls would be dripping with his essence—but everything was clean.