“What the—” he wondered aloud and dropped to his knees. “What happened here?”
Since her thoughts had been so recently centered on Piotr, Wendy was certain Piotr’s appearance was her imagination. She rubbed her eyes brusquely, sure he would vanish, but he was real. Or as real as a ghost could be, anyway. Her fingers itched to open her backpack, dive into the contents, and pull out her binder to compare her sketch from last night to the slim ghost now crawling across the restaurant, his hand gripping a table for balance.
Wendy’s memories of him didn’t do Piotr justice. She’d thought that the fall of hair, the dark eyes, even the scar that twisted from temple to neck half-hidden by his hair had been branded into her memory, but those pale images came up short of what he really was. Had any spirit she’d ever seen glowed so bright, so fiercely? Barely transparent, Piotr looked almost real, crouched on the linoleum. He looked alive.
He was searching for something. Every few feet he leaned forward, peered underneath the booths, and then continued on; his counter-clockwise circuit of the diner would bring Piotr to Wendy’s booth within moments. Eddie would understand if she did her thing, of course, but Jon wouldn’t and neither would the other customers. The diner was packed, so there was no way to discreetly step into the Never to talk to Piotr face to face on his own turf.
Torn, Wendy hesitated, not sure what to do.
While the heat of living bodies was immense, Piotr found it bearable if he kept his mind clear and concentrated on the task at hand. Being dead was all about willpower; you had to have the will to keep yourself coherent. Otherwise, eventually, you’d fade away until you became a Shade, a memory of a soul. It was a terrible, horrible way to go—deaf and dumb to everything, even the Never, drawn back to the place of your death and trapped there until you were a wisp, eventually extinguished.
Dunn wouldn’t have become a Shade, Piotr reminded himself as he peered under a table. He had died too young, too strong. The Lost had too much willpower, too much energy, too much life left in them when they died. Dying a brutal death turned the Lost into batteries, going on and on and on without end, rudderless in a world that quickly forgot their short time on it. It made them a target for Walkers.
Cannibalism. Eating a young soul. It was the only way for an adult ghost to permanently stave off the centuries and the constant need to be vigilant and alert, to will themselves to remain whole. To continue to exist. Of course, there was a price: every Lost destroyed ate at the ties a soul kept to the Never until the cord was gone, until the salvation of the Light was impossible.
Eventually the Walkers became monsters, shadows creeping at the edge of the abyss, silver cords obliterated; mere shells of their former selves. Some of the Walkers deemed their damnation a fair trade for the certainty of existence. The Light was a terrifying mystery. The Never was just a darker sort of life.
For Piotr, there’d never been a question of what to do. The choice had always been simple. Seek out the Lost. Keep them safe. Repeat.
Protecting the Lost gave him the will to keep going on, as it did for all the other Riders. Over the years Piotr had lost a few of the Lost—some to the hunger of the Walkers and a couple who preferred other Riders like Elle or James—but most of his Lost eventually found peace on their own.
It took time, forgetting your own death and moving on, but when the Light came, Piotr was always there to help his Lost enter. It could take decades but, over time, the Light almost always came for the Lost Piotr protected. Only Dora had been with him so long he’d forgotten when he’d picked her up. He knew that, given enough time and attention, she too would one day enter the Light.
Secretly Piotr hoped that this was what had happened to Dunn.
It wasn’t that Piotr didn’t trust Lily’s word—she was intelligent and her instincts rarely led her astray—but if he could find proof that Dunn had simply stepped into the Light, that the Walkers hadn’t dared a restaurant full of living, searing human souls, then Piotr would rest easier.
It was a best-case scenario, but he was desperate for good news.
Now, kneeling on the floor of a diner stuffed with living people, their burning hot legs scissoring through him, clipping his hip, his thigh, his shoulder, Piotr moved as quickly as he could among waitresses who poured coffee, chatted, and made change. On hands and knees he crawled, seeking the charred circle that would indicate the presence of the corridor of Light, searching for proof that something might still be going their way.
So engrossed in his task, Piotr didn’t pay attention to the living in the booths. Normally the living felt a chill when the dead were near, a pocket of cold air most noticed only as they were passing through. Most of the dead had the good sense to be still when the living were near—humans tended to pass quickly by, repulsed by the icy cold—so there was less chance of injury for the dead.
Searching closely for clues, Piotr left a wake of shivering humans behind him. Several called for their waitresses, complaining about the vents. More reached for jackets or sweaters, or cuddled against their booth- mates, seeking body warmth.
It wasn’t until he was resting his hand on the table on the window side of the room that he noticed the girl. Unlike the others, no gooseflesh popped up on her skin at his proximity; she did not shiver or pull away. Piotr would have dismissed this—perhaps she was used to cold—except for the rigid way she held her body, stiff and still but breathing elevated, rapid. He could feel her heat thrumming, more intense than the others, a warmth like banked coals in a pocket nimbus of heat.
Piotr paused, looking her expression over closely. The girl tensed and her eyelids swept down, the thick concealing lashes feathered across her cheekbones, but underneath Piotr could spot the gleam of her eyes. Testing a theory, Piotr shifted his weight and her gaze, nearly concealed by her eyelashes but not entirely, followed his movement. Piotr frowned, shifted again, and again her eyes tracked him.
“You can see me,” he said, wonder drying the saliva in his mouth, leaving his tongue thick and furry with excitement. A tingle began in his gut; working outward and leaving the edges of his body alight with a fierce pins- and-needles sensation. “You can see me.”
The accusation was quiet, no more than a whisper, but the girl’s breath hitched and she flushed; licking her lips, she turned away and glanced around the restaurant as if searching for a savior. There was no one.
“I have to get up. Excuse me,” she told her two boothmates and rose, brushing by Piotr but not touching him, moving swiftly for the door. Piotr followed, heart hammering in his chest, and melted through the wall in time to spot her turning the corner and hurrying through the parking lot, chin tucked to chest and looking neither right nor left.
The girl was athletic, he noticed, lithe and well-muscled but small in stature, padded in all the right places. Her hair, brilliantly red at the roots and faded black at the tips, had been allowed to grow wild, tumbling down her back in a riot of curls. The clothing she wore wasn’t immodest exactly, Elle often wore much less, but the cut of it and the way it clung left little to the imagination, granting the girl a fluid mobility Elle would certainly admire. Oddly enough, she was pierced and tattooed, intricate tribal designs worked around her wrists and collarbone in patterns that hurt Piotr’s eyes when he looked at them too long.
Only her face, rounded like a child’s, with large brown eyes and full lips, looked innocent. The rest of her whispered
The girl approached a blue car, some new model Piotr didn’t recognize, and dug through her pockets. Then, as if it were the most natural thing in the world, she opened a cell phone and pressed it to her ear.
“Hello?” she said aloud, glancing left and right at the empty parking lot. She settled on the back of the car, her weight barely dipping the trunk down. “Yes,” she said, tilting her head towards the main road, studiously not looking at Piotr. “I can see you.”
Confused, Piotr moved to stand in front of her so she would not be able to look away. “Are you insane? What are you doing?”
“Well,” she said, meeting his eyes at last but still pressing the phone to her ear, “I’ve found that I look less crazy this way. You know, talking to myself.”
“I see,” he said, and he really did. He’d heard of people like her, the soothsayers and fortune tellers who actually had a touch of the Sight in their blood, Seers that a soul could turn to for aid if they were willing to pay a price. In years past, many of those women had been burned as witches. Some, at their death, came to live in the Never, promising rich rewards to the unwary and unwise. This Seer was young, though, and soft around the eyes. Perhaps this was all new to her, or perhaps it had never occurred to her to charge for her care. Most Seers he’d known wouldn’t even talk to a spirit unless there was something in it for them; she seemed to be an
