Lightbringer

Or if she’s moved on into the Light?”

Wendy gaped. “You can find out if a spirit’s gone into the Light? Seriously?”

He laughed. “Of course! You think the Light leaves no mark in our world? If you find a place where the Light has been, it is special, sacred space until the marks of the Light fade. Some even worship there, hoping the Light will return.”

“Really? Why?”

“To find your Light is a great blessing in the Never.” Piotr laid a hand against his heart. “It is an end to pain and suffering. Many think it is to go home again. For one at the end of their rope, essence worn thin…anything is better than fading away, da? And who knows? The Light might return to that spot, taking any other ready souls with it.”

“Is that really what you think?”

Piotr shrugged. “Me? I do not know much about it. It is peaceful, I think, going when you are ready. The Light comes for them and my Lost, when they go, they always smile. I like that.”

“That’s nice,” Wendy said. “I’ve never seen a ghost enter the Light on their own.”

“Maybe one day you will, da?” Piotr leaned over her shoulder again and frowned at the picture on her cell phone. “But I do not think I have seen this woman, your mother, Wendy. Yzveenee, my apologies. I can keep a lookout, though. If you wish.”

“I do,” Wendy said, closing her cell. “I really do.”

“Then I shall help you,” Piotr promised. “You have my word. But…” He hesitated.

“But?” Wendy prompted.

“It is nothing.” Piotr waved a hand. “My friend Lily says I am like an old woman. I worry too much.”

His friend Lily? Wendy was startled by the jolt she felt at the mention of the name. After all, it wasn’t as if Piotr existed only in the vacuum of her memories. Of course he’d have friends among the dead. “If you’ve got a ‘but,’ I want to hear about it,” she said. Then winced. “I mean, what’s got you worried, Piotr?”

“How long has it been?” Piotr asked. “Since your mother—”

“She had her accident in February,” Wendy interrupted. She didn’t know why, but she didn’t feel comfortable admitting to Piotr that her mother wasn’t dead yet. Perhaps because every other comatose soul had the good sense to remain tethered to their body and her mother…well, hadn’t. “So it’s been about seven months.”

Peter’s expression was grave. “That is long enough for a soul to find the Light on their own, Wendy. Or, if she didn’t have the willpower to stay…she could have faded, become a Shade, is what I’m trying to say. You have met a Shade before in your wanderings, da?”

No shit, Sherlock, Wendy thought. After her first reap but before her mother’s accident, Shades had been all Wendy had been allowed to reap. The lost and lonely souls had forgotten themselves so far that they wouldn’t have recognized their Light if it’d burst into being right in front of them. Shades were their bread-and-butter, the meat of her duty as a Reaper. They were the souls she had to hunt down and the most important ones to send on. Otherwise they’d continue to fade, to pale, to vanish…into nothing. Souls lost and gone.

“Yeah,” she said, disturbed by the realization that when she’d sworn off reaping last spring that she’d also left a city full of Shades to their own devices. How many helpless souls had been suffering through the long and drowsy summer while she’d searched only for her mother? “I’ve met a couple.”

“I’m borrowing trouble,” Piotr soothed. “This is unlikely. Seven months is not long. We will find her if she can be found. My word on it.”

“Thank you,” Wendy said. “I appreciate it.”

“It is nothing,” he swore and bowed slightly, clicking his heels together. “Now then, I must take my leave of you.”

“What? Why?”

Piotr gestured to the diner. “I have work yet to do. Dunn was taken here.”

Wendy straightened, her color returning. Her weary concern was replaced by a steely-eyed determination Piotr found fascinating. “Here? In the diner? But being so close to the living hurts you, right? Yet you wanna go back in and look for the kid?”

“Da.” Piotr said. “I had hoped he had just gone into the Light, but there is no scorching in the Never. There is no essence, either.” He saw her confusion and explained, “Essence is like flesh and blood to the living. It is a mystery.” He sighed. “I had hoped, before…you weren’t in the diner when he was taken? A few days ago, around noon?”

Sympathetic, Wendy shook her head. “No, I’m sorry. The food’s awesome and I’d live here if I could, but that whole school thing gets in the way.” Brightening, she added, “But maybe your first guess was right? Maybe the kid just moved on into the Light? You didn’t get a chance to check under all the booths, after all. I got in your way.”

“It is possible, but unlikely.”

Kicking at the dirt, Piotr examined the Never terrain around him with a critical eye. The fire had scoured away the spiritual remains of the tenement building that had once stood on this ground, leaving only the solid diner in its place. He’d told Wendy the truth. There was no new residue here, he could see that now, no charred traces of Light that clung to walls or seats or doors.

Closer inspection proved that the boy hadn’t passed into the Light. Lily was right. Dunn had been taken, most likely by the White Lady’s Walkers.

“Going in there hurts you,” Wendy said matter-of-factly, spying his troubled expression.

“Da.”

“But you have to see if there’s anything that’ll point you in the right direction. A clue.”

He nodded.

“Okay then.” Determined to help, Wendy hopped from her place and strolled towards the diner. “Stay here.”

“Wait…what?” Piotr hurried after, reaching for her shoulder. He drew back when he realized the folly of trying to grab her. Wendy was living; not only would his hand pass right through her, but he’d burn himself in the process. Speeding up his pace, he hurried to step in front of her, cutting her off. “I do not understand.”

Amused, Wendy stopped walking and gestured to the building. “Piotr, I can help you. It hurts you to be in there, right?” She waited for his nod. “Okay then, well, it doesn’t hurt me at all, and I can see everything you see.”

“You…can see the Never?” Stunned, Piotr stepped away from her and shook his head. He’d never heard of such a thing before, even from other Seers. Most could hear the dead, some could even make the dead out—dim shapes they’d describe to paying customers—but none that he’d known had ever admitted to seeing the landscape of the Never itself. It was mind-boggling to even contemplate. “Not just me, but my world?”

Wendy pointed across the street. “Remnants of a four story hotel layered over that Burger la Hut,” she stated cheerily in a tour-guide falsetto, giggling every third word and bobbing her head left and right. “Next to the genuinely ghostly hotel, look south! In that supposedly empty lot is the remains of a fabulous fifties soda fountain with be-bop, soul hop, and rock and roll to soothe your soul! Don’t worry kiddies, though the Big-Bopper-Drive-In has nearly faded away, the fifties will never die!”

Dropping the bubblehead act, Wendy jerked her thumb towards the diner she’d just been sitting in. “Not too long ago, there used to be an apartment building layered over that building, but the last of it faded away last May. I think it burned down, what, in the sixties?”

“Da,” Piotr whispered, stunned. She was the most thorough Seer he’d ever met or even heard of. The strength of her power was stunning, and not a little frightening. “You have it.”

“Let me help you,” she urged. “Don’t hurt yourself over this when I can do it for you.”

This strange girl would be the undoing of him, Piotr mused silently, before nodding. She hurried away and he sank to the earth and closed his eyes. He had to bring her up to the others, he realized. Lily was wise; Lily was old. She would know what to do.

Because Piotr was at a loss.