Lightbringer

black. Pink and black.” She swallowed heavily, babbling now. “But it’s my room, you know? I like it.”

“I understand.” Piotr glanced at her out of the corner of his eye. “And if I do come visit you soon, Wendy? When do you want me to enter your home?”

“I dunno, whenever, I guess. Friday. We can talk that night. There’s a tree. Can you climb trees? Anyway, there’s a tree near the roof. It’s an easy jump. Do ghosts have to jump? I don’t… I don’t have a lot of experience with this.”

If Piotr noted her discomfort, he gave no sign. Instead he smiled and took her hand a final time, tracing a gentle circle on the inside of her wrist. Wendy’s knees felt trembly at the touch, the cool brush of his skin obliterating her nervous energy in one fell swoop and leaving her aching and breathless.

Oh yeah, she realized, I got it bad-bad-bad. Eddie would never let her live it down. Wendy the Reaper, scourge of spirits, had a crush. And on a dead guy no less. What next?

“I understand,” Piotr murmured, releasing her wrist and stepping away. He smiled, and that quirky grin, that twist of lips that was as familiar today as it had been five years before, was enough to make Wendy quiver from head to toe. “I will find you. Thank you.”

Nodding once, Wendy turned and strode toward the diner. She refused to look back. He’s a ghost, she told herself. Just a ghost, no one special. But her heart, thudding against her ribs, spoke an entirely different tale.

If she’d turned, just for a moment, she would have seen Piotr staring after her, expression wide open and eloquent with longing. Instead she flipped open her phone and dialed 9-1-1.

“Hello?” she said as the operator answered, “I’d like to report an accident in the woods behind the MVLA High School.” She put her hand on the door and pulled. “You see, I was skipping last period, and—”

CHAPTER TEN

Unlike most of her peers, Wendy didn’t get a cell phone until she was fifteen. It was a birthday gift from her mother and was strictly for the family business. Her father wasn’t supposed to know about it. Dutiful daughter that she was, Wendy still kept it a secret even though she doubted he’d care about it now.

Though she and her mother had been close once upon a time, the death of Mr. Barry had changed things between them. Her mother began trusting Wendy more, especially with the twins, and going out more often when Dad was on assignment. If her mother had been any other woman, Wendy would have thought she was having an affair. And in a way, she was. The love of her life wasn’t George, Wendy’s father. Her mother was in love with her duty as a Reaper.

The night of her mother’s accident started out typically. It was late February and the beginning of the rainy season. Wendy was studying at Eddie’s when she received the call from her mother. The cell, tucked away in her bag, trilled once before going to voicemail. Wendy, deep in the middle of a tricky word problem, was unwilling to stop her homework yet again just because her mother expected her to jump at her beck and call. She barely glanced at her backpack before going back to work. Shades generally stuck to the same area; whomever her mother wanted her to send into the Light would most likely be there tomorrow. The reaping, Wendy decided, could wait for once. It was a decision she’d soon regret.

An hour later she filed her books away and remembered to check her phone. She pressed 2, the speed dial for her voicemail. She expected her mother to have left a list of boring reaping assignments to knock out before Wendy could go to sleep. Maybe there were Shades hovering around the Tiny Tot playground or a ghost wandering down Castro.

The voicemail turned out to be something much more important than that. Eddie, munching on popcorn, watched the smile slip off Wendy’s face, replaced with a look of horror. He set the bowl aside.

“What’s up?”

Wendy snapped her phone closed and shoved it in her pocket. “I need to borrow your car.”

“Whoa there, hotshot, you’ve barely got your license.”

She wouldn’t meet his eyes as she gathered up her things and stuffed them haphazardly in her bag. “Ed, I need this. I gotta go.”

“Then let me drive you.” Eddie staggered to his feet, legs half-numb from the time spent on the floor, and grabbed Wendy by the upper arms. “Wendy, what’s wrong? Is someone hurt? That was your mom, right? Is she okay?”

“You wouldn’t believe me if I told you,” Wendy snapped, yanking away.

Quickly, Eddie set himself between Wendy and the door, crossing his arms and tucking his compact wrestler’s body firmly against the door. There was no way she was moving him without a fight. “I’m your BFF, Wendy. Why don’t you try me?” When she hesitated his expression softened. “Give me a chance,” he pleaded. “Please?”

Torn between her duty to her mother and the vow of secrecy her mother had made her swear, Wendy hesitated…and told him. She told him about the ghost she’d met the day his father had died, about the rotting Walker-to-be in the hospital, and about her mother’s calling—now her own—as a Reaper.

“So now that you think I’m crazy,” she finished, turning her face away so Eddie wouldn’t see her fear for their friendship, “may I please borrow your car? You can listen to my voicemail. My mom needs my help. I really gotta go!”

“I don’t think you’re crazy,” Eddie rebuked.

“What?” Wendy’s head snapped up. “Of course you do. Didn’t you hear a word I just said? Ghosts, Eddie. Dead people. You know, boo!”

“Wendy, look, you’ve always been a little weird.” He laughed, shaking his head in amazement. “To be honest, it’s a relief to, you know, have a reason for it. Why you’re so strange. This seems as good a reason as any.”

“You believe me?” Wendy could hardly believe her ears. “Serious?”

“I sincerely doubt that you of all people would lie to me,” Eddie said, scratching his ear. “Not after everything we’ve been through. So if you’re not lying, well, I guess that means you’re telling the truth. I guess there’s only one way to find out, huh?” He drew his car keys from his front pocket. “Let’s go.”

It took twenty minutes to reach Redwood City. When they spotted the gigantic pileup it took immense self- control for Wendy to keep her dinner down. Her mother’s ambulance was at the back, parked beside the overturned school bus half on the highway. Most of the police were at the front of the wreck where a U-Haul lay on its side, the side torn open and its contents strewn across the lanes of traffic. A twin mattress lay haphazardly across the divider, sodden and bent double from the rain.

Eddie pulled to the side of the 101, tucking his car as far into the breakdown lane as he could—and as near as he dared without attracting notice from the cops. The storm opened up, rain pouring buckets upon buckets across the windshield so hard and fast that Wendy had to squint to make out the front of the accident.

“Oh my God,” he whispered, thunderstruck. “What happened?”

“Who cares? There’re kids out there,” Wendy moaned, spotting the wandering hoard of Lost milling around the crushed remnants of the yellow school bus. Her eyes skipped over the garish splash of red splattered across the inside of the windshield. Apparently the driver hadn’t made it either. “Normally Mom doesn’t let me reap kids. All I’ve ever done are adults! Shades! Maybe a Walker. Once. But never kids!”

Eddie passed a hand over his mouth. “It looks like the U-Haul must’ve skidded. The semi couldn’t stop and the bus ran into the semi. Those cars got crushed in between. Oh my God, this is…” he swallowed rapidly and wiped his mouth again. “You’ve seen shit like this before? How do you keep from being sick?”

“You take a deep breath and remind yourself that the body is just a shell.” Wendy started scanning what she could see of the wreck. “Come on, Mom, where are you?”

“Can you do it without her? Reap them?”

“I guess, maybe, but kids are supposed to be way, way harder. I’m not supposed to; Mom’ll kill me if I do and she didn’t want me to.” Wendy buried her face in her hands, torn with indecision; she could go ahead and help with the reap and catch flack for it later, or sit like a good girl and wait for her mother to spot the parked car and fetch her. Despairing, Wendy cried, “What should I do?”