Lightbringer

Crawling on hands and knees, Wendy approached the blanket. At first she thought it was her eyes, but the rice was indeed moving. Maggots and silverfish.

Overwhelmed, Wendy turned her face aside and dry-heaved.

“A feast for my honored guest!” The White Lady cried, approaching from behind. She stepped around Wendy’s side and crouched down, the gull she’d beaned flopping from her fist by one rotting leg, and dipped the remains of its head in the puddle. “Even in dreams, a girl’s got to eat, yes? Not seasoned, but we’ll make due, won’t we? Nothing like an impromptu BBQ, that’s what I always say.”

“You sick bitch,” Wendy gasped, pushing away from the White Lady and wiping her mouth with the back of her hand. “You can’t keep me here!”

“Tsk tsk, manners! Keeping you here, what nerve! You’re my guest! My guest until we sort out some sort of truce, my most honored opponent. Yet here you are, insulting me! What, were you raised in a barn?” The White Lady threw the gull to the ground and stood. “Surely your mother taught you better than that!” She paused, tilted her head. “Or did she? Didn’t teach you much of anything at all if you honestly think a mere ghost like me can truly trap someone who ‘won’t deal’ with her in a little ol’ dreamspace. Shame on her.”

“Don’t you talk about my mother,” Wendy growled, staggering to her feet and balling her hands into fists. “Don’t you fucking dare.”

“Oh yes, Mommy Dearest is wandering our streets, isn’t she?” The White Lady threw her head back and laughed and laughed and laughed. “My ears might be falling off, but they hear rumors just as well as they did before I ended up here. What you do is some kind of family business, yeah? Mother to daughter, that sort of thing?”

“Shut up.”

“And not only that, but rumors say that Momma Dearest has been out of the picture for a while now. Since this summer, am I right? What happened, Lightbringer? She up and quit?”

“I said, shut up.”

“Oh, I’m just fooling you! Everyone knows how you’ve been blowing off sending those pitiful Shades on to search high and low for her. Not having much luck, are we? How do you think dear ol’ Mom feels about that?”

Wendy felt her throat go dry. “How…”

“I suppose it’d be a real honest-to-goodness shame if one of my Walkers found her lost little spirit before you did, hmm? If I’d, say, sent them out looking for her?” The White Lady held out one rotting hand before her as if checking her nails. A finger fell off and she tsked, scooping down to pick it up and set it back on. “‘Be subtle! Be subtle and use your spies for every kind of warfare.’ Sun Tzu.” She chuckled. “Every leader needs a few flies on the wall here and there. Know your enemy, and all that. Even if your enemy is a snot-nosed kid.”

“You… you…” Wendy sputtered.

The White Lady sighed. “Yes, me, me. Be a dear and let’s make this truce work, hmm? I’ll leave you alone to search for your mom’s ghostie; you leave my Walkers alone when you come across them on your hunt.”

“I can’t do that.”

“And why not? If they chase you, you run, what’s so hard about that? They’re weak compared to the likes of you, and it’s not like they could hurt such a mighty ghost-killer, right?”

Slowly Wendy straightened, squared her shoulders, and took a long, measuring look at the White Lady. Despite the obvious instability of the White Lady’s personality, something she’d just said was pinging around inside Wendy’s skull. “You’re trying awfully hard to keep me away from your Walkers,” Wendy mused. “You start hassling me in my dreams, out of the blue, and you’re making all these threats that you then claim that you can’t back up if I’m really so very mighty.”

“Sarcasm. They teach you all about it in school, I’m sure.”

“Thing is,” Wendy said, ignoring her, “it really is my dream, isn’t it? My…what did you call it? My dreamspace.” Wendy grabbed a handful of maggots off the ground and concentrated at them. One by one the maggots transformed into butterflies, yellow-winged and delicate. Only the centers were still maggots, wriggling and white. “You’ve got some control here, but ultimately… it’s still my space, isn’t it?”

Wendy flung the maggot-butterflies into the air and they massed in a brilliant golden-yellow cloud, momentarily obliterating the great blue bowl of sky. One, however, had a partially crushed wing and waved feebly at her from her palm. The wings fluttered and drew inside the body until it was just a maggot again, big and bulky and hot in her hand.

“I’m leaving,” Wendy said. “And if I find out that you’re stalking my mother or you know where my mother is, this conversation…I…you won’t like it, okay? I’ll come for you and I don’t care how long it takes.” She turned away.

“You can’t walk away from me!” The White Lady snapped, grabbing for Wendy’s arm. “We’re not done here!”

“Oh yeah? Watch me.” Dodging the skeletal fingers, Wendy strode to the hopscotch grid and threw the hot maggot to the concrete, grinding it beneath her heel. It bled thin, sticky ichor that seeped into the ground, obliterating the chalk outline and revealing the door of seashells. The jangle of metal chains became the hooting of the foghorn, the twittering of birds faded into the wash of constant grinding waves.

The mist was gone and with it the boat, Wendy noted, leaving only a swatch of scraped sand as testament to its appearance in her dream. A feathered gull flew overhead with a shining, scaled fish caught in its beak. The beach was beautiful once again.

The White Lady was gone.

CHAPTER ELEVEN

Friday evening found Wendy forgoing patrolling for her mother in favor of staying inside. Part of her knew this was pure lunacy—Wednesday afternoon and the disturbing dream that followed must have been some sort of delusion. But the touch of Piotr’s hand, the bittersweet wariness in his eyes, and the obvious insanity of the White Lady convinced her differently. Piotr was real and so was his dilemma.

Come hell or high water, Wendy intended to help.

When they got home after school, Wendy gathered an armful of cleaning supplies from under the kitchen sink. Ignoring Chel’s incredulous look and Jon’s curious questions, Wendy marched upstairs and gave her room a quick but thorough onceover.

“Is Eddie coming over?” Jon asked from the doorway around the second hour of her frantic whirlwind spree. He wrinkled his nose theatrically and snagged a handful of M&Ms from the candy dish on her desk. “It smells like Mr. Clean hemorrhaged to death in here.”

“Very funny,” Wendy grunted, shoving the last of her (now stuffed) shoeboxes under the bed. The box slid through Jabber, who territorially hissed and took a swipe at her with his claws. Wendy snatched her hand back just in time.

“Can’t a girl just want a nice room every now and then?”

Pouring an entire handful of M&Ms into his mouth, Jon struggled to chew and swallow before answering. “Using you and Chel as examples? No.”

“Beat it,” she replied, not unkindly, and threw him the shopping bag full of rags she’d dirtied. “And throw those in the washer while you’re at it.”

“Yes mon capitan!” Jon saluted, tapping his heels together. “Anything else your highness desires? Cake, perhaps? Possibly a virgin to sacrifice?”

“For you to stop being so nosy,” Wendy said and tossed the final rag his way. “Shoo!”

Shrugging, Jon left, taking the bag of rags with him along with another handful of candy. Maneuvering around Jabber, Wendy straightened the throw pillows on her bed, made sure her abundance of ratty stuffed animals were out of sight, and turned once around, examining the room. Everything looked okay, but that didn’t mean she hadn’t forgotten something important, like panties poking out of a drawer. Piotr seemed relaxed and his clothing was very nondescript but there was no telling when he’d died or what might offend him. He could come from some super-repressed century for all she knew, and Wendy was unwilling to risk chasing him away.