“Mom…I—”
“Didn’t know. Yes, I sorted that part out. I assume I’d still be in tiny pieces if it had been left up to you. But there was one person who knew, one person who’d been around long enough to know a thing or two about Lightbringers.” She slapped the skin against her face and strode across the room to Piotr’s side. “Even if he doesn’t remember it.”
Piotr, horrified, shook his head frantically. “I would never help you!”
“Of course you would, Piotr,” she said, and grabbed him by the back of the neck. “You’ve helped me all along.”
Piotr screamed and his knees buckled. He fell to the ground, eyes rounded with pain, but held Wendy’s Light orb tightly tucked into his chest, unwilling to drop it. Where her hand pressed into his flesh, dark essence poured into Wendy’s mother until the skin healed, the flap clinging to the rest of her face by the thinnest threads. Wendy gaped; her mother’d drained him for essence, like Piotr would drain a Lost.
“So convenient,” she said. “He’s like a walking battery for us. Even get near him and our kind gets a boost. You get sleepy at first, but he’s like good wine. He grows better with age.”
“H-how…when…Piotr…”
“Quit stuttering, dear, it’s unbecoming.” Her mother smoothed her hair, noticeably thicker and less ragged now, and patted Piotr on the top of the head. “Poor boy has been following our family for centuries. None of us had a clue why, but he’s awfully useful to have around. Bit crazy, though.” She held up one hand to block her mouth and whispered loudly, “A few screws loose upstairs. Terrible memory problem. Of course, that’s our fault too, you know. He gives up a memory for every time one of us sucks him dry. But that’s all right, it’s what he’s here for.”
Abandoning all concern for her own well-being, Wendy darted to Piotr’s side and cradled him in her lap. His pupils expanded and contracted wildly, his legs twitched and jerked, drumming against the floor in a slipshod staccato beat.
“You can imagine my surprise,” her mother continued, stepping over Piotr and wiping fastidiously at the front of her soiled robes, “when I discovered that you’d found our little family battery pack. And my further surprise when I learned that you were
“Who was it?” Wendy asked bleakly. “A Walker? One of the Riders? Who is your little stooge, Mom? Who’s been your marvelous spy?”
A warm, furry body pressed against Wendy’s side as Jabberwocky pushed past Wendy and trotted across the room to twine around her mother’s ankles.
“I told you, dear,” her mother said, scooping Jabber up and rubbing her chin against the ghost kitty’s head. “I’ve been watching you quite closely. Hello, darling. Did you miss me?” She made kiss-kiss faces at Jabber before setting him down. The cat vanished into the darkness gathering at the edge of the room.
Wendy blinked. Darkness? Her head felt woozy suddenly, and weary. Spots danced before her eyes.
“Oh, don’t worry, dear, that’s just the blood loss,” her mother said. “Time passes differently here, when you’re fully in the Never, in a place as strongly bound with emotion as this hotel. You’ve only been dying a few living seconds, but you’ll finish bleeding out soon, I promise.” She tsked. “Though if you want to catch your Light, I suggest you hurry. It’s looking a little weak around the edges.”
Wendy glanced over her shoulder and shrugged. “What’s the point? I came to get you and Eddie. You’ve gone off the deep end, what’s to say Eddie hasn’t, too?”
Her mother burst into merry laughter, wrapping her arms around her waist and rocking back and forth on her heels with mirth. “Oh Wendy, you are a peach! You think I had anything at all to do with Eddie? What kind of a monster do you take me for?”
“You…you didn’t?”
“Of course not, dear. Our job is taking souls once they’ve crossed, not making them cross. Other ghosts can interact with the living world, but you were right all along—I’m not one of them. I was lying to you. The only souls
“What happened to him?” Wendy demanded. “What happened to his soul?”
“That, darling, I can’t say.” Her mother shrugged. “I wasn’t there. Any number of things. Drug use, astral projection…anything can stretch a soul so thin it’ll snap. But his cord wasn’t rotted, so he’s still about somewhere, possibly lost as I was supposed to be. Looking for you, I’d wager. If you don’t feel like going into your Light, I’m sure you might even be able to find him. Who knows? Maybe you’ll even do a better job saving your best friend than you did your own flesh and blood.”
Her mother stretched and held out her hand. “Your doorway into the Light’s grown thin, Winifred. It’s time. Give me your Light and be on your way. Or stay here and learn a trick or two. It’s no matter to me.”
“You’d do this?” Piotr asked, pushing into a sitting position, still cradling Wendy’s ball of Light. “You’d kill your own daughter for this?”
“In a heartbeat,” she said, “if she still had one. I need it more than she ever would. All that power inside and she hardly ever tapped it. Disgusting. Now give me her Light. I’ll put it to good use.”
“You are sick,” Piotr hissed. “She is your
“Yes, she is, and Momma knows best. Besides, Piotr, you don’t have any room to lecture me. Or I suppose you don’t remember my mother and what she did to her own sister? It is our duty to pass on our knowledge, our teaching, and our ways. The proper ways.”
“Proper ways?” Piotr spat. “There is nothing proper about what you are doing.”
“Manners, Piotr. Manners.” The White Lady shook her head, tsking. “See, this is exactly what I’m talking about. Wendy learned the Sight at too young an age; it taught her sympathy for your kind. It made her think of you as a
“We’re not yours to control,” Piotr snapped, hugging Wendy’s fragile ball of Light as closely as he dared. “You don’t have any say over our souls.”
“I don’t?” She seemed truly sad at that. “Piotr, Piotr, Piotr, after all these years and you still haven’t learned? The dead must be sent on—Lost, Shades, Walkers, and Riders alike. No one may stay in the Never, even if they don’t think they’re ready to move on. No one.”
“That’s not your choice to make!”
“Isn’t it? Ghosts like you are like children who want to stay up past your bedtime because you fear the monster under your bed, in your closet. An adult, a person with clear sight, knows better. An adult can see what really is for the best and when it’s time to move on.”
“You’ll be killing your own line!”
“Hardly. I still have two very smart, very dedicated children besides Winifred. I’m willing to sacrifice her in order to keep our legacy strong.
Wendy wrapped her arms around her waist and ducked her head. She hated to say it but what her mother said made a sick, disheartening sort of sense to her. The pillar to the afterlife was here—maybe it really was time for her to move on. “Mom’s right, I guess. Do it, Piotr,” she whispered. “Do what is best.”
“Listen to my daughter, Piotr.” Her mother said. “Give me her Light, boy.”
“Or watch as I have my Walkers rip my daughter to shreds.” The White Lady held up a threatening hand, deadly calm and completely serious. “So what will it be, Piotr? Winifred? Or the Light?”
In his flickering vision Piotr heard a scream, faint and far away, and sensed a trembling as footsteps pounded up a flight of stairs. In the basement, in the living world and in the living time, someone—a maid, or a custodian perhaps—had discovered Wendy’s body.
“How about you go to hell?” he said and pushed away from Wendy’s lap, dodging past the White Lady’s goons, and sprinting for her bleeding body. Long-fingered, bony hands gripped his ankles, pulling him back, draining him, but Piotr struggled, thrashing his legs and kicking over and over again until the hands let go with a brittle crack. Then, Wendy’s body only a few feet away, Piotr shoved forward with all his might. The White Lady was screaming, the Walkers howling, but all he could see, all he could feel, was the pulse of her Light sliding out of his grip.
