He snorted. “You mean he hasn’t asked you to help him?”
“Help him with what?” As with Mr. Ankh and Dr. Wright, I had my suspicions.
“The zombies.”
“No. Until a few minutes ago, I had no idea he was involved.”
“He’s not involved. He’s a menace.”
And Cole was one big bowl of confusion. “You’re not making any sense. He’s either involved or he isn’t. Which is it?”
Cole banged the back of his head on a shelf, sighed and said, “Listen up, because I will never repeat this. I shouldn’t be talking about it now, especially considering you’re dating him.”
I stomped my foot. “I’m not—”
“Justin used to be one of us,” he said, causing me to shut my mouth. “Then he met up with a group of people who claimed to want to destroy the zombies but have only ever tried to stuff the evil spirits inside of living bodies. Think possession,” he added, probably sensing my increased confusion. “Remember the way you returned to your body?”
“No, actually, I don’t.” I’d been in too much pain.
His chuckle was without humor. “That’s right. I had to do it for you. Anyway, these people say what they’re doing is research to discover ways to counteract the zombies’ infection, but how can we believe them when they’re willing to hurt innocent people to do that research?”
“How do you know that?”
“After Justin told me about them, I visited their lab, saw people in cages, each living person in different stages of decomposition. And we’re pretty sure those
“Yes.”
“Well, he hasn’t mentioned them to me, I promise.” I wouldn’t give him a chance to mention them, either. I wanted nothing to do with anyone who was hoping to stuff something evil into something good.
Cole pinched the bridge of his nose. “Justin will tell them about my interest in you, so they’ll be contacting you sooner or later, in some way or another. They’ve contacted all of us. If you refuse to help them, they’ll try and convince you and it won’t be a pleasant experience.”
“I don’t care.”
A heavy pause. Then “Your grandparents will care.” A sigh. “Maybe you’d be better off walking away from me, Ali.”
What? “No!”
“Your life is about to change. You’ll be out almost every night. Probably be caught by your grandparents, definitely in constant trouble. Your free time will disappear, and your grades will drop. You’ll be hurt all the time, probably suffer broken bones. Sometimes you might even hope to die.”
“So?” I would be killing the very creatures that had destroyed my family—I would be stopping those creatures from destroying
“I’ll be careful,” I said on a trembling breath.
“You’ll never be careful enough. Besides, training you will take too much time and until you know what you’re doing, you’ll only be a liability.”
He was saying this to see if it would scare me away. Right? He needed to know I was strong enough to defend myself verbally.
“Besides everything else,” he continued as if I hadn’t spoken, “you will make enemies other than Justin if you hang out with me, and they will strike at you every chance they get.”
Okay, yeah. He’d heard the rumors. “I don’t care,” I repeated.
I wished I could see his expression as he said, “Easy enough to say now, but one day you’ll crumble. I’ve seen it happen one too many times.”
“Well, that day isn’t today,” I blustered on, trying to ignore the hurt inside me. Hurt that was swirling, burning. He wasn’t testing me. He just wanted me gone.
“When it comes, and it will, it won’t be with me. We’re done.”
There it was. A straight-up admission. He wanted nothing more to do with me. Well, fine. Okay. I’d go.
But…I didn’t want to go.
“Is Mackenzie the one who’s telling everyone I nailed you and all your friends?” I asked. He owed me that much.
He shook his head, the darkness giving way as a small beam of light seeped from the crack in the door. How menacing he suddenly appeared, the expression I’d wanted to see haunted…and oh, so haunting. “That’s not her style. She’s very up-front in her dealings. When she dislikes someone, she doesn’t go behind their back. She gets in their face.”
Unconvinced, I splayed my arms. “Who else would tell everyone I slept with you and all your friends in the same night? Who else would know I was
I could hear him grating his teeth. “If I thought, even for a second, that Mackenzie was responsible, believe me, I’d have her in here and on her knees begging for your forgiveness. Just trust me on this. She’s not as bad as you think.”
“Do you still like her?” I asked before I could stop myself.
“Not the way you mean.” No hesitation from him, at least. “When she moved in with me and my dad, I broke things off.”
My mind snagged on two things. The first squeaked out unbidden. “You’re shacked up with your ex-girlfriend?” The second I refused to voice. If he’d broken things off with Mackenzie only because she’d moved into his home, he could still have feelings for her—could have been using me.
“Again, not the way you’re implying. We don’t share a room or anything like that. I haven’t slept with her since…”
“Since?” I prompted.
He massaged the back of his neck. “Since a few weeks before school started. And that is not to be repeated. I don’t talk about this stuff with
Enough!
Not because he’d stopped caring for her. I might barf.
Just before my seventh-grade year, and only a few weeks after our chat about virginity, my mom had again sat me down and said,
A shrug of those wide shoulders. “Her dad and stepmom were tired of dealing with her and kicked her out.”
Mackenzie, unwanted by the people who were supposed to care for her most. I so did not want to feel sorry for her, especially now that I knew she was living with Cole, but fine, whatever. I softened just a little.
“So. Yeah. This is it for us,” he said. “We’re not going to get to know each other better. We’re not going to hang out, and I’m not going to train you.”
I barely bit back my cry of denial…of pain. I’d lost so much already that I couldn’t bear the thought of losing him, too. No wonder I’d pushed him so hard, abandoning my pride.
“Why did you tell me all of this if you were going to kick me out of your life?” I shouted.
“I don’t know,” he growled. “All I do know is that this is for your own good. One day, you might even thank me.”
I’d give this one more shot. Just one. “What about the visions?”
I flinched, his words echoing hollowly through my mind, at last breaking me. No, he wasn’t going to change his mind. And now, I didn’t want him to. He was done with me, and I was done with him. I’d tried, at least. He couldn’t say the same.
“I’m sorry,” he said. “I shouldn’t have—”
“No. You should have. But I won’t thank you later. I’ll thank you now.” He might have broken me down, but I would never let him know it. I rallied my wits. I was stronger than this. “You were right. We’re no good for each other. See you around, Cole.”
The hinges groaned as I opened the door. Without a backward glance, I strode away from him. Though my vision was blurring, I could see that kids were milling around the kitchen, still drinking beer.
Someone grabbed my arm from behind, stopping me. “Do you have a ride?”
Cole had followed me out.
“Yes,” I said, sounding as far away as I felt. Well, I
I stayed where I was. I’d finally found a purpose for my life, a way to deal with my loss, and he wanted to take that away from me.
Having dealt with my father in all the stages of his alcoholism, I knew how to handle her—with force. I pried the bottles from her kung fu grip and waved my fingers. “Keys.”
“Why?”
“I’m driving you home.” I kept the fact that I’d had only a few lessons and hadn’t yet gotten my license to myself.
“Oh, all right. He always does that, you know,” she grumbled as she dug in a hidden pocket of her dress. “Jumps to obey Cole’s every command. Go, Cole says, and he goes. You need to fix that. I mean, I was hoping you’d distract Mr. Authority, keep him busy so that Frosty could crawl after me properly.”
“I think Cole just dumped me,” I grumbled back. I didn’t think; I knew. At least the hurt was fading. I was even numbing out. “Besides, we weren’t really dating.”
“What! He dumped you? Justin must have beat him senseless.” She held out a glittery key chain in the shape of a cat. “There’s no other reason he’d do something so stupid. You’re the best thing that’s ever happened to him!”
“Thank you for the vote of confidence, but he just wasn’t into me enough.” I took the key and helped her up. She swayed, so I wound my arm around her and ushered her toward the door. No one tried to proposition me. Had they, I might have shoved their noses into their brains.
“Let’s get married, me and you, and have a thousand babies together,” Kat said. “That’ll show ’em!”
“What a fantastic idea. Let’s talk about it in the morning.”
Outside, cool night air stroked my arms and face. Clouds had appeared en masse, obscuring the moon—I jerked to a halt. There was my rabbit. Bigger than before, even brighter, holding something small and round in its hands.
“What’s wrong?” Kat asked. “Is your car phobia acting up again?”
“Something like that.”
“You’ll do fine. My car likes to steer itself, hence the reason for my crashes. But seriously, you won’t have any trouble.”
“We should—” I saw a flash of movement behind the far tree…saw the train of a dirty wedding gown…smelled the rot.
I glanced at the rabbit. The round thing in its hands now had hands of its own—clock hands, tick, tick, ticking away. It had come to warn me, I realized. Not about a car wreck, but about the zombies. The time had come; they
someone,
“But why?”
“Don’t ask questions. Please,” I said. “Just trust me.”
Grumbling under her breath, she obeyed, tripping back through the front door to hopefully guard it. As I stared at the shadows around the trees—dancing now, multiplying—I dug my phone out of my pocket and dialed Cole.
No answer. I was dumped to his voice mail. Avoiding me? Whatever. I left a message. “I think the zombies are at Reeve’s.” As I spoke, I used my free hand to reach for the blade in my purse.
A body lumbered into a thin ray of moonlight—followed by another and another. I gulped, fear spiking through me. “Scratch that,” I added, then did a double take when I spied my little sister flickering into view beside one of the zombies. She was pale, still in her pink tutu and wringing her hands together. “They
For better or worse, I’d take it.
12
Off with Her Head!
The first set of problems popped up rather quickly. One, I had no idea how to shove my spirit out of my body. The journal had mentioned “faith” as the cause of the separation, yes, but how was I supposed to develop faith? Or was I supposed to yield to the power inside me—power I couldn’t feel?
Two, I had no idea what would follow if I succeeded but Kat failed, and someone came outside and tried to talk to my unresponsive body. And let’s not forget that Kat could succeed, I could fail, and someone could walk out the unguarded back door just in time to die.
At least the solution to both points was the same: I had to draw the zombies as far away from the house as possible.
A live wire of raw nerve endings, I drew on a growing well of courage and leaped into action, clutching my blade as I sprinted toward my enemy. “Lord,” I prayed. “Give me strength, speed and maybe one of those hazmat suits.”
Just before I reached the first two zombies—and oh, sweet heaven, there were eight more just behind the line of trees that separated the Ankhs’ property from the forest—I shouted, “Dinner’s ready! Come and get me!” and veered left.
A chorus of grunts and growls erupted, each zombie veering with me, following as I’d hoped. As I ran, I glanced over my shoulder—then had to glance again. Bridezilla had honed in on me, moving faster and faster with every step. Her Groom of Doom wouldn’t be too far behind her. He never was.
I shifted my scope—and boom, there he was. Buy one, get one free. Though one of his ankles was twisted at an odd angle, he had a surprisingly swift gait, practically gliding over the ground.
Either whatever damage was done to the body before death followed into the spirit or Cole and friends had fought him before and hurt him, but he’d gotten away before the death-glow.
If they’d failed to defeat him, what chance did I, the novice, have of success?