I got up, pulled my desk chair over toward the bed, and sat on it backward, leaning my arms on the wood. Memories from last night started to surface. People. In this house. No, not people. Ghosts. I’d seen them. Not for long, but still. No séance. No stupid Halloween special effects. I had to make Dec understand the significance of what had happened. The potential. If I took a full dose…if I had someone to administer the second shot…
I licked my lips. “Dec, calm down. I know how to do this. I’ll need your help. Both of yours, actually. And a day. Just give me a day. But I’m sure I can do it.”
I stood, drew up my shoulders, and stepped over to Dec. So much was riding on this one conversation, I saw that now. Dec knew it too because he wasn’t asking questions. Instead, he was spring-loaded. We were so close.
I knew everything in the world was riding on my next words, so I chose them carefully and spoke them softly for Dec alone. “Your dad loved you. He did this for a reason. Tristan is here for a reason. Annie is here for a reason. You can’t just turn your back on them. You said you trusted me, so stop freaking out and let me help you.”
There was a war playing out in Dec’s eyes. What he wanted versus what he thought was right. I watched him, my arms tingling with hope.
Dec bit his lip and, after a while, said, “I need to know what Dad was talking about.” His voice was quiet, painful in a way that made my heart ache.
“I know,” I said. He had to understand I’d never put him at risk. This was all me.
“Fine,” he said. And then again, “Fine. We’ll try. Once. But we stop when I say to stop. You aren’t turning yourself into some sort of psychic vegetable for me.”
I’d done it. It was happening. And when it was over, somehow, someway, we’d let the Guild find out and my future would be clear.
Chapter 25
Russ
“Okay, so think back to what you remember from school,” I told Dec the next day. “Ghosts are the leftover bits of a person. They leave a trail. They’re usually focused on one thing: revenge, someone they loved, or guilt.”
Dec drummed his fingers on his pants. I couldn’t imagine what he’d told Annie about all of this. “Like Dad.”
I nodded, determined to stay calm even though I was buzzing with unspent anticipation. “Usually that obsession is so strong, I can almost see it.”
“But you don’t see it?” Annie asked.
“No, where Tristan is concerned, I don’t see anything.” I grabbed my backpack and settled in on the floor. “That’s why I think the… We failed yesterday.” It wasn’t as if I was worried the Guild was bugging our houses, but where ghosts were involved, you couldn’t be too careful.
I avoided Dec’s wide eyes as I pulled out the black pack and then two prefilled syringes with lengthy needles. “Here’s the plan.” I peeled off my coat and pushed up my sleeve. Sparks of electricity raced through me, too eager for the shot. “I’m going to start with one of these.” I pointed to the first syringe, which was filled with murky liquid. “Hopefully, I can find Tristan and convince him to show up and talk to you like he normally does. But I won’t have a lot of time. Give it seven minutes or so, and then, one of you is going to have to stab me with this.” I pointed to the other syringe.
Dec reached out and picked up the first syringe, shaking it. The fluid was greenish-white and thick, like it wasn’t sure it wanted to be liquid and not a solid. “What the hell is in that?”
There would have been no harm in telling him. It was all herbal, after all. But plants had been used for medicinal purposes for centuries, and this wasn’t the time for a history lesson. I took the needle back. “Old family recipe.”
Dec went green. “Look, this isn’t…” He paused. “The way.”
I took the cap off the thin long needle. The longer Dec fixated on what I was about to do, the more freaked out he was going to get. I needed to get on with it. “Relax. I’m on top of this. My grandmother wrote about it in her book.”
Dec gasped. “Well, forgive me if that doesn’t exactly make me more comfortable with you becoming some sort of drug addict.”
Next to him, Annie reached out and put a hand on Dec’s back. Something about the two of them together was both comforting and unsettling. I swallowed down a complicated type of jealousy that was as thick as the serum. Then I busied myself, prepping the other syringe. “Remember, seven minutes.”
Dec lifted his hand for the syringe and froze. I knew this would be hard for him, but couldn’t figure out how to make it any easier. He was just going to have to trust me.
“I’ll do it,” Annie said and took it from me. “Dmitry was on a ton of pain meds. I used to give him shots all the time.”
“Wait,” Dec said. He looked so scared, it made my head ache. “What happens if we don’t give you the other shot after seven minutes?”
I downplayed the risk. “If you do it too soon, this probably won’t work. And if you do it too late, it probably won’t work in a different way.”
I nodded at Annie. She nodded back. I only caught a glimpse of Dec’s pale face before I said, “Well, there you go,” and jammed the needle into my arm.
* * *
I jolted. Not awake, but something else.
I was still in Dec’s room, only I wasn’t. Dec and Annie were faded, moving slightly out of time as they hovered over my body, the needle still sticking out of my arm. It was the strangest thing I’d ever seen. I couldn’t let myself get distracted by this either; If I understood my grandmother’s notes, I only had seven minutes.
I mentally reached out and felt for the energy of the room. As I did, a small child skipped through the wall. An older woman rocked in a chair in the corner. A couple stared into each other’s eyes and talked, their voices quiet, far away. I blinked. Then blinked again.
A boy my age sat in the window seat, worrying at the end of his velvet cuff with one hand. The other held an impossibly thin cigarette that gave off the scent of citrus.
“Hey,” I said quietly.
The boy’s eyes opened wide. They were the green of the twinkling fairy lights my mother used to hang on our fire escape in the summer. There was something almost bioluminescent about them. Dec had never mentioned how otherworldly he appeared. “Tristan, right?”
He nodded.
I wanted to race over and fire questions at him, but I knew that wouldn’t work, so I approached slowly and gestured for Tristan to move over on the bench.
“Dec is looking for you,” I said, sitting down.