Elegy

  DEDICATION

  To Melissa Peters Allgood, who is both beautiful and good.

  And to make sure that 2013 will be so much better than 2012.

  CONTENTS

  Dedication

  Prologue

  Chapter One

  Chapter Two

  Chapter Three

  Chapter Four

  Chapter Five

  Chapter Six

  Chapter Seven

  Chapter Eight

  Chapter Nine

  Chapter Ten

  Chapter Eleven

  Chapter Twelve

  Chapter Thirteen

  Chapter Fourteen

  Chapter Fifteen

  Chapter Sixteen

  Chapter Seventeen

  Chapter Eighteen

  Chapter Nineteen

  Chapter Twenty

  Chapter Twenty-One

  Chapter Twenty-Two

  Chapter Twenty-Three

  Chapter Twenty-Four

  Chapter Twenty-Five

  Chapter Twenty-Six

  Chapter Twenty-Seven

  Chapter Twenty-Eight

  Chapter Twenty-Nine

  Chapter Thirty

  Chapter Thirty-One

  Chapter Thirty-Two

  Chapter Thirty-Three

  Chapter Thirty-Four

  Chapter Thirty-Five

  Epilogue

  Acknowledgments

  About the Author

  Back Ad

  Credits

  Copyright

  About the Publisher

  PROLOGUE

  Once again, I’m staring at my own death.

  My heart is pounding. My breath is coming in short spurts. And I can’t stop digging my fingernails into the heels of my palms, just so I can feel the little crescents of pain they create. Of course, those tiny bursts of pain can hardly match the throbbing in my dislocated shoulder. Not that any of that will matter in a few minutes, when I’m truly dead.

  Dead. I can hardly comprehend the word, since it’s held so many definitions for me. After all, I’ve done this before: readied myself for the final moment. Sometimes it’s happened, and sometimes I’ve defied it. But tonight, I won’t defy it. Tonight, I’ll die.

  Tonight, I want to.

  For the first time in my strange existence, I want death. I need it, in order to do what has to be done.

  Not to say that I’m not afraid; I am. Terrified, actually. But that doesn’t stop me from staring down the barrel of the gun pointed directly at me. I can’t figure out why it hasn’t fired yet. Then I notice how badly the gun is shaking. If it fires right now, I doubt the bullet will even graze my shoulder. Which obviously won’t be good enough.

  Slowly, my eyes move from the gun to the person holding it.

  “You okay?” I ask her.

  She doesn’t respond for a moment. Then, with a bitter laugh, she asks, “Are you kidding me, Amelia?”

  I just smile.

  Behind her, I can hear him shouting. Screaming, actually. I know that his friends are holding him back, gripping tightly to his arms as he struggles to break free and stop us. But my eyelids are so heavy, my tears so thick, I can’t actually see him.

  It’s probably a good thing I won’t be able to look into his eyes when it happens.

  I turn my attention back to the gun. Not to the person holding it, this time—just to the gun itself.

  “Do it,” I say, my voice quiet but urgent. “Please.”

  She doesn’t reply, but I know she’s heard me. With a weird instinct, she lowers the gun until it points directly at my heart. For a split second, I think she’s chickened out.

  Then I see a tiny spark of light, and my entire world rips into pain.

  Chapter

  ONE

  TWO WEEKS EARLIER

  Death, demons, deranged Seers—nothing I’d previously experienced terrified me as much as what I was about to do.

  If I can even gather up enough courage to actually do this.

  Steeling myself, I balled my right hand into a fist and lifted it. For a few seconds, I kept my fist suspended, letting it hover less than an inch away from my target. Then, with a frustrated groan, I dropped my hand back to my side.

  My task was easy enough: all I had to do was make a fist, rap my knuckles against wood, and repeat if necessary. So why couldn’t I do it?

  Why couldn’t I bring myself to do something as simple as knock on an ordinary front door?

  I started pacing again, my boot heels thunking across the floorboards of the porch. The sound of them spooked me a little. Even after spending a few months as one of the Risen—actually, the only Risen ghost left in this world, as far as I could tell—I still hadn’t quite made peace with the echo of my own footsteps.

  I cast a glance over my shoulder, toward the road. About fifty feet back along the curb, Joshua Mayhew leaned against the hood of his truck. He caught me staring and gave me an encouraging smile. I tried to return it, without much success.

  This little project wasn’t originally his idea—it was mine. But once Joshua and I had discussed the possibility, he’d latched on to it until I finally ended up here, pacing like a crazy person.

  As usual, Joshua thought this would end well. But I didn’t. I just couldn’t imagine a scenario in which the woman on whose door I was about to knock would react positively when she saw me.

  And her reaction did matter, more than almost anything in the world. Still, the reason I stood on this porch today—the real reason—wasn’t because she needed to see me; it was because I needed to see her.

  I flashed Joshua another tight smile and turned back to the door. I could do this. I could do this. I lifted my hand again, ready to knock for real this time.

  But I never got the chance.

  Before my knuckles could make contact with the door, it swung inward. Open.

  The first time Joshua and I visited this place, the door had swung open on its own. But this time, someone had pulled it open. Probably because she’d finally decided to do something about the person thunking around uninvited on her front porch.

  Her hand held the edge of the door, fingers gripped against the splintery, paint-peeling wood. On her ring finger, I could just make out the glint of a simple wedding band.

  She still wears it.

  Before I had time to process that thought, before I even had time to see her face, I felt a familiar current pass over my skin. It happened quickly—started and stopped in less than two seconds—but I immediately knew what it meant. I’d made myself invisible, intentionally vanished from the view of anyone living, including Joshua. Including the woman standing in front of me.

  It was a cowardly move on my part: I’d finally worked up the nerve to knock, and now she couldn’t even see me.

  She frowned, squinting into the shadows of the porch and out at the daylight beyond it. Seeing the lines on her face, the streak of gray at her temples, I sucked in a tight breath and released it in one foolish word.

  “Mom?”

  The woman at the door immediately jerked back like she’d been slapped. Her eyes widened, but she continued to stare out at the porch without actually seeing me.

  She’d heard me, though.

  For a while, we both stood motionless: my mother with her fingers clawed into the door; me with my fake heartbeat hammering in my chest. Although I knew it wasn’t possible, it seemed as though her brown eyes were boring into mine. Begging me to tell her why she’d just heard the voice of her long-dead daughter.

  I gulped once, as quietly as possible, and leaned forward a fraction of an inch. As if in response, my mother leaned backward.

  I thought she was trying to escape something that she couldn’t—didn’t want to—understand. But instead, another face appeared next to hers in the doorway,
probably summoned by my mother’s strange silence.

  This new face belonged to a woman, much younger than my mother but somewhat older than me. When she peered out the doorway, the corners of her blue eyes wrinkled faintly. I froze in place, but her gaze moved smoothly across the porch, not even hesitating on the spot where I stood. As though I weren’t even there.

  The woman took a step forward—maybe for a closer look at the empty porch—and I got a better view of her. She was striking, with her high cheekbones and impeccable platinum-blond ponytail. Pretty and polished, like a piece of fine glass.

  I knew I’d never seen her—not as a visitor to the Mayhews’ house or as a teacher at Wilburton High; not even as someone I’d passed on the streets of New Orleans this past winter. But something about this woman was strangely familiar.

  Before I had a chance to place her, she straightened the hem of her tailored blazer and turned to my mother with a worried frown.

  “Liz? Everything okay?”

  My mother’s frown deepened, just for a moment, before she met her guest’s gaze. “Everything’s fine,” she said, giving the blond woman a faint smile. “I thought I heard something out here. I guess not.”

  The blonde returned the smile, but it wavered on the edges, as though she thought her host might be a little unstable. It wasn’t a mean look, necessarily—just a cautious one.

  “The coffee, Liz,” she prompted gently. “It’s getting cold.”

  My mother nodded, looking embarrassed. “Of course. Sorry.”

  She hadn’t removed her hand from the edge of the door, and now she began to push it shut as she and the blond woman stepped back into the house. In the seconds before the door closed completely, I caught a final glimpse of the younger woman’s face. For just a second her blue eyes seemed to lock on to mine, and I felt that strange, dizzying sense of familiarity again.

  The feeling only intensified when I heard the last bit of my mother’s voice before the door shut.

  “Sorry again, Serena. Must have been the wind.”

  Chapter

  TWO

  Serena Taylor, the girl who murdered you, was having coffee with your mom?”

  Joshua sounded like he still didn’t quite be-lieve me.

  I lifted one shoulder and let it drop carelessly. That was the biggest shrug I could make, given the circumstances.

  “That’s not exactly accurate,” I mumbled. “At least, not completely accurate.”

  In my peripheral vision, I saw Joshua raise one skeptical eyebrow. Instead of elaborating, I flopped backward into the pile of lush pillows behind us.

  At the moment, Joshua and I were in his parents’ gazebo. His mother, Rebecca, had recently redesigned its interior, transforming the space into something hidden and exotic. The thick curtains that enclosed its outer walls were now masked on the inside by yards of white gauzy drapes. Glittering, star-shaped lanterns hung from the ceiling, and flowering plants filled every inch not occupied by the enormous, pillow-covered daybed.

  But despite the gorgeous setting, Joshua and I were tensed up on the daybed, not touching.

  Not that that’s anything new, I reminded myself. Not since New Orleans, where I lost my ability to touch the living.

  After what felt like an appropriately weighted pause, I propped myself up on my elbows and turned to Joshua.

  “To be fair to Serena,” I said, “she didn’t mean to murder me. She was under the influence of Eli and his wraiths.”

  When Joshua started to roll his eyes, I added, “Just like your friends when they tried to kill your little sister.”

  A dark look passed over his face, and I could read it perfectly. Joshua was remembering the night his sister, Jillian, nearly died, at the hands of his own friends and a malevolent ghost named Eli Rowland. Joshua shook his head, and the dark look shook away too, replaced by the thoughtful frown he’d been wearing since we left my mother’s house.

  “I don’t know, Amelia. After what happened to you—after the part Serena played in your death—why would she still hang around your mom? I mean, shouldn’t she be . . . ?”

  As he searched for the right phrase, I snorted softly. “What you mean, Joshua, is shouldn’t she be curled up in a corner somewhere, racked with guilt for what happened over a decade ago? Keeping in mind that she probably doesn’t even remember what happened?”

  He gave me that half grin, the one that made me ache to touch his lips, just once. “Exactly.” He shifted into the pillows next to me, keeping between us the few inches that had become a permanent fixture since New Orleans—inches that represented what we could no longer do: touch.

  “Besides,” Joshua went on, “how do you even know this woman is your Serena Taylor? Just because she’s blond and named Serena—”

  “And about the right age for someone born in the eighties,” I interrupted. “And she was having coffee with my mom, in one of the smallest towns on earth.”

  Joshua considered this, frowning again. But when his eyebrows unknitted and his mouth softened, I could see I’d won the argument.

  “Fair enough,” he conceded. “Maybe she’s the Serena Taylor. But . . . what does that even mean for us?”

  “Nothing, actually.”

  I sighed, stretching my legs across the daybed until my feet swung over the edge. “At least, it means nothing right now. It’s not like I’m going to call Serena and invite her to have coffee with me next. And anyway . . . I think we should scrap the whole Mom idea. For the time being.”

  When Joshua began to protest, I held up my hand, almost but not quite touching his lips.

  “Don’t even start,” I warned. “If I try to meet my mom again—and that’s a big if—then it will be on my terms. Surprising her by showing up unexpectedly on her front porch just isn’t going to work for me.”

  After a long pause, most of which Joshua spent glancing between my fingertips and my mouth, he nodded.

  “If that’s what you want, Amelia. I promise I won’t push the issue again.”

  I widened my eyes in mock surprise. “Joshua Mayhew not insisting that I do something risky yet supposedly rewarding? What is this world coming to?”

  “Hey, I’m a guy who proudly learns his lesson. You know, after about a million screw-ups.” He laughed, and then leaned forward with a suddenly wicked grin. “Besides, that’s my sister’s job now.”

  I shrieked, jerking fully upright on the bed. “Oh, holy crap, I completely forgot. That thing is tonight, isn’t it?”

  Joshua laughed again, but this time he sounded sinister, like the villain from a black-and-white movie.

  “You’re not afraid, are you?” he asked in his best Bela Lugosi voice.

  “Wouldn’t you be?”

  “Of a roomful of girls watching chick flicks while they paint each other’s nails and gossip?”

  I chuckled and rolled my eyes. “You have a seriously skewed view of girly sleepovers. You know that, right?”

  His smile softened as he sat up beside me. “Probably. But it doesn’t matter—I prefer our version of the sleepover anyway.”

  He leaned in, erasing the inches between us until we were nearly touching. Sitting this close, I could feel the warmth rising from his skin. And, of course, I felt the blush rising on my own cheeks.

  “Me, too,” I whispered, trying to keep my cool although I suddenly felt like I might ignite. Funny how he never stopped having this effect on me.

  But even with the heat flooding me, I had a fleeting moment when I missed our old sleepovers. The kind where I spent every night in his bed, placing my hand on him whenever I wanted, kissing him whenever I felt the urge. But things were so different for me as a Risen ghost. So different for us.

  In this new version of our relationship, I pretended to be Jillian’s “old” friend and Joshua’s “new” girlfriend—an ironic inversion of reality. For the benefit of his parents, I also pretended to leave his house every night. Later, I returned in my invisible state to curl up beside Joshua in bed, as cl
ose as I could without actually touching him. Because now, I could feel the wrinkles in the sheets beneath us but not the texture of Joshua’s skin.

  Risen ghosts regained the senses that death had taken from them. Taste, smell, even touch. But there was one tiny problem: the Risen could touch anything they wanted, except the living. It was the most ironic, double-edged gift I’d ever received.

  Not that Joshua and I hadn’t tried—frequently—to touch. During our first week back in Oklahoma, we took so many different approaches: slow and careful; quick and furious; even the unexpected surprise touch. But none of it worked. When I placed my hand against his, it always felt like I simply clutched the air; it was the same for Joshua. Worse, whenever we came too close, it looked as though we passed through each other—like I was made of air myself.

  Nothing made me feel more like a ghost.

  Still, so many things about my new existence were amazing. The smell of Rebecca’s garden after a hard rain; the taste of Jeremiah Mayhew’s chocolate chess pie; the slick plastic coating on the benches outside Wilburton High. Each sensation felt fresh and new. So exhilarating, they almost made up for everything else.

  Almost.

  I shook my head, willing my cheeks to shift from whatever color they were now to something less neon pink. When I felt a little more in control, I met Joshua’s eyes again and—a little reluctantly—returned to the subject of my upcoming torture.

  “You know, I still can’t figure out why Jillian insists I go to this thing tonight.”

  “Because you and Jill are now BFF?” he offered. When I glared at him, he grinned and went on. “Honestly, I think Jill just wants to make up for how she acted before New Orleans. And in New Orleans. And pretty much how she acts in general. Plus, I think she’s trying to make you some more . . . friends.”

  He dragged the last word out awkwardly, grimacing. I couldn’t help but copy his expression. The word “friend” made both of us uncomfortable. Not because of the ones I hadn’t made yet, but because of the one I’d made and then lost.

  Gabrielle Callioux.

  The girl who changed me into what I was now; the girl who, in only a few days, had become my closest friend; the girl I’d watched disappear into hell.