Late afternoon found Piotr hesitating in the bushes outside the Dew Drop Diner. The living heat within was immense, baking through the brick as the dinner rush built. Inside, waitresses twisted through the crowd with beautiful confidence, serving coffee and ringing up orders with an efficiency he envied. The bustle of life was intoxicating…but painful.
Still, there was nothing to do but get the job done. This was the last place Dunn had been seen. Dora, Specs, Tubs, he thought to himself, drawing courage from the thought of them taken like this, from a place they felt safe and comfortable. He had to find a clue, any clue, to help Dunn, and he had to do it now! There was no room for fear here.
Taking a deep breath, Piotr centered his will and stepped through the wall. When he entered the diner, Piotr was expecting a mess—Walkers in feed were like rabid wolves; if Dunn had been devoured, the walls would be dripping with his essence—but everything was clean.
“What the—” he wondered aloud and dropped to his knees. “What happened here?”
Since her thoughts had been so recently centered on Piotr, Wendy was certain Piotr’s appearance was her imagination. She rubbed her eyes brusquely, sure he would vanish, but he was real. Or as real as a ghost could be, anyway. Her fingers itched to open her backpack, dive into the contents, and pull out her binder to compare her sketch from last night to the slim ghost now crawling across the restaurant, his hand gripping a table for balance.
Wendy’s memories of him didn’t do Piotr justice. She’d thought that the fall of hair, the dark eyes, even the scar that twisted from temple to neck half-hidden by his hair had been branded into her memory, but those pale images came up short of what he really was. Had any spirit she’d ever seen glowed so bright, so fiercely? Barely transparent, Piotr looked almost real, crouched on the linoleum. He looked alive.
Piotr, she said to herself. Piotr.
He was searching for something. Every few feet he leaned forward, peered underneath the booths, and then continued on; his counter-clockwise circuit of the diner would bring Piotr to Wendy’s booth within moments. Eddie would understand if she did her thing, of course, but Jon wouldn’t and neither would the other customers. The diner was packed, so there was no way to discreetly step into the Never to talk to Piotr face to face on his own turf.
Torn, Wendy hesitated, not sure what to do.
While the heat of living bodies was immense, Piotr found it bearable if he kept his mind clear and concentrated on the task at hand. Being dead was all about willpower; you had to have the will to keep yourself coherent. Otherwise, eventually, you’d fade away until you became a Shade, a memory of a soul. It was a terrible, horrible way to go—deaf and dumb to everything, even the Never, drawn back to the place of your death and trapped there until you were a wisp, eventually extinguished.
Dunn wouldn’t have become a Shade, Piotr reminded himself as he peered under a table. He had died too young, too strong. The Lost had too much willpower, too much energy, too much life left in them when they died. Dying a brutal death turned the Lost into batteries, going on and on and on without end, rudderless in a world that quickly forgot their short time on it. It made them a target for Walkers.
Cannibalism. Eating a young soul. It was the only way for an adult ghost to permanently stave off the centuries and the constant need to be vigilant and alert, to will themselves to remain whole. To continue to exist. Of course, there was a price: every Lost destroyed ate at the ties a soul kept to the Never until the cord was gone, until the salvation of the Light was impossible.
Eventually the Walkers became monsters, shadows creeping at the edge of the abyss, silver cords obliterated; mere shells of their former selves. Some of the Walkers deemed their damnation a fair trade for the certainty of existence. The Light was a terrifying mystery. The Never was just a darker sort of life.
For Piotr, there’d never been a question of what to do. The choice had always been simple. Seek out the Lost. Keep them safe. Repeat.
Protecting the Lost gave him the will to keep going on, as it did for all the other Riders. Over the years Piotr had lost a few of the Lost—some to the hunger of the Walkers and a couple who preferred other Riders like Elle or James—but most of his Lost eventually found peace on their own.
It took time, forgetting your own death and moving on, but when the Light came, Piotr was always there to help his Lost enter. It could take decades but, over time, the Light almost always came for the Lost Piotr protected. Only Dora had been with him so long he’d forgotten when he’d picked her up. He knew that, given enough time and attention, she too would one day enter the Light.
Secretly Piotr hoped that this was what had happened to Dunn.
It wasn’t that Piotr didn’t trust Lily’s word—she was intelligent and her instincts rarely led her astray—but if he could find proof that Dunn had simply stepped into the Light, that the Walkers hadn’t dared a restaurant full of living, searing human souls, then Piotr would rest easier.
It was a best-case scenario, but he was desperate for good news.
Now, kneeling on the floor of a diner stuffed with living people, their burning hot legs scissoring through him, clipping his hip, his thigh, his shoulder, Piotr moved as quickly as he could among waitresses who poured coffee, chatted, and made change. On hands and knees he crawled, seeking the charred circle that would indicate the presence of the corridor of Light, searching for proof that something might still be going their way.
So engrossed in his task, Piotr didn’t pay attention to the living in the booths. Normally the living felt a chill when the dead were near, a pocket of cold air most noticed only as they were passing through. Most of the dead had the good sense to be still when the living were near—humans tended to pass quickly by, repulsed by the icy cold—so there was less chance of injury for the dead.
Searching closely for clues, Piotr left a wake of shivering humans behind him. Several called for their waitresses, complaining about the vents. More reached for jackets or sweaters, or cuddled against their booth-mates, seeking body warmth.
It wasn’t until he was resting his hand on the table on the window side of the room that he noticed the girl. Unlike the others, no gooseflesh popped up on her skin at his proximity; she did not shiver or pull away. Piotr would have dismissed this—perhaps she was used to cold—except for the rigid way she held her body, stiff and still but breathing elevated, rapid. He could feel her heat thrumming, more intense than the others, a warmth like banked coals in a pocket nimbus of heat.
Piotr paused, looking her expression over closely. The girl tensed and her eyelids swept down, the thick concealing lashes feathered across her cheekbones, but underneath Piotr could spot the gleam of her eyes. Testing a theory, Piotr shifted his weight and her gaze, nearly concealed by her eyelashes but not entirely, followed his movement. Piotr frowned, shifted again, and again her eyes tracked him.
“You can see me,” he said, wonder drying the saliva in his mouth, leaving his tongue thick and furry with excitement. A tingle began in his gut; working outward and leaving the edges of his body alight with a fierce pins-and-needles sensation. “You can see me.”
The accusation was quiet, no more than a whisper, but the girl’s breath hitched and she flushed; licking her lips, she turned away and glanced around the restaurant as if searching for a savior. There was no one.
“I have to get up. Excuse me,” she told her two boothmates and rose, brushing by Piotr but not touching him, moving swiftly for the door. Piotr followed, heart hammering in his chest, and melted through the wall in time to spot her turning the corner and hurrying through the parking lot, chin tucked to chest and looking neither right nor left.
The girl was athletic, he noticed, lithe and well-muscled but small in stature, padded in all the right places. Her hair, brilliantly red at the roots and faded black at the tips, had been allowed to grow wild, tumbling down her back in a riot of curls. The clothing she wore wasn’t immodest exactly, Elle often wore much less, but the cut of it and the way it clung left little to the imagination, granting the girl a fluid mobility Elle would certainly admire. Oddly enough, she was pierced and tattooed, intricate tribal designs worked around her wrists and collarbone in patterns that hurt Piotr’s eyes when he looked at them too long.
Only her face, rounded like a child’s, with large brown eyes and full lips, looked innocent. The rest of her whispered danger. But a living girl had seen him, had recognized him for what he was, and that was a siren call Piotr was unwilling to resist.
The girl approached a blue car, some new model Piotr didn’t recognize, and dug through her pockets. Then, as if it were the most natural thing in the world, she opened a cell phone and pressed it to her ear.
“Hello?” she said aloud, glancing left and right at the empty parking lot. She settled on the back of the car, her weight barely dipping the trunk down. “Yes,” she said, tilting her head towards the main road, studiously not looking at Piotr. “I can see you.”
Confused, Piotr moved to stand in front of her so she would not be able to look away. “Are you insane? What are you doing?”
“Well,” she said, meeting his eyes at last but still pressing the phone to her ear, “I’ve found that I look less crazy this way. You know, talking to myself.”
“I see,” he said, and he really did. He’d heard of people like her, the soothsayers and fortune tellers who actually had a touch of the Sight in their blood, Seers that a soul could turn to for aid if they were willing to pay a price. In years past, many of those women had been burned as witches. Some, at their death, came to live in the Never, promising rich rewards to the unwary and unwise. This Seer was young, though, and soft around the eyes. Perhaps this was all new to her, or perhaps it had never occurred to her to charge for her care. Most Seers he’d known wouldn’t even talk to a spirit unless there was something in it for them; she seemed to be an exception.
“I am Piotr,” he began, unsure what else to say. He tingled from head to toe now, heart hammering against his ribs, waves of jumbled emotion rocking him with unbelievable force. He cleared his throat. “And you?”
“Wendy,” she replied shortly, meeting his gaze and giving him a long searching look. Piotr, unsure as to why she was staring at him so hard, broke the contact after a few moments. Wendy’s expression was painfully intense; he felt as if he’d failed some vital test. “It’s short for Winifred?”
When he looked back he realized that her lips had thinned into a straight, taut line. She wet them several times, as if tasting her next words. Long moments passed before she sighed, shook her head, and laughed brusquely.
“You don’t recognize me.” Wendy rubbed the side of her hand against her forehead, leaving a pink mark behind. “I guess I shouldn’t be so surprised. I’m just me, right? Just Wendy.”
Startled, Piotr stepped back, taking her in again, carefully this time. Wendy stared at him in turn, eyes tracing his face with something like wonder. He realized that she truly did know him in some way, though she was a mystery in return.
“Net, I’m sorry.” Nervous now, taken aback, he clasped his hands and rocked back and forth on his heels, a child taken to task for an unremembered crime. Elle’s taunts came back to him: that old memory of yours just ain’t what it used to be. Annoyed, Piotr shoved the mocking voice away. “Should I?”
“Curly,” she replied and laughed again. The bitterness was gone now and the warmth had returned to her smile. Wendy rolled her eyes. “You called me Curly.”
The nickname was familiar but it took Piotr several seconds of actively casting back, thinking hard, before the image of the girl came. Blood-spattered and smoke-dusted, she’d been a tiny thing, eyes dilated in shock from a terrible crash and skin greenish-pale as curdled cream. It had been a car wreck, one dead, and the song of the Light fading away in the distance when he’d rode on the scene.
“Da, now I remember you,” he said, marveling. “The highway…there was bad weather on your side…the living side, yes?” Without thought his hand stretched forward as if to touch her but he truncated the movement, embarrassed to show wonder at the reunion.
“Got it in one.” The girl, Curly—no, Wendy—kicked her chunky boots and tilted her head back, staring up at the late afternoon clouds as if willing them to drift down and envelop her, stealing her away. “I thought I was seeing things, but you said I wasn’t.” She straightened and drew one knee up to her chest, resting her chin upon it. “In case you didn’t remember.”
“Net, I remember,” he said again, at a loss for what to say, and uncomfortable.
Her smile was swift, bittersweet. “Yeah, you seem to, now.” There was a clicking noise, faint but precise, and Piotr realized that Wendy had a metal rod through her tongue that she tapped thoughtfully against her teeth. He stared at it, fascinated. Why would someone do that to themselves? It boggled the mind.
“So, Piotr,” she said at last, “what were you doing in there? Don’t the dead usually avoid the living? Or am I just an exception for you?” Her chuckle was light and sweet.
Piotr’s heart lurched and he felt like a fool, imagining what it would be like to get real, honest laughter out of this girl. Seers were by their very nature dour people. If time and contact with ghosts hadn’t soured her against the dead yet, it would. It always did.
Still, Piotr decided, there would be no harm in telling her. Wendy was, after all, able to see his kind and might, if fate was kind, have been a witness to whatever happened to Dunn.
“Looking for clues,” Piotr began, choosing his words carefully. He liked this girl and he didn’t want to upset her unduly, but the situation merited a need for a certain amount of detail.
In the end Piotr outlined the bare bones of the situation, leaving out the horror that was the Lightbringer and the nightmare that was his recent encounter with the White Lady, stating only the rumors that the White Lady was ultimately behind the unrest among the dead and the recent rash of kidnappings. He told her about Dunn. Wendy listened in attentive silence, nodding her head at the right moments and clicking the bar against her teeth at others.
“So what you’re telling me is that the Walkers,” she said the word far easier than Piotr had anticipated. It slipped easily between her lips, as if she had practice, “are kidnapping the souls of little kids all over town?”
“We call the children ‘the Lost,’ but da, this is correct. Before… before, the Walkers always devoured the Lost,” Piotr confirmed. “As soon as they got claws on them. But now…” he left the sentence unfinished.
“They’re acting weird, traveling in packs. Grabbing instead of chowing down.” Wendy switched the phone to her other ear. A car pulled into the space beside them and Wendy nodded to herself, muttering, “Uh huh, okay, I get it,” until the passengers had turned the corner to the diner’s entryway.
“Da! You understand, but… you’ve… had experiences with them?” Piotr knew he shouldn’t be surprised at this, but the dichotomy of the thin, shocked girl huddled by the highway and this young, powerful woman was still fresh and startling to him. He supposed he would have to adjust.
“I’ve met the Lost before. Not often, but every now and then. Once I even spotted a Walker, uh… feeding.” Wendy paled and she wrapped her free arm around her stomach, hunching over. “It was… it was horrible,” she said. Piotr ached for her but didn’t know how to comfort the living over the obliteration of the dead. “Nasty.”
“So you know. You have seen.”
“Well, yeah. I’ve been spotting Walkers wander all over for weeks, but I didn’t realize it was this big a deal. And you think they’re taking their marching orders from this White Lady chick? But why? Aren’t they the ultimate evil on your side of the line? They’ve clearly got you and yours on the run.”
“The White Lady can give them something no one else can,” Piotr admitted. “Flesh. Before now, the Walkers would look out only for themselves. Then the White Lady came. Somehow, with her touch, she can reverse their deathrot. It was a mark of their darkness, the rot. It showed us that they fed on the young. To so casually reverse the marks of such blasphemy… she’s zloj… evil.”
“Gee, ya think?” Wendy sighed, rubbed a knuckle against the bridge of her nose, and tilted her head back, scowling up at the endless expanse of sky. “Great. Just what I need right now. An army of undead cannibals on the warpath.”
Piotr searched for a tactful way to express his surprise at her reaction. “Why would this concern you? You are alive. The worries of the dead, surely they are nothing to you?”
“You’d be surprised,” she replied shortly. “The concerns of the dead are sort of a big thing to me right now.” Her expression softened. “In more ways than one, apparently. Count me in.”
“You wish to help me?” Piotr was flabbergasted. “But why?”
Rubbing her eyes with the back of her hand, Wendy shrugged, flushing. “Couple of reasons, I guess. One, I don’t care if they’re alive or dead, no one should be messing with kids. Secondly, you were the first ghost I ever laid eyes on, so I sort of feel like I owe you. You know, for keeping me company when I had no clue what was going on. And finally, well, I’ve got my own selfish reasons, okay? I scratch your back, and vice the versa. I help you out, maybe you’ll think about helping me with a problem I’ve got going on.”
“It is a deal,” Piotr said, marveling at his luck. A Seer could go places a regular spirit like himself could not; she was living, after all. “What aid may I offer, Wendy? How can I help?”
“You want to know now?”
“It is as good a time as any, da? Is it a question? Perhaps I have the answer already.”
“I…” Wendy swallowed thickly. “I was wondering if you’d heard about a ghost wandering around town.”
Piotr raised an eyebrow and dared a smile. “I see many ghosts. It is my luck.”
“No, I mean…a specific ghost.” Wendy chewed her lower lip and suddenly brightened. “Wait! I have a picture, here.” She pulled the phone away from her face and pressed a few buttons in rapid succession. Piotr peered over her shoulder as she pulled up a picture of a slim red-haired woman with dark, kind eyes and a tired smile. Like Wendy, she sported a ring of intricate tattoos around her collarbone.
“This woman, she looks something like you,” Piotr said. “A sister?”
“My mother.”
“Ah,” Piotr sighed. “She has recently died and you wish to know if she’s still in the Never, da? Or if she’s moved on into the Light?”
Wendy gaped. “You can find out if a spirit’s gone into the Light? Seriously?”
He laughed. “Of course! You think the Light leaves no mark in our world? If you find a place where the Light has been, it is special, sacred space until the marks of the Light fade. Some even worship there, hoping the Light will return.”
“Really? Why?”
“To find your Light is a great blessing in the Never.” Piotr laid a hand against his heart. “It is an end to pain and suffering. Many think it is to go home again. For one at the end of their rope, essence worn thin…anything is better than fading away, da? And who knows? The Light might return to that spot, taking any other ready souls with it.”
“Is that really what you think?”
Piotr shrugged. “Me? I do not know much about it. It is peaceful, I think, going when you are ready. The Light comes for them and my Lost, when they go, they always smile. I like that.”
“That’s nice,” Wendy said. “I’ve never seen a ghost enter the Light on their own.”
“Maybe one day you will, da?” Piotr leaned over her shoulder again and frowned at the picture on her cell phone. “But I do not think I have seen this woman, your mother, Wendy. Yzveenee, my apologies. I can keep a lookout, though. If you wish.”
“I do,” Wendy said, closing her cell. “I really do.”
“Then I shall help you,” Piotr promised. “You have my word. But…” He hesitated.
“But?” Wendy prompted.
“It is nothing.” Piotr waved a hand. “My friend Lily says I am like an old woman. I worry too much.”
His friend Lily? Wendy was startled by the jolt she felt at the mention of the name. After all, it wasn’t as if Piotr existed only in the vacuum of her memories. Of course he’d have friends among the dead. “If you’ve got a ‘but,’ I want to hear about it,” she said. Then winced. “I mean, what’s got you worried, Piotr?”
“How long has it been?” Piotr asked. “Since your mother—”
“She had her accident in February,” Wendy interrupted. She didn’t know why, but she didn’t feel comfortable admitting to Piotr that her mother wasn’t dead yet. Perhaps because every other comatose soul had the good sense to remain tethered to their body and her mother…well, hadn’t. “So it’s been about seven months.”
Peter’s expression was grave. “That is long enough for a soul to find the Light on their own, Wendy. Or, if she didn’t have the willpower to stay…she could have faded, become a Shade, is what I’m trying to say. You have met a Shade before in your wanderings, da?”
No shit, Sherlock, Wendy thought. After her first reap but before her mother’s accident, Shades had been all Wendy had been allowed to reap. The lost and lonely souls had forgotten themselves so far that they wouldn’t have recognized their Light if it’d burst into being right in front of them. Shades were their bread-and-butter, the meat of her duty as a Reaper. They were the souls she had to hunt down and the most important ones to send on. Otherwise they’d continue to fade, to pale, to vanish…into nothing. Souls lost and gone.
“Yeah,” she said, disturbed by the realization that when she’d sworn off reaping last spring that she’d also left a city full of Shades to their own devices. How many helpless souls had been suffering through the long and drowsy summer while she’d searched only for her mother? “I’ve met a couple.”
“I’m borrowing trouble,” Piotr soothed. “This is unlikely. Seven months is not long. We will find her if she can be found. My word on it.”
“Thank you,” Wendy said. “I appreciate it.”
“It is nothing,” he swore and bowed slightly, clicking his heels together. “Now then, I must take my leave of you.”
“What? Why?”
Piotr gestured to the diner. “I have work yet to do. Dunn was taken here.”
Wendy straightened, her color returning. Her weary concern was replaced by a steely-eyed determination Piotr found fascinating. “Here? In the diner? But being so close to the living hurts you, right? Yet you wanna go back in and look for the kid?”
“Da.” Piotr said. “I had hoped he had just gone into the Light, but there is no scorching in the Never. There is no essence, either.” He saw her confusion and explained, “Essence is like flesh and blood to the living. It is a mystery.” He sighed. “I had hoped, before…you weren’t in the diner when he was taken? A few days ago, around noon?”
Sympathetic, Wendy shook her head. “No, I’m sorry. The food’s awesome and I’d live here if I could, but that whole school thing gets in the way.” Brightening, she added, “But maybe your first guess was right? Maybe the kid just moved on into the Light? You didn’t get a chance to check under all the booths, after all. I got in your way.”
“It is possible, but unlikely.”
Kicking at the dirt, Piotr examined the Never terrain around him with a critical eye. The fire had scoured away the spiritual remains of the tenement building that had once stood on this ground, leaving only the solid diner in its place. He’d told Wendy the truth. There was no new residue here, he could see that now, no charred traces of Light that clung to walls or seats or doors.
Closer inspection proved that the boy hadn’t passed into the Light. Lily was right. Dunn had been taken, most likely by the White Lady’s Walkers.
“Going in there hurts you,” Wendy said matter-of-factly, spying his troubled expression.
“Da.”
“But you have to see if there’s anything that’ll point you in the right direction. A clue.”
He nodded.
“Okay then.” Determined to help, Wendy hopped from her place and strolled towards the diner. “Stay here.”
“Wait…what?” Piotr hurried after, reaching for her shoulder. He drew back when he realized the folly of trying to grab her. Wendy was living; not only would his hand pass right through her, but he’d burn himself in the process. Speeding up his pace, he hurried to step in front of her, cutting her off. “I do not understand.”
Amused, Wendy stopped walking and gestured to the building. “Piotr, I can help you. It hurts you to be in there, right?” She waited for his nod. “Okay then, well, it doesn’t hurt me at all, and I can see everything you see.”
“You…can see the Never?” Stunned, Piotr stepped away from her and shook his head. He’d never heard of such a thing before, even from other Seers. Most could hear the dead, some could even make the dead out—dim shapes they’d describe to paying customers—but none that he’d known had ever admitted to seeing the landscape of the Never itself. It was mind-boggling to even contemplate. “Not just me, but my world?”
Wendy pointed across the street. “Remnants of a four story hotel layered over that Burger la Hut,” she stated cheerily in a tour-guide falsetto, giggling every third word and bobbing her head left and right. “Next to the genuinely ghostly hotel, look south! In that supposedly empty lot is the remains of a fabulous fifties soda fountain with be-bop, soul hop, and rock and roll to soothe your soul! Don’t worry kiddies, though the Big-Bopper-Drive-In has nearly faded away, the fifties will never die!”
Dropping the bubblehead act, Wendy jerked her thumb towards the diner she’d just been sitting in. “Not too long ago, there used to be an apartment building layered over that building, but the last of it faded away last May. I think it burned down, what, in the sixties?”
“Da,” Piotr whispered, stunned. She was the most thorough Seer he’d ever met or even heard of. The strength of her power was stunning, and not a little frightening. “You have it.”
“Let me help you,” she urged. “Don’t hurt yourself over this when I can do it for you.”
This strange girl would be the undoing of him, Piotr mused silently, before nodding. She hurried away and he sank to the earth and closed his eyes. He had to bring her up to the others, he realized. Lily was wise; Lily was old. She would know what to do.
Because Piotr was at a loss.