When Piotr stormed out of Wendy’s bedroom he had no idea where he was to go. Part of him knew he should head north, back into the city, to warn the others that the Lightbringer had a very good idea where they were located. Piotr had even begun the long trek back to Elle’s when he realized that Wendy had known about the bookstore for over a month now; if she had wanted to tear every Rider in the Bay Area apart she could have done so already. Instead she’d held off, and Piotr had a sneaking suspicion he knew why. For him.
Unsure which option was best, Piotr skulked around town, refusing to go back to the bookstore but unwilling to head back into his own turf and hunker down at the mill. Lily might understand, but would the others? After all, it was all his fault—Wendy’s words haunted him, her revelation that he was the reason she’d begun taking her duties as a destroyer of souls in earnest. He was the reason thousands of Shades and innumerable other ghosts around the city were gone. Their absence had been puzzling the Riders for weeks, but now he understood. It was all his fault.
The worst part wasn’t his shame, though. The worst part was the fact that he craved the Light. Like an addict seeking that final, fantastic fix, Piotr had to stop himself from turning around and rejoining Wendy in her room, from begging her to end his existence. She had been something he’d never encountered, something terrible and wonderful, and as much as he hated her, he still yearned for her.
Stomping along the back roads, listening to the distant hammer of the train pounding on the tracks, Piotr played their encounter over again in his mind. Caught in the limbo between spirit and flesh, Wendy had never looked more painfully beautiful. As she sank back into her skin the remains of the Light played about the edges of her body, glimmering with welcome—and excruciating—heat, leaving her almost smaller than before; slighter. Though now flesh, she’d appeared somehow insubstantial to the touch and definitely weaker in both spirit and will.
Driven by instinct, Piotr had perceived the well of flowing years coursing under her fragile living skin, tempting him with its bounty of life and Light. She was fragile in the limbo between spirit and flesh—he sensed that, like a Walker, he could take her life if he wanted to.
All he had to do was strike.
Safely distant, Piotr could admit to himself that he’d hated her then, and loved her, and hated himself for loving her. The blistering cold of his fury threatened to overwhelm him. She was a monster. She was his friend.
Ignoring her pleas for understanding, he’d left. To protect her, to protect himself.
It was the only part of that whole hideous encounter he was proud of.
The touch of Wendy’s human hand had been wonderful. The heat of the Lightbringer’s spiritual regard had been…more. And Piotr knew that he wanted more from her than she’d ever be willing to give. Sickened and torn, he started to walk faster, to jog, then run. Chased by his memory of Wendy encased in Light, Piotr fled, leaving the valley behind.
Homecoming came, homecoming went, then Halloween. Wendy spent every free moment roaming town, looking for a fight with the roving dead. Sleepless and careless of her safety, Wendy burned with a furious light.
Each night Shade after Shade melted away at the slightest touch and Walkers fell by the dozens. Wendy spent every night purposefully not thinking of Piotr and every day drifting between classes and assignments—like a ghost, herself. When she did finally relax long enough to drift off, her sleep was rife with nightmares, some featuring the White Lady watching in the distance, most not. It was as if the White Lady saw no need to torment Wendy further; she was her own worst nightmare now.
More than once she thought she spied her mother in the distance. Wendy would speed up, hurry toward the ghost, only to find a random Shade. Her reaps were fury-driven and none-too-gentle. Wendy hated them all.
Driven now by some deep-seated urge to keep moving, to keep doing as she should have done the moment her mother fell, Wendy quit calling Eddie for help with reaping and instead borrowed her father’s car without permission. Jabber stalking at her side, Wendy spent the wee hours wandering all the darkest parts of the Bay Area, seeking out the forgotten places and darkest alleys with suicidal glee.
She quit visiting her mother and deleted the calls that the hospital left on her cell. Wendy had more important things to worry about now. She didn’t want to face Dr. Emma’s curious concern or her mother’s blank and emaciated eyes.
“When Dad comes home, I’m gonna tell,” Chel declared one night when Wendy snagged his keys off the nail in the garage. Jon, sitting at the kitchen counter, took one look at Wendy’s face and abandoned the area, taking his half-eaten mixing bowl full of mac ’n’ cheese with him. Chel, ignoring her twin’s escape, pushed on, sliding between Wendy and the door to the garage.
“Where do you go, anyway, when you take off like this? You’re not visiting Eddie, I checked. Pick up a skanky boyfriend you’re ashamed of, Wendy?” She eyed Wendy’s bare arms, peering knowingly at the hollows of Wendy’s elbows. “Or maybe got into something a little worse?”
“I go out,” Wendy replied, and thrust a twenty from the grocery fund into Chel’s hand. Money normally shut her nosy little sister up. “Like you can talk. Keep your trap shut or I’ll tell Dad how you’re slutting it up with that walking disease you call a boyfriend.”
Pushing Chel easily aside, Wendy reached into her sister’s purse, hanging on the hook beside the door, and pulled out a half-full bottle of Phentermine. “Or about these.”
Humiliated, Chel was in tears; she snatched the bottle back. “Fuck off!”
“Go to hell,” Wendy snapped back, pushing past her, and slammed the door behind.
Part of her felt bad about Chel. She knew her little sister was starting to run with the wrong crowd, starting to get in over her head both at school and after, but there were Walkers left to reap. Life, as her mother used to say, could take care of itself. Wendy just had to watch her own back. As she pulled out of the driveway, Wendy glanced up and saw Jon sitting in his windowsill, shoving spoonful after spoonful of cheesy pasta into his mouth and shaking his head. She ignored him, punched the volume on the stereo up, and spun out into the night.
Weeks passed. Wendy hunted.
Thanksgiving was subdued. Dad had left earlier; he wanted to spend the evening with Mom at the hospital, and Nana had tottered off to the guest room by eight, leaving Wendy to stuff the vast remnants of their Thanksgiving fare into her mother’s weathered margarine tubs and wash the dishes by herself.
It was a dismal job. The stuffing had been soggy, the turkey underdone, and Nana’s cranberry sauce had been the wrong kind, not the canned sort that you sliced in paper-thin layers but the other type, full of pits and twigs and gooshy blobs. Chel had picked at her plate—shredding her roll and feeding it to Nana’s ancient poodle under the table, hiding the dollop of green bean casserole under her mashed potatoes—but Dad hadn’t noticed.
Jon, on the other hand, ate more than enough for the both of them. He was starting to get round in the face and when Wendy, pitying him, had tried to convince him to join her in a pickup basketball game after dinner, he’d turned her down, preferring to mix up a batch of fudge instead.
“Fine,” she snapped, irritated that he wouldn’t help her take her mind off things—off having a holiday season without Mom. “It’s your gigantic ass. Do whatever you want with it.” Wendy stalked away, ignoring the bewildered hurt on Jon’s face.
Life without Mom, she thought hopelessly, had finally begun to fall apart. In her room Wendy hid in the back of her closet, pulled Jabber into her lap, and cried herself to sleep with the ghost of her mother’s cat in her lap.
Weeks passed. Wendy hunted.
Three months. It had been three months—twelve whole and seemingly endless weeks—since Piotr had learned that Wendy was the Lightbringer. Piotr haunted the trails between the city and the valley, lost in his thoughts and brooding.
To keep himself from literally haunting Wendy’s home, Piotr wandered. He crisscrossed well-known trails and streets until he was not a person in the strictest sense of the word, merely a restless spirit walking; striding through the hours of the day in agony until the only face he could see was hers, his every thought tangled around the pain they’d caused one another. Time away from her had given him some hard-earned perspective. Piotr understood why she’d lied about being the Lightbringer at first, but couldn’t wrap his mind around why she’d continued to do so. Didn’t she trust him? Didn’t she owe him that, at least?
This brooding lasted until Piotr, finally closing the circuit towards the city, found a pair of thick-rimmed glasses just outside Elle’s territory. Piotr leaned down, picked them up, turned them in his hand. They were black plastic, horn-rimmed, and familiar.
The bookstore was in chaos when he arrived. Most of the Riders were gone, as were the Lost, leaving only Elle, Lily, and James. When Piotr arrived he found Lily meditating cross-legged in a corner beside James. James, battered about the head and neck, puffy with bruises and gashes, sported several even more severe wounds on his arms and legs. As Lily’s hands moved over them the cuts knit closed, but they were not seamless or pretty. Lily did not have a Lost’s healing touch.
“What happened?” Piotr asked, but knew it was a useless, futile question. He was a tracker and what had happened here was clear. Footsteps in the dust were marred by long, swishing swipes. Rider essence lay in puddles, silver pools that dried to dark and tainted grey. The floor was riddled with dime-sized holes, bored through in Swiss cheese patterns, and there was an unmistakable smell of wet rot in the air.
The Walkers had grown tired of trying to pick the Lost off one by one and had staged a mass assault.
“Those hoods snatched Dora,” Elle told him later, after they’d gone through the remnants of the Lost to assess the damage and estimate a sort of head-count of the taken. “Specs too. The rest of the Riders are on the lam, heading east. I sent Tubs with Kurtz, for safety.” Elle rubbed the bridge of her nose with one hand, filthy with dust and the day’s fight. Her other arm lay in her lap, lumpy at the elbow and oozing a thin stream of essence, snapped in four separate places. Large hunks of her golden hair were sheared away at the skull; she now had a jagged cut that wound across her forehead and diagonally down one cheek. It matched his scar.
Catching him examining her face, Elle’s eyes flashed warning. “I told them to pack their glad rags and get a wiggle on, no turning around. Kurtz took charge and they’re heading for Nevada. They ain’t ever coming back.” She almost spat the words.
So that was it. They were alone. Why was he not surprised?
Piotr nodded, numb, and left Elle’s side, wandering through the bookstore. He picked up an item here, an item there. Dora’s sketchbook had been left behind. It was not made of the same stuff she was; he would not be able to tell if she was safe by looking at it. All the same, Specs’ glasses were whole, and that indicated that Specs, at least, was unharmed. It was hope. Piotr seized on that.
Without one of the Lost there to help, the healing process took a few weeks. When James was up and on his feet again, he and Elle organized a citywide search program. “If we can’t find them like this,” he claimed, his dangling cornrows brushing the edges of the map Elle had scrounged from amid the rotting books, “we won’t find them.”
Enough time had passed that it was looking like the remaining Riders weren’t going to find more than scattered clues. The Lost appeared permanently gone, but at least Dunn’s hat remained solid, as did Specs’ glasses and Tommy’s cloak. They were still alive—at least, in a manner of speaking.
Practical by nature, Piotr set out each day expecting nothing and came back with exactly that. So it was to his great surprise when, traveling through the edges of Mountain View towards San Jose, a copy of the map with the search parameters in one hand and a flare in the other, he spotted a quartet of Walkers. One of them was struggling with a small and shrieking figure. A familiar figure.
“Specs!” Piotr yelled and, without thought or plan, dropped the paper and flare, flinging himself into the fray.
The Walkers had changed and not for the better. These beasts had faces elongated into unimaginable abominations, twisted and warped into monstrous shapes, with stitches of sinew thick as twine holding the gaping flaps of their essence together. These Walkers had been healed and then marred again. The purposeful scars were doubly hideous, lying so starkly against the fresh flesh.
Piotr, approaching at speed, drew Elle’s dagger and leapt at the Walker holding Specs. The Walker went down—end over end—and Specs, yelling with surprise and glee, tugged free.
“Piotr! Piotr! I knew you’d come! I knew it!”
Mindless with rage, Piotr began slashing at the Walker. Every cut he made—shallow and deep alike—broke fragile skin and spilled a foul-smelling, noxious liquid. It was not essence; it was too thin, too runny, and when it touched his hands, it stung.
Another fine spray of droplets flew, dousing him, and Piotr felt the burn of it eating into his skin, his pants and arms. Now he knew what the holes had been—these Walkers bled something beyond mere essence. Whatever they bled was acid to ghosts, essence-burning and foul, like unadulterated death. Piotr ignored the pain and continued stabbing.
Furious or not, Piotr was still only one man, and one who was severely outnumbered. Before he could finish off the Walker, two of the others dragged him, kicking and cursing, free. The other, moving swiftly, corralled and captured Specs again. They forced him to kneel on the ground. One gripped him by the hair, dragging his head back and exposing his neck. The other wrapped powerful fingers around his wrists, locking him in place.
“Rider.” Piotr was unsure which one of the Walkers spoke, as all four of them—including the one he’d attacked, which was only just now gaining its feet—nodded. “It is a Rider, yes, yes. Tough meat.”
“Filthy kid-killing pigs,” Piotr spat back, jerking left and right but unable to free himself. He began cursing as violently and loudly as he could, lapsing into Russian and back to English without thought, hoping that perhaps Elle, whose patrol circuit was supposed to cross his today, would hear. The Walkers ignored his tirade, seeming content to talk among themselves.
“White Lady will want him.” More nods all around.
One frigid finger ran across Piotr’s neck, over his chin, and pushed its way into his mouth. He could feel burning begin as the blood-flecked nail scratched the inside of his cheek. It was sharp and strong enough to cut him deeply. Specs, watching from a few feet away, moaned.
“Eat his eyes. Suck him dry.” Nod-nod, agreement all around.
“Greedy Lady,” one of the Walkers suggested. “All the meat for her, even tough meat. All the tasty for later. No tasty for us.”
It sounded almost forlorn at this tidbit, and somewhat annoyed. The finger in Piotr’s mouth withdrew, pulled back, and then stabbed him in the shoulder hard enough to pierce him through. The finger, knuckle-deep in his shoulder, twisted and wiggled, having just enough room to poke Piotr in the collarbone. The shock of its jagged nail scraping and flicking at his bone was enough to elicit a shrill and terrified scream.
“All the tasty for her plan,” the Walker said again, dropping down so it was face to face with Piotr. Its tongue, obscenely long and mottled grey, rolled out of its mouth and rasped its way over Piotr’s cheeks, licking away his sweat and tears. The end was forked like a snake’s and flicked with eerie rapidity, sliding over his eyes and collecting the agonized tears that leaked from the corners. “No tasty for us…but Rider could be tasty. Tough, yes, but a tasty we don’t have to share. We eat Rider instead.”
The hands binding his wrists tightened and Piotr closed his eyes, preparing for the worst.
It took Eddie, waiting for Wendy by her locker the day school let out for Christmas break, to knock some sense into her.
“Hey hot stuff,” he said as she spun the lock and started sorting through her books, choosing which ones would go home over break and which she’d leave at school.
“I see you’re scowly as usual.” Eddie waited and when she didn’t answer, added, “So, is your phone broken? Cuz I’ve left you, like, a hundred or so texts and someone hasn’t been returning them. I’ll totally buy you a new one for Christmas if you want. I already have a gift for you but there’s this sexy little black flip phone that—”
“Lay off,” she said, not unkindly and, with a shrug, merely piled the whole lot into her bag. The nightmares that kept her up to all hours had long since begun to take their toll; Wendy was passing her courses but only just barely. Even math had begun to slip.
White Lady’s threats or not, Wendy intended to take a few days off reaping and spend part of her holiday studying up. The ACTs and SATs were coming up and at this rate there was no way she’d get a scholarship. Not like she had much of a choice where to go to school. Until Mom came out of her coma, it was community college for her and Wendy knew it.
“You know, grumble-puss, I don’t think I’m gonna,” Eddie replied. His voice was so mellow, his smile so sincere, that Wendy missed what he was saying altogether.
Wendy sighed, rolled her eyes, and finally turned to face him. Unlike her, Eddie looked well rested. His clothing was neat and clean, his hair had been freshly dyed glossy blue-black, and the kohl lining his eyes was smudge-free. “Gonna what?”
“Lay off.” Reaching past Wendy, Eddie shut her locker door with a sharp snap. Then, taking her elbow in one hand, he firmly guided her past the pulsing throng of other students gathering their things and fleeing the building, to a bench outside.
There he forced her to sit.
“Eddie. Eddie! Hey, let go!” Irritated with his gall, Wendy struggled, but Eddie’s grip tightened and he refused to unhand her. “Eds, this is not funny.”
“Never said it was,” he replied as pleasantly as before. “But you, missy, and I are going to have a bit of a talk. And since you’ve decided texting is too gauche, we’re gonna do it the old fashioned way. Analog style.”
From the corner of her eye Wendy spotted Jon and Chel round the corner of the school, bags in hand. They spotted Eddie and approached slowly, standing just behind him, only a few feet back but far enough out of her range that she couldn’t reach them without struggling free of Eddie’s iron grip on her arm.
“All of you are in on this?” Bitterness crept into Wendy’s voice. “Manhandling me for whatever reason? Way to gang up, guys. I knew I could count on you three to stay classy.”
Jon shuffled his feet. “Wendy, we’re worried about you. You’re not sleeping.”
“I’m aware of that, thanks.” She jerked the arm in Eddie’s hand and his grip tightened firmly, not quite painfully, but close. “I’m fine. Let me go.”
“You’re not fine,” Chel replied coolly, snagging Wendy’s bag from the bench beside her where Eddie had set it. The heavy weight of the books was almost too much for her; she tilted slightly as she hefted the bag over her shoulder. “Look, you talk with her all you want, but we’re gonna miss the bus. I’ll drop these off in her room.”
Eddie nodded. Jon moved around the side of the bench and sat beside Wendy. For the first time in weeks, Wendy really looked at her younger brother, and was more than a little horrified to see the puffiness in his cheeks, the dark circles beneath his eyes. His shirt was old and too tight; his gut was now hanging over the waistband of his jeans. Jon, realizing that Wendy was examining him closely, blushed dark red.
“Shut up,” he said before she could speak, and patted his belly. “I’m working on it.” He glanced over at Chel, who was patiently waiting at the sidewalk. She had a protein bar in one hand and was breaking chunks off to eat, grimacing with every bite. Her face, Wendy noted, was not as gaunt as before.
Jon gestured toward Chel. “Things have been tough on all of us, right? With Mom and everything, Chel and I sort of depended on you to stay cool and keep us sane.”
Ashamed, Wendy struggled with her reply. “That’s not it. I—I—there’s been these bad dreams and—”
“I’m not surprised, all that stress. Look, what we’ve been doing to you isn’t fair,” Jon interrupted. “We figured you’d just keep on truckin’—at least I did—and I never thought ’til recently that maybe it’d be hard on you, you know, being in charge when Dad’s gone. Then you Hulked out and got all mega-bitch and you took us by surprise. Well, you took me by surprise. I think you bitch-slapped Chel into a whole new personality.”
Eddie’s hand dropped off her arm. Wendy rubbed the sore spot but she no longer felt the need to flee; it was as if she were rooted to the bench, stunned speechless by her normally taciturn brother’s urgent tone.
“Wendy, you woke us both up, okay? You had your say, you really hurt my feelings and scared the crap out of Chel, but you got our attention and we listened.” He glanced over at Chel, still waiting out of earshot. “It may not look like it at first glance, but I promise, we’re both working on it.”
“I’m sorry,” Wendy whispered. “I didn’t mean to hurt you.”
“My mouth, my body, my fault,” he replied. “You’re not the boss of me. Besides, I don’t regret a single Cheeto.” He smiled faintly, still pink from embarrassment at her close assessment, and hugged her again.
“Just listen to what Eddie has to say to you, okay? You’ve been a ginormous hosebeast but you’ve been under a ton of stress with Dad being gone. Chel’s pissed right now, but she’s like me—deep down all we want is for you to be happy. That and for you to quit stealing Dad’s car, cause he’s gonna kick all our asses if he figures that one out.”
Then, hitching up his pants self-consciously, Jon picked up his things, bussed Wendy on the cheek, and left. He joined Chel at the bus stop, shouldered Wendy’s bag himself, and they walked away toward the bright yellow line of buses pulling into the school’s drive.
“Wow,” Wendy said, watching her too-thin sister and growing-overweight brother drift into the throng of students climbing aboard their rides home. “Jon grew a pair. Big brass ones.”
“Yep,” Eddie agreed, “the day comes in every young boy’s life when he’s called a fatass by his beloved older sister. Or so I’ve been told, being an only child and all.”
Wendy winced. “I’ve really been in my own world, haven’t I?”
“That’s a polite way of putting it,” Eddie replied. “Another way is that you’ve been a screaming bitch, impossible to be around, um…almost completely irresponsible except for school and your ‘side job.’ And, oh, yeah, I did mention total bitch, right?”
“I think so,” Wendy replied dryly.
“Because it bears mentioning,” Eddie said, insistent. “Over and over again.”
“I get the point, Eddie.”
“No, darling, I don’t think you really do. But you will. Walk with me. It’ll be like old times. I’ll drive you home and you, me foine girl, can listen to ol’ Eddie talk.”
The grounds were quickly emptying. Eddie picked up his own bag, slung a loose arm around her waist, and guided her toward the parking lot and his car.
“See, the fact of the matter is, what Jon said aside, none of us depend on you to be a sane and rational human being. At least not all the time. But sometimes it’d be nice. And if there’s something wrong, we like to know about it so we can at least avoid the bitchiness if we can’t deal with it.”
“There’s nothing wrong.”
“Sure there isn’t. Right. Chel’s the one with the eating problem, but you’ve gotten werry-werry thin, me foine chickadee.”
Done playing, Eddie dropped the overblown accent and brushed a tender finger across each of her cheekbones. “You’ve got a full set of matching bags under those baby browns of yours, and I do believe so much scowling is going to cause early onset wrinklage. At this rate, you’re going to be the first MVHS graduate with grey hair.”
Self-consciously, Wendy touched her head. “I said I’m fine! Drop it, okay?”
Groaning, Eddie grabbed her by the wrist, shaking it slightly. “Wendy, look, I can totally stand you ignoring my calls, not responding to my texts, deleting my emails. I get that I was the jerk first—I got totally wrapped up in a girl and forgot I had friends for a while, yeah, sure. I deserve a little no-Wendy time. But the twins, annoying as they are, didn’t do anything to you they haven’t done before. And with your dad gone all the time and your mom in the hospital—”
“Hey—”
Eddie held up a hand to stall her protest as they reached the parking lot. “Wendy darling, I love you, but you are going to shut up and you are going to listen to me, if it’s the last thing I do in this friendship. You owe me that at least. Now hush up and let me finish.”
He waited until it looked like Wendy wasn’t going to respond and continued on. “Ahem, now, like I was saying, with your mom in the hospital and all, you’re like, woman of the house. Hell, screw that, you’re master of the house. And you, miss master, haven’t been treating the rest of the house particularly well.”
“I’ve been busy,” Wendy mumbled as Eddie opened the passenger side door and ushered her inside. She turned her face to the window, refusing to look at him. “With, you know, my special stuff.”
“Right, well, your ‘stuff’ is going to have to wait for a while, I think.” Eddie shut the door, moved around the car, and slid into the driver’s seat. “You get on Chel for using the Phentermine, but don’t think I haven’t seen those bottles of No-Doz you’ve been hiding.”
“Hey,” Wendy protested, stung, “I’m not the one abusing diet pills just to fit into some bleached-sheeple-douchebag club!” She waved her hands above her head. “Rah-rah, sis-boom-bah, gooooo bulimics!”
“No,” he replied sternly, “you’re the one abusing caffeine pills and chugging Red Bull so you can go and hang out with dead people all night. Which is crazier, I wonder?”
Wrapping her arms around her middle, Wendy groaned and sank back against the passenger seat. “It’s not the same thing. I need the caffeine. There’ve been dreams—”
“Which I didn’t listen to you about,” Eddie said. “And I’m really super sorry about that. But now you’ve got my full attention. Consider me the Wendy-Wikipedia, okay? I want you to tell me all about everything that’s been going on with you, especially these nightmares or whatever. Dr. Eddie is in and I’ll even waive the five cent charge.”
“Not now.”
He adjusted the rear view mirror, and checked the mirrors on each side. “Fine, when?”
“Eddie—”
“Don’t ‘Eddie’ me in that tone of voice, Wendy. What in the hell can be so bad that you’re afraid of falling asleep? What, you got Freddy Krueger in there, slicing people up? Are you going to drop dead if you fall asleep? Because the way things are going right now, you’re going to drop dead if you don’t fall asleep.”
“It’s my body, Ed.”
“It may be your body but I’ve got a baseball bat. I’ve got no problem letting you sleep off a concussion. Talk.”
“Fine. I spend just about every night avoiding sleep and running around town reaping. I still haven’t found my mom. Her soul’s been threatened by a dead crazy chick with skin like rotting lettuce. I won’t find her unless I keep looking so, neatly put, I have to do this, okay?”
“I get why you’re worried about your mom, but last I checked you were back to reaping anyone you came across, not just the bad dudes who chased you down. Is that still the deal?”
Irritated, Wendy refused to answer.
“So it’s still not just the creepy, rotting bad guys?” He waited for her reply and when it became clear that she wasn’t going to give one, he groaned. “Wendy, I’ve said it before and I’ll say it again, why exactly do you think you have to do this?”
Easing the car out of the parking space, Eddie settled into the line forming at the edge of campus. Around them other seniors threw their things into their trunks or backseats and revved their engines, lining up quickly behind him and shouting holiday well-wishes at one another. The air was cold, not frosty—not in California—but still chill enough to turn cheeks pink and make eyes sting.
“Why is it that you,” Eddie continued, waving at Pete Abrahms who cheerfully leapt into his dad’s van beside them, “have to go around reaping people who’re already dead? I mean, doesn’t that just seem a touch backward to you?”
They reached the front of the line. Eddie signaled, turned right, caught the tail end of the yellow light, and within moments they were away from the campus and heading towards home. Wendy, at a loss for words, sulked in silence.
Eddie let five minutes pass, turning left, right, and left again as he took the back streets home. “Not getting an answer, huh?”
“It’s my job,” she said. “It’s my mom’s job and it was my grandma’s job and it was her grandmother’s job, yada yada yada, so on and so forth. If you don’t understand that, Eddie, you don’t understand me after all.”
They were passing a park not far from her house where a cluster of elementary kids were learning to skate on the wide paths, holding hands and following a teenage girl in a narrow V like fluorescent-headed ducklings. Watching them, Wendy pressed her fingers to the glass, yearning.
“Hey, after fifteen years of putting up with your crap I think I understand you just fine,” he protested. “Maybe it’s you who doesn’t understand yourself. Maybe you just need to—”
“Stop the car,” Wendy demanded, sitting up suddenly.
“What? Oh, no, hon, I’m not gonna let you be like that.” Eddie shook his head and slapped his hand down on the auto locks. “After all this crap I don’t have to put up with a temper tantrum from you. You don’t get to storm off and—”
“Eds, shut your mouth for one damn second, stop the car, and open the stupid fucking door! I’ll be right back!” Wendy snapped. She kicked at the passenger door, cracking the plastic, and Eddie, bewildered, stopped and unlocked the car. Without another word she was out the door and sprinting across a small local playground, fading out of sight within seconds of her feet hitting the grass.
“Damn it,” he grunted, scowling. “Not again.” Pulling the car along the curb, Eddie parked and waited, eyeing the cracked plastic with a scowl. This could take a while.
Piotr, eyes closed, waited for the first blow to fall. The blow never came.
Instead a slow sweep of sound broke through the clearing, sweet and high, vibrating at the top of the range with a crystal tone. Heat began baking his cheeks and face, and where the warmth touched him, Piotr felt his anxiety drain away, felt the soothing sweetness fill him and lift him up. The hands loosened their unbreakable grip on his wrists; the vile tongue slipped away.
When Piotr opened his eyes the Light was blinding.
The Walkers, lost in the siren song, held open their seeping, mutilated arms and welcomed the Lightbringer’s embrace. Piotr began crawling forward, seeking the Light, and saw Specs doing so as well, both making their way as best they could towards the glorious, aching afterlife.
Before they could reach the edges of the Light, however, the song quieted, faded away. The Walkers were no more, taken with such rapidity that Piotr had hardly noticed their passing, and now only Wendy remained, the remainder of the Light glowing around her edges, eyes wary.
“Well, that’s new,” she said, sinking to her knees, face grave. Wendy held up her forearm. Four parallel slashes, deep enough that Piotr could see the red meat inside, bled sluggishly through the material of her grey overshirt. Wendy stripped the shirt off and wrapped the thin material around her wrist. “Ow,” she complained and glanced at Piotr from beneath her lashes. “Hi,” she said, tying off the makeshift bandage, “I missed you.”
“You too?” Piotr held out his hand. Before Wendy could reach for it, Specs was suddenly there between them, hands outstretched and eyes wild.
“Take me home!” he half-screamed, ignoring Piotr completely. It was as if Piotr wasn’t even there. “I saw it! You hid it but I saw it! I want to go home! I want my mommy! Mommy!” He grabbed Wendy’s wrist with both arms and shouted into her face, spit flying, “I WANT TO GO HOME!”
A burst of energy—purple-cold and fierce—pulsed out from him in a wave so powerful it knocked Piotr a full fifteen feet backwards. It was like nothing he’d ever seen or felt before, like nothing he could have ever imagined. Wendy, trapped by Specs’ tight hold around her wrist, sagged in his grip. Her face, red from the exertion of channeling the Light, bled white within moments and her lips turned bluish at the edges. She began to gag.
Horrified, Piotr struggled to his feet as Specs released Wendy’s wrist and bent over her, shoving his small hands through the flesh of her stomach and pulling something small and round and sharply glowing from deep within her gut. “I see you,” he sobbed. “Let me go home. Please? Please take me home?”
“Specs!” Piotr called, squinting to look at the intense ball of light in the boy’s grasp. “Wendy cannot help you if you’re hurting her! Specs! Specs! Listen to me!”
The boy didn’t hear, only clutched the orb and rocked back and forth, sobbing.
Wendy, face down in the dirt, didn’t move.