Ablaze - Book 4 Read online

  “Lucky me.”

  He tilted back his head and chuckled a bit. “That necklace was given to you for a reason, young lady. It may help us a great deal, not only in figuring out more about the owner of this book,” he said, patting the great red volume, “but also with my mission, to do what I came here to do.”

  “And what is that mission?” I asked. “I mean, time didn’t seem to stop very long last time, and I’m not sure what else it can do.”

  “What!? Zoey, you stopped time. Not only that, you safely traveled into the spirit world to close the portal.”

  I nodded but said nothing.

  “Remember what it has done so far, and perhaps you will begin seeing greater possibilities. Maybe those mighty powers were just the beginning.”

  “The beginning? You really think there’s more to it than that?”

  “I do.”

  “Like what?”

  “Perhaps some sort of teleportation, maybe even telepathy. I have no way of knowing,” he admitted with a sheepish glance askance, “but I would encourage you to experiment with it and see what you can do. You can also ask Isabella. It was hers, after all, so I’m sure she knows all the secrets.”

  I nodded, then paused before I stood from my chair. “How long do you think it will take to figure out what the book is saying?”

  “Maybe a week. I will work as fast as I can. We know the gist, but I think more details would help.”

  “Okay,” I said, yawning. “Mr. Geo?”

  “Yes?”

  “I’m so tired. I was so scared last night that I wasn’t able to sleep at all. Could you, uh… Can I, um…”

  Wearing a more sympathetic smile than I knew him capable of, the teacher pulled a notepad from his top drawer and scribbled a note on it, in worse handwriting than any doctor’s I’d ever seen. “You need to get some rest. No offense, but you look as if you’ve seen a ghost,” he said with a wink.

  “Very funny.”

  “What class do you have after lunch?”

  I actually had to pause to remember before I managed, “French.”

  He chuckled again, then tore the slip from the pad and handed it to me. “Well, have a quick bite to eat, then give this to the nurse. She’ll let you lie down for a bit.”

  “Thank you, Mr. Geo.” I clutched the piece of paper to my heart in relief, glad for his help and grateful for the upcoming rest.

  * * *

  I had a quick lunch with Hunter, then headed to the nurse’s office. “So I’ll just head back to my room,” I said.

  She laughed. “No, honey. It’s the middle of the school day, so you’ll have to settle for napping here.” With that, she led me over to a cot-like contraption in the corner; the mattress was no thicker than a double-decker grilled cheese, but as much as I wanted my nice, warm bed, it would have to do.

  I tossed on the turgid vinyl cot tucked between the wall and a privacy screen. Before I could even close my drowsy eyelids, whistling lips and obnoxiously distinct footfalls could only mean one person—one dead person, to be specific—and it was only too soon I was proved correct when William’s patronizingly refined voice drifted through the screen: “Pardon me, Nurse, but I seem to be a bit peaked today. Hello? Ma’am? Are you listening to me? Tsk-tsk. Some bedside manner you’ve got. For all you know, I could be dying.”

  Then the footfalls, audible only to me, moved around the divider, and I rolled my eyes when William smiled at me.

  “Hello, my dear! You’re not looking all that grand yourself. I thought I saw you upstairs last night, but you seemed to be in such a hurry. I didn’t want to intrude then, but I am glad I have found you now.”

  I glanced at the partition between myself and the nurse, then gave William a very pointed look to let him know I couldn’t talk at that moment without appearing schizophrenic.”

  Obviously, William didn’t care. In fact, he found my humiliation somewhat humorous. Normally, I would have agreed with him and found some amusement in the situation, but at that particular moment, I was far too tired to find anything funny about his impromptu visit.

  “What’s the matter, Zoey? Can’t you speak?”

  Keeping my jaw set, I gave a harder nod toward the curtain.

  William gasped in mock horror, and his ghostly hand flew to his ghostly mouth. “Oh no! She’s a witch, you say? The nurse is a witch, and she’s stolen your voice! Oh dear. What a terrible state of affairs. What does that say about the current educational system? Appalling. You hear that?” he shouted, leaning around the curtain while I rubbed the sharply aching temples of my forehead. “We’ve found you out now! We’re going to tell everyone. We will… Well, I suppose it can’t rightly be said we’ll tell anyone, but we’ll write it in all the papers! We’ll put it on that inter, uh… Web? Interweb? No, wait. Internet. Yes, that’s it! I still don’t quite understand those strange contraptions, at any rate, but Bookface seems to be the modern front page. We’ll google your tweet!” He glanced back at me, crossing his arms, and said, “You look as if you have something to say, my dear. Do speak up.”

  I did have a few words begging to spill out of my mouth, but mostly in yells. Instead, I simply shrugged my weary shoulders and held my tired tongue.

  “I’m afraid this situation simply won’t do.” William tapped his chin for a moment, then extended a hand to me. “Take my hand, darling.”

  It was extremely difficult to refrain from releasing a sigh of annoyance, but I grudgingly took his hand, awkwardly squeezing my fingers around his intangible ones; it was like trying to grip a cloud. As I more or less got hold of it, I noticed my necklace glowing faint blue. In the next second, it felt like an ice cube against my skin. I focused helplessly on it, drawn like a bug to a bright light, as if I had no choice in the matter. The sight of the necklace over my heart filled my mind, and only out of the corner of my eye did I see William’s hand slowly solidifying. He gripped my hand tighter and pulled me. As he did, his hand regained its transparency. Surprisingly, mine began to take it on as well. Though my mouth fell agape, I couldn’t even gasp as William pulled me out of my body like he was coaxing a friend into a pool. I felt myself springing free in that last second; the sensation was like the most satisfying back crack in the world, and I both felt and heard the surreal experience of my body falling back behind me, down against the cot again.

  Much to my surprise, my body was still in the same room, still in the nurse’s office, but it was so much colder and darker, like some super-eight, out-of-focus, 1970s film that had been stored in a dusty garage for forty years. Occasionally, it seemed to flicker in and out of existence, like a bad eight-bit videogame. I just stared at my pixelated, blurry self, then glanced over at the figure of the nurse. She jumped slightly, moving back and forth as if on a tight little loop. One second, she was jotting something down, and in the next, she started to get up. It was a continuous series of jotting and rising, jotting and rising, as if she was an Xbox character caught in a glitch—or maybe I was the one who was glitching, because something was warping my perception of time and space.

  That experience was far different than when I’d walked through the portal to the other side in my regular body. This time, it was truly an out-of-body event. Still, my perception of William was clearer than ever, his image sharper, as if he was made of solid flesh again. In that moment, for the first time, I saw how truly flamboyant his clothes were. His shirt was a rose pink, his ascot peach, and his cloak a powder blue that perfectly matched his gloves and his boots, albeit not his forest-green pants. Exhausted as I was, I could find no humor in the sight, especially because I knew seeing him in such vivid detail could only mean one terrible thing.

  “Zoey, my dear,” said William with a wave and a grand smile, “welcome to the afterlife. I have always thought you quite spirited, but now you are certainly that!”

  Chapter 5

  Panic set in upon his confirmation. “What was wrong with the other way?” I asked. “Why couldn’t I just walk through a po
rtal like last time? There was no need to make me leave my body.”

  “I just wanted to show you what your necklace is capable of. I didn’t show you before because I was sure it would have frightened you.”

  “Gee. Ya think?” I said, looking around and down at my odd, ghostly figure and the icy pendant hanging around my neck. My heart began to pound so hard that I feared it might burst. I stumbled back a step and looked down, then let out a soft cry at the sight of my own body lying there, seemingly asleep. “You killed me!” I shouted, spinning around to face him, tears already jumping to my eyes.

  Rather than trying to comfort me, he merely laughed. “I most certainly would never do such a thing,” he said. “Consider this…like the difference between summering in Spain and moving to Spain. You’re only visiting a while, a tourist here.”

  “But how can I visit the dead as an actual spirt and return from the afterlife in one piece. It’s just not possible…is it?” I asked, confused.

  “Heroes in stories do it all the time, my dear. Just think of Orpheus going to fetch Eurydice or Odysseus journeying to see his friends. Why, friends and lovers have been bumping into one another in the underworld for as long as the concept has existed. It typically requires a special ceremony or mental technique, but this…” He poked my necklace hard with his long forefinger, “This necklace, in this castle, opens a gateway, something that allows you to step in and out.”

  My fingers encircled the teardrop, its façade comforting in my grip as I asked, “How is that possible? I was okay with taking a portal to your world, but leaving my body is just… Well, it’s a whole new ballgame altogether. I’m not sure I like the idea of this.”

  “Crystals and gemstones are very sensitive,” he said, leading the way into the hall, which seemed slightly wider somehow, as if viewed through a fish-eye lens. “They can absorb spirit energy and human life energy and store it for a very, very long time. They also absorb the spirit of the place in which they exist. That particular necklace spent many years in this castle.”

  It made my head hurt to try to comprehend his words, but I understood the gist of what he was saying. My surroundings made it impossible for me to truly focus. Around me, I saw the indistinct impressions of other students and teachers drifting from one point to another, flickering along the path determined by their timeline; somehow, they didn’t seem to be making any forward progress, yet they continued moving about, flickering like a movie on pause. I also saw others mingling amongst them, ghosts wandering about, clearer than I’d ever seen them before. The castle around me looked exactly like it must have all those centuries before, with finely dressed lords and ladies meandering about, chatting softly and stopping to stare at me as William led me by.

  “You must forgive their stares, darling. They all know who you are, and they are not often visited by celebrities.”

  “Celebrities?” I asked, laughing. “I’m just a teenager. My family used to live here, but—”

  “Don’t downplay it, Zoey. You are an ancestor to the royal family, and you have a right to the throne. Had the monarchy continued to reign, you would be just as much a princess as Isabella was.”

  The thought was dizzying and loaned new significance to the furtive, curious glances of the specters around us. Soon, though, my attention was drawn back to the people in the hall, slowly filling the corridor. I realized some small degree of progress was indeed being made; time was not completely standing still, as it had when I froze it by accident.

  William nodded when I asked him about it. “Well, it’s the same principle, isn’t it? Upon death, perception of time becomes far less linear, as you can see. Death isn’t subject to time or space, particularly not here, and eternity lasts a long, long time. All events are simultaneous, Zoey, from start to finish. Time is merely a way of interpreting movement in a manner that makes sense to a living mind. This effect, like all those of your necklace, occurs in the mind of the wearer.”

  As we emerged on the third floor, we found it almost empty. I let out a deep breath of relief. It was strange, actually terrifying to walk straight through a sea of my classmates. Though I knew I wasn’t really dead and was only visiting that supernatural side, as my friend had explained, the pass-through reminded me of my current condition. Knowing I was no longer hosted by my own body induced a strange sort of suffocating sensation, almost like drowning every time I passed through a person. It didn’t feel painful or life threatening, but it was frightening. For that reason, I was glad to be in a wide empty hall, where there were no people to penetrate and pass through.

  William strolled down the hall in the direction of the hidden library. “Come, dear,” he coaxed.

  I followed him, only to stop short and gasp as I looked through a window. “Oh my gosh! William, look.” I pointed beyond the glass to absolutely nothing. There was nothing past the castle grounds except for distant stars. I felt a cold, white sweep of vertigo as all sense of direction was lost. “We’re floating in space?”

  “Technically everyone is,” William joked, letting out a smug little laugh. When he saw the panicked expression on my face, his expression softened a little. “It is just a bit off-putting to see it for the first time, isn’t it?”

  That wasn’t even close to the word for it. The whole idea made my head hurt. I looked away and gasped again. “Is that what’s keeping you here, all that…emptiness?”

  “No more than a cage keeps the prisoner. It’s only the method of incarceration, not the cause.”

  “So what is the cause?”

  After a furtive glance around, as if the walls truly did have ears, William leaned down to murmur, “That spirit who’s been harassing you… Tell me. Have you been able to see him in his real form?”

  “Never,” I said with a shake of my head. “Things just happen, like a poltergeist, but I know it’s King Geoffrey.”

  “Like a poltergeist? Do you know what happens when a person dies with spite in his or her heart, Zoey?”

  “No. What?”

  “The spirit manifests with that spite. It’s like an energy source, one of your modern batteries,” William said, again speaking of things he could never truly experience; for him, the Energizer Bunny was an entirely foreign concept. “It allows for a different degree of presence in the physical world. Spirits like mine or Isabella’s appear to the living with only the warmest of intentions, and—”

  I cut him off. “Don’t get on your high horse now, William. Your intentions initially weren’t so warm initially. You were helping Miss Shila. She opened the portal and let the spirits in, then guided the chosen spirits she needed, then let them possess us at night.”

  “I know that was awful,” he said. “I’m so sorry. I just want out of this prison…and we’ve all been waiting for you for so long.”

  “Well, I’m here now.”

  “Yes, but things did not happen quickly enough when you arrived, I suppose.”

  “You didn’t even give me a chance to figure anything out.”

  “Miss Shila was quite convincing. She promised to free us all. She is as skilled a manipulator as she is a psychic. Like so many others, my fault lay in believing her and allowing her to lead me astray.”

  “She chose all of us for our psychic abilities, so the spirits could use our bodies at night.”

  “Your principal was deceived as well. He just allowed her to be in charge, and she pretended to pick scholarly students, when she really had other plans in mind. She assured him she was choosing the cream of the crop, but she was actually just selecting the perfect spiritual conduits for her little ghostly experiment.”

  “How was she able to summon famous spirits such as Beethoven?”

  “She’s a skilled psychic. She was determined to reach all the great minds and let them continue their work through you.”

  “She’s crazy.”

  “Perhaps, but she is gone now.”

  “You know, nothing against classical music or anything, but the idea of Beethoven cra
wling around inside me, playing me like one of his symphonies, is a little creepy.”

  “I imagine it would make one uneasy. I actually accompanied him. He basically walked your body to the piano room and used your fingers to practice his old music and create new melodies. He couldn’t resist playing some of his famous tunes. Sometimes he’d lose the connection, though, and you woke up.”

  “Yeah, I remember that all too well. Do you know if Miss Shila recorded those possessed concertos?”

  “As far as I know, she has a record of them. With your hands, he jotted his new works on paper, then handed them to Miss Shila. He is truly gifted, and she seemed amazed. One of his new songs was so sad and haunting, the most beautiful thing I’ve ever heard.”

  “Great. So I was possessed by one ghost while another benevolent one was trying to make my life a living hell because he wants revenge on Isabella. Possessed by one entity, haunted by another. My, how I love this place.”

  “I’m sorry King Geoffrey focuses so much negative energy on you.”

  “I come from Isabella’s bloodline, and she’s the source of his fury.”

  “You are right. Hopefully, we can rid this place of him soon. Perhaps someone can kick his face and send him pecking.”

  “Nice try,” I said, laughing at his slang, “but I think you mean butt and packing.”

  “Hmm. That does not sound very nice at all.”

  Again, I broke into laughter, a bit louder this time. “I’ve gotta give you credit for trying, William,” I said.

  “Thank you.”

  He walked me into an open library, where I instantly spotted Isabella sitting at a desk with her back to us, her delicate fingers sweeping across the pages of the book laid out before her. Scrolls sat at her feet in disorganized piles, and a stack of books lay abandoned by her chair.

  “She’s been at it for hours,” murmured William.

  At the sound of William’s whisper, her flipping stopped, and she glanced up and over her shoulder at us. When she saw me, she stood and offered an enormous smile that mirrored my own. “Hello, luv,” she said.