Saundra Mitchell - Mistwalker

Opening a fat, black volume, Grey smiled. “If I say seventeen, will you ask me how long?” Ghostly brows dancing, he raised the book he was holding so I could see the cover. White hands clasped a red apple.

I stared at him. “Are you for real?”

Amusement played on his face. It lifted the curve of his brows and the curl of his lips. He approached me, closing his finger in the middle of the book. “One hundred seventeen, more or less. I’ve been dead for the last hundred, so I can’t accurately account for them.”

I took Twilight from him, turning it over. It was the real thing. It had a signature in the front, looping across the title page. It made no sense at all. Waving it at him, I asked, “You get to the bookstore real regular?”

“No. I can’t leave the island.”

“Then where’d you get this?”

It wasn’t right, something real and new being here. I looked at the shelves again, and yeah, he had his dime novels and the fancy leather classics. But other sections bristled with brand-new books. He had The Hunger Games and Freedom, right next to a copy of The Devil in the White City and The Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks.

Slipping his hands into his pockets, Grey came to stand beside me. His shoulder brushed mine, and he slipped Middlesex from the shelf. His fingers drifted through it, pale ghosts on the pages. “I can have anything I want, Willa.”

It sounded like a curse the way he said it. Like it was a knife pushed between bone and dragged hard through his fleshy parts. Shivering, I put the book down and considered him. “How?”

“I ask for it.”

Grey gestured at the stairs, which were suddenly present again. Tucking the book beneath his arm, he started up and just expected me to follow. So I stood at the bottom and waited for him to turn around.

“Maybe you could answer me without all the cryptic woo-la-la?”

“Before I go to bed at night,” he said, then leaned against the rail, interrupting himself. “Forgive me for skipping my bedchamber. I wouldn’t feel right accepting female callers there.”

Impatient, I leaned against the rail on my end too. I was fed up. If he was real, he was gonna be real. He was the one who talked all big about being completely honest with each other. Lifting my chin, I said, “Whatever, Grey. You were saying?”

“I think about what I want, and in the morning, it’s on my breakfast plate. I often wish for music-box parts. But sometimes I ask for something new to read. Sometimes today’s newspaper. Once, I asked for a way to see the world beyond the island. I expected a telescope.”

“What did you get?” I asked.

“The Internet.” He gestured at a desk that hadn’t been there a moment before. A laptop gleamed there, a thousand times nicer than the beat-up desktop my whole family shared.

I found myself walking toward him. “How’s that working out for you?”

“Not well,” he admitted. Holding his elbow out, he waited for me to take it. Then he glided up the stairs with me, his feet barely making a sound. “When I turn it on, it displays newspapers and nothing more. There’s war everywhere. Homicides in Baltimore. Missing children, State Fair disasters, a woman who’s grown the state’s largest pumpkin . . .”

Flooded with realization, I said, “It only shows you the news. A way to see the world outside the island.”

“Precisely.”

Grey pushed open a hatch, and wind swept over us. Cold and strong, it tried to keep us from climbing onto the beacon platform. We pushed back, and I caught my breath. I was surrounded by the sea. It was green and endless, stretching in every direction.

There was nothing between me and the ocean but air. Nothing split my vision of it. For a screwed-up second, I wondered what would happen if I dived into it. If I’d hit the water and turn into foam.

“Penny for your thoughts,” Grey said. Even when he stood away from me, his voice got close.

“I love this.” Then, before he got any ideas, I added, “The water. This is most of the world, you know. From space, it’s sea and more sea, with a little bit of land to break it up.”

Grey’s expression shimmered. “From space?”

I leaned over the rail, pointing to the sky. It had started to turn, purple in the east and crimson in the west. Red sky at night, a sailor’s delight. “From the moon. We went there. Lots of times. We have pictures from there.”

The air sizzled. Grey leaned with me, turning his silver face to the sky. “Pictures from the moon . . .”

“You like astronomy?” I asked.

He didn’t look over. His faint smile twisted, into something painful and staid. “I like any view that’s not this one.”

A bunch of gears clacked behind me, and the beacon simmered to life. Starting dim, it spun slowly, growing brighter with each pass. It shocked me, how much heat it threw off. My back stung with it.

“It’s not so bad,” he said softly.

He looked across the water to my village. I followed his gaze, and I don’t know what he saw. What moved in him when he looked at it.

But to me, it was beautiful. My heart wrenched, wistful. Weirdly homesick. Because it all looked perfect. Nothing to care about from this high up, nothing bad ever happened in that little town. They sailed home on glassy seas with full pots. Everything they planned happened the way they hoped.

Grey put a hand on my back. Its chill chased away the heat from the light. “Willa?”

“What do you know, anyway?” I asked.

Quiet, Grey ticked his tongue against his teeth. Then, he sat on the rail. He reached for me with his wispy fingers, curling them gently against my chin. He was still only shades of grey, but there was a light in his eyes. A dark spark that reacted in the shadows, leaping up.

Finally, he parted his lips and whispered, “I know you’re not alone.”

That touch stayed on my skin. It crept into my bones and tightened around me like a fist. As I walked home, I didn’t look back. I felt Grey, on that island, watching me. I knew he was there; knew he could see me.

From that lighthouse, he saw me. That lighthouse, where nothing but a fall stood between him and the whole ocean. Where some kind of spell brought him everything he wanted. As I slipped into a quiet house, I thought hard at the kitchen. I dared it to give me a turkey dinner, to put Levi in the chair across from mine.

But my kitchen was cold. Dark. Quiet. Thick clouds hung in the windows. It wasn’t even bright enough for shadows. Opening the fridge, I stood there in a cold glow. I pulled my phone from my pocket and sent a text to Bailey. It was a whisper into nothing, and she didn’t answer.

Helping myself to cold chicken and old potato salad, I made myself a plate and sat down alone. I rifled through the mail. The mortgage I ignored, and I tossed the light bill aside. Those weren’t for me, not anymore. Neither was the coupon for a tune-up or a catalog for mail-order clothes.

At the bottom of the stack, I found an open envelope from an insurance company. There was a letter inside, and it caught my eye because it said SETTLEMENT ENCLOSED. Stapled to a letter, a receipt fluttered when I pulled it free. It was made out to the estate of Levi Matthew Dixon.

My dinner turned to cold weight in my belly. No wonder Daddy didn’t want my money. I killed his son and paid a year of house payments all at the same time. Suddenly, I wasn’t surprised that he couldn’t look at me anymore.

I dumped my plate in the trash. I about escaped the kitchen, but Daddy came in the back door. He brought the ocean with him, the smell of it on his wet clothes. He brought the bitter, ashy scent of cigarette smoke, too. It trailed after him like a cloak.