Chris Green - Only the Good Die Young

She tried to smile as she inspected the damage, blowing it off, but I could tell she was calling on her patience.

I said, “This was my first time manipulating something physical like that. I need to refine my technique.”

“You will.” She looked me over good, from head to toe. “You’ve got a colorful glow. What happened tonight?”

Oh, was I a shade warmer than my usual gray? Fake Dean had probably gotten something started in me before his star place floor had cracked open and swallowed me up.

“I can’t explain any glow I might have,” I said. “All I can say is that tonight was… interesting.”

“How interesting?”

I figured I should start off with the Edgetts, so I began with Noah and Wendy’s fight in the kitchen, their older sister Farah’s appearance, then built up to big brother Gavin.

Naturally, I left out the part in which he was much more attractive in real life than in a picture. That wasn’t important.

In the end, a superficial explanation wasn’t enough for Amanda Lee.

“Were you capable of intuiting anything from him?”

“Are you asking if I could touch him and read his mind or something?”

“You don’t have that capability?”

I didn’t say much about that, because earlier in the day, I’d caught only a flash from Amanda Lee’s closed mind. And it wasn’t like I’d had contact with any other humans to know if I could infiltrate their thoughts or feelings.

“I’m finding out what I’m capable of by the hour,” I said. “But I didn’t have a chance to get real close to Gavin. Just from seeing their family dynamics, though, I can tell you he’s definitely the boss of the house. He’s also more perceptive than your average bear.”

“What do you mean by that?”

I guess Amanda Lee wanted me to be more plainspoken. “It was almost like he knew I was there, watching them.” I described when he’d walked over to me at the screen door, where I’d been standing, as if he’d vibed me. “Wendy might be sensitive, too.”

Amanda Lee didn’t say anything. The curtain was draped over the back of her so I couldn’t see into her house, and I felt like she was in one world and I was in another.

But wasn’t that the truth?

Finally, she spoke. “So that’s all you got from him. Superficial impressions.”

“Pretty much. I was about to go into the mansion when…” All right. How should I explain the Dean part?

Here went nothing. “I think I ran into the angel of death tonight.”

Maybe I should’ve finessed that a little more, because Amanda Lee literally reared back, her hand to her chest.

“He obviously didn’t get me,” I said, trying to chill her out.

“Why would you think it was an angel of death?”

“For one thing, he was hoping I’d go into a light.” I described the lotus pool, the purple, the stars, the nonexistent floor that’d still managed to hold me up. I even told her about how I’d felt human again, flesh and blood.

A little too much of both, really.

Still, I didn’t inform her of the effect he’d had on me. Between fake Dean and Gavin, she was going to think I was some kind of undependable horndog or something.

Even so, I was actually enjoying the possibilities of what I could do; I was feeling my supernatural power more and more as each night passed. And I was coming to realize that Amanda Lee was right—I really could make a difference.

I had the ability to settle scores now.

As a person, I hadn’t done much of anything in life. Who knew that dying would bring such opportunity?

After I told Amanda Lee about how the angel had assumed Dean’s appearance, she graduated to looking absolutely horrified.

“That’s how he was going to lure you into the light?” she asked. “By pretending he was the boy you loved?”

“See, that’s the thing.” I shook my ghost head. “This angel, or what-have-you, was honest about not being Dean. I mean, he seemed tickled that I was responding to how he looked and everything, but he kept going back and forth with actually acting like him. I think he was getting his jollies by toying with me.”

Amanda Lee frowned. I was coming to learn that her frowns were more serious than the others I’d encountered in life. She frowned only when something struck her as pretty bad.

A second later, she was back to normal, smiling at me like a cool mom. “The most important thing is that you got away from him.”

“Yeah,” I said, making like it was no biggie. “I managed. He finally got frustrated with how I wasn’t giving in to him and… Well, he might’ve actually just dismissed me out of sheer irritation. But whatever works to my benefit, you know?”

“And he couldn’t force you into the light.” Was there a thread of respect winding through her words?

Excellent.

“That was my impression.” I paused. “Truthfully, I can’t tell you much more about that star place. If it’s above or below us, or if it’s a plane that comes and goes in the blink of an eye.”

She fixed that clear gaze on me. “No matter what it is, I’m happy that you’re back here, safe.”

Just as I thought that maybe Amanda Lee would invite me in for the equivalent of ghost biscuits and tea, she gestured toward her front door.

“To the casita?” she asked.

All right.

She stepped away from the window, the curtain dropping back over it. A tiny breeze blew through the hole in the glass, ruffling the material.

I had to be more careful. Not spaz out so much with things like, oh, gardening shears and some such.

After I flew around the house, I saw Amanda Lee standing outside, below the glow of her porch lamp on her pink sweet pea–lined walkway.

When she caught sight of me, she began strolling toward my casita.

“While you were gone, I did more thinking.”

Was she going to tell me that she’d been overreacting earlier when she mentioned that she and her friend Jon wanted Elizabeth’s killer to pay an eye for an eye?

Nope.

“So… about haunting a confession out of him.” She was talking about Gavin, but just didn’t want to give a name to the guy she believed was a killer. “I think I know a good way to go about that.”

“By seeing if he’s guilty first. We already agreed on that.”

“Certainly.” She pushed open the casita door and I followed her in. “You shouldn’t doubt that this will be a genuinely righteous haunting. But before now, I wasn’t certain about the details of driving him to a confession.”

This woman was a hard-core general, by God.

She went over to the computer, turning it on, and I felt the needling buzz from it.

“Despite the hour,” she said, “I called Jon in England to talk, and he mentioned something worrisome. He wanted to know if there was any way we might end up being connected to this haunting.”

“You and Jon?”

“Yes. We can’t afford for anyone to know we would be behind a confession from the killer. In fact, we need that confession to seem as unforced by human influence as possible. The haunting has to seem natural, with no ties to Jon or me whatsoever.”

I prepared to ask “Why?” again, but Amanda Lee raised an eyebrow.

“You’re thinking like a human who doesn’t know spirits exist. If you were the killer, and you came to a point where you realized that a ghost was after you and haunting you because of a crime you committed, what would you do? And don’t allow anything to inhibit your imagination.”

She’d never really asked me to strategize in major supernatural terms before. “Since Gavin has money, he can afford just about anything, so…”

Amanda Lee jumped in. “What if he got ahold of someone who could send other ghosts to stop the one that’s haunting him?”