Chris Green - Only the Good Die Young

It retreated immediately, and went to Amanda Lee.

Below me, I could only watch in terror as she started moving like a puppet, disconnecting from Wendy’s and Noah’s hands, grabbing the pen, setting it to the paper like she couldn’t control the writing.

The pen swerved, creating sloppy words. Her breathing was quick, and I knew she wasn’t the one writing at all.

You will pay, the note said.

Shivering from the electric chill the other entity had sent through me, I saw a dark haze around Amanda Lee. What was it?

Before I could recognize any identifying features, it darted up and zoomed toward me again, still harrowingly unfamiliar, then cut through me like a blade this time.

I screamed, the sensation of a sharp edge digging into me, burying itself, energy splattering like blood.

Imitating my human death.

Amanda Lee’s voice rang out. “In the name of all that’s holy, leave us!”

It didn’t take more than that, and the thing whirled away from me as my essence wailed, feeling like ripped flesh.

With a crash, it shattered the nearest window, the curtains flaring out, the wind moaning in its aftermath.

It was like it’d done what it’d set out to do, and that was that.

The room was silent as the Edgetts gripped the table and I slowly came back together, shaking. Had Wendy been right? Had Amanda Lee opened a portal and let something far worse than me in, even though the other ghosts said meeting bad spirits didn’t happen that often?

Maybe it just took a séance.

Farah went slack and Noah hugged her to him. Gavin slowly stood.

“It’s out,” he said to Amanda Lee. “Will that be all?”

My thoughts were fuzzy, but even I knew that Gavin was wrong. Whatever had flown through the window wasn’t me. The family was far worse off now.

Amanda Lee clung to her Virginia accent, even as her voice quavered. “Let me fortify your house, just to be—”

“No. We’re done here. Thank you, Ms. Dantès.”

I thought for sure that Amanda Lee was about to tell him she’d messed up, but Gavin stepped away from the table, indicating she could leave.

“You did what you came here to do,” he said. “We’ll be fine.”

Amanda Lee paused, then cut her losses and gathered her crystal ball into her arms.

Wendy just stared at the broken window.

There was a movie I’d seen on Amanda Lee’s TV after I’d been pulled from my loop. The Silence of the Lambs . Jodie Foster, awesomely grown-up from Freaky Friday , had been an FBI trainee on the trail of a serial killer, and in one scene, she’d gone into a warehouse, where she’d found a jar with a head in it.

She’d had the same enthralled, fearful look on her face Wendy had right now.

As Amanda Lee left the room, she passed Constanza, who’d come to the entrance. The maid produced a small hissing sound as Amanda Lee walked by, hugging the crystal ball, ignoring her. Or maybe not hearing her because of the worry of what she’d accidentally unleashed.

When the front door shut and Amanda Lee was gone, Constanza talked calmly to the family.

“You don’t like her, Mr. Gavin. Me, either. So we let her go. But she was correct in one matter. Let me call someone who can make the house safe right away so the spirit never visits again.”

“It’s finished, Constanza,” Gavin said, his gaze dark.

“I know of a woman from my church,” she said doggedly. “I saw what went out the window, and I must call her tonight so we never have to worry about this again.”

Even in my fear-lined state, I knew she was talking about getting a cleaner in here.

I took the quickest way out of the mansion to catch Amanda Lee—the broken window.

I didn’t even think about what might happen if that dark spirit was waiting outside. Didn’t even stop to remember how my new friends had told me that meeting bad ghosts was rare and, good God, what was this one doing here?

I exited just in time to see Amanda Lee’s car tear out of the driveway and onto the road. I had to haul ass, but as she squealed around a corner, I hitched onto her roof and hooked my essence into the thin crack that she’d left in her window.

Then I leaned against the glass, shaping part of myself into a fist and banging.

“Amanda Lee!”

When she heard me, she jumped in her seat and swerved the steering wheel, almost veering into the next lane, where a car was coming.

For an endless split second, it felt like this was a replay of that car accident hallucination I’d given her the other night, with the headlights coming straight at us… .

Amanda Lee hit the brakes, skidding to a beach-view turnoff near a guardrail, dust rising as she cut the engine and fell against the steering wheel.

Still against the window, I watched her weeping, her proud figure collapsed into an emotional mess. But I was weak enough to lose my posture, too. That dark spirit had scared me, and I was just now feeling it.

Sinking over the edge of the window, then down the inside of it, I hunkered into the backseat, letting Amanda Lee cry great wrenching sobs.

She spoke around them. “I have no idea what I let loose tonight… Goddamn it, how could I have been so arrogant?”

Because you always believe that your way is the best way, I thought. And it backfired.

I didn’t think I needed to tell her that, though.

She shook her head, swallowing, coming up to wipe a hand over her face and push off those glasses. “What did I do, Jensen? Oh God, Liz would hate me. I wouldn’t ever have summoned something that dark, even by mistake, when she was alive. I wouldn’t have gone to these lengths, but it’s just that…” She glanced in the rearview mirror as I rested in back. Her eyes were red. “Sometimes I’m the one who feels dead and emotionless without her here. I don’t even recognize myself anymore.”

She trailed a hand down her face so hard that she left long, faint red marks from her fingernails, like she was punishing herself. But she seemed to realize that she was crumbling, and she drew in a quivering breath, taking really good stock of me behind her in that mirror.

“But just look at you ,” she said. “You’ve lost all the color you had. Goddamn me, I’m so, so sorry.”

“I’m fine.” I’d been through worse.

“You’re barely fine. That… thing attacked you. It came out of nowhere.”

I didn’t tell her that I planned to make matters better by rising to the power lines in a minute, just for a mini-fill-up. And I wouldn’t stay too long here in the car with her because the cleaner was coming to the mansion, and I had one last chance at Gavin, because I was sure this ghost chaser would spirit-proof his office and car and wherever else he was going to be, too.

When Amanda Lee had calmed down, I injected some levelness back into our conversation. “Can you tell me what that dark thing was?”

“I don’t know. Maybe an entity that was attached to the property, a relative who’s still clinging to the family… I was going to ask if you saw more of it than I did. Did it look like it might be your fake Dean?”

“No.” Then again, how could I be sure? I had no idea what that “keeper, not a reaper” looked like under its facade.

She began shaking her head again and wouldn’t stop. “I opened a portal. When Wendy mentioned it to me before the séance, I was so sure I could keep everything under control, but something was waiting to come through. It happened so fast, and if that something hadn’t been hanging around…” A sob shuddered through her. “Do you think it was Liz, and she became so angry in the afterlife that she’s a dark sprit now?”