Клаудия Грэй: Afterlife

But thinking of Lucas reminded me of the dilemma before him.

How can I ask him to face immortality, when it’s the last thing he ever wanted?

I decided that I needed to be solid for a while. Often it made me feel steadier about things, and there was just something comforting about being able to hug yourself. So I drifted up to the records room and began to take shape.

By that time of night, everyone else was in bed, so the records room was deserted.The traps had all been moved to the lower levels of the school, hidden in trunks; the room was just our hangout once more. Patrice’s German textbooks lay in the center of the beanbag chair, and Vic had left behind one of his hula — girl ties. Smiling slightly, I removed the brick in the wall where we’d hidden my coral bracelet — And a sick, horrible tidal pull seized me.

A trap! I tried to claw at the windowsill, the stones of the wall, anything, but I couldn’t solidify my hands. My bracelet had been taken out of its 21J cubbyhole, leaving the greenish copper trap in its place; my jet brooch was with Lucas, sound asleep, far away. I tried thinking of him as my anchor — of any of the other places I could go — but it was too late. The trap was too close, and I’d practically put my hand right into it. As I began slipping toward the shimmering sinkhole, I tried one last time to call out to Lucas — but I could only just manage to think his name before everything went black.

It was like sinking into hot tar. I couldn’t materialize, couldn’t dematerialize. I had no sense of the world around me, or whether I was anyplace in either the mortal or ghostly worlds. After I’d died, there had been a moment like this — and again when I had first traveled to the land of lost things but those terrible, depthless voids had lasted for only a second. This stretched on, and on, and on. A suffocation of the soul, made more horrible by fear.

No wonder they go crazy, I thought wildly, recalling the many shrieking spirits I’d sensed within Evernight’s traps. It’s going to drive me crazy, too, any second, and I’ve only been in here a few minutes — or has it been longer? Would I even know?Is this eternity? Is this the death beyond death?

Make it stop, Samuel had said. Make it stop. The ghost within him — the one that had been trapped like this — had lost the ability to think anything else. I would, too. Already I felt myself boiling down to the desperate instinct to escape, nothing more.

Then, in that formless void, a soft rectangle of light opened. I rushed toward it, not caring what it was or what it meant: It was something, in a world of nothing, and that was reason enough.

Then, in the frame of the rectangle, far bigger than life, I saw Mrs. Bethany.

“Miss Olivier.” She smiled as placidly as ever, but there was no mistaking the avid light in her eyes. “At last. I’ve been waiting for you.”

I COULDN’T LASH OUT; I COULDN’T ESCAPE. ALL I could do was stare up at Mrs. Bethany — at this moment, quite literally the only thing in my world.

“I had thought Mr. Ross would be the one to bring you to me,” she said. “But he was more devoted to you than I’d imagined. Then I finally found your little trinket in the records room — after weeks of searching — and realized how simple it would be to replace it with a trap and claim you for myself.”

She had always known about our visits to the records room. She had always known about me. “How did you know I was here at the school?”

Mrs. Bethany tilted her head, as though she felt sorry for me. “Based on your past behavior, it was natural to assume that where Mr. Ross was, you would be also.”

I hated her so much at that moment, I was surprised the trap didn’t shatter. My anger was hot enough to melt metal. to break stone. “I’m the reason you gave my parents jobs here in the first place, aren’t I? You set us up from the beginning.”

“I gave you every chance, you know.” She sounded calm. Satisfied. “If I enjoyed victimizing the helpless. I’d hardly have founded a school such as Evernight. Furthermore, I quite liked your parents; they’re fine teachers. So I felt bound in honor to explore every other possibility. I changed the admissions policy in order to bring in students attached to other wraiths, irn case one of those spirits might work equally well. Whenever you deviated from the path your parents had in mind for you, I urged you back onto that path. This summer, I told you that throwing away your chances for the sake of love wasn’t worthwhile. But you would never Listen. You ran headlong toward your ultimate destiny. And now I am free to act as I see fit.”

“You don’t want to be a vampire anymore,”l said. “But if you use me for this — you’ll be worse than any vampire.”

“I will be alive.” Mrs. Bethany displayed not a flicker of hesitation. “An old betrayal will at last be set right. I will be able to die as I ought to have — as a human woman. And you will be no less dead than you already are.”

A swirl of light, and the world took shape around me. At first I thought myself free, and prepared to vanish or run or do whatever I could — but 219 then I saw where I was.

Mrs. Bethany stood in front of me, trap in hand, in the middle of a room that shimmered in every color, floor, ceiling, walls. I realized that it had the exact same dimensions as the records room, but instead of bare stone and dust, this glittered, deep and translucent. Mother — of — pearl, I realized. And the copper roof on the south tower — the strange sensation I’d often detected from the empty room above my parents’ apartment — she’d brought the trap into the other tower, into this place. And now I knew what it was.

“You turned this entire room into a trap,” I said. Already I knew I wouldn’t be able to get out.

“My theory is that you can provide the power for many of us to revive,” Mrs. Bethany said. “You will be returning life to nearly a dozen individuals, Miss Olivier. Perhaps that is some small consolation.”

I backed away from her. The mother — of — pearl felt slippery against my feet — but no, that Wasn’t it. I couldn’t be solid or insubstantial; I couldn’t float, couldn’t run. Everything was in — between, robbing me of the abilities I could use in either state. Although I had a sense of place within this trap, it was still a trap, eating away at my very sense of reality and self. It just took longer. A slower death. No wonder I’d heard the wraiths screaming.. .

More gently, Mrs. Bethany said, “Think of it like being an organ donor.”

I had been able to hear the wraiths screaming, even when they were trapped….

With everything I had, with every ounce of strength, I screamed, both aloud and within my soul, “Help me! “In the scream I put the place I stood, Mrs. Bethany in front of me, everything I thought and felt and knew. The effort alone seemed to make me less than I’d been before — as though I had screamed out part of myself.

“The room is soundproofed,” Mrs. Bethany said. “No one can hear.”

Not with their ears, maybe. But if Maxie or Christopher detected it, or if Lucas could hear me within his dreams — A rap on the door startled me into hope. But Mrs. Bethany didn’t seem surprised. She simply held up the trap and opened it, then set it on the floor. The grayish swimming void unfolded before me again, and I desperately tried to keep from sinking within it. As I flailed about wildly, unable to resist, I heard a murmur of voices — hardly the rescue mission I’d been hoping for. o The trap swung shut. For a couple seconds, I felt a dizzying rush of relief, and I tried to make sense of what I could see. We remained in the mother — of — pearl room, but the door had already been closed again, cutting off my chance at escape. And now Mrs. Bethany and I weren’t alone. Half a dozen vampires ringed the room, each of them staring at me as eagerly as Mrs. Bethany had. Most were students; a couple were teachers. None of them were people I knew very well, but I knew one thing — they were ancient and powerful. Mrs. Bethany had chosen her accomplices well.