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Lucas took a deep, shuddering breath. “Thank you.” It was the first time I’d ever seen him drop his guard around Balthazar. They looked at each other without any rancor; the jealousy and defensiveness between them had vanished.
Balthazar walked around the side of the bed and brushed my hair back from my face. He bent over and kissed my forehead; as he did, he shuddered, and I could tell he was struggling against tears. In an instant, that had passed, and he was once again purposeful and solemn. Balthazar pulled back the quilt and bundled the sheet more tightly around me before picking me up in his arms.
They’re going to bury me. If they bury me, I can’t ever return! I didn’t let myself admit that I might not be able to go back no matter what. All I could think was that I had to prevent them somehow from doing this. Please, Balthazar, Lucas, stop. You have to stop!
Instead, Balthazar took me a few steps from the bed. His eyes were troubled, and he couldn’t quite look down at what he was doing. He whispered, “Cover her face.” Lucas, his face drawn, pulled the sheet up over my head. Once that was done, Balthazar seemed more focused. “Is there anything you want to—is there anything you want Bianca to have with her?”
Lucas took a deep, shuddering breath. “Yeah.”
He walked to the cardboard dresser where I kept my few things. As he opened the top drawer, I saw two of my only three pieces of jewelry: the jet brooch he’d given me in Riverton when we were first falling in love and the red coral bracelet I’d received as a present on my last birthday. Lucas’s hand closed around them both, and I knew he meant to put them in my hands so I’d have something of him with me for eternity.
Don’t let him do that. You have to keep those with you!
Startled, I looked around again for the source of that other voice. Not only could I not see it, but the world around me also faded again, threatening to disintegrate into the bluish mist that clouded my vision.
Who was that? The only person who was supposed to speak to anybody after they died was God, and I felt completely positive that God’s first message to me from the Great Beyond wouldn’t be telling me to hang on to my jewelry.
Still, that was the only guidance I’d received so far. I figured I had better listen.
As Lucas picked up the jewelry, I tried to say, Don’t. Leave them behind. He hesitated, but I couldn’t be sure if that was my influence or not. What else could I do?
Then I remembered how it had felt when Balthazar walked through me downstairs. For a moment, I had felt every emotion within him as intimately as I felt my own. I didn’t know if Balthazar had sensed anything in return—as upset as he’d been, he might not have noticed. It seemed worth a try.
I focused tightly on Lucas, told myself how badly I wanted to be with him, and then—it was like I zoomed forward, almost too fast to see, and then I was with Lucas, all around him, within him. His grief welled inside me, so powerful that it blackened my vision and made me feel as though I were sinking. The yearning I felt—the sense of isolation and futility—was almost too overpowering to bear.
He shivered, as if from the cold. “It’s like she’s still here,” he whispered. “When I look at the things I gave her—Bianca’s so close.” Lucas simply put the bracelet and brooch back in the drawer. “I can’t give them up.”
“Okay.”
My focus shifted, returning to Balthazar. What I saw then burned its way into my spirit, a dark mark I’d never be able to forget: Balthazar, standing in his black T-shirt and slacks as though he were part of the night, cradling my dead body in his arms. The white sheet shrouded me almost completely, save one hand that dangled downward and the fall of my long red hair.
This is real. This is absolutely real.
I’m dead.
Balthazar said, “Do you have the tools we’ll need?”
“In the garage.” Lucas hunched over, like he was trying to protect himself. “They—they have shovels.”
Shovels? Shovels. I don’t want to see this. I want to be somewhere else—
Then I was someplace else—nowhere else, sort of. The world once again held nothing more than blue-gray mist. Amid this fog, I was lost and alone. Although I despised that feeling, I could endure it more easily than I could endure the sight of Lucas and Balthazar digging my grave.
In the mist, a face began to take shape. A girl, perhaps my age, with short, fair hair—whom I’d seen many times before.
“The wraith.” My words sounded real to me now, although I didn’t think any living person could hear me. “You’re the wraith. I didn’t recognize you before.”
“I’m hardly the only wraith,” she said. Her smile was thin and sort of smug; right now, I wanted nothing more than to slap it off her face. “And, yeah, we sound different on the other side, don’t we? Like ourselves.”
“What’s happening to me?” I demanded. “Am I really dead? If so, are you keeping me from—from going to heaven or into the light or just going to sleep, whatever it is people are supposed to do after they die?”
She stroked the mist around us with a wide sweep of her arms, clearing the swirling fog. “There are plenty of choices, you know. And I’m not holding you back from any of them.”
Now that the fog had cleared, I realized I could see beneath us. We seemed to be suspended above the trees outside the house. Movement below caught my attention—Lucas and Balthazar, driving their shovels into the earth, hard at work digging my grave.
“This was my dream.” If only I could have wept. I needed to cry so badly. “One of the dreams I had about you—Do you remember them?”
“Of course not.” She looked almost offended. “They were your dreams. Your visions of the future. I wouldn’t have anything to do with them. If you saw me, it’s the same way you saw them—as part of what’s to come.”
