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“Many claim it,” the vampire said. “Many lie.”
“One tells the truth,” she said. A quick tug at the neck of her cape revealed an old scar upon her throat. “I was rescued, then. But I have always known that I am prepared. If a vampire were to bite me, and kill me, I would rise again, undead.”
The vampire took a step closer, disbelieving. “This is a trick.”
“No trick.”
“You hate our kind. Why would you become one of us?”
“I need to be free of human ties, human cares.” Mrs. Bethany’s expression faltered, but only for a moment. “I — I need to travel beyond the reach of my mortal means.”
That won her a burst of laughter from the vampire. “Mad. You’ve gone mad.” She said, “Change me and see.”
The vampire sprang at her, taking both of them down to the ground in one pounce. Mrs. Bethany didn’t resist and didn’t scream, not even when her blood spurted onto the white snow, steaming.
“Revenge,” Christopher said, “is a powerful motivator.”
The next place he showed me was obviously someplace a lot warmer. A palm frond brushed against the window and tropical flowers were piled high in vases. We seemed to be in an island villa, one that might have been very nice before it had been trashed. Furniture was upended, mirrors broken. Two dead bodies lay on the floor, and Mrs. Bethany stood in one corner, taking in the scene with some satisfaction. She wiped blood from her mouth with the back of her hand.
“She got them back,” I said. Despite the horror of the murder scene before us, I couldn’t help feeling like those guys had it coming.
Christopher nodded. “But at what cost? Her life. Perhaps more important, her mission. Her soul.”
“Where were you during all this?” I said. “Why didn’t you appear to her? If she’d known you were a ghost, that she could maybe talk to you — ”
“I could not yet appear to her.” The Caribbean scene with Mrs. Bethany faded, and we were once again in the land of lost things. Were we in the same location? Our surroundings had changed; instead of the city, we stood out in the open, in a desert too stark to be beautiful. Sunlight beat down hotly, and I noticed a scorpion scuttling across the ground. Christopher sat on a low, flat rock; his handsome profile was outlined against the dark stone, and for the ftrst time, I recognized him as the silhouette on Mrs. Bethany’s desk. “As you know, learning to use wraith powers takes some time — and far more time for most than it did for you. By the point when I could have appeared to my wife, she had learned to hate the wraiths as the natural enemy of the vampire. She had shown me, through her actions, that her hate was stronger than her love.”
I wanted to argue with him, but I remembered how hard it had been for me to appear to my parents. That fear of rejection was powerful. And as Lucas’s situation showed, not every person was strong enough to love despite the change.
Lucas, I thought. Of course Mrs. Bethany had been sympathetic to Lucas. Of course she reached out to him and understood him. She had been exacdywhere he was. But that didn’t make her generous and good. It just made her somebody who hated Black Cross a lot. He needed to realize that. and the sooner the better.
“I have to go,” I said. “I’ll come back, okay?”
I’d expected Christopher to protest, or throw some ice — storm tantrum to keep me here, but instead he kept gazing at the scorpion as it skittered upon the sand. “Go,” he said. “I am weary.”
Watching Mrs. Bethany’s death — even as a long — distant memory — had been as hard for him as it had been for me to see Lucas die. I put one hand on his shoulder. “Thank you for showing me.”
“Go,” he said, more quietly, and placed his face in his hands.
I concentrated on a place, on the records room, and traveled through the blue until it materialized around me. Patrice was up there alone, studying her German; she started when I appeared, but only for a second. “Hey, there you are. Lucas was getting worried.”
“I’m going to him right away,” I promised, going to the loose brick in the wall and retrieving my bracelet from behind it. When I’d put it around my wrist, I took completely solid form and felt an enormous wave of relief. “I just need a second to be … less ghostly. If that makes sense.”
“Whatever works,” Patrice said, not unkindly. “But he’s got a test this afternoon, remember? He’ll do better if he knows you’re around and okay.”
“I know it.” Though I hated to give up the bracelet so soon, I decided I’d better. “Okay, fine. Come with me?”
“Sure. I have to head down to class anyway.”
I trailed behind her as vapor the whole way down the stairs. “Could you keep out of my hair, please?” she muttered. “You’re awfully damp sometimes. I’ll frizz.”
“This isn’t easy. you know.”
“Neither is fixing my hair.”
I wanted to laugh, but just then — as we were reentering the classroom area — we heard the commotion. People shouting, shoes squeaking against the floor, the thud of a body against the waH — “A fight,” Patrice said.
“Lucas.” I knew it without having to be told.
