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A choice?
I had made the choice to attach myself to the Netherworld. Without coming here, I never would have received the gifts I hold. I hadn’t been born with them. I had obtained them after the car accident.
The Netherworld was what changed my life.
If I hadn’t wanted to stay in the mystical world and cross over, I would’ve been the same ‘ole normal me as before the accident. But I had accepted my death, even if I’d been saved before I could cross over. Therefore, I became bound to the Netherworld.
In the Netherworld, I held the power to make a choice that huge, and that made something supernatural happen in the real world. If I had accepted my death anywhere but here, nothing would happen. But standing in the mystical world—the place between here and beyond—was exactly where magical things happened. I took the Netherworld with me, because I had accepted it into my soul.
I had made the choice.
With that simple understanding of how it all worked and why, I gasped and snapped my head toward Nettie. Her eyes all but sparkled as she inclined her head. In outright urgency and tears flooding my eyes, I dropped Kipp’s hand. I stood on my tiptoes and grasped his face. “Do you want to live again?”
Both eyebrows rose in surprise. “You know I do.”
My hands trembled around his face as the branches of a tree behind Kipp swayed in the wind. Nettie wasn’t wrong—the answer was so damn simple that I wanted to scream out at how hard we had made it.
Why hadn’t I figured it out? After all I’d seen and learned about my abilities, I should’ve known better. I should have realized that only one thing could save Kipp—himself.
My body vibrated in hope. “Tell me.”
Kipp’s eyes softened with his tender smile. He placed his hands over top of mine, leaning down toward me. “I want to live again.”
The second the words left his mouth, a rush of wind fluttered the hair around my face, and his eyes went huge. He jerked out of my hold and glanced down at his hands, gazing over them before his focus jerked to me. “What….”
I stood, unable to move, unable to speak. I was only able to watch as Kipp began to shimmer with bright colors around him. Flickers of white and blue piercing light streamed around his body through the dark night.
The wind picked up, and I gathered my hair into one hand not to lose sight of him. I drew in a harsh breath, wrapping my free arm around my waist as tears rushed down my cheeks and the scent of the fresh trees engulfed me.
Kipp stared down at his fading body and I witnessed his confusion from the surprise flashing over his features. He didn’t understand what Nettie had said without saying it, but I did. It was the same power within myself.
The power to fix Kipp wasn’t something magical.
It was the strength within a soul.
Now it all made sense to me—when Kipp had been shot, he had come into the Netherworld to make that final decision. Live or die. Perhaps he accepted his death, but wanted to solve the Hannah Reid case, too. And that’s why he’d become a ghost in the first place. He needed to help Hannah cross with peace to settle his soul. Maybe he would’ve died after he solved her case, but his love for me trapped him.
The time he wanted to live again had been made in the real world. He had never told me in the Netherworld he wanted to live. He told me at a time when that admission wouldn’t matter. The decision couldn't be made in the real world. It had to be decided in the Netherworld.
Kipp had to choose to live.
The bright light mixed with purple blasts of color and when Kipp lifted his head, tears filled his eyes. His lips slowly parted and the wind whipped around us with such force, it caused branches to fall the ground behind him.
His whisper escaped, “Tess…”
Chapter Eight
Kipp had vanished…
I exhaled, unable to look away from the spot Kipp had winked out of existence. I stared at the pavement where he had stood in wonderment if he would reappear or if something would happen. “He’s gone.”
Had it actually worked?
As much as I had rationalized that I found the answer in my mind, and believed I had solved Kipp’s situation, and had seen it with my own eyes, I couldn’t accept it as true. For all we’d gone through to have him reconnect with his body, maybe part of me thought we’d never succeed.
The warm wind brushed over my skin, my body shivering and trembling, yet more in shock than at the cold presence of the Netherworld. I finally tore my focus away from the pavement and turned to Nettie. She looked blurry through my teary eyes, so I wiped my face frantically. “Did it work?”
She looked over my shoulder, then down the dark street behind her before she said to me, “He’s not here any longer, so I’m assuming so.”
