“Safe from what? They’re dead.”
He hesitated, then said softly, “There are predators.”
The last word sent a trickle down my spine. Suddenly this all felt vast and paralyzing, like realizing for the first time that death was real, and scarier and more complicated than I’d ever imagined.
Yamaraj leaned closer. “You’ll be okay, Lizzie. I can help you understand.”
“Thank you.” I reached out to take his hand.
At the spark of our fingers brushing, something went through my body, an ache, a longing. My heart beat sideways, and sudden colors wheeled across the sky, cutting the gray into tatters. For a moment I was back in reality, the rivers of black oil and red stars gone, like ghosts chased away by morning.
I pulled my hand away from him, and the gray world all came rushing back.
“Maybe this is too soon.” He looked down at his own fingers, which had sent that surge through me. “I should go.”
I swallowed, trying to speak. I wanted him to stay and tell me everything, but I also felt defenseless before all these changes—like the scar on my cheek, I was raw and new.
In the end all I could do was nod, and a moment later I was sitting alone on that tall sand dune, gasping fresh air, the sunrise pink and brilliant and warm on my skin.
“Shit a brick,” I said, staring at my hand. One touch had been enough to throw me back into reality.
My fingers went to my lips, and I sat there for a while, feeling alive for the first time in two days. Only a little piece of the afterworld’s cold remained, like a sliver of ice on my tongue.
* * *
My mother was stirring by the time I made it back to the room. My shoes and hair were full of sand, and sweat slicked my back inside my hoodie. But a shower could wait.
“Breakfast?” I asked as her eyes opened.
Mom nodded. “You must be starving. You hardly ate yesterday.”
She got up and ran a brush through her hair, and a minute later we were headed toward the motel diner. As we crossed the parking lot, an eighteen-wheeler rolled to a stop in one of the truck-sized spaces. I could feel its rumble through my feet and the heat of its engine against my skin, as if it were a monster beside us.
“You look kind of spacey,” my mother said.
“Not enough sleep.” Then I did the math. “Make that too much sleep.”
“Poor kiddo,” she said softly.
We went inside and studied the place mat menus, Mom smiling at how much I ordered. My body was really waking up now, wanting food and coffee and for the world to make sense again.
After the waitress had left us, I caught my mother staring at the stitches on my forehead. Then her eyes lingered on the place where the single tear I’d cried in the afterworld had left a tear gas burn on my left cheek.
I doubted she knew how often she did that. Would she keep doing it for the rest of her life?
But finally she turned from me to look out the window. “It’s so beautiful here. We should stop and see some of the sights.”
“Um, like the sand dunes?”
“Well, they’re kind of hard to miss. But there’s a ghost town up north of here. It’s called Chloride, because of a mining boom way back. There was a brochure in the room. Looked interesting.”
For a moment I thought of Tom’s face, and a shudder went through me. “No ghost towns, okay?”
She turned back from the window and saw my expression, then reached to take my hand.
“Of course not.” She was talking just above a whisper, like she didn’t want anyone else to hear. “Sorry I even mentioned that.”
“No, I’m fine, Mom. It’s just that . . .” These terrorists had tried to kill me but I’d gone to the land of the dead and now could see ghosts and apparently had acquired dangerous new powers and this boy, this boy had touched my fingertips—and they still tingled.
Plus, I really needed some better clothes.
“It’s okay,” my mother said. “We’ll just get you home.”
CHAPTER 9
AN HOUR LATER SOME TWO dozen authors had arrived. YA Drinks Night had taken over several tables, though these were populated only by handbags and empty glasses, as everyone was standing now.
Oscar had introduced Darcy around, as a writer whose debut novel featured a hot Vedic death god. Everyone smiled when they heard that phrase, or joked that they were dying to read it. Somehow reducing her book to a single phrase made talking about it less paralyzing. It gave Darcy a feeling of control, like knowing Rumpelstiltskin’s name.
Everyone was talking about their own work as well, and about the superpowers of their agents, the bloody-mindedness of copyeditors, and the perfidies of marketing departments. Darcy was swimming in a sea of publication, and all she wanted was to drown.
My first day in New York, she thought, a little giddy from her second Guinness.
“Are you Darcy Patel?” asked a young woman in a bright red fifties cocktail dress. “You signed with Paradox a couple of months ago, right?”
Darcy smiled. “That’s me. Afterworlds.”
“Sister debs!” the woman cried, and gathered Darcy into a breath-stopping hug.
When she let go, Darcy stumbled back a step. “Um, sorry?”
“I’m Class of Fourteen too! We’re sister debs!”
“Right.” Darcy wasn’t sure if “deb” was short for “debutante” or “debut author,” but they meant the same thing. “It’s nice to meet you.”
“I’m Annie Barber. Pretty stupid, right? I should have gone with a pen name.” She looked fearful, as if Darcy were going to revoke her publishing deal on the spot.
“I’ve always liked the name Annie,” Darcy said.
“Yeah, but ‘Barber’ sounds like . . . a barber. But at least I’m at the beginning of the alphabet, so I’ll get shelved at eye level. I’ve heard the end is okay too, because some people sit down and start at the end. It’s just the middle letters that everyone ignores.”
“Oh,” Darcy said, wondering if her middling last name had doomed her to shelving oblivion. “What’s your book called?”
“A Parliament of Secrets. Does that sound boring?”
“No, I love collective nouns. Like a parliament of owls, right?”
“Yes!” Annie’s face broke into a smile, and her phone came up. “I’m tweeting this.”
“Congratulations,” Darcy said. “On your book deal, I mean. Not on tweeting this.”
“I’m so glad I found you! We’ve been looking for more sister debs.”
“We?”
In answer, Annie propelled Darcy across the room to meet three more debutantes from the Class of 2014. They were all as bubbly as Annie, most of them meeting each other for the first time in person. They’d been on an email list together for months, exchanging advice and gossip and ironclad rules of publishing, none of which Darcy had ever heard before.
“If you don’t make a bestseller list in your first week, you’re doomed!” was one.
“Blurbs don’t work anymore!” was another.
“You should make sure that the quotable lines of dialogue in your book never exceed a hundred and forty characters!” seemed at best debatable.