But a trip to the mortuary was probably a regular event around here. There was more than one revolving door between the dead and the living as you made your way down these hallways. When you walked through the doors of County Care, your universe shrunk, smaller and smaller, until your whole world was your hallway, your nurse, and your eight-by-ten antiseptic peach of a room.
Once you walked in here, you didn’t care much about what happened out there. This place was a kind of in-between world. Especially since every time I took Aunt Prue’s hand, it felt like I ended up in another one.
Nothing seemed real anymore, which was ironic because outside these walls, things were more real than they’d ever been. And if I didn’t figure out what to do about a few of them—like a powerful Lilum from the Demon world, an unpaid blood debt that was destroying Gatlin, and a few larger worlds beyond—there weren’t going to be any antiseptic peaches left to call home.
I walked down the dark hallway toward Aunt Prue’s room. The safety lights flashed on, and I saw a figure in a hospital gown standing at the end of the hallway, holding an IV. Then the safety lights flashed off, and I couldn’t see anything. The lights came on again, and the figure was gone.
The thing is, I could have sworn it was my aunt.
“Aunt Prue?”
The lights went out again. I felt really alone—and not the peaceful kind of alone. I thought I saw something moving in the darkness, and then the safety lights flashed back on.
“What the—” I jumped back, spooked.
Aunt Prue was standing right in front of me, her face inches from mine. I could see every wrinkle, every mark from every tear, and every road, like a map of the Caster Tunnels. She beckoned me with one finger, like she wanted me to follow. Then she held her finger to her lips.
“Shh.”
The lights went out, and she was gone.
I ran, fumbling my way through the darkness until I found my aunt’s room. I pushed on the door, but it didn’t open. “Leah, it’s me!”
The door swung open, and I saw Leah holding a finger to her lips. It was almost exactly like the gesture Aunt Prue had made in the hallway. I was confused.
“Shh.” Leah locked the door behind me. “It’s time.”
Amma and Macon’s mother, Arelia, were sitting next to the bed. She must have come to town for Aunt Prue. Their eyes were closed, and they held hands over Aunt Prue’s body. At the foot of the bed, I could barely make out a shimmering presence, the flutter of a thousand tiny braids and beads.
“Aunt Twyla? Is that you?” I saw a flash of smile.
Amma shushed me.
I felt Aunt Prue’s gnarled hand clutching mine, patting me reassuringly.
Shh.
I smelled something burning, and realized a handful of herbs was smoking in a painted ceramic bowl on the windowsill. Aunt Prue’s bed was covered with her familiar bedspread, the one with the little balls stitched all over it, instead of her hospital sheets. Her flowered pillows were behind her head. Harlon James IV was curled by her feet. There was something different about Aunt Prue. There wasn’t a tube or a monitor or even a piece of tape attached to her body. She was dressed in her crocheted slippers and her best pink flowered housecoat, the one with the mother-of-pearl buttons. As if she were going out for one of her drives, to inspect every front yard on the street and complain about who needed a new coat of paint on their house.
I was right. She was number seventeen.
I pushed between Amma and Arelia and took Aunt Prue’s hand. Amma opened one eye and shot me a look. “Hands to yourself, Ethan Wate. You don’t need to go where she’s goin’.”
I stood taller. “She’s my aunt, Amma. I want to say good-bye.”
Arelia shook her head, without opening her eyes. “No time for that now.” Her voice sounded like it was drifting into the room from far away.
“Aunt Prue came to find me. I think she has something to tell me.”
Amma opened her eyes, raising an eyebrow. “There’s the world a the livin’, and there’s the world a the done-livin’. She’s had a good life, and she’s ready. And right now, I’ve got enough trouble keepin’ the folks I care about here with the livin’. So if you don’t mind…” She sniffed, as if she was trying to get dinner on the table and I was getting in the way.
I gave her a look I’d never given Amma before. One that said: I mind.
She sighed and took my hand in one of hers, my aunt’s hand in the other. I closed my eyes and waited. “Aunt Prue?”
Nothing happened.
Aunt Prue.
I opened one eye. “What’s wrong?” I whispered.
“Can’t say as I know. All that fussin’, and those Demons makin’ all that racket, probably scared her off.”
“All those bodies,” Arelia whispered.
Amma nodded. “Too many folks movin’ to the Otherworld tonight.”
“But it’s not finished yet. There’ll be eighteen. That’s what the song said.”
Amma looked at me, her expression broken. “Maybe the song’s wrong. Even the cards and the Greats are wrong sometime or another. Maybe not everything rolls down the hill as quick as you think.”
“Those are my mom’s songs, and she said eighteen. She’s never wrong, and you know it.”
I know, Ethan Wate. She didn’t have to say it. I could see it in her eyes, in the way her jaw was set and her face was lined.