I felt her approach. She was, after all, another part of me. Dear, mad Alys with her wild eyes and bloodstained mouth. She crept from the dark like a shadow herself.
“I’ve brought you a gift,” I said.
Noah’s wild gaze turned to me. “You can’t do this!”
I shushed him and ran my hand down his cheek. “It was never the dark you were afraid of, was it, Noah? It was the things you knew dwelled in it.”
Alys reached out her dark-stained hand, and I thrust Noah toward her. She grinned, pouncing on him like a cat on a mouse. His scream was the last thing I heard as I left.
The shadows receded, wrapping close to me once more. I was left on the stage with Joe. Ghosts continued to cause mayhem on the grounds, possessing humans and fighting one another, but the living were leaving at a steady pace, giving them fewer to choose from, and ruining all their fun.
I didn’t have much work left. I turned to Joe. “Look at you,” I said. “So young and alive.”
“Well, I took that whole die-young-and-leave-a-gorgeous-corpse thing to heart.”
I took his hand, feeling the energy that filled him. It was strong.
“Better than drugs,” he joked.
“You absorbed a lot of power. Are you all right?”
“I’ll be fine.”
“I can take it,” I told him. “I can give you rest, if you want. Peace. They found your Laura. Olgilvie’s been arrested.”
Dark-rimmed eyes narrowed. “If I stay here I can make sure he suffers.”
Dear boy. He made me smile. I took his hand in mine, twining our fingers. “He will pay for what he did, Joe. I promise you. But now, I think there’s someone who has been waiting a long time for you to give up your anger.” I gazed beyond him, and nodded my head.
Joe turned. When he saw her, warmth blossomed within me. It hadn’t taken much effort to call her. As one who had died a violent death, she would have felt the unearthing of her bones, and she would have hoped that Joe would finally come to her.
“Laura,” he whispered. He ran to her.
On the ground, I heard Roxi give a little sob. It was rather romantic to see the two of them finally reunited after all these years. Sometimes the dead held on to old grudges for too long. So long, that they forgot what it meant to be alive. They forgot the things that had been important to them, and that was really what it meant to be haunted.
Joe and Laura, their arms around each other, broke apart into little glimmering shards of light that drifted away on the breeze.
“They look like fireflies,” Roxi said with a sniff.
I smiled. “Yes, they do.”
When I descended from the stage, my friends were staring at me. Kevin was hurt, and Ben was awake. I walked up to Kevin and inspected the wounds. They weren’t deep, but they looked painful.
“You’ll be fine,” I told him. I could have healed him, but he wanted the pain. He felt he deserved it, dear thing.
“What did you do with him?” he asked.
I patted his shoulder. “I sent him somewhere unpleasant.”
“Will he ever come back?”
I shook my head. “No.”
“What about Lark and Wren?” Ben asked. He touched the back of his head, and his fingers came away bloody. “Are they coming back?”
Dear boy. So brave. So accepting of Lark and what she was. “Yes, but first I have work to do.” And the first of it was to heal him.
They all followed me across the lawn toward the building where Noah had done his damage. No one paid much attention to us now that a news crew had arrived. It seemed a good time for me to move out of frame.
“Stay out here,” I told the living before I walked into the residence.
The spirits gathered as I walked inside. They watched me—a few even followed as I went down into the basement and collected the bones left there, wrapped in burlap. I brought them upstairs and set them on the floor of the entry hall.
“Is this all of you?” I asked.
They nodded, and I knew they were truthful.
I held out my arms. “Come here.” And they did.
They came from other houses, too, from all over the grounds. Hundreds of them of all ages, shapes and sizes and social class. One by one, I sent them home.
Miss April was the last one. “I was mean to you,” she said.
I nodded.
Her chin quivered. “Are you going to send me to Hell?”
Hell was a concept of the living. I didn’t know Hell, but I knew suffering, and that was the void. “No.”
She stepped into my embrace. I felt her soul against mine—that joyful moment when she let go—and then she was gone. I was alone in the building with Noah’s remains. There was no energy left here, good or bad. It was just an empty place.
Like a grave.
I picked up the sack of bones and walked outside. My friends sat on the walkway, eating candy from Roxi’s unending supply, and talking. Someone had bandaged Kevin. Some distance away, the news people had their lights and cameras going. The campus was fairly empty now, except for emergency workers, police and those few living who remained behind.