“Are you trying to make me feel sorry for her? After what she did to you?” I spat out, suddenly enraged.
“No. I’m only tel ing you what is going on. As much as I know. From what I’ve seen. As for the demons, they don’t like the fact that you can see them. They certainly don’t like me. It’s supposed to be a one-way mirror. But you and I are not like them. And we’re not like anyone else living, either.”
“Except for Dex.”
She nodded. “Yes. But he’s had a life of trying to hide it.
It’s like a muscle. Yours has been active far longer. Your power is greater. So great that demons wil try to take that from you.”
I looked down at my hands as they made lines in the dirt.
“They already have. Haven’t they? Isn’t that why I’m here now? I didn’t walk through the door. I was forced at gunpoint.”
I slowly got to my feet. She reached over and grabbed my shoulder, steadying me. I looked at her face and wondered if I was stuck with her here for eternity. She was my grandmother, the grandmother I never knew. My grandmother who was locked away to die, and somewhere along the way, started dressing like Bette Davis in Whatever Happened to Baby Jane.
“You’re not hopeless,” she said. I wondered if she just heard what I was thinking and immediately felt bad. “This Roman is a powerful man. He’s got something to prove. He wil fight the demon until he dies from exhaustion.”
I bit my lip and looked behind me at the house. It was suddenly a dot on the horizon, so very far away. “And then what happens? Aside from being stuck here forever?”
“You won’t be,” she said.
“How can you be so sure?” Panic began to flood my veins. I didn’t want to die. I didn’t want my possessor to win.
I felt like a cloth had been lifted from my eyes and the surreal quality of the situation began to sink in. “Why aren’t you more upset? You’ve spent your afterlife trying to prevent me from coming here!”
She squinted at me, but not unkindly. “I have done the best I can. My limits with your world are there. I can only do much, say so much. It has taken time for you to open your eyes to me. You needed to take those steps on your own.”
I waved my arms at the landscape, at another giant bug crawling in the distance. “But I’m here! I’m in this place! I’m going to die here.”
“Most who are here are already dead. You’re not. Not this time, not if Dex can help you.”
“Help me?” I was stunned. “How can he help me?”
She took a step toward me and smoothed my hair off of my face. Her fingers felt far away, like I was growing numb by the second. “Your bond with him is a strong current. Your very hearts are magnets. If you listen, you can hear him. You can feel him. He’s the only one who can help you now.”
“I don’t think Dex knows what to do.”
She looked back at the house. A smal smile tugged at her lips. “He knows more than you give him credit for. Just listen. Concentrate.”
I couldn’t hear anything except her flat voice but I closed my eyes and listened hard anyway. I felt the world drop away from me, felt a strange weightlessness as everything swirled black behind my eyes. Then I heard voices. Many at first, then just Dex’s, echoing around my head.
“Let me help,” Dex pleaded, his voice cracking. “You can reach her through me. Use me.”
It was fol owed by Bird’s. “You can’t risk it. The pathway doesn’t work like that. If you find her and free her, it may take you instead.”
“Then it’s worth it,” Dex said, his voice suddenly strong.
“There wil be many times you may have to lay your life on the line for her. You must choose your battles wisely, Dex. You can only give up your life once.”
“Let him do it,” came Roman’s voice from the darkness.
He sounded weak and exhausted. “If this is his wish, I can use him to find her. I can bring her out. I can keep both of them safe.”
“No you can’t,” Bird said.
“Dex is right,” Roman said. “There is no other way.”
I opened my eyes and Pippa shimmered back into my vision. “What’s he going to do?”
“Don’t think of me,” she said quickly. “Don’t break it.
You’l lose him.”
I closed my eyes again. The voices were gone. Only the blackness behind my eyes remained. I waited and concentrated. I pictured Dex, his deep eyes, his smirk, his stark determination that blew me over from time to time. He was a strong man and a weak man al at once. A friend once, a lover last. A father in another lifetime. Now nothing.
But he was going to try to save me al the same.
Then I heard it, buried deep beneath my furrowed head.
“Perry,” he cal ed.
I concentrated on my name as it flew past me in the dark.
I focused harder and harder, trying to hear more, see more than I could.
He appeared before me, coming out of the darkness like a developing Polaroid. He was slightly translucent, as if he were the specter here.
“Dex,” I uttered, wondering if he could see me.
He could. He smiled when he saw me. It glowed supernatural y, like Christmas lights that are turned on for the first time; ful of relief, pride and beauty.
He reached out for my hand in the darkness but it passed through mine, lacking al solidity.
He came closer, his face scrunched up in fear and confusion, and it was just us two in a world of black emptiness.
“I don’t understand,” he said, shaking his head. “Why can’t I touch you?”
He tried again, this time his hand on my shoulder, but it melted away. He was as good as air.
“I don’t know,” I said, feeling the horror rise up my limbs.
“What’s happening to you, how are you here?”
“Roman has got a hold on both of us. I just thought of you until I...until I saw you. Here. Wherever this is.” He looked around him at the unrelenting nothingness. “But I don’t think I’m here enough.”
His face fel , his hair flopping down on his forehead. He reached for my face with his hand and kept it there along my cheek, even though I knew his fingers were sinking into my skin, even though I couldn’t physical y feel him at al .