I nod and look down, still angry, but now I’m dealing with a trickle of guilt, too. “You really can read people,” I say. I’m so confused. I don’t know who to trust, what to believe.
“You’ve seen Carson?” he asks.
I nod again.
“And . . . Nick?”
I look up at him then, and I think I see pain in his eyes.
“Yes,” I say.
“Your father?”
“No . . . I . . . I can’t face him yet. Seeing Nick’s struggles is hard enough. It must be so much worse for my dad.”
“Reena will try to take you to your death spot,” he says. “She wants you to become like them.”
“I’m already like them,” I say. “And I’m like you, too, and like the other Guides. I remember my life, I already feel the same pain you feel.”
“You’re not like the poltergeists,” he says. “They’ll probably never get to merge with Solus—their moons are dark. That’s what the death spot’s energy does—it makes you emotionally unable to move on.”
“I know,” I say. “Reena told me.”
“She did?” He looks surprised. “But how could you want that?”
“How could I not want to stay on Earth with the people I love?”
“It isn’t what you think, Callie. The people you love grow older; their lives move forward. They will die and you will be stuck, observing and never living, never sharing. It’s like watching a movie in a theater except you’re the only one. You experience no connection. It’s just a yawning emptiness.”
I hadn’t thought about it that way. He makes it sound awful, unappealing. Needing a minute to take this all in, I study my surroundings more closely. It’s small, and very private—high walls are on all sides of us. Gray stone is beneath us, a small table and two wooden chairs rest near the hammock, green plants line the area.
“Where are we?” I ask.
“My prism. It was the one place that I knew Reena and the others couldn’t follow us.”
“Because you’ve never invited them in?”
He nods, appears slightly discomfited. “You’re the first.”
“It wasn’t exactly an invitation.”
“I couldn’t risk you saying no.”
Any other time I might have felt privileged that he was sharing his space with me. I want to know everything about him. But I know he won’t share more, not now. He won’t tell me if he has to water his plants somehow or whether this place is like a patio he once knew on Earth. As I scan the area, I see nothing like a photo or even a trinket left over from life. Has he let go of everything? How can I?
“Nick’s not doing well,” I say, with regret, losing some of my anger at the high-handed way that he brought me here.
“He’ll heal,” says Thatcher. “The Living have an amazing ability to go on, and I believe that Nick has already started that process.”
There’s a sharp pinch in my chest. I know it’s selfish, but I still hate the thought of Nick moving on, maybe falling in love again. I realize a part of me fears that he already has.
“You have to let him go, you know,” says Thatcher. “No matter what Reena told you . . . you do have to let him go.”
A tear slides down my cheek.
“Callie,” says Thatcher, quietly yet urgently. “I’m sorry I lied to you about the portals. But everything else I’ve told you is entirely true.”
“Thatcher,” I say, wanting to use this moment, where he’s open and talking about truth. “What’s a poltergeist?”
He walks over to one of the wooden chairs, sits down, and leans forward, his elbows on his thighs, his hands balled tightly in front of him. As much as I’d like to relax in the hammock, I sit in the chair beside him.
“I heard Sarah say it,” I explain.
He nods. “Reena and Leo, Norris and Delia, the ghosts who are with them, the ones gathered behind them tonight . . . they’re the ones who refuse to merge even though their haunting is completed, the ones who can’t get over dying, the ones who remember and cling to their past lives. They’re poltergeists.”
He says the word like it leaves a rotten taste in his mouth.
“And Callie, I know you think they’re your friends. I know you think they’re fun and that their way of haunting—moving things and all that—is worthwhile. But it’s not—it’s all surface level.”
I nod—I’ve heard this from him, but I still like the way it makes me feel when I haunt that way, when the living know that I’m there. I start to say that, but when I open my mouth, Thatcher keeps going.
“The way I’ve tried to teach you to haunt—through an inner peace that comes from your unconscious—that’s how we make a real connection, a soul connection. That’s what gets you closer to merging. And Callie, Solus is the true way.”
Leaning back into the chair, I feel like a little girl for a moment, and I hate the vulnerability that overtakes me. Watching Ella almost get taken into that white light felt so terrifying, so wrong.
“Merging isn’t another death?” I ask, trying to read the drawn line of Thatcher’s mouth and the twitch at the edge of his cheek. I stare at him unflinchingly.
Slowly, he reaches out and sets the hammock to swaying, and I wonder if he draws comfort from the motion. Maybe he’d like to be lying in it as well, letting it carry away his worries. “No, it’s not a death. Ghosts are already dead.”
“But Reena said—” I start.
“Stop listening to her!” Thatcher lunges to his feet and stalks away. “Don’t you understand what she is?”
I come up out of the chair to face him. “I don’t understand. You say she’s dangerous, not a friend. But I know that she was your friend once, Thatcher—I’ve felt it. And besides, she saved me earlier today.”
“Saved you?”
“Yes.” I hesitate now, not sure I should bring up the séance. But now it’s too late, and so I tell him. About Carson and the chanting, the pain I experienced and the rush of sensation and sound. And the tidal pool pull that brought me back to the Prism, where Reena was waiting.
Thatcher’s eyes get wider and wider as I recount each part of the story, but I can’t tell if he’s surprised or afraid or just angry.
“I felt so much pain,” I explain. I’m trying to put Reena in a good light. “She brought me back to my prism and took care of me.”
He combs his fingers through his hair in frustration. “She didn’t save you,” he says. “She’s only looking out for herself.”
“What do you mean?”
“Callie, Reena is fixated on you. It has to do with your energy. I’m not sure what she’s planning, but the way she spoke at the merging ceremony made it clear that she’s leading the poltergeists to work against the Guides.”
“She wants to stay on Earth,” I say. “Don’t we all want that? How can you ask people who’ve died not to want their lives back?”
“No one asks that of ghosts. The Guides only want to follow the natural order of things—merging is part of that. We can’t have the Prism fill up with ghosts who refuse to move on because they’re nervous about what’s next.”
“Reena doesn’t seem nervous,” I say. “She seems determined and strong, but nervous is not a word I would use.”
“You’re right—it’s deeper than that,” says Thatcher. “Reena is afraid. The poltergeists aren’t happy and carefree—they are scared. You’ve been around them; you must have seen that, too. Their fear of the unknown, of merging, means that they are stuck in limbo—between the Prism and Earth. And now it seems like she’s making a name for herself—and the poltergeists—by spreading that fear.”