I could almost feel his warmth, too.
But if he was something spiritual, how could he be warm? Was coldness reserved just for garden-variety ghosts like me?
My breathing was coming faster, and for a moment I could almost believe that this really was Dean, maybe because I wanted to believe it with everything I had. Everything I’d lost.
His smile grew as he saw how he was affecting me. “Looks like I sure picked the right identity to interest you.”
And—bam—just like that, I was back to being defensive.
But he clearly liked playing around with me, this guy. And he didn’t give up just because of my mood change; he only looked into my eyes, his own gaze going as soft as a tough guy’s gaze ever could.
“Come here, Jenny,” he whispered. “You know you want to. You’re curious. You’re thinking, ‘Is he really Dean? If not, just how well can he imitate everything about him?’” Another grin. “I can assure you that I don’t disappoint.”
I shook my head, recalling what’d happened when I gave in to him back at the Edgett mansion.
“Remember the last time I kissed you?” he asked.
Not fair.
“You aren’t Dean,” I said, like these were magic words that’d shoo him off. “You never kissed me.”
“Why don’t you come here and find out for sure?”
“No.” I kept shaking my head, lowering my gaze so I didn’t have to look at him.
Too tempting.
Too much.
When I felt his fingers on my cheek, I nearly jumped out of my body because of the heat of him, the sparks he created inside me.
How could this be happening, though? Whenever I made contact with anyone as a ghost, I gave them chills.
What kind of place were we in that the rules didn’t apply anymore?
Shivers cascaded down the skin that I had in this place—shivers of longing that I thought I’d never be able to feel again.
“That’s right,” he said quietly, even closer now. “You can feel this way for the rest of your existence. For a ghost, there’s only coldness, isn’t there? You’ll never be able to touch anyone like this again—especially not the real Dean. Besides, you saw him today, and he was old, not the same boy you remember. He was nearly unrecognizable.”
“So are you.”
He only laughed at that.
When his fingers trailed down my cheek to my jaw, my stomach tumbled, bringing the heat to the same rogue places that’d gotten so excited when I saw Gavin earlier tonight.
But this was… different. This was my Dean.
Or the closest I’d ever get to him again.
“I could make you so happy,” he said. “Just like you should’ve been. You only have to say yes to me.”
Yes, I thought, because somewhere deep inside, I still loved him.
And it was this part of me that started shooting off silent questions: So what if this version of Dean wasn’t real? Wasn’t I feeling something that felt better than anything I had now, down on the earth? Wasn’t that a far improvement from coldness and invisibility and nothingness?
He was offering me something so much better… .
As he stroked my skin, that yes was on the tip of my tongue.
But, out of the corner of my eye, the twinkle of one of those stars kept me from answering.
There was something… off… about those stars. Something about the shapes that I wasn’t quite understanding yet.
There was something very wrong about all of this—
I jerked away from “Dean,” wiping my jaw on my shirt, like that was going to erase him from me. It didn’t—my skin still burned where he’d touched me—but it was a good show.
“No,” I said.
He didn’t look disappointed as I took a couple of steps away from him. In fact, he seemed cockier than ever, with an expression that said, “You’ll come around.”
I almost expected him to pursue me as I increased the distance between us, but he was just standing there, as cool as shade.
And that’s when I realized that this… thing… might not be as powerful as I’d feared.
“You can’t force me to do what I don’t want to do,” I said, “can you? You can’t force me to kiss you, to give in to you… or to go into the light.”
He hooked his thumbs in his belt loops, his T-shirt slumped just over his hands. He grinned that arrogant “I’m still not worried” grin.
Then I found out why.
A rumbling shook the nonexistent floor, and I wobbled down to my knees, off balance. When the clear floor began to crack, fragmenting around what seemed to be the center of the quake, Dean or the angel of death or—hell, what should I call him?—merely turned around and walked away from me, one hand up in a casual farewell.
“Another day, Jenny,” he said as a hole wrenched open and I dropped through it.
I grasped onto the edge, swinging in space.
Was he trying to kill me?
If I could even be killed?
As I dangled in the sky, watching him through the clear floor, praying that I wouldn’t fall farther, I noticed that the back of his jeans was missing that pocket Dean had once given to me.
Dean.
Stupidly, automatically, I found myself reaching up my free hand in his direction, like I wanted to stay with him.
But then I focused on a star that was closer than the others, and just as I was beginning to see a certain shape to it, the hole snapped open wider, and I lost my grip, tumbling down into a travel tunnel.
And going fuck knew where the Grim Reaper was sending me this time.
4
I was spit out into the night in front of Amanda Lee’s main house, skimming the ground until I finally landed in her garden.
Right away, I knew I had a ghost body again when I shot upward, the thorns in the bed of roses parting my essence.
“Crap!” I said, even as my “body” knit back together. Without dwelling on fake Dean, I headed over to the light in Amanda Lee’s window. I was busting with all the information I’d found out during the Edgett visit and my side trip to purple-haze limbo.
Amanda Lee was gonna freak out when she heard what I’d been through, wasn’t she?
On my way to the window, I noticed that the sky was nearly black, without all that many stars in it—totally different from the sky I’d just been in.
Even though I couldn’t explain any of it, I came to her window, thinking that she, of all people, could maybe offer some insight.
But since she was the one who always approached me for a discussion, I mulled over how to let her know I needed to talk.
I thought of all the ghost movies I’d ever seen, where trees scratched against windows to get the attention of someone inside a house, just like a spirit was manipulating the branches.
But how could ghosts do that?
And wouldn’t it be nice if I had a master ghost to teach me these things?
I focused on what was around the window frame—a bush, which was too low to scratch at the panes. Flowers in a window box—too soft to make sounds against the glass.
Then I saw a pair of gardening shears in the box.
You think?
I’d never done shit like this before, so I did what came naturally. I concentrated, picturing the shears rising and then tapping on the window with the handle, like I was an awesome Jedi.
And… I wasn’t. At all.
The shears hadn’t gone anywhere, so I tried again.
Shouldn’t this be working if I had the electromagnetic boogaloo in the air on my side? Plus, Amanda Lee had speculated that I was made of energy, too, and now that I was back on the earth from that star place, I could feel the currents in me, keeping me together. If I could manipulate the computer and TV with my electricity, why not something more physical, too?