All the Edgetts had gone pale at the news. Noah tried to break away from Gavin, but he pushed his younger brother back.
“Why don’t you give me the bottle?” he said to Farah. “You don’t need it anymore if James is gone. He can’t hurt you now.”
“He was going to tell everyone,” Farah said. “I couldn’t let him. There can’t be any witnesses or eavesdroppers left behind.”
Noah finally broke away from Gavin, and he rushed over to Farah before his brother could stop him.
“Don’t do this… ,” he said, reaching out for her.
But she reached out for him first, bringing the shard up to his throat.
Slow-motion shock—a little like a dream—took over. Wendy was screaming. Gavin was frozen. Farah was ready to cut her beloved brother’s throat, leaving no witnesses behind.
“All for one and one for all,” I heard her whisper to him.
I wouldn’t let her take any collateral damage with her, and I got a really crazy idea that had to work, even if it would drain me more than anything a ghost could ever do.
I whispered to Gavin, “I know what to say to stop her because I saw what happened that night. Let me in!”
And possession was that easy, just as Twyla told me it’d be, because, in his panic, Gavin was open to me.
I slipped in, praying this would work.
His body jerked as I filled it. At the same time, I had access to everything about him, including his memories.
First, I saw what I’d seen in him during empathy, but it was all so clear now: Elizabeth punching him, accidentally scratching herself in the process, drawing blood on her skin as she shouted, “You’ve got to let me go! I don’t love you. Can’t you get that?”
Then, in another flickering second, I knew without a doubt what he’d done to protect Farah four years ago.
I saw a man—Dad—outside the door of Wendy’s room one night after a lot of nights when Gavin had caught him giving his littlest sister the same looks he’d given Farah when she was younger. Gavin hadn’t known about the abuse then, not until Farah had spilled her secret to him after seeing Dad watching Wendy, too.
I saw Gavin taking his father by the scruff of his shirt and pulling him toward a glass-doored balcony in the hallway, opening the door, pushing him against the railing.
“Farah told me,” he said. “It’d better not be true.”
Dad refused to answer, fighting back instead and, just like that, Gavin lost his grip on him, and Dad was falling, falling.
Then he was on the ground, facedown in a pool of blood, and Farah had come up behind Gavin, witnessing the whole thing.
“Thank you,” she’d said, burying her face in his arm. “I knew you’d make him pay one day.”
No one else had ever been the wiser. Farah had talked Gavin into a plan for the sake of Wendy and Noah, and their money had bought them the luxury of “sending” Dad overseas on a series of business trips. Justice had been served.
Elizabeth clearly hadn’t been Farah’s first experience with killing. And I was pretty sure that Wendy had heard the skirmish in that hallway when she was a little girl, based on what I’d seen in her own empathy images.
As I pulled back from the memory, we heaved in a breath while I got used to having a heavy human body again with a truly beating heart, skin, blood. A voice.
“Farah!” I said, the world going back to normal speed. I sounded just like Gavin. “You don’t want to do this. I don’t blame you for what you did with Elizabeth.”
That got her attention.
I’d had him speak softly, with more emotion than I’d ever heard him use with his sister. There’d been too much guilt about what he’d done to Dad. He could barely look at her afterward, and with the way she’d always tried to thank him with her affection—it was the only way she knew to express gratitude—he’d distanced himself.
As her gaze softened while she looked at him, still holding the shard to a trembling Noah’s neck, I had Gavin take a step closer.
“You only wanted to make her pay for hurting me,” he said. “And I understand. I love you for that.”
I felt Gavin cringe inside. He was repelled by this Farah, saddened by what she was now.
Farah’s eyes filled up, and her smile was tragic.
“Elizabeth took away your pride,” she said. “So I wanted to take her out of your life, just like you did with Dad for me and Wendy.”
I heard a breath being sucked in behind us and knew it was a shaken, baffled Wendy.
But our focus was all on Farah, who wasn’t asking how Gavin could possibly know the details of what happened with Elizabeth so he could talk about it now.
I could see when she became suspicious, though. I could see in her eyes when, again, reality caught up to her.
She turned to Noah, still clutching the bottle to his cheek.
“For months, I’ve had to live under the thumb of someone who knew what went on that night. But I’m not going to live through that again. Do you understand, Noah? You were there, too. You helped me hide what I did, and you’re just as guilty as I am.”
I heard Wendy sob, felt Gavin’s heart shudder at the news.
“Do you love me enough to set me free?” she asked.
Noah shook his head. But even if he didn’t understand what she was asking him to do, I sure did. No witnesses, she’d said. No complications.
When she prepared to slice his neck, I forced Gavin to run toward them.
Yet Noah, who’d loved his sister so much that he’d committed a crime for her, reacted first.
He took her by the wrist and tried to wrestle the bottle out of her grasp. But in the struggle, she leaned over the rail and—
As they went over it, Wendy screamed, and I shot out of Gavin’s body at his shock. We both slumped to the floor, but at least he had enough strength to crawl toward the railing, calling Farah’s and Noah’s names.
As for me? I couldn’t go anywhere. My essence was fluttering hard, and I didn’t even have the energy to call for my ghostly friends to come and help me.
Instead, I was starting to relive my death again.
Running through the woods, got to get away.
Not running fast enough—
The old lady mask… the ax…
I felt it all playing out in front of me, felt me disappearing into that time loop.
But just as the present started to get lost in the looped past, I felt a pair of warm hands on me, and my world shut down altogether.
24
When I came to, I saw stars.
And I’m not talking about cartoon character stars that circled my head—I’m talking purple haze and glowing celestial bodies that were suspended around me in a cluster.
Real bodies.
White and hazy, lying flat on their backs, just like they were hanging from invisible strings, sleeping with their eyes open. Men, women, boys, girls…
I realized I was dangling in the air, too, with a true body that was just as pale and glowy as the rest of them. But it didn’t freak me out as much as it should’ve. The lack of sound was peaceful in a way. So was this watery-spacey sensation, like I was in one of my hallucinations, lifted by the purple ocean, made lazy by the warmth of a dark sun.
Even the memories of the monstrous night I’d had were subdued, like they were in the process of being buried. I could recall what’d happened, like Farah grabbing Noah and going over the railing, Wendy screaming, Gavin trying to get to them even if it was too late. But I didn’t feel anything.
I just rested, breathing slowly with my star-place body.