She nods, lifting herself on her tiptoes to kiss him. Lips press, tongues touch, and then it deepens, finally. The warmth and wet of a real kiss, the vibrating taste of his sounds, and the pressing hunger of Colin finally able to take more. He grows frantic, and a spreading tingle engulfs her skin, flames down her neck and across her chest. She feels the heat in ten pulses in her fingers, ten pulses in her toes. And yet, while his eyes fall closed, hers cannot. She’s simply fascinated with what’s happening. He exhales through his nose and lets out a sound of longing that is so strained and tight, she digs her fingers into his hair, wraps everything that she can around him.
But it isn’t enough; she’s not strong enough to keep him yet.
Somehow, in the split second before it happens, she feels it. A small jerk to the back of his ribs, the impact of life being forced back into him. Or of him being forced back to life. And then he’s gone, hurled backward through the air, gasping and choking, propelled by an invisible band around his chest. Lucy is left alone on the trail where, for an achingly perfect moment, he was just like her.
CHAPTER 19 HIM
THE CHANGE IS SLOW AT FIRST: SILENCE IS broken by a rhythmic beep. Darkness gives way to light. Numbness bleeds into pain.
He’s somewhere between awake and asleep. Or, maybe, alive and dead.
Colin always thought that dying would be the hard part. But feeling life seep back into his body is pain unlike anything he’s ever known.
It burns. His fingertips feel capped with lead weights, red with heat. Every inch of his skin pricks and pulses; the pain is so intense he can hear it, as if he’s on fire and the flames lick and tick near his ears.
Is he dreaming? Only a dream could whisk you from heaven to hell in moments and leave you willing to give up anything to do it over again. Wasn’t it only seconds ago that he was somewhere else? Somewhere both too bright and too dark, a world made of prisms of color warping rhythmically, as if everything around him pulsed with energy. For a flash, he remembers his skin prickling all over with the most intense anticipation he’d ever felt.
A face floats in the hollow space between his memories. Cool lips grow warm against his, and color swirls in irises that tell a story he wants to remember. He finally got to touch her.
If he sleeps again, maybe he’ll go back. Maybe she’ll be there too.
Voices seep into the quiet, and he opens his eyes, blinking against the dim light. Stark walls surround him, and the nauseating traces of antiseptic and coffee hang in the stale air. Everything around him seems lifeless.
The infirmary.
He flexes his hands, but they move in jerks. His fingers are stiff and numb, like rusty cogs. Colin tries to sit but quickly realizes it’s a bad idea. The room shifts and bends in front of him, and he collapses back into a pillow that’s too soft, hitting his head on the bed frame. Tubes and wires wrap around his arms, and each breath hurts more than the last. It feels like he’s inhaling propane, exhaling fire, yet he’s shivering.
A girl outside the room is asking to see him. He recognizes his name and turns his head toward her familiar voice. His lips know the shape of her name, but when he tries to say it, there’s no sound.
“I promise I won’t stay more than a few minutes,” she says.
“I told you, I can’t let you in there.” The other woman’s voice is familiar, but where he’s used to hearing soft honey, he now hears only edge.
“I’m not leaving,” the girl says flatly. “Please, tell him Lucy is here.”
Lucy. Blond hair and swirling eyes. The lake. The ice. Cold like he’s never known. The fear that he would die and then those fleeting moments when he didn’t care.
“Do you think I don’t know what you are?” The voices are closer now, quieter. “No way am I letting you get to that sweet boy.”
The silence outside his room stretches, making the air around him feel even more stagnant and stale. He opens his mouth and exhales Lucy’s name, but it’s too quiet for anyone to hear.
“You know about the others? Where are they?” she asks.
“If there’s even one more here, that’s one too many. You’re going to break that boy’s heart. Or worse.”
Maggie. Colin remembers her name, and everything comes back in a cluster of images and sounds: How many times he’s been in this bed, how many times Maggie has set his dislocated shoulder, stitched his cheek, given him everything from aspirin to morphine.
“Please,” Lucy says. “Just one minute. I promise I won’t stay long. . . .”
“Listen,” Maggie says more gently. “There’s nothing good that can come out of this. Leave that boy alone. Go take your haunting somewhere else.”
Haunting.
The door swings open, and Maggie enters alone. Her tall shadow slants across the far wall as she moves to the bed. Behind her, Lucy lingers in the hallway, catching his eye.
“Hi.” She waves.
He lifts his arm a few inches off the bed to wave back. Lucy’s skin is pale and almost glows beneath the artificial light. She doesn’t look real. The monitor registers the blip in his heart rate when he realizes that for the first time ever, Lucy looks like exactly what she is.
With one more apologetic smile, she disappears down the hall.
“Well, look who’s awake.”
Colin turns his attention to Maggie as she begins adjusting his tubes, checking the monitors. He wants to ask her what happened with Lucy, how she knows that Lucy is a ghost, and what she meant by “haunting.” He wants to ask her if he hallucinated the world of light and shadow, silver fire from Lucy’s touch. His heart squeezes painfully at the thought that it wasn’t real. But when he meets Maggie’s eyes, he realizes she’s waiting for him to say something.