Page 13 of Wicked Bonds
She looks at me then. “You said I’d die here. Last night. Is that what happened to you?”
I almost smile. “Did they warn you about talking to the dead?”
“Nobody warned me about shit,” she says, and now I do smile. I like a little defiance in a doomed soul.
“I was like you once. A student. Not as clever, but just as angry. I trusted the wrong person.”
She looks at the mark on her arm. “How did you die?”
It’s a rude question, but I’ve asked it myself more times than I can count. Of all the memories I can’t forget, that’s the one I can barely recall. But I remember enough. “Badly. Messy. With a lot of regret. They said I killed myself, but I know that’s not true.” I wouldn’t have done that. Not when I was so close to finding out the truth. Not when all I was living for was revenge.
“So you’re stuck here, haunting the academy?”
“I prefer to think of myself as a cautionary tale.”
She shrugs, then shudders at the pain in her arm. “I can handle myself.”
The mark is strawberry red, fresh and angry. She turns her whole body to face me, crossing her legs on the mattress. “So, what do you do all night, besides spy on girls in their dorms while they sleep?”
So nonchalant, like she speaks to ghost boys every day. Wherever did they find this one?
I sit on the desk, legs through the wood, and fold my hands in my lap. “I watch. I remember. Occasionally, I try to convince someone to do something extremely stupid, so they’ll join me on this side of the veil.”
“How’s that evil plan working out?”
“Not as well as you’d think. The living are surprisingly attached to their misery.” I blink slowly, smiling.
She’s silent for a moment, then asks, “What was your name?”
“Drake.”
“Drake,” she repeats. “So what’s the point? You stick around forever, popping up for jump scares?”
I look at the mark on her arm, the angry red slivered moon. “Every few years, one like you arrives. Every few years, someone thinks they can break the cycle. They haven’t yet.”
She shakes her head, but she’s thinking. “Why are you telling me this? Why should I trust you?”
Because I want to, I almost say. Because I want you to be different. Because the only thing worse than death is an eternity stuck here alone.
But I don’t say any of that. “Because you’re going to need help, eventually. And the ones who survive longest are the ones who listen.”
She studies me, but I know she won’t ask for help, not tonight. Maybe not ever. But the thought is planted, and that’s enough.
She pokes at the mark. “Does it ever stop hurting?” she asks.
I shake my head. “You just get used to it.”
She sighs. “Great.”
I could stay, linger here with her, but her eyelids are drooping. I stand, and she raises an eyebrow, not sure if she’s supposed to say goodnight to a ghost. I fade into the wall, and for the first time in years, I feel a little less dead.
Outside her room, the lights flicker as I pass by. I look down at my translucent hands, and try to remember what it was like to touch someone.
I think about Rose, and for one dangerous, impossible moment, I want to try again.
Maybe this time, it will be different.
It’s hours before I return.
