Dead Endings Book 2: Chapter 2

Burnished curls bouncing, Gabriella ran across the street. Sweat beaded on her forehead and she held a pair of high-heeled sandals aloft in her hand.

“Did I make it?” she panted, her bare feet slapping impressively on pavement. “They still there?”

Everett goggled at the sandals in awe. “I know you were close, but…you ran here?”

Cailen hooked a thumb at the door of the cafe. “They’re just about done with their cake,” she reported.

Gabriella wiped away sweat and took a deep breath. “Tell me again what you saw.”

Cailen opened her mouth, but Everett stepped forward and got in first. “There’s three!” he said. “And that’s not even counting that horrible other smell.” His nose twitched in disgust.

Gabriella looked to Cailen, who shrugged. “I guess that…cloud of death could be three spirits,” Cailen acquiesced, “but it’s like I said on the phone: there’s a fucking hurricane in there.”

“Poltergeist, maybe,” Gabriella mused.

Cailen shook her head. “I dunno, man. That thing looks nothing like Markle.”

“Markle was new. Old geists can get…a little shapeless.”

“Yeah, well, do old geists follow kids like a dog on a leash?” she countered.

“Only one way to find out.” Gabriella dusted off her feet and strapped her sandals back on. With a quick pat of her hair, she stepped toward the door.

“Whoa, whoa!” Cailen said, grabbing her arm. “What’s the plan here? Are we seriously just gonna stroll up to some kids and ask why they’re dragging around a bunch of dead people?”

“We could wait ’til they leave and follow them,” Everett offered.

“I think–”

The door banged open, startling them into silence. They watched as a prepubescent boy exited, turning to wave goodbye to someone inside. The tow-headed youth tromped off down the block, black backpack swinging as he passed them. Everett took a long sniff as he went by.

“Stop that,” Cailen hissed at him. “It’s creepy.”

“But he’s one of them,” Everett said, sounding offended.

Gabriella raised an eyebrow at Cailen.

Cailen nodded. “He was with the other kid, but, well…” Her eyes followed his slight form until he turned on 82nd Street.

“He’s not the one holding the strings,” Gabriella finished for her.

Everett looked back and forth between them. “Say what?”

“Kid’s clean,” Cailen clarified. “No ghost balloons. His buddy inside must be the one with the ‘ability.’” The word soured in her mouth.

“Look,” Gabriella said, probably noticing the sharp note in Cailen’s voice. “This kid probably has no idea what he’s doing. There’s a good chance he can’t even see these things and they’re just following him like moths attracted to a flame. You know what some ghosts are like.”

Her not-so-subtle reference to Elizabeth and Ethan’s toxic, undead relationship raised a noncommittal noise from Cailen.

Gabriella clapped her hands together. “All right, here’s the plan: Ev, you go inside first and sit at the counter or something. Cailen and I will come in, introduce ourselves, and have a little chat with him.”

Everett immediately protested.

“If all three of us sit down at his table, it’ll look like we’re ganging up on him!” Gabriella countered.

Cailen took another peek in the window. “Whatever we’re gonna do, we better do it fast–he’s not gonna nurse that shake forever.”

Everett threw up his hands, yanked open the door, and stepped inside. Cailen and Gabriella waited a minute before following him.

The door jingled cheerily as they entered. They walked to the counter, taking in the interior with what Cailen hoped looked like a casual eye.

Silence greeted them.

Cailen looked around for the staff, but found only Everett’s sulking form at the counter and the scant customers she had spied through the window earlier. Everett aside, the people huddled in their seats, perhaps subconsciously sensing the oppressive cloud overhead. She snuck a glance at it.

A great brume of dark matter swirled above the head of the mysterious boy. It seemed to thrash and writhe in place, but for all its visual fury, it remained anchored by the ceiling.

Now that she was closer, she could also see two smaller forms bobbing around in the dark current. Vaguely rounded, the two pale, glowing masses had long silvery strings that extended down from them, ending somewhere behind the boy. As she stared at the balloon-like entities, the misshapen forms of human bodies clarified, and she could make out details of distorted limbs and features. She thought she saw a twisted smear of horn-rimmed glasses.

Anger building in her gut, Cailen fixed her gaze on the boy. Like the one who had left earlier, he was probably middle-school-aged. He had wavy dark hair, large brown eyes, and vaguely Mediterranean features and coloring, but there was something sallow about his skin that made her think he didn’t get out all that much.

As if sensing her scrutiny, the boy slowly raised his head from a mostly empty shake glass and stared at her.

“You–” Cailen began.

Gabriella stepped between them, and approached the table with a few graceful strides. Cailen reluctantly followed.

“Hi,” Gabriella said. “May we sit down?”

The boy moved his eyes to her, then around the mostly empty cafe. “Um, there’s plenty of other seats…”

“We actually wanted a word with you, if you don’t mind.”

He looked at her again, really looked at her, and then at Cailen, who couldn’t help but glance at the hovering ghosts out of the corner of her eye. His forehead furrowed slightly, but then he smiled.

“You can see the ghosts!” he said.

Gabriella smiled back at him. “Yes, we can. May we sit?”

“They’re pretty cool, right? No one else seems to see them, but they’re totally real!” he said excitedly.

Taking his enthusiasm for consent, Gabriella ignored Cailen’s I-told-you-so look and sat in a chair across from him. She beckoned to Cailen to do the same.

“They’re actually what we wanted to talk to you about,” Gabriella began. “I’m–”

“Well, they’re mine,” the boy interrupted proudly. “I caught them. You should see what they can do!”

“Yeah, well, that’s–”

Cailen watched Gabriella flounder, half-amused, half-surprised. It wasn’t often that her friend struggled to direct a conversation. The calm, reasonable tone that worked so well with adults had no effect on kids, apparently.

“What can you guys do?” the boy demanded. “If you can see them, you can do stuff, too. Right?”

“Seeing’s enough,” Cailen said evenly. Her eyes flicked up to the spirits. “More than enough.”

His brown eyes moved to her. He looked her up and down, then said somewhat disdainfully, “I bet you can’t do much. You’re barely even glowing.”

She raised an eyebrow at Gabriella. The woman frowned and seemed to reassess the situation. “It’s not about our abilities,” Gabriella tried again, “but how we use them. Spirits were people once. We need to respect that and do what we can to help them.”

The boy sniffed. “They’re already dead. What do they care?”

“It’s not right to treat them like toys,” Gabriella admonished gently. “And they do care. Many ghosts are aw–”

The boy’s cheeriness quickly shifted. “You’re just jealous. I bet you can’t do anything, either.”

“I can, and I will if I have to,” Gabriella said, voice rising slightly.

“I don’t glow,” Cailen muttered, to no one in particular.

The boy started to rise, but Gabriella stood first.

“Listen,” she said. “I just want to talk to you about it; about the spirits and your ability and how we can fix this. I can help you with this.”

“I don’t need help,” the boy said sullenly. “And I don’t know who you are, but you can’t tell me what to do.” He sat back with a huff and chewed on the straw in his shake.

Gabriella took a deep breath and returned to her seat. “This is important…um,” she looked at the name tag affixed to the black backpack on the chair next to him, “…Aiden. We can either talk about this together and solve it, or I’ll deal with it alone.”

As if to punctuate her point, faint light began smoking off her knuckles like steam rising from a cup of coffee.

The demonstration wasn’t lost on the boy. He chewed his straw furiously as he stared at her hands.

Good, Cailen thought in dark satisfaction. Let the brat get smacked down. She would have just cut those strings immediately. The feeling of wrongness coming off the mess overhead had only grown worse with proximity, and reasoning with kids was a crap-shoot at best.

Gabriella and the boy sat in silence for a time.

“Fine,” he said at last. He pushed the empty glass away from himself and crossed his arms.

Gabriella relaxed.

“If you want them…you can have them.”

And then the cafe erupted in an explosion of light and sound and tea cups.

To be continued in Chapter 3.