Body & Soul полностью

Ah, yes, another lovely side effect of this in-body disaster. Whatever bond we'd shared as spirit guide and ghost-talker was now gone. Or, at least, the most obvious sign of it. I didn't show up daily wherever he was at 7:03 a.m., the time of my death. Good thing, because that might have been kind of tough to explain to the Turners.

At one time, I'd also been able to freeze pushy ghosts in place by simply restating my claim on Will. These days, not so much. Actually, for all we knew, it might still work. But it seemed unlikely, given everything else, and it was too dangerous to try. It would mean revealing who I was inside this body and that I could hear the spirits. Then Will wouldn't be the only one being overwhelmed by last requests.

“I don't want you to get hurt,” he added, his gaze softening as he took in the scar on my face… Lily's face.

Lily. I jerked away from him. Will wasn't immune to the effects of this bizarre situation, either. Even though he knew better, sometimes he looked at me and saw her. I know he did. And he'd never been as concerned about my welfare until it became tied to hers, it seemed.

It wasn't fair.

“I will be fine,” I said curtly, doing my best to squelch the wounded feeling rising up in me. “Can we just do this already?”

He opened his mouth as if to say something, then closed it, clearly thinking better of whatever it was. Smart. “Yeah. Okay,” he said. “I'll go first. Stay right behind me.”

I nodded, not about to argue that part of it. Among the other things we'd never tested was whether I'd bump into ghosts, as Will did, or pass through them, as other non — ghost-talkers would. I hadn't found myself colliding with invisible people yet, but that was no sure indicator, as I knew from experience that ghosts avoided walking through the living whenever possible.

He turned and opened the door, and I stayed on the heels of his worn Chucks as he walked in.

Malachi the Magnificent's waiting room looked surprisingly similar to that of a doctor's or dentist's, only darker, dustier, and reeking of way more incense. There were a bunch of chairs lining the outer edges of the room and in rows toward the middle. A door in the far wall led, presumably, to the back rooms, where the “magic” would happen.

A book lay open on a desk next to that door, with a photocopied sign asking us to SIGN IN, PLEASE! Blah.

Will wrote fake names — Milli Martin and Steve Vanilli — in the book without batting an eye. (Yeah, he thinks he's funny.)

But then he turned to face the waiting room again and hesitated. I followed his gaze, and for once, I understood. The blurry spots I'd seen before were not smudges on the glass. They were in here and moving. At least four of them, maybe more. The trick was how to avoid them without looking like we were avoiding them.

I stood on my tiptoes, putting most of my weight on my good leg. “The chairs in the back left corner, maybe?” I whispered to Will. There weren't as many blurry spots in that direction, though we'd have to pass several to get there. The noise seemed fainter in that direction, too. I couldn't hear anything specific, just a low murmur of voices, but too many for the half dozen or so living people there, most of whom were sitting silently anyway.

Will looked sharply over his shoulder at me. “You can see—”

I shook my head. “Kinda, sorta. It's… I'll explain later.”

He nodded and started toward the chairs I'd indicated, and I was right behind him… until someone caught my eye. A living someone.

I stopped dead, certain that I could not be seeing who I thought, especially not here.

Her normally glossy black hair was a dull and staticky mess gathered in a frizzy ponytail, and she was wearing a tank top and sweats — not the cute kind, either, but the baggy ones you only wear when you're home with the flu. Still, it was definitely her. Huddled in a chair across from the receptionist's desk and dabbing her eyes with a soggy tissue that looked about two tears away from disintegrating entirely, was my former best friend.

A rush of homesickness for my old life swept over me. “Misty?” Her name slipped out before I could stop it. “What are you doing here?” It felt like the world had tipped a bit, sliding people into places they shouldn't be. I hadn't seen her in months, not since graduation. Not mine, obviously. But hers and Will's and everybody else's that I knew.

She looked up, her eyes red and puffy from crying. Her gaze skated over my face, and she recoiled slightly, probably at the sight of the jagged scar on the left side, from my temple down. “Do I know you?”

Oh, right. I tipped my head forward, letting my hair slide to hide the damage, and buying some time before I had to answer. I didn't know what to say. She wouldn't recognize Lily, probably, but…“I—”

“What are you doing?” Will whispered to me, alarm in his voice. “Sorry, our mistake,” he said to Misty, and then started to pull me away.

But it was too late.

“Hey, wait,” Misty called after us. “I do know you.”