Before I could ask him, even in a whisper, what was going on, an unfamiliar face appeared in the doorway to the hall. “You're here,” she exclaimed at Will. Then, when she caught sight of me, her eyes widened. “You found her!”
She disappeared from the doorway, and I heard her yell, “They're here!”
Within seconds, the kitchen was flooded with spirits, many of whom I didn't recognize, all jabbering at once. They flowed in, surrounding Will and me individually, cutting us off from each other.
“Why didn't you tell me it was this bad?” I shouted at him over the clamor.
“What were you going to do? We didn't know you were still my spirit guide,” he shouted back. “And it wasn't this bad… until now.”
Fabulous. Well, that was helpful. I straightened my shoulders, tossed my hair back, and started to wade my way through to Will, or at least to the last place I'd seen him. The kitchen wasn't that big.
Of course, most of the spirits were too agitated to pay attention to what I was doing. They kept pulling at me, trying to stop me so they could explain, beg, plead, whatever. Though I couldn't see Will, I could only imagine it was worse for him.
The last straw came when someone actually grabbed hold of my arm and yanked until I stumbled back.
I sidestepped her face-plant, but barely. “Enough already!” I shouted.
The room quieted immediately, faces whipping around toward me. Through a gap I could see Will's pale face. They'd cornered him against the door to the basement.
I took a deep breath to reinstate my claim on him, to tell them they had to go through me to get to him. That would shut them up and make them go away… or at least freeze them in place.
Before I could say anything, though, I heard Will.
“You heard her. Out, now!” He stepped away from the basement door and pointed to the nearest exterior wall.
Shock rippled through me. I stared at him, but he refused to look in my direction, splotches of red rising in his pale cheeks. He focused instead on the spirits in front of him, some of whom were already starting to protest.
He shook his head and spoke over them. “Who else do you have to help you? No one. So don't piss me off!”
I gaped at him. This was exactly what I'd been after him to do from the beginning. Take control, own his power. It's what I would have done. If you can't get rid of a feature in your life that is less than desirable, make it work for you. But I'd never expected he'd actually follow through on it.
It took a few moments for his words to take full effect. But then some of the ghosts started drifting out the back door. Others moved through the wall that Will had indicated.
“We will be back to help you,” he said to those who lingered. “Just not today. We're already on task for someone else. You wouldn't want us to stop if we were working on your behalf.”
Points to him for not framing that as a question.
With a few more reassurances and warnings from Will, the rest of the crowd slowly dissipated.
“You did it,” I said, when the kitchen was empty except for the two of us. I couldn't quite keep the note of disbelief from my voice.
He shrugged, but he looked pleased, if a little stunned by his own accomplishment. “I wasn't sure what would happen to you if you tried to stop them. I didn't want to risk it.” He turned and walked down the hall to his room.
I stayed put. He didn't want to risk it, but why? Because he didn't want me to be gone? Or because he still needed me to try to stop Erin? Both? It shouldn't have bothered me that I wasn't sure which his answer would have been had I been brave enough to ask. But it did.
Especially because he'd just proved, in no uncertain terms, that he no longer needed me as much as he used to, if at all.
This was a good thing, I told myself. Will needed to be able to take care of himself. That's what I wanted for him.
Except… what about what I wanted for me?
Honestly, I wasn't sure what I wanted. I didn't want to disappear for forever, that was for sure. But I didn't know if I had a choice in the matter. If I was lucky, the light might come for me before that happened. That would be okay, except I'd sort of gotten invested in what was happening here. I couldn't imagine being happy or at peace, not knowing what happened to Will or the Turners. And returning to life as Ally Turner… was that even an option? Did I want it to be?
I rubbed my forehead, pushing at the dull ache starting there. God. Who said being dead was easy? Dying had only been the start of my troubles.
With the details about Edmund that we had now, thanks to Will's questionable landlord performance, it didn't take long to find the information that we needed online. We tracked down his parents' names from his sister's obituary and then their address from a white-pages search. Easy peasy.
