Body & Soul полностью

After a moment, I shrugged. “We see if he's home and try to talk to him.” Actually, more like plead with him to help us, but I couldn't see any point in being that specific with Alona right now. Maybe it wouldn't come to that.

I started down the street, and she followed.

“That's it?” she asked, when she caught up, skepticism heavy in her voice.

“What were you thinking? Hot pokers and broken glass?” I moved to the edge of the sidewalk, forcing Alona into the grass, to let a neighbor with schnauzer pass. He stared at me, the crazy unknown guy in his neighborhood talking to himself. I forced a smile and nodded at him. Whatever, dude. You can think what you like.

“We're not trying to break him. We want his help,” I whispered to Alona, once the schnauzer guy had passed and we'd moved back to the center of the sidewalk.

“If everything you said is true, I think we might have better luck with the pokers and glass,” she said grimly. “He doesn't want his sister back. And if we can find her and kick her out of Lily, that's exactly what will happen. She'll end up right back at his side.”

I shook my head. “I think it's more complicated than that. If he wanted her gone, all he had to do was have my dad call in the Order. But he didn't. And when he thought I was one of them, he was packing up and leaving town to protect her.” I hesitated, going more from a gut sense than from anything Edmund or Erin had said to me. “There's more to it, whatever happened between them.” Which was going to make dealing with them much trickier.

And that wasn't the only thing. Approaching the house from this direction, I saw something I'd missed before. In the yard, under the shade of a huge maple tree, was a fairly discreet real estate sign. What was less discreet, however, was a giant foreclosure notice plastered diagonally across it.

I stopped. “Crap.”

“What?” Alona asked, but then she followed my gaze. “Oh.” She shrugged. “So? His van is here. He has to be here.”

Yes, but in what kind of state? Probably not one prone to helping us. He'd been gone from his family for five years — thanks to the ghost we were trying to shove back in his direction — and in that time they'd evidently lost their home.

I sighed. “Come on. Let's go.”

We made our way toward the house, dodging neighbors and their small children alike.

Up close, the home had a distinctly abandoned look and feel to it. The grass was longer than it should have been. The windows didn't have any blinds or curtains, creating the look of hopeless eyes gazing back at us. And through the windows, we could see dark squares on the walls where pictures or paintings had been. The rooms, at least the ones I could see, were empty — no furniture visible.

I took a side trip to the driveway to check out the van. It was definitely Edmund's. Even if I hadn't recognized its battered appearance, the box full of half-melted purple candles on the passenger seat was a dead giveaway. But he wasn't in it.

“His?” Alona asked.

“Yeah.”

“Still want to walk up and ring the bell?” She rested her hands on her hips, as if this plan had sucked the whole time instead of just the last ten minutes.

“No,” I admitted. If Edmund was inside, he certainly wasn't going to be running to answer the door, that was for sure. “You want to—”

I didn't even have to finish before she'd turned on her heel and marched up the porch stairs to the front door and then through it.

Suddenly, with her absence, I felt more conspicuous hanging around this house that was not mine, like someone was going to start pointing and shouting at me. Which was ridiculous. From the perspective of the living residents here, I'd been alone the whole time. It was just, I guess, that I hadn't felt it until now.

I ducked my head and tried to look like I belonged here, trying to ignore the uneasy feeling growing in my chest.

Was this going to be what it was like if/when Alona vanished for good? Me, lurking around places alone, feeling even more like a freak just for being by myself in this mess? What if we couldn't find a way to get Erin out… or if Alona was right and she was no longer strong enough to keep the physical form of Ally going? Or, if she simply chose not to? In the end, it was Alona's decision, in the best-case scenario. Would she really intentionally choose to live as someone else, knowing it would be forever and that the person she'd been before would be gone for good?

I could safely say the Alona I'd first met would have chosen disappearing over life as Lily — or even Ally — Turner, and I certainly hadn't made the prospect of changing her mind any easier by being so hard on her changes to Lily's appearance and the way she was handling her second chance at “life.”

I wanted her to stay, definitely. But when it came down to it, I didn't want her to be miserable just because I would miss her if she were gone, because my life was better — although, okay, more complicated and sometimes more stressful, too — with her around.