Fateful Signs (Ballad of the Seer, Book Three)

Chapter 24 - There's No Place Like Home

Veronica watched as everyone rushed around her. She absentmindedly twisted some of the loose hair at the base of her neck around her finger. She felt kind of useless that she couldn't do anything. The frightened children were sent upstairs. Duncan carried an unconscious Lily, whose nose was bleeding, to the sofa. After wiping away the blood, Duncan stroked Lily's face, saying her name so lovingly. It made Veronica wish that she could have that again. She loved her new closeness with Joanna, but she missed having the physical closeness that living people took for granted. She had taken it for granted when she was alive, as well.

Mrs. Bishop ran from the room. Veronica could hear her heels - she didn't think she'd ever seen the woman wearing flats - click-clacking on the foyer floor as she rushed through, frantically calling out find or Ms. Birch.

Mr. Bishop knelt beside Duncan, holding Lily's hand. He looked so worried. They all did. Veronica wasn't. She had faith that Lily would pull through whatever was happening.

"She used so much magic." Duncan said.

The strange woman who came out of the mirror with Lily and the others laid a hand on Duncan's shoulder. "Let me check on her."

"Who are you?" Mr. Bishop asked the woman who ushered him and Duncan away. The way that she examined Lily, Veronica assumed that she must be some kind of medical professional.

"She's Cora. She's a nurse." Duncan said, confirming Veronica's theory.

In the corner of the living room, holding his arms across his chest, a dirty, bedraggled man - in desperate need of a shave, a shower, and a stylist - rocked back and forth on the balls of his feet. He chewed on his chapped bottom lip nervously, watching the others fuss over Lily. Something about him was familiar. Around the eyes.

Beside the man stood a teenage boy. There was something odd about him. He gave Veronica a strange feeling in the pit of her stomach. Nervous butterflies was the closest she could come up with to describe how it felt.

Suddenly, the boy looked up. He was holding his hand over his stomach, like he had the same feeling. He stared directly at her. She turned around to see what he might be looking at behind her. Because clearly that's what he was doing. He couldn't be looking at her. But he was.

"Holy crap," he exclaimed. No one but Veronica even glanced his way. The excitement was written all over his face, in his sparkling eyes and his joyous smile. "You can see me, can't you?"

"You can see me?" she asked, baffled. It had been a long time since anyone other than Lily, her family, or Joanna had looked at her. Occasionally, if one of Lily's friends knew she was there, they would say something friendly, though she doubted they meant it. They were just being nice because she was dead and they felt guilty. Lily was her only real friend anymore. She had once joked that it had taken death for them to see eye to eye. Veronica had been surprised at how much she had missed Lily. She had tried to find her many times over the last few weeks, to have someone her own age to talk to. Joanna was great, but she was seven. Conversations were limited to cartoons and whatever hobby the little girl was interested in that week.

The boy crossed the room, moving through the sofa and the coffee table to stand closer to her. When he passed through Mr. Bishop, the man shivered. "I'm Felix. It's so nice to see - and be seen by - someone. I thought I was trapped on some parallel plane. Like purgatory or something."

"It's something like that." Veronica said. She looked the boy up and down. He was a tragic mess. In life, she would have made fun of his red and blue sneakers and his high-waist jeans. Even the blue and white striped polo he wore was so wrong. It was a cheap material and there was no logo on the left breast pocket. It was obviously from some chain store and it probably only cost five dollars. And there was plenty more to mock: his braces, his acne, his terrible haircut. Of course, having seen the light - literally and figuratively speaking - she couldn't bring herself to claw away at his self-esteem. Leaving him a broken crying mess on the floor, as she would have once, didn't appeal to her. "You and I are in the Dead Zone. There's not many of us; at least, not that I've encountered. So, despite my better judgment, I won't use my ghostly powers to hurl your ass out the door."