A Vial of Life Read online

  “River,” I breathed. I laid my wispy hand on her shoulder, wishing more than ever that my fingers could close around her in even the gentlest touch.

  She drew in a deep, harried breath and raised her head, once again facing the mirror. Her eyes had become full with tears, and one spilled slowly down her cheek.

  She brushed it away with the back of her hand and stood up, moving to the window. Resting her palms on the windowsill, she stared through the glass over the surrounding rooftops of the Vale and toward the towering wall of treetops beyond.

  I stood behind her, my chest grazing her back. I ran my hands down along her arms and lowered my mouth against the back of her neck. She shivered suddenly and took a step back—passing right through my body. She moved to the single bed in the corner of the room and pulled off a blanket, which she draped around her shoulders.

  Did she feel my presence just now? Does my form emit a kind of coldness? Or was it mere coincidence? Being a half-blood, she was almost always cold, after all.

  When she moved away from the bed, she didn’t return to the window. She stood in the center of the bedroom and gazed around, as though she didn’t know what to do with herself.

  I remained by the window, just gazing at her. After I had made River leave The Oasis with Corrine and I’d taken off on my crazy journey into the supernatural dimension, I’d honestly believed that I would never see this girl again. And while I couldn’t have imagined in my wildest dreams reuniting with her in these circumstances, I felt grateful to be standing in front of her. Even if I couldn’t reach out and touch her, kiss her, hold her in my arms and tell her how much I ached for and loved her, just being able to lay eyes on her again and see that she was safe was more than I’d hoped for.

  She slumped to her knees on the floor, staring blankly at the opposite wall. As another tear escaped down her pale cheek, her lips parted slightly and I could have sworn that she breathed my name. I could only assume that her tears were for me.

  Chapter 13: Ben

  I stayed with River in her bedroom until she finally picked herself up off the floor and walked back to her mother’s room. As much as I ached to stay with her, now that I had seen that those I loved most on this island were safe, I had to start figuring out some answers. What is really going on here?

  It seemed that the funeral had been very last-minute, and many of the humans were going about their day as though nothing had happened. Perhaps word of Kailyn’s death hadn’t yet spread past the supernatural community. Or perhaps my parents were deliberately holding back the news until after the investigation my father had spoken of with Ibrahim, so as to not plant unnecessary worry or fear in the minds of our human population.

  I hurried back through the forest and arrived in the courtyard outside Corrine and Ibrahim’s home where the funeral ceremony was in full flow. Kailyn’s coffin had been placed in the center. I caught sight of Aiden at the front of the crowd. His eyes were red, but the rest of his face was quite expressionless. Stony, cold.

  A few feet away stood Kira, who was still sobbing into Micah’s arms. He stroked the back of her head as he held her tight.

  My parents also stood in the front row, along with a teary-eyed Rose and a grim-looking Caleb—whom I was seeing for the first time since arriving back.

  Among the sea of other familiar faces, I also caught sight of Abigail Hudson. This was the first time I’d seen her since the day I’d first left The Shade all that time ago. She was standing a few rows back from the front, next to Erik. He had an arm around her waist while she rested her head against his shoulder. Both of their gazes were on the ceremony, their expressions worried and somber. I was pleased to have the chance to see her again. While the romance between us had never worked out, Abby and I had become good friends before I’d left. I’d wondered how she had been doing, and to see her in the arms of Erik was comforting. I was glad that she had found someone else, and if Erik was anything like the man Kiev had turned into for Mona, I was sure that he would make her happy.

  Drawing my eyes away from Abby, I was about to move closer to the center of the courtyard through the crowds when my hearing was assaulted with a deafening tune. The same tune that had beckoned me across the Pacific. It started up again, louder than ever before. As was the case the last time I heard this melody on arrival within the island’s boundary, it was no longer beautiful to me. It was far too loud for me to appreciate it. It rang in my head so intrusively, I barely had room in my mind for my own thoughts.

  Where is that sound coming from?

  I glanced around the funeral ceremony once more and figured that now was as good a time as any to find out. I moved away from the courtyard, turning in a circle and straining my hearing to ascertain which direction the noise was coming from. It definitely wasn’t coming from anywhere near the beach behind me. No. The melody was coming from the mainland, its shrill tones piercing through the trees behind the witch’s temple. I followed the sound as best as I could, through miles of dark woods, until I neared the part of the island that was designated for agriculture. The trees thinned and gave way to meadows of corn and wheat, sprawling orchards, and a sea of vegetable fields. It was by the witches’ magic that we were able to grow such fresh produce without the rays of the sun.

  I paused, trying to find my bearings. The tune was drifting toward me from the direction of the vegetable fields. I moved forward swiftly again, my feet grazing the soil. I passed through several fields, until the melody reached a fever pitch and stopped. My mind stopped ringing and the quiet, soothing sounds of the island returned.

  But it meant that I’d lost the trail again. Now I might need to wait hours before it started up… although it had sounded so close to me. It’d been louder than ever a few seconds ago. I was certain that it came from somewhere in these very fields surrounding me.

  I stopped amidst the potato crops and scanned the area once again. To my left was a thin line of trees, marking the border between the potato and cauliflower fields. At the end of this row of trees was a small farmhouse that hadn’t been inhabited for decades. Although I’d spent most of my life on this island, I was quite sure that I had never stepped inside of it, even as a child.

  Then I spotted something strange. Gathered beyond the building, deeper into the cauliflower crops, was a crowd of people. Except, as I moved closer, they weren’t exactly people. They were… ghosts. Perhaps fifty of them, all hovering near the farmhouse.

  I was momentarily stunned. I found myself rooted to the spot, just staring at this odd crowd. There were men and women of all ages, and even some children. Some wore casual, modern clothes like jeans and t-shirts, while others wore outfits that looked like they belonged in the eighteenth century; the women wore long, heavy frocks, while men donned breeches, cravats, and pleated coats. The only thing in common was that their attire looked ripped and ragged, and sometimes even stained with blood. That, and they all appeared to be humans, or rather had been humans in their former lives.

  What in the world…?

  Through my confusion, I realized that this was the first time I’d thought about the fact that ghosts even wore clothes. I looked over my own form. I was wearing the same clothes I’d worn before leaving my body—a cloak, ripped shirt and pants—only now the fabric had almost become a part of me. The garments were just as intangible and wispy as the rest of my form. I couldn’t take the clothes off, or even touch them—my hands just ran through them, as they did with everything else I tried to make contact with. It appeared that ghosts took on an identical appearance to the body they left behind. Almost like some kind of distant reflection, a shadow of their former selves.

  Heads turned toward me as I arrived within ten feet of the crowd. They looked me over curiously.

  “Who are you?” I asked in a hushed tone—hushed not because I had any reason to be quiet, but because I was still in a state of surprise.

  I received several frowns before spirits from the crowd began calling out their names. “Augustus
Croft. Tiffany Adkins. Tim Forney. Charlie McGuire. Lucinda—”

  I held up a hand. I really wasn’t interested in knowing their names. “Wait, wait. I mean, where do you come from? Why are you here?” My confusion deepened as I gazed around at their bedraggled forms. “Did you all take the potion too?”

  They appeared to be bewildered by my last question.

  “Potion? What’re you talking about?” The woman who’d called herself Lucinda stepped forward. She appeared to be in her late twenties, with ebony skin and curly black hair tied up in a bun over the top of her head. From her rich accent, I guessed that she was from the Caribbean. She wore a suit that reminded me of those worn by air stewardesses—a gray skirt and jacket with a brooch attached, and a blouse whose front was drenched in blood.

  I tore my eyes away from the crimson stains. “Did you not take a potion?” I asked. “A light blue liquid administered by a witch. It separates a person from their body and turns them into a ghost.”

  She looked at me as though I was crazy. “I’ve no idea what you’re talking about,” she said.

  How could these people have become ghosts and not heard of the potion? From what Arron had told me, I’d gotten the impression that people who died normal deaths didn’t become ghosts. That was what the potion was designed for—detaching a person from their body, but still allowing them to remain in their previous existence without moving on to… whatever awaited after death.

  I glanced around at the other ghosts again. They also looked blank at my mention of the potion. Maybe there was another way to become a ghost after all. Maybe Arron had not given me the full picture. Perhaps he had not even known it himself.

  “Where have you all come from?” I asked, trying a different tack.

  Lucinda was the first to reply. “From 1982. I died in a plane wreck.”

  I raised a brow.

  “The plane I was working on, chartered for Hawaii, crashed over the Pacific before we ever made it there,” she explained.

  “And that’s how you became a ghost?”

  Now it was the woman’s turn to quirk a brow. “Uh, yes.”

  “But how?” I asked, more to myself than to her.

  She shrugged. “How do I know? One minute I was being thrown about the plane and the next, the pain vanished and I became… this.” She eyed herself over.

  I fixed my focus again on the other ghosts—particularly the section that did not appear to be from this century, or even the last.

  “You didn’t all die in the same crash. Where are the rest of you from?”

  Lucinda gestured toward a group of eight ghosts behind her—two children, five women, and one man. “They were on the plane with me. Passengers. As for the rest of these people, I’d never laid eyes on them in my life until arriving here on this island.”

  An elderly man with an eyepatch over his right eye drifted toward me. He wore a beaver hat, a long-sleeved shirt, and black pants that stopped at his knees, beneath which were long brown stockings. “I died in a shipwreck, about two hundred years ago now. On a voyage from Japan to the Philippines.”

  “I suspect you’ll find that most of these people here are from around the Pacific,” Lucinda murmured.

  I was still trying to wrap my mind around how they could be ghosts—but one thing that was becoming amply clear was that they all appeared to have died in some kind of traumatic, sudden way. Perhaps being ripped from the world unexpectedly caused one to become a ghost? I could only speculate because these ghosts didn’t seem to have a clue as to the meaning behind their existence.

  “And why are you all here on this island?”

  “I suspect for the same reason that you are here,” the old one-eyed man said as he glanced over me from head to foot. “Did you not hear that heavenly tune? Is that not what beckoned you to this strange, dark island?”

  “I was wandering somewhere near the coast of Hawaii,” Lucinda offered, her eyes growing distant with memory. “Not all that far from the plane wreck. Like the rest of us, I heard the melody calling to me across the waves. The most beautiful sound that I’d ever heard. I barely had a choice but to search for it. It was… like an angel calling me. I thought perhaps one had descended to finally end this half-life and coax me to heaven. I followed the tune for days. It disappeared sometimes and left me stranded in the middle of the ocean, but then it would start up again some hours later. Finally, I found this place. It is not heaven, but… it is somewhere I am meant to be. I cannot explain why, but as loud and shrill as the melody became on arrival… I do not want to be parted from it. I can’t bring myself to leave.”

  “Where’s the tune coming from?” I demanded. “Who is playing it?”

  “The man with the pipe,” one of the children of the air crash, to my right, squeaked.

  My eyes shot toward her. “Man? Where?”

  She raised a small hand and pointed toward the farmhouse.

  The farmhouse. Leaving the crowd, I moved toward its front door. As I arrived outside of it, I caught the scraping of chairs against the floor. And then whispers that I couldn’t quite make out. I drifted through the old wooden door, and, appearing on the other side, the first thing that met my eyes was a long woodwind instrument propped up against the peeling wall near the door. Its body was thick and perhaps three feet in length. It was made of polished black wood, and it reminded me of a bassoon.

  My gaze moved deeper into the farmhouse’s dank entrance room. The door to the living area was open, and from it glowed flickering candlelight. When I glided to the door and entered the sitting room, nothing could have prepared me for what I saw.

  Jeramiah and the witch, Amaya, stood around two high wooden chairs.

  Amaya wore a trailing maroon dress that covered her legs and arms and formed a turtleneck around her throat. Jeramiah was draped in a heavy black robe. The chairs they were gazing down at looked familiar. I could have sworn that they belonged to my mother and father—chairs they sat on during meetings in the Great Dome.

  How did the two of them ever penetrate the boundary?

  And what on earth are they doing here?

  Chapter 14: Ben

  I gaped at the couple as Jeramiah gripped the arm of one of the chairs. He turned it on its side and laid it down over the creaking floorboards.

  “We will carve these now,” he said to Amaya in a low voice.

  “How much should I carve?” the witch asked.

  “Of course, we won’t need all of this wood. We’ll take what we need and then burn the rest. Just be sure to cut shavings from both of them.”

  He left Amaya with the chairs and walked halfway across the room, where a round stone slab was propped up against the wall. He gripped its edges and laid it down gently on the floor before kneeling down over it and running his palms over its smooth, sanded surface. He glanced back over his shoulder at Amaya, who had already bent down with a sharp knife and was beginning to carve off shavings from the chairs. She worked quickly and with ease, as though she were slicing cheese rather than solid wood. Clearly she had placed some sort of charm over the knife. Within thirty seconds, she’d created a pile of splinters from both my mother’s and father’s chairs. She gathered them up in her palms and handed them to Jeramiah. He set them down on the floor, next to the round slab of stone.

  “Hand me the adhesive,” he muttered. “And also the sealant.”

  The witch picked up two cups that had been sitting on the dusty mantelpiece. One was filled with a thick white substance, while pooled in the other was a transparent, runny liquid.

  “You’ll also need a brush,” the witch said as she placed the cups down next to the vampire.

  She walked to one corner of the room where an old broom leaned against the wall. She turned it upside down, gathering strands of its bristles between her fingers, before yanking hard and detaching them from the wood. Reaching for her knife again, she cut off a long, thick slice of wood from one of the chairs, the tip of which she dipped into the bristles. Magically, t
he bristles clung to the stick. She approached Jeramiah, holding out her makeshift brush for him to take.

  Jeramiah dipped the brush into the thick, white liquid and ran it in strokes around the center of the stone. Then, collecting some of the shavings between his fingers, he began to lay them out on the sticky stone surface, slowly and carefully, in the forms of letters. The white adhesive dried quickly, becoming transparent, and soon I found myself staring down at the words:

  In honor and memory of Lucas Dominic Novak.

  Jeramiah reached for the sealant and brushed a generous coating over the wooden letters. Then he stood up and gazed down at the stone with brows furrowed and a thoughtful expression on his face.

  “Add a few flourishes around the edges, will you?” he asked the witch after a pause. “Even with the letters, it still looks rather bare.”

  Amaya heaved a sigh and bent down over the slab, holding the same knife that she had used to cut my parents’ chairs. She angled the blade against the stone, and again, as though the slab was made of butter, she began etching a pattern of ivy leaves around the edges.

  “Good,” Jeramiah breathed after she’d finished. His sharp blue eyes glistened slightly, and there was an odd warmth to them—warmth that I hadn’t witnessed in my cousin before.

  A span of silence fell about the room as Jeramiah continued to admire the slab, now turned into a memorial stone. Still gazing at the two of them in disbelief, I found myself holding my breath—as though I even had any to hold—like I was afraid they might hear me. It was Amaya who finally disturbed the quiet.