Body and Soul

I snapped it from his fingers, and he sucked a breath through his teeth. “Careful!”

Will treated the page like an artifact from a previous age, and I suppose, for him, it was. After our other resources (pretty much just the Internet) had failed to produce any new information on my predicament—or really, any information at all, other than calling for a priest—Will had dug into some boxes of his dad’s stuff in the basement. Most of it was random useless junk his mother couldn’t bring herself to throw away—a half-finished pack of gum, old birthday cards from Will’s grandma, an almost empty bottle of cologne, an old answering-machine tape, grocery lists with Will’s dad’s illegible scrawl.

I suspect Will had been hoping for a secret journal—something detailing his father’s struggle with being a ghost-talker over the years—that his mother had somehow overlooked or written off at the time as an attempt at fiction. I know he wanted to get a better handle on who his dad was, the kind of person he’d been, since his dad had lied to him for most of his life. But there was nothing like that in the boxes. And for the record, my hopes had been dashed as well, since he didn’t conveniently find a vial of mysterious liquid labeled EMERGENCY ONLY: FOR WHEN YOUR SPIRIT GUIDE BECOMES TRAPPED IN A BODY.

So…no diary of confessions, no bottle of secret formula, but tucked into a city map of Decatur was this folded-up page torn from the Psection in the yellow pages. The Psychic section, specifically. But what Will was interested in was the strange marks and undecipherable notes in his dad’s handwriting near several of the names/ads, even though we had no idea what any of the nonsensical scrawls meant.

Will’s dad was a bit of a mystery to him, so no matter how cryptic the messages on the page, it was more than Will had had before. From what Will had told me, his dad was never particularly chatty about the gift they both shared. Daniel Killian preferred to pretend that everything was normal, no matter what kind of toll that took on him and his son. I personally thought that was kind of crappy of him, especially given that he then bailed on Will and Will’s mom by offing himself a few years ago.

But whatever. I guess maybe I wasn’t the best judge of parental behavior at times, either.

I let out a breath and made a deliberate effort to unfold the page more carefully, and Will relaxed a little. He did have a point—the lines where it had been folded were already softening from the wear and tear we’d given it in the last few weeks. If it had been an actual historical document, it might have been faring better—parchment or whatever they used to write on back in the old days might have actually held up better than this cheap-ass paper.

The psychics shared a page with listings for property managers and prosthetic-device manufacturers. Malachi the Magnificent’s ad (God, could he sound any more like a little kid’s party magician?) was circled several times, hard enough to dent the page, and had what might have been a star by it.

Or an ink blot.

I sighed. Will’s theory was that his dad must have been checking into these people for a reason, maybe as part of his work for the Order. The publishing date, printed in tiny letters at the bottom, indicated the page was from five years ago, right about the time Will’s dad had finally quit working for them. The Order of the Guardians was essentially a group of ghost-talkers who’d taken it upon themselves to save living humankind from all of us big bad spirits. Never mind that ghosts were once living people, too. Lily and I had both almost succumbed to their relentless “protective” services. Will and I weren’t exactly their biggest fans these days, and that feeling was probably pretty mutual. Will had heard from them only once after everything that happened. As far as I knew, most of the leaders thought Lily had recovered on her own, and Will was simply no longer interested in joining their organization, much to their disappointment. The one who knew better, who had witnessed what went down in the janitorial closet at the hospital—my guess was, he was staying quiet to avoid losing control over his division. He’d been abusing his authority…and his daughter.

Still, the Order had some serious power players, and if they’d been interested in these “psychics,” maybe one of them might actually be valuable in some way. Maybe someone knew stuff we didn’t. Wouldn’t be hard; most days it felt like we knew nothing.

Folding up the page to hand it back to Will, though, I noticed something I’d missed before. “The other side of this is—”

He focused his attention on the steering wheel, ru

The section right before Psychics? Psychiatrists. His father hadn’t been crazy, as Will’s mom and others had probably suspected at the time, but depressed? Uh, yeah. People don’t generally take their lives via train because they’re feeling hunky-dory.

“Are you sure he saved this because of the psychics or…”

He just looked at me.

Yikes.“Okay, then. Never mind.” Will had few sore spots. This was one of them.

I finished folding the page and held it out to him.

He took it and put it back in his pocket. “He didn’t make any marks on the psychiatrist page. Not that one or the one still in the phone book. I checked.”

“I wasn’t implying that he—”

“Let’s just go, okay?” He opened the car door and got out without waiting for an answer.

Hey, look at that. I could upset people even when I was trying to be nice. Too bad I hadn’t realized this talent sooner. I could have saved myself the effort of coming up with all those perfectly pointed insults.

I followed him, climbing out of the car with way more effort than should have been necessary. My left leg was stiff from sitting for just the twenty minutes or so it had taken us to get here.

I gritted my teeth, forcing myself to stand up on it anyway. I hatedthis. So broken and clumsy and…not me.

I’d spent years training, working out, and not eating to get mybody, the one I’d had before. I was varsity cheerleader captain, people; that’s more than good genetics. It’s work.

But Lily…she was shorter, softer, curvier. Not fat, exactly, but not the athlete I’d been, either. Not even close. And don’t even get me started on the clumsiness. If there was something to trip over in a ten-foot radius, she found it…the hard way. Some of that was because this body had been in a coma for the better part of a year, and some because of the accident that had put her there. I had weekly physical therapy appointments to address those issues and hopefully get this body back to the point where I could exercise on my own. But a good portion of it would never be “fixed.” It was just her. And now, me.

I stepped back, shoved the door shut…and slipped on the loose gravel on the asphalt. I clawed for the door handle to catch myself, but it was too far away. I braced myself for the bone-crunching impact with the ground, but hands caught at me at the last second, pulling me up and against a solid, warm body.

“Are you okay?” Will’s voice in my ear sounded shocked. “I was coming around to help you.”

His arms were wrapped around me underneath Lily’s… mysizable chest—another big change, frankly—and I could feel his heartbeat thudding way too hard against my back. I’d scared him. Me, too.

“Fine. Just…I’m fine. Let go already.” But he didn’t, probably because that would have involved dropping me. My face burned, as I imagined what I must have looked like, flailing and falling like a total klutz.

Once I got my feet back under me properly, he let go. I straightened my shirt—a hideous yellow baby-doll number—and raked a hand through Lily’s blah-brown hair before turning to face him. “Thanks,” I said grudgingly.