Body and Soul

“On campus. In my dorm room,” he said in that same hushed voice, and tears spilled over from his watering eyes down his cheeks. “She wanted me to go with her to that stupid costume party, expand our social horizons, whatever that means. She was nervous about going alone.”

And then it clicked. He wasn’t talking about his parents;he was talking about his sister and her death.

Alona gave me a triumphant look.

“We fought about it, and she went alone. I was just so tired of doing everything together.” He thumped his head back against the wall, and the bottle in his slack grip tipped. If he hadn’t already drunk more than half, the whiskey would have spilled out onto the carpet. “The same college, the same dorm, the same major in Econ. And she was changing, becoming this person I didn’t know. Contact lenses, different hairstyle—”

“How about just a hairstyle in general?” Alona muttered, eyeing the out-of-control curls on the top of Ed’s head.

“—ditching her jeans and sweatshirts for clothes like the sorority girls were wearing, hanging out with dickhead frat guys…and she wanted me to change, too. Telling me who to talk to, what to wear. Nothing all that different from what she’d always done, but suddenly I was just sick of it. I didn’t like who she was becoming—all fake and plasticky—and I didn’t want to be a part of it. But if she reinvented herself without me, then who was I, you know?” He let go of the bottle to scrub at his face, and liquor flowed out, staining the carpet. “I was…It was confusing. I was trying to work it out, figure out what to do. So I told her no that night, probably for the first time ever. She was pissed, but I thought, It’s only one night—no big deal. Instead, it was everything.” He drew his knees up to his chest and rested his forehead on them. “It was just a stupid party,” he said, his voice muffled.

I’d told Alona that, for the moment, we only had to worry about finding Erin. But I realized now that having Ed tell us where Erin might want to hang out wouldn’t be enough. Not with all of this guilt hanging around, binding the two of them together. Ed’s unfinished business with someone who was essentially the other half of himself was the real problem. Without him, there was no way we were going to reach any kind of resolution, even once we managed to find Erin.

I made an executive decision. “You need to come with us. We need your help with Erin.”

He squinted at me. “You keep saying we.”

“My spirit guide, Alona, is here,” I said.

“Was that really necessary?” she muttered.

“For real? Hey, Alona.” Ed waved at a point well above where she knelt on the floor next to me.

She rolled her eyes.

He wiped his face and sat up straighter. “What do you need my help with? Is Erin okay?”

Alona sighed. “I wouldn’t if I were you,” she said to me. “It’s only going to make things worse.”

I ignored her. “It’s kind of a long story,” I said to Ed. “But the gist of it is that Erin has sort of taken a body that doesn’t belong to her, and we need your help to fix that.”

He lurched forward, once again making me wonder about the vomit potential of the moment. “A body?” He frowned. “She’s possessing someone? Is that even possible?”

“Seriously,” Alona said, “do you ever listen to me?” She pushed herself to her feet and stalked away.

“Kind of,” I said to Ed. “Like I said, it’s complicated. We need you to help us find her and get her out, back here where she belongs.”

He struggled to focus, rubbing his eyes. “But she’s in a body? Like, she’s alive?”

Oh, crap.

“Told you,” Alona singsonged from somewhere behind me.

I refused to look at her. “Not exactly,” I said to Ed, struggling to keep on topic. “The point is, the body doesn’t belong to her. We need to get her back here as a spirit, so she can resolve her issues and move on to the light. That’s what you want, isn’t it?”

“Is she happy?” he asked.

I thought of Erin gleefully smashing her mouth against mine. Happywould be one way to describe her. Ecstaticmight be more accurate. But that didn’t change the fact that what she’d done wasn’t right. She was in this only for herself. She didn’t care who got hurt—Alona, Lily, Lily’s family . . .

“I don’t think you understand,” I began.

“No, youdon’t understand. I oweher.” He pounded his fist against his leg. “What happened was my fault. I could have stopped her from going, or I could have gone with her, like she wanted, and she wouldn’t have had so much to drink. Then none of this ever would have happened.” He gestured around, obviously including his parents and their financial distress in the mix. “If she’s happy now, I’m not going to stop that. At least something decent will come out of this mess.”

I stared at him. “Are you not hearing me? She’s possessing an i

“She’s my sister,” he said, jabbing an unsteady finger in my direction. “And I killed her.”

I stood up and stepped back from him, frustrated. “No, you didn’t.”

“I might as well have.” He stared glumly at the floor.

“Look, it was her decision to go to the party and to drink on the freaking roof or whatever. She died, and she needs to move on. End of story.” I raked my hands through my hair, trying to find the words that would click with him, that would make him understand. “Her choices are not your responsibility. And sometimes you have to let people go.” As soon as the words were out of my mouth, I knew they were a mistake.

I heard Alona’s sharp intake of breath behind me and turned quickly to face her. “I didn’t mean you.”

She gave me a sad smile. “Why not? The same rules that apply to Erin apply to me, too. That’s what I’ve been trying to tell you.”

“It’s different,” I insisted. “You were sent back for a reason, even if no one spelled out what it was.”

“Glad to hear you think so now,” she said quietly.

Ed, of course, noticed none of this. He forced a laugh. “Let people go? You keep telling yourself that, man. Let me know how it works out for you in real life.”

Damn it.Drunk and ridiculous, Ed had a point.

I followed Will down the stairs after he stormed past me. He started pacing the empty living room, back and forth in front of the windows in the rapidly fading squares of sunlight on the carpet.

I leaned against the wall in the foyer and watched. The frustration rolled off him in nearly visible waves, and I felt a pang of sympathy for him. He was doing his best. That being said, I couldn’t leave it like this. We couldn’t just hangout in an empty house and hope for all of this to resolve itself. I mean, I guess we could have, but not without a lot of the collateral damage we were hoping to avoid. “So, what now?” I asked.

Will stopped to glare at me. “I don’t know, okay?” He rubbed his hands over his face. “You were right,” he said, his voice muffled. “This was a stupid plan.”

He sounded miserable, and it tugged at me in a way I normally would have worked very hard to ignore. Except…this was it. The end. In that knowledge, I felt a reassurance and freedom I’d never experienced before.

I straightened up and approached him cautiously, my steps soundless on the carpet. When I touched his shoulder, he jerked his head up, startled.

“It’s all right,” I said. “It wasn’t a stupid plan. There were just more variables than we counted on, is all.” Actually, more variables than hehad counted on. I’d foreseen that Ed might not be as easy to maneuver as Will had thought, and Will might have avoided some of this if he’d listened to me. But I saw no point in bringing that up now and making him feel worse. Hey, look at me, growing as a person.

He laughed bitterly. “You can’t fool me. You’re gloating on the inside. You tried to tell me, and I wouldn’t listen.”