Khanh, first of her name, mother of bunnies > Books: ghosts‎ (34)

Aren’t ghosts supposed to have some sort of agenda? I really hope mine isn’t to haunt my boyfriend’s bedroom. That is way too clichéd.

“Why didn’t y

Aren’t ghosts supposed to have some sort of agenda? I really hope mine isn’t to haunt my boyfriend’s bedroom. That is way too clichéd.

“Why didn’t you stay with your body?” he finally asks.
I meet his eyes and the only thing I want to say is I came back to be with you, I stayed for you.

I think I’m supposed to do something while I’m here. It doesn’t make any sense that I’d be given a free pass to haunt about and chill with my boyfriend.

“Well, I heard some guys saying she tried to go skinny-dipping in the river and froze, which is downright ignorant to suggest. Then Kristy London started telling everyone she saw Cassidy throw up at dance once because she was bulimic and that’s why she committed suicide.”

I was definitely drinking at the party, but was I drunk enough to forget everything that happened?

I cast away that dangerously hopeful thought and look up at Ethan, deciding to take advantage of what time I have left with him.

I’m momentarily distracted by Ethan’s navy blue boxer-briefs. They’re the only thing he’s wearing.

He exhales, long and loud. I lean forward, hoping for a whiff of his breath even if it’s sour, morning scented, but there’s nothing. I frown.

I’m sure my afterlife mission isn’t to hook up with my boyfriend—especially after what I just remembered about Caleb—but I can’t ignore the allure of his touches.

I bend down right in front of him, meaning to study his face for some proof of guilt, maybe attempt a ghostly trick to will a writing sample out of his obnoxious orange backpack, but the only thing I can think about is his mouth closed around mine. My eyes wander to his lips.

I squared my shoulders and inched up my chin as if I was above his affection. I wasn’t, but I was so mad I wanted him to think I was, to feel bad about it.

She sets a pad of monogrammed stationery on top of her notes from last week and adds Mica’s name to a short list of classmates, all of whom attended the party.
“This is your list of people you think might know something about my death, isn’t it?” I ask her.

Sadness rolls over me, knowing that I’ll never again be the person she turns to for comfort.

“Aimée,” I say very slowly as if overenunciating will allow her to hear me, “look under that binder.”

If I tell him I think I was with Caleb he’ll definitely ask why. I’m not ready to go there with him. It’ll ruin the small piece of us we’ve recaptured, and I can’t bear losing that again.

After he leaves, the cafeteria clears out, but conversations still echo off the walls. She was totally drunk … I heard she froze to death … Who kills herself over a breakup? I mean, really?

Aimée rolls her eyes. “I can’t believe he was high at eight-thirty in the morning. I’ll never get what Cassidy saw in him.”

He took my hand, and I was certain, in that moment, that I would never kiss anyone else for as long as I lived.

Caleb opens his eyes in a lazy, delayed reaction that tips me off that he’s high. Again.

"...you had changed when your parents split up and you started getting high all the time..."

“Speaking of, I made you a little somethin’ somethin’.” He reached into his bright orange backpack and pulled out a brownie wrapped in pink cellophane and about ten different colors of ribbon.
“Caleb, you didn’t have to do this.”
“I wanted to give you something special to celebrate your birth.”

I got them all killed. I was supposed to protect them, and I was underground, entertaining a convict, throwing daggers at a wall.

I got them all killed. I was supposed to protect them, and I was underground, entertaining a convict, throwing daggers at a wall.

"Our village is gone. The women massacred, the men turned to shadow stalkers, the children stolen. I believe that qualifies as ‘something gone wrong.’”

"A dagger won’t kill the fever. Won’t kill the spirits.” She turned. “But good luck anyway.”

It was a piece of meat, almost like a ball, but...
She realized what she was looking at and covered her mouth to keep from crying out again.
“It’s a heart,” she whispered.
It was indeed a heart, impaled on a branch.

He pulled a dagger from his belt. The blade shimmered in the lantern light, but it wasn’t the steel that caught her attention—it was the filigreed handle.
“That’s...that’s my sister’s dagger.”

“I didn’t mean to mock you, Ashyn. It’s just...sorcery? I suppose in a place like Edgewood they still believe in that sort of thing. Old superstitions.”

“It must be sorcery,” she murmured. “To make such a creature.”
“You’re as superstitious as an old nanny. Sorcery didn’t make such a creature. Necessity did.”

“It isn’t shadow stalkers,” she whispered. “They don’t speak—”
“Shhh!”
“It must be guards, from the village. They’re searching—”
“Shhh!” His lips came to her ear, warm breath filling it, his voice harsh with anger. “Be still and be quiet, Keeper. For once.”

Moria raced through the forest as she clawed vines aside.
I shouldn’t have left Ashyn. I know it’s my duty to protect everyone, and Ashyn can keep the spirits at bay. But I shouldn’t have left her.

“And you just happened upon him?”
Ashyn seemed as if she’d like to say yes, that’s what happened, but she could not lie to her sister. “His uncle captured me. Briefly. No one harmed me, though. Now let him up. Please.”

Ashyn loved her sister. And yet...It was not that Ashyn particularly wanted any of the young men who trailed after her sister. It was simply...well, simply that she wouldn’t mind a boy’s attention, if only to prove that she wasn’t completely invisible next to Moria.

As hard as Ashyn tried, she could not quite shake the lingering hurt over Ronan’s...betrayal certainly wasn’t the right word. Even abandonment felt too harsh.

"Liv...it’s a name, a verb, a command. A notion of mortality. That’s a name ripe for some epic poetry. If I could write, I’d write you one, a poem.

"Liv...it’s a name, a verb, a command. A notion of mortality. That’s a name ripe for some epic poetry. If I could write, I’d write you one, a poem.”

“I appreciate the effort, man, but let it go,” Gabe said, sincerely. “You know what’s most important right now: to learn the truth and bring justice. For her.”

My grades certainly didn’t get me into Wickham Hall. I assumed it was my portfolio.

They dressed the same. Their hair was almost identical. Their skin was milky with the occasional bout of freckles. Their noses even turned up in the same way. But mostly, they all talked the same.

That’s when I noticed him. He was standing next to the headmaster, still looking at me even though the others had turned away. Our eyes met, and I quickly looked away. But I could feel his gaze linger. I desperately willed my face not to flush, my lips not to purse. Suddenly I was aware of every single muscle in my face.

I looked up, mouth full of bread, to see what had happened and...he was there.
He stood in front of me and asked, “May I have this dance?”

He was skittish and intense, but his brown eyes were gentle. Still, I wanted to keep at least three feet away. He was almost exactly how I’d always pictured Vincent Van Gogh—in other words, pretty crazy.

Malcolm let go of my hand and took out his iPod. He clicked it on and then handed it to me. A playlist called Liv, Forever was cued up.
“I made it for you. Obviously.”

And we walked along a sun-dappled path, comfortable like two people who’d known each other forever.
I looked out over the terrain. Lush and seemingly endless. And we walked right into it, serenaded by the Beatles’s “I’m Looking Through You.”

He turned to me. “Draw on me.”
“What?”
“Draw on me.""
After he said that, he took his shirt off. His body was perfect.

My head whipped back from its force. And that’s when everything went black.

My body was cold and dull. Plump with death. I looked almost serene. My dark hair spread around my head, kind of like that famous painting of Ophelia floating in the river. Funny, I’d made so many self-portraits and yet I’d never really looked at myself and realized I was actually kind of pretty.

He kneeled on the ground next to my body and kissed my cheek.

I was separate from the world. I had become the star, hadn’t I? That tragic, lonely thing.

I imagined myself an angel. I kind of was, wasn’t I?

I waited and waited until there was enough condensation for me to write a single sentence. It took every ounce of willpower to ignore the pain in my fingertip. But I did it.
I will hold u again, I wrote on the glass.

It was mid-afternoon so there were no stars, of course, but the leaves were every possible orange and the clouds were perfect puffs.

A self-portrait. Almost all my drawings are self-portraits. They don’t necessarily look like me—in fact, they rarely do—but they represent me.

“You are so talented. Do you understand? Your skill is exceptional. If you unleash and add true emotion to your work, it will sing, Olivia! It will fly!”

“I think I’ve been waiting for you my whole life.”
“It must’ve been a pretty boring life.”
“It was. Then I met you.”

But then images started to emerge from the darkness around us. At first they were pleasant: a Titian cherub, a Chagall angel. But then one of Bosch’s devils appeared. And Munch’s screaming terror. Francis Bacon’s agonizing Pope. And one of Basquiat’s jagged skulls.

There was an opening in the canopy of trees where we could see the brilliant moon. And stars. Hundreds of them. He took my hand. He held it strongly—with commitment. We lay there silently for a long while until he spoke.
“Bright star, would I were steadfast as thou art—
Not in lone splendour hung aloft the night

I was dying inside. Brain exploding like a Pollock. Heart melting like one of Dalí’s clocks.

And he cried. He didn’t have that embarrassed look guys usually have when they cry, like the way my dad had struggled against his tears. Malcolm let go, without shame.

“You know what I wish?” he asked.
What?
“That I could just see you one last time—hear your voice. Hold you.”

His Juliet stood before him, or at least, the shape of her, frozen in blood, monochromatic crimson, but unmistakably her. Thick chains bound her across neck and waist; manacles clasped her wrists. Her eyes were the worst of all, open, bloody, blank and unseeing, yet somehow still accusing.

“You must go north. You will find the man who can help you there.”

“Farther. Farther than you have ever traveled. Over the mountains, to a castle by the sea. The seat of a murdered king.”

...the unearthly portal that divided the realm of the living and the dead.

But they were gone, the hillside, too. Romeo found himself in a strange, barren wasteland.
He was alone.

He plunged into the spectral river on the maggot’s back, and when it surfaced, screaming its rage from its horrible, rotting mouth, he saw through the portal.
And he knew Romeo would not save him.

“It’s me.”

“I don’t care!” Romeo could not hold back his anger any longer. “You’re mad, and I’m a fool for letting you lead me here.”

Hamlet groaned. “Oh, stop pitying yourself. You were desperate and unhappy at home, you’re desperate and unhappy now. Nothing has changed, except that now we’re closer to your goal.”

“Have you listened to a word you’ve said? You’re miserable without your true love, and you’ve come here to find her. You are closer to rescuing a loved one from death than any man has ever been, and now all you’re doing is complaining.”

“I thought you said it wasn’t terrifying!” Romeo shouted, his eyes wide with fear.
Hamlet shrugged. The bastard actually shrugged as he lay there on the stone. Romeo would have punched him, but there were more pressing matters at hand than the prince’s maddening attitudes.

“I don’t know. I never stepped completely through the corpseway.” Hamlet’s thought trailed off as he moved through the light, sliding his feet cautiously along the floor. “Seems safe enough. Come on.”

“I stuck my head in,” Hamlet argued. “It came out again. And my father’s ghost was able to traverse the corpseway. I see no reason that it might not work exactly as I’ve described.”

“Was there no way to find out, before you did this to me?” Juliet asked, her large brown eyes full of hurt. “The two of you never thought that a bit more preparation might have been required before tampering with the forces of life and death?”

Juliet proved tireless with her blade, to Hamlet’s surprise and delight. He could not imagine the ladies of his uncle’s court taking such bloodthirsty delight in defeating monsters.

But Romeo had seen this fire in her from the very instant they’d met, though it had been only a small spark then. Set among the tinder of conflict, she was now ablaze.

The cloth fell away from the thing’s face, revealing no eyes, no nose, just the sightless, round countenance of a maggot and a circular mouth full of teeth in endless rings.

Something in Juliet’s voice bothered Romeo. There was a smirk to her tone that was too comfortable with the prince. She spoke the way she had spoken to Romeo that night at her father’s party.

I consider the many tools at my disposal, eyeing his large blood-splattered frame, and settle on my weapon of choice – one so infrequently used I need to dust it off first.
My eyes fill with tears. “Wha–” I swallow hard “– what were those things?”
“Demons.” Thanks, Einstein. I got that part. I let a tear trickle over.
He hurries to reassure me. “Don’t cry – I’ll protect you.”
Humiliating. Absolutely humiliating.

Cue innocence! My sweet lashes flutter against my helpless cheeks, my useless hands wring the edge of my guiltless, blood-soaked nightgown. My lovely lips quiver over my pearly white teeth.
Jo isn’t buying...Damn, that gimp bitch is a hard sell.

I’m ashamed of my wickedness – when I’m not reveling in it.

“I just get so mad sometimes. I’m never going to be a Crusader, never get married, never do anything. But who do I get to be angry at? The demons? They’re constantly trying to destroy mankind and, if at all possible, Heaven too. There’s enough reasons to be angry at them – my leg’s superfluous. The other students, the Crusaders for how they treat me? They’re not trying to be cruel, I am damaged. They’re so very kind, so full of pity. I’d rather they hate me than feel sorry for me.”

“You don’t deserve to be a Crusader – and it isn’t because you don’t have the legs, but because you don’t have the heart.”

The new attendee, a man, crouches in the doorway. Well, not really a man, a human teenager. One of God’s most misbegotten creatures – big like grown-ups and yet dumb like children. Selfish, moody, reckless, with a tendency to sleep too much and complain too often.

He was strikingly, mythically gorgeous, like a lion that had been turned into a human. He had sparkling golden eyes and waves of honey-colored hair.

“Je te supplie,” Monique blubbered. “Je te supplie, Rochelle!”

“The reason I came here …” I took a deep breath. “I have an idea. You know how I said we weren’t really friends? Well, what if we were friends? If you come hang out with me for a while, maybe we can, like, bond. And then when we get back home, I’ll totally be your friend."

But she just laughed.

“Colette, that’s the most ridiculous thing I’ve ever heard. Why would I want to hang out with someone who treats me like dirt? So I can make people think I’m ‘cool’?” She punctuated the word with air quotes and started to turn away, shaking her head. “I think spending so much time with Hannah has actually made you crazy.”

“Wait!” I cried. “Don’t you wish you could improve your social status? This is your chance.”

Her aim was so true that each bolt was hit and turned into a boiled beet that exploded all over the cousins. Red pulp splatted in

Her aim was so true that each bolt was hit and turned into a boiled beet that exploded all over the cousins. Red pulp splatted into their faces, hung from their hair, and stained their dresses. The other girls couldn’t help but laugh.
The cousins stood in the middle of the ballroom, dripping vegetable matter and wondering why anyone would want to be a witch in the first place.

A man cantered down the middle of the street on a giant black horse, holding his own head under his arm. The eyes were staring balefully. His cloak billowed from his shoulders and the stump of a neck shadowed the collar of an old-fashioned frock coat. A whip hung from his belt, knotted and white, and made from a length of human spine. More bones were knotted into the horse’s mane.

The sky opened overhead like a broken water jug. Rain pattered over the roof, soaked their dresses and tangled their hair like seaweed. In moments, the gardens were a maze of ruined silk, mud, and slippery stone. A balding duke slid on his perfectly polished shoes right past them and into a hedge. A dowager who usually limped on a diamond-studded cane gathered up her hem and darted over the lawn, her wrinkled knees bare.

“Ooof,” Emma wheezed. “Someone’s elbow is taking liberties.”
“Sorry, sorry.” Gretchen shifted. “But if Penelope’s left foot gets any closer to my cleavage we’ll have to read the banns.”
Penelope squirmed and spat out what felt like a wad of lace. “I sincerely hope that was someone’s petticoat and not a rat,”

“I’m the headmistress here. Welcome to the Rowanstone Academy for Young Ladies.”
Emma set her teacup down with a jostle. Tea sloshed over the rim. “I was kidnapped by a finishing school?”

Four: her father was no help at all.
Five: she’d grown antlers.
Six: the gates between the living and the dead had been opened.
Seven: which was her fault.
Eight: they needed to be located and locked.

“I wonder where the library is,” Gretchen said.
“I wonder if there are any handsome young men willing to dance a waltz?” Penelope added hopefully.
“I wonder if we can hide under the tablecloth,” Emma put in.

“I wonder where the library is,” Gretchen said.
“I wonder if there are any handsome young men willing to dance a waltz?” Penelope added hopefully.
“I wonder if we can hide under the tablecloth,” Emma put in.

“Shouldn’t you at least be clutching me out of fear?”
She turned to look at him. “Why? I’m not afraid of the dark, Cormac.”
He sighed theatrically. “But girls clutch at me out of fear all the time. Apparently I am a great defender against bees, spiders, moths, and suspicious-looking scones.”

It seemed to me that in this confluence of cultures, we had acquired one another’s superstitions without necessarily any of their comforts.

It seemed to me that in this confluence of cultures, we had acquired one another’s superstitions without necessarily any of their comforts.

They had all my favorite kinds of kuih—the soft steamed nyonya cakes made of glutinous rice flour stuffed with palm sugar or shredded coconut. There were delicate rolled biscuits called love letters and pineapple tarts pressed out of rich pastry. Bowls of toasted watermelon seeds were passed around, along with fanned slices of mango and papaya.

I had seen some of the painted hell scrolls that depicted the gruesome fates awaiting sinners. There were people being boiled in oil or sawed in half by horse and ox-headed demons. Others were forced to climb mountains of knives or were pounded into powder by enormous mallets. Gossips had their tongues ripped out, hypocrites and tomb robbers were disemboweled. Unfilial children were frozen in ice. The worst was the lake of blood into which suicides and women who had died in childbirth or aborted their children were consigned.

My father’s withdrawal from the world meant that he had sought out no friends with sons and had arranged no match for me. For the first time I began to fully comprehend why Amah was continually angry with him on this subject. The contrast between the realization of his neglect and the fondness I had for my father was painful. I had few marriage prospects, and would be doomed to the half-life of spinsterhood. Without a husband, I would sink further into genteel poverty, bereft of even the comfort and respect of being a mother.

...my father said, “What, you don’t want to be a widow at almost eighteen? Spend your life in the Lim mansion wearing silk? But you probably wouldn’t be allowed any bright colors.” He broke into his melancholy smile. “Of course I didn’t accept. How would I dare? Though if you didn’t care for love or children, it might not be so bad. You would be housed and clothed all the days of your life.”

Despite my terror, I felt a slow burning in my stomach. Why should I be married to this autocratic buffoon, alive or dead?
“I don’t think so.”
“What?”
“I said, ‘I don’t think so.’ I don’t want to marry you!”
Lim Tian Ching’s eyes narrowed into slits. Despite my bold words, my heart quailed. “You don’t have a choice in this matter. I’ll ruin your father.”
“Then I’ll become a nun.”
“You don’t know the extent of my influence! I’ll haunt you; I’ll haunt your father; I’ll haunt that meddling amah of yours.” He was raging now. “The border officials are on my side, and they said I have a right to you!”
“Well, you are dead! Dead, dead, dead!” I shrieked.

What was happening out in the world of men? Had Tian Bai talked to his uncle again? What were we to do with our debts? How I wished I could go out and make inquiries by myself. If only I had a brother or a cousin to rely on. Despite the fact that my feet were not bound, I was confined to domestic quarters as though a rope tethered my ankle to our front door.

There are tens of thousands of people, all around you, maybe hundreds of thousands, who at some point have experienced somet

There are tens of thousands of people, all around you, maybe hundreds of thousands, who at some point have experienced something that they can’t explain. And these people are silent. They are ashamed. They are afraid. They are convinced that they are the only ones, and so they say nothing. That is the real reason the Pax Arcana is so powerful. Rationality is king, and your emperor isn’t wearing any clothes.

That’s one of the things that sucks about magic: it moves molecules around; and when molecules move, electrons shift; and when electrons shift, the air becomes electromagnetically charged. This is why all of those reality shows about ghost hunters basically amount to a bunch of guys with science degrees getting excited while they talk about energy readings, and you’re just sitting there bored watching a TV screen fill up with fuzz and static before the cameras go off-line.

“I’m involved with somebody else.”
Of course she was. All the good Valkyries are taken.
“OK, but you maybe saved my life, and you’ve seen me naked,” I said. “In some countries we just got married. Can I at least know what name you go by?”

The woman set Sig’s chocolate orgy out in front of her and deposited my steak on the table.
“Y’all must work out,” the waitress observed a little sourly. She apparently did not.
“I’m going to throw this up later,” Sig said expressionlessly.
“I have a tapeworm,” I said cheerfully.

"...I think it is lovely, your face. You are like a doll—I do not know the name...one of those that break if you drop them."

Lustrous dark hair hung loosely to broad shoulders. A few locks turned out in an unkempt manner contrary to the rest of his appearance, while a few strands clung to his noble, chiseled features—a long nose, high cheekbones, defined lips like a Grecian sculpture and impossibly dark eyes.

“No need for apologies,” he replied. “I was the one asking the questions.”
“Thank you, sir.”
“And there’s no need to thank me!” the professor snapped.
“I’m sorry---Oh dear!” Percy murmured, biting her lip and yearning to retreat into her corset.

Percy groaned. “Oh, that class remains my bane! I pay attention, take countless notes, but all I remember is the sound of Professor Rychman’s voice. Every syllable he speaks is like a hypnotic delicacy, like dark velvet. I try to grasp his explanations, but all I can see is how his robe sweeps as he moves, how his presence commands the room, how his brow furrows in thought, how his eyes blaze, how he calmly brushes a lock of dark hair from his noble face...'

“You guys showed up in my bedroom out of nowhere, shot my cat with a gun that looked like something from a video game, and told me that a demon’s trying to kill me. Want to explain how you could possibly know that?”
Jared looked over at me. “Because our family has been fighting his army for over two hundred years.”

Jared sat alone at the counter, staring out the window at the nothingness you see when you’re too lost in thought to see anything else. I wondered why he was sitting alone. Why he always set himself apart from everyone else, like he was the one who didn’t belong.

I stared at Lukas, shocked. “You know this song?”
Lukas gave me a sheepish smile. “It’s my favorite.”
Warmth spread across my cheeks, and suddenly it felt like we were sharing something intimate in front of a room full of people.

“Can’t you see that he’s using you to get over his grief? That you’re just a distraction? All the other girls know to keep their distance after what happened. He’s an emotional train wreck, and he needs time. Friends. Not some love-starved loner throwing herself at him.”

I’m sure it hasn’t been easy for him to find the right person to help him move on after Becca’s death. After all, we deep, smart, solitary types have a tough time relating to people who aren’t like us.

He and I definitely have a connection. I felt it when we first met, at the fountain, and even on the cliff.

But now Max has me. As a friend. Even as more than a friend. Whatever he wants.

Still, maybe if I can learn more about Becca, I can get closer to Max. Find out what kind of girl he likes. And then maybe, just maybe, he’ll like me, too?