“I don’t know,” she said finally. “Do I really want to live with you forever?”
Fisher chuckled. I cracked up laughing and shoved her shoulder. It was a classic Darcy line, and I was glad to see she still had it in her. I knew that I should tell her what had been happening on the island—that my father and others were suffering needlessly in the Shadowlands and we needed to figure out how to get them to the Light—but I didn’t want to spoil this moment. The truth of her new existence and the news that she would never see our parents again were enough to take in on one day. I didn’t have to scare the crap out of her as well.
For now, I was going to let her process what she’d learned, and I was going to selfishly hold on to this feeling that was sprouting up inside me. This delicate, fluttering white hope that somehow everything was going to be okay.
There was a sudden flash at the corner of my vision—something was moving in the house across the street. I flinched. Then thunder rumbled in the distance, and I unclenched. It had been nothing more than a remote flash of lightning. The storm messing with my head again.
“What I don’t get is, why didn’t you tell me this before?” Darcy asked. “You’ve known for…how long?”
“A week,” I admitted.
“But she couldn’t have told you,” Fisher said. “And you can’t tell any of the visitors. If you do, you damn them to the Shadowlands—and you get sent to Oblivion.”
“Seriously? That’s a bit harsh,” Darcy said, looking over her shoulder at him.
He shrugged. “I don’t make the rules.”
“So, basically, if I want to relegate some asshole to hell I just have to tell him he’s dead?” Liam asked.
Fisher whacked the back of his head so hard his hair stuck up.
“Ow! It was just a joke!” Liam snapped, his face turning bright red.
“We don’t joke a
bout stuff like that,” Krista said seriously. “Especially Oblivion.”
Liam shoved himself up and paced toward the closet. “I just found out I’m dead, okay? Excuse me for trying to lighten the mood.”
“Look, it’s just that there’s some history around here with this stuff. History no one wants to see repeated,” I said. “There was a Lifer named Jessica a while back who decided all the visitors deserved to know what was going on, so she told them. Just went around town, knocking on doors and spilling the truth.”
“So what happened?” Darcy asked.
“She got every last one of them a one-way ticket to the Shadowlands,” Fisher said grimly. “All those innocent people, damned forever.”
“For doing nothing wrong,” I added.
Lightning flashed again, and Darcy and Liam looked pale. Krista was about to say something when heavy footsteps pounded up the stairs, cutting her off. The floorboards in the hallway groaned, and there was a thudding knock on the door.
“Come in,” Darcy said weakly.
Joaquin opened the door, keeping one hand on the knob and one on the doorjamb. “You okay?” he asked her.
“I’ll live,” she said, then gave a quiet ironic laugh.
“Good.” Joaquin’s eyes flicked to me. “Mayor’s called a Lifer meeting at the police station. We gotta go.”
I looked at Darcy, and she endeavored to smile. “Duty calls?”
“Yeah,” I said, my stomach curling into knots. “But there are a few more things I’m gonna have to tell you on the way.”
So much for giving her time.
“Until further notice,” the mayor announced, “the island is on high alert.”
An uneasy murmur passed through the hundred or so Lifers gathered in the open area in front of the police station’s high front counter. As municipal buildings went, it was fairly small, and we were crowded shoulder to shoulder, some sitting in plastic chairs along the walls, others perched atop the marble counter, and still others—the overflow—hanging out around the officers’ desks. I glanced at my friends—Bea, Lauren, Krista, Joaquin, Fisher, and Kevin. No one said it, but we could all feel Tristan’s absence. Across the room, Pete and Cori huddled together near a potted palm. Cori’s dark curls half covered her face, and her gaze darted furtively here and there as if she thought we were here to accuse her of something. Pete glanced at us and did a quick double take, then pulled his baseball cap low on his head and trained his eyes on the ground. Everyone else was intent on the mayor, who stood at the center of the room with a three-foot radius of open space around her.
“What does that mean, exactly?” the man who ran the grocery stand asked.