Hereafter (Shadowlands 2)

There were no drugs, no alcohol, not even a pack of cigarettes. I didn’t uncover a journal filled with maniacal, violent drawings illuminating the inner workings of Aaron’s mind. No serial killer–style magazine tear-outs with faces x-ed out in red. No lists of names of the people who’d wronged him and deserved revenge. No beheaded dolls or dead puppies or bags of hair. I did, however, find a folded picture of David Beckham in his underwear drawer.

Yep. This guy was a real threat to society.

I emptied Aaron’s bathroom of its perfectly aligned bottles of shampoo, conditioner, gel, and body wash, checked under the bed, then opened the drawer on his bedside table. Something slid out from the back and knocked against the front stop of the drawer. My heart caught in my throat. It was his cell phone.

Glancing over my shoulder, I saw nothing but the open doorway; Tristan was giving me my space. Shakily, I turned the phone on, and it let out a loud, jaunty bing as it powered to life. There were, of course, no new messages, but when I scrolled to Aaron’s outgoing calls, a tear slid down my face.

There were twenty-three calls to his father over the past three days with a few to his brother and sister mixed in. Next to each of them was the awful message: CALL FAILED.

I sat down on the bed, clutching the phone in both hands, silent tears pouring down my face. Aaron had been a good son who wanted to make up with his father. I knew it. I had felt it last night when I’d held him. He was sorry for what he’d done, and all he wanted in the world was to have his apology heard. There wasn’t a bad bone in Aaron’s body, and this room proved it. He was just a person, a good person who had befriended me and my sister, all while suffering with his guilt.

The light in the room shifted, and I looked up at the four-paned window. The fog was starting to roll out, revealing the empty parking lot, the manicured hedge across the street, a seagull-shaped windmill stuck in the center of the front lawn across the street.

Tristan stepped into the doorway, his expression pained. “Are you all right?”

“No,” I replied bluntly. I turned the phone screen toward him. “Look at this. Just look. All he tried to do the entire time he was here was call his father so he could apologize. That was all that mattered to him. How can he deserve to be in the Shadowlands?”

Tristan blew out a sigh. He sat down next to me on the bed, the weak mattress buckling beneat

h our weight.

“I’m sorry, Rory,” he said, putting his arm around me. “I’m sorry you have to go through this on top of everything else.”

Anger flashed through me, so hot and sudden it made me spring to my feet. “Stop it!” I demanded. “Just stop! I don’t want you to tell me how sorry you are. I want you to fix it!”

“I can’t,” Tristan said, shaking his head. “I can’t fix it.”

“You’re telling me that you guys sent all those poor people off to the Shadowlands over a hundred years ago and you haven’t even tried, in all that time, to figure out a way to get them back?” I demanded.

An awful jolt of pain crossed Tristan’s face. “How can you say that to me?” he demanded, rising from the bed. “I told you how awful it’s been for me to live with that. You don’t think I would have brought them back if I could have?”

“There must be a way, Tristan,” I said. “There has to be.”

“Rory, look, I know that you’re a problem solver,” he said, irritated. “That you’re a questioner and a scientist, but I can tell you that this is one problem you’ll never find an answer to.”

“I can’t believe you,” I said, turning toward the door. “It’s like you don’t even care. Like you want him to rot in hell.”

Tristan just stood there, glowering at me, his jaw working under his skin.

“How can you be so complacent?” I ranted.

“You know what, Rory?” Tristan said, his eyes on fire. “I think we both need to cool off a little. I’m going to head out.” He slipped right past me out the door and into the bright sunlight.

“But what about Aaron’s stuff?” I shouted at his retreating back.

“Leave it!” he yelled without looking back at me. “I’ll get it later.”

He got to the end of the sidewalk, turned the corner, and was gone. At that moment, the phone on the nightstand rang, its old-fashioned bell pealing so loudly I jumped. A moment later, it rang again. Slowly, I walked over to the table and picked up the receiver, my hand shaking as I brought it to my ear.

“Hello?”

Outside the window, four crows landed on the fence across the street, watching me with their glassy black eyes. On the other end of the line, there was the faint sound of slow, rhythmic breathing. My heart hammered against my rib cage.

“Hello?” I said again, clutching the phone.

Laughter echoed through the line. Quiet at first, but growing rapidly louder. I banged the phone down and bolted from the room, leaving the door wide open behind me.

I ran for home as fast as I could, my pulse throbbing in my eyes, my ears, my fingertips. The chill ocean breeze did nothing to cool my overheated skin. Had that call been intended for me? Had it been placed by someone who knew Tristan and I were there, or was it just a random coincidence? A crow cawed overhead as I raced across the square, and I got this awful feeling in my gut. A feeling that on Juniper Landing, there were no coincidences. I tore through the park, turned the corner onto Freesia, and smacked right into someone.