Kissing Midnight Read online

  Dev eyes the fluorescents doubtfully. “These old places have iffy wiring. They may have blown some sort of fuse.”

  “Then why did the lights go out, but the music came on? Why did the lights come back on when you hit the switch?” None of this makes any sense. I feel completely thrown off, like the ground has shifted underneath me.

  Dev reaches out a hand to steady me. “You look shaken. We should get you out to the car so you can sit down.”

  I’m not going to argue. Right now, getting out of this warehouse seems like the best possible idea.

  I start for the door. Dev reaches down to the cat one more time, and I think he’s just saying goodbye, but when I glance back he’s looking at the cat with the strangest expression, like he’s furious with it. “I’ll deal with you later,” I hear him hiss under his breath.

  Or at least I think that’s what I hear. How can I trust anything anymore?

  Chapter 8

  Saintly

  An hour later, I’m still sitting in the passenger seat of Dev’s car, a plaid picnic blanket from the trunk wrapped around me, my hands still shaking. Dev has loaded the last of the boxes into the trunk and piled the back seat with costumes, and now he’s gone back in to clean up the mess. My mess. The thought makes me feel awful. I pride myself on being the sort of person who cleans up her own messes, thank you very much, and I know I should be in there helping, but the thought of going back into the warehouse makes me feel sick. The monster may have been all in my head, but it doesn’t matter. My nerves are still shot.

  Which is why I jump about ten miles when I see the wolf creature walk through the warehouse door.

  No, not the wolf creature. I let out my breath. Dev, with a sort of wolf-skin cape over him. The wolf’s head is pulled up over his own like a hood, its face covering the top half of his face so that its muzzle protrudes out over his nose and his eyes shine through the empty eye holes. The skin of the wolf dangles down his back, the front legs knotted at his chest like the clasp of a cape, the tip of the tail grazing the ground behind him. In the half light he looks like some ancient warrior returning from the hunt.

  He smiles at me from under the wolf’s muzzle as he walks up to my window and raps on the glass. “Look! I think we found your beast.”

  I roll it down, but only about an inch. “You think that’s funny?”

  Dev tips the mask up so the wolf’s nose is pointing straight up at the darkening sky, like its howling at the moon. I can see his whole face now, full of concern. “I’m not trying to make fun of you, Saintly. I just thought you might feel better knowing I solved the mystery. It was sitting on top of some boxes, right at your eye level. Made me jump just to see it, even with the lights on. I’m sure if I’d run into it in the dark…Well, it’s a wonder you didn’t have a heart attack.”

  There’s no teasing in his voice. His face is full of sincerity. He’s genuinely trying to put me at ease.

  I sigh. “You’re right,” I say. “I’m sure that’s what I saw. I’m sorry I snapped, I’m just…”

  “Still on edge. I get it. Anybody would be.” He crouches down by my window so the furry head of the wolf is close enough to pat. “I think we’re ready to head back to campus. Get you home where you can have a cup of tea or a stiff drink or whatever might settle your nerves. Put the night behind us, okay?”

  It’s the best idea I’ve heard all night, but I still feel bad. “What about the clean-up? You can’t possibly have done it all already.”

  He shrugs, making the wolf-skin twitch. “I can come back and finish up tomorrow. It’s no big deal.”

  “But it is a big deal! I don’t want you to have to come all the way back here.”

  Dev waves off my concern with his hand. “No worries. I have a car; I know where the place is now. It won’t take long. Honestly, Saintly,” he smiles a little sadly, “I have nothing better to do.”

  Suddenly, I feel bad for him. After all, it’s true: He doesn’t have anything else. Classes are over for the semester and Deals and I are probably two of the few people he has actually met. It’s going to be a quiet and boring winter break, and I get the impression Dev isn’t used to quiet and boring—isn’t longing for it, the way I am. For social, outgoing Dev, this must be hard.

  And he’s clearly hinting. I should at least invite him to hang out with Delia and I. I mean, after he just put up with my insane anxiety and cleaned up my insane mess. My cheeks flush with embarrassment at the thought — then my blush deepens with something more than embarrassment as I remember the feeling of Dev’s body pressed against mine, his protective arms around me.

  But I can’t actually invite him to do something, can I? Not after the way he flirted at the library. He’ll think I’m asking him out. And I’m not… right? Because that would be too complicated.

  Dev’s blue eyes meet mine expectantly.

  “Well,” I say, “listen. At least let me take you out to coffee or something to thank you.”

  His face lights up. “Really?”

  “Well,” I say, “I did stab you.”

  His laugh is full of relief, his smile so genuine I wonder if I pegged him wrong when I said he was a player. Right now, Dev seems like a good guy, a sheep in wolf’s clothing. “Actually,” he says, “I was feeling a little weird about not having anything to do Christmas eve. I was hoping to ask you out today at the library — you know, before we were so rudely interrupted.” His smile widens. “I would love to go out, but you have to let me choose the place. I want to surprise you.”

  Frankly, I’ve had enough of surprises today. In fact, it’s enough of a surprise, just to think Dev had been planning to ask me out. So, he really was flirting with me. At least one thing today wasn’t my imagination. “Okay,” I say cautiously, “I’ll let you choose.”

  “Excellent.” Dev pulls the wolf mask back down over his face, so his blue eyes shine through the eye holes and the wolf’s smile echoes his own. “Tomorrow night, we’re on.”

  Chapter 9

  Jesse

  Where is she, I wonder? For the past two days, ever since the girl saw me, I’ve been desperate to see her again, but so far our paths haven’t crossed. I hope a fresh vantage point might help, so I sit on the stone arch that spans the path outside the humanities building. I don’t usually climb stuff (heights bug me—go figure), but this arch isn’t too high, so I use it as a lookout a lot. Usually, I’ll admit it, I’m girl-watching, which maybe makes me sound creepy, but what else am I supposed to do? It’s not like the girls notice—they just look right through me, oblivious.

  Which, come to think of it, is pretty much what girls used to do when I was alive. The difference now is that I can look at them openly, rather than just stealing glances. I consider it making up for a whole childhood of trying not to watch pretty girls. It’s one of the few perks of being a ghost. It’s especially fun in the late spring when the weather is nice and they all come out and spread their blankets and do their homework in the sun in their tank tops and cut-offs. Then it’s nice.

  The weather’s not like that now, though. Not that I can feel weather like I did when I was alive. I mean, I feel it, but not as intensely as I did. It’s all sort of muted, the hot not as hot and the cold not as cold—which is good, I guess, because I’m not exactly dressed for cold, am I, since I have this jean jacket on year round? But I can tell it’s cold now just by looking at the students passing under my arch, at the way they rush from building to building with their heads bent and their scarves pulled up over their noses.

  There aren’t many students around. I think it must be holiday break, though I couldn’t tell you exactly what date or day of the week. I’m generally bad with time. I tend to fade out and disappear, which is sort of like passing out drunk, or maybe like having narcolepsy. When I come back, I’m never quite sure how much time has passed. I avoid looking at the clock tower as a rule, so I rely on the sun and the general coming and going of people to classes and meals to tell me the time and day. Is it be
fore Christmas? Or after? Did I miss it? The trees by the registrar’s office are still covered in lights. There are paper snowflakes in the windows of the library, and there’s a wreath hanging from the center of the arch I’m sitting on now. If I concentrated, I could probably kick it and make it swing.

  But I’m busy concentrating on other things. I scan the commons for the girl’s long, dark hair and puffy, sky-blue jacket. I don’t see her anywhere.

  Over on the curb, though, I see a few students loading duffle bags into a car. They’re probably headed home, or going on some road trip. Usually this would fill me with a wistful sort of envy, but today it makes me worried, too. What if the girl went home for Christmas? The thought of her being gone until January makes my heart constrict. How will I endure not seeing her, now that she’s seen me?

  Although, I have to admit, being seen comes with a certain amount of pressure. I mean, I’m desperate to talk to her, but what would I say? And what would she think of me? For the thousandth time today, I try to flatten the sticky-uppy part of my hair in back and to scoop my unruly bangs out of my eyes. I even try to wet it down with snow (which doesn’t work, of course.) God, I regret cutting my hair. You would think someone who jumped to her death would have bigger things to regret—and I do—but drunkenly cutting my hair myself still ranks pretty high on the list.

  I look like a dork.

  But it will be worth being seen as a dork, if only I can see her again. I turn around on the archway, my foot setting the wreath swinging, and gaze out over the arts center to the playing fields.

  And that’s when I see her.

  No, not the girl I’m looking for. Someone else completely. Someone who shouldn’t be there at all.

  I can tell right away she’s a ghost. For one thing, she’s semi-transparent like me. I can see right through her to the brick building beyond, like looking through fog.

  For another thing, she isn’t dressed right. Her long copper-colored dress looks like the sort they wore about a hundred years ago. It has a fitted bodice and a full skirt thick with petticoats. She has no coat, and her hair hangs down her back in ringlets, the color of a polished penny. Her dress is too long to let me see her feet, but I’m betting they don’t touch the ground because she glides when she moves. She passes through a group of students like a swan through a flock of ducks, her head a few inches above theirs, her chin raised disdainfully.

  I stare at her, dumbstruck. I can count on one hand the number of ghosts I’ve seen since I died. I mean, you might think we would be everywhere, but as far as I can tell I’m the only dead person in the neighborhood. And now there’s another ghost here, just a few days after a living person saw me? It seems too strange to be a coincidence.

  Which can only mean one thing.

  Maybe this ghost knows something about my girl.

  In a second, I’m clambering over the side of the arch and sprinting down the path. I don’t glide, just for the record, maybe because I was never very graceful in life, and I can’t fly or anything like that, but I’m a fast runner and I catch up with her pretty quick. “Hey!” I call, “Excuse me! You in the dress!”

  She stops, letting the student behind her walk right through her. I shudder at the sight; I hate the feeling of a living person passing through me. They’re warmer than I am and, not to be gross, but it feels like stepping in the warm spot where somebody pissed in the pool.

  The girl turns slowly. Her face is beautiful but pale, her lips thin and unsmiling. Up close like this I can see that, severe though she looks, she isn’t much older than me. I mean, she is older—like a century older, from the look of her clothes—but she wasn’t any older when she died. She looks nineteen or twenty at the most. She stares at me, silent.

  “Hi!” I give her what I hope is a friendly smile. “I couldn’t help noticing you.” I sound like I’m coming on to her, and now I really feel like a dork, but I can’t stop. ‘I mean, I saw you walking and…I’ve never seen you before, so…” My laugh sounds too loud. “It’s just been so long since I talked to someone.” I pause. “You can talk, right?”

  She purses her lips even tighter. “If someone allows me to get a word in, yes.” I can tell by her expression she wants to add but I don’t talk to people like you.

  “I just know some of us can’t talk. I mean, not that I’ve met many of us. And not to say you’re necessarily…” My voice trails off. I’m not sure of the etiquette here. Is it like outing someone, to assume they’re a ghost? Can I say it, or do I have to wait for her to tell me? “That is…If you are…are you…?”

  “Dead?” she says. “Yes.”

  I sigh in relief. “Good! I mean,” I add quickly, “not good that you’re dead, but good as in, good, I was right.” I blow my bangs out of my face. “I’m Jesse, by the way.”

  She presses her lips a little tighter. “Jesse is a boy’s name.” She looks me up and down, from my short hair to my dirty kicks. “Are you not a girl?”

  “No. I mean, yes, I’m a girl.” It’s not the first time someone has been confused on that particular point. I take a certain amount of baby-butch pride in being mistaken for a guy from time to time, even though I’m not tall or muscled enough to really pass.

  But clearly I’m confusing this girl, so I say, “It’s Jessica, technically, but I go by Jesse, spelled the guy way.” I feel my cheeks heat up when I say it. Admitting my name is Jessica always makes me feel like I’ve been pantsed wearing frilly underwear. “So, you can call me Jesse.” Awkwardly, I hold out my hand.

  The girl still looks like she just licked a lemon, but she’s too well-brought-up to ignore my outstretched hand completely. Her own hand is slim and white. She holds it limply, as if she expects me to kiss her pretty gold ring. “Charlotte Croft,” she says, with a little extra emphasis on the “Croft,” as if she thinks it should means something to me. I take her hand and pump it lamely a few times before she snatches it back. She draws a monogrammed hankie out of her sleeve like a magician and wipes her palm.

  I try hard not to take offense, but there’s no ignoring the pained expression on her face as she surveys my clothes. “I died in 1993,” I say, by way of excuse. Then, to change the subject, “I’ve never seen you here before. Are you new here?”

  “My parents own The Vanguard.”

  I’ve never heard of it. I give an apologetic shrug.

  “The Vanguard? The hotel?” She sighs dramatically at my blank expression. “Well, they did own it, back when it was still standing, and in those days everyone knew it.” She looks sad, and I feel suddenly feel sorry for her, in spite of her rich clothes and her haughty attitude. “The Crofts?” she says pleadingly, “The Greenwood Avenue Crofts?”

  “Oh!” That does ring a bell. If there’s anything I’ve had time to do in the last twenty years, it’s audit college classes, including a few on local history. “Greenwood’s the historic district. Big Victorian houses.” It’s easy to picture her there.

  “Yes! That’s where I grew up.” She smiles and looks about ten times prettier. But the smile only lasts a moment. “I’ve been away from it for a long time.”

  “Where have you been?”

  She looks away from me, out over the playing fields. “I am not at liberty to say.”

  From her pained expression, I can tell she wants to tell me, but something is stopping her. “But you have been somewhere?” I press, “I mean, you can go places? Because I can’t go more than a few blocks off campus. The farthest I’ve gotten is Xenon Street.”

  I’m afraid she’ll ask why, and I’ll have to explain the horrible feeling I get when I come to the edge of campus, like a thread is being pulled in my soul and I’m about to come unraveled.

  Luckily, though, she just nods. “The rules are different for everyone, aren’t they? Some can leave the place they died, others are bound to it. Some look as they looked in life, others as they looked in death. Some are free to do as they please, others are forced to replay their last moments over and over.”

/>   I scuff the snow with my sneaker. It doesn’t leave a mark. “Yeah,” I say, “I learned that the hard way a few years back. I saw one of us near the bus stop by the dining hall—a middle-aged guy. Looked like he was from India. I went to talk to him, but he must have been caught up in the memory of his last day because he just kept asking what time it was and then when a taxi came, he threw himself in front of it.” I shudder at the memory. “He didn’t just do it once, either. He did it to every taxi that passed. The cab drivers couldn’t see him, of course, but I could, just like it was happening right then.” I remember the crunch of the cab hitting him, the wet thunk of his head connecting with the pavement. “I couldn’t take it anymore, so I left, and eventually he disappeared.”

  I want to ask Charlotte where she thinks he went to. Heaven? Hell? Some other part of the city? Or did he simply stop existing? I’ve spent a lot of time in the library, reading over the shoulders of the living, and I’ve listened in on every religious studies class I can find, but I’m still not sure what I think. I want to ask her, but I’m afraid it’s not a topic of polite conversation.

  Besides, what if she knows? I’m not sure I’m ready for the answer.

  Charlotte is losing patience with me. Her eyes roam the campus hungrily. “I really should go.”

  “Why, if you don’t mind my asking?” It seems funny for a ghost to rush off. If there’s anything we’ve got, it’s time.

  “I’m looking for someone.” She takes a step away from me, but I’m not ready for her to go. It has been so long since I’ve talked to anyone! I’d rather talk to the living girl— my girl—but talking to Charlotte is way better than being alone.

  I take a step in front of her. “Who are you looking for?”

  “A man.”

  “Young or old?”

  Her expression darkens. “Both.”

  Both? What does that mean? “Is he living or dead?”