of here!”
Stan fell all over himself trying to comply. He literally went to the tile floor twice on his way to the door, his eyes wide, and stumbled out and into the night.
I turned back to the reflective surface of the video game’s screen, and just as I again found the shape inside it, fire erupted along my spine. I was slammed forward into the video game, and my head hit it hard enough to send a spiderweb of cracks through the machine’s glass screen. Pain, sickening and harsh, flooded through my skull, and I staggered.
But I didn’t fall. Justin DuMorne had been hard on me. It hadn’t ever been this bad, this scary, and it had never hurt so much—but then, it had never been for real. I grabbed the machine’s sides, forced my fingers to hold on, and kept myself from falling.
“Run! Run!” screamed the machine again. This time, the voice was blurred and distorted, disturbingly deep and malicious. I noted blurrily that the cracked and wildly flickering screen had a terrified wizard’s blood all over it. The game’s computer was apparently failing.
“You think that the inebriated little mortal is going to run to fetch the authorities,” purred the creature’s voice. I turned my head, looking around, and didn’t see anything. But the motion sent fire down my back, and for the first time I felt a trickling there beneath my jacket. I was bleeding.
“You think that if they come running in their vehicles, with their lights and their symbols, that I will flee.”
I turned and put my back to the machine. My legs felt wobbly, but I was beginning to fight through the pain. I clenched my teeth and snarled, “Get away from me.”
“I assure you,” came the creature’s bodiless voice, “that we will not be disturbed. I have made sure of it. But it does demonstrate that you possess a certain talent for performance under pressure. Does it not?”
“You sound like my guidance counselor,” I said, and wiped blood from one of my eyes. I took a breath and stalked forward, wobbling only a little. I grabbed the bag of money Stan had left on the counter. “I guess maybe you are a little scary.”
“Neither fear nor pain sway you from your objective. Excellent.” This time, the thing’s voice was coming from the far side of the convenience store. “But there’s no knowing the true temper of the blade until it has been tested. Even the strongest-seeming steel may have hidden flaws. This may be interesting.”
I paused, frowning, and looked up at my faerie godmother, who still sat at the edge of my grave, listening raptly. “I . . . Godmother, I’ve heard it said that ghosts are memories.”
“Indeed,” Lea said, nodding.
“Are the memories truth?”
Lea arched a rather caustic eyebrow at my words. “You ask your first question before finishing the tale?” Her mouth twisted in distaste. “Your storytelling form leaves something to be desired, child.”
“Yeah, I never did too well in English class. Will you answer the question?”
Her eyes became very, very green and glittered with a wild, gleeful light. “They are the facts, the events as you experienced them.”
I frowned. “I never really had a clear recollection of exactly what the thing said to me,” I said. “I mean, that blow to the head gave me a headache for days.”
“Ah yes,” Lea said. “I remember your pain.”
She would. “Yeah, uh. Anyway. I’m remembering the conversation now, word for word. Is that real? Or is it something that guy in black made up to fill in the blanks?”
“They are your memories,” she said, “the record, the impression of what you lived. Your brain isn’t the only place they are stored—it is, in truth, often a poor facility for such a purpose.” She paused to consider her next words and then spread her hands, palms up, an odd light in her eyes. “It is the nature of the universe that things remain. Nothing ever disappears completely. The very sound of Creation still echoes throughout the vast darkness: The universe remembers. You are currently free of the shackles of mortality. Your limited brain no longer impedes access to that record. The only blocks to your memory are those you allow to be.”
“That’s either very Zen or very . . . very crazy,” I said. “So, this memory—this is all the actual event?”
“Did I not just say as much?” she asked crossly. “It would make a ridiculous fiction. Why would I bother listening otherwise?”
I honestly wasn’t sure. But