Luminosity (Gravity Series #3) (The Gravity Series) Read online

  I had just gotten off the phone with Theo who had been complaining about Alex again. I missed being able to hang out with her, and I knew she felt bad that she’d been working so much. But it was hard for me to carry on a simple conversation without slipping into the paranormal.

  I missed having parents that weren’t broken up and a mother that wasn’t part of a possibly evil organization that may or may not want me destroyed.

  Staring outside, I started to cry, unable to hold back the urge. I cupped my hands over my eyes, sobbing softly.

  “It’s going to be okay,” Jenna said softly.

  “You’re just saying that,” I said, sniffling.

  “Of course I am. Doesn’t mean it’s not true.”

  I looked up at her and tried to smile, but it didn’t work too well and more tears came spilling out.

  Out of instinct, like she had hundreds of times before when I’d had scraped knees and bee stings, Jenna reached out to grasp my shoulder.

  Her hand made contact, without electric shocks or me fainting cold.

  I looked down at her hand in astonishment. It was solidly holding my shoulder for the first time since she died.

  “How are we touching? And without horrible electrical awfulness?” I asked.

  “It must be because of the necklace,” Jenna said. “I told you it felt powerful.”

  Both of us laughed nervously at the same time. Tentatively, I turned to her and reached out for a hug. My arms wrapped around her. It felt the same as it had when she was alive, except for the fact that her body was room temperature. I pressed my cheek into her shoulder and squeezed her tightly. She squeezed me back.

  The necklace was starting to send shooting pains up my neck to the base of my skull. “I’ve got to take this thing off soon,” I told her, shifting back begrudgingly. She nodded, her face serious and thoughtful.

  “If I do, though…what if this is just a fluke and we can’t touch anymore?”

  “I don’t think that’s the case,” Jenna said. “And even if it is, at least we got to hug one last time.” She reached out and squeezed my hand.

  Then I heard Claire clomping down the stairs. I felt my breath catch in my throat. I stood frozen for a moment, and ducked the necklace back under the neckline of my shirt with my free hand. Jenna’s hand was still intertwined mine, like she’d forgotten we were attached.

  Claire arrived at the bottom of the stairs. My heart hammered away inside my chest. Even though she couldn’t see Jenna, I still felt like she was about to catch me being deceitful.

  “Ariel?” she called. She was looking right at me. She walked over to where I was, but gave no indication that she could see me, turning her head left and right. She called my name again.

  “Claire, I’m right here,” I spoke up. Still no response. She turned and glided down the hall to my room.

  I glanced back at Jenna and then let go of her hand. I followed Claire footsteps. She was knocking on my door.

  “Claire?” I asked timidly. What if she still didn’t see me?

  “There you are,” she said, sounding exasperated. “Dinner’s ready. As you can see, I didn’t violate your privacy to tell you so.”

  She stalked back off down the hall while I stared at her. Holding Jenna’s hand had a pretty interesting side effect. It made me invisible.

  CHAPTER 18

  TO TEST OUT my new-found superpower, I wore the necklace the next day and sneaked out into the backyard while holding Jenna’s hand. She thought I was a bit nutty, but she went along with it.

  Claire was tending to her garden, her yellow gloves covered in dirt. As she dug into the dirt with a trowel, I jogged in a circle around her. Her wide-brimmed straw hat never rose and she kept digging. I bent down, still attached to Jenna, and stuck my face a foot from Claire’s, waving my free hand in front of her nose. She still didn’t acknowledge me.

  “That doesn’t necessarily prove this is foolproof,” Jenna said as I stood back up. “Maybe it’s just your mom.”

  “My mom has eyes like a hawk,” I muttered. “Let’s keep moving.”

  I peered into the window next door and saw Theo alone in the kitchen.

  “Too bad I can’t knock on the door,” I complained.

  A smile twitched at the corner of Jenna’s mouth. “You can go right through the wall. At least, if you can do the same things I can.”

  I frowned at her in disbelief, then stepped across the bricks leading to the door. I shoved my hand out towards the white wood. My fingers slipped right through, the sensation like cotton surrounding my skin.

  “That’s pretty nifty,” I said, grinning at Jenna. We passed through into Theo’s farm-themed kitchen.

  “Hi, Theo,” I said loudly. She didn’t even stir. “Theeeeooooo.” No answer.

  I almost wanted to do something to tease her, but she got scared easily. I didn’t want to freak her out too much. It was almost impossible to resist banging a pan on the way out, though.

  When I was holding Jenna’s hand, I felt very light and could see the shadows and fog more clearly. Our world looked softer and less real, pale and bland. Jenna and I discussed what to do with this new discovery.

  “Let’s try something first,” I suggested. “When we hold hands, maybe it actually pulls me into Limbo. I feel different, kind of weightless.”

  “Okay. So….”

  “So, let’s try another seance. We tried performing one before, but I know more now. More about what we’re up against.”

  “That’s so crazy that it just might fail,” Jenna said, lying on my bed with her bare legs crossed. “I’m up for it. But who are you going to try to contact?”

  “My grandmother, Eleanor. Maybe she can guide me.”

  ###

  Hell only had one church within the township, The Church of the Holy Light, set almost to the city line. A sprawling graveyard had been planted around it, framed by shady trees and berry bushes.

  One evening later that week, I parked my car in the empty church parking lot and opened the short little gate to the cemetery. People weren’t often buried within the stone walls anymore; most of the plots were full.

  Jenna and I crept through the headstones. I wasn’t usually creeped out when I was in the graveyard; I felt more of a serene feeling. But this time, it felt much more desolate. The shadows were noticeably bloated and although we hadn’t seen any of the human-like figures, I knew it was only a matter of time. Thick fog wrapped around the trees and tombstones. Most of the bouquets of flowers were dried and dead. A stiff, chilly wind blew through, popping goosebumps along my forearms.

  “Where am I buried?” Jenna asked randomly as we walked down the grave rows.

  “Brighton Hills.”

  “Oh. Is it nice?” She stopped at an ornate, two-foot-high cross. “What does my headstone look like?”

  “This is a really odd conversation.”

  Jenna looked sheepishly at me.

  “Well, it’s just a stone,” I told her. “A plain stone, I think it’s made out of marble. Has a nice little saying on it.” I told her what it said.

  “Oh, puke!” Jenna exclaimed. “ ‘Beloved daughter, cherished friend?’ How could you let them send me off with a Hallmark sentiment? How about, “‘Here lies Jenna, she kicked ass for the short period of time the universe allowed such awesomeness to exist in human form?’”

  “The stone isn’t that big. Plus, I didn’t exactly have much say in your interment.”

  She groused to herself, shoving her hands in her pockets.

  I scoffed. “You want me to go back with a Sharpie?”

  “Now that you mention it, I think it’s your duty as my best friend,” she said, smirking.

  A few more steps and we reached my grandparents’ graves. The bigger plots were secluded on a short hill. Even though they had died in a car accident out of town, their bodies had been buried in Hell where they’d grown up, fallen in love, and gotten married.

  I knelt beside my grandmother’s grave and
Jenna sat down across from me. It was weird to think that Eleanor, the girl I wanted to contact, was the same as the elderly, gray-haired woman with an obsession for depression glass that I remembered.

  “Okay, let’s get this undead party started,” I said.

  “You have a terrible sense of humor,” Jenna said. “I feel okay saying that since you can’t kill me.” She looked around us, at all of the tombstones and dramatic statues of angels. “What if this backfires and an army of zombies rush out of their graves?”

  “Well, I have my running shoes on,” I said, “and you were Miss Track Team. So, we’re good.”

  I lit three candles on the ground in front of us and settled back on my haunches. The flames flickered in the light breeze, and the flame of the red candle kept shooting upwards. I reached out and grabbed Jenna’s hands. Instantly I felt the weightlessness come over me, as if my body was lifting off of the ground. A hazy gray veil settled over the graveyard around us.

  I wasn’t feeling much from the graveyard. Not like the feelings I always got at Dexter—the stifling atmosphere, the faint beating of the demonic heart in the floor.

  It just felt like a gloomy, empty place with dead bodies underfoot. Not that out of the ordinary.

  I had no chant prepared, so I just started talking. “Hi Grandma. This is Ariel. I know it’s been a while since I’ve visited, sorry about that….”

  “Can we move on from the family reunion?” Jenna asked.

  “Sorry,” I muttered. “Grandma, I have some questions about what you used to see. I wanted to call you up and see if I could talk to you.”

  I glanced up, feeling like we were not alone, and saw the girl in gingham from my visit to Dark. I froze. She was leaning up against a tall tombstone with her arms crossed, glaring daggers at me. Jenna caught me looking and glanced in that direction, too. I blinked, and the girl disappeared.

  “Who was that?” Jenna asked.

  “I don’t know. But she keeps popping up. It’s getting irritating,” I said.

  I spoke a little more to the grave, but nothing happened. In the end I was rambling, watching the candle flames flicker to the bottom.

  “How long do we sit here before we declare this a failure?” Jenna asked. “I’m starting to feel tired. I think that holding hands sort of drains my energy or something.”

  A chill filled the air against my skin. Shadow figures started creeping out from the skeletal trees and behind the tall angel statues. They were slow but made big, even strides towards us.

  “Whoa,” Jenna exhaled, her eyes wide and fixed on the shadow shapes. “They’re coming right for us. What do we do?”

  Both of us darted up and raced towards the tall stone fence. The shadows kept advancing, their blazing red eyes boring through us. Their long, hazy arms and legs twitched as they shambled closer.

  I looked around frantically for an escape. We were in the corner of the cemetery. There was no way out.

  “Can’t you climb the wall?” Jenna asked, sounding as scared as I felt.

  “No, there aren’t any footholds in the stone. You should go.”

  “But I don’t want to leave you.”

  The shadows were closing in now, only a few feet away. Fear blasted through me, and I started shaking uncontrollably. I hadn’t felt so scared since Warwick held a gun to me.

  Jenna, always headstrong, punched her fist towards the closest shadow. Her hand passed right through it and the shadow dispersed like smoke. After hesitating, I did the same, waving my hand through another dark figure.

  “It’s like they’re not solid enough here,” I said, mystified.

  “Yet,” Jenna said.

  “So, how do we get out of here?”

  “Think of it like running through smoke,” Jenna said, her grip tightening on my hand. “Just hold your breath.”

  We launched into a run, crossing through the shadows. I didn’t feel a thing, and the shadows faded away as we ran out of the graveyard towards home.

  ###

  The rest of the summer zoomed past, growing hotter by the day, but I was indoors so much I didn’t notice. I read a lot and visited Theo at her job. A few times, Alex and I hung out at Dante’s over milkshakes.

  The shadows stayed away. I put the necklace back in the box to recoup for a while; the headache I’d had after the night in the graveyard lasted for three days, like an icepick repeatedly stabbed into my temple.

  Claire only dragged me to one more Thornhill function, a flower sale supposedly benefiting local charity. But I grumbled in the corner the whole time, apparently embarrassing her, and she revoked her invitation. She still went to the meetings with clockwork regularity. Each time she’d come home tired and dazed, breezing right past me and into her office.

  In all this time alone and consorting with Jenna, I hatched a plan.

  I tested out the limits of the invisibility with Jenna for several weeks. We walked around local places, holding hands like wayward toddlers, and tested to see if anyone would see or hear us.

  At first, Jenna could only manage five or ten minutes. But we had soon worked up to forty-five minutes.

  We wandered around the local strip mall, dodging into the coffee shop. We passed effortlessly through the small crowd teens and old folks getting coffee and chatting.

  “See anything interesting?” I asked.

  She nodded to a nearby table where a youngish guy was reading a heavy novel. “He’s got a porno hiding inside that.”

  I wrinkled my nose and looked away. As my head turned, I happened to see a strange man hunched by the postcard rack. He kept darting his head around, his baseball cap pushed low. I could only see his back, but as he moved off, I saw he was dragging his left leg a little.

  “That’s McPherson,” I whispered to Jenna. We followed him out of the coffee store and down the sidewalk. He turned his head and stopped and stared at girls as they walked past.

  “McPherson’s a perv, now?” Jenna said in distaste.

  “I don’t know if that’s it,” I said, my eyes trained on him. The other people milling around seemed uncomfortable getting close to him and kept a wide berth. He ducked into a clothing store, keeping his head bent down, as though to prevent people recognizing him.

  “We need to get closer to him and see what the hell he’s up to,” I said. Jenna nodded.

  We went into the store, which was crowded with weekend shoppers. Many of them were young girls. McPherson got close to a trio of teens, shadowing them. Then he shook his head and went towards another girl. She peered over her shoulder, noticed him and scurried out of the store without her purchases.

  A tag danged at the back of McPherson’s baseball cap, like he’d snatched it from somewhere to conceal himself. The more he stumbled around, the more pronounced the limp became.

  “Won’t do. Won’t do,” McPherson was muttering. “Something precious. Something precious.”

  Jenna and I exchanged a worried glance. The woman behind the check out counter stared at McPherson with a worried expression and picked up her phone.

  “Whoo, boy. I guess you’re not the only one who’s gone Smeagol,” Jenna said.

  Whatever was happening was getting worse.

  ###

  Henry and I were in our spot on the hill again, soaking up the late August heat. His time at the office was beginning to dwindle, with fewer things that Phillip could keep him busy with. He carved out chances now, and without my parents to tell me no, I had a free schedule. The white ghosts of dead dandelions dotted the aging grass around us.

  He’d brought me a full bag of chocolate covered popcorn, a gourmet brand in a fancy, satiny white bag. “I was going to bring something microwavable, show you my nuking prowess, but that didn’t happen.”

  “What’s the occasion?” I asked him, feeling touched.

  “Eight-month anniversary,” he said, smirking.

  “Geez, I’m sorry, I didn’t get you anything. I didn’t know we were celebrating monthiversaries.”

&
nbsp; “Don’t worry, you’re sharing with me,” he said, ripping the top of the bag open so a few loose kernels fell to the blanket.

  “What are you going to do if we make it to sixteen months? You’ll have to top yourself.”

  “Why do you always add the ifs and buts?” he asked, a tinge of irritation in his voice.

  “Well, I mean, what if we go to college in different states?” I asked him. It had been nagging at me whenever we were around. A year was a long time, but not that long. I was shocked we’d already been together eight months.

  “I’m not committed to anywhere. I think Alex has a good idea, trying to figure out what you actually want to do with the rest of your life before you take a leap.”

  “What if you get into Yale or something?”

  Henry snickered, bouncing popcorn through his fingers. “I didn’t apply to Yale. I didn’t apply that many places, actually. I’ve got money saved, and I want to go to school, but I’m not sure where yet.”

  “Well, still. What if we get separated?”

  “Simple,” he said, his face serious as he steadied his hand. “I’ll go wherever you go.”

  He smiled at me, the dark pools of his eyes shining. He leaned forward, pulling me into a kiss. The air was warm against my skin and his lips tasted of salt and faintly of chocolate. He ran his hand along my neck, then against my lips he muttered, “What’s this?”

  His fingers slid up the silver chain of the necklace. I’d been wearing it beneath my shirt, dormant against my chest.

  I felt a stir of energy behind me and before I could turn, Jenna’s hand was on my shoulder.

  “What was that?” Henry asked, his brow knit.

  I searched his eyes, feeling a shot of unease. Jenna almost never came around when Henry was with me, even at home.

  Jenna tapped my shoulder again, this time her hand lingering on me. “Tell him,” she whispered.

  Henry jumped back a foot, his hands behind him on the grass but almost falling over. He crab-walked backwards in his haste to get away from me. Most of the blanket scooted with him.