Her senses came to life, her eyes picking up new colors, as if she had comic-book infrared vision. The hum of distant streetlights buzzed in her ears. She could smell baitfish down by the bay.
As Wally collapsed, she heard his last heartbeat.
She gave a cry when her hoodie began stretching across her chest, her zipper ripping open. The waist of her jeans cut into her sides. What’s happening to me? She rushed into the bathroom, clawing away her strangling clothes. She was burning up. From the blood?
She reached into the shower and twisted the tap on, as cold as she could get it. When she scrubbed away the gang’s remains, her palms glided over her skin. It’d grown soft as silk, the jaundiced color fading.
She gaped down at her body. She’d filled out, no longer sickly thin! No bones jutted. Even better, she had tons of energy! She exited the shower and crossed to the basin with a spring in her step.
She stared at her reflection. An eerily pretty girl with gleaming black eyes and a blacker heart stared back.
Dark smudges highlighted her gaze like heavy eyeliner and hollowed her cheeks. Her full lips were blood red.
For kicks, she tried to return to her “ghost” form. She went completely invisible, then dialed it back a notch to faint-ish. Worked! The circles around her eyes deepened and her lips turned pale, yet even that appearance was pretty.
To look and feel like this, all she had to do was steal others’ lifeblood?
She’d awakened a ghost; now she was a blood-drinker too. A vampire.
No, she wasn’t a superhero.
Jo flashed a fang at the mirror. I’m a fucking villain.
Her heart soared. This was her origin story. She was going to be a legend (Secretly she’d known that too)!
Then her heart sank. Thaddie. Gotta get to him. Shit, she needed clothes. She scrounged through those bags until she found JT’s smaller threads. She slipped on a pair of sweats, rolling them up and tying them tight, then snagged a jersey.
With her revenge done, the urgency to find her brother overwhelmed her. Could she teleport to him as well?
She pictured him with MizB in some burbs house. Nothing. Jo strained to teleport. Didn’t move an inch. Do this the old-fashioned way. She tore out of the house, running toward the neighborhood MizB had shown her on a library map. Past the interstate, past the tower, past the pond . . .
Right when Jo thought she’d maxed her speed, she increased it. Trees and houses zoomed by. She was like a rocket!
In minutes, she’d reached the outskirts of the neighborhood. She raised her face to scent the wind.
Thaddie. Close. She followed his trail to a fancy house. Outside, she leapt into a tree, peering in windows. Spotted him! He was asleep in what looked like a guest bedroom. She imagined sitting beside him on that bed; suddenly, she was.
Adult voices murmured just beyond the door. The Braydens.
God, Thaddie looked so small and vulnerable under the covers, his Spidey doll clutched in his tiny hand. What if he’d been in the Thadpack when Wally had struck? What if he’d . . . died?
The more emotional Jo got, the more she wavered between ghost and body. She had to get Thaddie out of here before the Braydens saw her. “Wake up, baby bro,” she whispered.
He blinked open his eyes, sitting up in bed.
“We gotta go, Thaddie.”
His brows drew together. She heard his heartbeat race. “You’re not JoJo.”
She couldn’t look that different. “It’s me, kid.”
“Not JoJo, not JoJo,” he repeated as he scrambled back from her.
“It’s me. Spidey knows me.” She reached for the doll, to get a kiss on her cheek.
Thad yanked it from her, yelling, “You’re not JoJo! Not JoJo! NOT JOJO!”
She shot back in confusion, her palms raised; the door burst open. The Braydens.
MizB gasped at Jo, then lunged for Thaddie on the bed. Mr. B. shoved them behind him, his strong arm protecting them.
From me?
“Oh, dear God,” MizB murmured, as Thaddie squeezed her like a lifeline. “You d-died.”
Jo nodded.
“You need to pass on.” Mr. B. swallowed. “Or s-something.”
The three of them looked like . . . a family.
Jo’s voice cracked as she said, “Thaddie?”
He wouldn’t look at her, burying his face against MizB’s neck. Jo reached for him, but her fingers passed right through him. Grasping, grasping for her little boy.
The Braydens shielded him, MizB screaming, “Get away from him, you, you ghost or . . . or demon! Go back to hell where you came from!”
No, Thaddie’s mine! When he wailed as if in pain, Jo’s eyes watered. She told the Braydens, “I’m gonna get this figured out. But I will be coming back for him.”
MizB whispered, “Don’t.”
Jo floated forward, yearning for one last stroke of Thaddie’s curls . . . but she felt nothing. She couldn’t touch him, couldn’t hug him. Her Thaddie. A sob burst from her lips. I did die after all.
And this is hell.
TWO
TEN MONTHS LATER
It was finally time to collect her boy.
Jo ghosted to the Brayden house and stood outside a window, scanning for him among the people crowding the rooms. They were all dressed in black, talking in hushed voices.
She was busting Thaddie out tonight, couldn’t stand the separation anymore without tearing her hair out. . . .
For the first couple of months, she’d ghosted around the household, hovering over him as the Braydens spoiled him with tons of toys and a puppy and all the things Jo had wanted to give him. His washed Spidey doll sat on his toy shelf, buried among all the others.