Page 61 of Winter Lost

He stepped back, and turned me to face the fading ghost. I hadn’t been lost in the flood of understanding for long, I thought. The spider had only consumed a few more inches of his extremities. But when I looked into Jack’s face, I saw that his awareness, his sharp fear, was fading, too—his bright blue eyes were dulling.

“Jack,” I said urgently. He looked at me, but I couldn’t tell if he really saw me. This wouldn’t work if he didn’t help.

“Jack O’Malley,” I said, stealing all the dominance I could from Adam. My voice carried an Alpha’s authority and my own power over the dead.

The demand hit the ghost and he swayed, lifting one of his arms in a futile effort to touch me. There was so little of him left.

I had understood what I needed to do just a second ago. But while I wasn’t paying attention, that knowledge had drifted away like a half-remembered dream. I couldn’t tell Jack how to save himself because I couldn’t remember.

Memory. Ghosts are like a memory, I thought, and in that moment, I understood exactly why that was. Then the understanding left me, but I didn’t need to know why.

When we see a ghost, pay attention to it, it becomes more attached to our world, my brother had once told me. His next words, if I remembered them correctly, had been, So don’t do that.

“I see you,” I told Jack, focusing on him, trying to capture his eyes as if I were a vampire instead of a…whatever I was.

“Rory,” Elyna said urgently. “His name is Jack Rory O’Malley.”

Names are important—the fae won’t reveal their true names, and change them as often as they can. Names have power. Names remember.

How was it that Peter Pan saved Tinker Bell? It wasn’t the children clapping their hands—although they had. Peter Pan was a story. Fiction. A lie. But stories are powerful lies because they are true in a way that real life isn’t.

“I see you, Jack Rory O’Malley,” I said.

Peter Pan had saved Tinker Bell with belief.

“Jack Rory O’Malley.” This time I said Jack’s name with authority, knowing with absolute certainty that Jack stood before me now. In that moment, I believed that he was real.

The spider couldn’t feed upon him if he was real.

I wasn’t expecting the crack of sound, like a blown fuse, or the sudden flash as all the lightbulbs in the big chandelier over my head, all the lightbulbs in the reception room, the little connected office, and at least some of the ones in the hall lit up.

For just a moment, the moment it took for the lights to remember that there was no electricity to power them—for that instant, when the little reception room was lit up as bright as day, Jack O’Malley was visible to everyone, whole and complete, and as real and solid as flesh and blood and life. I could hear the thump of his heart.

Adam stiffened.

Elyna cried, “Jack?”

She reached for him, but before she could touch him, the lights went out and her hands passed through him.

“Jack?” This time Elyna’s voice was nearly a whisper.

There was a soft sound that did not originate from anyone in the room. It might have been a laugh. It might have been “Good girl.” I looked, but I didn’t see the spider.

“Is he gone?” Adam had his command face on, and that told me he didn’t know what to think, either. At some point he’d cleaned off his lips. The wound on his arm had healed, though his skin was still stained with blood. “Is Jack gone?” he clarified, directing the question at me.

“No.”

Jack was trying to comfort Elyna, though he could not touch her and she could not hear him. But I wasn’t worried about him just now.

“Did you see where the spider went?” I asked.

Adam helped me look. The room wasn’t big, but then neither was the spider, by comparison. We started at opposite ends and searched thoroughly. I noticed that Adam had quit treating Elyna as an enemy. I thought it was probably due to her obvious distress over Jack. My husband was a romantic at heart. He was still keeping an eye on her, still alert, but not wary.

“If it’s here, we’re not going to find it,” Adam said, moving the couch back to its original position.

I crouched so I could look under the end table. There was a wad of bubble gum, but no silver spiders. I flopped down on my butt.

“Oh, it’s still here,” I said direly.