Echoes Between Us - McGarry, Katie Page 0,45

V, and I’m curious as to why you’re avoiding me, why you’re taking on this project and why you’re lying to me about being downstairs. This house is alive, it talks, and I’m aware you spent time in the living spaces on the first floor. In fact, this house is screaming at me—so many things all at once, and there are so many voices I can hardly understand what any of it means.”

She places a hand to her head as if it aches, and I understand how she feels.

“I’m sorry you’re in pain,” I say, and my guilt becomes a weight on my chest. “I know how much you hate being here.”

“I worry about you. Otherwise I wouldn’t be here at all.” Choosing to ignore her pain, Glory lifts her head. I can tell because I do it all the time. “I need to smudge your house, and I need your permission to do it.”

“Why?”

“I need to rid the house of the spirits it has collected over the past few years, and I need your permission as someone has allowed these spirits to stay here. I’m assuming that person is you. While I understand that a good majority of these spirits have come to the house attached to the different tenants you’ve had in the apartment downstairs, they have stayed when the people left because your energy creates a welcoming environment.”

Everything in this house has always been friendly. Maybe Mom is right. Maybe Glory doesn’t understand that it’s okay for spirits to linger.

“I first smudged the house when you became friends with Jesse, and I’ve continued to do it over the years. I wasn’t able to force everything out since I’ve been doing it around the house and I didn’t have you or your father’s permission to smudge. I have been able to minimize the negative energy’s impact and power, but I had no idea how much the energy had grown since my last visit. There’s something evil lurking downstairs and you need to let me force it out.”

I wrap my arms around myself as I think of my mom. What if Glory accidentally forces her to leave? “Dad will be home soon. He’s making deliveries in the area this week, and I don’t think he’s going to be happy to find you walking around trying to burn down his house.”

“My angels told me you’d say that.” She goes silent, waiting for me to respond, but I don’t have anything to add.

“You’re playing a dangerous game,” she says, “but I’m here for you if things spiral out of control. In the meantime,” she opens the basket, takes out another smudge stick and a seashell, “I’m leaving these with you. When you are called to do this, open the windows and every door to the house, closets included. Light the sticks and go through the entire house, and you have to command the spirits to leave. Once you’re done, put out the sticks by crushing them into this shell. Then call me and I’ll do a follow-up. Do you understand?”

I nod because Glory has always been awesome to me and lying to her doesn’t feel good. Glory places the smudge sticks and shell on the kitchen table then crosses the room to me.

“You aren’t helping anyone, living or dead, by giving spirits a place to stay,” she says. “They need to move on.”

“Why?”

“Because we’re meant for more than here. Earth isn’t our final destination—it’s preschool. Death is a graduation from this place to another. Plus, if the spirits don’t move on then neither do we.” She tucks my hair behind my ear, like my mother used to do. “Jesse told me your headaches are getting worse. I brought crystals: amethyst and tourmaline. They will help. I spotted the hammock in the backyard. Let’s go there and I’ll perform a healing. The house is too loud for me to stay in.”

“Okay.” But I don’t move. Instead I’m stuck in place. Dread fills me as I think of Mom, how Sawyer said Lucy’s having nightmares and how the activity in the house seems to be growing. “Why am I a magnet for spirits?”

“One, you believe.”

True.

“Then there’re some people who share a rare place between the living and the dead and you happen to sometimes be there.”

I say what she dances around. “Because I’m dying.”

“Not anytime soon if I have anything to do with it. Come, let’s call on some angels to do their job.” Glory takes my hand. I clasp on to her