Sisters of Blood and Spirit
Kady Cross
Wren Noble is dead–she was born that way. Vibrant, unlike other dead things, she craves those rare moments when her twin sister allows her to step inside her body and experience the world of the living.Lark Noble is alive but often feels she belongs in the muted Shadow Lands–the realm of the dead. Known as the crazy girl who talks to her dead sister, she doesn't exactly fit in with the living, though a recent suicide attempt and time in a psych ward have proved to her she's not ready to join her sister in the afterlife.Now the guy who saved Lark's life needs her to repay the favor. He and his friends have been marked for death by the malevolent spirit of a vicious and long-dead serial killer, and the twins–who should know better than to mess with the dead–may be their only hope of staying alive.
Wren Noble is dead—
she was born that way. Vibrant, unlike other dead things, she craves those rare moments when her twin sister allows her to step inside her body and experience the world of the living.
Lark Noble is alive
but often feels she belongs in the muted Shadow Lands—the realm of the dead. Known as the crazy girl who talks to her dead sister, she doesn’t exactly fit in with the living, though a recent suicide attempt and time in a psych ward have proved to her she’s not ready to join her sister in the afterlife.
Now the guy who saved
Lark’s life needs her to repay the favor. He and his friends have been marked for death by the malevolent spirit of a vicious and long-dead serial killer, and the twins—who should know better than to mess with the dead—may be their only hope of staying alive.
I stepped into my sister and took over her body for the time being. People called it possession, but I didn’t like to use that term in regards to Lark. Thankfully, she was just asleep. I opened my eyes—Lark’s eyes.
Mason looked down at me. He frowned. “You’re not her,” he whispered.
I managed a small smile, impressed that he could tell the difference between us—most people couldn’t. “You can let her…me, go now. Thanks.”
He dropped his arms like I was on fire. I stumbled, but managed to catch myself. Wearing Lark was fairly comfortable, but I wasn’t used to having substance in this realm. Limbs were heavy, clumsy. I braced my hand against the roof of Nan’s car.
This was different from when Lark was awake and I shared her body. Despite the heavy limbs and awkwardness of them, they felt like mine. I was in control, not my sister, and it…it was wonderful. And strange. So strange.
Praise for The Girl with the Iron Touch: (#ulink_7e75f693-06fd-5f9f-9a84-2a00318dab7a)
“A well-calculated blend of paranormal romance and genuinely innovative story.”
—Kirkus Reviews
Praise for The Girl in the Clockwork Collar:
“Surprising, vivid and cohesive—the work of a pro.”
—Kirkus Reviews (starred review)
“Teens will enjoy the fast-paced action.”
—VOYA
Praise for The Girl in the Steel Corset:
“A steampunk mystery with a delicious love triangle and entertaining Jekyll and Hyde element.”
—RT Book Reviews
Sisters of Blood and Spirit
Kady Cross
www.miraink.co.uk (http://www.miraink.co.uk)
This book is for Mom, who instilled in me
a love of things that go bump in the night. Thanks, and I miss you.
It’s also for my sisters—I’d fight a ghost for each of you!
And last, but not least, this book is for Steve, who supported me
from the very beginning. I couldn’t do it without you.
Contents
Cover (#u684b3a61-cc53-5e84-a9f5-e43e4adb3e29)
Back Cover Text (#ub60545c2-5302-5290-80be-4dbe7974a134)
Introduction (#u2937eae7-a3ac-5c46-8ba1-b87b79f4fe43)
Praise (#ulink_e0e8ead0-0d87-5676-9862-0c0101f1b300)
Title Page (#ua65d4ec5-c186-555a-9a8e-3d4f4f313f91)
Dedication (#ub550f331-6023-5797-b799-b783f5c41d17)
Chapter One (#ulink_ca5a6794-13a4-5029-bc19-725550b4710a)
Chapter Two (#ulink_2eab2f4c-0252-503e-a84b-ede2d8fb23e6)
Chapter Three (#ulink_3f69dc02-0215-5ad8-9640-7993609f8d6b)
Chapter Four (#ulink_e0988b1e-2235-525d-a37c-7e2097a68232)
Chapter Five (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter Six (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter Seven (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter Eight (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter Nine (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter Ten (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter Eleven (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter Twelve (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter Thirteen (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter Fourteen (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter Fifteen (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter Sixteen (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter Seventeen (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter Eighteen (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter Nineteen (#litres_trial_promo)
Copyright (#litres_trial_promo)
(#ulink_7e808b60-e4c2-5a11-bb95-630fb784a80f)
“Abandon all hope, ye who enter here.”
—Dante
LARK
The scars on my wrists itched. I curled my fingers and tugged on my cuffs as I rubbed my arms against my jeans. Everyone stared at me as I walked down the hall. Maybe not everyone, but enough to make me lift my chin and straighten my shoulders. I glared back. Most of them looked away. Don’t provoke the crazy girl. At Bell Hill, no one had looked at me.
I’d thought my second day of high school would be easier than the first, but it was worse. Gossip had spread, and now everyone knew who I was and what I’d done.
I scared them—it was obvious. Even the ones who smirked at me or made remarks were afraid. They wanted to look tough to their friends. Hey, if making fun of me made them feel strong, then they obviously had their own problems.
I’d known some of them for most of my life. New Devon wasn’t a very big town, and at one time I’d been a popular kid. In day care and elementary school everyone had wanted to play with me and my sister the ghost. I wish I could have seen my own face the first time someone told me I was too old to have an imaginary friend anymore.
Imaginary? The word echoed in my head. People applied terms like overly imaginative when I was still young. Eventually they began to say things like, “dissociative,” “delusional” and my personal favorite, “troubled.” No shit. There had never been a teenager in the history of the world that wasn’t troubled by something. It was kind of our thing.
I walked past a small group of girls clustered in front of a section of lockers painted in the school colors of purple and gray. They drew back, as though I was contagious. They didn’t say anything—didn’t even giggle. If they’d been mean I would have been more comfortable.
I didn’t hang my head. I had nothing to be ashamed of. Maybe I’d made a couple of bad choices, but they had been mine.
I wasn’t crazy. I might be a freak, but I wasn’t crazy, and I never had been. I had proof of that, and other people knew it, too—not many, but enough.
As luck would have it, my locker was just a few down from where the girls stood watching me warily. I stopped and opened it, placing my bag inside so I could take out what I needed for my first class.
“Why are we here?” my twin sister, Wren, asked. She stood by the locker next to mine, arms crossed over her chest. Her vivid red hair fell over her shoulders in a straight curtain that required absolutely no work—no style she wanted ever did, because it was of her making. There weren’t any hair styling tools in the Shadow Lands.
I didn’t respond. Talking out loud to someone no one else could see would make them all think they were right, that I was still crazy. I was supposed to be cured. That was the only way the school would take me back. Although, at that moment, I had to wonder as well what the hell I was doing there.
Oh, right. My parents didn’t want me, so I’d had no choice but to move in with my grandmother in my old hometown while Mom and Dad had a fresh and shiny new life in Massachusetts. My mother just couldn’t deal with the fact that I could see and interact with Wren. Not because she thought I was lying, but because she was mad Wren didn’t talk to her.
I wasn’t cured. I wasn’t crazy, either. But there was just no easy way to explain why Wren was there with me—she’d been dead since the day we were born. I came out breathing and she...didn’t. I think someone made a mistake somewhere along the way, because my hair was stark white and hers was deep, vivid red. I should be the ghost, not her. God—if there was one who even cared—knew I liked the dead a lot more than the living most days. Other than our hair and style, we were identical, to the point that if I dyed my hair her color even we’d get confused over who was who.
For years my relationship with Wren was seen as cute if not sad—a little girl playing with her “imaginary” dead twin. As I got older, my knowing things about how people died because “Wren told me” made me look weird, guilty even. People would ask me to communicate with their dead relatives, but it was Wren who did all the legwork.
People called me a liar. Called me crazy. Called me a freak. Eventually, I began to believe them. That was when I got desperate and made the scars on my wrists.
I closed my locker and walked down the hall, pushing my way through the crowd of teeming hormones. People stared. Some said things. I ignored them, staring straight ahead. I just wanted to get this day over with. These people didn’t matter; I knew who and what I was.
I just didn’t know why.
“I suppose you have to ignore me while you’re here, don’t you?” My sister sighed—rather dramatically I thought. She knew the drill. The time I’d spent locked up made her a little...needy. Other than me she didn’t have anyone to talk to except an old woman who stuck around to watch over her family and a crazy man from the 1700s who liked to haunt his old house just for the hell of it. Although, I think she’d have more friends if she wasn’t with me all the time. Unfortunately, the few other “nice” ghosts we’d had contact with had moved on once we did what they asked of us, and hanging out with the scary ones wasn’t an option.
“Mmm.” It was the only response I could make without anyone noticing.
“Fine. I’m going to the library. I’ll find you later.” With that, she walked through a wall and was gone. I hated when she did that—mostly because I couldn’t.
I followed the swarm, rounding a corner toward what would be my homeroom for the rest of this year. A small group of kids were gathered against the wall just a few feet away. A few guys—mostly girls. Seniors. I could tell just by looking at them—they had that faint smug superiority of knowing they had to make it only until June and then they were free, done with the insane asylum that was high school. I might have sneered at them as I walked by if one of the guys hadn’t raised his head and looked right at me.
I froze. It was just a second, but I froze like he was a speeding car and I was a raccoon out for an evening stroll on the center line. Mason Ryan was even more gorgeous than he had been the last time I’d seen him, a fact for which I resolved then and there to despise him. Gold-streaked brown hair, hazel eyes—and lips no guy deserved to have. Black button-down and jeans. He was one of those guys who was so beautiful it hurt to look at him.
But it hurt for other reasons. I needed to avoid him if I could—and not just because his father was chief of police. Mace and I had a secret. Well, not really a secret. A few people in town knew that he had been the one to find me bleeding out on the floor, but knowing and understanding were two different things. Nobody but he and I knew exactly what we’d shared, and it would always be there, lingering between us like a breath.
One of the girls with him turned to look at me, as well. She had a nasty-looking scratch on the side of her face that kept her from being model-gorgeous. I barely glanced at her; my attention was solely on Mace. The sight of him made me want to puke, tied my gut up in knots and shoved bile into the back of my throat.
Funny how much sick tasted like shame.
Mace didn’t look as though he felt much better. I didn’t want to think of the state I’d been in that day when he’d held me in his arms and begged me not to die on him because he’d have to live with that. He straightened away from the wall he’d been leaning against, and took a step forward—toward me. Ohhh, no. Not today. Not ever, if I could help it.
I broke into a sprint, straight into the classroom where I found a seat at the back of the room and dropped into it, trying to keep my heart in my chest. A few heads turned to look at me. Whispers and coy glances exchanged. Let them talk. I didn’t care. My heart hammered and my stomach twitched, but I was safe for the time being. As safe as I could be in a small Connecticut town where everyone knew practically everyone else, and even if they didn’t they still talked about them.
“Lark?”
Now what? I looked up, turned my head. Sitting right across from me was a familiar face—tanned skin, dark eyes and even darker hair. She smiled at me. I almost smiled back. Almost. “Rox.”
Roxi Taylor was a month or two younger than me and was always very friendly—like crazy-ass friendly. It would be easy to dismiss her as fake, but she really was just a good, sweet person.
I didn’t get it.
People like me, who could see things other people couldn’t, didn’t get to be ignorant of human nature for long—not when people either wanted to use you or hurt you. I’d tried to hate Roxi for years, but it just wouldn’t take, and that part of me that distrusted everyone wanted very badly to distrust her, but could never quite manage it, even though I was sure that no one could be that nice all the time. But Roxi had never asked me for anything—ever. Never made me feel like there was something wrong with me. I always wondered what was wrong with her that she wanted to be my friend.
She grinned—she’d gotten her braces off since the last time I’d seen her—and threw her arms around me. “It’s so good to see you!”
Shit. I did not want this attention, but it would be a lie if I said it wasn’t nice to find someone who was happy to see me, that part of me didn’t want to hug her back. It didn’t matter that a little voice inside screamed for me not to trust her. I let myself have that moment.
“Dykes,” someone muttered.
A few laughs followed. Then someone else said, “Don’t, man. She’s like, the angel of death or something.”
I pulled away from Roxi and turned to face our audience. What annoyed me more than the smirks were the few expressions of genuine fear. I mean, sometimes being thought of as scary was a good thing, but having people be scared of you was different, especially when I hadn’t given them any reason to be afraid.
Yet.
“If I was the angel of death, you think I’d be here?”
They seemed to consider this, their shared brain struggling to make the connection.
“Why are you here?” A blond guy with a big zit on his chin asked. From his voice I knew he was the same one who’d made the “dyke” remark. His name was Aaron or Albert or something. I remembered him from last year. “Shouldn’t you be locked up with the rest of the retards?”
Heat rushed to my cheeks as people laughed, but I didn’t look away. Homeschooling was the only way I’d been able to return to my correct year. I’d busted my ass to not get left behind. Wren had been right there with me.
“They kicked me out because they needed room for your mother.” Lame, but it was the first thing that came to mind. “And I’m not retarded, asshole. I’m crazy—there’s a difference. Which you’d know if your parents weren’t brother and sister.” More laughter, but this time it was for me, not against me.
Andrew—that was his name—turned red, which only made that ugly zit stand out more. I wanted to smack it with the heel of my shoe while my foot was still inside, bust it wide-open. Gross, right? “Bitch.”
I raised a brow. “Seriously? That’s the best you can do?”
A hand settled on my arm. I looked down, expecting it to be Roxi. It wasn’t. It was Wren. Damn.
“Who are you looking at?” Andrew demanded. Then his expression turned mean—happily mean. “Is your sister here? Your dead sister?”
In books, the hero’s blood sometimes “turns to ice” in his or her veins, but that’s not right. It’s not the blood that freezes, it’s everything around it, so that your blood actually feels like hot razor blades ripping through your entire body. I lifted my head. What laughter there was gave way to uneasy, half-assed giggles. “Don’t talk about my sister.”
I shouldn’t have said anything.
“How did she die anyway?” Andrew asked with a mocking grin. “I bet your mother saw that there was two of you and lost her shit. Did she know that she killed the wrong one? It should have been you she killed.”
No one had killed Wren, she had been stillborn, and our mother had never gotten over her loss. And yeah, I wondered if the wrong one had died all the damn time.
Beside me Wren’s shape shimmered, like the edges of her were fraying. It was what happened when she got mad. Really mad. She picked up on my emotions like I’d dropped them on the floor in front of her. It meant I had to be really careful when I lied to her.
Her anger picked up my hair like a breeze.
“Don’t,” I whispered.
“Oh, are you going to cry?” Andrew pressed in a whiny voice. “Did I upset you?”
I met his gaze with a hard glare as warmth spread through me—a dry summer breeze on a hot beach. Oh, hell. I’d promised myself this wouldn’t happen. It was only the second freaking day! Wren settled in, her spirit fitting me perfectly, like a glove tailor-made for a hand. She smiled, using my lips. “She wasn’t talking to you.” It wasn’t my voice—it was lower, softer.
Andrew frowned. “What...?”
I hated when Wren possessed me without asking, but she was so powerful—like nothing I’d ever felt before. I felt strong—invincible—when we were joined together like this.
The lights flickered. Concerned murmurs rose up. People glanced at me. I shrugged—crazy didn’t affect the electricity. The lights flickered again—then the fire alarm went off, shrieking like a banshee. Hoots and cheers filled the air. Fire alarm on the second day—a lovely way to start the year. Everyone tore from the room, and Roxi didn’t wait for me—smart girl. Andrew rose from his seat, but I stopped him by grabbing his wrist.
My sister was strong. Inhumanly strong. Under my fingers, Andrew’s wrist felt as fragile as dry twigs. He tried to tug free. “Let me go, freak!”
“Sit down,” Wren commanded through my mouth. He wasn’t as stupid as he looked, because he did what he was told.
“Good boy,” I said, rising to my feet. Wren slipped out of me as easily as she’d entered. I felt her loss like someone had taken my eye or a limb. It never got any easier. She had physical contact now, sorta, and it was better if I didn’t stick around. “You just sit there a minute. There’s someone who wants to meet you.”
Andrew lifted his gaze to mine as I gathered my things. He didn’t look so smug now. “Wh-who?”
“My sister,” I told him, smiling just a little when he looked down at his wrist, still in Wren’s ghostly grip. He had to feel the cold fingers biting into his skin even though he couldn’t see them. “You know—my dead sister?”
I walked to the door, Wren’s low voice following my every step as she whispered words I couldn’t make out. I hesitated when I heard Andrew whimper.
“Go,” my sister told me.
I didn’t look, I just kept walking.
* * *
A few minutes before the end of first class I got summoned to the principal’s office. I was surprised they waited that long. Andrew was absent, and people had been looking from his empty seat to me since we were let back into the school after the alarm.
Not like they could blame me for anything. After all, I’d been outside with everyone else. If not for Roxi I would have been standing alone, with an invisible boundary around me that no one dared cross. Seriously, no one had come closer than two or three feet. It was like I had pink eye or something.
With a sigh, I packed up my books and left the classroom. Even though I’d been gone since almost the beginning of the previous year, I knew exactly how to get to the office. I’d spent a lot of time there before what my mother called the “incident.”
Incident. Somehow it didn’t have the same punch as “attempted suicide.”
I was one of those teenagers categorized as a problem or “troubled.” I got it. Last year I was troubled, and I had lots of problems. The biggest one of which was that I let myself believe the people who called me crazy, and I stopped believing in Wren.
So, yeah. I was messed up and I did some things that I really regret doing. Things that I refused to think about as I made my way down the hallway to the main staircase near the office.
I had to check in with the guy at the desk and tell him who I was. I could tell from the way he looked at me that he already knew. He pointed at the waiting area and told me to have a seat. Principal Grant would be with me in a minute.
A few seconds later a guy sat down in an empty chair across from mine. He was tall and lean, wearing jeans and a gray shirt. He had a young Keanu/Ezra Miller thing going on. Very cute, despite having a bit of a black eye.
“Rough morning?” I asked.
He grinned as he slouched in his chair. Yeah, he was really cute, even though he seemed surprised that I had spoken to him. “This?” He pointed to his eye. “This was yesterday. You should see the other guy.”
Corny, too. I smiled back. “If it happened yesterday why are you here?”
He lifted his chin toward Principal Grant’s office. “Waiting.”
I was saved from trying to figure out something witty to say by the opening of the principal’s door. A girl a year or so younger than me walked out. She took one look at Keanu and her brown eyes narrowed. The resemblance was obvious. She tossed her long, straight hair. “What are you doing here?”
He stood up, shoving his hands in his pockets. “I’m supposed to take you home.”
The girl glanced at me, and for a second her eyes widened. Then she smirked at her brother. “I can go back in if you want to wait a little longer.”
What was that supposed to mean? Keanu’s cheeks flushed, but he didn’t look away from her. And he didn’t look impressed. “Let’s go.”
She flashed that smirk at me before flouncing past. Her brother gave me an apologetic look. “Sorry you have to follow that.”
I laughed. “And here I was feeling bad for you.”
He smiled. “See you around, I guess.”
I nodded, and he was gone.
The door to the principal’s office opened again. “Miss Noble, please come in.”
Principal Grant was about six feet tall and imposing. I wouldn’t call her pretty, but she had an interesting face and curly dark hair. I was nervous as I crossed the threshold into her office.
“It’s only your second day back, Miss Noble,” she said as she closed the door behind me. “It’s not good that you’re in my office already.”
“I didn’t do anything,” I told her.
She gestured to a stiff-backed chair in front of her desk. “Sit, please.”
I did.
She sat down behind the desk and folded her hands on the top. She looked like a judge with her black suit and severe expression. I tried to keep my attention focused solely on her. “You were allowed to return to this school because of your grandmother’s ties to the community and her promise that you wouldn’t be any trouble. Are you going to make her break that promise?”
The mention of Nan yanked on my temper. “I didn’t do anything.”
“Then why did a young man have to leave school after an altercation with you?”
My eyebrows shot up. “What?”
She wasn’t buying it. “Do not play coy with me, young lady. What did you say to Andrew?”
“He was the one doing all the talking,” I replied hotly. “He insinuated that I was a lesbian, and then he made every joke he could at my expense. I told him to shut up. Then the fire alarm went off and we all left the room. Ask Roxi Taylor. I was with her the whole time.” Except for those few minutes with Wren...
“I will,” Principal Grant promised. And then she surprised me. “He called you lesbian?”
I shrugged. Again, I tried to keep my gaze focused on her, and not what was behind her. “A dyke. He was just being a jerk.”
“I take that sort of harassment very seriously, Miss Noble. This school has zero tolerance for bullying.”
“When did that happen?” I asked before I could stop myself. “Because it certainly didn’t the last time I was here.”
She looked embarrassed. “That was before I took over as principal.” Yeah, she’d been the vice principal then. “Things are different now, I promise you. If Andrew returns to school, he won’t speak to you in that manner again.”
If? Huh. “You kicking him out for picking on me won’t make my life any easier. I don’t care if he comes back, so long as he leaves me alone.”
Ms. Grant stared at me for a few seconds—enough to make me nervous. “I’ll take that under advisement. You’d better get back to class.”
That was it? “Okay.” I stood up and made for the door.
“Oh, Miss Noble?”
I stopped, hand on the doorknob, and turned. “Yeah?” Don’t look. Don’t look.
“Victim or instigator, I don’t want to see you in my office again. Am I understood?”
I nodded. “No offense, Principal Grant, but I don’t want to see you again, either.”
Or the ghost of the former principal standing behind her, his brains blown all over the wall.
* * *
“What did you do to Andrew?”
I glanced up as Roxi fell into step beside me on the walk home that day. My heart gave a little skip. After my “talk” with Principal Grant I was paranoid that everyone was out to lynch me.
“Nothing.”
“Okay, what did your sister do to Andrew?”
Huh. Grant hadn’t thought to ask me that.
“Nothing permanent,” Wren answered from her place beside me. She had changed clothes since this morning and was wearing a long boho skirt, peasant blouse and a floppy hat. Her feet were bare. Who needed shoes when your feet didn’t actually touch anything?
I was going to miss shoes when I died.
I barely looked at the living girl walking beside me. “I don’t know what you’re talking about. I haven’t seen him since the fire alarm this morning.” When we’d come back to class he was gone. I hadn’t asked Wren what happened and I didn’t want to know. My sister was normally quite gentle, but she was dead, and the dead took offense easily. Andrew had screwed himself when he’d suggested I should have been the one who died.
“Come on, Lark.” Roxi stopped on the cracked sidewalk. Weeds poked up through the concrete near my feet and I nudged them with the toe of my secondhand pink-and-red Fluevog shoes. “I’ve known you since we were five. I know you’re not crazy, and I know Wren is real. I’m not the only one, either.”
My eyes narrowed. “Could have used you when everyone else thought I was a liar...or nuts.”
Wren stood behind Roxi, studying her. “She seems sincere.” She didn’t care who I told about her. She only cared about me. But I cared about us.
“I told everyone who would listen that I didn’t think you were crazy.”
I looked her dead in the eye. “Gotta think that wasn’t too many people.”
Roxi blushed. She was even pretty with her face all red. “No.” She started walking again. I fell into step beside her. “Still, I wanted you to know I believed you.”
“A little late coming.” Wren walked on Roxi’s other side, still studying her as though the girl was a dress she’d like to try on. “Nice thought, though. I think she means it.”
“Thanks,” I said, looking straight ahead. My grandmother’s house was just down the block. I could feel relief loosening my shoulders. I’d only been out of some sort of care for the past few months, and being back to school had exhausted me with all the noise and bustle. All those bodies conditioned to respond to the sound of a bell reminded me a little too much of the “hospital” my mother had abandoned me to when I had refused to say that Wren was all in my head.
When I had tried to die to be with her.
I didn’t think Mom believed I was crazy, either, but it was easier than saying she hated me because Wren talked to me and not her.
“Is she with us now? Your sister?”
I cast a distrustful glance at her. Was she trying to trick me into saying something wrong? You give people messages from dead relatives, fight a few ghosts on school property, try to kill yourself and all of a sudden you’re Trouble. Huh.
“What do you think?”
I tried not to laugh as Wren jumped in front of her and shouted, “Boo!” My thoughts were getting too morose, and she knew it.
Roxi shot me a shrewd glance as she walked right through my sister—and shivered in the early September sunshine. “I think you’re not about to discuss her with someone you’re not sure you can trust.”
“I’m a fairly private person.”
“That’s just a pretty way of saying you’re antisocial.”
I grinned as my sister laughed. “That, too.” I liked this girl. I really hoped she wasn’t playing me.
“I like this girl,” Wren commented. “I really hope she isn’t playing us.”
That thing they say about twins being on the same wavelength, feeling the same thing, thinking the same thing? It was true, and the whole dead-vs-living thing just cranked it up to eleven. The only reason I was alive was because Wren had felt something was wrong and had come looking for me the night I’d partied with a bottle of vodka and a razor blade. Good times. And I felt her anguish the entire time I was locked up and she couldn’t do anything to help me.
She’d done more than anyone else. More than our parents or any sanctimonious doctor. And I had been so pissed that she’d played a part in saving me, because I had thought death would finally put us in the same world.
It wasn’t my time to die, she’d said—as if she had any way of knowing.
We walked in silence for a bit, my grandmother’s house coming steadily closer. I’d only lived there a few days—since Dad had dropped me off with a guilty look and my own credit card—but it already felt more like home than my old house had in a long time. We’d lived in this town since I was three, but after my...accident, my parents had moved to Natick up in Mass. Mom needed to run away, while they decided I needed to endure daily torture at the hands of my peers. Whatever. I wasn’t bitter. Much. And at least here I didn’t have to see the look on her face when my mother looked at me. Not that she looked at me very often.
“So,” Roxi began, ending my pity party, “want to hang out later?”
My inner alarm went off, screeching “abort!” over and over. “Uh...”
“I’m going over to ’Nother Cup at eight. It’s open-mike night. Kevin McCrae’s playing. You know him, don’t you?”
Oh, yeah. I knew him.
“Yes!” Wren screeched in my ear. “Say yes! Say yes or I’ll bring Mr. Havers over to visit.”
Mr. Havers was the old dude who liked to haunt for the hell of it. He had few teeth and was as bat-shit crazy as a dead guy could be. And he smelled like a horse. “Yes,” I said through clenched teeth. “I know him. That sounds great. I’ll meet you there?”
“Sure.” Roxi grinned. “It will be fun.”
“Yeah. Big fun.” Could I sound any less sincere? An evening spent around more staring people with my sister rhapsodizing about Kevin McCrae—the one person other than me who could hear her. And the one person I wanted to see less than Mace. Woot. And I was such a fan of coffeehouses with blatantly unclever names.
But when was the last time I’d been out? When was the last time I’d spent time with people my own age who weren’t dead or mentally unstable? Or the last time I had to worry about curfew? Did I even have a curfew?
We stopped at the foot of my grandmother’s driveway. The smooth pavement led to a large slate-gray Victorian with eggplant trim. Large maple trees grew along both sides of the drive, forming a canopy that was just starting to show a hint of color.
“Your grandmother drives a Volkswagen Beetle?”
There was no missing the little car—it was purple. “Yes.”
Roxi squinted. “Are the taillights shaped like flowers?”
“They are.” I didn’t mention that the interior was green. Chartreuse. Nan had it custom done.
The dark-haired girl nodded. “Pretty.” She glanced down at her feet. “Listen, I know you don’t want to talk about it, but I’m really glad Mace found you.”
She forgot to add “lying in a pool of your own blood with your wrists sliced open.”
“Thanks.”
Roxi nodded as she lifted her head. “Okay, so I’ll see you at eight.”
“Sure.”
She grinned. “Great. See you then.” She turned to walk away, then stopped. She glanced over her shoulder with a lingering smile and looked somewhere over my right shoulder. “’Bye, Wren.”
My sister stood at my left, but the effect was the same. Wren’s eyes widened, and I wondered if Roxi would ever know how much those two words meant to her. How much the thought meant. Wren lifted her hand and waved, even though Roxi had already set off down the street.
We walked up the lane, finally alone.
“What did you do to Andrew?” I asked.
Wren shrugged. Her blouse slid down on her shoulder. “Scared him a little, that’s all. I told you, nothing permanent.”
“Then why wasn’t he in class?”
“He had to go home.”
“Why? And please don’t say he was bleeding from the eyes.”
She shot me an indignant glance. “He peed his pants.” Yes, the scariest person I knew said “peed.”
“That’s it?”
“Isn’t that enough?” she shot back.
I held up my hands. “Just making sure.”
My sleeves had fallen down my arms when I raised them, and Wren grabbed my left forearm before I could lower both. Her thumb was like velvet against the satin of the scar that ran down the throat of my wrist. Tears filled her bright blue eyes.
“It’s all right,” I told her.
“Did it hurt?” she asked. Wren didn’t have much of a concept of physical pain, having never experienced it. She had no scars and she never would—not unless there was something in the afterlife that neither of us knew about. She’d never asked me about them before.
“Not as much as I thought they would.”
“I’d take them if I could.”
“But you can’t.” I gently pulled my arm away. “They’re mine.” And the only thing other than our hair that set us apart as two separate people instead of two halves of one.
(#ulink_3dd4aaa2-8fd6-59ff-8908-451c5c9aaf16)
WREN
Sometimes I watched Lark sleep, just to make certain nothing happened to her. She didn’t know that I did it or she wouldn’t have closed her eyes. She said I “creeped” her out when I did things like that. What else was I supposed to do? I didn’t sleep—I didn’t need to. I had tried to once, but I got bored. As a child I’d figured out—with Lark’s help—how to pass through books so that I could actually read them. Thankfully our grandmother had a fabulous library—not as good as the one in the Shadow Lands, but it was more than adequate.
When we were little, Lark asked me if I lived in Heaven. I told her I didn’t know. I still didn’t. It was an untruth that the dead had all the answers. We just had different questions.
The truth of where I “lived” was that it was big and peaceful and muted. No bright colors—except for my hair—no loud noises, no strong smells. Certainly nothing like the wave of deliciousness that greeted me when I phased through the door of our grandmother’s kitchen. My sense of smell wasn’t that developed, but spending time in this world had helped strengthen it, and what I smelled was good.
“Oh,” I said. “What is that?”
“Peanut butter cookies,” Lark told me. “Best smell in the world.”
“Can I have one?” I sounded so pathetic, and I was. We both knew the only way I’d ever taste that delicious scent was if Lark let me in, and I’d already violated her space once today.
My sister smiled, indulging me like she always did. She had such a big heart, especially where I was concerned. “Sure.” I forgave her for asking what I’d done to that boy in her class. It wasn’t as though she didn’t have reason to ask, especially after what I’d done to that orderly in the hospital our parents had put Lark in. I scared him so bad they took him away sobbing. He never came back, but I visited him from time to time.
“I didn’t hurt him,” I insisted, needing her to know the truth. I didn’t have to tell her who or what I was talking about. She knew. Lark just nodded. She didn’t like to talk to me in front of other people anymore. I understood why, but it still hurt sometimes. Other times it made me angry. People got hurt when I got angry, so I tried to stay calm.
“Hello, girls,” Nan greeted us. “Hug.”
She was five feet tall and slim with a head of thick hair dyed a color almost as bright as mine. According to Lark she didn’t look like a grandmother, but Charlotte Noble felt like one.
Lark hesitated—she always did. It was my fault, this distrust she had of people, even those who should have her complete faith. Just by being, I’d made her life so much harder than it should have been. She didn’t like to hug, and I wished I could hug everyone I met. When we first came here, Lark let me in so I could feel our grandmother’s arms around me. Today, I simply moved through the tiny woman, letting her sweet warmth sift through me.
To my delight, Nan smiled. “Wren, you’re like walking through a patch of sunshine, dear. Lark, just come hug me and get it over with, girl. I won’t bite you.”
I watched, anxious as the two most important women in my existence embraced. Was it my imagination, or did Lark relax a little? True to her word, Nan didn’t bite. I’d been nervous for a moment.
Out of the corner of my eye I saw a flicker of something in the next room—just a passing shadow flickering in the afternoon sunlight. Was there someone else in the house? I moved slowly into the room, hoping to catch our visitor, but there was nothing, not even a trace of spectral energy. That was disappointing. It would have been nice to meet another ghost—a friendly one.
In the Shadow Lands I had form and substance, but in the living world I was nothing more than a projection. It was annoying. In the Shadow Lands I could eat a cookie—if they existed there. The dead didn’t need to eat. We didn’t get our strength from food.
We got it from the living. Humans left a trail of life energy like slugs left slime. Maybe not the best analogy, but it was almost like they exhaled a little bit with every breath. We drifted along sucking that up. Sometimes a ghost would get greedy and siphon from a person. Heightened emotion meant more life force. Ghosts particularly liked the taste of fear. That was why so many hauntings were terrible things.
Fear tasted like my grandmother’s cookies smelled.
I looked around one more time, but there was nothing out of the ordinary. Maybe I had spent too much time in this world and my eyes had started to play tricks on me, or maybe I was becoming as suspicious as Lark.
I wished she had talked to Mace earlier. We—I—owed him so much for saving her life. When I saw her lying on the floor, and what she had done, I panicked. I couldn’t help her except to hold her wrists and try to stop the bleeding. I needed help, and I cried out to anyone who could hear me.
Kevin McCrae had heard me. Some people were more attuned to the frequency of the dead than others. In the human world they were called mediums. Where I came from, they were called “doors.” Kevin was a door I could open, and I didn’t even knock first. He hadn’t even known who I was when I tore into his mind like a madwoman, begging for his help. He didn’t live close to us, but his friend Mace did. Kevin called Mace and asked him to check on Lark, then Mace called 911.
Kevin and I kept in contact after that night. Not a lot, but some. He was the only person other than my sister to have ever known I was in the same room, and he was the person I’d run to when Lark wasn’t there.
He was the reason I wanted to go to the coffee shop that night. Lark knew it, of course. But my sister didn’t know all of it.
Oh, and I wanted to know what Roxi was hiding. There had been sincerity in her invitation, but there had been something else, as well. It was easy enough to assume that the secret was something she thought might convince Lark not to go if she revealed it straightaway. That made me suspicious.
“Anything exciting happen today?” Nan asked as she used a spatula to move the warm cookies from baking sheet to plate.
Lark and I exchanged glances. She knew.
“That lovely Principal Grant called today.” I didn’t believe lovely was the word she really wanted to use. “Told me you’d gotten called to the office because you’d scared a young man badly enough that he wet his pants and had to go home.”
Lark glared at me. I shrugged. “I’m not sorry I did it.”
“I didn’t do a thing to him,” Lark said.
“I didn’t think you did.” Suddenly, our grandmother looked right at me. “You owe your sister an apology, young lady.”
My jaw dropped. I knew she couldn’t see me, but this thing of ours seemed to come from her side of the family, because she was definitely sensitive to the Shadow Lands.
“She does?” Lark asked, speaking for both of us.
Nan nodded. “I know you didn’t hurt that boy, and that your sister’s intentions were good, but you got the trouble for it. You’ll always get the trouble for it. Wrenleigh, you need to think of these things before you act. I know you want to protect Lark, but now you’ve made things difficult for her, so you need to apologize for that.”
There was no way she’d have known if I apologized or not. I could have broken every window in this house. I could have made her sorry she’d tried bossing me around. Neither of those things were going to happen. I was chastised. She was right.
“I’m sorry,” I said to Lark. “I didn’t think. He hurt you and I just wanted to hurt him back.”
My sister nodded. “I know. It’s okay.”
But it wasn’t, was it? I knew Lark had forgiven me—she always did—but her life would have been easier if I hadn’t always been doing things she needed to forgive me for.
Nan smiled. “That’s a good girl.” She held the plate of cookies out to Lark. “Take one for your sister, too.”
Lark plucked two cookies off the cooling plate, gathered up her school books and announced that she was going to do some studying before dinner.
“Liar,” I accused.
Lark ignored me. “Nan, is it okay if I go out later? Roxi Taylor invited me to open-mike night at ’Nother Cup.”
There was no denying how much this pleased Nan—her face lit up. “Of course it’s all right! Do you want to take the car?”
Horror filled me. “No!”
But my sister smiled. “That would be great, thanks.” Because a white-haired girl driving a purple car wouldn’t stand out at all. God, it was a good thing I was invisible to most humans because I’d wish I was if I had to drive in that car. Fortunately, I didn’t have to depend on human modes of transportation.
As we climbed the stairs to our room, I thought I saw something again—a flash of black in my peripheral vision. I whipped my head around, but there was nothing.
“You okay?” Lark asked. “You’re not mad at Nan?”
She sounded a little...afraid. “No! Of course not. I thought I saw something.”
“I didn’t see anything.”
Of course she hadn’t. She could see a lot of things, but she still had the limited eyesight of a living person; they were notoriously shortsighted. “Probably nothing.”
“You know, if you want to go to the coffee shop tonight, I don’t mind if you go without me.”
I looked at her, lips twisting. “And miss seeing the reaction to you driving a grape jelly bean? I don’t think so. Besides, you promised Roxi you would go.”
“Yeah, I know.” She stared straight ahead as she climbed the rest of the stairs. “It would be rude of me to bail on her.”
I didn’t add that it would also be stupid for her to stay home and try to send me away. I wasn’t bound to Lark, I could come and go as I pleased, and tonight it would please me to be there with my sister to make certain no one tried to hurt her. If anyone gave her a hard time—even if it was Kevin—I’d risk Nan’s wrath and make certain they regretted it for a very, very long time.
LARK
So. Many. Hipsters.
I walked into ’Nother Cup expecting to be punched in the face by a wave of pretention, and I wasn’t disappointed; it almost dropped me on my butt.
I wasn’t proud to admit that I’d changed my clothes before leaving the house. I wore a black-and-white sleeveless dress with a Peter Pan collar and a pair of chunky black-and-white-striped Mary Janes. I’d pinned my hair—as white as my collar—into a messy updo and smeared on some black liner and red gloss. The Addams Family meets Mad Men.
“Stop fidgeting,” my sister commanded with a scowl as I straightened my dress. She was wearing something romantic and flowy, with her brilliant hair in curls. She looked gorgeous—and no one could see it.
“No one says fidget anymore,” I muttered, turning my head so no one else could hear.
Wren pointed across the fairly crowded shop to a low table surrounded by plush leather sofas and paisley chairs. “There’s Roxi. Do you see Kevin? I’m going to see if I can spot him.” She took off before I could answer, slipping in and out of people like they were wisps of smoke.
Only, she was the wisp. I needed to remember that. She was as real and solid to me as anyone here, but only to me.
I ordered a chai latte—which took forever—and made my way through the throng toward the stage area. I was practically on top of the table when I saw who else was there.
I knew I should have stayed home.
“Lark!” Roxi jumped up and hugged me. “You guys, this is Lark. Lark, this is Gage, Ben, Sarah and Mace.”
Okay, so I didn’t really know Gage, but I recognized him from school. Looking at Mace still made me want to puke. Sarah seemed friendly enough. The one who really got me, though, was Ben, the guy I’d seen in the principal’s office earlier. Maybe I could ask him what his sister had meant about letting him wait a little longer. And where he’d gotten that black eye.
And why when he looked at me I felt he knew me. Really knew me.
I gave them all a halfhearted wave. “Hey.” The only empty chair was the one near Roxi. Unfortunately, it was also next to Mace. He wore a white shirt over a black T-shirt with dark jeans and boots. Great, we were coordinated. I think he noticed, too. His mouth lifted a teeny bit on one side. It was a pretty lame-ass smile.
Sarah—the girl I’d seen with Mace earlier at school, smiled across him at me. She should really have a bandage on that scratch. She must have been new to school. I didn’t recognize her from before I went to Bell Hill, where they’d loaded me with pills and therapy. Thank God they hadn’t tried an exorcism. “Hi,” she called over the noise of the crowd. “I love your shoes.”
She seemed sincere, and my biggest vanity was my fashion sense. I smiled. “Thanks.” I had gotten them at Goodwill and painted them with leather paint to freshen them up. It had been a real bitch taping off the stripes, but worth it.
Wren plopped herself down in my chair, phasing through my right leg so that we were literally joined at the hip. “Kevin’s about to perform,” she squealed.
I didn’t reply, of course, but I put my hand on my leg and patted so she’d feel it. I didn’t want to encourage the crush—it wasn’t like anything could have come out of it when he couldn’t even see her.
A short bald man stepped up onto the stage and up to the mike. “Thank you all for coming to open-mike night here at ’Nother Cup. Our first performer is Kevin McCrae.”
Thunderous applause met this announcement, along with several hoots and whistles. Mace was one of the loudest, which surprised me. I watched him as he shouted out his support, a grin on his face.
Mace turned that grin on Sarah, who whistled, then Mace’s gaze met mine. I watched, helpless, as the joy melted from his face. Superfabulous for my ego, that was.
Did he remember how I’d looked that night? All decked out in a white cami and pj pants, my arms sliced open and blood in my hair? Did he remember that I’d looked him in the eye and begged him to let me die? Of course he did. He’d begged me not to die on him. Finding someone in the middle of suicide wasn’t something a person forgot. He’d told the police that he thought he’d heard something. As my next-door neighbor he’d decided to check in on me, knowing my parents weren’t home. He found me on the floor of my bathroom, my wrists cut. He called 911 and tried to stop the bleeding with towels.
But Kevin had been the reason he’d found me. Kevin was a medium, and Wren had made contact. I didn’t feel guilty because he knew about me. I felt guilty because he knew how badly I’d upset Wren.
Mace opened his mouth to speak—what the hell could he possibly have to say?—but a chord from Kevin’s guitar stopped him, thank God. I jerked my attention toward the stage, because my sister was squealing like a freaking idiot.
Kevin McCrae was a freshman in college. He was tall and well built, with longish curly dark hair, incredible blue eyes and glasses. I thought he looked a little too much like “thoughtful-sensitive man,” but if Wren liked the look of him, who was I to judge? After all, I was trying really hard not to stare at Ben.
He did a couple of covers—Beatles tunes and something by Nirvana. He played well and had a fabulous voice. I hated to admit it, but I enjoyed his set—until his last song.
“This is a song I wrote,” he said in his low, slightly raspy voice. “It’s for Wrenleigh.”
I swear to God my heart freaking stopped. I tried so hard not to glance at my sister, but it was hard when she was right there—part of me. I could feel her nervous energy fluttering inside me. There were very few people in the town, let alone this room, who would have known Wren’s full name. You would have to go to her grave to see it.
Kevin McCrae had written a song about my sister? Just how well did they know each other? How well could they know each other? I forced myself to listen to the lyrics. Something about hearing ghosts for so long, but then one so beautiful he was in awe of her came to him.
Barf.
And then Kevin looked right at me as he sang, “Did you think of how much it would hurt her when you cut to the bone? I felt her pain calling out to me like it was my own.”
He might as well have gotten off the stage, walked up to me and smashed his guitar over my head. I couldn’t believe it. I just sat there, shocked and frozen like an idiot, my face burning.
Screw that. I tried to stand up, but Wren held me to the chair. She’d known. She’d known about the damn song. She’d known he was going to sing it. Everyone at this table knew what he was singing about.
I never thought my sister would sit and watch me be humiliated, the past shoved in my face one more time.
“Get out of me,” I whispered.
“Lark,” she pleaded. “Just listen to the song, please.”
Wren was preternaturally strong, but I wasn’t without my own talents. If she had a little extra power where the living was concerned, then I had a little more influence over the dead—or at least more experience. I gathered up all the hurt and anger inside me and pushed it at her. It must have surprised her, because she let go easily, lifting out of me to hover a few feet above the table. Show off. I’d have been sprawled on the floor if she shoved that hard at me.
I jumped to my feet and ran, elbowing my way through the audience.
“Watch it, cow,” a girl dressed all in white snarled.
I could snarl, too. “Get out of my way.”
She smirked. “Say please.”
What was this, a CW show? This kind of drama just didn’t happen in real life, did it? I took the plastic top off my cup and dumped what was left of my latte down the front of her. She gasped. Actually, it was more of a roar, but I’d already shoved her aside and kept moving. I didn’t stop when I stepped out into the warm September night but made a beeline straight for my borrowed purple Bug. Nan had been so excited at the prospect of me making friends. God, she was even more naive than I was.
I pressed the button to unlock the car and climbed in, tossing my purse onto the passenger seat. For a moment, I sat there, forehead against the steering wheel. How could I have been so stupid? Hadn’t I learned anything? God, I was so deficient. I was going to have to switch schools because I was too young to drop out. I could probably have gotten into one a town or two over. Maybe. My past would have caught up with me sooner or later, it always did, but for a little while I could have hidden.
I started the car and lifted my head. I’d just slipped the gear into Drive when someone stepped in front of the bumper. The headlights made them look ghoulish, but even ghoulish, Mace was gorgeous.
I put down the window and stuck my head out. “Get out of the way.”
“Give us a minute, will you?” he asked. “We just want to talk to you.”
Roxi appeared by the window. “Please, Lark. I can explain. It was my idea.”
“Explain this.” I flipped her the bird. Then, to Mace, “Move, Ryan.”
Roxi’s hand grabbed my shoulder. Her grip was tight, desperate. “Please.”
I ignored her as I revved the engine, trying to scare Mace. He knew I wasn’t going to run him over, though. Jerk. The others stood there with him, clustered in the headlights with anxious expressions on their faces—not what I’d expect of people wanting to mess with me. And my sister was finally there, just on the edge where I could barely see her. I wasn’t in any danger from these people or she would have been full-on Amityville right now.
Unless she was in on it.
And that really was crazy. A genuine insane thought.
I turned off the car and stepped out, holding the door open between me and them like a shield. “What’s going on?”
Kevin had joined our group, too. He looked at me like I was something he’d just scraped off the bottom of his shoe. I didn’t even know the guy. What was his damage?
Roxi stepped forward, hands held out in front of her, imploringly. “Lark, no one meant to hurt you tonight. I’m sorry if you feel like you’ve been ambushed.”
I raised a brow. “You mean I haven’t been?”
“I told you to be straight with her,” Ben growled. He was all frowny and serious, not quite so pretty, but even more hot. He turned to me. “We asked you here to talk to you.”
I glanced at Roxi. “Not to be my friend, then.” Shouldn’t have said that. Made me sound whiny and pathetic.
She looked like I’d slapped her. “I meant what I said.”
I wanted to believe that, I really did.
“This is stupid,” the darker guy—Gage—said. I remembered him from elementary school. His last name was Moreno. “You guys watch too much TV. She can’t help us, because there’s nothing going on.”
Help them? With what?
I turned my attention back to Ben, but my gaze caught on Sarah instead. “You should get that scratch looked at,” I told her. “It looks infected.”
It was as though I was a hunter with a semiautomatic and they were a herd of deer. They all froze, staring at me.
Sarah’s hand went to her face. “Really?”
“Yeah. You should at least put a bandage on it. Some Neosporin.”
Gage stepped forward, rolling up his sleeves. “What about me? Do I have scratches, too?”
Long, jagged furrows ran the inside length of each of his forearms. They rose up in thick, scarlet welts that oozed wetly under the streetlights.
I made a face. “What the hell have you been into?” I asked them, but I shouldn’t have asked. Hell, I shouldn’t have let them know I could even see them. I knew my mistake as soon as the light hit his arms in the right way, allowing me to see that tar-like tinge that clung to the wounds.
“Oh, hell,” I whispered. “You pissed off a ghost.”
No one else could see their scratches. Even they couldn’t see them, but I bet they could feel them. Some ghosts were nasty that way.
“Oh, Lark,” Wren whispered. “This is bad.”
“Did it get all of you?” I asked.
“Not me,” Kevin said, but the rest nodded.
I glanced at each of them. I didn’t want to get involved in this. But...shit. I couldn’t just walk away. They had no idea what they’d gotten into.
Roxi shot a fierce look at Sarah. “I told you Ben was right. I told you something happened that night.”
Sarah’s jaw was slack, her eyes wide. Her fingers were still pressed to the wound on her face. “It’s not possible,” she whispered. “Ghosts aren’t real.”
“There’s one here right now,” Kevin informed her hotly. Huh. Mr. Sixth Sense all ready to snap to my sister’s defense. I liked him at that moment. A little.
Gage shook his head. “This is so fucked up.”
I turned to Ben. “How did you know?”
He shrugged. “I felt it.”
“You believe in this stuff?” Mace demanded. He looked from Kevin to Ben like he felt betrayed by them. “That’s just great.”
“And you don’t?” I asked. “Come on, Mace. You’re smarter than that.”
He glared at me. He blamed me, I think. He’d been living in perfect ignorance before being dragged into my world.
Gage stood there, rubbing at his forearms. He looked scared and confused. “Ghosts are real?”
For a second, there was silence. Then, I said, “Yes.” There went that promise I’d made to keep myself out of trouble. To keep my head down and not attract attention.
“We have to help them,” Wren insisted.
I glanced at her. “Can’t help them if they don’t want it,” I replied.
Gage was watching me. “Who are you talking to?”
I sighed. “My sister. She’s dead.”
He paled a little. “Oh, shit. The stories about you are true?”
Roxi patted him on the arm. “It’s okay.”
Mace and Sarah exchanged glances, then looked at Gage, Roxi, Ben and Kevin. None of them wanted this to be true. In fact, I expected them to protest a little harder, but they weren’t stupid. They knew something was off.
“Can you help us get rid of it?” Roxi asked, her hand over her stomach.
“Yeah,” added Gage. “What do we do?”
Okay, so they were ready to admit that something was wrong. That meant that they were open to believing in ghosts, and that for the first time in my life I was with people who just might believe me.
I didn’t know everything about ghosts, but I knew more than they did. I knew more than most people did. And Wren knew way more than me. Still, she and I just sort of figured things out as we went along. We weren’t exactly experts.
“We’re all they’ve got,” my sister whispered. Kevin’s gaze jerked in her direction. Just how sensitive was he to her presence?
“Where did you find it?” I asked. Cool fingers curled around mine and squeezed. My sister, giving her approval. I had an awful feeling that this was going to bite me on the ass.
“Fairfield Cemetery,” Sarah replied.
I shook my head. And closed the Beetle’s door. I wasn’t going anywhere just then.
“Lark, that’s not right,” Wren insisted. “Do you hear me? I said it’s not—”
I shot her a glare. “I know.”Did she think I’d forgotten about Kevin and his little song during this drama?
“Are you talking to your sister again?” Sarah asked hesitantly.
I tried to smile. It didn’t work. “Yes.”
“Her name’s Wren,” Kevin said, stepping into the circle. He shot me a glance. I gave him the finger. He’d flapped his lips about my sister enough already.
“Ghosts don’t haunt cemeteries,” I informed them. “Cemeteries are sanctuaries. There’s nothing there but bones and peace. Ghosts need something to hold on to—a person, place or thing. When ghosts need to feed they go back to a place they knew in life where they might find the living. Your ghost is from somewhere else. Where else have you been that’s close to there?”
They all looked around, shaking their heads.
“At least one of you has been somewhere else. Maybe you walked across property near the graveyard? Trespassed somewhere?”
That shared glance was all the answer I needed. “Where?” I demanded.
“Haven Crest,” Gage said, voice hoarse and face white. “The old...hospital. We cut across the grounds one night.”
I made a face at his choice of term, which I knew had been for my benefit. Haven Crest had been an asylum in the most horror-movie sense of the word. Every kid in town knew about it by the time he or she was ten. Some even dared to brave its rusted gates. I knew better. I saw what was there. Those memories kicked my heart into overdrive and brought back other memories, of pills being forced down my throat as the ghosts of Bell Hill looked on, some of them eager for a chance to “play” when my senses were dulled and I couldn’t fight back.
“You’re on your own,” I told them and pivoted on my heel. “Good luck.”
“Wait!” Roxi cried. “You’re not going to help us?”
“I can’t,” I told her. “I’m sorry.” And I really was.
“Lark, we have to help them,” Wren insisted, but I turned away.
Someone grabbed my arm, but it wasn’t Wren. It was Mace, and he looked angry. And afraid. Of all the people to grab me, to make me look them in the eye, why did it have to be the one who had saved my sorry life? Yes, they’d locked me up after he did it, but I was here because of him. I owed him.
“You can’t tell us we need your help and then walk away,” he said.
I shook my head as though he’d been the one to remind me of that fact. “I won’t do it. You can’t make me go there. Do you know what that place is? Do you know what it’s like to be surrounded by ghosts that don’t have any sense of right and wrong? To be strapped to a bed and unable to fight when creatures who get off on pain come to play?” Tears filled my eyes and I refused to be ashamed of them. “You don’t know, and I can’t do that again.”
“You’re right,” he said. “I just know this.” And then he shoved my hand under his shirt, flat against the smooth, muscled wall of his chest. I gasped at the heat there—the burning ridges that scorched my palm. He had the scratches, too.
Heat raced up my arm. No, it was like my arm was on fire. I cried out. Wren reached for me... My head snapped back—eyes, too.
Pain. Blood. Suffering. Terrible images filled my brain, each moving too fast to be sure of what I was seeing. I heard screams and laughter, tasted blood and tears. And I burned.
Then I saw them—Mace, Roxi, Gage, Sarah, Ben and Kevin—all of them. They were dead—ripped apart by something with huge claws. Their blood covered the floor of what looked like an old medical ward. Rats scurried along the edge of the growing crimson pool.
Mace’s face—what was left of it—turned toward me. Something had ripped out his eyes, but I knew he could see me. “You,” he rasped.
And there was Wren, clacking like a vulture, squatting among all the gore. Black clots of blood matted her hair, stained the skin around her mouth. I watched in horror as she lifted unnaturally long, bloody hands. Each finger had become a wicked razor-sharp claw, and from those claws dangled a cluster of eyeballs—like an upside down bunch of small, macabre balloons. I saw Roxi’s eyes and Mace’s eyes, and Sarah’s. They all turned to stare at me accusingly.
My sister grinned at me before popping one of them into her mouth.
I screamed.
(#ulink_1f6ca70f-1718-5669-b91d-0e00e3d417ab)
WREN
Lark slumped against Mason at exactly the same moment a police officer got out of his car on the other side of the parking lot.
“Crap,” Ben muttered. “Is that Olgilvie?”
Someone else swore.
I barely glanced at the tall, heavyset man in uniform walking toward us. I was more concerned about my sister. What had happened when she’d touched Mason’s wounds? “Lark?”
Mason held her up. He couldn’t see me, however. To his friends he said, “Stay calm. Let me do the talking.”
Sarah looked panicked. “How are we going to explain her?” She gestured at Lark. “She looks drunk.”
It was obvious that everyone thought we were in trouble, so I did the only thing I could think of. I stepped into my sister and took over her body for the time being. People called it possession, but I didn’t like to use that term in regards to Lark. Thankfully, she was just asleep. I opened my eyes—Lark’s eyes.
Mason looked down at me. He frowned. “You’re not her,” he whispered.
I managed a small smile, impressed that he could tell the difference between us—most people couldn’t. “You can let her...me, go now. Thanks.”
He dropped his arms like I was on fire. I stumbled, but managed to catch myself. Wearing Lark was fairly comfortable, but I wasn’t used to having substance in this realm. Limbs were heavy, clumsy. I braced my hand against the roof of Nan’s car.
By that time the police officer—Olgilvie—had reached us. “Evening, kids. Had a report of a girl accosting another with a cup of hot tea. Then I heard a scream. Everything all right up here?”
“Yeah,” Mason replied. “Just messing around.”
Olgilvie ignored him and came straight toward me. Did I know him? He looked familiar. Had he been there the night Lark had hurt herself?
He peered at me with narrow dark eyes. “You’re that Noble girl, aren’t you? Charlotte’s granddaughter.”
I nodded. God, even Lark’s head was heavy. How did the living walk around like this all day?
His shoulders straightened, like a rooster trying to make itself taller. He tucked his thumbs into his belt. “Are we going to have trouble again, Miss Noble?”
Again. I wanted to explain to him that we had never had any trouble, but that we certainly could if he wanted. I wanted to make the little hairs on the back of his neck stand up on end. I wanted to make his bladder quiver. A girl screams and he shows up talking like she’d done something wrong? Shouldn’t he be asking if she—I—was all right?
A skinny young man with a lot of hair and jeans that were too tight stood beside the officer. It was obvious he was one of my kind—not just because he looked out of place, but because he looked right at me and winked.
“No,” I said, looking away from the ghost. “We’re not going to have trouble.”
The policeman nodded, rocked back on his heels. “That’s good, because I have friends at Bell Hill. If I think for a minute that you’re a danger to anyone in this town I won’t hesitate to give them a call.”
Lark would say something snarky—my sister got defiant when threatened—but I couldn’t think of anything. I was too angry. How dare he bring up that awful place. Lark hadn’t done anything and this man talked about sending her back there? He looked at her as though he thought she was a criminal. Trouble. Just what did he think she was going to do? She’d hurt herself, not anyone else.
“She didn’t do anything,” Mason said, with a frown. “Why don’t you back off?”
The officer obviously didn’t like his tone. “You watch your tone, Mace.”
“No.” The boy who had rescued my sister, and earned my eternal gratitude, folded his arms over his chest. “There’s nothing going on here, so maybe you should go find some real trouble, because I won’t hesitate to call my father—you know, your boss—and let him know that one of his officers is bullying a teenage girl for no reason.”
The older man stared at Mason, who stared back. Oh, I wished Lark could have seen it! If I liked Mason Ryan before, I adored him now for standing up for my sister.
“Someday, you’re not going to be able to hide behind your daddy the chief anymore.” Olgilvie pointed a thick finger at him. “I’m going to be there when that happens.”
Mason shrugged. “Then I guess you and I will have trouble. Someday.”
The officer stepped forward, jaw tight. That was when I put myself, or rather Lark, between the two of them. I probably shouldn’t have done anything, but it was the only way I could think of to end this situation before it became any more out of control.
And the only way to get the ghost to go away.
“You hid behind your father when he was chief, Opie.”
The color drained from Olgilvie’s face. “What did you call me?”
“That was what they called you, wasn’t it? The kids who liked to tease you?” Sometimes I knew things about the living, but in this case, the name had come from the ghost with him.
I smiled a little, moved closer to him, so only he could hear what I said next—the secret his companion shared. He staggered backward after I spoke to him, looking at me like I was something unnatural, which I was, of course. I was glad Lark wasn’t awake to see it, because too many people had given her that same look over the course of her life.
The officer turned and walked away. He looked unsteady. The younger man’s ghost walked beside him.
“What did you say to him?” Mason asked when it was just the group of us again.
“Something only he and a dead man knew,” I answered. And that was all I was going to say. Things taken to the grave were taken there for a reason. By revealing it, and scaring the officer away, I’d basically indebted myself to the ghost haunting him. If the ghost ever needed a favor, I was obliged to reciprocate. No need to bring anyone else into that bargain.
I had bigger things to worry about. “Can someone help me? I need to wake up Lark.”
With the exception of Mason, they all looked at me in...well, it wasn’t quite horror. Surprise? That was when I finally let myself look at Kevin. My heart skipped a beat.
“Wren?” His voice was hoarse.
I nodded. His eyes were so blue, even in the dark parking lot. The breeze blew dark curls around his face. Such wild hair. It didn’t occur to me to speak. I just wanted to look at him. God, I could touch him if I wanted.
After that first connection when Lark had hurt herself, I didn’t expect to talk to Kevin again, but he reached out to me a day or two later. And when my sister had shut me out, he was the one person I could talk to about it. It took some time, and it wasn’t easy, but we got so that we could communicate fairly easily. He couldn’t see me, couldn’t touch me, but he could hear me.
“Oh, shit,” Gage said, staring at me. “That’s a ghost in there? Dude, that’s...fucked up.”
I blinked. There were other people with us. I hadn’t exactly forgotten them, they just hadn’t mattered all that much to me. Sometimes the living faded into the background, there were just so many of them.
“Where do you need to go?” Mace asked.
“Someplace private. Quiet. Not here,” I replied.
Kevin came forward. “My place. My parents are away for a long weekend.”
His house! Oh, no. Lark was going to kill me when she woke up. I didn’t care. I wanted to see his house. I wanted to touch the light switches he touched. Walk the floors he walked. I wanted to smell his toothbrush. Maybe try on his clothes. I didn’t care if it was weird—I spent 99.9 percent of my time incorporeal, damn it.
“I need someone to drive,” I said with a wince, gesturing to my grandmother’s hideous car. “I can’t.”
“I’ll drive you,” Kevin offered.
Oh, Lark, please stay asleep. Just for a little while longer. Please, please.
“Are you sure? It’s an ugly car.”
He smiled, and it was like watching the moon rise from behind the veil. So bright. “I don’t mind.”
Mason clapped him on the shoulder. “We’ll meet you there, man.”
The keys were already in the...thing. What was that called? The ignition? I managed to clomp around the back to the passenger side. Kevin opened the door for me. I smiled. “Thanks.”
I pulled the seat belt across Lark’s body and buckled it. No need for both of us to be ghosts. Kevin climbed in, fastened his belt and then started the engine. He glanced around at the interior.
“Wow,” he said. “It really is hideous.”
I laughed. “Isn’t it?”
He grinned, adjusted the stick thing and then made the vehicle move. “It’s weird, being able to actually talk to you, and have you be more than a voice in my head.”
“I know.” I sneaked a glance at him. “It’s nice.” There were so many things I wanted to say to him, but they all seemed so foolish now that I had the chance. We’d talked a few times over the past year and a bit, but this seemed much more...intimate. I could touch him if I wanted. Smell him. Feel his warmth.
I never realized just how cold I was all the time.
“Do you think Lark will help them?”
“Yes.” It wasn’t a lie. “She’ll do what’s right.” It just took a little prodding to get her there sometimes.
“Good.” He turned his head toward me just for a second before looking back at the road. “I can’t believe it’s you in there. Earlier that face looked like it wanted to kill me.”
“She felt ambushed. The song...”
“Did you like it?”
“I did. Lark felt like it was an accusation.”
“It kind of was. She put you through something terrible.”
“She thought she was insane, Kevin. Living with me made her feel that way.” I couldn’t have expected him to understand.
His jaw tightened. “No. She let people make her feel that way. I know what that’s like, and it’s not your fault.”
He was sweet, but he really didn’t understand. “We can’t be friends if you hate her.” It hurt to say the words.
“I don’t hate her. I just think she made some bad choices.”
It sounded like something Lark would have said. As much as I liked him, this was my sister we were discussing. He had to be an only child, because he obviously didn’t know that the only person who could say anything bad about Lark was me. “She didn’t do it to hurt me. She did it so we could be together.” I had never told anyone that. In fact, Lark and I had only ever talked about it once—shortly after she cut herself. There had been that brief moment when we had actually been together behind the veil. She’d been dead for a few seconds.
It had been wonderful. I never had and never would tell her just how much. Lark and I could touch, but there was always this invisible barrier between us. We were in different worlds, even if they overlapped. To have her with me finally was incredible—and wrong. She didn’t belong in my world, and I couldn’t have let her stay.
Kevin glanced at me again. “Okay.” He only said that one word, but it seemed to mean so much more than that. I smiled.
“Can I...?” I swallowed. “Can I touch you?”
The car swerved as he jerked his head toward me, then back again. “Now?” His voice was strained.
“I just want...” I leaned over and wrapped one of his curls around my finger. His hair was silky, springy—exactly like I’d hoped it would be. I laughed. “I’ve never felt hair other than Lark’s before.”
And this was different from when Lark was awake and I shared her body. Despite the heavy limbs and awkwardness of them, they felt like mine. I was in control, not my sister, and it...it was wonderful. And strange. So strange.
I pulled my hand away, but he caught it and twined his fingers with mine. His hand was warm. Strong. My heart slammed hard against my ribs. Was I going to vomit, or burst into song? I couldn’t tell.
And it wasn’t my heart, not really. It was Lark’s heart. I had to remember that. This wasn’t my body. In this realm I didn’t have a body. I wasn’t real.
But I let Kevin hold Lark’s hand all the way to his house anyway.
LARK
My eyes opened. The first face I saw other than my sister’s belonged to Mace. Funny, but his face was the last thing I remembered seeing before I passed out. God, that vision of Wren eating eyeballs had been gross. Not something I ever wanted to see again.
“Where am I?” I demanded. “Whose bed is this? And why do I smell toothpaste?” I swear on her grave my sister blushed.
Kevin’s freakishly curly head appeared over Mace’s shoulder. “You’re at my house. My bed.”
Well, ew.
“You fainted,” my sister informed me. “I had to wear you for a bit—there was a police officer.”
I opened my mouth, then closed it again.
“It’s okay,” Wren continued, strangely giddy. “They know about me. We’re friends.”
At the same time, I heard Roxi say, “Your sister possessed you when the cop showed up. It was awesome.”
Oh, great. Okay, so Wren possessing me seemed to convince everyone that I’d be on board with helping them, but what the hell had my sister done while running around in my body? I glanced at Kevin, my gaze narrow. She better not have made out with him. I sat up. My head swam a little. I reached out to steady myself, my hand clamping on to something warm and hard.
It was Mace’s shoulder. As soon as my brain settled I jerked my hand away.
“You okay?” he asked.
I nodded, avoiding his gaze. He needed to go away. He was too much of a distraction for me. I couldn’t seem to think around him. All I could think about was that he’d seen me at my weakest, and I could never change that. I owed him my life, and I couldn’t change that, either. That meant that regardless of what I thought of the others, I had to help him. I had to do everything in my power to save him. I might be a living, breathing girl, but I knew ghosts—I could fight them and hurt them—and I had one on my side.
So, I was going to walk into an asylum. A haunted one. I wanted to mention—just in case there was any confusion on the subject—that asylums and hospitals and jails didn’t have one ghost, or even half a dozen ghosts. Most of them, especially the old ones, could have hundreds of ghosts. When I was thirteen my parents took me—and Wren—to London. The Tower of London freaked me out. Wren had to return to the Shadow Lands—where she lived when she wasn’t with me—because the ghosts wouldn’t leave her alone.
There was a different energy to ghosts when they were in this world. The ones that stayed here had issues, and they were agitated, while Shadow Land ghosts were generally more calm. At least that was what Wren told me. I wasn’t there long enough to find out for myself, not really. But the Shadow Lands was like a stepping-stone between dimensions—a place between earth and Heaven, reincarnation...whatever.
“What happened to you earlier?” Roxi asked. She was perched on the dresser near the foot of the bed. Mace and Sarah were on the edge of the bed and Gage and Ben stood against the far wall. My sister was with Kevin. I didn’t like that very much, but at least he wasn’t looking at me like I was Hitler. In fact, he seemed really confused when he looked at me.
Oh, God. She’d made out with him. Didn’t she? She was so lucky she was already dead.
“I don’t know,” I told her honestly. “I had some kind of vision.”
“Of what?” It was Kevin who asked.
“I don’t want to talk about it.”
“It could help us.”
I scowled. “I said I don’t want to talk about it.”
“But it could help,” he insisted.
I clenched my jaw. “It won’t.” I gave him a look that said if he pushed it I’d punch him in the face.
Instead of continuing the argument, he tilted his head. “That bad?”
I resisted the urge to snort. “I passed out.” Was that bad enough for him? And why was he suddenly being all understanding? I thought he hated me.
“Sorry ’bout that,” Mace apologized. “I didn’t know that would happen.”
I shrugged. “Didn’t think you would have.”
He looked down—at my hand, the one he’d shoved under his shirt. My fingers twitched. I closed them into a fist. “I need to see where you were attacked.”
He didn’t even blink. “Okay. Let’s go.”
“Now?” His girlfriend blinked enough for both of us. “You’re going now? She just woke up.”
Mace rose to his feet and so did I. “He wants to make sure I don’t change my mind,” I remarked with less humor than I intended.
He shot me an unamused look. “Maybe I just want to make sure my friends and I are back to normal as soon as possible. I have to think that spectral wounds aren’t good.”
He was right, they weren’t. In fact, they could be life threatening. It was weird, but he didn’t seem to doubt for a moment that I could fix this, even though I had no freaking idea of how to do just that. “Let’s go, then.”
Wren came toward me. God, there were a lot of people in the room. So many of them depending on me to help them. I didn’t do well with responsibility. “I’m coming with you.”
I shook my head. “You’re not going anywhere near that place until I’ve checked it out.” I turned to Kevin. “Do you have a can of salt I can take with me?”
“Sure,” he said. I had to admit that I liked not having to explain myself. I followed him to the kitchen—everyone else tagging along behind. He took a large can of salt from the pantry and handed it to me. It was full, the seal not even broken. It was a cheap but effective weapon against spirits. I wasn’t sure why, but I didn’t care so long as it worked.
“If you’re not back in an hour we’re going to come looking for you,” Ben said. He’d been pretty quiet up until now. Then again, he and Wren could have chatted up a storm and braided each other’s hair while I was out of it, for all I knew.
I shot him a grim smile. “If we’re not back in an hour we’re dead.”
That brought the mood down.
“Why would you say that?” Sarah demanded. She turned to Mace. “Why would she say something like that?”
“Because it’s true,” I retorted.
My sister looked embarrassed. “Lark...”
I held up my hand. “We’ll be fine. I’ll have your friend back in one piece, I promise.”
“You’re our friend, too,” Roxi said softly.
I snorted.
“If you want to be,” Ben added.
There was something in his gaze that freaked me out. He freaked me out—almost as much as Mace, but for different reasons. “Morbid curiosity?” Why else would he seem to be so interested in me? He was probably one of those guys who secretly crushed on goth girls. “Let’s go.”
I pivoted on my heel, toward what I hoped was the back door. Outside I stomped toward Nan’s car.
“We’re taking my car,” came Mace’s voice from behind me.
I swerved toward the Jaguar. It was old and black—cool without screaming, “I have a huge wang!” Good thing he was driving, because I had no idea where the keys to the Beetle were. Whoever drove it here must have still had them.
I tried the passenger door. It was locked. Great. The thing predated auto lock, so I had to wait for him to come around and unlock it for me. I stood there feeling like a loser.
When Mace reached me he didn’t immediately unlock the door. He stood there watching me. Finally, I lifted my chin and met his gaze with a belligerent one of my own. “What?” I wished I’d worn heels so I could be more at his eye level. I found him...intimidating.
“Just so we’re clear, my interest in being your friend isn’t morbid curiosity.” His tone smarted with indignation. “This is morbid curiosity.” He grabbed my right arm and yanked my sleeve up.
“Hey!” I cried, pulling against his grip. He was way stronger than me and held my arm tight, turning it so that the scar there was fully visible—a long, smooth ridge against my pale skin. He touched it with his other hand—a gentle stroke. It was a violation.
“Don’t,” I choked out. I was tempted to hit him with the can of salt.
His gaze lifted and locked with mine. “That was the scariest day of my life, finding you like that.”
“Oh.” A genius with words was I. Being the center of my own little world, I’d thought only of my own shame, my own feelings. It never occurred to me how finding me must have affected him beyond his opinion of me.
He continued, still staring into my eyes, still holding my arm. He didn’t touch my scar again, though. “Nobody has ever scared me more than you have—that day, and then tonight when you passed out.”
My throat was tight—probably because my heart had jumped into it. A smart-ass retort came to mind, but I couldn’t bring myself to say it. “What do you want from me, Mace? An apology? Fine, I’m sorry.”
The muscle in his jaw twitched. “What I want is for you not to treat me like I’m one of those assholes who doesn’t understand you or treats you like you’re crazy.”
I yanked on my arm again, but he held tight. I knew that if I pretended it hurt he’d let me go. Here was the twisted part—I didn’t want him to let me go. It had been so long since someone, especially a guy, had touched me. “What are you, then?” Did he really expect me to believe that he, of all people, didn’t think I was nuts?
His nostrils flared slightly. “I’m the guy who kicked in a window to get to you. The guy who found you in a pool of your own blood and wrapped your arms in pillowcases to try to stop the bleeding. I’m the guy who prayed for you to live while you begged me to let you die. I don’t want your apology.”
“What the hell do you want? Gratitude? A freaking medal?” I wasn’t yelling, but I was close.
“What do I want?” His fingers tightened on my arm. “Jesus, Lark. I want you to forgive me!”
(#ulink_c0fbadae-5df7-5eaa-80b7-5741afbaa045)
LARK
I stared at him. “What?”
Mace stared back. There was maybe three inches between us—just enough that I could look at him without going cross-eyed. He took a step backward. I was glad he did, even though my arm felt cold when he let go. “I want you to tell me that I did the right thing.”
“Oh, Mace.” I felt like I’d been punched in the stomach. He looked haunted, and I knew all about that. “Yeah, you did. You did the right thing.”
He looked away, raking a hand through his thick hair. He stood with his back to me, hands on his hips. I thought I heard him sniff. What was I supposed to do? I couldn’t hug him, I wasn’t very good at it. Should I say something? What?
Then he turned. He didn’t look at me. “Let’s get going.” He unlocked the Jag and opened the passenger door.
“Thanks,” I murmured as I slid inside.
Mace closed the door, then crossed in front of the car to climb in the driver’s side. We buckled our seat belts and he started the engine. Neither of us spoke during the drive to the graveyard. It was secluded and we could park there while poking around close to the asylum grounds without getting too close. Mace would be a magnet for the thing that had marked the group of them. With any luck I’d be able to get a feel for it, or at least get an idea of what we were up against. If our luck went bad, the thing would come for Mace, and maybe kill both of us.
My fingers tightened around the can of salt. Mace and the others had put their faith in me, were depending on me. Stupid of them, really. Even though I knew most of them wouldn’t have anything to do with me in any other circumstance, I felt like I had to at least try. Besides, it wasn’t as though I was scared of dying. Been there, done that.
Fairfield Cemetery edged up against the grounds of Haven Crest—the asylum had a huge amount of land that the town was apparently thinking of reclaiming. Yeah, good luck with that. They’d better burn, salt and bless every square foot.
“Want to get the gate?” Mace asked when we pulled into the graveyard lane. I unfastened my seat belt and climbed out. There wasn’t any traffic on the quiet side road, although it was after eleven. The only light was the Jag’s headlights casting long, eerie shadows through the wrought-iron bars. There was a chain draped around the rungs, but it was just for show—not locked. I removed it and pulled open the gate so that Mace could drive in. He stopped and waited for me to replace the chain. Then we continued into the graveyard.
“There are other people here,” I remarked after we drove by two cars parked some distance apart.
“They won’t bother us,” Mace said, looking straight ahead.
“How do you know?”
He shot me a disbelieving glance, as though it should be obvious. “They’re busy.”
Suddenly, I understood. Embarrassment heated my face. How could I have not figured that out on my own? “How romantic,” I muttered.
Mace shrugged. “It’s private. Personally, I think it’s disrespectful.” He laughed drily. “You probably think that’s stupid, huh?”
Now I was the one looking at him like he should know better. “The person I love most in the world is a ghost. I think I have a unique perspective on respecting the dead.”
He tilted his head. “I guess you do.”
I stared at him. “Do I agitate you?”
“Yeah. Yeah, you do.” He pulled the car under a large maple tree and put it in Park. He turned to look at me. “But I think you like having that effect on people. Keeps them from getting close.”
I scowled. “You sound like a shrink.”
He smiled. Actually, it was more of a smirk. “Guess I agitate you, too.” Then he unfastened his seat belt and got out of the car. I had no choice but to follow him, and for once, I had no smart-ass comeback.
It was dark in the cemetery, but it was a clear night and the moon cast everything in a silvery light. I recognized our surroundings as we walked deeper into the stone garden. “Do you mind if we make a stop first?” I asked. Cemeteries weren’t just calming to ghosts—they were calming to me. There was a sense of peace here, and I needed a minute to center myself.
“Really?” He arched a brow. “Are you serious?”
“It will just take a minute.” Without waiting for his response, I veered right, down a worn path, and kept walking until I reached a familiar stone angel bowed over a matching bassinet. Both were smudged with age and dirt, with patches of moss clinging to them. Someone had left a bouquet of flowers—like the kind you got at the grocery store—on the small, flat headstone that was set into the grass. I couldn’t see the name on the stone, but I didn’t need to. I knew whose grave it was.
“Someone’s been here,” I said—like it wasn’t obvious.
“Kevin,” Mace replied. “He’s been coming every couple of weeks ever since it happened.”
No need to say what “it” was. My opinion of Kevin rose a little. Before I had tried to kill myself I had visited this sad little plot once a week, making sure it looked good, cleaning the stone. This was my first time back since returning to New Devon. I would have to thank him for taking care of Wren’s grave while I was gone.
“Is this the stop you wanted to make?”
I nodded as I picked a bit of moss from the angel’s head.
“Sorry I gave you a hard time about it.”
I shrugged. “They bought room for me, too.”
“What?”
I crouched down and moved the flowers so that he could see the headstone. “My parents.”
Mace peered over my shoulder. “Shit.”
“Yeah.” I traced the letters of my own name, carved there beside Wren’s. Unlike her, I had no expiration date below mine. I couldn’t even begin to articulate how I felt about having a grave all ready for me to move in whenever I needed it. “You know, I’m okay with not being there yet. I meant what I said earlier—you did the right thing. Thank you.”
He cleared his throat. “Yeah. You’re welcome.”
I stood up. “Okay, let’s go. Take me to the spot where you guys sneaked onto asylum property.” The old hospital campus was locked up at night, but kids from New Devon had been sneaking in for as long as I could remember. I couldn’t remember any stories about people getting hurt, though I’m sure there were some. Maybe Mace and his friends had pissed off a ghost, but the more likely explanation was that recent construction on the site had stirred something up. Ghosts weren’t big on change. My newfound “friends” had simply stumbled in at the wrong freaking time.
Or something there was getting stronger.
We walked back along the path, then took a right on the main trail. It wasn’t long before we reached the stone wall. It had crumbled in spots, but was about eight feet tall, and topped with rusted barbed wire. The grass was tamped down around one particularly large tree. Someone had nailed boards into the trunk a long time ago—we’re talking the ’70s from the look of the wood. The bark there had been chipped and worn away from years of traffic.
“There’s a rope ladder on one of the branches,” Mace explained. “We climbed the tree, then went down the ladder.”
“Awesome,” I muttered, looking down at my cute shoes that were so not made for climbing trees. Neither was my dress. I felt completely ridiculous.
“Want me to go first?” he asked.
“Unless you want to be scarred for life by the sight of my granny panties, you’d better.” They were boy panties, but who could tell the difference in the dark.
He gave me an odd look, then scampered up the tree like he’d been born to do it. I followed a lot less gracefully. My shoes had smooth soles, so they couldn’t grip the homemade ladder. I still had the salt, too, so I was only holding on with one hand.
“Ow!” Damn splinter in my palm.
Mace’s hand appeared before me. “Your hand or the salt—give me one.”
I gave him the salt. I didn’t want him to get the idea that he was my freaking knight in shining armor or something.
Once I made it to the branch he was on—a limb thick enough to hold both of us—he held on to another branch for support and walked out over the wall. I inched along behind him. It would be just my luck to fall and break my fool neck on the asylum side. By the time I got to the rope ladder, Mace was already on the ground, holding the rope steady for me. There wasn’t any graceful way to descend a ladder that swayed and diped with every movement. I swore the entire time down—under my breath, of course.
“You’ve got a mouth like a sailor,” Mace commented when I joined him. The grass was brown and flattened by dozens of feet. That was good.
I opened the salt and began pouring it. “Met many sailors, have you? Is there something Sarah should know about you, Mace?”
“I love me a man in uniform,” he quipped. “What are you doing?”
“Making a salt circle around you.”
“Why?”
I didn’t look up. “Because this thing has had a taste of you and will be able to sense you’re here, and I don’t want to have to explain to Sarah that it took you on my watch.”
“Your concern is touching, Lark. Really.”
It wasn’t his sarcasm that made me look up, though I appreciated his skill at it. “I owe you. That means I’m going to do everything I can to keep you alive. You okay with that?”
“Yeah, I think I am.” His gaze locked with mine. We stood there, staring at each other. Awkward.
A cold breeze brushed my bare legs. I turned my head in its direction. “Feel that?”
“Yeah.” Out of the corner of my eye I saw his hand go to his chest as if it hurt. The ghost was coming.
I checked the ring I’d poured around him—it was a good, thick mound of salt that could withstand a spectral wind. Good.
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