by Kady Cross
He sighed. “What are we going to do?”
“We’re going to destroy Bent.” I said this as though it was obvious—not to be snarky, but because we had no choice. Lives depended on this.
“How?” he demanded. “You already said we won’t be able to get near his grave.”
“We’ll figure it out!” I snapped back. His computer screen flickered. I really had to learn to get better control of my emotions. I couldn’t go around wreaking havoc with electronics all the time.
Kevin sighed. “I’m sorry. I feel really helpless.”
And guilty, I thought. I didn’t say it, though. Kevin was in college, but he was the same age as Mace. He’d been born in the summer while Mace hadn’t been born until that winter, throwing them into different school years. These people were his friends, and they were in danger. But Kevin hadn’t been with them that night they were attacked, and hadn’t been wounded. He felt like he’d let them down by not being in this with them. Silly boy.
“I feel it, too,” I admitted.
“You?” His expression turned dubious. “Get out. You’re powerful. You’re the most capable person I know.”
Person. No one—except Lark—had ever called me a person before. Ghost. Spirit. Thing. Never person.
“Are you okay?” Kevin asked.
“Do you really think of me as a person?” My voice quivered.
He looked confused. “Yeah. Shouldn’t I?”
I burst into tears. Hands over my face, I sobbed into my palms. My shoulders heaved, breath hitched. Thank God I couldn’t produce mucus, because I’d seen Lark make a mess of herself with less crying than I was in the middle of, and I had no tissues.
Then again, I didn’t really produce tears in this realm, either.
“Wren?”
I held up my hand. I just had to pull myself together. I couldn’t talk to him when I was like this. How did mortal girls stand it? On some of the TV shows Lark watched it seemed like the girls cried all the time. It had to be exhausting.
Finally, the sobs subsided, and I was able to lift my head.
Kevin was watching me nervously. “Are you okay?”
I nodded. “Sorry about that.”
“Did I upset you? I’m sorry if I did.”
“I’m the opposite of upset. No one’s ever called me a person before.”
“Really?” The fact that he was truly surprised made me want to cry a little more.
“Kevin, you aren’t a normal live person, you know that?”
He smiled. “I’m eighteen years old. It’s the weekend, and my parents are out of town. What am I doing? Sitting in my room with a beautiful girl and we’re talking about ghosts. I know I’m not normal, Wren.”
“Would we be doing something different if I was alive?”
His smile faded. Had I said something wrong? “Yeah, we would.”
“Like what?”
He sat back down at his computer. “I wonder if the groundskeeper is familiar with the graves or has a plan of the cemetery? I think Roxi’s uncle owns the company that looks after Haven Crest. I should get her to check with him.”
I was confused. I must have said something. “Kevin...?”
“Don’t,” he said, not turning around. “Your sister was right.”
“About what?” I was going to kill her.
At least he glanced over his shoulder this time. “She said I was going to hurt you—that it was inevitable, and she’s right. I’m going to hurt myself, too.”
“She is not right. You won’t hurt me.”
“No?” Finally he turned around. “You’re dead, Wren. I’m alive. That’s probably not going to change for a long time. Maybe it would be better if we stopped hanging out, just the two of us.”
Pain blossomed deep inside me. “No. It wouldn’t.”
He removed his glasses and looked at me. His blue eyes were so sad. “I haven’t had a girlfriend since you came to me and asked me to help you save Lark. I spend more time at your grave than I do with any girl I know. I’m infatuated with you, and it’s no good for either one of us.”
“But—”
“I think you should go. Please.”
At that moment I understood the meaning of the term heartbreak. There was a pain inside me I couldn’t locate or identify. It was as though my chest was being squeezed by giant hands, thumbs digging deep inside. It was like the time Lark tried to push me away, but sharper, because I’d known that Lark loved me, and wanted me to be real. I’d known that I would have my sister back one day. This felt...final.
I immediately left the house—flashing back to the Shadow Lands instead of returning to Lark. I needed a few minutes alone because I wanted to blame her for this, and I knew it wasn’t her fault. She’d only said what Kevin and I both knew to be true. Our feelings had started to go beyond friendship, and there was no way that could ever work.
Maybe it was time for me to start spending more time with my own kind. As much as I loved my sister and wanted to be with her, the living brought me nothing but pain and aggravation.
I sat down on a park bench I’d never noticed before and wallowed in this new feeling. And then I tried very hard to let go of the blame, because it wasn’t anyone’s fault that I was dead, and it wasn’t Lark’s fault that I couldn’t be with the boy I liked.
I would start spending more time here in the Shadow Lands. I would be more social with my own kind. I would stop pining over a stupid human boy.
But I would not forsake my sister. Lark and I were two puzzle pieces that were meant to fit together. Like it or not, we had a purpose. At least, I thought we did.
The white-haired woman had shown up at Haven Crest. Lark had seen her. Who was she, and why was she helping us? Why now? Had she been a patient there? Was that why she could show up at the hospital and in the Shadow Lands? Or was she something else? And could she help us destroy Bent?
One thing was for certain, I wasn’t going to find any of these answers sitting on a bench in the dark.
Besides, in the end, my sister was the only person—living or dead—that I could rely on. In the end, all either of us had was the other.
LARK
There was something wrong with Wren, but she didn’t want to talk about it. I didn’t have to be a freaking genius to figure out it had something to do with Kevin. Did it make me an awful sister that I hoped he let her know it couldn’t work between them? I didn’t like to see her upset, but I really didn’t want to see her get her heart broken.
Because let’s just think about how Wren might take that. Strong emotions in ghosts were what led to hauntings and other generally bad things. I had no idea what my sister was capable of—and neither did she.
She hovered over my shoulder as I flipped through the book she’d brought back from the Shadow Lands. There was some interesting information in there—stuff on patients and staff alike. I paused to look at a black-and-white photo of a kid from the ’90s.
Olgilvie? He’d been a patient at Haven Crest just a few years before it closed down. Maybe Wren was right to worry about me antagonizing him after all.
“I told you not to antagonize him,” she reminded me.
“Yeah, yeah. We’ll look at that later.” Sometimes when she said what I was thinking I didn’t know whether to punch her or laugh. I did neither, but I did keep flipping.
I found the records about the graves being moved around—and the new plans that Kevin had said were lost in a fire. I also found a few mentions of the mixed up graves—Bent’s number was mentioned.
Mentioned twice. As in Bent had two freaking graves. What had they done, sawed him in half? Obviously, it was a mistake, but why did it have to be Bent they got messed up?
Okay, so I was tempted at this point to set the whole cemetery ablaze and cleanse t
he whole damn place in one fell swoop. That wouldn’t do it, though, and I knew better. You had to get right down to the corpse—get the bones. If there wasn’t a corpse then you had to find whatever tethered the ghost to this world.
“Oh, hell,” Wren said with a scowl.
“Well,” I said with fake bubbliness, “at least we have it narrowed down to two spots. That’s better than the entire graveyard.”
“These spots are at opposite ends of the graveyard,” she pointed out. “The breathers will never make it from one to the other before Bent kills them.”
“Breathers?” I echoed. Wow, that wasn’t like her to be derogatory. “Hey, I’m one of them.”
She shot me a dirty look. “Please. You’re not.”
“Do I need to kick Kevin’s ass?” I asked. “Because you are not you right now, and if he is responsible I need to hit him.”
Her shoulders sagged. “No, don’t hit him. Well...” She smiled slyly. “You could maybe give him a sharp pinch next time you see him. And no, I don’t want to talk about it. Not right now. He was right— I just don’t like it.”
I might not have been a genius, but I wasn’t completely brainless. Kevin had taken what I’d said to him to heart and ended things with Wren.
I hugged her—hard. I’d wait to tell her about Ben. It would be cruel not to, and I needed some time to accept that it was real. There was a part of me—a paranoid, suspicious part—that expected to go to school on Monday and find out it had all been a joke.
“Sorry about whacking you with that bar,” I said. “I was terrified Bent was going to grab you again.”
“It’s okay,” she replied. “I’m sorry about giving you a hard time about that police officer.”
“No, you were right.” I opened the book and looked at his photo again. He’d been hospitalized for “delusional” behavior, whatever that meant. Ghosts didn’t keep the same kinds of records that the living did, I guess. “That’s going to come back to bite me on the ass someday, but I can live with it for now.”
“I was thinking...”
She wasn’t looking at me, but out the window. That was never a good sign when Wren couldn’t make eye contact. “Yeah?”
“Maybe after we get rid of Bent I should start spending more time in the Shadow Lands. There’s so much I don’t know about what I am.”
It was like a punch. I wanted to protest. I wanted to order her to stay here with me. “You really want to do that?”
She turned her head. “I need to have some friends of my own—ghost friends. Young ghosts, not just Iloana.”
Fucking Kevin. Well, this was my fault, too. I might not like it, but it felt like the right thing for Wren to do. She had to have a life—or death—of her own, and so did I.
“Can I meet them?” I asked.
She looked alarmed. “Of course! Lark, you’re my best friend.”
I blinked back tears. “Okay, then. Just so we’re clear on that. It probably would be good for you to spend more time there. Besides, you cramp my style.”
She frowned. “What does that even mean?”
I shrugged. “I think it’s a polite way of calling someone a cock-blocker.”
Her frown deepened. “I’m not sure I understand that, either.”
I laughed. “I love you.”
My sister grinned. “I love you, too.”
Were all sisters this way? Could you go from anger to annoyance, then sadness and betrayal, then to acceptance and happiness in the span of seconds? Or was it just us? Every once in a while I wondered if maybe we weren’t two halves of the same whole. That somehow, we shared a soul.
She crawled into bed with me a little while later. It was so late, and I was exhausted.
“Hey,” I said, half-asleep. “Who was that white-haired woman at Haven Crest?”
“I don’t know. She’s the one who helped me find the book in the Shadow Lands.” I sensed, rather than saw her frown. “She said her name was Emily.”
“So, she just popped up?”
“Yes. She said she was from here. Maybe she’s one of Bent’s victims?”
“Hmm.” Maybe, but why not say so? I was too tired to think about it. “Maybe she’s our ghostly godmother.”
“That would be nice,” Wren said. “Now go to sleep.”
So I did.
* * *
My cell rang at ten. I picked it up but didn’t recognize the number. “Hello?”
“It’s Ben.”
Honestly, I hadn’t expected him to call, and he made me grin like a stupid idiot—a fact not lost on my sister, who suddenly sat up straight and took great interest in my conversation. “Hi.”
“I didn’t wake you up, did I?”
“No, I’m up.” God, it was still the weekend. Twenty-four hours hadn’t even passed since the séance.
“So you’re not in bed?”
Okay, I didn’t embarrass easy, but my cheeks burned. Wren raised her eyebrows in silent question—one I was going to have to answer later. “No.” I cleared my throat. “Just got out of the shower.”
A low chuckle vibrated in my ear and raced all the way down my spine. “So, if I came over in about fifteen minutes you could be ready to go?”
Hells yeah. “Go where?”
“Hospital. We’re all going to go see Gage.”
Not quite what I’d hoped for, but still a good thing. I wanted to see how Gage was doing, too. “Make it twenty. I need to grab breakfast.”
He agreed and we hung up. Wren was still watching me as I stuck my damp hair up into a messy bun and rushed to my closet. “Who was that?”
“Ben.”
“Ben? Not Mace?”
I stuck my head out of the closet. “Mace has a girlfriend, and I think I already told you that he doesn’t like me like that.”
She looked genuinely confused—and put out. “I could have sworn he did. Still, Ben’s cute.”
“He is.” I hid my smile by searching for a shirt. “He’s nice, too.”
I could have sworn I heard her mutter, “And on the right side of death.”
I pulled on jeans and a light shirt. September was still a warm month in Connecticut, and today was bright and sunny. “We haven’t really talked about it, and this might not be the best time, but are you okay with the fact that Ben seems to like me?”
Wren shot me an annoyed look. “Of course I am. I saw how he looked at you at ’Nother Cup the night we met them. It was obvious he thought you were awesome.”
“It was?” I slipped my feet into a pair of flats. “Why didn’t you say anything?”
She shrugged. “You wouldn’t have believed me anyway.”
There was that. I put on mascara and lip gloss—the two things I would never be seen without—grabbed my bag and ran downstairs. Wren was already in the kitchen when I walked in. Cheater. Nan was at the table sipping what was probably her third coffee and reading a book on her tablet.
“I hope you’re going to eat something before you run out,” she said.
“Yes, ma’am.” I grabbed a mug for coffee, a banana and a bagel—which I shoved in the toaster. I ate the banana while I waited. Then I sat down at the table with a coffee and a hot bagel with melting peanut butter dripping off it. I was starving.
“I heard a bunch of kids broke into Haven Crest last night,” my grandmother remarked without looking up. “You wouldn’t know anything about that, would you?”
I chewed and swallowed. The peanut butter caught at my throat. “Should I?”
“I would think not.” She took a sip of her coffee. “I’m sure if you ever got caught doing something like that you’d call your grandmother to come get you rather than take on that jerk Olgilvie on your own.” Now she looked at me. Pointedly, I might add.
“Of course,” I agreed, a little stunned. She knew, right? I mean, she wasn’t dumb, and from the way she looked at me...
“Good.” She went back to her reading. That was it. She didn’t yell or tell me how disappointed she was, but I knew where I stood. I reached over and squeezed her hand. She squeezed back.
Ben actually came to the door when he arrived. Of course Nan knew him. I think she knew everyone in town. She gave me twenty bucks in case I needed anything and told me to be careful.
As soon as we got into the car, Ben turned toward me as though he was going to kiss me. “Wren’s with us,” I blurted.
He froze halfway to me, startled. “Are you just saying that so I won’t kiss you?”
“No!”
“Good. Hi, Wren.”
“I can leave,” she offered. Poor thing looked really uncomfortable. Fucking Kevin.
“She offered to leave,” I repeated.
Ben shook his head with a grin. “Don’t be foolish. A little anticipation’s good for the soul.”
I grinned, too. All that anticipation went right to my stomach and fluttered away. In the backseat I think my sister actually swore. She really wasn’t herself. I didn’t like it.
We didn’t talk about anything serious during the drive. Mostly we listened to the radio and I felt that stupid rush of happiness every time we liked the same song. I think Ben might have been as nervous as I was, and it was hard to be flirty when you had company. I had to give him props for not being weirded out by the fact that my sister was invisible to him.
At the hospital we found out that Gage had been moved out of emergency into the IC unit. Was that a good thing or bad? It sounded bad. We took the elevator up to that floor and ran into Kevin at the nurses’ station. He looked scared. Behind him a handful of people were in a small, glass-front room, fussing over the person in the bed. Gage’s father was in that room with his arm around Roxi’s shoulders.
“What’s going on?” Ben asked. “What happened to Gage?”
Kevin looked at me—normally he would have looked at Wren, the jerk. “He’s gotten worse.”
LARK
Had I done this? Had I hurt Gage when I touched him? Was Mace worse now, too? Sarah?