Sisters of Salt and Iron

by Kady Cross

  “What did you do to her?” I demanded.

  “Why on earth would I confess to you?” His tone dripped sarcasm. “You’d only try to fix her, and that’s not in my best interest at all. Give her back to me, and she’ll be as good as new. You want to come home, don’t you, darling?”

  Wren’s fingers bit into my shoulder. I tried not to let the pain show. “I don’t want anything to do with you,” she rasped. The words were true, but his hold over her was stronger than her own will. The moment Nan lifted the spell, Wren would run back to him.

  Noah leaned closer, his gaze intent. “Did that clever sister of yours place a bind on you? I’m impressed, Miss Noble. I thought you more ignorant than you obviously are, but not as much as my dear Emily, who has clearly filled your head with nonsense about the Melinoe.”

  “You were the one who mentioned it first,” I told him. “When you tried to find out how much Wren and I knew about it. And Wren’s not coming back to you, so you can just get over it. As soon as I find your bones, you’re history.”

  He laughed. It wasn’t contagious. “You stupid cow. Haven’t you figured out where I had my boy bring my bones?”

  Bring. Not put, or hide, but bring. Oh, hell. Of course. If I were a powerful old ghost surrounded by dozens of other old, strong ghosts, where would I keep my bones? I’d keep them right freaking next to me, where any human would be stupid to go.

  Haven Crest.

  That’s where his remains were. I don’t know how he’d managed to do it, because he still would have had to use Kevin to bring them to the right spot on the property and risk getting caught, but he had managed it. I didn’t doubt for a moment that he was telling the truth.

  I put my hand over Wren’s and pried her fingers open, then I wrapped mine tight around them. It was that or let her rip my arm out of its socket.

  “So, what now?” I asked. “You fill me in on your dastardly plan, because you’re obviously a genius and I don’t stand a chance of defeating you, even if you spell it out?”

  “I’m not foolish, young woman. I have no intention of telling you anything.”

  Wren pulled her hand from mine. “He’s going to use the energy from the concert and the fact that it’s All Hallows’ Eve to fully cross over into this world, where he’ll finally take revenge on Emily and Alys by destroying you and me, Nan, Mom, Dad and everyone in that line. And then he’ll set the ghosts of Haven Crest free, and once he’s harnessed the power of the buildings and the land, and all its dead, he’ll make certain that any living person who sets foot on those grounds never leaves.”

  Noah glared at her. I watched as my sister smiled as smugly as he had just a moment before. She bent down so her face was right beside mine. “You infected me with your corruption to make certain I’d return to you, but you didn’t realize just how strong that connection would be? Oh, my dear Noah—who’s the ignorant one now?”

  Noah’s expression turned as hard and cold as stone. His gaze locked with mine. “Return her to me, breather. Or she’ll only get worse, until she’s nothing more than a mindless wraith.”

  “You have the power to stop him!” Emily cried. “The two of you together—”

  They were gone, and I was left staring at myself and Wren in the mirror. My sister slumped to the floor, great sobs racking her body. I slid from my chair to the carpet beside her, pulling her close as I wrapped my arms around her. She might be a being of pure energy, but she was flesh and bone to me, and her tears soaked the shoulder of my shirt. I didn’t need to ask her what was wrong. Any girl who had ever had her heart broken would recognize those sobs.

  When she finally quieted, she lifted her head. The sight of all those black veins jarred me again—I’d forgotten about them somehow. Her eyes were red, but that was better than the black I’d seen lately.

  “He’s right,” she said with a sniff. “I have to go back to him.”

  I shook my head. “No freaking way.”

  “Lark, if I stay here, I’ll only get worse, and I can’t help you. If I go back, I can help you stop him.”

  “No,” I insisted. “He’ll use you.”

  She actually smiled. It was sad. “At least now I’ll know I’m being used. I can find his remains. I need to face him. I need him to know he didn’t break me.”

  “I’m going to torch his ass,” I vowed. My voice trembled with rage. “If it’s the last thing I do, I’m going to turn him into a pile of smoldering ash.”

  Wren’s bottom lip trembled, but she nodded. “He’ll keep me from the appointment with Special Collections.”

  “That doesn’t matter right—”

  She stopped me—put her fingers against my mouth. “It matters more than ever. You have to go. You have to be the one to find out about Emily and Alys and how to help them. How to help us. Tell me you’ll go.” She removed her hand.

  Was she nuts? “I don’t know how to go to the Shadow Lands.”

  “Yes, you do. If I’ve always known how to come here, you know how to go there.”

  She made it sound so freaking easy. Instinctual. Maybe it was. But it was obvious that she couldn’t tell me how to do it, and I would have to do that on my own—and it was going to mean more missed school.

  There was a knock on the door. I looked up just as Nan stuck her head into the room. “Can I come— Oh, my dear girls. What’s happened?” She might have been in her sixties, but our grandmother was in great shape, and as soon as she saw us, she was right there on her knees beside us, holding us both.

  The only person I loved more than her at that moment was Wren.

  “Nan, you’ve got to remove the binding spell,” I said. “Wren has to leave, or she’ll get worse. And I need you to show me every book, journal and possible ghost-related item that belonged to someone in our family.”

  Nan nodded. Her expression, which had been full of concern as she looked at Wren, turned to one of steely determination when she turned to me. “We’re going to fix this, right? And make whoever is responsible for it sorry they ever crossed my girls?”

  I smiled, blinking back tears I couldn’t afford—not at that moment. “Yeah,” I said, taking one of her hands in mine and one of Wren’s. “We’re going to make him very, very sorry.”

  WREN

  The moment my grandmother wiped the blood from my forehead and said, “I release you,” I felt myself pulled from the warmth of her house to the familiar ghosts of Haven Crest. A few hours ago I loved that building and its inhabitants. Now I despised it, and them.

  My only comfort in the face of their sneers and smug smiles at having so thoroughly fooled me was that they didn’t have Lark on their side. And they hadn’t beaten me, no matter what they might think.

  Immediately I began to feel better—stronger. It was being near Noah that did this. Whatever he’d infected me with, it wasn’t so bad when I was with him. I wished I could say the same about the pain of his betrayal, but that was so much worse when I looked at him.

  “You needn’t look at me with such hostility, my love,” he told me. “If it’s any consolation, I was not as guarded with my own feelings as I ought to have been.”

  I stared at him. Silent.

  He touched my cheek. I forced myself not to jerk away.

  “I am rather fond of you,” he murmured. “You are so deliciously frightening when you want to be, with a rather delightful mad bent to you.”

  I smiled bitterly. “I’m the crazy one,” I replied.

  He arched a brow. “Indeed?” He obviously didn’t catch my reference to the Melinoe. Maybe he didn’t know as much as he thought he did. That could come in handy.

  “So, what’s your plan, Noah? You’ll use the concert to tap into the spectral energy of Haven Crest and bring yourself fully into this world, and then what? Will you be human? Ghost? Ghoul?”

 
He looked so proud of himself. “An immortal being of pure power.”

  “What happens when you’ve gotten your revenge? Surely it won’t take you long to tie up whatever loose ends my sister and I represent. How will you amuse yourself once you’ve gotten your revenge?”

  Surprise blinked in the depths of his bright eyes and then was hidden. “How I amuse myself will no longer be any concern of yours, my dear. Unless, of course, you’d care to spend eternity with me?”

  “It’s tempting,” I replied. “But I doubt it would ever happen. You don’t seem to have much of an attention span.”

  He stiffened but didn’t lose that haughty look. “Well, to be fair, you didn’t provide much of a challenge.”

  I laughed, even as the words cut me. I had been entirely too easy for him to take advantage of me. “Of course I didn’t! I’m sixteen years old, Noah. And you should be glad of it. Had I any amount of experience with the opposite sex, I wouldn’t have been attracted to you at all. It was only because you looked so much like Kevin that I was drawn to you in the first place.”

  Noah smirked. “Such remarks cannot touch me, little one.”

  “I’m not trying to insult you—we both know I haven’t the necessary appreciation for depravity it would take to descend to your level.” Let Mr. Fancy Vocabulary think on that one for a moment. “It’s merely the truth. You’ve seen Kevin. You’ve been Kevin! I’m sure you’ve noticed the resemblance.”

  “Well, we are related.”

  “Oh, and it’s so easy to tell. It’s embarrassing, but there were times when I forgot that you weren’t him.” I let myself smile then—a little dreamy, faraway look. No man, no matter how young or how old, dead or alive, liked to be told that a woman had been thinking of someone else while she was with him. And Noah had hurt me deeply enough that I wanted to hurt him back.

  His eyes turned cold, but that biting smile remained. “Yes, well, I suppose I should be grateful you don’t have white hair, or I might have confused you with Emily.”

  “No,” I corrected. “You wouldn’t have made that mistake. It’s obvious to me now that you’re in love with her. Or rather, that you’re obsessed with her. Have you always been? Because that must have been very painful for you when she dusted your sister. Oh, I’m sorry—when she sent your sister on to the next stage of her journey.”

  Suddenly, Noah was right there in front of me—his face just inches from my own. “Don’t you ever talk about my sister. And the next time you insinuate that I feel anything but hate for Emily Murray, I’ll make you sorry.”

  I grinned. “No, I don’t think you will. You could try, but I’ll still be right, and you’ll still be in denial.”

  He hit me. Knocked me a few feet across the room. It didn’t hurt like it had when Lark had tossed me into the side of the house, but it still smarted. And it gave me such satisfaction it wasn’t even funny. I laughed all the same. I’d gotten to him, made him break that gentlemanly act of his.

  “What are you laughing at?” he demanded.

  “You,” I chirped. “My sister hits harder than you.”

  “You want to be hit harder?” He clenched his fists. “I’ll be glad to oblige.”

  I held my arms out to my sides. “Be my guest.”

  He scowled. “You actually want me to hit you?”

  “You can hit me all you want. It’s not like you can beat me to death, is it? You think you can hurt me that way because you used to be alive, but I don’t have that reference. You can beat me all you want, if it makes you feel like a man. It won’t make me afraid of you.”

  I’d struck a sore spot—I knew it from the blackness that overtook his eyes. I wasn’t afraid of that, either. “Now you’re getting interesting,” I said.

  For a moment I thought he was going to come at me again, but then Miss April stepped between us. “Don’t you dare hit her, Noah McCrae. You were raised to never hit a girl.”

  “She’s not a girl,” he sneered. “She doesn’t know what it is to have lived. She’s just a dead thing.”

  Ouch. “I’m Dead Born,” I informed him. “In the hierarchy of our world, that makes me better than you, and I know you understand class. Maybe I don’t know what it is to live, but hanging around here, concocting some plan that will let you walk among the living again, tells me that you don’t know what it is to be dead. Even if you succeed in your plans, you’ll still be dead, Noah, and your sister will still be gone.”

  “That may be, but your sister will be dead, too.”

  I shrugged. “That only means we’ll be together, so I’m fine with that.”

  “Death isn’t pleasant.”

  “She’s already died once.”

  He froze. “What?”

  Hadn’t I told him about this? I was sure I’d mentioned Lark’s suicide—but maybe I hadn’t mentioned that she’d actually died. That was important, apparently.

  “That bothers you,” I observed. “Does that change your plans?”

  He didn’t answer me. He just turned and walked away. He climbed the stairs, but I didn’t follow. He wouldn’t be foolish enough to keep his bones in his room. I would have seen them by now. He wasn’t stupid, so he would hide them someplace safe.

  I wondered where Lark had hidden mine.

  In movies, ghosts are often portrayed as basement dwellers. People are always afraid of cellars and dark underground tunnels and structures. I have known of ghosts who linger in such places, but subterranean places remind most ghosts of their grave, and they avoid them. We exist in the dark because we’re often not given a choice, but we’re drawn to the light. That’s why it’s so unfair that many ghosts have to withdraw inside when the sun rises.

  If I were going to hide my own remains, I’d choose one of those dark, underground places where neither ghost nor living liked to go, but not someplace obvious like a morgue, which often drew those curious ghost hunters. But I’d keep them close—where I could check on them, especially if I knew someone wanted to destroy me.

  Noah’s bones were in this building. Probably in the basement. I just had to find out where exactly, so Lark or someone could burn them down to ash.

  “Where are you going?” April asked when I moved.

  I turned to her. Was she expecting me to thank her for stepping in between Noah and me? If she was, she’d be waiting a long time.

  “Not far,” I told her. “Noah saw to that when he infected me with...whatever he infected me with.”

  “It was only a bit of himself, and a bit of this place.”

  The place? How had he managed that? “It was poison.”

  “That’s a little melodramatic, don’t you think?”

  “No.” I turned my back on her and left the main hall. She followed me. Noah had probably told all of his little sycophants not to let me out of their sight. It was annoying, but smart.

  Instead of going to the basement, I walked all the way down the corridor to what used to be the dining room. I passed two residents who drew back into the wall as though they were afraid I might brush against them and taint them. If I could, I would.

  The dining room was at the end of the corridor. It was a big room with large windows on the three outside walls. A lot of the panes were broken, and the rest were dirty. The tiled floor was covered in debris, including leaves and twigs that had blown in through those windows. There was an abandoned bird’s nest on the chandelier. The last time I’d been in that room, Noah had made me see it as it used to be—beautiful, clean and whole. Now I saw it like I saw Noah—as it truly was.

  It wasn’t pretty.

  “Noah says that soon this entire building will look like it used to all the time,” Miss April informed me, “not just when we remember.”

  I turned to face her. The morning sun coming through the windows made her look tired and drawn. Not
as fresh and pretty as she usually appeared. “How’s he going to do that?” I asked.

  She didn’t respond.

  “He hasn’t told you, has he? He’s filled your heads with all the things he plans to do, but he hasn’t told you how. Are you all just going to go along with it?”

  Miss April glared at me. “We trust him. He’s always looked after us. He’d never hurt any of us.”

  I snorted. “Yeah, right.” I sounded so much like Lark at that moment. “I’m sure Robert would disagree with you.”

  She grinned at me, showing all her teeth—yellow and a little crooked. “You’re sure, are you? Good for you. It must be nice to be so sure.” She giggled and pivoted on her heel, leaving me alone.

  I didn’t bother to wonder what she’d meant, because I really didn’t care. I waited for a couple moments after she left, and then I left, as well.

  I had a basement to search. I wondered if Noah knew how lucky he was that I couldn’t interact with matches.

  LARK

  I tried not to worry about Wren after she left. After she was taken.

  Nan and I went up to the attic to look for anything that might be useful. I found some old books on the occult and paranormal phenomena, and some old photos, but nothing that screamed at me as a beacon of ass-saving.

  I’d been hoping that the answer would just be handed to me. I’d—we’d—been lucky with that in the past. I knew what we were now, but I still didn’t know much about it, and the internet wasn’t always the most trustworthy of sources.

  I was going to have to keep that appointment tomorrow in the Shadow Lands, even though I had no idea how to get there. Wren said I’d figure it out. I hoped she was right, because ever since we’d gotten our first whiff of trouble I’d been running into wall after wall. We had a laundry list of things going on, but no idea how it all tied together.

  And no idea how to stop any of it, short of burning Noah’s bones, which we couldn’t find. Maybe Wren would have some luck there.

  Without my sister I was lost. Incomplete. I was missing an important piece of myself and only functioning at half power.