Sisters of Blood and Spirit

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.

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.