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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.
