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“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.
