Brenda’s headlights illuminate a stop sign, red and white and gray with dust from the mines. She could probably blow right through it at this hour of the night, but she stops anyway, twisting in her seat to face me. Her expression is grave.
“There are two ways a ghost can anchor a place to the world. The active way, that’s what Delia is doing in Manhattan. At the same time, as long as she’s a haunt and in the world of the living, she’s also a passive anchor for Babylon, where she’s buried. That’s why witches and ghosts don’t fight more than we do. If we needed you to stay where you were buried, there’d be a lot more ‘Sorry, but I have to bind you into this oak tree for the sake of everyone I love.’ Nimue did Merlin, just like the legends say. What they miss is that Merlin was dead at the time, and if he’d gone chasing dishware across Europe, he’d have been leaving Camelot without an anchor. His bones were long gone, you see, and he allowed no other ghosts to haunt his hallowed halls. So you’ve been haunting New York, and all this time your bones have been here, comfortable in the soil, part of what’s anchoring Mill Hollow.”
“Why does that explain Danny being here?”
“Because a town this small is highly unlikely to have more than one human ghost. As long as you were in Manhattan, Mill Hollow was the safest place for him to go. Already anchored, but with no one to ask why he was in town. Him, and whoever he’s working for.”
“You mean the witch.” That is the long and the short of it. Danny is a ghost, and ghosts can’t do much to their own kind. We can’t prison ourselves in glass, can’t trade time between us. For those things, you need a witch. And the ghosts of Manhattan are missing.
“I do.” Brenda looks at me seriously. “This is your town, Jenna. This is your holy ground.”
“No,” I say, without thinking. “It’s not. I’m not the anchor here.” Because I can sort of see what she’s trying to say—the shape of it, at least—and what she’s saying is wrong. Maybe I’m the oldest human ghost in Mill Hollow, but that doesn’t make me the anchor. There’s something else holding this place to the world. Something other than me.
“Maybe so and maybe not, but it’s still your town. If there was a witch here, where would she be hiding? Where would we find her?”
There will be time to argue about anchors later. I close my eyes, breathing in the taste of Kentucky, the sweet dampness that coats my lungs and stays behind even when the air rushes out again, unchanged by its time in the phantom prison of my lungs.
As I breathe, I start to see the Hollow sketched across the inside of my eyes, a pale, monochrome map of a place. There’s the graveyard, where my bones lie next to Patty’s, whiling away eternity in a pine box. There’s the church, where we went on special Sundays, promising to honor and obey a God we didn’t quite understand and didn’t quite believe in. There’s home, and the school, and the narrow strip of shops that was our main street, and the old theater, and—
Stop. Back up. The theater I remember was the jewel of the town, small and bright and always open, with cheap matinees for the kids and long engagements of the hits for the adults. Patty and I went there about once a week when we were growing up, trading our pocket money for the chance at escape, even if it was only for a little while. I’m pretty sure that’s where she fell in love with the idea of New York, turning it into the fairy-tale ending that could save her from the monsters in her mind. That’s where I fell in love with the idea of running. Running so far, so fast, that the sunset could never catch me and the movie would never have to end.
But the theater on the inside of my eyelids is shabby and shuttered, with boards across the windows and nothing written on the marquee. I know the reasons why even without thinking about them. Cheap cable, home video, a dwindling population, and better places for the money to go as the ticket prices soared. It makes sense that the Mill Hollow Cinema would be closed down. I still never expected to see it, not in my lifetime, and not in what came after.
“The theater,” I say, opening my eyes. “That’s where they’ll be.” I can’t put words to why I’m so sure. I just know. The Mill Hollow Cinema is dark, and shuttered, and filled with shadows. It’s also right at the center of town, with multiple rooms far from the street. Someone who could get inside there could hide for weeks, if they stayed out of the lobby and away from the windows.
“You’re sure?”
I shake my head. “I’m not sure of anything anymore. But it feels . . . it feels right. I guess that matters, under the circumstances.”