Half an hour later we left the store. Everyone but Ben had a plastic bag full of items. He’d bought a pair of sunglasses and that was it. He still hadn’t told me what he was going as that night, so I decided to keep my costume secret, as well.
I crossed the parking lot, swinging my plastic bag, as I laughed at a joke Gage had made. I turned to say something to him, but he was gone. They were all gone. The cars and the parking lot—the box stores that made up the rest of the plaza—everything was gone, and I was standing on cobblestones in a world where everything was muted and soft. The street I stood on seemed taken right from the pages of a BBC historical production, with gas lamps and horse-drawn carriages rattling along.
A woman in Edwardian clothing stopped on the opposite side of the street and stared at me. She looked scared. I glanced up and saw another woman peeking out a window from behind a curtain. Her mouth was open.
“Lark?”
I turned toward the familiar voice. It was Wren. She stood right beside me. “You’re not supposed to be here,” she said, taking my hand. “Come with me. Now.”
I entwined my fingers with hers and stepped toward her. My ears popped, and suddenly the other world was gone, and I was back in the Goodwill parking lot, with my sister and all of my friends staring at me in concern.
“What happened?” Ben asked, pulling me in for a hug.
“I don’t know,” I replied. I was shaking, and there was no hiding it. “It felt like I stepped into another world.”
“You did,” Wren informed me. She had a strange expression on her face. My sister wasn’t easily frightened, but she looked worried. Not just that, but she was looking at me like she didn’t quite know me. “Lark, you were in the Shadow Lands.”
I frowned at her. “I couldn’t have been.”
“Couldn’t have been what?” Roxi asked, looking from me to the empty space occupied by my sister.
“In the Shadow Lands,” I replied. “It’s impossible. Only the dead can go there.”
“You were dead,” Mace reminded me softly. “Once.”
I shook my head. “It had to have been my imagination.”
My sister stomped up to me, so close our noses were almost touching. Of course, no one else could see it. “It was real. You were between both worlds.”
Like her. Our gazes locked. I didn’t have to say it for her to understand. This was weird. And it was big.
“Are you okay?” Ben asked, giving me a squeeze.
I nodded, looking away from my sister. “It’s probably because Halloween’s so close.”
“Maybe,” Wren allowed. “Or it might be something else.”
I ignored her. “We’d better get going.”
In my pocket my cell buzzed. I had a text. I pulled the phone out of my pocket and glanced at the message.
We’re going to talk about this whether you like it or not.
I shot Wren a snotty look. She didn’t look impressed, but I didn’t care. I’d been to the Shadow Lands when I died for, like, two seconds. It felt like a lot more time there. And with the veil thinning it made sense that I’d be sensitive. Last year I was still in Bell Hill, so the meds might have kept me from experiencing the same thing then.
“Want to grab some lunch?” Mace asked us. “Mexican?”
A big plate of cheesy nachos was exactly what I needed. “Sure,” I said. And then to Ben, “Unless you need to go home.”
“No. Lunch sounds good.”
Everyone else left ahead of us. Wren said she’d meet us there. I didn’t know where she was off to, but I suspected it was the Shadow Lands. I got into the car.
Ben opened the driver-side door and slid in. He put the key into the ignition, but instead of turning it, he turned to me. “Be honest. Are you okay?”
I leaned my head back against the seat and smiled. “Yeah, I’m good.” It was mostly true. I mean, yeah, it was weird, but my whole life was weird. If I freaked out every time something strange happened, I’d spend 99 percent of my time a basket case.
He leaned over and kissed me. For those few seconds I didn’t think. I didn’t worry about anything.
Like what those two women in the Shadow Lands saw when they looked at me. Or why my sister had been afraid.
WREN
“She just didn’t look right,” the woman with the cockney accent explained. “There were something dreadful odd about her, for such a pretty girl.”
She looked odd because she was alive, but I didn’t say that. I only asked this woman—and the one who had been on the street when Lark had popped into the Shadow Lands—about what she’d seen because I didn’t want it getting around that my sister had slipped past the barrier.