I watched as his expression brightened. He was looking at a point over my shoulder, a grin spreading across his face. “That’s too cool.”
I turned. Practically everyone had stopped to watch the guy who had just entered the room. He was tall and dressed entirely in black as Neo from The Matrix. The costume was perfect—long black coat, boots with silver buckles, cargo pants with weapons strapped on. His black shirt was snug enough to cling to his defined chest and abs. Even the hair and sunglasses were perfect.
A “sexy witch” and a “sexy Freddy Krueger” straightened up as he walked by, eyeing him with obvious interest. But “Neo” didn’t even give them a glance. In fact his attention was focused on just one person.
Me.
If it had been anyone else, I would probably say something sarcastic about the amount of detail in the costume, but this was Ben. My Ben. And he looked freaking incredible.
“He wore that to New York Comic Con last year,” I heard Mace say. “He’s got new sunglasses, though. Killer costume.”
That was one way to describe it. I would also describe it as “hot” if I were capable of speech.
“Hey,” Ben said when he reached me. “You look amazing.”
“So do you,” I replied.
As if to prove my point, Gage walked by and slapped him on the back, saying, “Awesome costume, man.”
Ben smiled. “I kinda feel like I should give you my coat. There’s not much to that dress.”
It was a thin material, but it wasn’t like I was naked underneath. It was October in New England, after all. That said, spaghetti straps don’t provide that much warmth.
“Keep it,” I said. “Enough girls are staring at you already.”
His grin grew. “Jealous?”
I rolled my eyes. “No.” And then, with a smile, “Maybe.” It was true. I liked knowing other girls thought he was gorgeous, but I didn’t like feeling that someday he might find someone he liked better than me. Certainly there were girls out there who were less work and weren’t always getting into fights with dead people.
He laughed and put his arm around my shoulders—he was so warm!—pulling me in for a kiss.
“Get a room,” Mace drawled—as he always did—before walking away. I flipped him off, but he didn’t see the gesture. Ben gave me a hug before letting me go, but he took my hand in his.
“So, Carrie, huh?” he asked, giving me the once-over again. “Points for going with the original.”
“Thanks. It was an easy costume—Wren found the dress.”
“Is she here?”
“Not yet. I’m not sure she’s going to show. It’s getting harder for her to keep herself hidden. She showed up in a lot of Roxi’s photos from the dance. She might not want to risk other people seeing her.” It was weird, but after years of wishing people would believe my sister was real, I was suddenly very worried about what might happen if they did.
More people began to arrive, and we gravitated toward what I considered my main group of friends. I was eating chips—my willpower having evaporated—when Wren arrived. Chewing was the only thing that kept my mouth from falling open at the sight of her.
She looked amazing. She was dressed in a gorgeous gold ball gown—the kind they wore in the Victorian era—and her hair was all piled up on top of her head with pins that glittered in the light. She looked like a princess.
She turned her head and said something. That’s when I realized that the guy standing next to her, dressed in a tux with tails, was also a ghost.
And they were holding hands.
My breath caught. How had she managed to bring him with her? I didn’t even know she could do that. Ghosts could travel, but it required some sort of connection with a person or object. Josiah Bent had been able to follow us to the hospital after hurting Gage because he’d gotten a “taste” of us. Normally the dead were bound to the place they haunted. Wren didn’t have a haunt and wandered about as she pleased at times. She wasn’t a normal ghost, and this only made that all the more clear to me.
But I had more important questions than how she’d managed to bring another ghost with her, such as who the hell was he, and why didn’t I know anything about him?
And why did that hurt so much?
WREN
My sister was not happy to see me. I suppose I ought to have told her that I was bringing a date, but asking Noah to come with me had been an impulsive thing, and I hadn’t really given Lark much thought while I was with him. It wasn’t as though she told me everything she did.