“She’s going to want you to break up with me. No one wants their grandson involved in this kind of crap.”
He kissed my forehead. “She’d rather have me knowledgeable than ignorant. Besides, she likes you.”
I arched a brow but didn’t argue. I would just have to take his word for it.
Gage had taken Roxi home, so I was on my own for the short drive back to my grandmother’s, where my mother had dropped me two months earlier. Dropped me and walked away. I tried not to think about it. Being abandoned by your own mother because you “broke her heart” sucked.
Wren didn’t pop into the car. She didn’t meet me at the door when I walked into the house. And after I tiptoed upstairs, I found my room empty. She was still with Noah, I guessed.
I felt strangely alone. I suppose it would be a normal feeling for most people, but not for me. I had no connection to my sister at all, and I hadn’t felt that since all the drugs at Bell Hill when I’d actually believed that I was crazy after all, and that Wren was just a product of my sick mind.
I washed my face, brushed my teeth and changed into a tank top and pajama pants. Then I slipped between the sheets and tried not to think about Woodstock. I was getting better at not letting ghosts get to me. Ghosts, I could handle.
I fell asleep in minutes, replaying Ben’s kisses in my head.
I dreamed.
There was nothing but darkness, and I was in the center of it. All around me I could hear voices crying out. Something brushed by me, but I couldn’t tell what it was. I struggled through the dark until I caught sight of a glimmer of light. I tried to chase it, but it was like swimming through a sea of rubber bands. I had to reach that light. I had to break through to the other side, to the place where it began.
The Ruiner is after you, a voice whispered. He won’t be satisfied until you and your sister are destroyed.
Who was the Ruiner? I couldn’t find my voice to ask.
You’ll know what to do. When the time comes you will not fail as we did.
Who the hell was “we”? I fought to ask the question, but nothing came out but panicked silence.
I must have fallen deeper asleep, or it was forced upon me, I didn’t know, but when I woke up the next morning, sunshine filled my room.
And my sister was still gone.
WREN
I didn’t leave Haven Crest until late morning. I stayed inside with Noah when dawn broke, and met a couple of his friends who drifted about the place. They looked like an odd little group, since each came from a different time period! But they were friendly and had some amazing stories, and I so enjoyed meeting others of my kind that weren’t insane. It might sound like a small thing, but it didn’t happen very often. Ghosts that had lingered on earth for a long time usually became bitter and twisted whether they wanted to or not.
When I finally left it wasn’t because I wanted to, but because I knew Lark would be worried about me by now, and it wasn’t as though she could check in on me as easily as I could her.
And maybe I felt a little guilty about not coming when I felt her reach out for me last night, but I did not want to return to that party and watch everyone having fun when I could be having fun of my own.
So, I said goodbye to Noah—we didn’t kiss because the others were there, and he was old-fashioned—and drifted home. I took my time. I told myself it was because I wanted to enjoy the morning, skirt around trees and cars, peek in windows and spy on the living, and not because I wanted to put off facing my sister. Sunday morning was a lazy time in New Devon. Even the brightly colored leaves took their time falling from branch to ground.
Smiling, I caught hold of the breeze and followed it home, to the big old house my grandmother owned. It had a nice yard where Lark and I had played as children, with trees just begging to be climbed, their bare branches thick and sturdy. I slipped through the front door—no more substantial than air—into the kitchen. I thought Lark might be in the kitchen having breakfast, but she wasn’t.
“Wren, honey, is that you?” Nan asked, squinting in my direction as she poured a cup of coffee.
Charlotte Noble was in her sixties, but she didn’t look it. Her hair—not quite as red as mine—was graying, but there was hardly a line on her pretty face.
I nodded. Normally, she couldn’t see me, but she could feel my presence. Nan was sensitive to ghosts, which made sense, because it was her side of the family where all this kind of stuff happened. It was because of her that Lark and I knew about our great-great-grandmother Emily and her twin, Alys—who was Dead Born like me. I’d caught glimpses of Alys in the house when we first moved here, but I hadn’t seen her in a while, and neither Lark nor I had seen Emily, who had appeared to both of us, in just as long.
Nan smiled. “Thought so. You ought to have let me know when I saw you earlier.”
“But I just got home,” I said.
She blinked. “Did you just speak?”