I wasn’t mocking him, I just had to make light a little. There were quite a few of them—suicides—loitering around the school. It was sad, really. And if I couldn’t treat them like every other ghost, I empathized too much.
It was at that moment, when we were both watching, that Dan jumped. He looked right at us—so now he saw me—and stepped into thin air. I cringed when he “hit” the ground—turned my back as a ghostly van plowed into him.
“What’s he looking at?” Wren asked.
I turned my attention back to Dan—who had already reset and was back on the roof. He was a rapid cycler. He seemed to be watching something on the far side of the school, which was odd for him. Any other time I’d seen him, he was staring down at the driveway, trying to get his timing right.
I looked in the direction he was staring. I thought I saw something, but then it was gone. I must have imagined it. The morning’s insanity with Emily had freaked me out—more than I would even admit to Wren. Maybe I was having paranoid hallucinations or something.
Walking toward the school entrance, I shook my head. Of course I’d been wrong. I hadn’t seen a person standing on the grass staring at me, and the person certainly hadn’t been my old pal Woodstock, because he was gone. I’d burned him up myself. It was just my mind—and Dan—playing tricks on me.
Even so, I stopped at the school door and took one last look over my shoulder to make sure I was alone before going inside.
WREN
I arrived at Haven Crest to find Noah with his arms around Miss April, who was very, very upset. So much so that even to me—another ghost—her manifestation had taken on a hideous appearance. Her face was moldy and battered, her lips blue. Her form was skeletal, her hair peeling away from her scalp. Her dress was more moth-chewed rags than expensive silk. She looked nothing like the sweet young woman I knew her to be. If this was how humans sometimes saw her, it was no wonder they ran screaming from this place.
There was a crowd gathered around them. Several of the residents nodded at me when they saw me. They looked somber. And angry.
I obviously wasn’t going to get to talk to her in private anytime soon. That was annoying enough that I didn’t even feel guilty for it.
“What’s wrong?” I asked. I wasn’t too crazy about the death grip she had on Noah, either.
Noah looked up at the sound of my voice. There was a wildness to his expression that spoke to something inside me. A darkness to his eyes that made me think of dangerous things. At that moment, I knew that if I showed Noah my collection of treasures he would appreciate it.
That he would understand it.
“Vandals defaced the walls in Miss April’s room,” he told me.
The young woman pulled from his embrace and whirled around to face me. “They painted the walls and smoked vile, pungent cigarettes. They left refuse on the floor. They...fornicated in the corner!”
Had Miss April not looked so completely monstrous I might have laughed, but I couldn’t do that to her, not when she was so obviously upset.
“Are they still here?” I asked.
“No.” She grinned, revealing brown and chipped teeth. “I finally summoned the strength to manifest and scare them off.”
Noah smiled slightly. “Scared is far too gentle a term, Miss April. You terrified those children. They will never set foot on these grounds again.”
After what Bent and his disciples had done to Lark and our friends, I probably shouldn’t have smiled, but I did. The situation was totally different, and people who trespassed on Haven Crest property, knowing all the stories, deserved whatever they got. The spirits of this building kept to themselves and were peaceful—except for Robert, but he was gone now.
Miss April preened under his praise, but her gaze was unsure. “But why can’t I stop?”
Noah’s smiled faded. “I don’t know.” He looked to me. “Miss April can’t seem to revert to her natural state.”
“Oh.” I’d never experienced a lingering manifestation myself, but then I’d always had Lark to calm and ground me.
I reached out and put my hands on either side of Miss April’s terrible face and stroked the parchment-dry flesh of her cheeks. She looked surprised, but she didn’t pull away as I willed some of my aura—my energy—to mix with hers. I could feel her anger, her distress.
“It’s over now,” I murmured, pulling some of that negative energy from her and replacing it with my own calm. “They’re gone, and they won’t ever come back. We’ll get rid of the garbage in your room and see if we can remove the graffiti. Would that make you happy, Miss April?”
She nodded. Her hair was thicker now and shinier. Her skin seemed brighter and softer.