“I don’t like to think of her as dead.”
I couldn’t help but notice the direction in which he glanced. He knew exactly where Wren’s grave was located. “No, you don’t. I appreciate that.”
“Careful, Lark. Keep going like this and I’m going to think you like me or something.”
I smiled, but I was only partly amused. “It’s on us to stop this. We have to find his remains. And we have to keep him from possessing you again.”
“I’ve been read—” Kevin suddenly stopped.
“What is it?” I asked.
He pointed, and I followed the line of his finger. Wren’s grave. “I don’t see anything,” I whispered.
He lowered his hand and wrapped it around mine. It was like tuning a radio station. One moment there was nothing, and then I saw what he did.
It was Wren and Noah. They were faint—just a shadow of how I normally saw them. Was this how ghosts looked to normal people? Maybe Kevin wasn’t a great example of normal.
I watched them talk. Wren looked so happy, but she also looked...weird.
“Does she look different to you?” I asked. It wasn’t like they could hear me—we were seeing something from the recent past, not really them. That was why I hadn’t been able to see it without his help. Leftover spirit energy wasn’t my thing—but mediums loved that stuff.
Kevin nodded. “She looks ghoulish. I don’t like it.”
It was true. Wren looked paper-white, with dark smudges around her eyes and mouth, like what I’d seen on Noah in Roxi’s photo. Even her expression was wrong. She looked less like my sister and more like something you’d see in a Japanese horror movie.
“What’s he done to her?” The back of my eyes burned with hot tears, and suddenly I was struck by a paralyzing fear.
What if he’d already ruined her? What if I was never going to get my sister back? What if I couldn’t stop him?
Shitshitshitshit. I was going to hyperventilate.
I watched, lungs straining for breath, as Noah and Wren kissed. Kevin dropped my hand like it burned him. I hunched over, sucking in air in greedy gulps.
“Are you okay?” he asked.
I held up a finger—not the one I normally would have used, but a polite one to tell him to give me a minute. Slowly, I breathed in through my nose and out through my mouth. Once I was certain I wasn’t going to drop, I straightened.
Head rush. I grabbed Kevin’s arm to steady myself until the world stopped spinning.
“Sorry,” he said. “I didn’t know it would do that to you.”
“That makes two of us.”
“You really couldn’t see them?”
I shook my head. “I see them on this plane. I think you must see them on a different channel or something. Weird.”
“They were at her grave.”
“Yeah.” The ghost who had hidden his remains knew where my sister was buried. My sister, who was descended from a woman against whom he’d sworn revenge.
Fucknuts.
“Kevin,” I asked, turning toward him with a new determination. Noah was not going to have my sister, the Mr. Darcy Casper-ass douche bag.
His gaze widened as it met mine. I guess he saw that I meant business. His jaw clenched. I guess he meant business, too. “What do you need?” he asked.
I looked back at the little square of land that held all of what was left on this earth of my twin. The spot where my parents had put her just a few days after we were born, the only evidence that’d she’d ever truly existed. If I were Noah, I’d have my human meat suit come back here as soon as I could swing it.
“A shovel.”
WREN
I didn’t know how long I’d been at Haven Crest, but when I glanced out the window and saw it was dark, I knew it had been too long. And not long enough.
Noah and I had spent most of the day and evening dancing, merging, dancing some more and talking. He told the most amazing stories of what life had been like when he lived, of the ghosts who had come and gone from this building and Haven Crest in general. He knew so much about life—and death.
“I should probably go,” I said. “You must be sick of me.”
Noah ran his finger down my cheek. We were reclining on a chaise in his room. “I could never be sick of you. You are far too extraordinary.”
I preened at his praise.
“Besides,” he continued, “where are you going to go? Your sister is probably with her living friends, and those woeful souls in the Shadow Lands are far too dreary for someone like you. You may as well stay here. With me.”
He had a point. A very good one. Part of me insisted that I should go to Lark, if for no other reason but to check in with her, but why disrupt her? This close to Halloween I didn’t know if someone might see me. I didn’t want to get Lark in any trouble.
And really, I didn’t want to go anywhere. I was happy at Haven Crest.
“I have an appointment in the Shadow Lands on Wednesday.”