“We’re grounded, remember?” It came out more snide than I intended. “I’m bound to this place until Nan lets me go.”
Lark raised her gaze—to the bloody cross on my forehead, no doubt. “It’s a neat trick. I think we need to take a look at some of the family books she’s kept.” Books. The living kept so much information in books. Lark and I had learned so much on our own when there had been books in this house that could have helped us if we’d only known.
“But first,” she continued, “we need to find out what’s wrong with you.”
“Unless you’ve become an expert in spectral infections, I don’t think you’re going to have much luck.”
“Not me,” she replied. She gestured to the full-length mirror. “Emily.”
“You really think we can summon her? That she’ll even know what’s wrong with me?”
“Hey, she knows we’re Melinoe. That puts us ahead of us.”
“Melinoe?” I echoed. “She said that?”
“Yeah. I’ve been meaning to look it up.” She turned on the laptop on her desk. “How could I have forgotten? And why do you have that expression on your face?”
“Noah called me that the other day. When I asked what it meant, he told me it was ancient Greek for ‘a pretty girl.’”
Lark glanced over her shoulder at me. “Sounds like he was fishing to see if we knew what it was.” She turned back to the computer and started typing. “Let’s find out.”
I drew closer and peered over her shoulder at the screen. “How do we sort what’s correct and what’s not?”
“We look for anything that seems to describe us.” She clicked on a link. “Nope.” Then another. And another. And then...
“The daughter of Persephone and Hades—or Zeus, depending on what version you prefer.” She scrolled down a bit. “Okay, here we go. ‘Melinoe travels between the world of the living and the land of the dead, driving people mad with fear and defending the living from the vengeful dead. She rules over ghosts, hauntings, madness and restless spirits. She is often depicted as half white, half black, but early depictions show her as half white, half red. There are those who say she’s not a single creature at all, but twins, one born to the living and one born to the dead, representing Persephone’s agreement with Hades to spend part of the year in the Underworld and part of the year on earth.’”
Lark turned her head toward me.
“Well,” I said, “that seems to describe us a bit.”
My sister looked dumbfounded. “We’re not goddesses. No freaking way.”
“Of course not,” I agreed. “But we’re not human, Lark. Not entirely. We’re something else.” Two halves of the same whole. It was true.
“Greek, apparently.” She made a sound that I thought was supposed to be laughter.
I crouched beside her, so that I wasn’t bent over her shoulder. “Lark, we’re not freaks. We’re not some weird accident. We’re meant to be. We have a purpose. Isn’t that wonderful?”
The expression on her face made me wonder if maybe I was the one with domain over madness. “We’re mythical!” Her voice was a hoarse squeak. “Like freaking Thor.”
“He’s very cute.” She gave me an exasperated look, so I decided to leave the joke-making to her. “Lark, I know this is a lot to process, but I think you’re missing the positive part of this.”
“Enlighten me.”
“We protect the world from vengeful spirits. According to Emily, Noah’s a vengeful spirit. He never told me what Melinoe meant because he’s afraid of us. If he’s afraid of us, that means he sees us as a threat. We can stop him. Why else would he want to set us against each other?”
“We’re stronger together than we are apart.”
“Exactly. Now I’m going to go over by the window because I really want to eat your face.” Oh, yes, I was definitely the crazy one. Strangely enough, I was fine with that realization. It made me suddenly make sense to myself.
“Touch my face, and I’ll take you back to Noah myself.”
I think she meant it.
LARK
The black veins were getting worse. And so was Wren’s aggression. Her mood swings I could handle, but I didn’t know what to do about the veins.
I went looking for books in the den, but the only one I found was the one that had given Nan the binding spell. It was an old book on Protection From and For Restless Spirits by Alexander Murray. A relative of Nan’s, I guessed. It had lots of interesting information that I wanted to learn, but nothing that could help Wren at that moment.