I’d struck a sore spot—I knew it from the blackness that overtook his eyes. I wasn’t afraid of that, either. “Now you’re getting interesting,” I said.
For a moment I thought he was going to come at me again, but then Miss April stepped between us. “Don’t you dare hit her, Noah McCrae. You were raised to never hit a girl.”
“She’s not a girl,” he sneered. “She doesn’t know what it is to have lived. She’s just a dead thing.”
Ouch. “I’m Dead Born,” I informed him. “In the hierarchy of our world, that makes me better than you, and I know you understand class. Maybe I don’t know what it is to live, but hanging around here, concocting some plan that will let you walk among the living again, tells me that you don’t know what it is to be dead. Even if you succeed in your plans, you’ll still be dead, Noah, and your sister will still be gone.”
“That may be, but your sister will be dead, too.”
I shrugged. “That only means we’ll be together, so I’m fine with that.”
“Death isn’t pleasant.”
“She’s already died once.”
He froze. “What?”
Hadn’t I told him about this? I was sure I’d mentioned Lark’s suicide—but maybe I hadn’t mentioned that she’d actually died. That was important, apparently.
“That bothers you,” I observed. “Does that change your plans?”
He didn’t answer me. He just turned and walked away. He climbed the stairs, but I didn’t follow. He wouldn’t be foolish enough to keep his bones in his room. I would have seen them by now. He wasn’t stupid, so he would hide them someplace safe.
I wondered where Lark had hidden mine.
In movies, ghosts are often portrayed as basement dwellers. People are always afraid of cellars and dark underground tunnels and structures. I have known of ghosts who linger in such places, but subterranean places remind most ghosts of their grave, and they avoid them. We exist in the dark because we’re often not given a choice, but we’re drawn to the light. That’s why it’s so unfair that many ghosts have to withdraw inside when the sun rises.
If I were going to hide my own remains, I’d choose one of those dark, underground places where neither ghost nor living liked to go, but not someplace obvious like a morgue, which often drew those curious ghost hunters. But I’d keep them close—where I could check on them, especially if I knew someone wanted to destroy me.
Noah’s bones were in this building. Probably in the basement. I just had to find out where exactly, so Lark or someone could burn them down to ash.
“Where are you going?” April asked when I moved.
I turned to her. Was she expecting me to thank her for stepping in between Noah and me? If she was, she’d be waiting a long time.
“Not far,” I told her. “Noah saw to that when he infected me with...whatever he infected me with.”
“It was only a bit of himself, and a bit of this place.”
The place? How had he managed that? “It was poison.”
“That’s a little melodramatic, don’t you think?”
“No.” I turned my back on her and left the main hall. She followed me. Noah had probably told all of his little sycophants not to let me out of their sight. It was annoying, but smart.
Instead of going to the basement, I walked all the way down the corridor to what used to be the dining room. I passed two residents who drew back into the wall as though they were afraid I might brush against them and taint them. If I could, I would.
The dining room was at the end of the corridor. It was a big room with large windows on the three outside walls. A lot of the panes were broken, and the rest were dirty. The tiled floor was covered in debris, including leaves and twigs that had blown in through those windows. There was an abandoned bird’s nest on the chandelier. The last time I’d been in that room, Noah had made me see it as it used to be—beautiful, clean and whole. Now I saw it like I saw Noah—as it truly was.
It wasn’t pretty.
“Noah says that soon this entire building will look like it used to all the time,” Miss April informed me, “not just when we remember.”
I turned to face her. The morning sun coming through the windows made her look tired and drawn. Not as fresh and pretty as she usually appeared. “How’s he going to do that?” I asked.
She didn’t respond.
“He hasn’t told you, has he? He’s filled your heads with all the things he plans to do, but he hasn’t told you how. Are you all just going to go along with it?”
Miss April glared at me. “We trust him. He’s always looked after us. He’d never hurt any of us.”
I snorted. “Yeah, right.” I sounded so much like Lark at that moment. “I’m sure Robert would disagree with you.”
She grinned at me, showing all her teeth—yellow and a little crooked. “You’re sure, are you? Good for you. It must be nice to be so sure.” She giggled and pivoted on her heel, leaving me alone.