It was terrible.
There in the middle of the dirty, dingy floor was the girl who had given me Emily’s message. I couldn’t even remember her name, and the fact that she was on fire didn’t help to jog my memory.
Her screams. Oh, her screams.
“Help her!” I shouted to those gathered. They were all older than I was. Surely they knew what to do?
No one moved. They just stood there, staring in horror as her head was engulfed in flames.
Except for Noah. He didn’t look horrified at all. In fact, he looked smug—actually pleased.
“This is because of you!” I hissed at him.
He raised a brow. “Me? It’s your sister behind this, my dear. Oh, how I would love to see her face when she discovers that it wasn’t my skull she lit up.”
Lark would be horrified. Or, at least I hoped she would be. I, on the other hand, could listen to those screams no more.
I shouted in my head, focusing on the little electronic miracle my sister carried around with her at all times. I shouted for her to put out the fire as I threw myself at the burning girl and wrapped my energy around her. I didn’t know what I was doing, but when Lark took fire safety in school years ago they’d said to “Stop, drop and roll,” and that’s what I did.
Oh, it hurt! The flames—pure spectral energy—seared me. It was like being destroyed layer by tiny layer.
Greenish black smoke rose above me in angry tendrils, just like the smudge on my aura, and those awful veins.
Someone grabbed me, swearing. Their grip was tight and strong. They tried to pull me away from the girl, but the fire was dying, I could feel it.
Then, suddenly, it was gone. The hands pulling at me stopped, and I released the girl.
She looked awful—her hair mostly gone and her face blistered. Her nose had been totally destroyed. Burning her skull hadn’t been enough to send her on, only to maim her in a terribly cruel way.
I looked down at my hands. They were pink and tender, but otherwise I was surprisingly unhurt. Underneath the burn I looked fine. Normal.
No black veins.
I turned my head to look at Noah. He’d done this to her on purpose. He had to know she was a friend of Emily’s—they’d been here at the same time. And he’d only tried to pull me off her because he knew the fire—the very same spectral cleansing fire that forced us on to the next stage of our journeys—would burn the infection out of me.
I lunged at him, slamming him into the wall. Halloween was so close that he smashed into the plaster, leaving an imprint that his form then dissolved through.
He grabbed my hand and used me to pull himself out. As he did, the black veins reappeared on my arm, ugly and tar-like. The fire might have taken some of his infection from me, but whatever he’d done to me responded to his touch. I’d need more than just a little spectral fire to fix it.
Plaster dust clung to Noah’s dark coat and hair. He brushed off his sleeves with a sneer. The ghosts gathered around us were silent—including the girl whose head had been on fire.
“You still haven’t learned who is in charge here, have you, Wren?”
“I know the residents of this house deserve a better leader than you.”
“Are you interested in the job?” he asked, stepping closer. “Because they’d rather have me.”
There were a few murmurs of agreement behind me.
“You allowed that girl to be hurt.”
“I allowed a traitor to be punished for her betrayal. So I buried someone else’s bones in places for my boy Kevin to recover and hand over to your sister. It’s not my fault she’s so full of hate for our kind that she immediately sets our remains ablaze.”
More murmurs. He had them all brainwashed. He’d had about a century to perfect it. I’d only known them a few days—not long enough to make a difference. The dead could be so stubborn.
“I wish I could see Lark’s face right now,” he went on, smiling. “She’s probably so proud of herself, thinking that she might have caused me pain or slowed me down.”
Maybe, but I doubted it. The fire had gone out pretty quickly after I “texted” Lark. She would have felt my pain and panic, as well. I didn’t mention any of this, of course. I might have been terribly naive, but I wasn’t stupid.
Instead, I said, “She’ll only be that much more angry when she finds out the truth. Is that what you want?”
“The angrier she is when she comes here on All Hallows’ Eve, the better it will be. If I didn’t need you, I would have destroyed you by now, just so she’d know what it’s like to lose the most important person in the world.”