“Bastard,” Kevin muttered. I gave him what I hoped was a sympathetic smile.
“Okay, so we know he’s out for revenge,” Ben began, “but if I had been a ghost for a century or so, waiting to get my revenge on someone, why wait until this Halloween? What’s so special about this one? I mean, wouldn’t you and Wren have been easier to get rid of when you were kids?”
That was a good question. I mean, aside from the months spent in Bell Hill, and the little time I’d spent in Massachusetts with my parents after that, I’d lived the entirety of my life in New Devon. I’d been on Haven Crest property before; so had Wren. So why had he waited until now?
“Maybe he wanted to make sure you were old enough to know what he was doing?” Mace suggested. “Make sure you suffered?”
“Maybe. It’s not the anniversary of his sister’s death,” I said, consulting the notes I’d made earlier. “I don’t see anything that makes this year special to him.”
“Maybe it’s not him,” Nan suggested. “Maybe this year is special because it’s the year you and your sister turned sixteen.”
We all looked at her. “So?” I asked.
Nan smiled that smile that said she didn’t know how I’d managed to survive this long in the world. “Sixteen has historically been the ‘coming of age’ year for many cultures. If you add one and six, you get seven, which has historically been a number of power in religious and mythical texts. In some versions of the Persephone-and-Hades story, it was seven pomegranate seeds that Persephone ate, sealing her fate to spend half the year as the underworld’s queen.”
I stared at her. Persephone and Hades—parents to the Melinoe. Nan had been doing her research, which made me feel stupid and totally out of my depth. I should have already known what she’d just said. I should have been better prepared for this, but Noah had made sure no one had been there to prepare Wren and me.
“Sounds good to me,” Gage announced, giving Nan a grin.
“Yeah,” I agreed. I hesitated. “There’s something I have to tell you guys. There’s lore that suggests that Wren and I are descendants of Persephone and Hades.”
One by one, each of their heads turned toward me. One by one, they looked at me in slack-jawed surprise.
“There’s a story that they had a daughter that was split into twins—one had ties to the dead, the other to the living. It sounds crazy, I know, but...” What else could I say that wouldn’t make me sound insane?
“From what we can tell, there have been twins like Lark and Wren in every other generation of my family line,” Nan told them. “I was supposed to have been like Wren, but my twin died, breaking the cycle. I believe the four of you have spent enough time with my extraordinary granddaughters to see how special they are for yourselves.”
Gage stared at me in wide-eyed wonder. “You’re like Wonder Woman or something.”
The rest of them laughed, which made me feel better. Ben still stared at me. I couldn’t quite figure out the expression on his face. Was it amazement? Fear? No. I think it might have been respect. Maybe a little awe. Was he okay with this? Or was this the moment when he finally decided I was just too much of a freak?
“We know we can’t stop the show, so how do we protect people?” It was Roxi who brought us all back to the problem at hand. “It’s going to be a big crowd.”
I turned to Mace. “Your dad has guys working the gate and security, right?”
“Yeah.” He rested his forearms on the table and leaned forward. “Olgilvie’s going to be there and a few other guys, along with outside security.”
“I’m surprised Olgilvie would want to work it,” Roxi remarked. “Wasn’t he a patient?”
“Yes, but it wasn’t anything major,” I said. “Otherwise he probably wouldn’t be allowed to be a cop.” Still, he was a murderer, according to Joe. And a rapist.
I turned my attention back to Mace. “Do you know if they plan to use hand stamps?”
“Yeah, they do. Dad asked me to get some, after making me promise not to tell people so they could sneak in.” He made a face. “Like I’d buy my own ticket but sneak someone else in.”
“You haven’t gotten the stamps yet, then?”
“No. I was going to get them tonight—less chance of someone figuring out which ones I got and getting their own.” Mace popped a pretzel into his mouth. “Why?”
“You need to get stamps that have the Seal of Solomon on them.”
His eyes crinkled at the corners. It was the same expression he made when he fought the urge to be sarcastic. “And where, pray tell, would I get stamps with the Seal of freaking Solomon on them?”
“I know!” Nan exclaimed. She got up from the table and rushed off into the living room. A few moments later she returned with her laptop, which she set on the table and began clicking away on the keys.