On top of an old dresser was a small lacquered box—the kind for keepsakes and mementos. It wasn’t any of my business what Wren kept in it, but I was curious. I’d never gotten a peek into her life before, not like she had into mine. She knew every detail of my life practically, except for when I was alone with Ben. And that was good, because her hanging around when we were making out would be just plain weird.
I gave in to my interest and opened the lid. I looked inside...
I shut the box and left the room.
That would teach me to be nosy. Oh, my freaking balls! Eyeballs, to be exact. Like, a dozen of them, and none of them a pair that I could tell.
Since my sister had never maimed or killed a living being, I could only assume the eyes came from ghosts, who were technically already dead. Still, it freaked me out. Of the two of us, Wren was definitely the crazy side of the Melinoe equation. Which left me to be the scary one, a job I wasn’t going to excel at if I got squeamish at the sight of eyeballs.
But I’d had that vision when we’d gone up against Bent, of Wren clutching a bouquet of eyeballs like they were wildflowers. Now I couldn’t help but wonder if it had been a warning of some kind, especially since in the vision the eyes she’d held had belonged to our friends.
No. Wren would never hurt them. I had to believe that.
I left the little house as fast as my feet would take me and ended up on a quiet street that reminded me of a soundstage, or a movie backdrop. It looked perfect—too perfect. And when I rounded the corner I found myself on the same street I’d visited when I’d jumped between worlds outside of the Goodwill. God, that seemed so long ago now. That same woman was in the window. This time I waved at her.
She yanked the curtains shut.
So much for manners. Okay, then. I’d better get to the library. I didn’t know where that was, but my feet seemed to have a direction in mind, so I followed them until they took me to a large columned building that practically screamed Library!
I climbed the long flight of shallow steps to the huge door and pushed. It swung open without even a hint of a creak, inviting me into a building that spread out so far from the center desk and so high, that it couldn’t possibly fit into the dimensions of what I’d seen as I’d climbed the steps. This was trippy. Dr. Who trippy.
I walked up to the front desk. A woman with a 1950s hairdo and pencil skirt looked up at me through cat-eye glasses. She had the naughty librarian thing down to a science. Her very red lips fell open at the sight of me.
“Oh, my goodness,” she said—in a tone so breathless I almost rolled my eyes. Was everything and everyone here a bizarre parody of the living world? “You’re not supposed to be here.”
“Yeah, sorry about that. My sister couldn’t make her one o’clock appointment with Special Collections, so I came instead. My name’s Lark Noble.”
“I know who you are.”
When she just kept staring at me, I leaned against the wooden countertop. “Are you going to tell me where Special Collections is, or do you want to talk fashion instead? Or, would you prefer that I just toddle off and find it on my own?”
“No!” She straightened her skirt. “I’ll escort you.”
“Awesome.” I gave her my most sincerely fake smile. “Thanks.”
As she came out from the behind the counter—and she definitely had the wiggle to go with that wiggle skirt—I said, “You must not get many breathers in here.”
Her lips pursed. “That’s such a vulgar term.”
“But it’s what you call us.”
“I prefer ‘non-dead’ or ‘death-challenged.’”
I laughed out loud. This time her whole face pinched up. She hadn’t been joking.
“Sorry,” I said, and I was sincere this time.
“The most common term we use is simply ‘the living.’ It seems to work fairly well.”
I couldn’t argue with that.
She led me up a flight of stairs that curved and wound upward in a wide, wooden spiral. The runner was a rich blood-red and didn’t have a speck of dirt on it, or a fray. In fact, everything in this place was absolutely perfect. I bet they didn’t even have dust.
No wonder most ghosts chose to either move on or remain in the human realm. This place would be utterly boring. A nice place to visit, but you wouldn’t want to spend your death here.
Finally, we reached the top, and I didn’t have to be distracted by the sway of her butt in front of me. There, on the opposite side of the hall, was a large double door with Special Collections above it on a large plaque.
“Here you are,” the librarian said, unlocking the door and pulling it open.
“Thanks,” I said, stepping up to the threshold. “Any rules I should know about?”
She looked at me as though I were stupid. “No talking. And don’t blame me if the books don’t cooperate.”
Riiiight. I opened my mouth to make one of my usual witty retorts, but she was gone, and the door smacked me in the ass as it swung shut, knocking me into the room, which was as big as the entire library in New Devon. How was I supposed to find the book I needed?
I walked up to one of the long tables that had chairs in front of them. It was the only table that had books on its surface. The Melinoe, one of them had in gold leaf on its front.
Creepy.