“This isn’t rude.” Her eyes widened to a point that they were too big for her face, giving her a creepy-doll look. “You don’t want to see me get rude.”
She had that right. “Okay, I’m going.” I slowly walked around her. Woodstock had gotten up and was coming after me again. I doubted he’d let the librarian stand in his way.
I picked up one of the heavy wooden chairs and threw it at him. He only had one eye, and it wasn’t on the side closest to me, so he didn’t see it coming. It crashed into him, knocking him off his feet and sending him sprawling across another table.
The librarian let loose something that sounded like a cross between a squeal and the roar of a T. rex in Jurassic Park. I didn’t stick around for the rest of her reaction or Woodstock’s recovery. By the time she turned that anger toward me, I was already running out the door.
WREN
It was pointless trying to fight him. This place and these ghosts did something to me. Pulled me in. Loved me. They whispered to me all the things I could do if I weren’t bound by living morality, if I weren’t afraid to be my true self.
And Noah talked to me of eyes, and how they reflected a person’s soul. When we were alone, and it was just me and him, merged into one, he told me I could take as many eyes as I wanted—from both the living and the dead—on All Hallows’ Eve. I could do whatever I pleased, and there’d be no one to stop me. No one strong enough, especially once my sister was dealt with.
I tried to hold on to Lark. I reached for her in the dark, but then the dark started swimming, seething with terrible creatures that wanted to tear me apart, and I shrank back in fear. Why had my sister left me to this place? Why hadn’t she come for me? Why didn’t she save me?
“She’s more concerned about her breather friends,” Noah whispered. “She’s one of them. They’re more important to her than you.”
I wanted to tell him he was wrong, but I couldn’t, because I wondered if maybe he was right. All she ever did was talk about protecting the living, and her friends, and her breather boyfriend whom she’d never even noticed when he was a fat, funny-looking kid. Shallow and disloyal, that was my sister.
I tried to run away from the things that nipped and bit, but there was nothing but darkness around me, and I didn’t know where to go. I was scared, and I was angry. So angry.
Lark had done this.
Strong fingers wrapped around my wrist, and for a second I thought it was Noah, but it wasn’t. It was a girl. Then I hoped it might be my sister, but of course it wasn’t her. She wasn’t coming.
Hair the color of blood broke through the darkness, followed by a face as pale as the grave, and eyes that glittered like ice. Lips, stained berry-red. I knew that face.
“You don’t belong here,” she told me, though her lips didn’t move. “You need to leave. You have work to do.” Her voice was soft but strong, and I believed what she said to me.
“I don’t know the way out,” I told her.
“Yes, you do,” she said, and gave me a push.
Up and out I drifted, until the dense black gave way to moonlight and candles, something soft and scratchy on what Noah called “the phonograph.” He was wrapped up in me, and I was wrapped up in him, so perfectly that we were one.
I’d fought him at first, but I soon learned I didn’t have a choice.
“I thought I’d lost you for a moment,” he said. “But I’ll never lose you, will I, Wren? You’re mine for as long as I want you.”
“As long as I want you,” I repeated, and he laughed, the sound reverberating through me like a wave moving through the ocean. I wanted to ask him what was so funny, but it didn’t matter.
I laughed, too.
LARK
Halloween.
“You know, I used to love Halloween,” I told Roxi as we got ready for the concert in my room.
“You loved it right up until Kevin’s party,” she reminded me. “Right before things got weird.”
“My whole life is weird,” I muttered, arranging my hair on top of my head. I’d gathered it up into a high ponytail and then wrapped it into a thick coil. I took two slender iron bars the size and shape of chopsticks and slid them through the bun, anchoring it to my head. To anyone else, they’d just look like hair decorations, but they were ghost-stickers. They were a little heavy, but wearing my hair high on my crown took the brunt of the weight, so I didn’t feel like every strand was being pulled out at the root.
“Good thing you have friends who like weird.”
I turned to her. “You know, normal people would have cut and run by now. I don’t know why you guys stick around.”
She shot me a dirty look. “Because we’re stupid.”