Sisters of Salt and Iron

  “I have to go,” he said, rising from my bed. “He’s leaving. Can I count on you, J.B.?”

  “You can. Now get out so I can go back to sleep.”

  Joe grinned. “Sorry, sweetheart, but you’re about to have more company. Go easy on the poor kid.”

  And then he was gone—like flipping a switch. When a ghost decided to take off, there was no lingering to say goodbye. What had he meant by more company?

  Someone knocked on my window. My bedroom was on the second floor. Who did I know who was crazy enough to climb a tree to visit me this early in the morning?

  I crawled out of bed and went to my window. I pulled back the curtains, ready to shoo away a squirrel or scare off a woodpecker.

  I was not prepared to see Mace staring back at me, even with Joe’s warning.

  It was a good thing that I didn’t scare easily. I still jumped, and I swore, but at least I didn’t scream, because that would have brought Nan running, never mind that she slept like a brick.

  I opened the window. Mace sat in the tree outside holding the screen. It was cold and I was only wearing a T-shirt and boxers, but the T-shirt was black and it covered everything, even if some of those bits were stiffly offended by the chill. Besides, he’d seen me in less the night he’d saved my life.

  “What the hell are you doing here?” I asked.

  “Can I come in?” he asked. Now that I got a good glimpse of him, he looked terrible. He was scruffy, looked like he hadn’t slept. And I could smell beer on him, which was really odd, because he wasn’t much of a drinker.

  That was why I stepped back and let him crawl inside.

  It wasn’t graceful—he lurched over the sill and pretty much fell into my room, sprawling gracelessly on the carpet while still holding the screen. I took it from him before he could hurt himself with it.

  “You’re going to be putting that back,” I informed him, and shut the window. It was freaking cold out!

  He pushed himself into a sitting position. There were a lot of girls who would love to be me right now, and I wasn’t one of them.

  “Sorry,” he said. “I didn’t know where else to go.”

  “Home?” I suggested, wrinkling my nose. “You know, that place where the shower is?”

  He lifted his arm, turned his head and took a whiff. “I must smell like ass.”

  “A little bit, yeah.” Since it was obvious he wasn’t going to stand up, I sat down. It wasn’t even dawn yet, and my room was lit only by the street light outside. Thanks to Joe, however, I was fully awake.

  “Is Wren here?” he asked, looking about like my sister might pop out of the closet at any moment and scream “Boo!”

  “Nope. Just you and me, stinky.” Then, more seriously, because we kinda had a bond and I cared about the guy, “What’s up?” I didn’t need to ask. I already knew what he was going to tell me.

  “Kevin came over last night,” he said, his words slurring a little—probably more from lack of sleep than the beer, because I could tell he wasn’t really drunk. “He told me he couldn’t lie to me anymore, and that he and Sarah have been screwing around behind my back.”

  I raised a brow. “Did they actually go that far?”

  He looked at me—long enough that I almost squirmed. “Did you know?”

  I shook my head. “I saw them talking at the party, and I figured it out.”

  “Huh. Guess I’m the last one to know. I feel like such an ass.”

  “For what it’s worth, I heard Kevin tell Sarah that you were his best friend and he didn’t want to hurt you.” Maybe that wasn’t my story to tell, but I didn’t care too much about Sarah. I cared about Mace, though. And, oddly enough, I cared about Kevin—and their friendship.

  “He should have thought of that before. And, no, he says he never slept with her.”

  “You don’t sound convinced.”

  Mace closed his eyes and leaned back against the side of my bed. “She wanted to. I went to see her after Kevin confessed. She says he treats her better than I do. She said with me she felt like she was just a substitute for the person I really wanted.”

  “What’s she talking about? You were totally into her. What other girl have you even spent time with?”

  “You. She was jealous of you.”

  I swear to God the bottom fell out of my stomach. “Me? Is she on crack? I’m with Ben.” And I totally wasn’t Mace’s type. Was I? Never mind, because he wasn’t mine. “Why?”

  “Because we have history.”

  “She’s jealous because you found me lying on the floor in a pool of my blood and tears, begging to die? That’s fucked up.”

  He laughed at that—thankfully. “Yeah, I know.” His expression sobered. “I can’t decide if I’m happy that I know what she’s like and that we’re done, or if I’m just really pissed off. I feel betrayed, y’know?”

  I nodded. “Yeah.” I didn’t really. I hadn’t dated much, and no one had ever cheated on me before because they thought I was crazy and might go psycho on them if they did.

  “Can I crash here for a bit?” he asked. “I don’t want to go home and have to explain it all. Not right now.”

  Nan probably wouldn’t like it, but she’d like me letting him drive any farther even less. “Sure.” I pulled the quilt off my bed and handed it to him. I gave him the extra pillow, too. Then I climbed back under the covers. My bed was still warm.

  “Hey, Lark?”

  I peered over the side of the bed. He was cocooned in the quilt on the floor so tightly I had no idea how he’d accomplished it. “Yeah?”

  “Thanks for being my friend.”

  Aww. I smiled. “You’re welcome. And if you’re still here when Ben comes by to pick me up, you get to explain why. Got it?”

  “Got it.”

  He curled up into a ball and promptly passed out. I watched over him for a little while just to make sure he was okay. Out of the small group of people I considered friends, Mace had been the big surprise. I felt more of a connection with him than I did even with Roxi. I couldn’t explain it, but if I had to move away tomorrow, Ben and Mace were the people it would break my heart to leave—and my grandmother, of course.

  The fact that Sarah thought our relationship was romantic was just one more reason not to like her.

  She was obviously nuts.

  WREN

  I didn’t go to Noah with what I’d learned. I was going to wait on that. There had to be a reason why he didn’t tell me Kevin was a relative. Maybe he didn’t even know. I wasn’t going to jump to conclusions, and I wasn’t going to ask about it so soon after him losing a friend. Never mind that the friend was a bastard and a villain. Instead, I stayed in the Shadow Lands a while, letting it balance and recharge my spiritual energy, and then I went home to tell Lark what I’d found out.

  And found Mace asleep on the floor of our bedroom while Lark was sprawled across most of the bed.

  Was that a window screen leaning against the wall? The strangest things seemed to happen to my sister when I wasn’t around.

  An advantage to being a ghost is that I was very, very quiet. I sat down on the edge of the bed and waited for the alarm to go off. It did just that a minute later; Lark’s cell phone suddenly came to life, blaring a song that always made me want to dance.

  Mace bolted upright. “What the hell?”

  I laughed. He was a mess. Lark didn’t react with the same surprise. “Wren?” she mumbled. “Wren?”

  That was my cue. Part of the whole “working on my electronic interaction” agenda apparently included learning how to turn off my sister’s alarm, so she could remain wrapped in the warmth of the bed.

  I turned off the alarm. Mace fell back to the floor. I heard a thump, and he swore.

  “I think he missed the pillow,” I said
.

  Suddenly, a wave of blankets crashed through me. I shuddered. God, I hated the feeling of fabric disrupting my energy. I’d tried to explain it to Lark once, and she said it sounded like trying to floss her teeth with yarn. I had no idea if that was accurate or not, but she understood me better than anyone else.

  “Get up!” my sister cried. “Mace, get the hell up!” She almost stepped on him as she jumped out of bed.

  He groaned and sat up once again. His thick sandy hair stuck out in all directions, and he looked like he was about five years old, all rumpled and sleepy.

  “What?” he demanded groggily. “What time is it?”

  “Seven,” Lark replied.

  He swore again. “Wake me up in half an hour.”

  Lark grabbed him by the shirt front before he could fall back onto the carpet. She was pretty strong, my sister, though it was more impressive against ghosts than humans. I could see the muscles in her arm straining against the weight of his torso.

  “You’ll get your ass up now,” she informed him, holding his upper body a good foot above the floor. “My grandmother will be up soon, and Ben will be coming to get me for school. I am not going to be the one who explains why you’re here.”

  Mace glared at her. “Ben won’t freak out—he’s too zen. And get your morning breath out of my face.”

  “My morning breath? Dude, you smell like you rolled around in sweaty beer that someone else puked up.” But she let go of him and stepped back. “C’mon.”

  Cursing under his breath, Mace struggled to his feet. Standing, he raised his arms above his head and stretched. This lifted the hems of the two shirts he wore, revealing a thin expanse of flat stomach that was surprisingly tan and surprisingly muscular.

  “You’re staring,” I said to my sister.

  Lark rolled her eyes at me. Mace lowered his arms with a frown. “Did you hear something?”

  “It was Wren,” Lark informed him. “It’s the Halloween thing again. Do you want to shower? You can use the one down the hall.”

  He shook his head. “No. I need to get home. Mom will worry. I’ll see you at school.”

  Lark put on her robe and saw him out. When she came back, it was with a look of relief on her face. “Nan isn’t up yet,” she said. “God, that was weird. I love the guy, but nothing makes life more awkward than waking up to the friend who drunkenly spilled their heart out to you. Thank God you were here. I didn’t know what to say to him.”

  “What happened?” I asked.

  “Kevin told him that he and Sarah had been messing around.” Her gaze turned shrewd. “That’s why you’ve been pissy about the two of them lately, isn’t it?”

  I nodded. The memory of seeing Kevin kiss Sarah after telling me we could never really have any sort of relationship still hurt. “Poor Mace.”

  “I think Kevin honestly feels bad.” Lark removed her robe. “I respect him for having the nads to confess. It’s going to take a while for him and Mace to patch things up.”

  I could have said at least five things about Kevin at that moment—none of them nice—but Lark was right. He’d done the right thing breaking it off with me, and it probably hadn’t been easy. And for every bad thing I could say about Kevin, I could think of ten that were good, so I didn’t say anything.

  “Mace must think of you as a good friend,” I said, following Lark into the bathroom. She turned on the shower.

  “I guess he figured since he’d seen me at my most vulnerable, he could let me see him at his.” She pulled off her pajamas. “He was pretty messed up.”

  I didn’t ask her if anything had happened between them, because I knew it hadn’t. Lark wouldn’t do that. And I didn’t ask what Mace had said to her because that wasn’t any of my business, and she’d tell me if she wanted. Besides, I didn’t really care. I had my own things to worry about.

  My sister pulled back the shower curtain and stepped inside. “Did you find out anything in the Shadow Lands?”

  “To find out about Emily and Alys I had to make an appointment with Special Collections in the library.”

  “What?” Her voice was slightly muffled by the spray. “That’s crazy.”

  “I know!” I felt better having her agree. “So I can’t get to them until Wednesday.”

  “What about the void? Did you research it?”

  “Um, no.”

  “Wren.” My name dripped with disappointment.

  “I’m not going back there.” And she couldn’t make me. Although we both knew she could, really.

  “That’s why we need to check into it—see if there’s another way to help Alys without actually going in there.”

  “Oh.” I was such an idiot. “Okay, I’ll look. But there’s something else I want to talk to you about. It’s about Noah.”

  “O-kay.” The word seemed dragged out of her mouth, as if her teeth were trying to hold it in. “What about him?”

  “I think he may be related to Kevin. His last name is McCrae.”

  The hooks that held the shower curtain to the rod scraped against the metal as Lark yanked the curtain open enough to stick her face out. “Really? Did he tell you this?”

  I shook my head. She was going to make a big deal out of this, I just knew it.

  Her eyes widened. “Did you go snooping into his Shadow Lands library file?”

  When she put it that way it made me feel like a character on one of those TV shows she liked to watch where there was melodrama at every turn. “Sort of.”

  Lark frowned, obviously unbothered by my snooping. I ought to have known she’d support it. “Do you think he doesn’t know?”

  “I’m not sure. He asked what Kevin’s name was, though. And he didn’t say anything when I told him. That’s weird, right?”

  “Yeah.” The curtain slipped closed once more. “It’s probably not a big deal, but it is strange. I guess the only way to find out is to ask him. You know, if he did know, that would explain why he gave up Woodstock so easily. The jerk picked on Noah’s family.”

  I hadn’t thought of that, but she was right. What surprised me the most was that she actually sounded like she wanted to give Noah the benefit of the doubt. That was weird, too.

  Maybe Noah hadn’t said anything to me at the time because Robert might have been listening. “I’ll go to Haven Crest later and talk to him.” As soon as I said the words, the toothbrush holder on the vanity fell over, and Lark’s makeup caddy began to shake, tossing brushes and cosmetics onto the marble counter.

  “What the hell...?” Lark muttered. Then she screamed.

  I yanked open the curtain without touching it. My sister had her back pressed to the tiles, and held up her hands to deflect the spray from the shower.

  It was blood.

  Blood poured from the showerhead, ran over her bare feet and down the drain. It covered Lark from head to toe. It was in her hair and eyes, coating her in a clotted glaze.

  “Stop it,” I said, focusing on that spray as my energy heated. My hair lifted, and I felt that surge of power that came when I got angry. “Stop it. Now.”

  And just like a flick of a switch, the shaking stopped. Water poured from the showerhead, washing away the blood. Lark jumped under the spray, scrubbing furiously at herself to get clean.

  “What the hell was that?” she demanded when she finally stepped out—scrubbed pink and free of blood.

  I knew she didn’t really expect me to have any answers. “I don’t know.” Then I felt it—like a shiver down my spine—the presence of something, or someone, else. It wasn’t close, but it was strong. Powerful. Everything around me blurred for the duration of a blink, and when it cleared I couldn’t believe my eyes.

  “Lark?”

  My sister looked up from tying the belt of her robe. When she saw what I’d already se
en, her jaw dropped. “Oh, my God.”

  Blood ran down the walls of the bathroom, trickling from the letters that a dead hand had painstakingly printed all around us, some of them several times.

  DANGER

  HE’S HERE FOR YOU

  SALT

  IRON

  DEATH

  AS ONE

  BURN

  Our gazes followed the words, the letters losing shape as the blood dripped. At the same time we turned toward the mirror. Lark made a small noise. I didn’t, but I was just as surprised.

  There, on the other side of the glass, was Emily. Her palms pressed against the mirror. Her long white hair hung wildly around her pale face, and her eyes...

  Her eyes were hollowed-out black holes. Not gory. Not bloody. Just black. Bottomless.

  Lark moved toward the mirror. I reached out for her, but she stepped just out of my reach. She raised her own hands to the mirror, so that they settled over Emily’s.

  “What do you want?” she asked.

  Emily opened her mouth to speak, but then she glanced over her shoulder. I couldn’t see what she saw, but whatever it was scared her. For a second, her fingers breached the glass, grasping at this world—at Lark.

  I rushed forward as my sister reared back, tugging on Emily’s hands. I grabbed her right arm so Lark could switch both hands to her left, and we pulled. First came her forearms, then her head and shoulders, then her torso...

  Emily jerked back, taking us with her. “Pull harder!” she cried. “He’s got me!”

  I glanced at Lark. She turned her head to look at me. I knew our expressions were the same. Without saying a word, we both dug in our heels—for me that was fairly literal, as I could actually set my heels into the floor—and pulled with all our combined strength.

  Whatever—or whoever—had a hold of her on the other side was incredibly strong. Even though we pulled with all our might, my fingers slipped against Emily’s energy. She was being pulled back into the mirror, and there was nothing Lark or I could do to stop it—though we tried.

  “You need to face It together!” Emily cried as she was ripped from our grasp, the black caverns of her eyes staring sightlessly at both of us. “Together!” Her head phased through the glass so fast it was a blur. Then her arms.