Sisters Of Salt And Iron

My chest tightened. I looked from Mace to Ben, to Roxi and Gage, and even to Sarah. Kevin hadn’t come because he was prepping for the party, which was just as well. Each of these living, breathing people made an effort to acknowledge or be kind to Wren. They were thoughtful of her, and that meant more to me than any of them could ever know. After years of being told my sister wasn’t real, that she was only in my mind, it was so freaking good to know that not only were they wrong, but that Wren had become real—in her own way—to others.

I blinked back tears.

“Lark!” Wren cried a few seconds later. “I found it!”

Had she ever. It was a vintage pink slip-dress from the ’70s. Normally such a piece would be fairly expensive, but this one had slight stains on the front and was only five bucks.

I knew exactly what to do with it.

Half an hour later we left the store. Everyone but Ben had a plastic bag full of items. He’d bought a pair of sunglasses and that was it. He still hadn’t told me what he was going as that night, so I decided to keep my costume secret, as well.

I crossed the parking lot, swinging my plastic bag, as I laughed at a joke Gage had made. I turned to say something to him, but he was gone. They were all gone. The cars and the parking lot—the box stores that made up the rest of the plaza—everything was gone, and I was standing on cobblestones in a world where everything was muted and soft. The street I stood on seemed taken right from the pages of a BBC historical production, with gas lamps and horse-drawn carriages rattling along.

A woman in Edwardian clothing stopped on the opposite side of the street and stared at me. She looked scared. I glanced up and saw another woman peeking out a window from behind a curtain. Her mouth was open.

“Lark?”

I turned toward the familiar voice. It was Wren. She stood right beside me. “You’re not supposed to be here,” she said, taking my hand. “Come with me. Now.”

I entwined my fingers with hers and stepped toward her. My ears popped, and suddenly the other world was gone, and I was back in the Goodwill parking lot, with my sister and all of my friends staring at me in concern.

“What happened?” Ben asked, pulling me in for a hug.

“I don’t know,” I replied. I was shaking, and there was no hiding it. “It felt like I stepped into another world.”

“You did,” Wren informed me. She had a strange expression on her face. My sister wasn’t easily frightened, but she looked worried. Not just that, but she was looking at me like she didn’t quite know me. “Lark, you were in the Shadow Lands.”

I frowned at her. “I couldn’t have been.”

“Couldn’t have been what?” Roxi asked, looking from me to the empty space occupied by my sister.

“In the Shadow Lands,” I replied. “It’s impossible. Only the dead can go there.”

“You were dead,” Mace reminded me softly. “Once.”

I shook my head. “It had to have been my imagination.”

My sister stomped up to me, so close our noses were almost touching. Of course, no one else could see it. “It was real. You were between both worlds.”

Like her. Our gazes locked. I didn’t have to say it for her to understand. This was weird. And it was big.

“Are you okay?” Ben asked, giving me a squeeze.

I nodded, looking away from my sister. “It’s probably because Halloween’s so close.”

“Maybe,” Wren allowed. “Or it might be something else.”

I ignored her. “We’d better get going.”

In my pocket my cell buzzed. I had a text. I pulled the phone out of my pocket and glanced at the message.

We’re going to talk about this whether you like it or not.

I shot Wren a snotty look. She didn’t look impressed, but I didn’t care. I’d been to the Shadow Lands when I died for, like, two seconds. It felt like a lot more time there. And with the veil thinning it made sense that I’d be sensitive. Last year I was still in Bell Hill, so the meds might have kept me from experiencing the same thing then.

“Want to grab some lunch?” Mace asked us. “Mexican?”

A big plate of cheesy nachos was exactly what I needed. “Sure,” I said. And then to Ben, “Unless you need to go home.”

“No. Lunch sounds good.”

Everyone else left ahead of us. Wren said she’d meet us there. I didn’t know where she was off to, but I suspected it was the Shadow Lands. I got into the car.

Ben opened the driver-side door and slid in. He put the key into the ignition, but instead of turning it, he turned to me. “Be honest. Are you okay?”

I leaned my head back against the seat and smiled. “Yeah, I’m good.” It was mostly true. I mean, yeah, it was weird, but my whole life was weird. If I freaked out every time something strange happened, I’d spend 99 percent of my time a basket case.

He leaned over and kissed me. For those few seconds I didn’t think. I didn’t worry about anything.

Like what those two women in the Shadow Lands saw when they looked at me. Or why my sister had been afraid.

WREN

“She just didn’t look right,” the woman with the cockney accent explained. “There were something dreadful odd about her, for such a pretty girl.”

She looked odd because she was alive, but I didn’t say that. I only asked this woman—and the one who had been on the street when Lark had popped into the Shadow Lands—about what she’d seen because I didn’t want it getting around that my sister had slipped past the barrier.

It made sense that if the dead could easily cross at this time of year, then the living could, as well. It felt strange, though. I’d never heard of it happening before, but that didn’t mean it hadn’t. I wished our ancestor Emily—who had reached out to both Lark and me before—would decide to show up and give us some advice on how this living/dead twin thing worked, but we hadn’t seen her since the night she helped Lark tap into her ghost-fighting abilities.

I hadn’t had any glimpses of her sister, Alys, either—who had occasionally shown herself to me at my grandmother’s house. It was frustrating, because I felt like their appearances meant something. Shouldn’t they have moved on?

I wanted to find Emily and Alys. I wanted them to tell Lark and me why we existed. What was the reason? What was our destiny? I wanted answers. But it seemed that Lark and I were destined to wind up with nothing but an endless list of questions.

The one thing that struck me as I left the woman to wander the streets of shadow-Edwardian London, was that neither of Lark’s witnesses had remarked that she looked like me. That meant that she looked different here—maybe like how I looked when I manifested in the living world? No wonder the women had been afraid of her.

What would happen if Lark manifested here for any length of time? We spent so much time trying to make sure I didn’t cause harm in the living world with my abilities, but we’d never considered whether she could be a danger to the dead.

And why hadn’t we discussed it? I’d seen her punch a ghost. Seen her hurt a spirit. Those ones had deserved it, but what if she went after someone who didn’t? She might hurt someone, just like there was the danger of me doing harm when I manifested among the living.

I was getting ahead of myself. There was no need to get anxious. This might have been an All Hallows’ Eve aberration. Yes, that was the best way to think of it for now. If it happened again, I’d consult the Shadow Lands library.

I drifted back into the earthly realm. I spent more time among the living than I did the dead. It wasn’t completely because of Lark and our friends, but because I found the living more interesting.

The Shadow Lands was made up of bits and pieces the dead had assembled—not quite Heaven, but a more idyllic version of what their lives had been. There wasn’t the amount of emotion and drama going on that there was in the living world. Lark turned her nose up at many of the reality shows on the television, but she didn’t seem to realize that, to me, her life was a reality show! Even the simple act of shopping was interesting to someone who only had to “think” her appearance and make it so.

I ended up at Haven Crest. I didn’t wonder why—I wasn’t totally vacuous. It was obvious that some part of my mind had been thinking about Noah. Other than Lark’s realm-jumping, I hadn’t thought about much other than him all day.

It was late afternoon, and while the daylight hours had shortened considerably in New England, there was still an hour or more of daylight left. Noah wasn’t a young ghost, so there was a chance he might be about, especially if I could find the spot he haunted.