Sisters Of Salt And Iron

“Oh, my God,” Roxi said, as she looked at the screen of her phone. “There’s Wren!”

Everyone crowded around to look. I drifted between Sarah and Kevin, knowing they’d feel the chill of my presence. Kevin looked right at me. I ignored him. He’d hurt my feelings and proven that he wasn’t the person I thought he was. I was having a hard time forgiving him for it.

“That’s so weird,” Gage, Roxi’s boyfriend, remarked. “She looks so real.”

I glanced at him at the same time Lark said, “She is real.”

He rolled his dark eyes. “Realer, then.”

Roxi kissed his cheek. “I think you mean tangible.”

Gage shrugged. “Whatever. It’s just cool to see her, that’s all.”

Everyone else agreed, and I smiled. Lark smiled, too.

But then everyone broke into couples for the slow dance, and Kevin looked at me. “It is good to see you,” he said. No one else would ever hear him above the music, his voice was so low, but I could hear it, and he knew it. It took all my strength not to stick my tongue out at him—or rip his eyes out.

I left instead. I couldn’t trust myself to be around him, not when that dark and angry part of myself was so close to the surface. I might hurt him, and I didn’t want to do that, no matter how much he’d hurt me.

I let myself drift through town, wandering aimlessly along the dark streets. My kind were everywhere—strolling along the sidewalks, peeking in windows, sitting on benches. Tomorrow there would be even more of them as even the weaker ones gathered strength.

Halloween was still days away, but that time of year has always been hard for me. This year it seemed even rougher. The veil between the world of the living and the world of the dead grows thinner as the calendar counts down to the end of October. It’s our holiday—when we can cross between dimensions and interact with the living if we wish. We can be our true selves. Those who have become violent or despondent remember who they were, and decide if they want to try moving on, or give themselves over to the darkness.

A lot give up, but there are an equal number who move on.

But not me. I stayed exactly where I was. I don’t think I had a choice.

Halloween’s approach had to be hard on Kevin, as well. He was a medium, and his abilities had only gotten stronger since our encounter with the ghost of madman Josiah Bent at Haven Crest Hospital.

I liked Kevin, and I thought he liked me, but then he told me we shouldn’t spend so much time together since we could never really have a relationship. Then I caught him kissing Sarah—Mace’s girlfriend. Mace, his best friend. That had stung, but the disappointment I’d felt was worse.

I kept drifting. The town of New Devon wasn’t very big, and there wasn’t much more for a ghost to do there than there was for a living sixteen-year-old. I didn’t feel like going home, but I wasn’t going back to that dance.

I suppose I shouldn’t have been surprised to find myself at Haven Crest. The abandoned asylum was incredibly haunted from years of treating those who were considered insane or were locked up by their families. The graveyard on the property contained hundreds of cremated remains—and those were just the ones the families hadn’t claimed.

Haven Crest was full of, as Lark would put it, her people. Though, unlike Lark, most of the residents really were insane. If they hadn’t been when they went in, they had been by the time they died. It made for a lot of spectral energy in one spot, and like any ghost, I was drawn to it, because no one lived at Haven Crest anymore—they were all ghosts, and that made them my people.

I stood on the lawn facing the main building—a large, redbrick building with a wing on either side of the central block and a large white domed-roof tower. It had staging and construction materials piled up in front of it. The town was in the process of reclaiming as much land and buildings as they could, turning them into offices and public spaces.

Because what could possibly go wrong when disturbing the ghosts of more than a century’s worth of mental patients?

On the light post near my head someone had recently stapled a poster: One Night Only—Dead Babies!

I frowned. Why would anyone in their right minds want to see deceased infants? In my experience that kind of thing was very disturbing to the living. As a ghost, a baby was just another ghost. I hadn’t seen one myself—they tended to move on quickly.

Oh. Wait. Dead Babies. Yes, this was a musical band that Lark enjoyed listening to. I remembered dancing around our bedroom one night pretending to play a guitar while she sang into a hairbrush. I smiled at the memory. We didn’t do things like that anymore. Lark was always with Ben, or there were other people around. The times we were alone were rare and usually when she had homework to do, or needed to sleep. I would never actually say it to Lark, but sometimes I wished we could go back to a time when she didn’t have friends, and people stayed away because they thought she was crazy.

Dead Babies was going to be holding a concert here at Haven Crest on Halloween night. I’d heard Lark and Ben talk about a concert that Lark proclaimed was “a farking bad idea.” This had to be it. All that music and energy at a place like Haven Crest? The dead wouldn’t be able to resist, and there would be so many living to interact with—who wouldn’t think anything of a peculiarly dressed stranger dancing next to them. It would be Halloween, after all.

I would have to attend this concert. It might be fun. Or dangerous. If I was lucky, maybe both. All those warm, breathing bodies, ripe with fear, practically begging to be terrified. Delicious.

“Hello.”

I didn’t jump. It’s a well-known fact that ghosts don’t scare easily. I turned my head. Standing there beneath the lamp across the drive from me was a boy who looked to be a little older than I was. From the way he was dressed, I’d say he was actually a century older than I was. Young men didn’t wear suits much anymore, especially not jackets with tails.

“Hi,” I said.

Hands in his pockets, he crossed the pavement toward me. He was tall and pale with thick black hair and bright blue eyes. He had a nice smile—the sort that made my heart flutter. I might not actually be alive in this dimension, but I was fully intact in my own. Even if my heart didn’t actually beat, I was still capable of the sensation of physical response.

“I haven’t seen you around here before,” he remarked.

I folded my arms over my chest like my sister did whenever she felt defensive. “I haven’t seen you, either.”

He stopped right in front of me, still smiling. “I’m Noah.”

“Wren.”

His left eyebrow lifted. “An unusual name. One I’ve heard before. You wouldn’t be the ghost who helped destroy Josiah Bent?”

I stiffened. Bent had been a terrible creature, and he’d hurt Lark’s—our—friends. Because of that, and because I believed he needed to be destroyed, it hadn’t occurred to me that anyone at Haven Crest might harbor resentment for us getting rid of him.

But I wasn’t afraid, and I wasn’t going to lie. “Yes.”

His grin widened—he had nice teeth. “I have to thank you for that. Bent was a first-class bas—uh, scoundrel.”

“You can say bastard in front of me. Women aren’t considered delicate creatures anymore.”

His smile turned rueful. “That is a pity. Still, I’m happy to see that the loss doesn’t extend to beauty nor grace.”

Was that a compliment? “Are you flirting with me?”

Noah leaned a little closer. “Perhaps. Is it working?”

“I think so.” I smiled at him. I liked this game. It was fun, and it made me feel silly and light. “Maybe you could do it some more just to be certain.”

His dark eyes brightened. They were like a night sky—I could see stars reflected in them. “I’ve met many girls on these grounds, and you’re the first with whom I wanted to flirt.”

I laughed. “I don’t believe that.”

Noah’s head tilted as he shot me a bashful look. “Fair enough, but you’re the first one I hoped would flirt back.”

Oh, he was good. Lark wouldn’t trust him. In fact, I could hear her making retching noises in my head. But my sister wasn’t there. I was alone with a cute boy who wanted to spend some time with me, and there wasn’t any drama around it. We were both dead, so what was the worst thing that could happen?

I smiled. “I don’t really know how to flirt.”

He made a clucking sound with his tongue. “For shame. I would be happy to instruct if you are in want of a teacher.”

We were so close I could feel his spectral energy mingling with mine. It was like a warm breath on bare skin. We weren’t tangible to the living, or in their world—unless we manifested—but to each other we were solid. Real.

My gaze drifted to his mouth—he had perfect lips—before rising to meet his. God, those eyes! “Do you really think you could teach me?” I asked with a smile.

He arched a brow. “I think you have a natural talent for it.”

I laughed. “Maybe you’re just so good that I’m learning already.”

A bright smile parted his lips. “That may be true.” He offered his hand. “Would you care to dance with me?”

I said the words that I’d heard said countless times in romantic movies—“There isn’t any music.”

As though on cue, the sound of a cello and violin playing together in perfect harmony drifted around us, soft as a breeze.

“How did you do that?” I asked, looking about. I actually expected to see a couple of ghosts nearby, playing for us.

“When you’ve been around as long as I have been, you learn how to tap into lingering spectral energy.”

I nodded. “You found a looper.”

A looper was a common kind of ghost—the kind that are stuck, either knowingly or unaware, in a particular moment or action. Some are doomed to jump off that bridge night after night, or walk the same stretch of road, scream the same blood-chilling scream. They’re like ghost-zombies, mindless and driven only by compulsion. Sad, really.

“There are quite a few of them here,” he said. “I’ve just brought them a little closer. I’m not hurting them.”

The concern in his tone made me like him more. “I hadn’t thought you were.”

Noah looked relieved. “You’ll dance with me, then?”

I nodded. “I’m not very good. I’ve never really learned.”

“Ah.” He grinned. “Something else for me to teach you.” He held out his hand. I took it and put my other hand on his shoulder as his arm went around my waist.

“Just look into my eyes and follow me,” he instructed.

I did. The next thing I knew we were whirling and twirling around—easier to do when your feet didn’t have to touch the ground. Following really wasn’t all that difficult once I realized there was a pattern to the steps. It was fun.

There were ghosts in the windows of nearby buildings watching us. Some even came outside, but they didn’t approach us. A few found partners or danced by themselves, but they didn’t try to interrupt. Noah spun me over the top of the security patrol car as it drove by, and I laughed as we flew up into the air.

Lark reached out to me an hour or so later. It wasn’t a summons, just a gentle prod to make sure I was all right. We really did have the whole twin-ESP thing going on, but I didn’t know if it was because we were twins or because I was dead. The why wasn’t really important, it was convenient to be able to feel one another when we weren’t together. My sister had a habit of getting into trouble—though she’d probably say the same about me.

I let her know I was fine, and she seemed to respect that because she didn’t summon me—a command that I didn’t seem to be able to ignore, and Lark only used it when it was urgent. She was probably with Ben anyway.

“What’s it like to have lived?” I asked as we danced.

His smile seemed almost sad as he whirled me around the chimneys of one of the older buildings. “Terrible and wonderful. Anxious and joyous. Things hurt and stink and rot. And then, you’ll find the most perfect flower, or watch the sunrise, and every pain will have been worth it.”

I felt hollow inside. “I wish I could experience it.”

He looked me in the eye. “My dear girl, you don’t have to be alive to live. There are plenty of living people in this world who sleepwalk through it and never hate or love any part of it. You are more alive than almost anyone I’ve ever known.”

Noah and I danced and talked some more. We flirted and we laughed. And then, the sun peeked its head up over the horizon.

We were sitting beneath an old tree that still had most of its leaves—which were almost as dark a red as my hair. Noah lifted his head.

“You should go,” he said. “Your sister will wonder where you’ve been.” Of course he knew about Lark if he knew who I was.

He was right. She’d worry if I wasn’t there when she woke up, even though she wouldn’t be up for a while yet. It was Saturday, after all.

“Is the daylight difficult for you?” I asked. It was a known fact that most ghosts were weakened by the sun. I wasn’t one of them, though I did feel more “alive” at night.

He glanced away—as though it was something to be ashamed of. “Yes. I’m sorry.”

I placed my hand over the one resting on his thigh and gently squeezed. “Don’t be.”

Suddenly, his face was right there in front of mine, and his fingers touched my cheek as though I was made of the most delicate glass. “If I could I would spend all the hours of this day and the next, and all the others that follow, in your company.”

My throat tightened. Lark would have thought of something witty to say at such a time. Me? Not so much. “Me, too.”

His face brightened. He rose to his feet, helping me stand at the same time. He held both my hands in his. “Will I see you again tonight?”

I nodded. “Yes. If you want.”

“I can think of nothing that would give me more pleasure.”

He talked like something out of a romance novel—like Mr. Darcy. I loved it. I grinned. “Well, I would hate to deny you.”

A slow smile curved his perfect lips. “I was right—you do have a natural talent for flirting.” His smile faded. “I must go. Until tonight.”

I started to say something, but he cut me off by pressing his mouth to mine in a quick, firm kiss. Then, he was gone, leaving me standing there, stunned.

I pressed my fingers to my mouth and smiled. I felt light—ridiculously happy. Who knew that boys held such power in their lips?

I spun around, laughing out loud as I whisked myself away from Haven Crest. As I drifted away I saw two leaves fall from the tree. They drifted down to the ground where Noah and I had sat. They each fell alone but ended up together on the grass, stems entwined. Somehow, they’d found each other.

I danced all the way home.

LARK

I woke up late, a little sore from the fight with Daria, but otherwise fine. I would have been up earlier, but I’d stayed out late with Ben. Memories of how we’d passed the time made me warm all over. God, that boy knew how to kiss. Where to touch...

What the hell was that sound?

Slowly, I pushed myself up onto my elbows and looked out into the dimness of my room. There was Wren dancing and singing under her breath in front of my mirror. She kept changing her outfits and hairstyles like a movie montage. All she had to do was think it, and she could look it. I hated that about her. It took me forty minutes to get ready. It took her four seconds.

I’d never seen her like this. She was grinning like an idiot, and I’m pretty sure she was singing a Taylor Swift song. She was also wearing a dress exactly like the one Belle wore to dance with Beast in the Disney movie.

“That yellow clashes with your hair,” I grumbled, beating down the blankets.

She yelped, and so did I. What the hell? I’d never startled her before.

“Are you okay?” I asked, frowning at her. She looked...sheepish. I guess I would be, too, if I’d been caught in that dress.

“I’m fine,” she chirped. “Just bored waiting for you to wake up. It’s about time.”

My gaze narrowed. There was definitely something up with her. “Where did you end up last night? I was surprised you weren’t here when I got home.”

She shrugged and looked away. “I went to the Shadow Lands for a while. Nothing exciting.”

My ass. But, hey, if she didn’t want to talk about it, she didn’t want to talk about it. I didn’t like it when she nagged me, so I wasn’t going to nag her.

Except... “You’d tell me if you were in trouble, right? Like if something awful happened?”

She frowned, dark red brows lowering over eyes that were exactly like mine. “Of course. Just because I wasn’t with you doesn’t mean something terrible happened.”

But something had. I was willing to bet it was Kevin. He’d left the dance early, too. At the time I’d assumed a high school dance wasn’t all that interesting for a guy in college, but now I suspected he’d run off to hang out with my sister. If he broke her heart, I was going to break his head.

“Why are you looking at me like that?” Wren demanded, the ball gown melting away into leggings and a long, slouchy sweater.

“Like what?”

“Like you want to punch me in the face.”

“Sorry. It’s not you I’d like to punch.” I threw back the covers. “Gotta pee.”

She came into the bathroom with me, phasing through the wall. Ghosts didn’t have the same personal boundaries as the living. Wren never had a full bladder, the cow, so she didn’t get that emptying it was often a private thing.

“Did you have a good time last night?” she asked, sticking her fingers through the shower curtain as she turned her back to me. At least she gave me a little privacy.

“I did—obviously after we got rid of Daria.”

Wren frowned. She looked disappointed. “I was so sure that it was her love for Mr. Fisher that kept her here, not revenge.”

“When love goes bad, it goes bad. Happens all the time.” I flushed and washed my hands. “Not like they had a chance at happiness with her being a ghost.”

“You know, for a girl with a boyfriend, you’re terribly cynical about love.”

“No, I’m not.” I pulled on my pink fuzzy robe. “I just believe it works better if both people are on the same side of the veil.” I gave her a pointed look, hoping my meaning hit home.

She thought about it. “Well, that certainly makes intercourse easier.”

I stared at her. Gaped, actually. “What?”

Wren looked at me like I was slow. “Intercourse. You know, interaction between two people.”

“I think you mean discourse. Intercourse means sex.”

“Oh.” A look of understanding took over her face. “It really would make that easier, then, wouldn’t it?” Then, she burst out laughing and so did I.

Our grandmother wasn’t home when we went downstairs. Sometimes Nan and a couple of her girlfriends went shopping on Saturday mornings and then went for tea afterward. I didn’t expect to see her anytime soon.

The coffee was still hot. I filled the biggest mug I could find and dumped in some flavored sweetener until it was the perfect color. I drank it while waiting for my bagel to pop.

“That’s a lot of cream cheese,” Wren remarked when I sat down at the table, breakfast in hand.

I picked up half the bagel and took a big bite. I could feel cream cheese smear against the outside edges of my mouth. I had been a little heavy-handed. “It’s the best part.”

She shrugged. “If you say so.” Wren had experienced food before. Sometimes I’d let her possess me so she could experience things, but while she enjoyed the taste of cookies or chocolate, or even hot wings, she didn’t understand eating for pleasure. To her a little cream cheese was the same as a lot.

I actually felt sorry for her when it came to that.

“Hey, can ghosts have intercourse?” I asked as the coffee kicked in. “The sex kind, not the conversational type.”

She stuck her tongue out at me. “We have all the same parts the living have, so I have to say yes.”

But she didn’t know for certain. My sister was still a virgin. The idea that she might remain that way forever was a little...depressing. It wasn’t any of my business, but sometimes... Sometimes it was upsetting thinking of all the things I could experience that she never would.

Then again, I’d never know the sublime pleasure of being able to scare someone so effectively their bladder never worked properly again.

“Mostly ghosts merge their energy,” she continued. “It’s more of a literal ‘becoming one’ with one another.”

“What if everything gets all mixed and you, like, leave part of yourself in the other ghost?”

She frowned. “I don’t know.”

Yup, virgin. I finished the first half of my bagel. “Hey, I want you to practice with my phone a bit.”

Wren rolled her eyes. “Do we have to?”

“Yes. If Kevin hadn’t been at the dance last night you wouldn’t have been able to lead them to Mr. Fisher.” I didn’t add that the less time she had to spend around Kevin, the better. “The message you sent me was wrong. You need to be able to communicate with people, and electronics have always been a popular medium of supernatural communication.”

Red brows shot up. “You’ve been watching those ghost hunting shows again.”

“Yes,” I admitted. “They’re ninety percent crap, but they get the electronic stuff right. Most of the time. Look, I’m not expecting you to download any apps. I just need to know that if something took me out, that you could talk to someone.” I held her gaze, even though it was uncomfortable.

When I’d cut my wrists in a much-regretted suicide attempt, Wren had had to find a medium in order to get help. That medium had been Kevin. If she hadn’t found him—and if he hadn’t called my neighbor, Mace—I would have died for sure. As it was I had been technically dead for a few seconds.

It had felt much, much longer.

I wasn’t in any hurry to die now, and I needed to make sure she could get help if it was needed.

I set my phone on the table. “Okay, go.”

Wren sighed, but she didn’t put up a fight. She closed her eyes and tilted her head back. A few seconds later my phone vibrated, and the text notification came up. I swiped my finger over the screen and brought up my new messages. One was from Ben, but the other had no name attached. Even though I was pretty confident it had worked, I held my breath as I opened the text.

BOO!

I looked up. My sister sat there grinning like a freaking idiot. “Really?” I said. “That’s the best you can do?”

She shrugged. “You’re sitting right next to me. What was I supposed to say?”

“I don’t know. Something a little less stereotypical?”

My phone vibrated again. I looked down. A new message.

BOOBOOBOOBOOBOOBOOBOOBOOBOO.

“Ass,” I said. Wren laughed. “Fine, you can use a phone right in front of you. Now I want you to send a message to Ben—and try to put a little more thought into it, please.”

“Fine.” She closed her eyes again, and I started in on the second half of my cream-cheese-laden bagel. I checked my email as I chewed.

I was scoping out the latest designs on the Fluevog website—I loved me some shoes—when my phone buzzed yet again.

It was Ben. His first text said that he’d dreamed about me last night, followed by a bunch of winky faces. The second read, How is Wren able to text me? And why did she ask me if you and I have ever had intercourt?

Intercourt? I started laughing. Auto-correct spared no one, not even the dead.

Wren smiled. “Is that from Ben?”

I set my phone aside. “He said to tell you that he’s saving himself for marriage.”

“Saving himself from what?” she asked. I didn’t know if she was serious or not.

“Forget it.” I took another bite of bagel. “You’re good with text. Next we work on actually making a phone call.”

My phone rang almost immediately. I glanced down at the display and sighed. Wren started laughing.

“Cow,” I muttered.

On the screen, underneath Calling, it simply said: BOO.