Sisters of Salt and Iron

by Kady Cross

  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 grand
mother 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.

  My twin was still chuckling to herself when my phone buzzed again. I looked down expecting to see another message from Wren the comedian, but the name that came up was Emily, and the message read: Darkness is coming. You must save her.

  My heart skipped a beat. I only knew one Emily—we were related, and she’d been a twin, as well. She was also dead.

  Save who? I typed, then hit Send.

  No reply. Awesome. Who the hell was this mysterious “her”? But more importantly, what did she mean by “darkness is coming”? That wasn’t cryptic or anything.

  God. Ghosts were such douche bags.

  LARK

  We met at the local Goodwill later that day to shop for Halloween stuff. The dance the night before had just been the beginning of what Roxi was calling “The Halloween Season.” There was a party tonight at Kevin’s because his parents were on a cruise—his parents were away a lot—and then there were a couple of ghost walks through the week that I’d probably bow out of, leading up to thte Dead Babies concert at Haven Crest on Halloween.

  I’d already let everyone know what a bad idea attending the concert was, and we had all agreed to go anyway, despite the fact that ghosts from the hospital had tried to kill us. Were we mentally deranged? Probably, but Dead Babies were awesome. One of my favorite bands. Yes, enough that I’d risk going to see them at the most haunted place I’d ever visited, on the night the barrier between the realms of the living and dead was at its thinnest.

  I justified it like so: I had to be there in case anything happened. It was my duty as someone who could combat ghosts to protect the concertgoers—and the band—from spectral harm. I had told my friends—and myself—so many times I almost believed it.

  Bottom line—I wanted to go more than I was afraid of the ghosts. And that was stupid. No getting around it. I was the chick who went into the dark basement to find out what had made that scraping sound, armed with nothing but a pair of nail scissors. The idiot who decided to help the creepy little bare-footed, black-eyed kid who wore a tattered nightgown and stank of stale well water.

  Hey, at least I owned it.

  So, we were at Goodwill getting last-minute items for tonight, and also for Halloween night.

  “I think you should go as Daenerys Targaryen,” Roxi remarked, holding up a pink stuffed dragon.

  “Ugh,” I said, digging through a rack of dresses. “Do you know how many times I’ve been called �
��Khaleesi’ since that show started? Too many.”

  “But your hair is perfect for it.” She looked genuinely upset that I didn’t jump on the idea. “And I found a dragon.”

  I sighed as she wagged the toy. “Throw it over.”

  She grinned and tossed it over the racks. I caught it with one hand. “It smells like puke.”

  “It will wash,” she chirped.

  Roxi was one of those people who were almost always happy. I could hate her for it, but I think she kept me from being too emo. She was a little shorter than me, with long dark hair, a tan complexion and big brown eyes. She said her mother was Romanian and her dad was half-black. It didn’t matter much to me, but she was gorgeous all the same. My mother was a bitch, and my father was a half-ball-less wonder. I was jealous that her parents even liked her, let alone loved her.

  “I think I’m going to go as Cleopatra on actual Halloween night,” she announced, holding up a long white dress that might have been fashionable in the late ’70s. It was hideous by way of fabulous.

  Her boyfriend, Gage—cute, dark-eyed, needed a haircut—bounded up beside her. “Does that mean I can be a gladiator?”

  The way they smiled at each other made me turn away. PDAs were not a spectator sport as far as I was concerned.

  Ben walked over. We’d been dating for almost two months, and I saw him almost every day, but I still smiled whenever I saw his face. Call me biased, but he’s one of the hottest guys in school. Funny, smart—and he knows how to kick ghost-butt. His grandmother was Korean, and she’d taught me how to make pujok—basically a protection sigil against ghosts and evil spirits. I thought she liked me, but sometimes she looked at me like she wasn’t quite sure what I was.

  I got that a lot. I’m a teenage girl with stark-white hair whose mental state had been seriously questioned, and who could interact with ghosts the same as the living. I probably wouldn’t like Ben’s granny nearly as much if she just welcomed me with open arms.

  “What are you wearing?” I asked, trying not to laugh.