Page 34 of All Her Ghosts

Perfectly calm, Bas says, “Check your pockets.”

One hand flops like a fish at the teacher’s side. With difficulty, he turns his pockets inside out. His wallet tumbles from his khakis, slapping to the floor. Bas crouches down to get it, tugging open the zipper on the side.

He says, “How many of you are there?”

“We—”

“We?”

“Us…”Confusion warps their voices further. The ghosts turn inward, speaking to each other. Mr. Snider’s body struggles to contain their agitated thrashing. They pull on his seams, distorting his face. His lips go dark. Blood vessels burst in his eyes, bruising welling up in the sockets.

“That’s fine,” Bas soothes. “Don’t worry about it. How about we call it seven? That’s a good number, right?”

“Seven,” the ghosts agree with obvious relief. “Seven.”

Reaching forward, he cups Mr. Snider’s hand. Students gasp, bracing for the inevitable ghost-drain transference, but none comes. Bas simply tips the change out into his bulging palm. Shifting quarters aside, he points to a nickel.

“Then I’ll take this. Call it a group discount.”

“Payment,” the ghosts chorus, overlapping in their eagerness. “Yes, payment. Payment for the Ferryman,” and lurch forward.

Bas takes the coin.

The world shifts. The pressure in the air changes. The coin catches in the fluorescent light, in the pale ghost flame burning in Mr. Snider’shaunted eyes—just for a second—and between his fingers, it’s not smooth and silver but lumpen gold.

The ghosts shift their attention. Hands outstretched, they creep toward me. It feels like one half of a promise. It feels like gravity. Likeresponsibility.

I step forward, drawn by a tide I don’t understand, by the current of the river in my ears—

(wood creaking, solemn figures lining the shore, golden obol safe beneath their tongues.)

They stare at me with that gauzy multiplicity, pleading, and in that second, I know them. I know all of them. I know who they were, how they lived, how they died. I know their suffering. I feel it in my bones—they’re suffering, and they came here forme.

Driven by a deep and reckless instinct, I reach for them. I gather them to me, plucking out each dead flicker from around the bonfire of Mr. Snider’s living light, cupping their many faces in my hands.

“It’s okay now,” I tell them. “I’ve got you. You’re home.”

And I press my lips to their foreheads. Electricity sizzles, a caffeinated migraine burning me down. I hear the rush of waves against a black sand beach, taste midnight-blue raspberry, bitter and deep. My promise echoes heavy in my mouth, in my soul—

(home, home, home)

Mr. Snider crumples.

And I tumble backward into an endless, star-spattered sky.

CHAPTER 11

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Barefoot. Cool, dark earth presses up between my toes. Wind curries over the distant river and across my vast fields, bending the flowers. Asphodel catches its spindly fingers in my hem.

The wind blows again, louder. A howl shakes my stars, hard enough my long-ago hoard trembles in their moorings. Formless shapes stir in the tufted grass. My sweet straw-deaths, gone bleary-eyed and vague with long rest, now clamber to their feet. In the distant garden, new-grown souls cry out in fear.

My chest clenches. My exposed ribs ache. What is going on?

I lift my hand to the sky—too late. Lightning blows the shattering cracks wide. Boiling water in a frozen glass. One after another, my stars shoot past my reaching fingers, searing my flesh and bones, shattering in the burning grass. My field of flowers aflame.