Page 42 of All Her Ghosts

I’m…

I’m not human, am I?

“Don’t lie to me,” I hiss. “You said you don’t want secrets—then stop keeping them. I know it’s impossible for a living person not to have a heartbeat, but I listened to my chest, Mom, and I listened to Bas’s. There’s a sound in there, but it’s not a heart. It’s notnatural. Bas’s babynapper said something happened seventeen years ago and the only thing that could be is me or, like, the entire actual Ghost War—”

I don’t mean it. It’s just a quip—a gauntlet, an insult, a ridiculous exaggeration—but as soon as the words leave my mouth, I freeze.

All the pieces to this strange puzzle fall into sudden, terrible focus. Every un-memory of asphodel and dying. The broken sky, two halves reaching for each other across a crumbling field. The lab. The ghosts in Mr. Snider’s body, reaching for me in pain and desperation. My hands cupping their dead faces, the funerary drum of my instinctual promise—

(home, home, home)

“Mom.” Horrified, I ask, “What did you do seventeen years ago?”

Stone-faced, determined, she stares out at the cars ahead. “I became a mother.”

“No.No.Whatever you did, you did to Bas too. The ghosts in there—theytalked. They were looking forus.”

Mom’s head whips around.

“They spoke?” she blurts, fear live-wire hot. Too quickly, she catches it. Her face falls carefully blank. “No, that’s not possible. Ghosts can’t—”

“No secrets, you said! You wanted to be a safe place, but I come to you, and you call me a liar!”

“I’m not!” She reaches for me, but I slap her hand away, earn a sharp glance that quickly softens. “I’m not calling you a liar. I’m sure you heard something. Remnants retain the cadence of speech, and can sound like words at times. But functional language dissipates as the remnant loses coherency and memory of its original form—”

“They called Bas theFerryman,” I spit, an inescapable challenge. Mom sucks in air like I hit her. Her eyes dart, only half seeing the road, searching for some lie she can piece together on the fly, but I don’t give her the chance. I bulldoze forward. “They were desperate. Suffering. He helped them somehow, took payment. They…”

Words fail me. I grind my knuckles into my breastbone, searching for the right words, some way to force her to see what I saw—the nickel turning to gold between Bas’s fingers, the rush of a river, the taste in my mouth and the hungry silence in my empty chest, knowledge bone-deep and raw, exposed.

But Mom knows how to ruin anything. She ruins it before I figure out the words, forcing a scoff. Head shaking, she pulls into the driveway.

“The boy was attacked by ghosts, and he takes the time to pick their pockets? That’s exactly what I’d expect from Cain’s parenting. He always was a calculating bastard.”

The image of that sunlit obol flakes away in my mind’s eye. Tarnished and decayed, the reality of the day oozes away from me. Myworld turned upside down, my chest split open and welcomed ghosts home, theimpossiblehappened—but one little smirk and my mother makes it ugly, petty and small andordinary. A fantasy. A mistake.

I can’t breathe. My muscles vibrate with the urge to shake her. I stare across the driveway at the RV and every cell in my body howls at me to steal the keys and run—drive and drive until it runs out of gas and I run out of money and I leave it behind to walk into the sunset.

It’s only alittlefelony.

And only if my mom reports it stolen.

“It wasn’t like that,” I whisper, but Mom’s done listening. Her eyes catch on the RV, and for a hot second, I almost hope she’s wishing I would steal it too.

Honestly, wouldn’t it be better? She doesn’t want me here, not really, notme—the hard, broken reality of me. She wants the daughter in her head, the easy one, the perfect one, the kid I never was. So wouldn’t it be better for us both if I left, if I put enough space between us so she could finallyrest? In my absence, she could paint me in her memory however she wanted. She could drop all her frustrated expectations and disappointed hopes.

Wouldn’t it be a kinder, gentler end—infinities cracked open, two welcoming hands and a kiss on the forehead—if we both just… let this stunted attempt at familial obligation die?

“Everything is such a mess. We’re constantly at each other’s throats,” Mom murmurs and turns, forcing a smile. “Why don’t I take tomorrow off, and we steal a long weekend, just get away, go for a drive?”

My stomach rots. A cold weight clamps its jaws around my head.

“So we’re moving,” I deadpan, ripping off my seat belt.

“What? No, just a little weekend trip,” she protests, catching my hand before I can kick my way out of the car.

I try to pull away, but Mom clamps her fingers down, holding tight. I stare at her, face burning, my skin too small and seams straining, tears stinging in the corners of my eyes.

“You really do think I’m stupid.” I force a laugh, voice thick. “You think I don’t notice you do this? Every time we move, you drag me around the country for a week, like a couple dumb roadside attractions can apologize for what youkeep doing to me.”