Page 45 of All Her Ghosts

I shouldn’t. I’ve known this boy for two days. Day one, I found him under a library table, stole him from the school, and kissed him in the rain. But on day two, we became gods of death in a supposedly ghost-proof room, opened the gates of the afterlife to let’s-call-it-seven lost souls and the hundreds watching from the woods. We’re technically five hours away from the start of day three—who knows? The trajectory we’re on, we could overthrow the government by the end of the week.

And listen, I know this is crazy. I know I should say no. I should tell him we’re moving too fast, too irresponsibly, getting in too deep in ways we can’t come back from. I should close my curtains and turn my back on whatever he’s offering, all strangeness and charm in the uneasy dark of my backyard. I’ve only known him for two days…

Yet somewhere deeper than my bones and meat, I’ve known himforever.He wouldn’t lie to me.

“Okay,” I whisper. “Give me five minutes.”

Hanging up the phone, I shove it back into my bra. I rip open the garbage bag from moving day, grabbing whatever change of clothes I first lay hands on, loop my boots by their laces around the handle of my carpetbag. The anxiety in Bas’s voice catches in my chest, lighting up every vein, but the flame it kindles is something wilder than fear. It’s the cracked glass finally shattering, the boiling water spilling out. Not pain, not two palmsful of burning—

(seared skin and bone on a shattered, guttering star)

—but a geyser. Iamthe boiling water. Burning and determined, I press my forehead to the floor, suck in a deep breath, and shove mysoul through. Wiggling down with disembodied head and shoulders, I pop out above the kitchen alcove, dinner cooling on the table below and Mom sitting with an untouched plate, staring at her phone with one hand threaded in her hair.

How am I going to get past her? Smack in front of the back door, close enough to hear the front, she’ll be up my ass before I can get halfway across the driveway.Damn it.

Okay, deep breath, I gotta be smart about this.

Snapping out of my party trick, I ease open the bedroom door. When a tense moment of listening brooks no movement down below, I scooch forward, bag clamped under my elbow, until I reach the top of the stairs. Wrapping an arm around the railing so my body won’t tumble down after me like a forgotten doll, I stand up without it and wisp silently into the kitchen.

I find Mom standing in the kitchen, a plate of food gone cold at the table but a second spinning in the microwave. Over her shoulder, I watch her reload the same series of web pages over and over, checking every local ghost tracker, one after another. A bubble of green sits over our local area, marked an impossible 0 in a sea of orange 3s. I’ve never seen a 0 in my life. It has to be a mistake. Except… the outlines of that green hollow sit down the road from us, directly over the high school. And after what we did…

Is this what has Bas worried, what brought him here early, with the half-joking promise of a felony? Mom’s face darkens with every refresh, her hand clawing through her hair hard enough to dislodge the alligator clip, graying blonde strands tumbling in a mess around her furrowed brow.

The microwave beeps. With a sigh, still refreshing her screen, she drops a fork onto the plate, and pulls the plate out of the microwave, then turns toward the stairs.

Towardme. Oh my God, is she actually bringing me dinner? For the literal first time ever? Of course, it’s only theworst possible timefor her to grow this particular motherly impulse, so that tracks!

I don’t have time for another mother-daughter heart-to-heart right now. I can’t risk it with my soul outside my meat, my bag packed, and my—oh, I don’t even know what he is waiting in the weeds outside. I need to distract her, quick.

Shaking out my hands, bouncing on my toes, I surge forward, slamming my hand through her cellphone before I can stop to think. Electricity surges up my arm, thin and thready, the battery a tiny juice box I instantly suck dry. Her screen fizzes out, ghost maps falling dark.

Swearing, Mom drops the plate on the counter. She punches the power button a couple times, even bangs her phone on the counter in frustration. When that doesn’t work, she assaults the kitchen drawers instead, rapid-fire slamming through them, searching for a spare charger.

Ohshit—I realize my miscalculation too late. We haven’t been in this house a week—no time for a junk drawer and who knows what box we even packed it in. The only other charger Mom has is in her bedroom.

Upstairs.

Grumbling, she turns, crossing through the archway into the living room.

Double shit.Fingers fizzing, I scan the room in a panic. My gaze lands on the blender, unpacked but unplugged. It’ll have to be good enough. Lunging, I grab it in both hands, andshove, flooding the motor with thestolen cellphone juice. It screams to life, blade whirring, jumping across the counter entirely untethered.

Mom yelps, startled, and snatches it before the pitcher can shatter to the floor. I push harder, drive the motor louder—but fold in an exhausted wheeze. The blender cuts off. Her cellphone didn’t give me enough.

“What in the hell?” she breathes, lifting the dangling cord. Hands shaking, she sets it down and backs away, headed again for the hall.

Not good enough—okay, shit, what do I do now? The poltergeist routine worked a little, but I need something bigger, something she can’t ignore.

My gaze seizes on the basement door, brand-new lock already installed and shining fresh-battery green. My lip curls. Of course she did. Of course she couldn’t leave that bastardized ghost trap unlocked for more than five minutes. Well, I can fix that. This time I don’t bother shoving my whole body through at once—instead I punch my fist into the keypad, my arm through the door. Gripping the lock from both sides, I pull the energy from its entrails with one hand and shove it back in with the other.

The electronics howl in mechanized agony. A thread of smoke coils from the dead bolt. The metal cracks. The door sways open.

Suddenly, for the first time in my life, I have Mom’s undivided attention. Except, no—the invaded basement does. She runs forward, hand pressed to the door with a look of concern in her eyes I’ve never seen—and is this what it feels like to be her priority? The thing worth loving? The thing a parent can be proud of?

The ocean in my chest roars. My ribs crack.

I’ll give her something to be proud of.

Launching myself down the stairs, I barrel faster than the mirrors can scramble, down into her secret den. As soon as my feet hit the ground, I stop short. The ghost trap still lays sprawled out across the floor, an unholy carpet of half-assembled prisms. Even disconnected from power, broken apart, it still glows an unearthly blue, and I could almost swear ghostly faces press against its gilt and mirrors from inside.