Page 48 of All Her Ghosts

My wounded pride flares before my aching brain has time to catch up.

“You think I’dkillyou?” I snap. “Then why are you kidnapping me?”

Belatedly, his words sink in.He likes his soul where it is—and I could change that, couldn’t I? I wonder what would happen, if I dipped my fingers beneath his skin as easily as I gathered up the ghosts inside Mr. Snider. Even now, firmly in my body, if I close my eyes I can feel the fire under his skin, the light of his life, and it would be so easy—sodevastatingly simple—to pluck out that bright little spark and crush it in my palm.

Icouldkill him.

And he knew that. He knew it and he still came.

What kind of trouble are we in that he would risk that?

Swallowing hard, I tug my cellphone from my bra. I pass it back between the seats. Immediately, Bas shoves a paper clip into its seam, popping out my SIM card.

“What is the Demeter Project?” I ask. “What is going on?”

“You want the short version? The stunt you two just pulled blew up seventeen years of painstakingly tedious effort keeping youbothoff the government’s radar. Now it’s time for Plan B. Lucky for you, Plan B’s simple,” Cain says. “Step one: get out of town ASAP—” He cuts off. His head snaps sideways, eyes fixed on the big black SUV blowing the stop sign on a side street. It screams past, windows tinted so dark we can’t see the driver, and Cain watches it the entire time, the rigid line of his body at odds with his idle driving, plodding along not one tick higher than the posted speed.

“There’s a plan?” I whisper, the tension of the passing SUV trapping my voice. “You planned for this?”

Cain shrugs. He takes a second at the stop sign to check his mirrors, stare down every road for a long three seconds. I glance into the back seat. Bas makes a wiggly gesture with his hand.

“Always have a plan for shit hitting the fan,” he says.

“And the shit hit?”

Bas cocks his head. “Well, yeah. What’s that one quote—ten impossible things before breakfast?” He ticks off on his fingers. “Ahumanghost swarm formed, it showed intent, it traveled, it spoke, it possesseda guy—there’s not a single record of that occurring,” he says, glancing at Cain for confirmation. “And then you and me sent the ghosts home and picked a guy back up from what should have been irreversible ghost drain. That’s downright impossible.”

“Whatever the two of you did with that teacher, you opened a door,” Cain says. “A lot of ghosts took advantage.”

I can’t think. My body feels like a war zone, shots fired, nothing but panic and praying and senseless noise. I dig my fingernails into my arms, desperate to hold back the tide, something bigger than myself echoing in the hollow of my rib cage.

“What do you mean a door? I didn’t open anything, I just…”

“Just what?” Cain prompts calmly—like this is normal to him, eyes never even glancing off the road.

“It was just seven ghosts,” I blurt. But my protest sounds tinny in my own ears, diminishing into a desperate whisper. “We said we’d call it seven.”

But it wasn’t, was it? It wasn’t seven ghosts inside Mr. Snider, and I knew that, even at the time, reaching into his chest again and again, cradling every last pained and desperate soul to my chest, their little lights blurring together—so blisteringly happy, at last, to be held. To be seen.

Helplessly, I glance around at Bas.

“What did we do?” I whisper.

He flashes a tight smile, his dark eyes full of stars, a galaxy expanding in the watercolor gaslights flashing past our windows.

“We helped them,” he murmurs, but it doesn’t match the pained way his mouth crinkles or how his shoulders bow, tight and hard, his own hands clenched in useless fists against his stomach.

It feels like a lie. It feels like too little, too late, a wishing penny down an empty well and no one listening for the fall. My stomach twists. Anxiety batters at the backs of my teeth. My fingernails bite into my skin.

“I need more than that.”

“We don’t have more than that,” Cain says, shaking his head. “No one knows what you did yet. Not the government nerds and sure as hell not me. Best I can figure, you found a way to briefly punch a hole through realities and in—oh, what do you figure, Bas? Four-and-a-half minutes?—funneled half a county of dead folks through.”

I don’t know what to say to that. Don’t know what Icansay.

“Somehow, the ghosts all know it too,” Cain continues, before I can figure out how to work my mouth so words come out. “Felt that door open or something. Ghost activity is increasing across the state—theshitin question, if you will—ghost swarms with intent and direction all headed straight to the center of an obvious, sudden dead zone, consistently demarcated across all government radars.”

Government radars—like the computers in Mom’s mad science dungeon, constantly tracking remnant activity.