Page 54 of All Her Ghosts

“You believe this shit?” he mutters, and I don’t know if he’s talking to me or himself, levering down onto the newly made couch. “Such disrespect from my own kidnapped baby.” Flopping down, he tugs his baseball cap over his eyes, folds his arms across his chest. “You come back here with onions and I’m disowning you.”

“Heartburn special, got it.” Bas grins, firing off a finger gun, then looks at me. “You coming, Jenny?”

How is it so easy for them?

“Yeah,” I croak. “Just let me brush my teeth first.”

Shoving myself into the tiny bathroom, I wedge the door shut on Bas’s baffled “Beforeyou eat?” and pretend not to hear him. I force myselfto concentrate, to breathe slow and even, a normal teenage girl doing normal teenage things—and I don’t know whythis, out of everything, is what gets to me. I’m mired smack in the middle of several felonies, states away from home, the product of a messed-up government experiment, but watching the two of them together somehow hurts me the most.

I don’t know why Cain stole Bas, but I remember terror and rage and a cold metal table, and I can guess. When my other half came after me, when he died and got up again and again in whatever body would hold him, I bet eventually he ran low on options, got trapped in a child like I did. And somewhere along the way, twenty bullets deep, Cain must have realized killing him wouldn’t work, so he just… stole the whole baby.

Hefatheredhim.

My chest aches, remembering a plate in the microwave, the anxious pinch between my mother’s eyes, futilely refreshing a subpar ghost-tracking weather app over and over. I wish…

I don’t know what I wish. Can I wish it had gone differently when it shouldn’t have happened at all? Can I wish we’d learned to talk with more than actions? More than offering warm leftovers and road trips and silent apologies forever left unanswered? Knowing how she broke the world to build me, how much suffering my existence here caused, am I allowed to wish for anything at all?

I rinse the sour taste from my mouth with Listerine, slap cold water on my cheeks. Held together with minty fresh determination, I get my shit together. Outside, I take a quick picture to remember our parking spot—section C, spot 82. No risk of Mom seeing it with my internet off and no SIM card in my phone.

Carpetbag in one hand and Bas in the other, we trudge across themuddy field, slogging through wet grass and kicking gravel. Dew glitters on my boots, soaks the toes of Bas’s sneakers. His socks must be sopping, but he doesn’t seem to notice. We cut through the last row of cars, spilling into the flea-market proper, and Bas’s eyes light up. Darting sideways, he drags me after him, to a vendor plonking down big Tupperwares of costume jewelry onto a beat-up folding table.

“We don’t have a lot of money,” I protest, but Bas flashes me a grin. He plunges a hand into the box and emerges with a velvet choker, its wispy agate cameo dangling from a short silver chain.

“You need a green ribbon, Jenny,” he says. “Keep your head on straight.”

I can’t breathe. I watch him haggle for it with my eyes stinging, head spinning, my un-heart so tight and swollen it clogs my throat and I can’t tear my eyes away. The early-morning sun burns cords of copper into his gray hair, thaws his glittering black eyes into fresh-turned earth. When he turns, smiling at me, my brain stalls out. I can’t think of anything but harvest gods—of Hel, the only creature alive and dead, tricking the world to keep one; of the Morrigan and her cunning magics, stealing King Arthur away; of Persephone and what she saw in Hades—

Was it this? His mischief, his shy joy, his work-marred hands cupping her tender throat so gently, fastening the clasp?

Lunging forward, I grab the front of Bas’s hoodie and press my lips to his.

(We stand ankle-deep in the star-spattered river, moonlight in the bowls of our bronze scales draping a silvery beacon across the water. Ghosts journey, arms laden with death goods they won’t need beyond a single coin, an offering, the price of measuring hearts against feathers…

One of us weighs, one of us waits, arms open and torch held high on the opposite bank.

Which of us is Harvest? Which of us is Death?

We’ve swapped so many times I can’t remember where we began.)

My head spins. My rib cage feels like a dress that doesn’t fit, zipper straining, about to split. Bas presses his forehead to mine. His hand spanning my cheek grounds me in my skin. My cold fingers steal the blazing heat from his. Breathless and giggling, we lean into each other like chilly drunks, both a little wobbly by the time we make it across the flea market to the tin-twinkie diner at its far edge.

Already decorated for Christmas to ward off spooky Halloween, frosty condensation hazes windows strung in plastic pine garlands. A bell announces our arrival, the heat inside hitting us like a wall in sharp contrast to the frozen morning, syrup-sweet and promising sausages. The hostess glances up from behind a long bar counter, her arms laden with plates.

“Sit anywhere, hon,” she tells us, so we do, sliding into a red vinyl booth opposite the little TV on the back wall, blaring out the morning news for all the old regulars hunkered over their coffee mugs. Bas hands me a slightly sticky menu from its rack against the window, but I can’t concentrate.

We’re probably the only people here under forty and everybody seems to know each other, conversation bandying back and forth across the bar, skipping across the booths. An old man sitting at the bar cracks open an honest to God metal lunch box, hands over his thermos. The waitress takes it like a habit, empties in a whole pot of coffee without ahiccup in the story about her kid’s last football game, hands it back with a plastic-wrapped sandwich she had ready and waiting.

Time smears around us. Lost somewhere outside its steady flow, I order pancakes in a haze. Bas asks for a Mountain O’ Meat. It arrives ten minutes later, steaming and perfect, smelling so good my stomach rumbles like thunder in the distance. I barely hear it. I can’t look away from the wrinkled woman in the booth over Bas’s shoulder, smiling at her gray-headed husband with an old adoration in her eyes.

“Are you okay?” he asks, but I can’t answer. I swallow hard but can’t choke down the knot of jealousy swelling my throat closed, entranced by the gentle, ordinary beauty of some strangers’ lives.

What’s that like? Living with someone for so long you build a routine? Waking up to the same face every day, the same house, the same life?

She’s wearing a necklace, too, a dainty little diamond pendant to keep her head on straight. Did her husband pick it for her? Did he buy it knowing she’d wear it every day for the rest of their lives? Does he suspect how long that’ll be? Does he know the length of his own life’s thread? Can he feel himself coming to its end? Does death lurk around his blind corners, a constant companion, an inevitable given? Does he fit in his body? Does he feel his soul straining at its seams?

Is he afraid? AmIallowed to be? Does a weapon—a fucked-up government science experiment—even have the right?

“What are we doing?” I whisper, eyes flicking over to find his. “What’s our plan here?”