Page 79 of All Her Ghosts

“You can’t,” I breathe.

Gun dangling from its strap, Mom seizes my hand, tearing it from Bas’s.

“It will work,” she urges, ignoring how he bristles at her theft. “Iknowit will work. Persephone, I’ve spent the last seventeen years researching this. I’ve run all the tests—”

“That’s the problem! Don’t you get it yet? The asphodel, the ghosts, thetruth—you’ve been running from it all this time, but you can’t keep closing your eyes. Hell is where Bas and I are.” I squeeze her hand, grab her elbow, shake her. “Listen to me, foronce, please. As long as the living keep dying, their souls willneverstop looking for us. And you’re right—you’reright. If you deploy that ghost bomb, you’ll close the gap. But once it’s closed, you’ll only trap hellhere.”

“So I trap it here!” Her fingernails dig into my arm. “So I buy you another fifty years! Don’t you deserve that?”

“Do they?” I demand, wrenching away, flinging an arm out at the abyss, into the distance, all my sorry souls so battered and bloodied by the world, the monstrous wall, the sharp edges of the lives they left behind. “They’re suffering!”

Mom doesn’t understand. She slaps my arm down, shaking her head.

“They wanted this! The world wanted this—the governmentpaidfor this—well, fine, I made them the bed they begged for, and they can goddamned sleep in it. They owe me this!” She bites every word, voice rising. “Theyowe me my daughter.”

In the distance, something booms against the locked door. The chains rattle hard. Bas brings his sun sword to hand—his light flares in the corner of my eye but I can’t look away.

Here it is—one last choice. One last step. Boots planted in the mouth of a crossroads, I can still turn back. I can give my mother what she wants, return to the living world with earbuds too loud to hear, eyes locked to the ground so I don’t have to see. I could drop this massive burden down the chasm and walk away, go back to school on Monday—

And good god, it’s still onlySaturday.

“No,” I tell her, choking down the tightness in my throat. Extracting myself from her grip, I step away. “Nobody owes you that.Idon’t owe you that. The people that are hurting—hell, maybe some of themarethe same people that hurt you—but most of them are just… Grandpa ghosts and accidents and roadkill. People who were sick or old or sad. Theyjust want torest. They’re hurting every second of every day, and I feel it. I suffer with them. It’s who I am. I’mresponsible.” I choke on the word, swallowed by its enormity.

Another step brings me back to Bas’s side. He reaches for me like a habit, ancient instinct drawing us together until our hollow chests kiss, my fists clenched in his singed hoodie, the glowing brand of his fingers spanning my cheeks. His forehead dips to mine. With burning hands, he welds my cracked and breaking body together, calloused thumbs brushing the corners of my eyes, steaming away the blur of tears.

“I’m sorry, Jenny. Time’s up,” he murmurs, hot breath misting in the gap between us. “We have to get moving. The soldiers are almost here.” Bas smiles, fingers trailing my half of our red thread of fate. Gently, he presses my MP3 player into my hand.

“You were right, you know,” he says, stepping away. “There is no back to normal. There’s no road trip that can fix this. No pancakes or meat mountains. Only us. It’s time to stop running.” He swallows hard, shoulders firming, Cain’s words bittersweet in his mouth. “We’re weapons. It’s time we aimed ourselves.”

A battering ram crashes against the distant door again. Metal squeals. Shouting blares through the crack, orders, another wall-shaking crash that sends stalactites shattering to the iron grating around us. Water pours down a swiftly widening crack, a trickling creek blazing into a river—

And swimming like salmon in its current, dozens of gleaming ghost lights.

Ghosts climb the walls. Will-o’-the-wisps kite through the unsteadyfluorescent dim. A misty hand claps Bas’s shoulder. Cain boils up around him, his young-again face so devastatingly proud despite the pain, the ghost fence still gnawing at him every second he remains.

“Hey, kid,” he says, tapping a knuckle to Bas’s chin. “Whatever you’re gonna do, might want to do it quick. That door won’t hold out much longer. How are we gonna play this?”

Mom’s face cracks. Grief scores her raw. But something in the pain urges her on. At last, she breaks into motion.

“We have to go,” she blurts, reaching for my hand. “Come on.”

She drags me after her. Sword drawn, his father bolstered on his shoulders to keep from burning on the iron floor, Bas follows. We plunge into a final room and my ocean—the unused heart shriveled in my chest—shivers into something like a beat.

It’s the room.

It’stheroom. And it’s all still here. The table, the runes scratched into the stone floor, the blood, the back wall fallen away to stare into a deeper cave, the heart of the earth—myheart, my true heart—a funerary drum beatinghome, home, home.

And in the corner, a cassette player hisses, stuck at the end of a tape.

CHAPTER 23

Playlist: Pastel Melodies for Rotting

“Wish You Were Here (reprise)” by Pink Floyd

Help me with this!” my mother barks.

I can’t move. Time smears around me. Bas fragments into a blur. The two of them together heave the heavy iron table against the door. My mom kicks over a filing cabinet. On her butt in the dirt, she shoves with her legs until she rams it into place.