Kady Cross - Sisters Of Salt And Iron

It made sense that if the dead could easily cross at this time of year, then the living could, as well. It felt strange, though. I’d never heard of it happening before, but that didn’t mean it hadn’t. I wished our ancestor Emily—who had reached out to both Lark and me before—would decide to show up and give us some advice on how this living/dead twin thing worked, but we hadn’t seen her since the night she helped Lark tap into her ghost-fighting abilities.

I hadn’t had any glimpses of her sister, Alys, either—who had occasionally shown herself to me at my grandmother’s house. It was frustrating, because I felt like their appearances meant something. Shouldn’t they have moved on?

I wanted to find Emily and Alys. I wanted them to tell Lark and me why we existed. What was the reason? What was our destiny? I wanted answers. But it seemed that Lark and I were destined to wind up with nothing but an endless list of questions.

The one thing that struck me as I left the woman to wander the streets of shadow-Edwardian London, was that neither of Lark’s witnesses had remarked that she looked like me. That meant that she looked different here—maybe like how I looked when I manifested in the living world? No wonder the women had been afraid of her.

What would happen if Lark manifested here for any length of time? We spent so much time trying to make sure I didn’t cause harm in the living world with my abilities, but we’d never considered whether she could be a danger to the dead.

And why hadn’t we discussed it? I’d seen her punch a ghost. Seen her hurt a spirit. Those ones had deserved it, but what if she went after someone who didn’t? She might hurt someone, just like there was the danger of me doing harm when I manifested among the living.

I was getting ahead of myself. There was no need to get anxious. This might have been an All Hallows’ Eve aberration. Yes, that was the best way to think of it for now. If it happened again, I’d consult the Shadow Lands library.

I drifted back into the earthly realm. I spent more time among the living than I did the dead. It wasn’t completely because of Lark and our friends, but because I found the living more interesting.

The Shadow Lands was made up of bits and pieces the dead had assembled—not quite Heaven, but a more idyllic version of what their lives had been. There wasn’t the amount of emotion and drama going on that there was in the living world. Lark turned her nose up at many of the reality shows on the television, but she didn’t seem to realize that, to me, her life was a reality show! Even the simple act of shopping was interesting to someone who only had to “think” her appearance and make it so.

I ended up at Haven Crest. I didn’t wonder why—I wasn’t totally vacuous. It was obvious that some part of my mind had been thinking about Noah. Other than Lark’s realm-jumping, I hadn’t thought about much other than him all day.

It was late afternoon, and while the daylight hours had shortened considerably in New England, there was still an hour or more of daylight left. Noah wasn’t a young ghost, so there was a chance he might be about, especially if I could find the spot he haunted.

Finding another ghost wasn’t easy in a place like this. The dead recognized each other’s energy, so if I was in a house with one or two ghosts I could probably seek them out without much trouble. A place like Haven Crest, though... Well, there were so many ghosts that trying to find just one was like that old saying about needles and haystacks.

Maybe not quite that hard. I had interacted with Noah. Our spirits had brushed together. That would make it a little easier to find him once I found the right spot—just like Lark knew the scent of Ben’s soap, I would recognize Noah’s energy.

Based on the way he’d been dressed I knew he had to have died in the late nineteenth/early twentieth century. There had been fewer buildings back then, and of those only the main residence and one other had been used to house patients. I knew this because, after Josiah Bent, Lark and I both wanted to make sure we knew as much about this place as we could. Haven Crest was so haunted it was practically a spiritual entity itself. That was something that needed to be watched.

I moved toward the main building, where there had been a wing for male patients and another for female. A building to the left of that, some distance away—closer to the forest and former garden—had been segregated in a similar manner, but with one difference. It had been for the wealthy patients. The wealthy white patients. I’d learned that the “colored” inmates had been divided by gender and affluence and were housed in a separate building.

Lark had tried explaining racism to me in the past, and while I understood the concept, I couldn’t wrap my mind around the sentiment behind it. People ought to be judged by their character, not their color.

Based on the fact that Noah had fair skin and had been well dressed, it was probably a valid assumption that he haunted the upper-class residence, so that’s where I went. Thankfully, this was not where Josiah Bent and his followers had haunted, because I probably wouldn’t be welcomed there by many of them. As an outsider, Dead Born and free to go wherever I wanted, I was going to be resented, regardless.

That knowledge didn’t keep me from entering the old building. Its once beautiful windows were mostly broken and boarded up. The large, double doors were locked but hung loose on rusted hinges, dirty white paint peeling. It reminded me of photos I’d seen one time Lark was browsing some internet site—photos of celebrities who had ruined their looks with drugs and alcohol. This building had been beautiful once, but it had been abandoned to the ravages of time and neglect.

I walked through those sad doors and stood in the middle of a reception area with a high, vaulted ceiling. It looked as though there had been some plasterwork on the walls at one time, but it had been pried off. Broken pieces lay scattered on the dirty hardwood floor. Not just neglected, this building had been pillaged, as well.

Vandals. Their kind had no respect for anything. How terrible it must be for those who haunted this place to see it slowly stolen away. It hurt me—offended the deepest part of me.

In response to my anger, the building cried out. To living ears it would have sounded like a low groan—creaking floors or old pipes. To me, it was an anguished wail.

Yes, Haven Crest was more than just a collection of old wood and stone.

“Wren?”

I turned my head. Standing on the stairs to my left was Noah. He looked concerned. “Is something wrong? I felt...a disturbance.”

I shook my head, but my heart was full of sorrow. “This place must have been beautiful once.”

“It was.” He continued down the stairs. He was wearing different clothes today—a white shirt and gray vest with black trousers and boots. His thick hair was tousled as though he’d been running his hands through it. He was beautiful. I just stood there and watched as he approached me.

“Would you like to see it as it once was?” he asked.

I didn’t know if seeing its former glory would make what I felt better or worse, but I knew that I wanted to see it. “Yes.”

“Take my hand.”

I slipped my hand in his, feeling the warmth of his fingers around mine. Slowly, the faded wallpaper gave way to a beautiful pale blue damask. The plasterwork reappeared as frames on the walls and bouquets of flowers in the corners of the ceiling. The wood floor gleamed, the stairs, as well, and they were covered by a strip of cream carpet with roses printed on it. Above our heads a sparkling chandelier hung, its brass chain shining. Even the reception desk was a thing of beauty. And the windows! They were flanked by pale gold velvet curtains, pulled back to let in the sunlight.