“Good. So now that Lu isn’t going to try to get in the middle of this, let’s get us untangled. Ready?”
“No.”
Ah, shit.
“Stella, this isn’t something that I can hold for long. The plane that ghosts exist upon and the one that I travel aren’t aligned exactly. Even if we didn’t want it to, they’re going to pull apart. And when they do that, they pull us apart too.”
“How long before that happens?”
“I don’t know. I’ve only been in this situation once, and I didn’t wait that long before bailing ship.”
“I want a favor,” she said.
“Fair.”
“I want to talk to my sister.”
It took me a second to figure out who she was talking about, but then an image, a memory of a much younger Dot, the owner of the house, filled my vision.
“So, Dot’s your sister?”
“Yes.”
“This was the house you grew up in together?”
“This was my room.” She didn’t sound upset that Dot had remodeled it and was renting it out, but ghosts could be tricky. The ghosts I’d run across had lost big swaths of the things that went into being human. Most of them had dissolved down into just a handful of their strongest emotions, memories, or wants.
There were exceptions to that rule, but Stella felt like she was on her way to losing some of those things. Losing bits of her personality that she’d naturally built and changed and grown when she was alive.
“Maybe I can give your sister a message?” I had no idea how I was going to do that, but I’d try. “It isn’t going to be easy. If the living aren’t ready to hear from a ghost, it can be pretty hard on them. Are you sure this message is worth it?”
“She needs to know. I have to tell her. Let me tell her. She needs to know.” Her emotions were boiling up, hot, heavy lava, smothering out my breathing room.
“All right. She needs to know. I’ll find a way to get her a message.”
“No. Not you. Me. Only me.Ineed to tell her.”
“That’s….more than I can promise, Stella.”
Her anger was a hard slap that would have left my nose bleeding if I were flesh and blood.
“I know things,” she said. “I…I saw your memories. You’re looking for answers.”
She had my full attention. “Be very clear with me.”
“I saw your…thoughts? She’s your wife, Lu? And you want to be with her, but she’s a…some kind of monster?”
“Lu’s no kind of monster.”
“But she’s not human. Not anymore. Not since that horrible attack—”
“I was there,” I said. “What does this have to do with talking to your sister?”
“It was thirty years ago, I think. Time’s hard for me. But a man came through town. Riding the road. He had things to sell.”
I didn’t see how a carpetbagger fit into this conversation.
“Magic things,” she said.
