She made quick work of cleaning up the altar, shoving everything into her bag with frustrated force. A pinch of graveyard dirt spilled over her torn blue jeans, but she dispersed it over the carpet until it almost looked like dust. Cody relieved her of the vodka, shoving it down the side of their shorts for later. Ellory checked one more time that there were no noticeable signs of their presence, and then she checked a second time to be safe.
Tai threw an arm around Ellory’s shoulders, steering her toward the elevator. “I never have a dull moment with you, Lor.”
Ellory managed a smile. “The whole reason I came to Warren was to entertain you.”
The elevator dinged open. Cody entered first, and Tai stepped in after them. Her arm passed through Ellory as if she were a ghost. Ellory blinked several times, but the image before her didn’t change. The elevator framed the forms of three people: Cody, Tai, and Ellory’s body gazing pensively at the ground between them.
She stared at herself, at her pineapple-shaped updo, her toothpaste-white high-tops, her dark brown knee peering through the frayed edges of the holes in her jeans. That was her, but ifthatwas her, then what wasshe? And how had she gotten that way?
She remembered the warmth of her skin, and the terror that hadgripped her. The flashes in the dark and the sense that if she focused hard enough, then she could see beyond this world on purpose this time. Even so, she stumbled backward as a frightening truth dawned on her.
Her séance had worked.
But she hadn’tsummoneda ghost.
Somehow, she had become one.
14
Someone cursed. For an instant, Ellory thought it was her, but her voice was not that deep or that far away.
The table to the far right of where they’d been sitting was no longer empty, and the carpet beneath her feet was no longer present. Shiny mahogany wood formed the floor, its lines distorted by a thin layer of mist that coated everything like freshly fallen snow. It reminded her of summers spent at the public pool, diving deep to watch the sunlight warp as it pierced the chlorinated water.
But the figure at the table noticed nothing wrong. He ran his thick fingers through neat brown locs, which fell over the wrinkled collar of his starch-white oxford shirt. Dripping from the top rail of the chair was a black hoodie with the Japanese characters forLupin the Thirdembroidered across the back. His sleeve was rolled up to reveal a detailed tattoo on his inner forearm of a crow with small black eyes and short black legs. Its feathers pointed, knifelike, toward a flat, square tail near the bend of his elbow. Above its head was the far-too-familiar symbol from the museum: a sun with a line through the center.
And she knew, without knowing how, that this was Malcolm Mayhew. The Graves Ghost, resurrected—or perhaps not yet entombed.
Vision blurring, Ellory crept closer, taking note of the undercut that his locs had hidden from the back. His eyebrows were faded. His mustache curled above his upper lip in a paintbrush swipe. His face was a light brown that darkened closer to his neck, and his round nose bore a silver septum piercing. Below his oxford shirt, he wore plaid patchwork pants in red and black. He scratched his cheek with ring-laden fingers. His large black eyes were walnut shaped.
She smiled when she noticed he had a half-eaten bag of Twizzlers by his textbook. At least her research had been sound.
Wait. She still had lips?
Ellory looked down at herself and tried not to scream. She was a translucent shadow, a figure made of the endless void between worlds, limned in skull-white stardust. She had known—she hadseen—that she’d been severed from her own body, but it was one thing to watch herself walk away and another to see what little remained. Frost gathered in her chest, an invisible chill that seemed to root deeper the longer she and her body were separated. She staggered, catching the edge of the table to keep herself upright. A pen went flying as she fell through it.
Malcolm Mayhew cursed again. He grappled for his pen, and still he didn’t look at her. “I swear this bitch is haunted.”
Picking herself up, Ellory stifled a hysterical laugh. If only he knew.
“All right,” said Malcolm, “I think I know what I did wrong. But let me check one more thing before I try again.”
His chair scraped across the wood. It echoed through the emptylibrary. Moonlight snuck through the skylight, casting a ghostly glow in the shape of a spotlight, but Malcolm sat too far away to bask in it. She could see everything perfectly in the dark, but couldhe?
He rubbed his eyes as he ambled toward the nearby stacks. A watch was on his wrist; it was nearing three in the morning. His pants had suspenders clipped to the back and front pockets. Silver chains swung like pendulums from his belt loops. The shelves consumed him, until not even his shadow remained.
Ellory realized she was about to watch him die.
“WAIT!”
He didn’t hear her, couldn’t hear her. Maybe it was because she wasn’t really here, the memory unaffected by her spectral presence, but no matter how loudly she screamed, her own voice echoed back to her, sounding more mocking each time: “WAITWAITWAITWAIT.”
Ellory sprinted after Malcolm Mayhew, reasoning that if a table couldn’t hold her, then the shelves couldn’t crush her. He’d found a ladder and hefted himself up to the second rung, scanning the higher titles. Dust flaked from their aged spines. He coughed into his elbow twice before he hopped to the floor for a fit of sneezing. This time, when he climbed the ladder, he found the right book and freed it from the shelf in a grimy cloud of neglect. He wiped the cover on his pants and turned the yellowing pages with care, lips soundlessly forming the words of whatever he was reading.
All the while, the mist rose from the floor, climbing up Ellory’s legs, her hips, her shoulders. The room fell away until all she could see was the silver fog that gathered outside a perfect circle carved for Malcolm Mayhew alone. Behind him, the shelf creaked and groaned like a grandmother standing.
Suddenly, she couldn’t move any closer. Her feet were rooted to the ground.
Her stomach clenched. It was time.
