“I’m just making conversation.”
“Want to trade bedrooms? You look tired.”
“I can manage. Thanks for the compliment.” She looked around. “The Thornhills are that way.” She pointed. “School was somewhere there. There was a house over there with an old lady in it. She’s probably dead now. That’s all I know.”
“Impressive,” I said.
She picked up on my sarcasm immediately. “Stuff it, Vail. I only learn what I need to learn, and nothing else. It’s how I save brain space for other things.”
“Other things like shampoo.”
“Says the man whose area of expertise is how to jump into a body of water.”
Ouch. “Who owned the house across the street when we were kids?” I asked her.
“No one,” she replied. “It was empty.”
“Someone attempted a renovation sometime since we left, then gave up.”
She shrugged.
“The Thornhills aren’t home,” I said. “They haven’t been home for approximately ten days.” I knew this from the newspapers and mail I’d picked up from the porch.
Dodie’s eyes lit up, and our gazes locked.
“No,” I said. “Not today. We’re supposed to be looking for Ben.”
“Fine, you joyless drip. Where to now? It’s your expedition.”
“You’re the one with a map in your head, even though it’s faulty.”
“You’re the one that dragged me out of bed.”
We could bicker like this all day. Wehaddone it all day, plenty of times. “The faster you pick a direction, the faster this is over with.”
“So pick a direction, then. I’m cold.”
I turned and took a step. Dodie’s heavy sigh behind me said I’d chosen wrong.
“For God’s sake, we’ll go the other way, then.”
“Well, you’vepicked.So I guess we’ll go this way, since apparently, that’s what we’redoing.”
I pushed branches out of our way, but I let them snap back a little hard, so she yelped behind me.
“You really slept normally?” Dodie asked after a minute.
“I told you, I don’t remember. I closed my eyes, and then I opened them. So I guess I slept.”
A pause. “I had dreams. The old ones, like I haven’t had since I left.”
The Fell house wasn’t a great place for sleeping. I’d never again had dreams anywhere else like I had here. I suspected my sisters had bad dreams, too—or maybe it was just Dodie who had dreams. What Violet saw was different and so, so much worse than a nightmare. What she saw didn’t always end when daylight came.
“I haven’t had mine yet,” I said, “but I will.”
“I don’t want to hear about your dreams,” she snapped. “They’re probably filthy, you perv.”
“There’s only one perv walking in these woods today, and it isn’t me.”
