Sisters Of Salt And Iron. Kady Cross

and stink and sharp teeth.

      “Hold her!” I cried.

      Wren seized her, fingers like talons as they restrained Daria’s arms. I tried not to look at her. I didn’t want to see my sister looking like something out of a horror movie. I ripped open the bag of salt and shoved my hand inside, scooping up the sharp grains and the charm. I looked up into the ghost’s fathomless eyes; there was no shred of humanity left.

      “Do it,” my sister growled. Her voice was like the drag of a shovel across a gravestone, and it was all the encouragement I needed to end this shit storm fast.

      I bolted upright, slamming my fist into the gaping side of Daria’s skull, burrowing my hand deep into the ectoplasm of her brain. I gagged.

      It’s not really her brain. She’s dead. A ghost—she has no brain, not physically. Telling myself that was the only thing that got me to open my fingers and release the salt and charm inside her. She reared up, screaming.

      I fell back on the floor, hands over my ears. It felt like my head was going to explode. I gasped for breath as tears streamed down my cheeks.

      And then, it was quiet. No other sound but the muffled music from the dance, reverberating through the floor.

      Daria was gone, and my sister sat beside me, her back to me, legs splayed and shoulders slumped.

      “Wren?” My voice sounded small.

      She held up her hand—it still looked like claws. I knew not to say another word. Instead, I sat up and took that hand in my own. Once we made contact it didn’t take long for it to morph back into its usual state. I didn’t understand my effect on my sister any more than I understood any part of our existence, but it didn’t matter. I was the one thing that could bring her back from a manifestation.

      “You okay?” I asked.

      She nodded. “Yes. You?”

      “I’m covered in salt and ghost-goo, but, yeah, I’m okay.” I was sore, but that would be gone by morning—another side effect of this whacked-out life.

      “This room’s a mess.”

      I glanced around at the damage. It was too much for me to undo. “We need to get out of here. Is she gone?”

      Wren nodded. “She’s gone. How did that even work?”

      I shrugged. “Don’t know. Don’t care.”

      “We need to start figuring these things out.”

      “Yeah, but not tonight.” I pushed myself to my feet. She followed—much more gracefully, of course. “There’s one thing we need to do before we go home.”

      “What’s that?”

      I grabbed her hand and pulled her toward the door. “Let’s dance.”

      

      WREN

      There really wasn’t any reason for me to stay at the dance once Daria moved on, but I knew it bothered Lark sometimes when I manifested, and that had been happening a fair bit lately. I couldn’t help it—Halloween was coming, and my ties to the world of the living were already abnormally strong. I knew Lark was having a difficult time with the number of ghosts she had to deal with, but I don’t think she realized how hard it was for me to try to remain hidden when All Hallows’ Eve demanded I come out and show myself.

      Anyway, I stayed at the dance so that Lark and I could have a little fun together—not that she paid that much attention to me. She had her boyfriend, Ben. And now that she had real, loyal friends, she didn’t need me so much. I was happy for her, and I knew I could hang out with her group anytime I wanted. But being in a room with people who couldn’t see or hear you seemed more like punishment than fun.

      I danced a little with Lark and our friends—she insisted they were mine, too—to a few faster songs. Even though Lark and Kevin—who I was trying to avoid—were the only ones who could actually see me, I still enjoyed myself—laughing as they took silly selfies and made what Sarah called “duck lips.”

      “Oh, my God,” Roxi said, as she looked at the screen of her phone. “There’s Wren!”

      Everyone crowded around to look. I drifted between Sarah and Kevin, knowing they’d feel the chill of my presence. Kevin looked right at me. I ignored him. He’d hurt my feelings and proven that he wasn’t the person I thought he was. I was having a hard time forgiving him for it.

      “That’s so weird,” Gage, Roxi’s boyfriend, remarked. “She looks so real.”

      I glanced at him at the same time Lark said, “She is real.”

      He rolled his dark eyes. “Realer, then.”

      Roxi kissed his cheek. “I think you mean tangible.”

      Gage shrugged. “Whatever. It’s just cool to see her, that’s all.”

      Everyone else agreed, and I smiled. Lark smiled, too.

      But then everyone broke into couples for the slow dance, and Kevin looked at me. “It is good to see you,” he said. No one else would ever hear him above the music, his voice was so low, but I could hear it, and he knew it. It took all my strength not to stick my tongue out at him—or rip his eyes out.

      I left instead. I couldn’t trust myself to be around him, not when that dark and angry part of myself was so close to the surface. I might hurt him, and I didn’t want to do that, no matter how much he’d hurt me.

      I let myself drift through town, wandering aimlessly along the dark streets. My kind were everywhere—strolling along the sidewalks, peeking in windows, sitting on benches. Tomorrow there would be even more of them as even the weaker ones gathered strength.

      Halloween was still days away, but that time of year has always been hard for me. This year it seemed even rougher. The veil between the world of the living and the world of the dead grows thinner as the calendar counts down to the end of October. It’s our holiday—when we can cross between dimensions and interact with the living if we wish. We can be our true selves. Those who have become violent or despondent remember who they were, and decide if they want to try moving on, or give themselves over to the darkness.

      A lot give up, but there are an equal number who move on.

      But not me. I stayed exactly where I was. I don’t think I had a choice.

      Halloween’s approach had to be hard on Kevin, as well. He was a medium, and his abilities had only gotten stronger since our encounter with the ghost of madman Josiah Bent at Haven Crest Hospital.

      I liked Kevin, and I thought he liked me, but then he told me we shouldn’t spend so much time together since we could never really have a relationship. Then I caught him kissing Sarah—Mace’s girlfriend. Mace, his best friend. That had stung, but the disappointment I’d felt was worse.

      I kept drifting. The town of New Devon wasn’t very big, and there wasn’t much more for a ghost to do there than there was for a living sixteen-year-old. I didn’t feel like going home, but I wasn’t going back to that dance.

      I suppose I shouldn’t have been surprised to find myself at Haven Crest. The abandoned asylum was incredibly haunted from years of treating those who were considered insane or were locked up by their families. The graveyard on the property contained hundreds of cremated remains—and those were just the ones the families hadn’t claimed.

      Haven Crest was full of, as Lark would put it, her people. Though, unlike Lark, most of the residents really were insane. If they hadn’t been when they went in, they had been by the time they died. It made for a lot of spectral energy in one spot, and like any ghost, I was drawn to it, because no one lived at