a while to forgive them, with Martha helping me work through the deception. I hadn’t quite forgiven the Knell yet.
On the other hand, the Knell was my best chance—maybe my only chance—to find both Neos and my missing family.
Upstairs, I found Nicholas in the hallway, listening at Natalie’s door. Even while lurking, his youth made him seem innocent. From the look of him, he’d died sometime during the Dickensian era. “Food, Glorious Food” could spring from his lips at any moment.
What are you doing? I asked.
She won’t stop crying. Even after I made her a fire.
Nicholas laid the fires and polished the silver and did whatever other tasks Anatole and Celeste deemed below their dignity. Gotta love a household staff of ghosts.
I’ll take care of her, I said. Go find something to eat, will ya?
I wish, he mumbled, before fading out.
Oh yeah, he couldn’t eat. Sorry, I called after him, then knocked on Natalie’s door. “It’s me.”
She cried harder.
I went in and found her curled in a fetal position on the bed, not bothering to look up. The room was a mirror image of my own, with antique furnishings and a minuscule fireplace, but hers was in shades of yellow, while mine was blue green. I plopped down next to her and started rubbing circles on her back.
She took a shuddering breath. “I like ghosts,” she said, in a small voice. “I’ve never been afraid of them, you know?” She turned her face toward me and I grabbed a box of tissues from the bureau to wipe her tears.
“Blow,” I said.
She rolled her eyes. “Thanks, Mom,” she said, lifting tissues from the box.
“Well, right now …” I left the rest unspoken. We were both missing our moms, and with Martha gone, we kind of had to fill in for each other. I brushed her hair behind her ears and silently encouraged her to tell me what brought this on.
“It was just seeing his casket go into the grave. I knew you were going to summon him later, but he won’t be the same, will he?”
“Not quite,” I said, looking at the gray light filtering through the window. “He’s sad. I don’t remember his ever being sad.”
“And then—this is totally selfish—but I couldn’t help thinking about me. All those people there. If I died, who’d even come to the funeral? Do you think my parents would care?”
“I’m sure they—”
She blew her nose. “I don’t even have a family anymore. I chose seeing ghosts over my parents. And now I drift from place to place, wherever the Knell sends me. What kind of life is that?”
“I don’t know.”
“A crappy one.”
“But, Natalie, look at you. You’re the queen of coping. You’re pretty and fun and you make friends everywhere you go.”
“I’m in eleventh grade and this is my fifth high school.” She sniffled. “You know the Knell is paying for Thatcher?”
Thatcher Academy was the private school we both attended, with uniforms and fencing classes and old money. I’d wondered who was footing the bill for both of us, but had been too preoccupied by the fact that I could control ghosts to ask about it.
“They already told me they’ll pay for college,” she said.
“That’s a good thing, right?”
She grimaced. “They saved my life.” She’d been in a bad situation, before Bennett stepped in and rescued her. “But when am I going to stop owing them? I don’t think they’d care if I died.”
“Natalie, stop. You’re not going to die. And I’d care.”
“You would?”
I took her hand. “Of course. And so would Bennett. We’re your family now.”
She gave me a watery smile. “We do bicker like sisters.”
“Exactly!”
I hugged her and she said, “Um, now that we’re sisters, I feel I can say that you need to do something about that smell.”
“I fell into Coby’s grave.”
She started laughing, like I’d hoped she would. Her mood lightened and, with that crisis averted, I told her I had to pack for the appointment with the Knell.
I was at the door when she said, “Emma, don’t let them split us up.”
“Why would they?”
“They don’t like us to get too close. But they’ll listen to you.”
I frowned. We were like family, and the Knell had played manipulative games to get us together. I hated the idea that they might try to separate us. And what did that mean for me and Bennett? Did the Knell know how close we were getting? Were they going to send Bennett away? My heart constricted at the thought.
“I won’t let them,” I promised,