Hourglass

“But you’re one of us now.” Her aqua-green face shone in the soft dawn light. “Don’t you see how much better this is?”

Lucas turned to Balthazar. “If she’s a ghost—a wraith—then how do we contact her?”

“I’m right here!” I called. But they didn’t hear.

Balthazar looked entirely lost for words. “I don’t—vampires and wraiths—we learn how to avoid them, not how to talk to them.”

“Who would know?” Lucas’s eyes were desperate. “Is there a way? Any way? I don’t know of one—maybe there isn’t one—Dammit, there’s got to be one. Gotta be.” He glanced down at the grave, and then shut his eyes tightly.

“I’m thinking, okay?” Balthazar didn’t look much more encouraged than Lucas. “Do you know anybody in Black Cross who could tell us something?”

Lucas groaned. “Plenty of people. None of whom I can ever speak to again. Except—maybe—”

He was considering it—seriously considering reaching out to Black Cross, although the hunters might well be under orders to kill him on sight. Oh, no, I thought. Lucas can’t do that. He’s upset, he’s confused, it’s a terrible idea—

The world dissolved into bluish fog again, and I lost any sense of a corporeal body. Although in some ways that sensation was liberating—kind of like flying in dreams—I didn’t enjoy not having a body. Bodies were good. Bodies told you where you were and what you could do. Already I seriously missed having one I could rely on.

As I attempted to pull myself into some kind of shape, the wraith coalesced beside me in the mist. “You’ll actually learn to have fun with this in time. But it takes some getting used to.”

“I’m not getting used to it today.” When I spoke only to her, the words had begun to feel like talking—even if nothing was actually said aloud. “We have to discuss what’s happened to me.”

“So, talk.”

“Not while we’re—floaty and lost and whatever! Take me someplace real. Someplace we can both be real.”

“Fine, be that way.”

In the blink of an eye, the mist vanished. She and I stood in the attic of Vic’s house, not far from the dressmaker’s dummy, which still wore its jaunty plumed hat. I could smell the musty old books and see the clutter piled high—although a little less, since he’d provisioned our wine-cellar home. The wooden slats of the floor showed vividly through our translucent feet.

She smiled at me, still smirking a bit. The wraith could have been pretty, if it hadn’t been for the expressions on her face. Her fair hair was stick straight and cut short in a bob. She had a narrow chin, a strong nose, and sharp, knowing eyes. It startled me to realize that she was probably a year or two younger than I was.

Well, that she’d been a year or two younger when she died. For the first time, I realized I would never get any older. That somehow felt more final than all the rest.

The wraith said, “I’m Maxie O’Connor. I died here almost ninety years ago. I’ve haunted this house ever since. You’ll feel drawn to this place, too, since you died here and everything, but I’m telling you right now, this house is mine. I let you guys camp in the basement as a favor to Vic, but that’s all. Visit, don’t stay.”

Like I’d even want to visit. Her name sounded vaguely familiar, but I couldn’t place it and didn’t much care. “You’re a wraith.” The next part was hard to say, but I managed it: “Like me.”

Maxie nodded.

Ugh—a wraith. I’d learned to hate and fear the wraiths during my last year at Evernight Academy. As far as I could tell, all they did was frighten and torment people. The one in Raquel’s house had been a true monster. Now I was one of them. The revulsion I felt cut me deeply; it was like it would’ve been better to be nothing at all. For the first time, I truly understood Lucas’s resistance to becoming a vampire. Turning into something I’d never meant to be—never wanted to be—meant losing something important about myself, maybe losing myself entirely. He’d seen that all along.

Despite my dying hopes, I had to ask: “And there’s—there’s no way back? To being alive, I mean.”

“Oh, yeah, it’s easy as pie.” Maxie smirked. “You just snap your fingers. That’s how come I didn’t change back to being human years ago.”

“You don’t have to be sarcastic.”

“True. I don’t have to. I threw that in at no extra charge.”

Maxie had been the wraith who had attempted to kill me at school. I now realized that might have been the high point of our relationship. Then I thought about that for a second. “Wait—I saw you at Evernight Academy. Repeatedly. How could you be there when you were haunting this house?”

Like it was the most obvious thing in the world, Maxie said, “Vic, of course. I’m connected to him, and he traveled to Evernight. From there, I was able to contact you.”

“You’re Vic’s ghost.” I remembered how fond he’d been of Maxie. Obviously he hadn’t interacted with her very much.

“Why don’t you just appear to him outright?”

“It’s difficult to appear to the living. Those two guys downstairs—”

“Lucas and Balthazar.”

“Lucas I knew, but not the vampire. They’re hot, by the way. And you had them both on the string? Nice job.”