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During several terrifying incidents at Evernight, including one that nearly killed me, that was precisely what the wraiths had tried to do.
Vic sighed. At this point, we’d been parked in front of his house for more than five minutes, and we’d been arguing about this ever since we’d left the diner. The water sprinklers on the broad green lawn had cycled through three different speeds. He said, “We appear to be at something known as an impasse.”
“I wish to make an observation,” Ranulf said.
Exasperated, Lucas said, “You’re not the only one cramping up in this backseat, okay?”
Ranulf replied, “That was not the observation.”
“Go ahead,” I said. Nobody would change my mind.
But then Ranulf said, “Are you not wearing an obsidian pendant?”
I put my hand around the antique pendant my parents had given me this past Christmas. An obsidian teardrop dangled from an ornate chain of copper that had gone green. At the time I’d thought the necklace simply a thoughtful gift, a reflection of my interest in vintage clothes. However, Mrs. Bethany had informed me later that obsidian was one of the many minerals and metals that repelled wraiths.
In other words, it could help keep me safe. Since she’d told me that, I’d never taken the pendant off, not even to bathe. I’d almost forgotten about it.
“The obsidian gives me some protection,” I admitted, “but I don’t know how much or for how long.”
“I promise you, this ghost isn’t a baddie,” Vic said. “Wraith. Whatever. She’s awesome. At least, I think she’s a she.”
Lucas asked, “Have you talked to this thing? Communicated with it somehow?”
“Not exactly, but—”
“So how do you know it’s ‘awesome’?”
“The same way I know I’m being mocked,” Vic said, eyes narrowing. “I can just tell.”
I still wanted to tell Vic to back his car out of the driveway and take me and Lucas back to our hotel. Yet I knew we could only afford a few more nights there, and that only because we’d gotten a lucky deal. Vic would loan us whatever cash we needed, but I wanted to borrow as little as possible. If we couldn’t stay on his property through July and early August, we’d have to ask him for thousands. I really preferred not to do that.
My hand still clasped around the pendant, I said, “I’ll go in.”
“Bianca, don’t.” Lucas looked furious, but I put one hand on his arm to steady him.
“You and Ranulf wait out here. If you hear any screaming or the windows ice over—”
“I don’t like the sound of this,” Lucas said.
“I said if, okay?” Now that I’d made the decision, I didn’t want to sit around worrying; I wanted to do it and get it over with. “If that happens, you guys come in and help. Vic and I will try it this time. We won’t stay here if the wraith causes a problem.”
Although Lucas still looked displeased, he nodded. Vic clambered over his driver’s side door without even opening it. As I got out, I could hear Ranulf’s knees crack as he straightened his legs and gave a long sigh of relief.
Vic’s parents weren’t home, so the house was empty. Their place was gorgeous, more like something in a magazine than any real home I’d ever been in. The foyer was tiled in green marble, and a small chandelier hung from the thirty-foot ceiling. Everything smelled like furniture polish and oranges. We walked up a central staircase that was broad, white, and flowing. I could imagine Ginger Rogers dancing down those steps in a dress of ostrich feathers; certainly a movie star would belong here more than me in my cheap little sundress.
Of course, Vic didn’t quite seem to belong here either—and this was his house. I wondered if his carefree goofiness was maybe his way of rebelling against the perfect order his parents had established.
“She only shows up in the attic,” he said, as we walked along the parquet hallway upstairs. The paintings on the wall looked old. “That’s her special place, I think.”
“You actually see her?”
“Like a figure in a sheet or something? Nah. You just know she’s there. And every once in a while—Well, we’ll try it. Don’t want to get your hopes up.”
My one hope at that moment was not to get freeze-dried by a wraith. Silently thanking my parents for the pendant, I watched as Vic opened the door to the attic stairs and started to climb. I took a couple of deep breaths before I followed him.
The Woodsons’ attic was the only messy part of the house. The clutter was nicer than in most attics, I suspected. A blue-and-white Chinese vase sat on a dusty desk as wide as a bed and probably almost a hundred years old. A dressmaker’s dummy wore a jacket of yellowing lace and an old Edwardian ladies’ hat still jaunty with plumes. The Persian rug underfoot looked genuine, at least to my uneducated eye. Although the air smelled musty, it was a nice sort of musty, like old books.
“I like it up here,” Vic said. His face was more serious than usual. “This is probably my favorite place in the whole house.”
