Page 35 of City of Liars

Sure enough, a cool breeze curled through the room, making the flames flicker. Goosebumps sprang up on my skin despite the heat of the fire, and I reached for the throw draped over the couch, wrapping it around myself. “Wow. I never thought of it like that, but you’re absolutely right.”

Tessa reached for the pitcher, pouring herself another margarita. “You’ve infiltrated them, honey. You’ve got the power of the privileged at your fingertips and the righteous fire of the disenfranchised in your belly. And let’s get real, there’s nothing more threatening than that.”

“You think I threaten them?” My eyes widened.

“I know you do.” She lifted her glass, her dark eyes sparkling at me over the rim. “Viva la revolución, my friend.”

“Salud,” I said in reply, and leaned across the coffee table.

But before our glasses could touch, the breeze swept through the room again, stronger this time. It swept the napkins onto the floor, scattering them. The flames flickered, then shot high, sending shadows leaping up the walls. In the corner, the piano began to play a tentative tune, jarred loose as the wind rattled the keys.

As suddenly as it had begun, it was over. The room was still, the piano silent. Across the table, Tessa and I regarded each other with identical expressions of shock.

“What the hell was that?” she said, sounding shaken.

“I must’ve left a window open,” I said, sliding off the couch to gather the napkins and striving not to sound unsettled.

She knelt next to me, picking up the rest. “I guess so. But the piano…that was creepy. My Uncle Wei would say it was a ghost, for sure. And my Tia Ana would say it’s close to Día de los Muertos, so the veil between the living and the dead is thin.”

I suppressed a shudder. Usually, Tessa was as pragmatic as they came, but every so often, the superstitions of her childhood bubbled to the surface. “There are no such things as ghosts,” I reminded her, reassuring myself as much as Tessa.

“Maybe it was Feng Po Po,” she offered, giving me a half-hearted smile as she stacked the napkins on the table and slid back into the armchair. “The goddess of the wind.”

“Yeah, because that sounds much better than a ghost.”

Giving a last uneasy glance at the piano, Tessa clinked her glass against mine. She took a single, perfunctory sip, and then her phone buzzed. “Oh, crap,” she said, glancing at it. “I didn’t realize how late it was. Apparently Maia can’t fall asleep. Dean’s read her five stories, but she’s still asking for me. I’ve got to go.”

Was it my imagination, or did I detect a tiny note of relief in Tessa’s voice? Normally, she’d tell Dean to work it out, he was their dad, not a babysitter. And unlike Gray, he actually did. This time, though, she got to her feet, grabbed her raincoat, and slung her purse over her shoulder.

“Call me anytime if you need moral support,” she said. “Keep me in the loop when you go to New York with hot piano dude. And not just about what your research turns up, either.” She winked at me. “I want to know everything.”

“I will,” I said.

Hugging me, she stepped out into the rain. I went from one window to the next, determined to figure out which one I’d failed to shut. But to my surprise, all of them were not only closed, but latched.

The house was old, I told myself, dismissing a flicker of unease. Even a locked window wasn’t airtight. There was a perfectly reasonable explanation for what had happened.

But after I’d watched the fire burn to ashes, checked on Chloe, and crawled into bed—which, unsettlingly, still smelled of Theo—it was a different story. Alone in the darkness, I thought again of the way Grandma Ella’s doppelganger had strolled past Atomic’s bouncer and slipped between the people on the dance floor, unnoticed by anyone but me.

How she’d vanished into thin air, as if she’d never really been there at all.

20

The Making of Lucinda Snow – 1927

The Ghost People told the girl that visitors had come to see her, and hope sparked in her heart.

They had dressed her in stiff white clothes, with a matching bow in her hair, and given her a book to hold. In the girl’s vague recollection of Before, there had been a book with brightly colored pictures of animals. She remembered a woman’s voice reading it aloud, the smell of laundry soap, and the safety of warm arms wrapped around her.

When the Ghost People put the book in her hands, she had opened it, looking for pictures, but there had been none. Disappointed, she’d tugged at the skirt of the nearest adult—a woman named Mrs. Reming, dressed all in white like the rest of the Ghost People—wanting to show her what was missing. The woman leaned down and the girl pointed, turning one page after another, her eyebrows raised in silent question.

“That’s the Bible, Lucinda,” Mrs. Reming said, scooping the girl into her lap. “A very important book. Can you say Bible?”

The girl frowned, her lips shaping the word. Lucinda, they’d named her, after Mrs. Reming’s sister. Lucinda Snow, because she’d been found on a snowy day. “Our little snowgirl,” they called her with affection.

Ghost girl, she thought instead, but couldn’t speak.

“You’ll need the Bible,” Mrs. Reming persisted, straightening the bow in the girl’s hair, “when you get to your new home. They’ll need to see you’re a good Christian girl. You’ll show them, won’t you? When you meet your family, you’ll talk to them.”