Page 55 of Some Kind of Haunted

Because I am Lexi Darling, a member of one of Midas’s founding families with a foundling for a mother who passed down these gifts to me, and I am going to help, however I can.

And if I have anything to say about it, I’m going to be one of the good guys while I do it, and, who knows? Maybe sort this whole town out while I’m at it.

Chapter Seventeen

I spend the next few mornings in a similar routine. I go to the diner, Jack gestures me to the kitchen stool while Braxton gets me coffee, and Jack hands me breakfast—always something different that I did not order. Always something delicious that I probably wouldn’t order, if I’m honest, though I can’t remember why when I taste the things he’s made.

Jack kind of keeps his distance, but not in a I read your dreams and think you’re psycho way. More like he’s distracted with other things. Or possibly because my dreams aren’t really the help he thought they might be.

I think this is best, because I am mostly distracted by the way Jack looks when he laughs with Marleen, and it is not good for my focus. If my dreams actually helped and if he’d taken them so seriously as to come and talk with me about them . . .

Well, I could do some really, really dumb things for a pair of eyes that green.

Besides, I have decided to own my gifts and help the best I can either way. How lovely to have that put to the test immediately, I tell myself. Surely there’s something metaphoric in thinking my dreams are the key after all these years of being a curse, only to find they’re not really much of anything.

Also, I am trying to focus. After these cozy breakfasts on that stool that show me glimpses into who Jack might be beneath all the glowering, I spend at least the morning and often the afternoon with Harrison. I learn about the history of Midas, demon deals, and the Darlings.

Harrison mostly avoids talking about my grandmother. I think they must have been good friends and it makes him too sad, so I don’t pry. No matter how much I want to ask him why he thinks Amelia told him that our father remembered everything that was happening here, when that shouldn’t be possible, according to everything he’s teaching me. Or that she suggested Logan and I would know, too, when that doesn’t track with any of the stories he tells me about other Midas residents who left.

They go. They have reasons for not coming back that can’t be argued with, because they have different memories. Midas protects itself—and the Feed. That’s what I’m getting from all of this.

But I’m not going to force a sweet old man to psychoanalyze his friend when he’s still grieving her death.

Harrison never complains that I need a breather, or when I have trouble hiding that my mind is wandering. He shares his stories, his history, and lets me go when I can’t sit still any longer. Every day, he wishes me well.

Sometimes I wonder if I should tell him about the dream notebook even though Jack told me not to, because maybe he would have a different take on what’s in those pages. But I never say anything.

Logan usually comes in search of me sometime around lunch. I fill him in on what I’ve learned, and he grills Harrison on logistics. Where do the foundlings come from? No concrete answer. How does a person know if they’re dealing with a demon? Harrison feels like he’d just know, but he hasn’t come face-to-face with one.

None of his answers ever satisfy Logan. For him, the longer the days stretch on, the more edgy he gets. I think he misses New York. His job. Feeling like someone important.

I find myself realizing that I don’t miss home much at all. Not that Midas is somehow morally superior to the big city, like most of the people around here seem to think, as if that’s obvious. It’s just that the longer we stay, the more I think Midas fits me better.

I wonder how Logan would take that if I told him. I wonder how anyone who knows me would take it. Would it just be another in the long line of Lexi’s Gone Crazy jokes?

Would it matter?

But that’s not what’s important in this moment. The only goal right now is to try to find some connection between history, my dreams, and what everyone knows. Before Halloween. Before the Feed.

But every day, there’s only so much of these back-to-school history lessons I can take before my brain refuses to engage. When I glance at the big picture window today and see the sun is starting to set—the sky a dusky kind of orange—I congratulate myself on sticking it out. This is the longest I’ve managed to stay.

“It’s later than I thought,” I say, nodding toward the window. “I think I’ll head over to the knitting shop and see if Nora needs any help closing up the store.”

That’s another thing I like about Midas—the knitting shop. I’ve been in too many knitting shops to count, and I like them, but none of them were mine. I don’t even mean legally mine. I just mean that I know Nora and Cleo, and they know me, and are still reliably happy to see me.

It feels a lot like those real friends I told Logan I’d never had. It feels a lot like that belonging.

Maybe it just feels good to walk into a place filled with the thing I love the most—yarn—and not have to use that yarn to hide from people.

“Nora . . . She’s a good girl,” Harrison says now, with an odd carefulness to his tone. He’s studying me with his bushy eyebrows drawn together.

I feel like I’m being tested. “I really like her.”

And I genuinely do. All the brash determination I’ve developed to mask what’s going on underneath and inside me usually weeds out the quiet and shy pretty fast. And Nora is both.

But she’s also certain. There’s a kind of steadfastness inside all her nervousness. I don’t know anyone like her. I’m not sure I know her all that well, but I’m trying. And I think she’s trying, too.

And she’s an easier nut to crack than Cleo.