Page 67 of Some Kind of Haunted

“Shit.”

Jack sees it before I do. I have to look back at him to see what he’s swearing about, and when I look in the direction of his gaze—and Cleo’s run—I see a pretty white house with curtains fluttering in the breeze. It’s a bit cold for open windows, but—

My gaze drifts to the second floor. The windows are open there, too.

And a woman stands on the roof.

Jack and Cleo are racing for the front door, running flat out. I’m frozen for a moment, looking at the old woman standing there with both feet on the shingles while one hand grips the window. She’s pointing out at something, but I don’t think I’m the only one who doesn’t dare look away from her while she’s up there.

She isn’t dressed for the cold or the wind that whips through her wispy white hair. She’s saying something, but I can’t hear it. She isn’t steady. She—

It clicks then, a breath after Jack’s curse. She must be Cleo’s grandmother. She is the face in the window from the other night. And she is most definitely not well. I race inside after Cleo and Jack, chasing them up the stairs and arriving at the top of the house long after they have.

When I find them in a room upstairs, Jack is already out the window. He’s got his hand over the old woman’s, helping her hold on to the window. Cleo is inside, clutching Jack like they’re a kind of chain, linking her grandmother to safe ground.

“I can see them,” I hear the woman say. I can only see her back, but her head turns to Jack. “Can’t you see them?” she asks him desperately.

I look to Jack, who is precariously balanced with one hand clasped to Cleo’s grandmother’s hand. “Sure, I see them,” he says gently. Soothingly. “But there are better places to do that, aren’t there? Safer.”

“It’s coming. They’re gathering. They’re feeding.”

“We know,” Jack says. “Come back inside, Virginia. We’ll talk all about it.”

“Come on in, Grandma,” Cleo echoes. Her voice is strong, but her eyes are dark with worry.

With some finagling, Jack manages to get her back in through the window before he comes back in himself. I think we’re all a little shaky, but Cleo gets her grandmother to sit down in an armchair in the corner.

“Down by the river,” Virginia is saying, looking at Cleo like she’s searching for something. An anchor, maybe. An answer. “They’re gathering too soon. It’s worse. Like before.”

Cleo kneels at her grandmother’s feet, clasping her hands in hers. “Shh. It’s okay,” she says. Cleo looks at Jack, then me. “She’s getting confused. She . . . Sometimes she remembers Feeds from before and thinks it’s happening now.”

It makes sense. How traumatic events might come back to haunt you when your brain is failing you. But something about Cleo talking to me brings Virginia’s gaze to mine.

It almost makes me jump, because it’s like looking into my own eyes. Or Logan’s. They must be Darling eyes.

My grandmother Amelia’s eyes.

For a weird, topsy-turvy moment it’s like time flows around me. Past and future. In and out. All things and nothing, and I think maybe I mixed up my sleeping pills last night.

“You see,” she says. To me. At me.

It doesn’t feel like a threat. I’m not even sure it feels like a warning, but I don’t know how to describe how those words hit me. The you is directed at me.

You see.

“You see it. In your dreams. Don’t you?”

Everything in me freezes. She knows I dream? But . . . Cleo says she’s misremembering. Maybe she’s confused me with someone else. With Nora?

But Virginia sinks deeper into the chair, looking tired. Tired but lucid as she gazes at me with heartbreak in her eyes. “Amelia so wished there was more she could have done for you. But your father took you, and Midas let you leave.”

I swallow, and I hear Cleo and Jack inhale sharply. Because it’s clear. She’s never met me, at least as an adult. No one introduced me. But in one look, she knew exactly who I was.

“She brought you back. Amelia sacrificed everything to bring you back.”

My heart is so loud in my ears it’s like a physical pounding, like I am throbbing from the inside out. Sacrificing everything means . . .

“She knew where the real danger was,” Virginia says, her gaze moving to Jack. Something in it hardens, and her grip on Cleo’s hand tightens. “Where it always is. She knew. Do you know?”