Page 76 of Some Kind of Haunted

He puts his own plate on the counter across from us, apparently choosing to eat while standing rather than coming around to a stool.

We eat in silence for a little while. I’m not sure if everyone is that hungry or just . . . lost in all the same unanswerable questions.

My gaze moves to Jack. He’s looking at me with that intense green that I want so to mean things it doesn’t. It can’t.

But then he looks away, puts his burger down, and sighs. “I know Cleo thinks her grandmother is confused, but it was more than that today. Wasn’t it, Lexi?”

He looks back at me. I remember the way Virginia looked at me, looked into me. I remember that she knew me. Who I was. Why I was there.

“It was,” I agree.

“Maybe not everything she said was clear, but it points to danger. It points to . . .” Jack runs his hand over his face like he’d give anything not to say this. “Maybe Lexi isn’t early. Maybe the Feed is coming sooner than we think.”

Chapter Twenty-One

After we eat and Jack issues a few more dire warnings, as that appears to be how he self-soothes, Nora herds Logan and me back upstairs. My twin swings into his elfin horror of a room like he’s never wanted anything more than to sleep there. And ignores me when I smirk at him.

More points to me.

Nora and I end up sitting together on the end of my bed. I think both of us are exhausted, but neither of us is quite ready to be left to our own thoughts.

Not after the bomb Jack dropped.

“Should we call Cleo and check up on her?” she asks, playing with a little tassel on one of the decorative pillows. “I would, but it’s so late now.”

“Tomorrow is soon enough,” I say, thinking about Virginia. “She said she’s safe there. She’s right, isn’t she? Even if the Feed is early?”

Nora inhales, then nods. “Nothing bad ever happens out at the airport, and she can hardly leave Virginia. Much less bring her here if she’s struggling with memory issues.” Nora blows out a breath. “All my life I’ve known the Feed would come, but none of this is happening like I thought it would.”

I can’t help but laugh at that. “I know the feeling. And I didn’t know anything about the Feed.”

She leans into me, shoulder to shoulder. If I could have dreamed up a sister who’s the opposite of Logan and somehow the other side of something I needed, it would be Nora. She’s so nice in a way I don’t find cloying or fake, the way I would if someone came at me with niceness in New York, where that kind of thing is suspicious. It makes sense to me that Amelia took her under her wing.

“You’re dealing with so much more, I know,” she says.

“It’s not a contest, Nora. You can bitch, too. Anyone dealing with demons and a potential death by slurping gets to bitch.”

That gets a little laugh out of her, which makes me feel good.

“Anyway, you should get some rest,” she tells me. She gets to her feet and looks down at me. I can see a million worries in her eyes, but she doesn’t voice any more of them.

I make myself smile reassuringly. “I will if you will.”

She smiles back at me. “Deal. And the antique store is fitted with all my usual protections. We should be perfectly safe.”

I believe her. I haven’t sleepwalked anywhere in weeks now even when I do dream. “Are you going to fall asleep happily dreaming of the horrors you’ve put Logan through?” I ask, hoping to cheer her up.

Weirdly, I think it both cheers her up and bums her out, though I don’t know why. She slips out the door, closing it behind her so I am left in this very cramped, overfilled room all by myself.

With hair wreaths.

I don’t want to look at them, but they’re right there in my line of vision.

How can I possibly sleep amongst hair wreaths and a locket with furry hair in it that I cannot bring myself to put back under my pillow, no matter the protections involved?

I search the room a little desperately until I find a box. It’s filled with vases swathed in bubble wrap, and I carefully take them all out and set them gently on a shelf in the corner. Then I march over to the wall and begin to take down the frames one by one so I can pile them into the box. I get the locket out of my bag and toss it in there for good measure.

I look around the room, wondering what I’m going to do with this box of hair horrors. There’s a stack of big, heavy-looking books on one shelf, so I kneel on the floor and pull them all out, put the box where they were, then pile the books on top.