Page 8

He glanced over his shoulder, grimacing. “Listen, if you don’t want to wait around, you can go to the party ahead of time. It’s my buddy Lee's house. He’s throwing the party. He goes to a rival school, but he’s hockey. I’ll text him, tell him to look out for you. He’s a cool guy. There’s other people already there. It’s not just for our school, but his as well. Go. Chill. Have fun. I’ll find you as soon as we get there.”

I started to nod, but a question came to me. “Wait.”

He had begun to leave. “What?”

“If he’s throwing a party here, that means he lives in town. Why doesn’t he go to school with us?”

“He did. He got kicked out. You can ask him the story. He hates telling it, but it’s fun to bug him.”

I didn’t know how to respond to that, and it didn’t matter. Claudia appeared at the end of the trees. She tried looking behind him, but he moved so she couldn’t see me. He insisted she go ahead of him.

“Please don’t go to that house.” This time it was Shelton beside me, and he was wringing his hands together.

I lowered my voice, just to be safe even though I didn’t think anyone else was around. “I need to know why.”

“There’s someone there we don’t want you to meet.”

“Who?”

“If you go, you’ll meet him. If we tell you who it is, you’ll want to meet him anyway.” He sounded defeated, his head hanging down. “He could be dangerous.”

“To you?”

He gave me a sad smile and shook his head before he began to fade away. “To you.”

My mom chose to kill her ex. My grandparents were about to kick me out of their house. Cassian was telling me to go to a party. For a moment, I let everything simmer inside of me. The ghosts didn’t want me to go, but then there was Ethan being surprised I was going to go to the football game because I didn’t have friends. And well, the last memory did something to me.

What did I have to lose? At this point, not a thing.

I was going to that party.

Eventually.

I had to walk.

4

The mansion was on the outskirts of town, which was six miles away. I was hoping I could shorten that if I cut across two factories and a landfill. There was a friendly ghost who guided me around one of the factories, giving me the passcode to get inside without setting off any alarms. When I was coding it in for the second building to get through, the ghost commented, “You know, with your skillset, you’d make a great thief. Most ghosts want to help a Living that can see us. You ever thought about burglary and robbery for a career?”

I paused before hitting the last number. “It does run in my family.”

“No kidding. Any success?”

I hit the last button, and the door flashed green. I pushed open the door and stepped inside. “At getting arrested.”

The ghost followed. “Could they talk to ghosts?”

“No.”

“I think you have a decent chance.”

I gave the ghost a grin. “Thanks. That makes me feel oddly warm.”

“No problem, though that could be the radioactive material they have in here. You might want to walk faster.”

He led me through the last door and gestured over the back field. “Melbor will take you through the landfill. Word gets around fast when we find out there’s a Living in town who can talk to us. He’s waiting for you just on the other side of the gate.”

“Awesome. How do I get through the gate?”