There Are Ghosts Here

Chapter One

There’s a fire in the back of my throat. Dense and sticky and thick enough to bite. Though my eyes are heavy and my stomach is roiling, it’s the ash coating my tongue that demands my full attention. It’s a powerful taste, made worse each time I swallow—­raw, angry tissue burning as I choke down a mixture of saliva and regret.

I am aware of my physical form, though I can’t seem to fully access my faculties. Toes won’t wiggle. Knuckles won’t crack. My cheek and temple are pressed against cool glass, a welcome relief from the fire within. Without warning, my body is jerked to the left, but I don’t go flying. Something holds me in place, digs into the thin skin of my neck, working against momentum and the sharp angle of a turn.

A seat belt. I’m in a car.

It’s one of Peter’s drivers—­I can tell by the soft leather armrests, the soothing spa soundtrack humming at a low volume, the way I can’t hear the engine like I can when Mom’s driving her midnight-­blue junker. I ought to be terrified, waking up in the back seat of a vehicle driven by a stranger, but my stepfather is addicted to this app, uses it to call a car every time I need a ride rather than spend a single second alone with me.

My eyes are gritty, surely bloodshot as I peel them open. I have to blink ten times to clear my vision. Just as I expected: black leather seats, and the back of a stranger’s head. I try to catch the driver’s eye in the rearview mirror, but no matter how I crane my neck all I can see is a smooth expanse of skin.

The shiver is involuntary. Outside the car is a blur of trees, a gray sky. Fog creeps closer until the windows are coated too, my confusion turned tangible.

“Where are we going?” Each word wavers with effort; each syllable feels like coughing up thumbtacks.

The driver doesn’t respond. They never do. Peter probably requested silence. It’s his way of ensuring I never find a father figure, not even for the fifteen minutes it takes to get home from school. But the scenery outside is nothing like the suburban sprawl I’m used to. We’re somewhere far from tract homes and town houses. And I am all alone.

I reach for the door. The driver says nothing but clicks the locks with a chastising smack. I rattle the handle. Nothing happens. Child locks. For safety, of course. The app wouldn’t want a lawsuit on their hands.

With effort, I swallow. Take a deep breath. Try not to panic. I’ll just call Mom and get this sorted out. I pat the pocket of my oversized hoodie. No phone.

There’s a bag at my feet. Mom must have packed it for me. I take inventory: shirts folded into tight, neat squares, socks rolled carefully in pairs, sweats wrapped protectively around a second pair of shoes.

What is all this for?

I rummage through the zippered pockets. Toothbrush, hairbrush. Still no phone. In the final pocket, a folded piece of newspaper. I shake it out and gape at the headline—­Town House Fire Tied to Teenager. My school photo takes up half the page.

It wasn’t a dream, then. The fire in my throat, my hair stinking of smoke. There was searing heat. Shouting. Then the whole world went black.

I skim the first few lines of the article. The flames that ravaged the complex began in the bedroom of sixteen-­year-­old Willa Childs. Whether the fire was accidental or an act of arson is under investigation. Fire Chief Richard Ortiz urges parents to talk to their teenagers about the dangers of an open flame in the home. I crumple the newspaper in my fist. Peter must be pissed.

This paints the bag at my feet in a brand-­new, vaguely ominous light. If there was a fire at the town house, we no longer have a place to live. I have a bag full of clothes, no phone, and a newspaper article implying that I’m an arsonist. My heart sinks into my stomach. I’m more certain than ever that this car is taking me somewhere I don’t want to go.

The driver navigates his vehicle up a rocky hill, the sky somehow grayer than before. I half expect to be dumped at a concrete juvenile detention center or, if I’m lucky, a boarding school for troubled teens. Instead, out of the fog emerges a house, a dilapidated Victorian manor, whitewashed and sagging like a deflated balloon. The car comes to a stop beside an ancient red pickup truck.

“What is this place?” I ask.

The driver says nothing but unlocks the doors with a dismissive flick. I assume this means I’m supposed to disembark. With effort, I collect my things and stumble out of the car, legs unsteady on the gravel driveway.

Salt whips in the wind, clinging to my hair, the strands wilting the same way my shoulders sag beneath the canvas backpack that may well hold all my remaining earthly possessions. The car’s windows are tinted; I can’t make out the driver’s face before he speeds away. When I turn to glance over my shoulder, not even a tire track remains.

The wind howls and the house before me emits a great, terrible groan, releasing years of pent-up aches and pains. I make my way toward the front door, the weathered slats of the wooden porch creaking beneath my feet. The supports buckle like bum knees. As the porch lurches, I realize the house teeters mere feet from the edge of a cliff. From below comes the roar of the sea.

I read somewhere that if a person falls into water from too great a height, the water turns hard as slate and their body shatters, spine compressed, neck snapped. I refuse to meet such a brittle end. Shuffling backward, I nearly lose my balance and tumble down the steps to a different kind of demise.

Before I can knock, the front door opens and a girl with a blunt blond bob emerges. The thighs of her linen overalls are streaked with dirt.

“You’re early.” Her green eyes are bright with suspicion, bangs stuck to her forehead in a way that makes me want to reach out and smooth them back into place. As if she can read my mind, she brushes her arm across her face, and the strands fall perfectly into line.

“Where am I?” Between the roar of the ocean at the bottom of the cliff and the space between us, I almost have to shout.

The girl flinches, then smiles, showcasing a gap between her front teeth. “At Dorsey House. New girls hardly ever arrive before noon.”

I frown up at the sky, an indecipherable gray. “Dorsey House,” I repeat, testing it on my tongue. It’s salt cured and gristly, a carefully seasoned, muscular cut of meat.

“You’re right to look concerned,” the girl says. I can’t tell if she’s trying to intimidate me or offer me a warning. Either way, her words sting, small stones cast in my direction without ­kindness.

“I won’t be staying long.” I gesture to the bag on my back. If this was a permanent stint, surely Mom would have packed more robustly.

A tiny crease appears between the girl’s thick eyebrows. “We’ll see about that.”

“What’s that supposed to mean?” I swallow the uncertainty creeping up my throat like a spider.

That gets a laugh from the girl. It’s small, like a hiccup, short and bright and surprising. “You’ll find out soon enough,” she says.

I bristle at her tone. She speaks with authority, not assumption, as though she can dictate how I’ll react before I do. But she’s a stranger. If I don’t know what I’m doing here, she certainly doesn’t.

The girl tugs at a gold chain around her neck, fingers closed around its charm. “So,” she says, her gaze so intense I shrink beneath it, “are you coming in or not?”

Not, I’m ready to say, until a second girl appears in the doorway. Her long dark brown hair is tied back from her heart-­shaped face with a ribbon. Her eyes hold the sort of impossible confidence possessed by only the very wealthy and the very beautiful. Unfortunately for me, she’s very likely both.

The buzzing starts in my chest. A shivering, suffocating want, like love at first sight but sharper, more brutal. A knowing, terrifying in its prophecy. It frightens me, this recognition. How can I feel so certain about a stranger when I am so unmoored from myself?

The new girl rests a hand on the blond girl’s shoulder, possession so casual it’s almost lazy. The blond girl slithers backward without even looking until she’s shrugged herself under the new girl’s arm, burrowing her head into the pale expanse of the other girl’s long neck. Together, they’re a veritable fortress of unreadable expressions. Cerberus, minus one head.

“You’re early.” The new girl’s voice is low and croaky, a stick scraping a window in the middle of the night.

“So I’ve heard.”

Her brown eyes glimmer dangerously. “You’d better come in before you freeze.” Her voice is less hoarse now, though there is still something electric about her—­the live wire to the other girl’s light switch.

The clouds have descended in a swirl of fog. If I didn’t know where the cliff ended, I could easily walk right off the edge and into the sea.

“I like the cold,” I insist, even though my teeth have begun to chatter. Still, deference is a weakness, and these girls haven’t yet decided where I fall in the food chain.

“You get used to it,” the blonde pipes up, nuzzling herself further into the new girl’s neck. I’m equal parts envious of and repulsed by the ease of her affection.

“Ivy. Hush.” The second girl looks annoyed as she detangles herself from the blond girl, Ivy.

Their contact broken, Ivy wilts. “Caro,” she whines, reaching for the other girl, but Caro takes a step back.

“Don’t teach her bad habits,” she snaps, turning her attention toward me. “Call me Caroline or die. You decide.” She doesn’t wait for my response. Instead, she turns on her heel and dis­appears into the house. After casting an uncertain glance at me, Ivy follows.

The screen door catches on the wind, staying open just a crack. The darkness inside isn’t inviting, but it is alluring. Still, I bite my thumb as I consider my options, the tiny chip in my front tooth sharp against the pad of my finger.

I don’t know where I am, so I could run away.

I don’t know where I am, so I could stay.

“If you’re not careful, girl, your face will freeze like that.”

The old man’s voice catches me by surprise, faint enough that it might be the wind, rough enough that I know it’s not. I spin around on the porch and nearly stumble into him, seventy-something and gnarled in all the expected ways—­twisted knuckles and a perpetual sneer. The top of his head is nearly hairless; the few wisps he’s managed to hold on to stick up straight like he’s been shocked. The air is astringent with salt, and when I shudder, I don’t know if it’s because of my stinging skin or because I did not hear him approach.