CHAPTER THREE

The sound of that laugh. It plays back in my head for about the hundredth time. It was her voice; Anna’s voice, but it sounded mad, and shrill. Almost desperate. Or maybe that’s just because I heard it coming out of a dead man’s mouth. Or maybe I never really heard it at all.

A sharp crack makes me blink and look down. One of my mom’s white clarity candles lies in two pieces at my feet, rolled up against my toe. I’d been packing them into a box to take to Morfran’s shop.

“What’s the matter, son of mine?” She’s got this halfway smile on and a cocked eyebrow. “What’s got you so distracted that you’re breaking our livelihood?”

I bend down and pick up the two halves of candle, awkwardly shoving the broken ends together like they’ll magically merge. Why can’t magic work like that?

“Sorry,” I say. She gets up from the table where she was tying on incantations, takes the candle from me, and sniffs it.

“It’s okay. We’ll just keep this one. They work just as well broken as not.” She walks over and sets it on the windowsill over the sink. “Now answer the question, kiddo. What is it? School? Or maybe that date of yours went better than you let on.” The look on her face is half-teasing, but there’s hope there too.

“No such luck, Mom.” It’d be easy enough to say it was school. Easy enough to say I was daydreaming. And I probably should. My mother is happy here. After we found out that my father’s murderer had been renting out the attic of the house and ate her cat, I figured she’d move us. Or burn the house down. But she didn’t. Instead she settled and made the place ours, more than any of the rentals we’ve lived in since my dad died. The whole thing seemed like something she’d almost been waiting for.

I suppose it was something we were both waiting for. Because it’s over now. Closed.

“Cas? Are you okay? Did something happen?”

I give her my most reassuring smile. “It’s nothing. Just leftover crap.”

“Mm,” she says. She pulls a box of matches out of the junk drawer. “Maybe you should light this clarity candle. Get rid of the cobwebs.”

“Sure.” I chuckle, and take the match. “Shouldn’t I say the incantation first?”

She waves her hand. “The words aren’t always necessary. You just have to know what you want.” She pokes me in the chest, and I strike the match.

* * *

“You are playing horribly,” Thomas says to me from one couch cushion over.

“So what, it’s just Pac-Man,” I reply as my last guy runs smack into a ghost and dies.

“If you’re going to look at it that way, you’re never going to beat my top score.”

I snort. I’d never be able to beat it anyway. The kid has creepily accurate hand-eye coordination. I can hold my own in a first-person shooter, but he beats me at the old arcade games every time. He takes the controller and the theme music starts over. I watch as Pac-Man eats cherries and dots and sends ghosts back to the start box.

“You’ve memorized the boards.”

“Maybe.” He grins, then hits pause when his phone starts buzzing. The cell phone is new for Thomas. A gift from Carmel, which she uses to repeatedly text him to try to get us to meet her at the mall. But the mall is a thing that should not be suffered. Except maybe for Cinnabon.

Thomas sighs. “Want to meet Carmel and Katie at Cinnabon?”

I take a deep breath. He’d come over to give me a book he’d found that had theories about the afterlife. It’s sitting next to the Xbox, unopened. I’m tired of reading and coming up with more questions and no answers. I’m tired of chasing down my dad’s old associates and getting nothing but best guesses. It’s become an exhausting dead end, and even if it makes me feel guilty to think so, that’s the truth.

“Let’s go,” I say.

* * *

The mall is bright and smells like lotion. Every store we pass by must sell the stuff. Carmel met us at the entrance, alone. Katie bugged out the minute she heard we were coming.

“Does it bother you that your best friend dislikes me so much?” Thomas asks, his mouth stuffed so full of Cinnabon that he’s barely understandable.

“She doesn’t dislike you. You just never take the chance to get to know her. You both make her feel unwelcome.”

“That’s not true,” Thomas objects.

“It’s sort of true,” I mutter from just behind them. And it is. When it’s just me and Carmel and her friends, it’s fine. I can mingle if I have to. But when the three of us are together, it feels like a closed club. I sort of like that, and I don’t even feel guilty about it. The three of us together is safe.