AND THEN I’M not alone. Someone is sitting with me, a presence more sensed than seen. I turn my head—just enough to make out her shape, shot through with the dying light like sun through murky water. I can count the bones of her hands.
“Hello, Sara,” Miranda says.
“You can’t be here,” I say. I can’t turn my head all the way to look at her; fear claws through the numb shell I’ve built around me. “You were lost. In the dark.”
“It wasn’t the dark,” she says. “It was the sunrise. It’s harder to exist in the light. I’m less real.”
She stretches out her hand. It shifts, becomes more solid, then the bones and muscles and veins glimmer below her skin again. She pulls it back.
“What are you?” I ask in a hushed whisper.
“Dead,” she says, with a harsh laugh. “Which I suppose doesn’t clarify things much here.”
“You’re a—ghost?”
“Yes. I died a long way from here.” I turn to face her now. She smiles a little, sad. “I’m sorry I stayed away so long. It’s harder, here. It’s not just the daylight. It’s the road. I don’t belong, and it knows it. It’s easier to hide from it at night. I think I’m safe for a little while, though. And we needed to talk.”
“Why?” I ask. “Why are you here? Why are you—are you helping us? Or—”
“I died—I was killed—and then I woke up,” she says. “And I didn’t know where I was or what I was supposed to be doing, but I found the road. Or it found me. It catches things. Lost things. Like me.”
“Like the creatures in the house?” I ask.
“A bit like that. Though I’m not as lost as they are. I’ve got a good hold on who I am. So far, at least. It might last. Might not. The point is, while I was wandering the road in those first few days after I died, I found your sister.”
“Becca. She didn’t say anything.”
“I didn’t show myself. I didn’t know how to hide from the road, not yet, and for someone—something—like me, if you draw its notice—well. Once the road notices you, you start to become part of it. You lose the ability to leave. So I only watched.
“Becca talked to herself sometimes. She talked to you, too. And I knew that you would come, eventually, because you’re her sister and that’s what sisters do. I brought you the notebook.” I frown, thinking of Isaac. She left you a map. I thought he’d been talking about Becca. He must have gotten them confused, his mind too addled by the road to distinguish the living girl and the dead one. Miranda continues. “I helped, what little I could without the road noticing me. Without her noticing me.”
“Without Becca noticing you?” I ask, confused.
She shakes her head. “Think, Sara. You’re getting so close to her now. This might be the last chance you have to remember.”
“Remember? I . . .” I look away. There’s something at the back of my mind. A dream I had, maybe. The memory of a voice whispering in my ear. Find me. Not Becca. “Lucy,” I say. “I didn’t—I didn’t come here for Becca, did I?”
“Of course you did,” she says. “You would carve through a hundred worlds to find your sister. She used that love, Sara, but it was real.”
“I was having dreams about Lucy,” I say. “I could hear her calling me. Telling me to find her. I can still hear her. But I can’t—” I shudder. Find me, a soft voice whispers, and I feel the sensation of fingertips dragging over the backs of my hands. “Why can’t I remember?”
“Places like this do strange things to memory. Make it malleable. There are things that take advantage. The echoes took Nick from you.” The name means nothing to me; it slides away. “They’re hungry, bitter things, but their motives are simple, at least. What she’s doing is more complex.”
“And what is that?”
“She’s altering your memories, but she’s also making you . . . open,” Miranda says. “Vulnerable. She needs you, you see. To escape this place. She’s greedy for life. She’ll take yours if she can.”
“Take mine? How . . . What . . .”
“Listen. I will tell you as plainly as I can,” Miranda says. “Since you first started having the dreams, she’s been shaping your mind and your memory. Because if you know what she is and what she wants, you’ll try to stop her. She’ll hide every memory you might use against her. She’ll hide this one, too, because I’ve told you what she’s doing. And if you can’t remember, you can’t fight her.”
“Help me, then,” I say, desperate. I can feel fingernails of fear against my throat; I know Miranda is right.
“We don’t have much time. The eyes of the road are on me,” Miranda says. “And once you cross the water, I won’t be able to follow.”
“Then how do I stop her?” I ask, the only question that seems to matter.
“I don’t know,” Miranda says sadly. “I don’t even know if you can. But if you can remember, maybe you have a chance. I can’t give you your memories back, but I can help you make a map back to this moment. And if you can remember this, remember what she is and what she’s doing, maybe you can find the rest of the memories she’s hiding. Find the truth.”
“A map?”
“A trick,” she says. “A trail of memories so inconsequential she won’t think to erase them. If you can tie those memories to this conversation, it might be enough to uncover it.”
“Like what?” I ask.
“Something small, but concrete. A pattern you can remember,” Miranda says. “It could be anything. A color. A phrase you’ve heard along the way. It can be anything, as long as you remember it. And as long as she won’t think to destroy it.”
My eyes flick to the gate, to the two crows crouched there. They’ve been here the whole time—there was a crow in the tree when I talked to Vanessa, that day in school. And more on the road since, alone and in groups.
Miranda follows my gaze. She doesn’t need me to say anything at all; it’s like she knows what I’m thinking. She nods. “Count the crows, Sara. All of the crows you’ve seen along the way. Remember them. Follow them back to this moment, and remember me.”
She stands. The light carves through her. Voices tumble behind us, coming toward the crest of the hill. The others will be here soon.
“And Sara? I have a sister, too. Find her, if you can. She works for a man named Andrew Ashford. They can help you. Tell Abby—tell her I’m sorry. Tell her to stop looking for me.”
And then Miranda is gone.
One of the crows on the gate croaks, shaking his wings. “Two,” I whisper, my finger tapping twice, slowly, against my thigh.