Without saying another word, Ash takes a step back and starts fumbling for something with her left hand in the air, one eye closed, like she’s trying to thread an invisible needle. I feel a nasty tug in my chest, and even though I’m outside my body and don’t have a stomach, I suddenly want to throw up. I look down, and I see the lifeline that joins my body to my spirit glowing in Ash’s hand, as insubstantial as dust lit by a sunbeam. How can she take hold of it?

“I’m sure you know what’ll happen if I break this,” she says, “but don’t worry. I need you alive.”

Her American accent seems to be real at least — she hasn’t dropped it — but there’s a glittering sharpness to her that she’s been hiding.

Ash gives my lifeline another sharp tug, like she’s trying to reel something in.

“That ought to do it,” she says. “Wait here.”

“Do I have a choice?” I ask.

Ash smiles, then turns and walks back into the kitchen. I think of shouting after her, but again there doesn’t seem much point. She’s the one running the show here, for now at least. She comes out with another plate of food, walks back through the living room, ignoring me completely, and disappears upstairs. After maybe half an hour — it’s hard to judge time without a clock, with only artificial light — she comes back carrying a white plastic patio chair. She places the chair lightly in the middle of the empty room, facing the mirror, and then, finally spotting the rice cake she dropped, she picks it up and goes back into the kitchen. I’m left looking at white walls, a polished floor, a single white chair. It’s like the conceptual-art exhibit Elza dragged me to last month.

After a long while of this, I hear a heavy knock at the front door. So she called someone? I’m going to meet whoever is behind all of this? I knew there had to be someone else pulling the strings. Another necromancer? Ash walks past me again. I hear her open the front door, but no word of greeting, just the sound of a heavy tread in the hallway. Definitely another person. I’m wound tight with fear and anticipation. Who could it be?

Ash comes back into the room holding my hand.

What?

It’s my body. No question about it: definitely me. Brown hair, navy polo shirt, familiar face. My jeans and Lacoste shoes are splattered with fresh mud — I must have trekked through the fields to get here. My lifeline pulses between us, thicker and brighter now that the distance between my body and spirit is so much shorter. I had no idea this was possible. My eyes (my body’s eyes) are closed. Ash guides me across the room and gently encourages my body to sit down in the patio chair. She runs a hand over my face.

“So really,” Ash says, “I can do whatever I like to you. Clear?”

“Perfectly,” I say, trying not to show any fear.

“Try anything cute,” she says, “anything at all, and you’ll wish you hadn’t. And whatever I ask you, I want the truth.”

Her gray eyes glitter in the harsh light. I’m starting to wonder what exactly happened to Mark Ellsmith.

“Whatever you want to know,” I say.

“Great. Let’s keep that attitude,” she says. She slides one white-socked foot over the smooth wood of the floor. She looks strange and childish as she does it. I’m still finding it hard to match Ash’s appearance and mannerisms with the threat she actually poses to me. It’s like that picture of the two faces that are also a vase. Picture One: Petite exchange student. Picture Two: Necromancer, possible murderer.

“So,” she continues. “Luke Manchett. You’re Horatio Manchett’s son and heir.”

“Yes.”

“Horatio died last October,” she says.

“He choked on a piece of steak.” I confirm.

“So you inherited his Host?”

“I did. There were eight ghosts —”

“I understand how necromancy works, Luke. You inherited his copy of the Book, his sigil, his binding rings, and eight spirits. Where are they now?”

“I got rid of them,” I say.

“How?”

“The Manchett Host is broken. They’re gone. I sent them back to Deadside.”

Ash yanks my body’s head back by the hair. “Really?” she yells.

“Yes! Ash! Seriously! Believe me!”

She lets my head roll back into position.

“Don’t lie to me,” she says.

“Why would I come here myself if I had a Host to do it for me? They’re gone!”

“Yes,” she says after a pause. “That’s what I’ve been told. I just didn’t quite believe it. So you broke your own family’s Host. Banished them. Why?”

“I never wanted them. . . . Necromancy . . . I didn’t know . . . I had no idea. They nearly killed me. I had to get rid of them.”

“He never told you? Horatio?”

“Never.”

“Well.” Ash bursts out laughing. I think I preferred it when she was shouting. “That must’ve been a surprise.”

“Yes,” I say, unsmiling. “It was.”

“Had you ever seen a ghost before?”

“It was kind of a ‘deep-end’ situation. I had to learn on the job.”

“I’m actually impressed,” she says. “I know all about Horatio’s Host. My father said he was insane to trust Octavius as much as he did. Everyone thought that Host was a disaster waiting to happen.”

“Your father . . . ?”

“I don’t remember saying this was a conversation,” Ash snaps.

“Who are you, really?” I ask.

“I’m Ashley Smith from Marin County, California,” she says, but there’s this mocking tone to her voice.

“Who’s that meant to fool? That’s the fakest fake name. It’s like saying you’re called John Brown.”

“There’s plenty of people named Ashley Smith. But no, you’re right. That’s not my name.”

“Who are you?” I ask again.

“I’m nobody,” she says. “I’m nobody, and I’m asking the questions.”

“So ask.”

“When did you last see him?” Ash says.

“Dad?” I don’t see much use in lying — she might already know the answer, as she seems to know all about me — but I don’t want to tell her what happened with him and the Devil last Halloween. “I was six. He was leaving us. He was wearing a red tie with polka dots. He . . . Are you all right?”

Ash is giving me the strangest look.

“It’s just very odd,” she says. “I’ve wondered about you for years. What his family was like. Who he loved. Finally meeting you . . .”

I’m seized with sudden inspiration. “He did something bad to you,” I say. “Horatio.”

“Huh,” Ash snorts. “That’s hardly a wild guess. He did bad shit to everyone he met, as far as I can tell.”

“Me and my mum, too,” I say.

Ash doesn’t reply. Maybe this is how I get out of here. Play to her sympathy. Show her we’re in the same boat. I hope she’s not another version of the Shepherd, seeing me and Dad as the same person, hungry for the revenge she can’t take on him. . . .

“It sounds like he messed us both up,” I say.

“Don’t say that!” she screams. “Don’t ever say that! Don’t compare yourself to me! You don’t know! Don’t you dare tell me that!” She’s right up close to the mirror’s surface, yelling so loud the glass vibrates.

“Sorry, Ash! I’m sorry! Please!”

She’s biting her lip, clearly trying not to cry. She turns away, strides into the kitchen. I hear her banging around. I’m certain she’s going to come back with a knife or something and go to work, and I’m frantically trying to pry my spirit fingers into the seam around the mirror’s glass, force my way out, but it’s just not happening, and then she comes back and all she’s holding is a glass of water. She puts some pills in her mouth and takes a gulp.

“Sorry,” Ash says absurdly. “I’m sorry. I’m trying to work on my mood and stuff. Be more balanced.”

“That’s . . . OK, Ash. Let it all out.”

I really don’t know what to say. She’s like the clouds crossing the moon in the night sky outside: cold, distant, constantly changing. She’s pacing the pale wood just behind my body’s chair. She gestures with the half-empty glass. She’s about to say something and doesn’t. Ash wants something from me, I think. She wants something from me, but she can’t quite come out and ask for it yet.

“It’s been ten years for me, too,” she says, “since I last saw my father. We were six.”

There’s something Dad told me nudging at my mind, bumping up against the shore of my memory like a boat at high tide. Something Dad told me . . . last year, that night, Halloween, when I spoke to him and the Devil . . .

He left me and Mum ten years ago. There was a war between necromancers. That was why he needed to summon the Fury, his demon, and why he used . . . why he used my unborn brother for the ritual.

Where does Ash fit in with this?

“The war,” I say. “I know about that.”

“They were supposed to be on the same side,” she says.

The memory isn’t a boat bumping against the shore anymore, it’s more like a dam bursting. A name flashes into my head.

“Magnus,” I say.

“Good,” Ash says. “Magnus Ahlgren. And I still remember the last time I saw him.”

“You’re his —”

“Daughter,” she snaps. Ash swallows the last of her water. “I was his daughter. Your father betrayed mine. He sent his Host to our secret house one night and killed my family. My father died. Our family’s Host was broken and consumed by Horatio’s demon. So you’re right, I’m not Ashley Smith. My name is Ashana Ahlgren.”

“But you’re . . . American? I thought Magnus was Scandinavian.”

“We’re Swedish. I lived there until I was six, then I lived in a lot of other places. It wasn’t safe. But I ended up choosing California when I was twelve, and that’s where we’ve stayed for the last four years. It’s beautiful. When we’re done here —”

“Done with what?”

She ignores me. She turns the glass around in her hands. She’s thinking.

“I’m sorry about your father,” I say.

“Don’t be. I barely knew him. If we made a noise when he was reading, he’d make us hold a block of ice until it melted. Child-rearing up beyond the Arctic Circle. And Mum had crossed over just after I was born, so.”

“Right.”

“I loved our Host, though. They’re the ones who brought us up. They were kind to me. I barely even spoke to any living people when I was really little. And then, you know, your big dog-headed demon ate them all.”

“You always saw ghosts?” I ask. The idea of being brought up by a Host, of loving them, strikes me as totally insane. It’s like being brought up by a writhing nest of vipers. The idea of the Shepherd or the Prisoner being my childhood guardian is beyond absurd.

“I’ve been a member of the Ahlgren Host more or less since I was born. Dad put a sigil minor inside my hand when I was eight days old.” Ash holds up her left arm to the mirror. I peer at her hand. There’s a tiny white scar, the size of a five-pence piece, on the inside of her wrist.

“There’s a sigil inside you? How does that work?”

“Yeah,” Ash says carelessly, “it’s part of the bone. It’s like this little stone charm, and then you do some magic and it fuses into you. Sigil minors are like sigils with training wheels, I suppose. I was going to get a proper sigil when I was eighteen.”

“Dad had a black ring. I didn’t know sigils could be inside you.”

“I know all about those rings. Well, sigils can be anything that’s properly worked and prepared. Some of the old necromancers had oaken staves or, like, crowns made of gold, stuff like that. Octavius, your dad’s old Shepherd — he had his sigil mark tattooed onto himself. Ahlgrens have always had bone sigils, made part of us, because you can’t steal them.”

“So you’ve got a Host?” I ask.

“Sort of. It’s complicated. And I’m supposed to be asking you questions. . . . So, I know you’ve read the Book of Eight. Where do you keep it?”

“I got rid of it,” I say.

Ash looks me in the eye. “You’re a bad liar,” she says. “And you’re awful at investigating people. Your goth girlfriend? Worst eavesdropper I’ve ever seen. And coming into Holiday’s house like that . . . as if I’d keep anything important there. Honestly.”

“Why are you staying there? How did you make the whole exchange story work? Holiday’s family?”

“I’m actually discovering that I’m quite fond of the Simmons. Don’t worry about them.”

“What about Mark Ellsmith?”

“He’s in a hotel.”

“Would this hotel bear any resemblance to the farm that dogs get sent to when they’re really ill?”

Ash snorts. “He’s alive, if that’s what you mean. I don’t just murder people, Luke. He’s being paid to live there for a month. I can give you the address if you like.”

“I’m hardly in much of a position to check it out if you did. How are you . . . how did you manage all of this?”

“I have my ways. I sort of had some outdated ideas of who you were. I thought you were popular, so I decided I’d just come in at the top and find out what kind of person you were before I asked you for anything. And then I get here and find out you’re not invited to anything anymore, and you spend all your time with that one girl . . . so clearly something had happened with your father’s Host. But it was frustrating, and you seemed to be onto me immediately.”

“You were hardly subtle. Gliding into school dressed all in white.”

“I know.” Ash sighs. “I never realized how much I’d stand out in this depressing little place. Ah well.”

“And I followed you back here. You didn’t expect that.”

“No, I didn’t. Although you got yourself stuck in a spirit trap. I wouldn’t give yourself a pat on the back just yet.”

“It’s hard to feel smug when you’re trapped in a mirror,” I admit.

“I don’t feel that smug out here,” she replies.

“So what do you want from me? Why did you come to find me?”

Ash looks at the floor.

“Actually,” she says, “I sort of came here to ask for your help.”

I don’t know how to respond to this. Usually when people ask for your help, it’s assumed you can either agree or turn them down. I don’t really feel like I can say no to Ash. She watches me intently, running her right foot back and forth across the floor. Her sock makes a soft sound against the wood.

“Normally people who ask you for help don’t have you captured.”

“You trapped yourself there. This isn’t your house. Nobody invited you.”

I don’t say anything. Given everything Ash has done in the past few days, I feel totally justified in following her to this house. I’m not about to apologize.

“You seem like someone I can talk to,” she says after a pause. “If I let you back into your body, will you promise not to do anything stupid?”

“Of course,” I say. Ash barely weighs a hundred pounds. The second she lets me out of here, I’m heading for the door.

She frowns. “Well, you would tell me that. You want me to let you go. You’re thinking, Oh, she’s so small and delicate, no way can she keep me here. . . .”

“I don’t hit girls.”

“What makes you think you’d get the chance?”

Ash makes a beckoning motion with her left hand. A spirit blinks into existence beside her. The ghost is a tall, dark-skinned woman with long black hair and eyes like pools of oil. She wears a white robe, and a broken spear juts from her chest. The ghost I saw last night. Some of the pieces are coming together.

“This is my retainer,” Ash says, “the last of the Ahlgren Host. The Widow.”

“We already met,” I say.

The black-eyed woman looks from my body to my spirit, trapped in the mirror, and back again.

“What would you have me do?” she asks Ash softly, in a voice like frost forming.

“This is Luke Manchett, Horatio’s heir. He will be our guest,” Ash says. “He is not to leave without my permission.”

“As you wish,” the Widow replies.

“When I let you out of the mirror,” Ash says, turning to me, “you’re to go directly back into your body. If you try and go anywhere else, you’ll wish you hadn’t. Are we clear?”

“Perfectly,” I say, eyeing the Widow. I’ve got no illusions about my ability to outrun Ash’s terrifying servant, and besides, I’d be leaving my body here.

Ash seems satisfied with my answer. She walks up to the mirror and presses her left hand against the glass. A thin, high chime sounds, and the glass of the mirror splits neatly down the middle. The two halves of the mirror swing outward like a set of double doors, and I find myself pushed back into the living room, like a piece of paper caught in a gale. The Widow has one hand resting on the shaft of the spear that sticks from her chest; she’s watching me for any sudden movements. I give her what I hope is a reassuring grin and float toward my body. My head has fallen to one side, and my breathing is light and regular. There’s a zit coming through on my left cheek, a deep red hill. I need to shave.

I fall into myself.

I come awake in the white plastic chair, shivering, with a knot of tension halfway down my back. I flex my fingers and toes. The room is absolutely freezing, although I think this has a lot to do with the presence of Ash’s servant. The house has that new-paint smell, harsh and artificial.

Ash is facing me, with her back to the mirror. There’s no sign of the crack or opening in its surface anymore.

“So you’ll behave yourself, Luke?”

“Yeah,” I say. My eyes feel gritty. I blink. “I promise, seriously.”

“You look cold,” Ash says. “Hang on. I have some oversize stuff that might fit.” She vanishes into the hall, and I hear her padding up the stairs. I look at myself in the mirror. I don’t look good. The Widow is standing behind me, hands resting on the back of my chair. The cold coming from her skin burns. I almost ask if she’d consider backing off a bit, but one look into her tar-pit eyes squashes that idea. Why do her eyes look like that? I’d assumed the Shepherd’s eyes were a one-off, just some strange side effect of him being evil, but it seems like there’s something more to it than that.

Ash comes back with a white fisherman’s sweater. She hands it to me, and I pull it over my head. It’s a surprisingly good fit, maybe a bit too tight at the chest. It’s clearly made from expensive wool.

Ash fiddles with her nose ring. Neither of us seems quite sure where to go from here.

“Are you hungry?” she asks after an uncomfortably long pause.

“I am, actually.”

“Spirit walking, leaving your body vacant, is supposed to speed up your metabolism,” she says. “Shamans used to feast for eight days and eight nights before they attempted a journey to the other place.”

“How do you know that?”

“I do have Magnus’s library,” Ash says. “All his books and papers. Your dad stole most of them, but he didn’t know about the encrypted backup of the archives. I’ve been studying them for years.”

“Lucky. Dad only left me some random papers.”

“I’m not lucky,” Ash says.

“Sorry,” I say quickly. “I just mean, Horatio only gave me some pages of numbers and stuff.”

“And the Book of Eight,” Ash says. “Don’t forget that. Your demon destroyed my family’s copy. Burned it.”

“You don’t have one?”

“They’re not easy to come by. I’ve read everything ever written about it, but I’ve never seen an actual copy. You’re luckier than you realize. Anyway, aren’t you hungry?”

She walks past me. I stand up and follow her into the gleaming white kitchen. I lean against the doorframe. I can feel the Widow standing behind me, her deathly cold aura making me shiver even through Ash’s sweater. I glance around, accidentally make eye contact with the ghost, and quickly look away. Ash is breezily rummaging through some cupboards, her back turned, but there’s nothing I can do. I’m stuck here. She’s got me right where she wants me.

Ash makes me a little plate of dried fruit, olives, a cup of yogurt. I sit up on the counter and start to eat. I don’t have much of a taste for olives, but the dried apricots are exactly what I needed. The gnawing hunger in my gut quiets down.

“I have Coke in the fridge,” Ash says, “if you want some sugar. Or there’s tap water. I didn’t remember to buy a kettle yet.”

“How did you get the electricity connected up here? Whose house are we in?”

“It’s mine,” Ash says. “I paid for it.”

“This development isn’t finished until next year.”

“I paid five times the market price for this house to be finished by this March, to my exact specifications, and work has been suspended on the other sites for a month.”

“That’s not possible.”

“It’s possible,” Ash says, “if you have enough money. I needed my own place in Dunbarrow, away from the town. This seemed ideal.”

“Are you, like, rich?”

Ash smiles. “We’re so rich we’re not even on the rich list. The Ahlgrens have been raising the dead for centuries. There’s plenty of opportunity to earn in our line of work. Since I’m not eighteen yet, my access is restricted. I can only use some of our fronts and stuff. But I get by.”

“The Goodman Foundation?”

“That’s one of the ways I move money around.”

I remember my own inheritance, the money Berkley tried to tempt me with, the fortune that vanished into thin air when I didn’t choose the way he wanted me to. Somehow I suspect Dad’s fortune was small compared to the fruits of many centuries of necromancy. When your servants are invisible, intangible, and can kill most people by looking at them the wrong way, it’s not hard to see how a necromancer could earn a living.

I swallow the last of my food.

“So what do you want my help with?” I ask Ash.

“I need your copy of the Book of Eight,” she says.

“I gave it back.”

“To who?”

“The Devil,” I say.

“Ah,” Ash says, not seeming as impressed as I was hoping, “so that’s how you got rid of the Host. Halloween. The Rite of Tears.”

“I don’t have it anymore.”

“Do you think he’s lying?” Ash asks the Widow.

“Yes,” the ghost replies.

“Now, why would he do something like that?” Ash asks softly.

My stomach lurches. “I don’t know what you want with it.”

“Fair enough,” Ash says. She pinches the bridge of her nose. Breathes in and out. “I didn’t want to do this tonight. But you’re right. I wouldn’t agree to help someone before I knew what they needed help with either.”

“Mistress Ahlgren?” the Widow says.

“I want him to want to help us,” Ash tells her. “It’s the easiest way.”

Without another word, Ash turns and walks back through the living room to the hallway and the staircase. I’m clearly expected to follow her, and I do, noticing the lightness in the sky outside the window. We must’ve been talking all night, although I don’t feel tired. My body did sleep, I suppose. Ash must be exhausted. The Widow glides along beside me, her face as blank as the walls.

The stairs are made from the same blond wood, leading at a right angle up onto a large landing. There’s a window, affording another view of the dawn’s glow rising behind the half-finished estate. There’s a bathroom, three doors that are shut, one hanging open. As we pass this door, I can see a bed inside, a desk, a freestanding clothes rack laden with white apparel. Ash’s room, I suppose. So she’s keeping some things at Holiday’s place for show? How much stuff do you need for a month’s visit? We stop in front of the farthest door.

“She’s in here,” Ash tells me softly, and opens it.

This must be the master bedroom — it’s big, larger even than the living room downstairs. It’s dark, and there’s a strong antiseptic smell. I can sense that the room is full of something: large suitcases, or maybe amplifiers? I’m thinking immediately of an audio mixer, because I can see glowing lights and readouts, but that doesn’t make sense. Why would Ash be showing me an audio mixer? There’s a low metallic rasping noise, like a robot breathing. Ash turns on the light.

There’s a bed with a girl lying in it.

The girl is connected to the room’s machines. The room is filled with them; they own the room. It’s a room for machines, and it seems like there should be no space for her or anything else that’s living. She’s got an IV in her arm, tubes in her nose and mouth. Tubes snaking under the white bedsheets. The smell of disinfectant is overpowering, but underneath it I can smell her, the girl, her body’s own smell, skin and hair that’s gone unwashed. There are machines stacked all around her, banks of lights and dials, a monitor that shows her vital signs: numbers, graphs, an oscillating readout. I see that the master bedroom boasts an impressive array of electric plugs and a sink installed in the far corner.

“She’s been on life support for a decade. The machines do everything for her,” Ash says to me. “Everything except what makes a life worth living.”

I come and stand next to Ash at the foot of the bed. The girl lying there, motionless, is the one-armed girl I saw in the field behind my house. The same girl I saw in Ash’s kitchen. Lying here, in human form, I see both her arms are intact. So why is her ghost missing an arm? The girl’s hair, long and tangled, is bunched up around her face and neck. She’s dressed in a mint-green hospital gown. Her pale feet, sticking out from beneath her bedsheets, are bare. Her face, although difficult to see under the breathing and feeding tubes, is Ash’s face.

“You’re —”

“Twins,” Ash says. “Identical. I’m about an hour older. Her name is Ilana Ahlgren.”

Ash brings two chairs through, and we sit at the foot of the bed. It’s hard to know where to look. Watching Ilana feels like an intrusion somehow. Ash barely takes her eyes off the monitors.

“I hated to do this,” Ash says. “We have private home care in America. Very best. Bringing her over here was the hardest part. But I had to.”

“Why?”

“Her spirit wanders at night. You already saw her. There’s no way of stopping it. I’ve tried everything. She’s very . . . trusting. She needs the Widow with her, to make sure nothing tries to hurt her. But I needed the Widow here as well, so there really wasn’t another way. I couldn’t leave Ilana in California.”

So the Widow guards Ilana and Ash. I had worked that much out for myself.

“Why did she come to my house?” I ask.

“I don’t know. She has strange ideas. Her mind isn’t right.”

“So you don’t have a clue why she might be interested in me?”

“We share a lot of stuff. . . . It’s hard to explain. Sometimes I have dreams where I am her. Sometimes she knows things I know without me telling her. I think she knew I wanted to ask you for help. That’s why she went to find you.”

“Well, I suppose it worked,” I say. “In a way, she brought me here.”

“I guess so.”

“So what happened to her?” I ask. “Why’s she in a coma? Why does she climb out of her body at night and wander around?”

“Your father happened to her.”

I look at Ilana’s face, eyes closed, thin plastic tubes snaking into her nose and mouth. I look at the displays on the machines, pulsing red numbers and oscillating bars, measuring her life out in beats on a screen.

“Horatio didn’t even know us,” Ash continues. “I doubt he gave me or Ilana a second thought. He sent his demon, the Fury. He was thousands of miles away, back home safe in England with you and your mother.”

“I’m sorry, Ash. I never knew.”

“So you keep saying,” Ash says. She leans forward, looking down at the floor, one hand gripping the rail of Ilana’s bed. “That’s what makes this worse for me. You grew up without knowing about any of this. You didn’t have to run away from home in the middle of the night, six years old, everything on fire behind you. You haven’t spent your life looking after Ilana”— she smacks her hand against the bed for emphasis —“moving her from country to country under a fake name. Wondering if Horatio would ever send his Host back to finish us off. I never even cried for the first few years. I couldn’t.”

“It’s not fair,” I say.

“No, it wasn’t. We’d never hurt anyone. I only remember pieces of that night. The Widow and the Errant woke us up, and there was smoke everywhere. . . . The house was burning, and I didn’t know where to go. They wouldn’t tell me what was happening. It came up behind us when we were in the courtyard. Nearly winter, snow on the ground. It looked like the smoke at first, rushing at us, and then I saw it had a shape, like a dog . . . a big hungry dog.”

“I’ve seen it as well,” I remind her. “It nearly killed me, too.” Of all my father’s servants, the Fury scared me the most. There was some stiff competition, but at least the Shepherd was human once.

“I think it was after our sigils,” Ash continues. “Horatio ordered it to break the Ahlgren Host. Ilana was just behind me. It could’ve been the other way around. She could be sitting here in this chair, looking at me. It lashed out once with the whip, and it caught her in the arm, the hand with her sigil. Demons’ whips, they can’t hurt your body, but your spirit . . . they go right through it. She lost that part of her spirit, and your dad’s demon ate it right up.”

“So that’s why her ghost is missing the arm?”

“The Errant flung himself straight at Horatio’s demon. It ate him, too, of course, but he saved us. I barely remember anything after that . . . just Ilana screaming and the Widow carrying us through the snow. Ilana went the next day. Fell asleep. She hasn’t woken up properly since.”

Ash falls silent. Her eyes are closed, and she’s gripping the end of the bed. I have this urge to hold her, but I can’t bring myself to do it. She clenches her jaw. The muscles in her neck tense. After a long silence, Ash shakes her head and opens her eyes again.

“Sorry,” she says.

“Do you need time alone?”

“It’s hard to remember anything about that night,” she says. “It’s hard for me.”

“My dad was a real bastard. I’m glad he’s gone.”

“Me too. But it’s not enough.”

I want to ask Ash what would be enough, what exactly she wants from me, what she’s going to do with the Book of Eight, but she sighs and stands up. I realize Ilana is standing to the right of the bed. Or rather, her body is still in bed. Her spirit stands beside it, one-armed, smiling at me and Ash. She says something in her strange language.

Ash answers in the same singsong voice.

“What language is that?” I ask.

“We had our own way of talking,” Ash says. “Twin-speak. We grew up together. . . . Magnus kept us hidden away. We only had each other to learn from, a lot of the time. We spoke English and Swedish, too, and we got some Latin from our Host, but this was our special way to talk. After the demon cut away a part of her spirit, she started to lose her mind as well. Our twin language is the only one she remembers now.”

Ilana chirps to Ash again.

Ash responds, then turns to me. “She’s hungry.”

“What do you mean, hungry? I didn’t know spirits got hungry.”

“It’s best if you see this. So you understand.”

Ash calls out to Ilana in twin-speak, and Ilana smiles broadly. She glides across the bedroom, straight through her own body and the hospital bed, and stops right in front of Ash. They link their hands, each a warped reflection of the other, white-haired girl and one-armed ghost. Ilana moves even closer to Ash, brings her lips to her sister’s. Ash breathes something out, like solid light, a shimmering white mist, and Ilana drinks it in.

It goes on for a while. I’m standing by my chair, not sure how to react, poised to move quickly away from them if it seems necessary. Ilana is pulling something out of Ash, the same kind of light I’ve seen linking my body and soul when I spirit-walk.

Eventually Ash pulls back, breaking the connection. Ilana chirps and tries to lean back in, but Ash stops her, snapping at her twin. Ilana protests, then turns and sees me. With a wide smile, the ghost glides across the room, holding out her single hand. Ash yells something in twin-speak. Ilana doesn’t listen. I’m pressed up against the wall, with the ghost’s smiling white face right in front of me. Her hand strokes my head, sending waves of cold through my face and neck. I can’t move. I can’t turn away from her.

“Please . . .” I say, barely managing a whisper.

Ilana’s blue eyes shine with happiness. She dips her mouth to mine.

There’s a flash of searing light, and the ghost shrieks and flies up through the ceiling. Ash is in front of me, left hand outstretched, breathing hard.

“Sorry,” she says. “Sorry. I’ve told her again and again . . . it’s only for her and me. Nobody else.”

“What was happening?”

“You saw her wound,” Ash says. She sits back down in her chair, looking at her sister’s body, the machines threaded into it and around it. “The demon’s whip took her left arm, but only in spirit. That wound can’t be healed. She’s losing herself, day by day. Her essence is leaking out. It’s like a loose thread in a sweater. She’s unraveling — she has been for ten years. The only way I can keep her alive at all, keep her from disintegrating completely, is by giving her my own life force. I used to share it once a year, on our birthday. That kept her going. Then it was once every six months. Then every three months, then every full moon. Now it’s once a week. This past week, it’s been more than that. She asks me every night. It’s killing me, Luke.”

“Then don’t do it,” I say.

Ash doesn’t respond.

“You shouldn’t have to kill yourself to let her live. Not like this. If she properly understood what she was costing you, she wouldn’t do it. You’ve done more than anyone could ask from you.”

“She’s not just my sister,” Ash says softly. “She’s me. She’s my other half. We came into the world together. We’re one person. What would you give for someone you love? I can’t live without her. I love her. I’ll do whatever it takes.”

I think of Mum, Elza, even Ham. The people I love. I can’t say how far I’d go to save them, keep them alive. I hope I’ll never have to find out.

“I understand,” I say.

I look at Ash, slumped in her chair, and Ilana, her body asleep in the bed. Two broken things, clinging together as best they can. My father did this to them. He tore their lives apart and probably never thought about them again. He never even mentioned them to me. I wonder if he even knew that Ashana and Ilana Ahlgren existed when he ordered the attack. Does that make it better or worse, if he didn’t know? Ilana’s heart rate rises briefly, and then returns to normal. I look down at my muddy shoes, then back at the girls. They haven’t moved. Ash doesn’t look frightening anymore, just lost and scared.

“My hair started growing in white a year ago,” Ash says. “My eyes are gray and they’re supposed to be blue. I love my sister, but she’s killing me.”

“So what do you want me to do about that?” I ask.

“I need the Book of Eight. There’s a way to heal Ilana, make her whole again. I know it exists. But only the Book itself will give me the knowledge I need to perform the rite.”

I consider this.

“I’d need an afternoon with it,” Ash says. “That’s all. I have reading equipment, page sequences, everything else. I just need to know how I can save her. I want you to want to help us. I’m asking you. Begging you.”

“I do want to help you,” I say.

Ash looks at me.

“I know you’re a good person,” she says. “I can tell.”

“You’d only need to read it once,” I say.

“There’s no other way. That’s all I’m asking. I know the Book of Eight is dangerous. That’s why I’m not asking you to read it. I’ll take the risk.”

I close my eyes. This has been one of the longest, strangest days of my life. It must be dawn by now, Wednesday morning. It’s the first of April. I’ve been in this house all night. In a few hours it’ll be time for school. I need to get home before Mum knows I’ve been gone.

If I’ve got a chance to fix even one thing my dad broke, wouldn’t that make everything that’s happened to me worth it? If there’s a chance the Book of Eight could do someone some good, I’d like to take it.

“I’ll help you,” I say.

Ash engulfs me in a hug. Her white hair is surprisingly soft against my neck and chin. She breathes into my chest.

“Thank you,” Ash says. “Thank you so much.”

It’s dawn when we leave Ash’s strange, empty house. The sky is a watercolor wash of pink and yellow, the sparse clouds tinged with peach. The air has a bite to it, although the sweater Ash gave me is thick and warm. I stash my hands deep in my pockets. The menace that clung to the building site at night has faded with the darkness. Ash leads me to her car, and we climb in. The inside smells stale and old, and the passenger seat sags when I put my weight on it. She must’ve gotten this third- or fourth-hand. She could afford something much better, I’m sure, but the thing about this car is nobody would look twice at it.

Ash starts the ignition and backs out of the garage. I was right to think she’s done this a lot. She could easily pass her driving test if she were seventeen. I’ve managed to convince Mum to let me back the car out of our driveway a few times, no more than that.

“How are you allowed to drive?” I ask as we pass by the half-built houses.

“I’ve got a U.K. license,” Ash says.

“But you’re not old enough.”

“My license says different.”

“So it’s fake.”

“There are still people out there who respect my family name,” Ash says quietly, and I decide to leave it at that. We pull out onto a main road, no real traffic at this time of day. I’m wondering how stealthy my body was about leaving Wormwood Drive. If Mum realizes I’ve been gone, I’ll be in deep trouble. Did it lock the door behind it? Maybe Ham got out. These are all minor concerns compared to what could’ve happened to me, but they’re concerns nonetheless. Ash slows the car as a black cat darts out of the hedgerow and across the road, out on some early-morning mission.

“How did you get my body to come to the house?” I ask her after a while.

“Oh,” Ash says, “that’s simple. As long as you can find the link, it’s easy to summon an earthly vessel. I’ve never done it in real life before, but I knew the theory.”

“What would happen if someone did that to Ilana?”

We’re driving through Kirk’s estate now. We just went past his house. We used to be best friends, and we haven’t said a word to each other in months. Maybe I shouldn’t have asked Ash about her sister. She’s looking at the road ahead, hands clamped on the wheel.

“Ilana doesn’t have a proper link to her body, so it wouldn’t work. That’s her main problem: the bond between her animus and soma is almost totally broken.”

“But I thought when it broke —”

“You die, yes. What happened to us doesn’t seem to have ever happened before, or at least I can’t find records of it. Ilana should’ve died years ago. My life force is keeping her here. The Ahlgren Host was broken, destroyed. Magnus was the Host’s necromancer and he died, but his sigil and our family’s Book of Eight were destroyed as well. Neither of us can inherit. The Host is gone. But he’d already made us minor masters of his Host, and that binding wasn’t fully broken, so . . . I don’t know. We’re like a wheel without a hub. It’s unstable.”

“What is a minor master?”

“I suppose it’s like a sublet. You give someone limited authority over your Host. Most necromancers wouldn’t even dream of it, but it’s perfectly possible. It’s old magic, blood magic. Usually works best if you extend it to family members.”

“So you’re both bound to the Widow? She takes your orders.”

“Yes. But I can’t summon or bind new spirits. I wouldn’t try it even if I had the Book of Eight. Ilana’s situation is so precarious . . . even trying to summon a new member of our Host might tip her over the edge into death. She was a minor master, like me, but her sigil was destroyed. . . . It’s complex.”

Despite never having read the Book, Ash seems to understand far more of the theory behind necromancy than me.

“I thought Hosts were eight ghosts,” I say.

“Yes,” she says. “Hosts are made from nine spirits. Eight dead servants, one living master. That’s always been the way. The master can assign others as minor masters, but their authority is limited in some ways. And most necromancers don’t do it at all, because it can unbalance the Host if you have too many masters.”

Is that why Dad never gave me a minor sigil? I suppose I could always track him down and ask him.

“That does seem complicated,” I say.

“I can give you some reading if you like. There’s this great treatise from fifteenth-century Germany that outlines most of the theory —”

“I think I’m all right.”

We drive through the estate. We pass a milk van, stopped outside one of the identical redbrick houses, engine still running, pumping out a gray haze of exhaust. The sun is peeking over the horizon. Birds crowd the telephone lines. We drive past Dunbarrow High, school gates still padlocked. There’s a single jogger making her way uphill, struggling along in black-and-pink sneakers, panting out white billows of breath as she runs in the cold. I look at her face as we pass her, but she’s fixated on some point on the horizon.

“And Mark’s in a hotel,” I say.

“Luke,” Ash says, “we’re not going to get anywhere if you don’t trust me. Why would I hurt him? Where would that get me? He’s in a hotel in Brackford. He’s being paid.”

“He agreed to this?”

“He thinks he’s consumer-testing the place.”

“And why does he think that? How do you . . . I mean, why did everyone think you’re an exchange student? Are you, like, a hypnotist? How does that work?”

“By magic,” Ash says, which I suppose is a pretty obvious answer. “And I’ll give you Mark’s room number and check-in date if you don’t believe me. You can go talk to him if you like. But you’re going to have to start trusting me sometime.”

We drive through town and climb the long hill toward Wormwood Drive in silence. Ash knows which house is mine without being told, which is unsettling but not surprising. We come to a halt just shy of the entrance to our driveway. The street is deserted. I unclip my seat belt.

“Well, it’s been an interesting night,” I say.

“Likewise,” Ash replies.

“I suppose I’ll see you at school.”

“I guess so.”

She taps her hands on the steering wheel, biting her lip, then cuts the engine.

“Can I see it now?” she asks.

“See what?”

“The Book of Eight.”

Her gray eyes search mine.

“No.” I shake my head. “Absolutely not. It’s, like, five thirty in the morning. How’s it going to look when Mum wakes up and finds you in the house?”

“All right.” She looks away. “Sorry.”

“Look. Come by tonight, after school.”

“I will,” she says.

The street’s stillness is complete and total. You could believe that time had stopped, that we’d be here in Ash’s car forever, the sun never rising or falling, the sky stuck in its strange tropical blend of pink and blue. Inside their houses, my neighbors will be asleep, waiting for the shrilling of their alarms. Ash is facing ahead, breathing lightly, not seeming to look at anything in particular. I wonder what she’s thinking. I think about my neighbors, immobile in their darkened beds, and the dead, lying in their dark graves.

Ash restarts the engine, breaking the spell. I reach for the door handle.

“Hey, do you want your sweater back?” I ask.

“Keep it,” she says. “It fits you better than me.”

I get out of the car, shut the door behind me. I walk around to our gate and look back at Ash, still parked, watching me. I’m not sure what’s appropriate. Are we friends now? I’m helping her with something important, but I’m still not even sure if we like each other. She trusts me. I’m trusting her, too, come to think of it.

In the end I give her a little wave, but she’s already driving away.