His father called a meeting at the breakfast table the next day. “Well, the mayor’s finally showed his hand,” he told Zane and Emma. “I knew he wanted to buy the land from us, but I wasn’t expecting just how much he wanted it.”
He pushed a piece of paper with something scrawled on it toward them, and it took Zane a few seconds to realize that these weren’t just some random numbers—it was the amount of cash the mayor was offering them for Stilgarth.
Emma let out a sound that was half gasp and half squeal. “We could buy anything we want with this much money!”
Her father chuckled. “Well, not quite anything we want, but it would be more than enough to keep us in comfort for the next several years. More than enough to pay for both your colleges, if you’d like.”
“But what about the other residents?” Zane asked. “A lot of them don’t want condos and a shopping mall.”
“And some of them do. We can’t arrange our lives around other people, though; we have to make the best decision for us. Do you want to stay in Solitude?” his father asked him gently. “I know that we haven’t been here long, but as I said before, I’m open to moving, if that’s what you’d like. I’ve been carting you two from place to place, and it feels like there’s never enough time for you or Emma to make friends the way you should. This seems like a good place to start, whether or not we decide to sell the place—but only if you want to. We don’t have to sell the manor if you’re against it, either. It might be fun to restore it together. The money to sell is great, but I have more than enough saved up to give us some options to start.”
“What are we going to do with the manor if we don’t sell it?” Emma asked. “Restore it and then what?”
“You can’t just sell it without figuring out some compromise, either,” Zane said. “A lot of people here are gonna be mad at us.”
“I’m afraid that’s the nature of business transactions like this,” his father said with a wry smile. “People will be mad regardless of what we decide, but disappointing people isn’t the same as hurting people or behaving unethically. So we ought to at least make a choice that we can live with, knowing we can’t make everyone happy. Does that mean you’d like to stay and keep Stilgarth till we decide what to do with it?”
“I . . .” Zane wavered. He didn’t want the house. Visions of the woman by the window, of her underneath the memorial crawling toward him—he didn’t want any of that. It would be easier for his father to sell everything so they could get out of town as quickly as they’d arrived and leave all this behind.
And yet something hung heavy in his gut, like he knew that was the wrong decision to make, despite his fears.
“I don’t know yet,” he finally said.
“Well, the mayor’s agreed to wait a month, so there’s no rush. We’ll all get a feel for the place some more and see if this town’s worth staying at.” His father cleared his throat. “I do want to let you both know that the mayor also asked me to stay on and oversee the construction projects they have, if we do agree to sell. And if they make a successful go at this, that will mean more work for me as they expand—enough to keep me occupied for the next ten years at least, based on the plans he drew up.”
“So we don’t have to keep moving?” Emma asked, eyes wide. “We can stay here even if we don’t keep the house?”
Zane knew what she was thinking, why she was so excited. No more having to change schools every couple of years, no more having to say goodbye to friends.
“No more moving,” his father agreed with a smile. “If you like it here, that is.” He flipped a couple of pancakes onto Zane’s plate. “Now go ahead and eat your breakfast.”
• • •
The idea that they could stay in one place on a more permanent basis was appealing, but Zane wasn’t sure he wanted to do it in a town with a ghost that seemed to be stalking him.
He was still trying to convince himself that he’d dreamed it all the night before. That he hadn’t actually seen a ghost. That it was some nightmare.
He thought that the daylight would protect him, at the very least. That he wouldn’t see anything out of the ordinary while he was in school. He’d arrived early enough to shoot some hoops for a few minutes on the basketball court, trying to chase the restlessness out of his system. He’d slept badly last night, but he wasn’t tired. If anything he was a little scared, not that he’d ever admit it out loud.
It was when he was moving in for a layup that he saw a sudden glimpse of white out of the corner of his eye. Something that looked like bare feet gliding toward him.
Feet that were twisted and gnarled, toes spread too far apart and bent.
Zane panicked.
He was on the floor before he knew it, flat on his butt. Whatever had broken his concentration was gone, if it was even there to begin with. There was no one else here with him.
No one except Garrett and some other team members, who’d walked in just as he fell.
“What are you doing?” Garrett asked, smirking, but he bit back whatever snide remark he’d been about to make and hurried to kneel by Zane’s side. “You all right? Didn’t hit your head or—”
“I’m fine!” Zane shot back. He scrambled to his feet, ears burning. Of course Garrett of all people had to find him like that, but most of all, he was scared. What’s wrong with me?
Garrett didn’t look angry or on the verge of a snarky comment. If anything, he looked oddly concerned, and for some reason that made Zane even more annoyed. “I said I’m fine,” he repeated when the other boy made no move to go away. “You can go.”
Garrett didn’t. He continued to stare at Zane even as the latter snatched up the ball and slunk off the court. Garrett hadn’t even bothered with an insult, which weirdly hurt Zane’s pride. Had he looked so pathetic back there that he couldn’t even get Sevilla to express his usual derision for him?
Zane’s bad mood lasted into math class a few hours later, when Mrs. Robertson announced that the class would be working in pairs for a new project. Teams would be assigned a fictional company where they would have to balance their expenses and create a budget and a working payroll for the fiscal year. Numbers were not Zane’s strongest subject.
Mrs. Robertson had at least given them the choice to pair up with friends, and since Kev was in his class, too, Zane was on the verge of turning around to ask him when Garrett raised his hand. “I don’t mind pairing up with the new kid,” he called out.
Zane’s jaw dropped open. Mrs. Robertson looked pleased. “That’s very kind of you, Garrett,” she said.
“It is very kind of me,” Garrett said. “You don’t mind moving over for a few minutes while I talk with my new partner, do you, Kev?”
Zane shot a frantic look at Kev, who looked confused, then shrugged amicably and grinned. “That means I can ask Allison,” he said, winking as he stood to shift seats.
“Seriously?” Zane muttered as Garrett drew nearer, expression neutral. “It’s pretty obvious you hate me. Now you’re gonna torture me at practice and math?”
“I know you saw her,” Garrett said matter-of-factly. He slid into Kev’s seat. “The Gravemother. Back at Stil-garth, underneath the memorial. Probably saw her a few more times after that, judging by how skittish you are.”
Zane gaped at him. “How did you . . . ?”
“Because I saw her, too.” Garrett looked around warily. “This probably isn’t something you want to discuss here, so if you don’t have anything else planned later, we can talk about it over at my place. We can work on the budget project and I’ll try to explain everything then. You cool with that?”
Zane continued to stare. There was no such thing as ghosts. Whatever had happened to him was the result of stress or something. Garrett was hallucinating, too. Maybe there was some kind of gas at Stilgarth that made them start acting like—
Garrett gazed down at the floor. “Part of her mouth was missing,” he said, and this time his voice trembled. “And she was moving like every bone in her body had been smashed to bits.”
Zane took a deep breath and slowly exhaled. “Sure,” he finally said. “I’ll come over.”
• • •
Zane scarfed down a quick lunch and then headed to the school library, where he combed through every book he could find that mentioned the Gravemother. Some referred to the legend only in passing, while others treated it like a historical treatise, though they were full of conjectures and hypotheses and not backed by a lot of facts. Disappointingly, there weren’t many details beyond what Mr. Vink had already explained. Nothing in the collection said anything about what the Gravemother actually looked like.
He’d chased Kev and Hale down in between classes to ask about the encounters other people in town had, and they confirmed that the most anyone had ever seen of the ghost was a figure in white. No real accounts of her features, save for a few outliers (like the beady yellow eyes from Mrs. Hyacinth, whom no one seemed to believe).
Which meant Garrett wouldn’t have known about the missing jaw unless he’d seen her, too.
When Zane emerged from his last class of the day, Garrett was already waiting for him. He was idling by the parking lot with his hands shoved inside his jacket pockets, but he straightened quickly when Zane approached.
“How did you know?” Zane exploded, consumed by curiosity.
“I told you. I saw her like you did.” Garrett shifted, and Zane realized that the boy was just as uncomfortable as he felt. “Look, I know that we got off on the wrong foot—”
“We didn’t get off on the wrong foot. You got right in my face and—”
“—but I think we ought to put aside our differences for now,” Garrett barreled on unapologetically. “There’s more riding on this than just you or me. The Gravemother’s been responsible for hauntings in Solitude over the years, but it’s never been as bad as the last few weeks since they tried to take down the manor. And given that we’re the only ones who can see her, we owe it to everyone else to make sure we finally put her soul to rest.”
“Ghosts don’t exist,” Zane said bluntly. “And look, I won’t lie and say that I didn’t see anything, but there’s gotta be a perfectly good reason beyond just some supernatural—”
“The Gravemother told you a name, didn’t she?”
Ice ran through his veins. Garrett had known that, too. And he couldn’t have, unless . . .
Garrett nodded grimly, seeing the answer on his face. “I’ve seen her outside of Stilgarth since. Always when I’m awake, so I know I wasn’t dreaming her up. She was calling for someone named Emmy, and there’s no one in town that I know by that name.”
“I do,” Zane said quietly. “Her name is Emma, and she’s my sister. And if the Gravemother’s real, then—then we need to figure this out before something happens.”
Garrett looked at him. “All right,” he said. “Nothing’s going to happen to Emma. We’ll puzzle this out together.” He stuck out his hand.
After a moment, Zane accepted it.
“Welcome aboard, city boy,” Garrett said.