All Her Ghosts

Chapter 1

What in the stupid basement is so important Mom can’t even unpack the spoons? Six houses in three years, and every time we move, she spends the first week locked in her secret villain lab, leaving her teenage daughter alone to scavenge from the corpse of yet another abandoned life.

Stomping through the house as loud as I can in mismatched socks, I slam the fridge, the cabinets, the drawers—anything that makes noise, just to illustrate the emptiness.

The first claws of sunlight blare through the naked kitchen windows, heating the stack of taped-up moving boxes piled in the bougie breakfast nook.

The suburban cardboard pyramid off-gasses a wet paper stink, filling the empty kitchen with must and dust and not much else.

Under the rubble of our last aborted attempt at being normal, I unearth a box labeled pantry and spill it out on the floor.

Tupperware rolls past the kitchen table.

Jar lids escape under the fridge. Why the heck not, right?

It’s not like Mom cares. If she cared, she would have unpacked four days ago when we moved here.

If she cared, she’d actually make breakfast for her kid, not leave me on my own to scavenge—let’s see—a half-used bottle of black nail polish, a new loaf of bread, a container of the worst-sounding jam I’ve ever heard of, and, crucially, not a single spoon.

I sit back on my haunches, glaring out at the painfully blue October morning, and force myself to breathe.

Wednesday is too early for a mental breakdown and seventeen is too young to shuffle off this mortal coil, but here we are—half dressed with a pounding headache, no eating spoons, no mental spoons—getting ready for my third morning at the sixth new school I’ve attended since I hit puberty.

“Anything would be better than this,” I mutter to myself, shoveling garbage back into its boxes. “A tragic school bus accident. An escaped convict with a chain saw. A kidnapping—”

Hunched like a goblin halfway under the table, I spot the man striding around the outside of our new house before he sees me.

His cold gray eyes cut through the kitchen, scanning the room.

Is he casing the place? Trying to figure out if we’re home before he robs us?

He’s dressed like a man who avoids the police for a living: dark hoodie, dark jeans, absolutely nothing about him distinct enough to tell anybody about.

I expect to see a hammer any minute. Maybe a brick through the back door?

I lurch to my feet, blood fizzing with adrenaline, the cool emptiness of an impending fight filling up my brain.

The man’s eyes meet mine through the glass.

He falters. Just a second of hesitation—and it could have been his shoe catching a rock in the path around the house—but something in his face changes.

His mouth twitches. His shoulders ball down.

He looks away, crosses the narrow patio to the back door, and knocks hard enough to rattle the glass in the windowpanes.

Nice try, I guess, but I’m not dumb enough to open that.

Instead, balancing on the built-in booth seats around the kitchen table, I inch the window down from the top sash.

“I just watched you walk the whole way around the house. What, you don’t want to be seen from the street? That’s serial killer behavior, you know that?”

The man keeps his hands where I can see them, blowing steam into his cupped palms. He angles his body toward me, even points his head my way.

You’d think I had his full attention but something about his face…

he reminds me of a lighthouse, way off on a broken, rocky shore.

The spotlight glances over me, but never lingers long enough to illuminate.

“I came to speak with your mother.”

“Listen, buddy, let me save you some time. Just because we’re new here doesn’t mean we’re new to this. We already talked to the HOA. We don’t want to save money on any of our bills, subscribe to cable, satellite, or the neighborhood watch. Just mark us down as no for whatever and go.”

The lighthouse lamp passes my face again, almost warm this time.

“I’m an associate of hers, smart-ass,” he says, deadpan. “Is she home or not?”

Taken aback, I blink at him. Maybe my vision’ll clear and somebody rational will pop out from the late-morning mist instead.

“Smart-ass? Really? Wow—well, you’ve charmed me.

I totally want to let you in now. Only, my mom’s a scientist and kind of old?

So I don’t really think she’s stupid enough to fall for this whole”—I splay my hand, gesturing at his gray-salted buzz cut and three-day stubble—“negging, home-invading, soccer dad vibe you’ve got going on right now. ”

The corner of his mouth twitches into an actual smile. For the first time, he meets my eyes directly and his cold gray stare feels like a graveyard of old mistakes. Haunted. I can practically smell the ghosts on him from here, bitter ozone drifting through the open slit of the window.

“Oh, believe me, Persephone,” he says. “I know exactly what Chloe Green is stupid enough to do.”

A well splits open in my stomach, cold water flooding my chest. How does he know my name?

How does he know my mom’s name? Mine—I don’t know, we fight so much, maybe he waited outside until he heard her yelling at me?

But Mom doesn’t even use her full name when she can help it.

She goes by her middle, avoids giving out her last.

I don’t like this. This is above my pay grade.

“Yeah, okay, I’ll go get her,” I relent begrudgingly. “But you twitch funny and I’m calling the cops.”

Shoving the window back into place, I lock it, check the sash and the dead-bolted back door twice. Watching him the whole time to make sure he sees me do it, I flare two fingers at him, my eyes to his haunted lighthouse. He tips his head, unimpressed. Tips his chin, a silent command: Go.

You know, I almost hope he puts a brick through the window? I can’t wait to see what happens to him after.

Retreating across the kitchen, I pound on the basement door, howling for my mom.

Nothing. Not even a shuffle down below or a whisper of music so she at least has a decent excuse for ignoring me.

I try the handle, but it resists in my hand, internal servos catching, refusing to move without the correct key code.

Of course. Mom doesn’t believe in emergencies worthy of “violating the sanctity of her office.” Heck, even my own birthday isn’t worthy enough.

Last month I got all the usual gifts: a rewrapped “I promise I wouldn’t postpone if it wasn’t important, Persephone;” a secondhand knockoff version of “I’ll make it up to you next week;” with an encore of half-hearted road trip and the lackluster news broken that ta-da! We’re moving! Again.

Clenching my jaw, fingers still fuzzy with adrenaline, I tug my phone from its hiding place in my bra strap.

The stranger stares straight through the house, his eyes a pressure on my spine, watching every move I make. Could she not even have put up a single curtain? I want to climb out of my skin so bad it takes physical effort to scroll open my contacts and shove the phone to my ear.

A bastion of parenting, my mother only hangs up on me once.

“Why are you still here?” she answers the second time, waspish. “The bus comes in five minutes.”

“There’s a strange man outside. I tried yelling for you, but you were too busy to bother. I’m assuming you want me to get abducted?”

Mom pauses long enough that I check the screen to make sure she hasn’t hung up on me again.

“A strange man?”

“Yeah, he wants to talk to you. Says you work together.” I hate the way his gaze moves, a methodical calculation in the way he eyes the yard, the darkened hallway just past the kitchen, the distance between the houses and the street.

Still, he stands right where I left him, his hands where I can see them.

Safe enough for now, anyway. I can’t resist an opportunity to nettle.

Keeping a wary eye on him, I gasp in fake horror. “Mom, are you dating?”

She hangs up. A minute later, I hear her exasperated footsteps pounding up the stairs. The door ricochets open.

“I guarantee you we are not dating,” she says, jaw tight.

“You haven’t even seen him.”

“Go catch the bus.”

“And walk outside saying what?” I protest, glaring. “Excuse me, Mr. Kidnapper, my mom says I have to go to school today? No panel vans for me, thanks?”

That earns a sharp inhale. A flicker crosses my mom’s face, a spark about to ignite, but she freezes in the middle of the kitchen, eyes locked on the man framed in the bare lattice window of the back door.

Her breathing goes jagged, too quick, like somebody punched her in the chest and she can’t catch her breath.

I abandon my quest to annoy her, anxiety squeezing my own chest.

“Mom? Who is he?”

“Don’t worry about it. Go to school.” Slowly, she turns, stares me full in the eyes. She says, “We’ll talk about it later.”

Anger evaporates my worry. Instant and white-hot, it burns my nerves until I can’t feel my arms at all, pins and needles; then numb, gone. I hold myself very still, clamp my fury between my teeth, and force my voice even, so she can’t say I’m emotional and ignore me.

“You’re lying. You only ever bother to look me in the eyes when you lie. Do you think I’m so desperate for attention I’ll believe it better that way?”

“Persephone,” my mother says. “This discussion is over. Don’t forget your ghost salt. It’s—”

“Hanging beside the door you’re kicking me out of,” I snarl. “Same place it’s been in the last six goddamned houses—and God forbid you share a room with me for more than a minute in any of them!”