Luis shook his head. "No,but I found all this stuff." He brightened a little, pulling the oldpuzzle boxes and decks of cards from the box.
Theodore stood up, droppinghis spoon into the carton and grabbing up one of the decks. "I rememberthese!"
Benedict groaned. Heremembered them, too.
"Odd toys…"Emmeline commented, circling the table to get a look inside the box.
"I hated those!"Benedict said. They had all been to test and build psychic abilities. Cards and lightboxes and impossible puzzles.
Theodore was already flickingthe rubber band off the deck and shuffling the large, worn cards. "That'sjust because you sucked at it."
Hazel pressed her smile backunsuccessfully. "Aunt Gloria would make us sit in the parlor with thosecards until we could get five right in a row."
Theodore nodded, shuffling thecards and flashing the images on the underside. Coloredpictures, shapes, words, and numbers. "I had the best record."
"Second best,"Elysium corrected.
"I had to sit in thatparlor for two days straight," Benedict sulked. He had never gotten morethan one right at a time, and those rare victories had been sheer luck. Elysiumand Lucy would eventually lie and say he'd gotten five. They were all certainGloria knew, but even she got tired of Benedict crying in her parlor.
"Okay," Theodore putthe shuffled deck down.
"No," Benedictwhined.
Theodore grinned and picked upthe top card. He looked at it once, Elysium and Luis getting a peek at it overhis shoulder, and then he stared across the table at Benedict.
"I'm not playing,"Benedict persisted.
"Just guess," Lucyurged.
Emmeline walked around to theother side of the table, standing behind Theodore's chair. "Ablack heart."
Benedict sighed, trying tosound annoyed so he wouldn't smile. He had hated this game so much as a kid,and he hadn't even thought about how it would work now. "Heart.Black."
Theodore's eyes went wide, andLuis grinned. He turned the card. Lucy and Hazel cheered on either side ofBenedict.
Luis picked up a second card.
Emmeline leaned over hisshoulder. "The number twelve."
"Really?"Benedict complained when his brother took part in the game. He groaned, nodded,and pretended to think hard. If anything, Benedict had become a good performerduring his decade of ghost hunting. "It's a number. Twelve."
Lucy screamed in delight whenthe card turned. They continued to play until Benedict was up to seven in arow. Should he throw out a wrong answer to end the game?
"What's your record, Elys?" Hazel asked.
"Eleven."
Emmeline grinned. "Wecould beat that…"
Theodore picked up anothercard, glancing at it quickly and then pressing it to his chest.
"Star,"Emmeline said. "Yellow."
"A yellow star,"Benedict repeated.
Theodore laughed and swore,tossing it down. "When did you get good at this?"
Benedict shrugged. "College. I'm a late bloomer."
"Keep going,"Elysium pressed.
They did. He had ten right.
When Theodore reached for theeleventh card, Elysium put two fingers to the top of the deck to stop him. Heslid the top card off, face down on the table, and stared across it atBenedict. "Guess it."
Hazel groaned. "That'scheating, Elys. The whole point is to get it fromsomeone else's mind."
Emmeline leaned over the tablebeside Elysium. And for the first time, it struck Benedict how young shelooked. It had been easy to forget that she was unaging,caught forever as a reflection of herself at eighteen, when it had just beenthe two of them. But seeing here there beside Elysium underlined both the newstreaks of gray in his brother's hair and the fact that Emmeline would nevercatch up. Someday, Benedict would be old and gray, and she would still be thesame.
She was so close to Elysium,right beside him, but he didn't notice. How could he not sense her? How hadnone of them noticed her?
Benedict was about to laughand toss out a guess when Emmeline reached out. Her fingers touched the top ofthe card, almost touching Elysium's digits. She stared hard at it and thengrinned, looking up at Benedict. "It's a rose. And that one," shepointed at the top of the deck. "Is a raindrop."
Benedict wanted to ask her howshe knew, but Emmeline's vision was different than his—than any of theirs. Asmuch as she appeared to be here with him on this plane, she was someplace inbetween, overlapping places and times. He stood and stretched like he mightleave without guessing. His family held their breaths, about to complain.
"It's a rose."
Lucy made her excited, hummingsound, heels beating a drumroll on the floor until Elysium flipped the card.
Theodore shouted, smacking thetable.
Benedict grinned and walkeddown the side of the table to reach the deck. He didn't break eye contact withElysium. "Raindrop," he said and flipped the next card.
Even Luis let out a peal oflaughter, the room erupting with squeals of delight as he called the twelfthcard in a row.
Elysium's hard expressionpulled suddenly into a grin. "Well, damn." He laughed and fell backinto his seat. "Maybe the rest of us should still be practicing…"
"That's some seriousugly-duckling-turning-into-a-swan shit," Theodore said.
"We shouldn't havesecond-guessed him," Hazel chuckled. "He's been hunting ghosts foryears. It's just hard not to think of him as our little runt anymore." Shemanaged to make it all sound sweet, and Benedict laughed.
But he noticed Emmeline wasn'tlaughing. She was back to lurking in the corners, stalking the room andwatching all of them with her mysterious green gaze. He was so used to her thathe easily forgot how strange this was. And the only ones he could ask aboutEmmeline, about how she could exist without anyone but him seeing her, and whyhe could see only her and no other ghost, were the very same people he couldnever tell. His family believed he was normal now, normal like them, and theyhad made a life out of pushing spirits from their world on to the next. No, hecould never tell them. He supposed that meant he could never know why she washere—a small price to pay to keep her.
Chapter Nine
Benedict woke suddenly thatnight. He sat upright in bed, staring at the darkness of his room andwaiting—listening. Something had pulled him so completely from sleep, and yethe couldn't remember what it was, his heart beating wildly in his chest.
A heavy thud came fromdownstairs, making him jump where he sat.
He pushed back the covers andturned
