The next day, the others searched the house for how the ghosts got in. I would have been happy to help them, but I was under strict orders to stay inside and talk to the ghosts. My assignment wasn’t all that difficult, so I decided to work on the decorations as well.

Olivia found me in the front hall, laying out the ornaments I’d made that morning.

Of course, she didn’t approve.

“Nice,” she said, looking down at my paper cranes.

A one-word compliment, given enough sarcasm, feels a lot like a bee sting.

She picked one up. “But don’t you think we have more important things to be worrying about?”

“I take it you didn’t find the hole?” I said.

She scowled and went over to hang the bird on the tree. “No.”

Iset came in behind her. “I’ve checked the last charm. It’s intact and working.”

She sounded resigned.

Olivia’s resignation sounded a bit darker. “Good to know we wasted the whole morning.”

“I don’t think that confirming our home is safe is a total waste of time.”

Without being asked, both of them came over and started putting up the decorations. Maybe they were restless. I could sympathize.

“What about you, Emerra?” Iset asked. “Did you get a chance to talk to them?”

My eyes flicked to the side of the room. Kappa was playing with the rag ball I had made from my craft scraps. The three ghost children were staring at him with rapt attention. They had tried to approach him several times, but Kappa would unconsciously scoot away from their chilly auras, so they had to be content with watching him from a distance. As they did, their expressions wandered through a myriad of emotions, ranging from confusion, to wonder, to amusement.

Despite the fact they weren’t paying any attention to me, I lowered my voice. The others might be able to talk about the ghosts as though they weren’t there, but they would understand me.

“I’ve run into a few problems.”

Iset sat down on the nearby stairs. “Go on.”

“The good news is that I can see them better now. They look more solid. Is that normal?”

“Attention makes everything stronger, even spirits. The reason they were so faded was probably because they hadn’t been seen or heard for a long time.”

Olivia said, “I wonder if they would have lasted this long if they hadn’t had each other.”

Her voice was soft—almost kind.

Iset added, “But since you can see and talk to them, it makes sense that they would become more substantial.”

“Will it help their memories?” I asked.

Iset tilted her head.

“They don’t remember much,” I explained. “John says he doesn’t remember anything—”

“John?”

“The youngest.”

“He’s only five, Emerra. I wouldn’t expect his memory to be all that reliable anyway.”

“Anna remembers more, but it’s all scattered. And…” I glanced at the ghosts again. They were still diverted by the bog-monster.

“And?” Olivia prompted me.

I turned and handed her a decoration. “I don’t think they want to remember.”

“You think there’s trauma there?” Iset asked.

I nodded. I was good at recognizing trauma in children. I had an unfortunate amount of experience.

“And they won’t talk about it?”

“Not yet,” I said. “It’s always easier to talk when you’re doing something else. They couldn’t help me make the ornaments, but I thought it might be a distraction.”

“And then they met Kappa.” Iset sounded amused.

“You can see them?”

“You keep glancing that direction.”

“Did you learn anything?” Olivia asked.

Once again, her voice was kind. I tried not to openly marvel at it. I was sure that would be the fastest way to guarantee I would never hear it again.

You might be reading a stolen copy. Visit Royal Road for the authentic version.

“When I asked about their parents, Anna said she had a dad,” I said. “Kind of.”

“How do you ‘kind of’ have a dad?”

I had wondered about that myself.

Ever since I had learned that I wasn’t actually hearing English when my brain insisted I was, I found that, if I focused on the ambient sounds, I could sometimes also hear a murmur of foreign words. But hearing something twice at the same time gave me a massive headache, so I didn’t try it often.

I had tried it when Anna attempted to explain her home life. I don’t know why I thought hearing a foreign word would make it any clearer. I guess I’m just a genius like that.

“He wasn’t a normal father figure,” I said. “She talks like he’s her dad, but when I ask if he is, she says no, and she always refers to him by his first name.”

“What was it?” Iset asked.

“I—why?”

“I’m still trying to figure out their language. It might help us learn who they are.”

“I think it was D-something. Like…Dominie? Dominus?”

“Domnus,” Iset muttered. “Roman. I can look it up later, but I don’t think it’ll help.”

“Why not? It can’t be a common name,” Olivia said.

“Not today, but back in their time period, it was much more common to name your children after saints.” To me, she said, “Go on.”

“I tried talking to John and Jacob, but most of their memories seem to come from when they were ghosts.”

“What makes you think that?”

“Because they only talk about each other and Anna. They talk about being outside—the trees, the animals, winter, summer—but that’s it.”

“Why are they with Anna if she’s not their sister?”

“Anna says she takes care of them.”

“Does she say why?”

“No.”

“You didn’t ask?” Olivia said.

“They wouldn’t talk about it.”

In the long silence that followed my statement, I took the chance to place a few more decorations on the tree.

While I was on my tiptoes, Olivia said, “I don’t suppose they told you anything about how they died? Or why they got caught here?”

“No,” I said. Since I was staring at the tree instead of watching her, I found it easier to admit my weakness. “I know it’s important, but I didn’t want to press the issue. John was getting upset.”

“I thought you said he didn’t remember anything.”

“Pain makes a different kind of memory.”

I hadn’t been thinking when I mumbled that last line, so my ears had the honor of informing me how dumb I sounded. It was true, but that didn’t mean most people would get it.

I waited for Olivia to say something sarcastic or make fun of me, but she didn’t. When I felt brave enough, I peered around the tree. Olivia was picking through the decorations with a thoughtful frown.

“What did Anna say about it?” Iset asked.

“She said she doesn’t remember what happened, but she said something about bones.”

“Bones?”

“Yeah. Bones. She kept repeating it. They were watching the bones.” The string on the ornament I was holding finally settled between the needles. I lowered my arms. “And that’s when she got upset.”

“Any idea why?”

I walked over and grabbed some more decorations. “She thinks she needs to be somewhere.”

“That sounds like an echo,” Olivia noted.

Iset saw my quizzical glance before Olivia did. She said, “Sometimes a caught soul can become obsessed with the task they were focused on when they died.”

“Sometimes that’s the reason they get caught,” Olivia added.

“So if we can figure out what she was trying to do, we can help them do it and release them?” I asked.

“It’s not that easy. The tasks usually involve something in the past. How do you deliver a letter to a woman who’s been dead for a hundred years? Sometimes, if you’re lucky, you can create a convincing substitute, but most of the time, their only hope is to learn to let go.”

“I don’t know if it is an echo,” Iset said. “‘Watching the bones’ doesn’t sound like the type of task a child would be given.”

The front door opened. A cold rush of air came in, followed by Darius and Conrad.

“Nothing!” Darius announced. “Not a damn thing.” He kicked the snow from his boots. “I even had Conrad sniff around, in case something might turn up, but…” The vampire shook his head. He finished taking off his boots and turned to us. “What about you ladies?”

Iset said, “Olivia and I went over the whole house. Everything looks fine. Emerra’s been talking to the ghosts, but that hasn’t been as enlightening as we might have hoped.”

Darius came toward me. “Can you hear them better now?”

“Kind of,” I said, “but there’s a lot they don’t remember. And a lot they don’t want to remember.”

“Are they here?”

When I looked over, Anna was watching me with her blanched eyes. I shivered. “They’re over by Kappa.”

Kappa glanced up when he heard his name, but then he went back to the wrestling match he was having with the ball. Despite the fact he had two webbed feet, two webbed hands, and fangs, he still seemed to be losing.

“Did you ask them how they got in?”

“They don’t know.”

Darius grumbled, “So we have three intruders who had no way to get inside and don’t remember how they did it.”

“They’re not intruders,” Iset said. “They’re children, and they’re lost.”

At that moment, I knew exactly how Darius must have felt sometimes—it killed me that I couldn’t run over and kiss that mummy.

The count accepted this chastisement with his usual grace. “You’re right. Thank you, Iset. But we still don’t know who they are or what to do with them.”

“Do we have to do something with them?” I asked.

Darius and Conrad both turned to me.

“Look at them.” Realizing my mistake, I changed it to, “Take my word for it, they aren’t hurting anything, and they seem—I don’t know—happier.”

“Anyone would be happy watching Kappa mess with that thing,” Olivia said.

“Exactly! Can’t we leave them alone?”

“They need to be released, Emerra,” Conrad said.

“Do they need to be released right now?”

Iset’s bandaged head turned toward Darius. How she managed to exchange glances with anyone was one of the wonders of the Noctis mansion. Maybe the gesture was a habit.

She said to me, “Sooner would be better, but it doesn’t seem like we can do anything right now, even if we wanted to.”

“If they’re this much stronger after only one night, maybe in a few days they’ll start to remember something,” I said. “Or if they get the chance to relax, they might be able to open up.”

“That is a possibility,” Iset admitted.

“That’s one possibility,” Conrad said.

His tone was dark and there was way too much hint in it for my comfort.

“What do you mean?” I asked.

“You said they were following you around. If you went upstairs right now, do you think they’d stay with Kappa, or do you think they’d go with you?”

A cold feeling crawled, one vertebrae at a time, from the base of my spine up to my neck.

Conrad went on, “And if they’re hanging around with you that much, how long do you think it’ll be before you start having dreams?”

I didn’t bother answering.

Darius picked up an ornament. As he hung it on the tree, he said, “I’m going to call Jacky. He should at least know what’s going on, and he might have a few ideas we haven’t thought of.” He tapped the cloth covered Styrofoam ball. “You know, these don’t look half bad, Emerra.”

“Thanks,” I muttered.

I was in for a series of nights almost as horrifying as what poor Scrooge had to go through, but at least my ornaments looked good.