He and Olgilvie traded glares, but the cop looked more amused than anything else. He liked that Mace was in trouble—and he loved that Mace was in trouble along with me, which made me think that the chief didn’t have much liking for me at all.

“Can I ask you a question?” I said to Olgilvie when Mace was gone.

He looked amused. “What?”

“How come you’re being haunted by Joe Hard?”

The iron bar clattered to the table hard enough to leave a mark. Olgilvie’s face went completely white. When he looked at me, his expression was a mix of fear and...hatred.

“Lark,” my sister said. “What did you just do?”

I couldn’t answer that, because I had no freaking idea. I regretted doing it, though—sort of. Olgilvie was afraid of me, and that was kind of cool, but I had a feeling that I’d just poked him about a secret he’d kill to keep. A secret that I didn’t really know and wasn’t worth me dying over.

“What do you know about Joe?” the officer rasped.

I looked at Joe, who was grinning at Olgilvie like a shark about to take a bite. “I’ll do you a solid, JB. Tell him if he doesn’t let you go I’m going to tell you where Laura is.”

Oh, this was all kinds of stupid. “Joe says if you don’t let me go he’ll tell me where Laura is.”

For a second, I thought Olgilvie was going to have a stroke. He went from white to crimson in seconds, and a vein on his forehead bulged. If looks could kill, there’d be nothing left of me but a pile of smoldering bone.

“You idiot,” my sister said. Then to Joe, “If he tries to hurt her, I’m going to come for you.”

For a second, Joe didn’t look all that impressed, but then Wren...changed. She felt and looked ominous—like a thundercloud ready to spit lightning, only one hundred times more dangerous. Her eyes turned into mirrors, reflecting the darkness I’d only glimpsed once before and never wanted to see again, but I couldn’t look away. She was my sister, and I refused to be scared of her.

Joe swallowed, his eyes wide. “Riiiiiight.”

I looked at Olgilvie. He was still flushed. He stank of desperation. “I don’t know who Laura is,” I told him. “And I don’t really care. I just want to go home. Can I go home, sir?” I thought the “sir” was a nice touch—might make him feel a little more in control.

“Yeah,” he said, his voice shaking. “Get the hell out of here.”

I grabbed the iron rod and salt from the table and jumped up. Wren followed after me in silence. She was angry at me. I was angry at me, too. I’d blackmailed my way into going free, but I’d just made a huge enemy that I knew I was going to regret making.

“Be seeing you, JB!” Joe shouted.

I didn’t acknowledge him. Our paths would cross again; I knew it. He’d better hope I wasn’t dead when that happened.

LARK

It took me a few minutes to get my bag back. By the time Wren and I left the police department, she had filled me in on what had happened to Gage. It was hard to listen and not respond, but there were too many people around for me to even acknowledge her. I didn’t say anything until we got out into the parking lot.

“I should have been there,” I said as we walked. It was late—really late—and there wasn’t anyone around to overhear.

“There was no way you could have known Bent would go after Gage like that.”

“No,” I agreed mockingly, “because what he did to Sarah wasn’t a hint or anything.”

Wren sighed—a long-suffering sound she’d used with me a lot. “You couldn’t help Mace and help Gage, too. Suck it up.”

I stopped and turned to look at her. “Suck it up?”

She shrugged and frowned at me. “Or get over it—whatever.”

I shook my head. Slang and my sister just didn’t mix.

“Mace seems to be all right,” Wren commented as we started walking again. “What happened?”

I looked around to make sure no one was about—again. “Can you think of any reason why my touch would heal wraith wounds?”

She pretended to think about it. “We’re not normal?”

Sarcasm and my sister, on the other hand, they mixed pretty damn well. “I touched him, Wren. Somehow I stopped the wound from hurting. It happened earlier with Sarah, too.”

“I don’t know. Lark, when you died and came back, everything got mixed up. We were odd before that, but now...”

“It’s like all the rules got messed up,” I finished.

She nodded. Her fingers brushed my hair. “How about, just this once, you just be glad you’re weird instead of trying to figure out how and why?”

I was too tired to argue. “Sure.”

“Wonderful. Now that that’s settled—I can’t believe you threatened that deputy. God, Lark! What if he decides you’re his enemy? He’s the law!”

“You’re not saying anything I haven’t thought of, Wren.”

“Maybe you should have thought harder before opening your mouth.”

“I said it because it got us out of there. I’m not going to think beyond that.”

“Sometimes I think you don’t think at all. If you hadn’t ironed me I might have been able to scare him at the asylum and you wouldn’t have been taken.”

“How would that have been any better? He still would have blamed me.” I glanced at her. “Maybe you don’t think as well as you think you do.”