“That’s sweet.”
“They knew other languages too, and my sister would trade them her prettiest seashells for foreign words. She had a fine collection of curses.”
I felt a smile on my face. “Sounds like my Spanish.”
He smiled back at me, but the expression faded. “It was a good place to grow up. But people didn’t live long back then. My sister died younger than most.”
“Yeah, she only looked about fourteen. Wait, were you . . . ?”
He nodded. “Twins. We still are, even if I’m a little older now.”
“Right. Weird.” Yami was stuck forever at the age she’d died, but her brother wasn’t. “Is that why you stay in the underworld? So you don’t leave her behind?”
“I live there to keep my people from fading away.”
“And she’s one of them. You’re a good brother.”
He didn’t answer, and we walked a little farther. I’d always wondered what it would be like to have a brother or sister, especially a twin. I’d imagined making up our own language, and giving each other secret names.
Of course, I’d had an invisible sister all that time. Mindy had been there every day, watching me grow into an eleven-year-old, then aging past her. A shiver went through me.
“Are you okay?” Yamaraj asked. His eyes glinted brown against the gray world. He and I were still in color, as if we didn’t belong behind this veil of death.
“I’m fine. So when your sister died, is that when you became . . . like us?”
He nodded. “I couldn’t let her go alone.”
“Whoa. So that whole twin-bonding thing is real.”
Yamaraj thought for a moment, then shrugged. “It is for us.”
“How did she die?” I asked, my voice small.
“She was betrayed by an ass.”
“Um, pardon me?”
“A donkey,” he said. “A beast that belonged to my family.”
I was still confused, but my next question froze in my mouth. Past Yamaraj and down the street, the cat lurked in the shadows, green eyes glimmering.
But it wasn’t watching us anymore.
It was staring at another bungalow, even older than the one my mother had grown up in. The house was set back from the road, with gnarled desert trees in the front yard. Around each was a planter box full of stones.
Standing on the lawn were five little girls, all Mindy’s age, dressed in outfits that all looked out of date—plaid jumpers, shirts tucked into jeans, short dresses. They were all staring at the house.
“He’s still here,” I murmured.
Yamaraj turned to follow my gaze. “Who is, Lizzie?”
“The bad man. The man who killed Mindy.”
He took my arm. “This is why you wanted to come here?”
“She needs to know.”
“Be careful,” Yamaraj whispered. “There are some ghosts you can’t save.”
“I don’t want to save them, I just want to help Mindy. She’s afraid all the time, even after all these years.” I couldn’t take my eyes from the collection of little girls. They just stood there staring at the house, silent and fidgeting, as if waiting for a performance to start. “She needs to know if the man who killed her is still alive. Or if he’s wandering the flipside, looking for her.”
“Come away from here, Lizzie.” Yamaraj pulled at my arm, but I shook him off.
“I have to make sure he’s still alive.”
“You don’t want to go any closer to that house,” he said.
As I opened my mouth to ask why, one of the little girls moved. Her head turned slowly, the rest of her body utterly still, until her gray eyes rested on us. She was a little younger than Mindy, wearing overalls and sneakers. Her gaze lingered, her expression blank except for the barest hint of puzzlement.
Yamaraj turned to face me. “Don’t look at them.”
“But they’re just . . .” My words faded as the other girls, all in one motion, turned their heads to stare at us. Their five little gray faces regarded me with growing interest. “Okay, maybe this is kind of weird.”
Yamaraj was already kneeling, his palm on the asphalt. He stood up as the bubbling oil began to expand beneath our feet, and put his arms around me, his muscles tense and hard.
“You don’t want them in your memories,” he whispered as we began to sink into the street. “Just think of home.”
* * *
Our second journey in the river seemed faster, as trips home often do. It was easy to hold an image of my own house in my mind, because I wanted to be there so badly. But it was harder this time to ignore the wet, shivery things that brushed against us. Some part of me had realized what they were—loose memories, fragments of ghosts who had faded away.
I kept my eyes shut the whole way, head pressed against Yamaraj’s chest, his warmth and solidity protection against the blank stares of the gray-faced little girls.
We came to a halt on another windy expanse under a blank sky, but somehow I could feel home just overhead. Or maybe it was beneath us—the afterworld had confused me on the concepts of up and down.
But before I returned to my bedroom, Yamaraj took me by the shoulders.
“You give this up, Lizzie. Don’t go there again.”
“I have to help Mindy. It’s what I would do for a living person.”
“But those ghosts are in your head now.”
“That’s for sure.” I shuddered, seeing their gray faces. “But why is that such a bad thing, besides the potential for nightmares?”
“Ghosts go where they can for nourishment. Think about it. Mindy died in that house, didn’t she? Hundreds of miles from here, but she lives with you now.”
“Right. Because my mother remembers her.”
“More than anyone else in the world. More than her own parents.”
“That’s kind of sad. And weird.”
He shook his head. “It’s not as strange as you’d think. Sometimes when children go missing, their parents can only stand to hold on to their memories for so long. When they let go, those children fade, unless someone else keeps them in mind.”
My mouth was dry. “But that means those little girls are there . . . because the bad man remembers them better than anyone else?”
“Their last days, perfectly. But what if they had you to nourish them instead?”