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the dead anymore. I had minimal brain damage. Lucky it wasn’t completely scrambled. It’s like the accident broke the channel.”
    My hand still cupped my mouth, my eyes wide. “And mom?”
    “When we were both well enough to leave the hospital, Claire told me that she couldn’t see ghosts anymore, either. I believed her, because I never thought she’d lie to me. This whole time, I took for granted that her experience would be the same as mine. She was so eager to forget all about it. She hid it really well, Ariel. I didn’t know until…what happened. I knew she took the Valium, but she told me it was for panic attacks. We promised we wouldn’t get back into ghosts again.”
    “So when she said you didn’t have a choice?”
    “She meant that I lost my abilities, but she apparently didn’t. When she said that, part of me realized her lies.”
    “Is she the one who stole the necklace back?”
    Hugh drained the rest of his cup. He looked ten years older than he had a month ago. Gray patches were beginning to grow at his temples, and there were more wrinkles lining his forehead.
    “She knew that they were some kind of a cult, but from all I can tell, she didn’t know they were after you. Other than you being my daughter. We had a moment of worry when the Ford girl broke your nose. But that seemed like just a spat between girls.”
    We sat in silence for a while, both looking at the floor. My brain was full to exploding, and I felt dead tired. But somehow I still didn’t feel satisfied.
    “I think it’s time we go to bed,” Hugh said, standing up and taking our cups to the sink.
    I hopped up. “But I have so many more questions.”
    He turned and put his hand on my cheek. Bags dragged down his eyes. “You’ve gotten more than enough information for tonight. Get yourself a good sleep to absorb what I told you. We can talk in the morning.”
    I was about to protest, but he was right. My head was spinning enough to make me dizzy, and I felt like I could pass out right there. “Okay.”
    We changed out of our mourning clothes, stowing them away in the bag in which we bought them. I shut the door to my room, turned off all the lights except for the bedside lamp, and changed into my pajamas. Sliding underneath the cool sheets, I fully expected to fall asleep instantly.
    Instead, I turned from side to side, punching the pillow to fluff it up, but the tension in my neck wouldn’t abate. I stared up at the ceiling, missing the stars that were on my ceiling in my old bedroom. My best friend, Theo, had put them up, and my thoughts turned to her. She’d found out I was dating Henry and had gotten really mad at me for not telling her. I’d barely spoken to her since then, and she’d left on winter vacation. She hadn’t gotten back yet, even though New Year’s had already passed and school was back in session. Was she still out of town? Probably.
    I reached for the phone on my bedside table, and tapped my contacts. I stared at her name, my fingers itching to call or at least text her. But she was more than likely still mad at me, and I didn’t want to play my dead mother as a card to win back my friend. That wasn’t fair to any of us. I set the phone back down and punched the pillow again.
    My boyfriend Henry was still recovering, and for once I didn’t want to talk to him. There would just be too much to explain. He’d let me know that they just released him from the hospital, since he had recovered well from being stabbed by McPherson. But I hadn’t seen him in school.
    The biggest surprise was that Hugh had seen ghosts. It never popped into my head. All of the ghost-seers I’d heard about were female: me, Claire, Eleanor. That a boy could see ghosts was something I’d naively not considered. Sure, Henry had seen the shadow shapes that sometimes lurked around us, but that had been different.
    Hadn’t it?
    I jumped off of the bed and went into the bathroom. Even though it was late, I stripped down and