Dusk or Dark or Dawn or Day(22)

“Aren’t you going to see who it is?” asks Delia, when the ringing gets to be too much.

I pick up the receiver. It’s cold and heavy in my hand. “Hello?”

“Jenna!” Danny sounds so relieved to hear my voice that it hurts. I almost drop the phone. “I was afraid you wouldn’t pick up.”

“Danny?” Brenda stiffens. Delia looks relieved. I try to focus on the sound of his voice. “Danny, where are you? We’re all worried sick. The ghosts are gone. All the ghosts are gone.”

“That’s why I’m hiding—because someone’s been stealing ghosts, and I don’t want to be next,” says Danny. “I was calling to make sure you were okay. Where are you, Jenna? Are you being safe? Are you being careful?”

“I’m at home,” I say, frowning. “You called me. You should know that. How did you get this number?” A lot of people who shouldn’t have my number have been calling me lately. It’s starting to get on my nerves.

“I—” Danny stops after that one syllable, leaving it hanging for several seconds before he says, “Just be careful. Stay in public places, if you can. Don’t go to the helpline. It’s too predictable. Try the park, or Times Square, someplace where no one can get you alone. I’ll do my best to call again.”

The line goes dead. I lower the receiver, frowning. “I never gave him my number,” I say. “How can he call me if he doesn’t have my number?”

“There are many kinds of witches,” says Brenda. Then, without giving me a chance to stop and think, she asks, “Where did the call originate?”

“Mill Hollow, Kentucky,” I say, with equal speed. Then I stop, blinking slowly, and turn to stare at her. “How did you . . . how did I . . .”

“Ghosts can always find home, and there had to be a reason you’d been left alone this long,” says Brenda. She looks to Delia. “Lock your doors and windows tight. It’s not safe here anymore. I know you can’t leave—”

“You know I won’t leave,” says Delia firmly.

Brenda smiles. “You won’t leave. Yes. But you need to stay secure, if you can. We don’t want Manhattan to come unmoored.”

Delia sobers. “No,” she agrees. “We don’t want that.”

I look between the two of them, and I have no idea what they’re talking about. If I’d lived—if I’d grown up and grown older as a living human girl—I’d be an adult by now. As it stands, in some ways, I’m still a child. I always will be, right up until I reach my dying day and step across the line into whatever waits for ghosts who have moved on. It’s frustrating under the best of circumstances. Right now, it’s terrifying.

“What does ‘unmoored’ mean?” I ask.

Both older women stop, turning to face me. Delia’s mouth works like she’s trying to speak but can’t find the words. That just makes things worse. Brenda can be silent. I’ve seen it, seen her sitting comfortable at the diner counter with a cup of coffee in her hand, letting the world move around her like a promise. But Delia doesn’t hold her peace. “I’m not resting in it, so I don’t see the need to cling to it” was what she told me once, when I asked if talking all the time got as exhausting for her as it was for me. Delia is never silent, and now Delia can’t make a sound.

This is where I should turn and run. This is where I should go see California, catch a plane to Hawaii, anything to get me away from this suddenly unsafe apartment full of ancient cats and silent ghosts, anything to take myself out of the line of fire. I’m Jenna, I’m the girl who runs. I ran from Patty’s death and into the storm that killed me. I ran from Mill Hollow and the slow acidic ache of watching my parents age and die while I stood outside of time, exiled by my own actions. Ghosts are going missing, Danny is calling me from Mill Hollow, and Delia has been struck silent. This is where I leave.

“Well?” I look between the two of them, not moving. “What does ‘unmoored’ mean?”

“Ghosts don’t age unless they choose it,” says Brenda. I already know this, but something about her tone tells me to listen. Her words are careful; she’s choosing them like she’s trying to pick the best shells off a cluttered beach. Delia’s mouth stops moving. I wait.

Brenda continues, still slow: “Most people think this means ghosts aren’t connected to time anymore. That time doesn’t care about the dead, and maybe that’s true, in a sense, but it’s also false, in a much larger one. Time needs the dead, or it gets . . . confused. That’s the best way to say it. Time gets confused. Time doesn’t run right without the dead to tell it which way it’s supposed to go. Ghosts are the nails in the coffin of eternity, and they keep the lid from flying off.”

“If there were no ghosts in Manhattan, maybe Tuesday would come after Wednesday instead of before,” says Delia, finding her voice. “Or maybe Tuesday would come and never end, and nobody would notice, because who really pays attention to such things? Everything would get tangled, and even the people who couldn’t tell you why it hurt to be here would feel the pain of it all. They’d start leaving. That’s the long and the short of it. When a place comes altogether unmoored, life deserts it.”

“How did people ever go anywhere new? That doesn’t make sense. Who was mooring Manhattan before humans got here?”