Her sister, at five, speaks with the confidence and diction of a princess. “I told them,” she says, standing in the doorway.
“Who?” says Nightjar, feeling stupid. “What?”
“That you’d gone missing,” she says. “I would have confessed earlier, but I was waiting for Gnomon to leave.”
“So you’re a tattletale,” spits Nightjar.
“I saved you, sister. They wouldn’t have noticed you were gone.”
Nightjar slams the door. Confusion, anger, grief, chagrin: when she lets herself speak it’s a crack of thunder, and a crack in the dam.
POE, she whispers in her terrible new voice, and the ghost is there.