Free A Curious Tale of the In-Between by Lauren DeStefano

Lady Savant said. “It would cost a lot of money to get there. More money than a little girl could have. Which is why I’ve come up with a way to help you. Think of how powerful we would be.” She waved her hand across the air as though she were holding the headline on a silver tray: “‘Lady Savant and the Child Extraordinaire.’ A woman who can hear spirits, and a girl who can see them. We would travel the country, and pay our way with nightly shows.”
    Pram shrank into herself. She was beginning to awaken, and with consciousness came fear. What ever hold Lady Savant had over her was waning.
    Lady Savant knew it. “You must go home now,” she said. “A young girl needs her rest. Tomorrow morning when you awaken, you will remember this dream, and you’ll come and see me.”
    “I’ll . . . see you?” Pram said.
    “Because you want to find your father,” Lady Savant said.
    “ I want to find my father,” Pram echoed. She had no trouble with that part, because it was true.
    The man with the muscular arms opened the door. The breeze moved Pram’s hair. She stood to leave.
    “You’ll come back tomorrow,” Lady Savant called after her.
    Pram walked slowly through the town. Her eyelids were drooping, her feet dragging. Felix wished he were alive so that he could carry her the rest of the way home.
    “Pram?” he said, walking circles around her.
    She stopped walking and looked at him. “Felix?” she said. And her eyes fluttered and went white, and she collapsed.

CHAPTER
    13
    F elix was sure he’d entered every Tudor house in the town before he found Clarence, who was sleeping. “You have to wake up,” Felix pleaded. “You’re the only hope I have.” He reached through Clarence’s curly head again and again. “You stupid boy.”
    Normally Felix took comfort in being invisible, but now for the first time he hated it. He hated himself for being dead, and for being helpless. He’d left Pram alone and without a coat, breathing clouds into the chilly air. Deep in her unconsciousness, Pram remembered who Felix was and that she trusted him, and he’d managed to drag her to the sidewalk before her body fell through him again.
    In his dream, Clarence saw her there. He dreamed that the howling wind carried a voice telling him that he had to wake up. He knitted his eyebrows together and pulled the blanket tighter around his shoulder.
    Felix balled his fists. He thought of hurricanes and willed himself to have the power of one. He’d been able to make the tree fall that afternoon, and he could surely summon a commotion now.
    The top drawer of Clarence’s dresser slid from its hinge and hit the ground with a thud. Pram disappeared from his dream and he sat up.
    “Yes, good,” Felix said. “Now go and find her.”
    But Clarence of course didn’t hear him. In the moonlight he saw the drawer on the ground, and he knew that something was amiss. Drawers did not fall on their own. He thought of his dream, which had been unusually vivid, and had the horrible idea that it might be real.
    “Hello?” Clarence said. “Felix, is that you?”
    Clarence couldn’t know that Felix stood beside the bed, shouting and gesturing for the door.
    Felix did have to give the boy credit. It was instinct, not a special ability, that made Clarence get out of bed and put on his coat and shoes. There might have been a little bit of love to it, as well, though Felix would never acknowledge as much.
    Clarence ran through the house, and just before he reached the front door, a voice called out, “Where are you going?”
    One of the maids stood in the doorway of her bedroom, her hair disheveled.
    “To the center of town,” Clarence said. “It’s an emergency.”
    “What kind of emergency could require a boy to be out alone this late at night?”
    “I don’t have time to explain,” Clarence said, opening the door.
    “If you leave, I’ll have to tell your father,” the maid said.
    “Yes, thank you,” Clarence said. “He