Free Queen of the Dead by Stacey Kade

, do you?”
    Like the girl from the Gibley Mansion? Like me, Mom? “No,” I said. Because if so, why hadn’t my dad ever mentioned them to me? It was one thing to refuse to talk much about the gift/curse we both shared. A whole other thing to let me think we were alone in it when he knew otherwise. “Definitely not.”
    She nodded again, seemingly reassured, a spark of her Sam-induced happiness returning. “Good night, hon.” She snapped the light off and shut my door on her way out. After a few seconds, I heard her running water in the bathroom and the sound of her footsteps heading down the hall to her bedroom. A few minutes after that, nothing but that heavy silence that comes with someone sleeping.
    I wished it could be that easy for me. But my mindwould not slow down, playing back the evening over andover again, in fast-forward, rewind, slow motion, and every possible combination. No additional answers emerged, though.
    I was finally starting to doze off when a funny scrabbling noise sounded at the window behind my headboard.
    My first completely illogical thought, half-asleep and fuzzy-brained as I was, was that Mrs. Ruiz had managed to pull herself back together, and she was pissed and coming after me. I knew for sure it wasn’t Alona. She always managed to slip in and out of the room without a sound.
    I bolted up and off the bed, swallowing back the instinctive and childhood urge to call for help, fumbling and flailingto reach the light on my desk.
    The window squeaked upward, and I cursed myself for always leaving it unlocked.
    I snapped the desk lamp on and hoisted it above my head as a makeshift weapon, just as a familiar face, surrounded by mass amounts of wild dark hair, appeared in the opening. “Thank God,” the girl from the Gibley Mansion said, bracing herself in the window frame.
    I didn’t move, couldn’t move. I wasn’t entirely sure I was awake.
    “You know just about every spook in town knows your name, but not where you live?” Without waiting for a response, she clambered in and stepped down on my bed and then the floor. “What are you doing?” she asked with a frown, taking in the lamp with her gaze.
    Like I was the one where I wasn’t supposed to be. I couldn’t have been more surprised if Jessica Alba had suddenly appeared in my bedroom. Thankfully, I’d thrown a T-shirt on after Alona had left, and getting caught in boxers wasn’t that big of a deal.
    “What do you want?” I asked, when I recovered the ability to speak. Alona’s dire warnings of a vast conspiracy rang in my ears, sounding less and less crazy by the second. Feeling a little foolish suddenly with the lamp above my head, I set it down carefully.
    “So suspicious,” she said, still frowning.
    Now I was getting pissed. “Were you or were you not the person accusing me of ruining your life just a few hours ago?”
    She sighed. “You’re going to make this difficult, aren’t you?” Without waiting for an answer, she reached forward, and I stepped back, the sharp edge of my desk biting into my back, before I realized she was just grabbing for my desk chair.
    She rolled the chair toward herself with a smirk that said she’d seen my retreat and found it amusing. She twisted the chair around backward and sat down, her arms resting across the back.
    “Where’s the queen?” she asked.
    It took me a second to realize she meant Alona. “Not here,” I said warily. “Why?”
    “Good.” She nodded.
    “What do you want?” I repeated, still not sure how I felt about her being here now. Yes, I was curious. Not sure I was curious enough for a stranger to be in my bedroom late at night when I hadn’t invited her.
    Alona’s voice whispered in my head. Invasion of your ter ritory; it’s a power play. Damn. Maybe my mom was right. I was spending way too much time with her.
    The girl didn’t answer right away. She just stared up at me in that cold, evaluating way that made me feel like I was back in Principal