“Yes,” Livvy said. Much like pushing through a headboard, she had been able to push herself down into the water. It had been nothing like swimming had been back in Los Angeles, where the water was green or blue or gray, depending on the time of day and whether the sun was shining, and all the waves wore a cap of white froth and came rushing up noisily on the wet sand. Dimmet Tarn was black, utterly black, as black as night but without stars or moon or the promise that dawn would ever come. Black as tar, black as—nothingness.

Livvy had not felt the water of Dimmet Tarn, but she had sunk into it all the same, slowly, until her head was beneath the surface, darkness below her, the suggestion of the winter sky above shrinking until it was gone altogether and she saw and felt nothing. She had sunk down and down into that void, that blackness, that nothingness, until it was not clear to her whether she was still sinking at all. Nothingness was all around her. Only that strand that connected her to Ty remained, as thin as it could be and yet stronger than the strongest metal.

She and Ty had theorized that perhaps since she was now, as a ghost, uncanny herself, she might be able to discover the secret of Dimmet Tarn. Livvy had liked the idea she might have a superpower of some kind, be useful in some way, and Ty liked the idea that there might be a local mystery that they could solve. But if Dimmet Tarn was keeping an occult secret, Livvy had not discovered it.

“They’re going to ring the bell for dinner soon,” Livvy said.

“I hope it’s not olive loaf,” Ty said.

“It is,” Livvy said. “Can’t you smell it?”

“Ugh,” Ty said. He put down the black notebook and picked up the red one in which he kept his timetables. He flipped back a page and said, “That’s three times in four weeks.”

Livvy had worried about what it would be like for her brother, to be so far away from home, but Ty had adapted surprisingly well. He’d drawn up a schedule for himself on the first night, and he followed it faithfully. He laid out his clothes each night for the following morning, and before he fell asleep he checked his alarm clock against the watch he wore around his wrist. Ty kept one of Julian’s old empty lighters in the pocket of his jeans, for when he needed to keep his fingers busy, and he wore his headphones around his neck during classes like a kind of talisman.