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especially not weird, creepy strangers. She thought I should probably just stay home. She wished I
could
stay home, but home was gone. She hated leaving our old house. It wasn’t the same here—she hadn’t spent much time in this place before, it wasn’t
hers
, and itmade her feel weaker and somehow scattered. She liked Cousin Hepzibah, though.
    I asked her about the other ghost, but she didn’t seem to understand me.
    â€œBut you’re a ghost yourself, Kitty!”
    She gave me her patient impatient look, the one that says “My baby sister is talking like a silly little baby.” With a sigh that fluttered the bed curtains, she floated off the bed and sank slowly into the painting over the fireplace. I got up and went over to it to look for her, but I couldn’t make out much, just glimpses of a river through shadowy trees.
    I wondered where Kitty went when she wasn’t here. Was she in the picture now, behind a tree or over a hill, out of sight? Was she in the walls? Was she nowhere at all?
    I felt as lonely as I had when she’d first died.

CHAPTER SIX
    Supernatural Salvage
    P ut on your boots, Sukie-Sue,” said Dad a few days later. I was sitting in the kitchen with Cousin Hepzibah, the only really warm room in the house. I had finished my history homework and was reading ahead to see what would happen to George Washington’s battered army, but I clapped the book shut and jumped up from the hearth bench. “Where are we going?” I asked.
    â€œPossible salvage.”
    â€œWhere?”
    â€œNew Hampshire.”
    Dad liked me to keep him company, especially after Kitty died. He didn’t usually say much, but it was companionable driving with him.
    After a while, we turned off the main road onto a gravel road that led uphill. A plow had been through after the last heavy snowfall, but that was days ago. Since then, a few light dustings had left the road ghostly between looming trees.
    The view opened up dramatically when we got to the top of the hill. What must once have been a lawn sloped down from a large old house. Despite a tangle of scrub and leafless saplings, you could see clear across a town-spattered valley.
    The house itself was tall and graceful, with a pillared porch that sagged in the middle. A young tree was growing next tothe chimney, rooted in the roof. “They’re tearing this down?” I asked.
    Dad nodded.
    â€œWhy?”
    He shrugged. “Cost a lot to fix it, and they like modern.”
    We went in, noting the heavy door and the windows on either side, each with sixteen panes of wavy glass. There was a built-in hall tree for hanging hats and umbrellas. It was in pretty good shape, its mirror glimmering dimly. The hall was surprisingly grand, with paneling and a marble mantelpiece.
    The staircase listed scarily. “Mahogany,” Dad said approvingly, knocking on the banister. The newel was carved into a pineapple.
    â€œWhen’s the house coming down?” I asked.
    â€œSoon. Bruce says they want to start building in the spring.”
    That was good news. Dad’s friend Bruce liked to hire Dad, and he always gave him first crack at the salvage. “And the property owners don’t want to reuse any of this? Not even that awesome fireplace?”
    Dad shook his head. “They’re steel-and-glass people.”
    â€œWhat a waste.” I patted the doomed pineapple finial.
    When I touched it, something cold buzzed through my arm. It felt like the doorknob Elizabeth Rew at the flea market had bought, or the broom, or like the air just before Kitty shows up. I remembered how Elizabeth had sniffed at the doorknob.Was she somehow sensing the same quality by smelling it that I sensed by touching it?
    â€œYou know what, Dad?” I said. “I bet that lady from the flea market last week is going to want this stuff.”
    â€œReally? Why?”
    I shrugged. “I don’t know, I just . . .