The Unwanted by John Saul Page A

want to do that?”
    Cassie shrugged, and let her imagination begin to flow. “Lots of reasons. Maybe they just want to see the houses they lived in, or keep an eye on their descendants.” Her voice dropped slightly. “Or maybe there are people in the graveyard who weren’t supposed to die, and they’re still there, waiting for revenge.”
    Jennifer’s eyes narrowed, but when she spoke, her voice quavered just the tiniest bit. “Now,
that’s
dumb!” she declared in conscious imitation of Cassie’s earlier pronouncements. “All you’re doing is trying to scare me, and you can’t. I’m not a baby.”
    “But it could be true,” Cassie insisted, her gaze returning to the graveyard once more. “Nobody knows what happens to us after we die. Maybe we just die, but maybe we don’t. Maybe we keep on living, in different bodies.”
    Jennifer frowned. “You mean like re—reincar—whatever that word is?”
    “Reincarnation,” Cassie said. “Maybe—” She fell silent as she noticed a slight movement out of the corner of her eye. Peering out the window, she looked to the left and saw Eric Cavanaugh leaning into the power mower, pushing it through the thick grass in his backyard. She frowned slightly, remembering his odd reaction when he’d been introduced to her. For a second he’d almost seemed afraid of her.
    She watched him for a few moments, and then, as if he could feel her eyes on him, he turned, squinted against the sun as he tipped his face up, and hesitantly waved. Another moment went by before Cassie waved back.
    Abandoning the window, she looked at the room once more, then her eyes fell on Jennifer, who was watching her warily. “I told you it was small,” the little girl said cautiously. “You don’t like it, do you?”
    “Yes, I do,” Cassie said. “In fact I like it a lot better than the other room, and I think we ought to trade.”
    Jennifer’s eyes lit with sudden excitement. “Really?”
    Cassie nodded. “Why don’t you go down and tell your mother, and if she says it’s all right, we’ll just start moving your stuff back into your room, okay?”
    Jennifer squealed with delight, and darted out of the room. A second later Cassie heard her pounding down thestairs. Then, alone in the room, she let herself feel it once more.
    As before, it felt right.
    This house wasn’t hers, and the people she lived with weren’t hers. Not really. But this room, for some reason she couldn’t quite understand, truly felt as though it belonged to her, and she was meant to have it. Here she would feel comfortable, feel safe.
    When Rosemary appeared in the doorway a few minutes later, Cassie was still by the window, sitting on its ledge.
    “Cassie?” Rosemary asked. For a moment the girl didn’t move. “Cassie, is something wrong? Is there anything I can do?”
    Cassie looked at her then, and fleetingly Rosemary had the impression that the girl was somewhere else, somewhere far removed from the little bedroom. Then something in Cassie’s eyes changed, and she smiled.
    “No. I just think I should have this room, and Jennifer should have the other one. Is it all right?”
    For a moment Rosemary was tempted to argue, tempted to point out that surely Cassie would need the extra space much more than Jennifer. But as her eyes met Cassie’s, she changed her mind. For in Cassie’s eyes she saw something that suddenly worried her.
    Keith’s stubbornness, like Jennifer’s, was in his jaw, and was nothing more than a physical feature. But Cassie’s was reflected in her eyes, and that, Rosemary knew, was something else entirely. Cassie’s stubbornness was in her spirit, and Rosemary was suddenly quite certain that once this girl made up her mind about something, it would be very difficult to change it.
    “If that’s what you want,” she said at last, “I don’t see any reason why you shouldn’t have it.”
    But as she left the room a moment later, Rosemary had the strange feeling that although