His warm brown eyes assessed me for a minute. He slid his hands into the pockets of his pale corduroy pants. "You know haunted houses aren't my thing. That stuff is brainless."
"Yeah, I heard you." I tried not to take his words personally. "But it's just for fun. We're not taking it seriously. Theo and I were going to stick around and hold a seance."
"A seance?" he asked, lifting one brow.
"Yeah. That's how people in Hell get our kicks, y'know. Halloween taints our blood."
"Seances. Also corny," Henry said, leaning his head back against the tree trunk. His hair blew around gently in the breeze.
"Well, I know they're not as cool as dragons," I said sarcastically.
"I know how to separate fantasy from reality," he said seriously, his eyes darkening a shade.
"So do I," I retorted. Most of the time.
I started to turn away, back towards the sidewalk. It was a lost cause.
"What the hell, I'll go," he said, shocking me. "But only for you. What day are you planning?"
"Saturday," I said, trying to contain my irrational excitement. "We're going to the orphanage for the haunted house, and then we're going to find a way to hang around after. Oh, and make sure you bring a fourth person. It doesn't matter who, as long as they're willing.
I thought better of the suggestion for a second. "And as long as it's not Lainey or Madison."
"Okay. But don't be offended if I laugh," Henry warned. The Lexus glided up to the sidewalk and Henry nodded goodbye as he got into the passenger seat and disappeared.
CHAPTER 12
MY PARENTS LEFT for the airport Friday afternoon. They had been invited to go to a wedding in New York, for one of Claire's sorority sisters. Aunt Corinne was enlisted to keep me company——which, decoded, meant watch over me.
"You need a babysitter at fifteen?" Theo had asked me skeptically at lunch.
"Yeah, you know. I might try to put metal in the microwave, or get a boo boo and needed it bandaged."
Ambrose Slaughter forced his way past me with a grunt, grabbed a cellophane-wrapped sandwich, and cut directly to the cashier. No one in line dared protest. He made sure to bump into me again on his way back out.
"Excuse you," he spat.
I merely held my breath and waited until he was out of sight.
"Or throw a banging party, considering how popular I am," I muttered, clutching my tray.
In reality, I didn't protest my parents' decision to have Corinne over, at least not too much. I knew I was on shaky ground, as they allowed me to hang out with Theo whenever I wanted. I waited for the limits to be revealed. I didn't want to jeopardize the little freedom I had left.
Aunt Corinne was due to arrive two hours after my parents departed, so I had rare time to myself. I caught up on laundry and read A Tale of Two Cities for English. Then I started picking up the already tidy house, since I knew Claire would have wanted me to.
I wiped down the kitchen, cabinets to floor, and re-vacuumed the living room carpet, trying to make everything as nice as possible. Of course, Claire had been scrubbing her hands raw up until the last minute. The house smelled strongly of disinfectant and the five apple cinnamon candles burning on the kitchen windowsill.
Corinne arrived half an hour late, lugging two huge suitcases and a steamer trunk out of her minivan and almost smashing my toes. Her sunglasses sat crookedly on her nose.
"There was traffic. It would have been faster to walk," she reported in her nasal voice as we began to drag in her bags. I had no idea what she could possibly need so desperately for two days. She only lived thirty minutes away in Ann Arbor.
I helped her get settled in the den where she was staying. She griped about the short couch and the lack of TV, but otherwise seemed satisfied.
An hour later, I was hanging out in the dining room while Corinne botched an attempt at dinner. Chunks of unidentifiable vegetables were swimming in green sludge in a stew pot on the stove. We had been talking about school and she'd asked me questions about what Claire was up to, which I recognized as fishing for gossip. I had none to give her, since Claire and I hardly exchanged words. I was biding my time, waiting for the right moment to ask her what I needed to.
"Have you ever seen a ghost?" I finally asked, attempting to sound nonchalant from my seat at the table.
"What do you mean?" Still stirring the pot, Corinne turned to me, her nose scrunched up. If I didn't know her better, I'd have assumed her expression was due to the stew's noxious fumes. But that was Corinne's default face.
"Have you ever actually seen a ghost with your own two eyes?" I asked again, shifting the napkin holder back and forth so I didn't have to look at her.
She paused, tapping gunk off of the wooden spoon with a clunk and setting it on a paper towel square.
"I've had paranormal experiences before," she said cautiously, crossing the room and taking the seat across from me. I watched her pick out her words. "I've heard them and I've sensed them. I can feel when a spirit is nearby, or even if it's just the energy that has been left behind."
She rotated her arms in windmill motions as she spoke, giving her the loony psychic aura she projected so often.
"So the answer is no?" I asked bluntly.
She met my eyes and looked irritated, dropping the otherworldly act. "That's right. Technically." She let out a big sigh, pointy shoulders shuddering beneath her navy blouse. "Not for lack of trying, however. Guess I didn't inherit mommy's little gift." Her tone was unmistakably bitter.
I perked up. "Mommy's little gift?"
She laughed dryly, her lips curling into a sneer. "You mean Claire didn't tell you?" Off of my puzzled look, she said, "Of course not. She thinks it's shameful to the family."
I waited for her to continue, curiosity clawing at me. I didn't have to wait long.
"My mother, your grandma Eleanor, saw ghosts. Not just communicating with them. She saw them, as real as anything."
The skin over my spine slithered, like ice water pouring down my back. What was she telling me?
"Your mother wouldn't want me to let you know this," Corinne said. That only seemed to sweeten the deal for her. She stood and returned to her stirring duties as smoke drifted in the air.
"I won't tell her," I pleaded. "I'd really like to know."
She looked like an old-fashioned witch stirring her cauldron, straw-like yellow hair falling down her back. Or maybe that was just Hell having its effect on me. Over my shoulder, I looked out the back door, where Hugh's decorations glowing eerily in the settling twilight.
"Mom never told me much about it," Corinne said. I couldn't tell if she was holding back or not. "She would tell me stories when I was little, about the spirits she'd seen. But before your mom and I were born, she..."
Here she paused, and I could practically hear her brain picking out her words again, like a toy crane machine.
"She stopped."
Finality in her tone urged me not to push the matter. When a person irritated my aunt, she could give him or her the cold shoulder for months. Sometimes decades. She started rooting around in the cupboards above the stove, opening and shutting them forcefully.
"Where does your mother keep the plates in this clutter?" Corinne asked, back to her usual self.
I got up and retrieved the soup bowls. She ladled the repulsive stew in and crinkled her nose up again. My stomach rolled, threatening to turn over.
"If someone wanted to go about having a seance, how would they do it?" I asked as innocently as I could muster.
"What is it with this line of questioning?" Corinne snapped, glaring at me.
"I was just wondering. Those books you gave me sparked my interest." It wasn't entirely untrue, just not the complete story.
"A girl as young and inexperienced as you wouldn't be able to pull off a seance," she said shortly.
I felt insulted, especially considering that at that moment I'd had more contact with spirits than sh
e had ever had.
"Don't you have any books on the subject?" I pressed. I knew that Corinne had once held a side job where she acted as a traveling medium for bereaved hipsters.
"Probably, somewhere. But I don't loan out my books," she amended quickly.
Corinne brought the two steaming bowls of gunk to the table and set one at my place. Swishing the spoon around, I mentally envisioned the microwavable ham n' cheez pockets in the freezer. Less nutritious, maybe, but far more edible.
"Where's the necklace you got for your birthday?" Corinne asked unexpectedly.
"I keep it in my room." I was trying to figure out how to pretend to eat the soup so as not to hurt her feelings, without getting the spoon anywhere near my mouth. Concealing it in a napkin wouldn't work and we didn't have a dog.
"How about you go and fetch it while I order pizza? Then I can answer your questions," she suggested.
I was shocked. She hardly ever indulged in junk food, and she ate her own cooking all the time. The green sludge must truly have been an abomination.
I went downstairs and fished the little white box out again. Pulling off the top, I inspected the necklace tentatively. I hadn't forgotten how the green stone had heated up at the restaurant when I'd spied on McPherson's secret meeting. It didn't make any rational sense then, but now that I knew Eleanor had seen ghosts, it felt like the blurry picture before me was coming into focus.
Back upstairs, the table was cleared off, a set of unopened paper plates waiting. Brackish drops of soup dotted the wood, and I wiped them discreetly away with a napkin.
Corinne was sitting on the arm of the living room recliner, tapping her fingers on her knees. If my mother had seen her, she would have shooed her off like a naughty cat.
My aunt held out both hands for the necklace and I laid it across her palms. Squinting with the stone up to her nose, she rotated it around.
"Well?" I asked impatiently.
"This could be a talisman to increase spirit view. It reminds me of something in one of my books, but I don't think I have it with me," Corinne explained.
"It was your mom's, right? Did you ever see her wearing it?"
Corinne shook her head, her expression murky. She adjusted her bony butt on the chair arm.
"I've never seen it before," she said. "But mom had boxes full of jewelry. Dad bought her every bauble she ever wanted."
She pointed a sharp fingernail at the back of the pendant. Upon closer investigation, I saw some etchings I hadn't noticed before.
"See these designs?" she asked. "These look like alchemic symbols. Sometimes alchemy has been used in modern times for spellcraft. This could prove to be a powerful tool when trying to contact spirits."
"Does it feel, uh, like warm to you?" I asked, biting my lip.
She frowned at me like I'd just asked her how much she weighed. "What?"
"Nothing."
I got the feeling she didn't want to give the necklace back, as she wrapped her fingers protectively around the pendant. But I snatched it out of her grip.
"You said you were going to answer my question," I pressed.
She rolled her eyes and crossed her arms over her chest. "Many different methods exist for going about a seance. You can find them online, if you're that interested. But the most important ingredient for success is that you truly believe and feel connected to the dead you're trying to communicate with."
The doorbell jangled and Corinne hoisted herself off the recliner with a fistful of cash. I sat on the couch, studying the symbols on the back of the necklace and contemplating what to do. I licked my dry lips, feeling the cracked skin beneath my tongue.
After we'd gorged on pizza and buttery bread sticks, I excused myself to my room to kill some time. I fiddled with my textbooks, double-checking my homework, unable to concentrate. Every few minutes I'd get up and pace the floor, appraising the alarm clock.
When I finally crept back up the stairs, it was long past midnight. I heard snoring before I reached the top step. Corinne had passed out on the recliner, a knit throw tossed gracelessly across her knobby knees. A bottle of wine and an empty glass sat beside her, and the TV was blaring a special on arson.
I sneaked into the den, pushing the accordion doors almost completely shut. Her trunk was against the bookshelves. I didn't like taking things, but I rationalized that I would bring them back as soon as I was done, and take every precaution to make sure her items weren't harmed in any way.
Roses were carved into the antique wood of the trunk. I opened the heavy, awkward lid and propped it up against the bookshelves, hoping it wouldn't slam down and amputate my fingers.
As I rummaged around inside, I saw a stack of books jammed against the back. At the bottom was a tome entitled Modern Seance Methodology, filled with torn paper scraps serving as placeholders. Flipping through it quickly, I gathered the other supplies I needed. I felt like my scheme required something more solid than quacky internet advice.
I looked around for the other book Corinne had spoken of, the one that might contain information about the necklace, but I didn't see it. The trunk lid shut with a clunk, and I scrambled out of the den and slipped past Corinne. I went back downstairs to prepare for the next night's deception.
###
I'd planned out Saturday night for a week, but for some reason I was more nervous when it arrived than I'd been on the first day of school. I intentionally refused to examine my motives. Something was haunting me, and whatever it was, it was manipulating my emotions.
I stood in front of the mirror in my room, studying my reflection the same way Jenna had studied hers months ago. In my head, I saw my friend as she had been that night, full of anticipation and nervous energy.
My pale, narrow face looked thinner and older from stress, but my hazel eyes were bright and excited. Too excited. I was putting a lot on this evening. There was every possibility that the seance would be a total bust.
I glanced at the wall above my desk in the mirror, half expecting the thudding sound to start up again in response to my thoughts.
Saying goodbye to Corinne, I took my roomiest purse with me and hoped she wouldn't notice how it bulged. She didn't and only pestered me a little before I made my escape.
"Call me when you get back to Tay-Oh's house," she said, pronouncing Theo's name wrong even though I had already corrected her twice. "And be careful. Remember that your mom and dad don't want you getting in any trouble. At your age, trouble is always chasing you. Don't let it catch up."
"Sure, I'll behave. I'll talk to you later." There was a good chance she'd forget that she'd told me to call when the time came. There were plenty of unopened bottles in the wine rack.
Ms. Vore and Theo were already waiting in their car at the bottom of the driveway. By the time Vore dropped us off at the orphanage, it was five minutes to eight. The sky had turned charcoal gray with streaks of thin clouds, the twisted, bare tree branches black against the night. Bonfires nearby sweetened the autumn air.
"Be back by eleven-thirty. Have fun," Vore told Theo and sped off in her car, leaving us in front of Dexter's open gate. She seemed to be rather lax about Theo staying out, or maybe that was me, being used to overprotective parents.
For a moment, I felt guilty that Hugh and Claire didn't know about my ruse. Being partially honest was still lying. But I tried to tell myself that I wasn't hurting anyone, and I would take care of myself.
Theo was wearing huge, glittery bat earrings, her red hair up in a shiny bun. With her glasses, she looked like the world's coolest librarian.
"This place lives up to the hype," she said, eying the steep, shingled roof of the orphanage. "My socks are definitely in danger of being knocked off."
"Is this the first time you've seen the orphanage?" I asked. We stepped through the gate, shoes crunching through a carpet of fallen leaves. I had a momentary flashback to my long-ago birthday dream.
Locked out, I could go no farther. Jenna standing
in front of the steps, hands hanging at her hips, face flat and hopeless...
"Yeah. I've never had a chance to come over to this side of town," Theo said, breaking me out of my memory. "Where's handsome Henry supposed to be?"
"He just said he would meet us here," I replied, shrugging. "We didn't decide on a specific place."
"Hopefully we can find him," she said, surveying the scene. I thought she was kidding at first, until I noticed how packed the lawn was.
I vaguely recognized a lot of juniors and seniors from Hawthorne, although I didn't know anyone by name. They towered above us as we crossed the lawn, making me feel adolescent. I wondered why, of all places, Dexter would attract such a crowd. Probably because the orphanage seemed so genuinely creepy.
With a jolt of both fear and irritation, I registered Ambrose Slaughter among them, swigging back a can of beer and berating one of his buddies. He was wearing a mask in the shape of a white rat, currently pushed above his eyebrows. Most appropriate mask ever. I steered Theo away before she noticed him.
It looked like someone had done a cleanup job of the grounds since my last visit; the trash had mostly disappeared, although the ground was still dry and brown.
"I don't see any sign of Henry," I whispered to Theo, frowning. Although there were plenty of boys in hoodies. "Maybe he ditched on me. I should have found someone who doesn't think ghosts are ridiculous, I guess."
I didn't want to accept the disappointing possibility that I'd been stood up, but it seemed very likely. In my head, I chastised myself for ever thinking he'd go through with it.
"Were you going to give up on me that easily?" Henry asked from behind me. Theo and I turned to see him, a mock expression of hurt crossing his face. "Good to know I'm so easy to get over."
"You're just hard to find," Theo said quickly.
I noticed then with some trepidation that Henry had recruited Alex Perkins, the idiot always cracking jokes in history class, as our fourth person.
"He was the best you could come up with?" I asked, jerking my thumb at Alex. Theo tilted her head, scrutinizing the other boy.
"I'm just here for the free entertainment," Alex assured me, running a hand through his carefully gelled hair. "You did buy me a ticket, right?"
I scowled and nodded at the same time. From my purse, I retrieved the tickets I'd bought online and distributed them to everyone.