“Well… it was usually just me.”

  “Really?” He raised an eyebrow. “No friends?”

  I shrugged. “Not that I remember. Not here anyway.”

  “Hmm.” He narrowed his eyes, but his lips curled upward in a sly smile. “Okay, I’m revising the image in my head. Now I see little Mackenzie hitting her goth phase a few years early, telling the kids at school about the ghosts in her bedroom and freaking everybody out.”

  “I was not goth.” I didn’t bother disputing the rest. His imagined scenario was too close to reality for comfort, and it was only my extreme laziness toward makeup that kept me from wearing heavy eyeliner and purple lipstick. “And most people don’t have the luxury of growing up somewhere like Donn’s Hill, okay? In places like this”—I waved a hand at the back fence, indicating the suburban area around us—“people like to throw words like freak around.”

  His smile vanished. “Oh, don’t worry. There were plenty of tiny tyrants at Donn’s Hill Elementary. Kids always find a way to make somebody feel bad for being different.”

  I sat beside him and wrapped an arm around his waist, pulling him into a lopsided hug. “I wish we’d met earlier. I would’ve loved having a friend like you around.”

  He squeezed me back. As we sat there, the breeze picked up and shook the surrounding trees. I shivered. My loose-knit pullover left far too many gaps and spaces to effectively block out the wind, and the cold seeped through my jeans from the concrete.

  “It’s getting chilly.” Graham let go of my waist and rubbed my back with one hand. “I wish we could go inside.”

  “Me too,” I said automatically, but it was a lie.

  When we had first pulled up to the house, I just stared at it for a while, taking in the sameness of it. It was identical to the one in my memory, as though I’d only been gone twenty minutes instead of twenty years. Whoever bought the house after my mother’s passing hadn’t made any changes, not to the light pink stucco or the bark chips and succulents that crowded the tiny front yard.

  It took me longer than I would have expected to find the strength to climb out of the truck. My legs felt limp beneath me as I crossed the short distance from the sidewalk to the front porch, and when I rang the doorbell, I found myself hoping nobody would answer.

  Nobody did.

  Reluctant as I was to step foot inside the house, I hadn’t been able to resist sneaking down the driveway and slipping into the backyard through the unlocked gate. Now, just in case this was my last chance to be here, I heaved myself to my feet and wandered over to the swing set. My fingers dragged lightly down the metal links, as cold as the last time I sat there. In my mind’s eye, I saw our neighbor Darlene round the corner from her driveway. A grim expression clouded her features as she explained to me how completely my life was about to change.

  A sharp voice yanked me back to the present. “Excuse me, can I help you?”

  Graham was on his feet, tucking Striker into the front of his zippered hoodie and backing toward me protectively as an angry-looking woman let herself through the back gate. I focused on her face and let out a tiny shriek of surprise.

  There she stood, as though summoned by my very thoughts.

  Darlene.

  I hadn’t even bothered checking to see if she still lived in the house next door. I assumed that, like me, she had moved away a long time ago. Looking at her, I realized how little sense that made. Just because my life upended completely didn’t mean everyone else’s didn’t carry on as per usual. Obviously, Darlene had stayed right where she was, looking exactly the way I remembered her.

  No, I realized as she squinted at Graham. She’s aged.

  For some reason, that surprised me too. It was jarring to see the crinkles around her eyes and mouth and the encroaching gray at the roots of her hair.

  She moved a few steps closer and asked Graham, “Do Jack and Diane know you’re here?”

  A smile spread across my face. This was classic Darlene: bold, brave, and in everyone’s business—but in a good kind of way. She wasn’t the sort of neighbor who would ignore questionable activity in the next yard. She would put on her best housecoat, march back there, and make sure everything was on the up-and-up.

  “Darlene, it’s me.” I waved at her, pulling her attention away from the tall man with the cat in his sweater. “Mackenzie Clair.”

  The instant she saw me, recognition sparked in her eyes. She placed a hand over her heart. “Macky-bug?”

  I cringed. I had forgotten that awful nickname. Graham coughed in a way that sounded suspiciously like laughter, and I realized with horror that he would never forget it.

  “It’s just Mac these days.” I rubbed the back of my neck with one hand and ducked my head, feeling like a little kid.

  Her body slammed into mine before I had a chance to look up, and her arms wrapped around me in a suffocatingly tight hug. Just when I thought I would have to shove her away so I could breathe again, she released me, pulling back to examine my face.

  “Look at you! You’re all grown up. And—” Her voice broke, and she finished her thought in a whisper. “God, you’re just your mother’s clone, aren’t you?”

  Her face was close enough to mine that I could trace her eyes as they landed on each of the features I inherited from my mother: the dark blue in my irises, the sharp edges of my cheekbones, the loose waves in my dark hair.

  I cleared my throat and stepped backward, then introduced my companions. Darlene gave Graham an awkward half hug to avoid smashing Striker.

  “How long are you in town?” she asked. “Do you have time for a cup of coffee?”

  Graham perked up. “You don’t mind if we bring our cat?”

  Darlene waved a dismissive hand. “No, no, that’s fine. Come on over whenever you’re ready.”

  She slipped out through the back gate, and I looked at Graham.

  “We can stay out here as long as you want,” he said.

  I shivered, once more feeling the chill through my sweater. “It’s okay. I’m ready. Besides, it’s freezing.”

  “Brrrllll,” Striker agreed, snuggling deeper into Graham’s hoodie.

  We slipped out the way we’d come, closing the back gate behind us and returning to the sidewalk. Next door, Darlene’s house looked just the way I remembered. It was one of the few two-story homes in the neighborhood, and she’d painted the siding a vibrant green that exactly matched the Astroturf covering her front yard. Unlike my mother, Darlene hated gardening.

  She threw open the door and ushered us inside, clearly excited to have guests. I stared around the living room, trying to recall if I’d ever actually been inside her house before.

  I decided I hadn’t.

  If it had looked like this when I was a kid, I would have remembered.

  Furniture, plastic totes, and cardboard boxes crowded the room from edge to edge. A narrow, winding pathway had been kept reasonably clear, but we had to step over a toppled pile of newspapers to follow her into the kitchen.

  “Sorry it’s so tight in here.” Darlene squeezed between a tall dresser and a television stand that held no television. “Nobody ever comes to the front door, so I mostly use this room for storage.”

  The kitchen was blessedly uncluttered. Cupboards ringed three of the walls, leaving an open space in the center for a small table. Pale light from the setting sun peeked into the room from the window above the sink, which provided a clear view across Darlene’s driveway and into my mother’s old backyard. A door by the fridge led outside.

  I wondered again if I had been in her house before, at least in this room. Everything from the pale yellow refrigerator to the sunflower-printed hand towels felt undeniably familiar.

  “Sit down, sit down,” she said. “Cream in your coffee?”

  “Yes, please.” I lowered myself onto a spindly stool I suspected had been rescued from a dumpster somewhere.

  Graham took the metal folding chair next to me and released Striker from the indignity of her harness. She shook herself vigorously before setting to work investigating the crumb-littered recesses beneath the cupboards.

  After pouring the coffee, Darlene leaned her elbows on the table and stared at me, joy still lighting up her face. “I can’t believe it’s really you. Tell me everything. What do you do for a living? Are you a librarian like you wanted?”

  “Librarian?” I frowned. I had enjoyed Saturday morning story time at our local branch, but when I cast my mind back on my earliest career aspirations, all I could remember wanting to do was hang out with the Muppets or live in a castle in some unspecified—but probably royal—capacity.

  “Do you remember that little card catalog you made out of a shoebox?” Darlene rested her chin in her palm, eyes dancing. “You wouldn’t let me borrow so much as a magazine from your mom unless I wrote my name on an index card.”

  I laughed. “I don’t remember that at all.”

  “She’s still pretty stingy about letting people borrow her books,” Graham said.

  “That’s not true!” I protested.

  “Really?” He raised one thick eyebrow. “I wanted to borrow your copy of For Whom the Bell Tolls last month and you said I was welcome to read it, but only in your apartment.”

  “That’s because you read in the tub, and I don’t want my books to get wet. If you’d read like a normal person—”

  “What, hunched over a bowl of cereal at the table?”

  Darlene reached out and patted my hand. “You two are adorable.”

  “I’m not a librarian.” I shifted in my seat, debating how to explain my profession. For one thing, I’d never had to tell someone I was a paranormal investigator before; someone else always seemed to, or people already knew before meeting me. “I work on a TV show called Soul Searchers. We… well, we sort of look into potential hauntings—you know, try to figure out what’s really going on.”

  “You’re kidding,” Darlene said.

  I blushed again. “Nope. That’s really what I do. I know it sounds kind of silly, but—”

  “This is perfect.” Her eyes were very round. “I’m so glad you’re here. I’ve got a ghost upstairs.”

  CHAPTER FIVE

  I laughed at Darlene’s words, but I was the only one who found them funny. As she and Graham stared at me with serious—and in her case, confused—expressions, I realized she wasn’t joking. Even Striker paused her efforts to fish something out from under the fridge to gaze at me with reproachful eyes. My laughter faded away until the ticking of Darlene’s wall clock was the only sound in the kitchen.

  “You’re serious?” I asked.

  “Of course.” She cast an anxious glance at the ceiling above us and shuddered.

  “Oh.”

  Investigating a haunting was not what I expected to spend my evening doing. And since prior experience had taught me that burning sage did nothing to dispel Horace when he appeared, I hadn’t bothered to pack anything more than the single emergency bundle I always kept in my purse. On top of missing most of my supplies, my track record with solo attempts to summon or banish spirits wasn’t great.

  But the thought of reaching out into the next world and feeling something reach back stirred something in me. If my psychic gifts had a stomach, it would be growling louder than an angry cat. Not getting to do any real Soul Searchers investigations lately had starved me, and Darlene was offering me the fix I’d been craving for weeks.

  “Okay,” I said, straightening up in my chair and putting on my most confident smile. “We’ll get to the bottom of this together. Why do you think your house is haunted?”

  “I hear footsteps,” she said. “Every night, right above my head. There’s a master bedroom upstairs at the front of the house, but I haven’t slept up there in years. My knees don’t like the stairs, so I moved my bedroom into the den down here.”

  She pointed to the adjoining room. Through the open door, dozens of pieces of furniture loomed. A sudden sense of claustrophobia pressed in on me, even from my seat in the kitchen. How did she manage to sleep surrounded by so many shapes in the dark?

  “I went up there once to investigate,” she said. “I told myself nobody could be in the house. I figured it had to be my imagination.”

  “Did you see anything?” Graham asked.

  “No.” She glanced up toward the ceiling again and lowered her voice. “But I could hear someone whispering.”

  I found myself unconsciously matching her low volume. “What did they say?”

  “I couldn’t understand the words. It might have been a different language. Spanish, maybe?”

  I traded a look with Graham, who simply shrugged.

  “There’s something up there.” Darlene stared back and forth between us with wide eyes. “Can you make it go away?”

  Her earnest expression tugged at my heart. Even if I hadn’t already been on board with helping her, those eyes would have sold me. Kit and Yuri had always fielded the requests for the Soul Searchers team to investigate a haunting. Did everyone who came to us look this frightened and desperate? How did Yuri ever manage to say no?

  “I’ll try,” I told her. “I can’t promise anything. Usually when I do this, my team has a lot of equipment—EMF meters, thermometers, cameras…”

  “We have cameras.” Graham held up his cell phone. “And flashlights.”

  Darlene brightened. “So you can do it?”

  “I don’t know if there’s anything up there,” I hedged, not wanting to get her hopes up higher than I could deliver. “But I’ll do whatever I can.”

  After we finished our round of coffee, Darlene led the way back into the living room. I had thought the room only had two doors—the front entrance and the little archway into the kitchen. But she pushed aside a tall pile of cardboard boxes marked Bedding, revealing a narrow carpeted staircase leading to the second floor.

  “When’s the last time you went upstairs?” Graham asked.

  “Oh my, let’s see… It’s been a few months at least.” She cringed. “You must think I’m a foolish old woman, not even using half my house.”

  “It’s hard to downsize.” Graham’s voice was smooth and soothing. “We completely understand.”

  His words erased the worried crease between Darlene’s eyebrows. I stared at him in wonder; he was perfectly channeling Yuri’s famous bedside manner, the quiet confidence that made people comfortable letting us into their homes for our investigations.

  “Do you need anything?” Darlene asked.

  I pulled the sage bundle from my purse and squeezed it. The faint crackle of the dry herb was always a comfort. “Matches and a candle, if you have them.”

  She ducked back into her kitchen and returned a moment later with a sheepish expression, handing me a small green lighter in the shape of an alien’s head.

  “It was an impulse buy,” she explained. “I got it years ago in Roswell. I don’t know why. I don’t even smoke.”

  “It’s cute.” I clicked the button where one of the alien’s ears would be, if it had them. It took me a few tries, but the lighter finally sparked and a thin blue flame hissed out of the nozzle. I lifted my finger off the button, expecting the flame to extinguish, but it was a persistent little thing.

  “Sorry, it’s always been like that. Sticky.” Darlene reached out a hand and popped the button back up with her fingernail. The flame went out. “Just be careful with it.”

  “I will be. Thanks.”

  “Do I have to come with you?” she asked.

  Her expression begged for a negative. When I shook my head, she visibly relaxed.

  “I’ll just wait down here then,” she said, retreating into the kitchen.

  I took a deep breath, then began creeping up the narrow staircase. It was clear Darlene hadn’t been up here in some time; the light from the living room hit the photos of her extended family at a sharp angle, illuminating a thick layer of dust on the glass. The air grew warm and stale as I neared the top of the stairs, and I sneezed.

  Striker padded along beside me on silent feet, for once not trying to trip me. She also wasn’t trying to race me to the top, a fact I forced myself to ignore before my imagination could run amok with reasons my furry companion might be reluctant to beat me upstairs.

  Graham brought up the rear, following behind us with pursed lips and tense shoulders.

  At the top of the stairs, I groped around the corners for a light switch. I found one and flicked it up.

  Nothing happened.

  “Is there a light up here?” I called down to Darlene.

  She reappeared in the living room doorway. “The bulb burned out. I kept meaning to fix it, but”—she shrugged—“didn’t.”

  I pulled out my phone and switched the camera function to record video. The screen was gray and grainy until I turned on the flash. There was a burst of light, and then the hallway was illuminated. Beside me, Graham did the same.

  Our twin lights swept the walls. Despite the clear signs of hoarding on the main floor, I still wasn’t prepared for the amount of furniture and boxes above. The clutter began in the hall, which was lined with packed shelves and rows of cardboard boxes. Faded black permanent marker announced their contents, with lines drawn through the original labels and all-caps descriptions like AUNT DEBBIE and TAXES—1998 scrawled below.

  Through the three open bedroom doors—one on each side and a third at the end of the hall—more furniture was visible. Every flat surface was stacked high with boxes, baskets, loose piles of clothing, and bric-a-brac. The sensation of claustrophobia I’d felt downstairs crept back up my spine. I shuddered.

  “Feel anything?” Graham asked.

  “Uncomfortable,” I whispered. “I can taste the dust in the air. I really don’t want to go into any of these rooms. God knows how much mold might be up here.”

  “So don’t,” he suggested. “Let’s just set up right here.”

  He propped his phone against a pile of sewing patterns and angled it so the camera pointed down the hallway. Then he took my phone out of my hands and aimed the camera toward me.

  Striker, always the brave one, immediately ducked into a bedroom. I would have preferred her to sit in my lap; she was my good-luck charm, and I felt stronger with her nearby. But the logical part of my brain reasoned that the footsteps Darlene thought she heard were nothing more than an ancient pile of magazines toppling over. If there was no ghost up here, it didn’t matter how weak or strong my psychic abilities actually were, so I let the cat explore the maze of stale smells that permeated the collection of preserved garbage.

 

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