A plan formed as I watched Amber, Ashlee, and Sydnee follow Tabitha to their table. Their mother had basically abandoned them for an investment broker, but that was months ago. They had changed recently, become withdrawn and despondent. I couldn’t help but wonder if they were being abused in some way. If so, we needed more info, more proof to go on besides the fact that they had a few hairs out of place. Ashlee had resorted to cutting herself, and I wanted to know why. If they were being mistreated, I could go to Grandma and Grandpa with hard evidence, hopefully enough to get them moved to a safe location. But I needed to know for certain who or what was causing their distress.
“Okay, guys,” I said to Brooklyn and Glitch. “It’s time to initiate surveillance. We need to find out what’s going on with Ash and Syd. Who’s up for tonight?”
“It’s Friday night!” Glitch said in protest. “And I’m grounded.”
“When are you not grounded? It’s not as though that’s ever stopped you.”
“But we haven’t had a decent night’s sleep in days,” he said, grasping for excuses.
“Oh yeah, like you were planning to go to bed early. I’m telling you, something is happening.”
“Exactly. A football game. I have to be there.”
“No,” I said, “with the Southern twins. Did you see Ashlee’s arm? Something is so wrong with them.”
“Trust me,” Cameron cut in, “there ain’t a thing wrong with those two, unless you count the unusual and exquisite length of their legs.”
Brooklyn turned a tight-lipped smile on him. “Thanks so much for that penis-driven observation.”
“Anytime, moon pie,” he said with a smirk. “Jealous?”
Glitch laughed humorlessly, his tone mocking.
She rolled her eyes. “As if.”
Cameron leveled an amused smile on Glitch before refocusing on his fork. “Course, there is a ghost haunting them,” he added as if in afterthought.
“A what?” I lunged closer to him. “What did you say?”
“A ghost,” he said with a shrug, “ever since they moved into that new house.”
“Are you serious? A real live ghost?”
“Ghosts aren’t alive,” he stated matter-of-factly.
Wow. I didn’t know ghosts existed. ’Course, until yesterday, I didn’t know for absolutely certain angels existed either. Or pretty much any supernatural being. I had faith and I knew in my heart, but seeing an angel in person was a different matter entirely. And I darned sure didn’t know I was a prophet.
Brooklyn was unconvinced. “You’re lying. That house can’t be haunted. They just built it.”
“Right,” Jared said, jumping into the conversation, “but where did they build it?”
Cameron met his eyes and shook his head as though they were suddenly the best of friends and the rest of us were drooling idiots. “No one ever thinks about the land.”
Jared shrugged his brows and nodded in agreement.
“So, land can have ghosts?” Brooklyn asked.
“Anything on earth can have ghosts. Land can be just as haunted as a house,” Cameron said as he made a tepee with his utensils. “Even more so.” He gestured toward the Southern twins with a nod of his head. When Glitch looked over at them, Cameron swiped his fork for stability. “They think it’s their dead grandmother,” he added.
“Is it?” I asked.
“No,” Jared said, watching Cameron as he labored away. “It doesn’t work that way.”
An aggravated sigh pushed past my lips. “Someday, Jared Kovach, you’ll have to explain exactly how it does work. But for now, we need to do something.” I leaned in and spoke directly to him. “We have to help them.”
He frowned in doubt, and I couldn’t tell if it was directed at me or at the apple crisp dessert he was coveting. “What am I supposed to do?”
“Did you ever think that maybe that’s why you’re here? Maybe you’re here to help people, to use your powers to champion the cause of those who are … well, championless.”
“Lorelei,” he said patiently, pushing his tray away, “I’m here because I broke the law. I’m just as carbon based as you are.”
“You will never be as carbon based as I am. You’re like Cameron, remember? Strong. Powerful. Nigh indestructible.”
“Nigh?”
I sat back and crossed my arms. There had to be a reason for his presence on earth. Maybe that woman in my dream was real. Maybe she was trying to tell me something. This was too big, too miraculous to just be an accident. “Aren’t you even curious?”
“Not especially,” he said. Then he gestured toward Cameron’s stainless-steel tepee with a nod, an evil grimace spreading across his face just as it collapsed rather loudly due to an inherent structural failure—utensils tended to slip on slippery surfaces.
Cameron cast him a frustrated frown, as though Jared had something to do with the downfall of his masterpiece, then began to rebuild it.
“Hey, man,” Glitch said in sudden annoyance, “did you jack my fork?”
Then it hit me. “Fear the darkness.”
“What?” Brooke asked.
I turned to her in wonder. “I just realized what Ashlee wrote on her arm. It said ‘fear the darkness.’”
“She wrote on her arm?”