Curling her fingers around the edges of the volume, Mom scooted it away, just the tiniest bit. "Nothing you need to worry about. Just something I'm looking into for Maya."
She inhaled sharply through her nose, the same way Finn always did right after she told a lie. My chest tightened, and I fought the urge to yank the book back, to see for myself what Mom was so interested in. It had to be about Finley. But if it was, why wouldn't she tell me, let me help her?
Because she's afraid you're going to screw it up, a voice hissed in my head. Because if you had just gone into the house with Finley that night, she might still be here.
Blinking against a sudden stinging in my eyes, I just nodded. "Okay."
The silence that hung over the table was threatening to turn awkward, so I cleared my throat and said, "You know, the only part of the Mary Evans things that doesn't make sense to me is the frog and the Barbie."
Mom rested her elbows on the book in front of her. "You're right. There are plenty of stories about ghosts attacking people, but that level of physical manipulation...it would take a lot of energy. That's not just wielding a weapon; that's planning."
I nodded, drumming my fingers on the table. "It seems kind of advanced for a ghost."
"Advanced, yes, but not unheard of."
Mom and I both jumped as Torin's voice floated through the kitchen. I glanced around, wondering where he could be, and my eyes landed on the clock above the stove. It was framed in a beveled mirror, and even though all the little pieces of Torin were hard to make out, I could still see him in there.
"Torin, you know you're supposed to keep to your mirror," Mom said, getting up and heading for the clock. She lifted it off the wall, and Torin made an aggrieved sound.
I stood up from the table, leaning one hand against it. "Have you seen something like this before?"
Mom stopped, the mirrored clock held out from her body. I couldn't see Torin's face, but I heard him clearly when he answered, "Only once. My coven raised a particularly nasty ghost. On their own, spirits are usually harmless, but if they've been summoned forth by any type of magic, well. Completely different kettle of fish."
Lowering the clock to the table, Mom considered that. "So you think a witch or a warlock could have somehow raised this spirit?"
"Possibly." Mom had put the clock facedown, so Torin's voice came out muffled. "Or, at the very least, powered it up. Isolde mentioned that there had been very basic haunting activity at this school for quite some time. So why now? What changed in the past few months to turn an ordinary specter into something that can perform such feats as securing a dead frog to a door, or mutilating a toy?"
I chewed my lip. How long had Dex been in Ideal? It couldn't be a coincidence that just when this guy, who was clearly something, showed up, Mary Evans had become Uber-Ghost.
But Mom just shrugged. "Well, it's not like it matters. Powerful or not, ghosts are easy to dispose of. And we just have a few more days until the full moon. Izzy will get rid of it, and that will be that."
Except that I wasn't sure that would be that. If someone was raising ghosts, what was to stop them from raising another one once Mary Evans was gone? For just a second, it was on the tip of my tongue to tell Mom about Dex. But what if I did, and she decided this case was too big for me after all, and just decided to take it over herself?
I glanced at the pile of books on the table-Mom's super-secret "research" that she still wouldn't tell me about.
If she was going to keep her secrets, I would keep mine.
CHAPTER 17
"Here." Romy added a sweater to the pile in my arms. "Redheads look good in green."
I cast a doubtful look at the sweater. "This...doesn't look like green."
The shade should've been called "Radioactive" or maybe "Noxious." That had been one of our vocabulary words this morning.
Frowning, Romy reached into the rack and pulled out a black skirt. "Here, Ninja Lady," she said, tossing it to the top of my stack. "You can wear it with black."
We'd been shopping for over an hour, and Romy had already talked me into a pink blouse, two pairs of jeans that were not black, three T-shirts in various shades of purple, and even a yellow sundress. "First day of spring, if I don't see you rocking this, I'm going to be very disappointed," Romy had said when she'd shoved it into my arms.
"Deal," I'd replied, even as a little voice inside my head reminded me that I wouldn't be in Ideal in the spring.
Now I gently put back both the green sweater and the black skirt. "I think we're set, Romy. My mom's credit card can only take so much."
Romy heaved a huge sigh and ran her fingers longingly over the green sweater. "What if I bought it, and then you could borrow it sometimes?"
I laughed. "Clearly, you and that sweater were meant to be."
Once we left the store, we still had nearly half an hour to kill before her mom was due to pick us up. Ideal had one mall, and while it wasn't exactly upscale, there were a few nice stores, and I had to admit, the smells wafting from the food court were pretty tempting. But rather than head that way, Romy steered us toward a particularly sad-looking toy store.
"You know, I'm actually all stocked up on My Little Ponies," I told her as she dragged me through the entrance. Romy rolled her eyes.
"First of all, no girl can ever have enough My Little Ponies. That's just science. But secondly, we're not here for those. I need to get a new Ouija board. The one we have is all scratched up and smells like school."