from a macabre fairy tale.
“That’s not funny.” And then, because I wasn’t sure she was joking, I asked, “A ghost couldn’t get through the security system, right?”
“Of course not,” Phin assured me. “Aunt Hyacinth knows what she’s doing. Plus twenty-five years of positive energy use here has strengthened it until the spectral equivalent of an F-five tornado couldn’t get through.”
While I was picturing that with some dismay—did that mean there was a spectral equivalent to a house-leveling tornado?—something cold and clammy pressed against the back of my leg. I jumped with a startled squeal. In the dim light, Sadie’s eyes shone back reproachfully, while the other dogs pressed close to me for comfort.
“For crying out loud.” Spurred back to sense, I found two flashlights and gave one to Phin. “I’m going out to the fuse box. Keep the dogs inside so they don’t give me another heart attack.”
“Here,” said Phin, running to her equipment and returning with the headlamp she’d worn earlier. “So you can keep both hands free.”
I took it, even though I knew I would feel too ridiculous to put it on. “Thanks.”
I went out through the mudroom, relieved to see that it wasn’t as dark outside as it seemed in the house. The sun had set behind the big granite bluff to the southwest, casting everything into an eerie twilight of silvery blue and indigo shadows. Sunset had also brought a breeze to blow away some of the heat of the day, and dark shapes rode the currents overhead.
Bats. I shivered. They lived in the limestone caves that riddled the hills, and dusk brought them out to hunt bugs. I was generally pro-bat, except when I was trekking through the dark trying not to think about the inevitably dire fate of every horror movie character stupid enough to go into the dark with a flashlight and check the fuses.
The breaker box was outside the physical and metaphysical barrier of the board fence. A ridiculous arrangement. I slipped out of the gate, feeling the change like a pop in my ears, a tingle of warning. Maybe because I was still thinking of dead bodies. Aunt Hyacinth’s protections around the house would stop a spirit. They wouldn’t do anything against an axe murderer except make him queasy, which didn’t seem like it would be much of a deterrent. I mean, a strong stomach probably came with the job.
The thought made me hurry as I tried to outrace my nerves. Unease had knotted tight under my ribs when Phin had mentioned F5 arcane tornados, and it hadn’t loosened.
Phin’s talk of ghosts shouldn’t have bothered me so much. I’d grown up around Uncle Burt, and my cousin Daisy had been dealing with the dead as long as any of us could remember. But tonight I could not push away images of cold, silty water and slimy rocks, and thin, pale hands reaching—
The breeze lifted my damp hair and carried the rosemary scent of the shampoo, clearing my thoughts and bringing memory into sharp focus. I knew exactly what had my stomach in knots, why carefully latched mental doors were rattling their hinges. It was partly the argument with Ben McCulloch, but mostly Phin bringing up La Llorona.
The weeping woman. Another spook, another river. A camping trip to Goliad, a flashlight, two preteens with a really bad idea. Phin was twelve and I was eleven and we had snuck out of our rented travel trailer and gone looking for the veiled woman who, legend said, wept by the river for her drowned babies. The stories of her luring living children to their deaths didn’t frighten us enough to make us waste the opportunity to investigate. Jeez, we were stupid.
I remembered nightmare snatches. The shadowed veil, the ashen skin of her clawed hands. Water closing over my head. But I didn’t remember exactly what had happened at the river, or how Phin and I had gotten away.
I recalled vividly what happened after, though. Dad had flipped his lid when he found his wet, bedraggled daughters after a frantic midnight search. He’d driven home growling things like “your crazy mother” and “encouraging this BS.” And scarier things like “court” and “judge” and “custody.” Much scarier to me than La Llorona.
It had shaken even Mom. Since they had never married, I wasn’t sure what his chances would be of getting custody. But even at eleven years old, I didn’t need psychic powers to see the way things would go if Phin started telling a judge