furious with me.”
“Are you sure you didn’t have a sleepless night because Phin is furious with you?”
I considered the question. Was Phin capable of doing some hoodoo to make me toss and turn like the princess and the pea all night, my brain spinning like a corrupted hard drive?
Absolutely. Would she?
When I did doze, the luminous specter waited, then turned into La Llorona, dragging me underwater, where I froze and couldn’t breathe, until I jolted awake, huddled in the middle of my bed, bones aching, teeth chattering.
If not for the physical misery, I might not put it past her. But Phin was never petty.
“What are you doing here?” I asked, following Daisy again, this time into the kitchen.
“Delivery service,” she said, rooting around in the refrigerator. “Your mom said you needed those books. Also, you should call her, because she’s getting some intermittent heebs and jeebs, and it’s rocking the vibe in the store. That’s my message, because I’m working there this summer and I need the commission.”
She emerged with a Dr Pepper and a handful of baby carrots. “Why’s Phin mad at you?”
“Because I wouldn’t let her do experiments on me last night.”
“Hmm.” Daisy contemplated my face as she cracked the top on the bottle of DP. “That’s either rather wise or extremely foolish.”
“Why?” I asked, because I knew perfectly well that she hadn’t driven an hour and a half out here, leaving before the sun was up, just to bring me books and tell me to call my mother.
Phin picked that moment to appear from the workroom. She already looked thunderous, but at the sight of Daisy, she clouded even darker. “Great. That’s all we need. A psychic.”
“Hey, Phin. How are things in the laboratory?” She said it like Boris Karloff, with an emphasis on the bore.
“Have you been up all night?” I asked my sister.
“Of course not.” She went to the cabinet and got down a pottery mug with a black cat on it, then put the kettle on to boil. “I got my usual four hours.”
Daisy munched on a carrot. “Don’t people who don’t get enough sleep eventually snap? I’d lock up the axes and knives if I were you, Amy.”
“I’m pretty sure I’ll snap first,” I said dryly. In fact, I was pretty sure what would make it happen, too.
“So, why does Phinster want to do experiments on you?” Daisy asked.
Phin folded her arms and raised her brows. “You mean you don’t know already? What kind of clairvoyant are you?”
“One who works best with dead people,” said Daisy, popping another carrot into her mouth.
Another sardonic look from Phin. “Which is, I assume, why you’re here. Because of Amy’s ghost.”
I didn’t need a road map to see where this was going, so I took a shortcut. “How can I be haunted?” This was the argument we’d had the night before. “The ghost was around before I got here. Hell, the ghost was here before I was even born.”
“If you don’t believe me,” Phin said, “ask Daisy. You don’t really think she drove all the way out here on whatever flimsy excuse she gave, do you?”
I looked up at Daisy. She wrinkled her nose in apology. “Sorry, Am. It wasn’t just your mom with the heebie-jeebies. And now that I’m here, I’m definitely getting a vibe. The dead are sort of my thing, so as much as I hate to say it, Phin is right.”
Phin snorted but didn’t gloat. I looked from one implacable face to the other and felt the sand shift under my arguments. Which, to be honest, weren’t built on certainty so much as hope.
“I think it’s extremely unfair of the two of you to gang up on me this way.”
Daisy took my shoulders and bent to look me in the eye. “We’re doing it because we love you, Amaryllis. The first step to solving your problem is admitting you have a problem.”
“Very funny.”
She grinned and dropped her hands. But I noticed she shook them at her side, like shaking the feeling back into cold fingers. A small movement, tactfully hidden, but in its way, the most convincing argument of all.
“What about the people who say they’ve seen the Mad Monk?” I said. “That would mean it’s not just me who’s haunted.”
“Unless they haven’t really,” said Phin. “You said it yourself, the McCulloch Ranch ghost might be legend based on another ghost, shored up by accidents and imagination.” She paused. “Actually, you didn’t say that last bit, but you know it’s true.”
“Or,” said Daisy,