“I’ll try …”
“Honey, I’m scared. Please take a break.”
“A break? From what?”
“Anything that involves ghosts.”
“Obviously,” Ellie said, “Kirby doesn’t count.”
“Is that actually that obvious?” Vivian asked. “Kirby won’t disappear if you spend two weeks without him.”
“He keeps me safe,” she said. “Plus, Kirby is right here, right now, and I haven’t fallen into the underworld again.”
Vivian groaned. “Let’s make a deal,” she said. “If you absolutely need Kirby, go ahead and wake him up. That’s fine. But you can’t leave the house alone. If you vanish, there needs to be a witness. Somebody who can get help. Promise me?”
“Yes, Mom.” Ellie kissed her mother’s cheek. A moment later, she was cocooned in a firm hug. “I’m worried, too,” Ellie admitted. “Don’t get me wrong, though. The ocean was incredible.”
As they spoke, Ellie and her mother took turns retrieving Gregory’s plush frog from the edge of the room. “I bet there’s megalodons down there, too. If I ever learn how to wake up big shark ghosts without, um, putting every bite-sized thing at risk,” Ellie continued, “I’ll make a fortune selling tickets. People love big fish. The bigger the teeth, the better. What about you, cutie pie? Can you say me-ga-lo-don? ME-GA-LO-DON?”
Gregory giggle-shrieked, a completely respectable response.
SEVENTEEN
“AT THE LIBRARY,” Ellie said, “we should use fake names. Just in case.”
“Do you have any ideas?” Jay asked. He and Ellie were in McAllen, sharing a vegetarian nacho platter. Their tortilla chips were heaped with Soyrizo, cheddar cheese, and pinto beans.
“Not really,” Ellie said. “I have a list of potential superhero names, but they’re too fanciful for real-world undercover work.”
“Can I hear them anyway?”
“Sure. Numero uno: Dog Ghost Whisperer.”
“That one is probably taken.”
“How about Super Natural?”
He rubbed his chin thoughtfully. “I understand the joke,” Jay said, “but some people may interpret it literally. Like you’re claiming to be very, extremely natural.”
“Last one: Elatsoe.”
“That’s pretty!”
“Good, ’cause it’s my real name.”
“Ellie is short for Elatsoe? Eh-lat-so-ay? I thought you were an Eleanor.”
She dropped a tortilla chip onto her plate and squinted at Jay. “How long have we known each other?”
“Forever.”
“And all this time you thought I was Eleanor?”
“Either Eleanor or Elizabeth. Sorry!”
“It’s my fault for not telling you sooner. I’m named after my heroic ancestor. Everyone calls her Six-Great now, but she was originally Elatsoe. It means ‘hummingbird’—élatsoe—in Lipan. Well. Technically, I was named after the animal. The night before my birth, my mom had a vivid dream about a hummingbird with black feathers, which glittered like those Hubble space pictures, the ones full of galaxies. It filled her with such overwhelming joy, she thought the dream must be a sign, and the rest is history.”
“I’m jealous. Mom and Dad named me Jameson because my father is James, and I’m … I’m his son.”
“If you have a son someday,” Ellie said, “he can have the name Jamesonson.”
“Or Jay Junior! I love it!”
Jay’s new phone played the iconic part of Beethoven’s Ninth. “It’s Al!” he said. “Sorry. I need to take this.” Jay pressed the green “accept call” button and treated Ellie to a fascinating one-sided conversation.
“What’s up?” he asked. “Oh! I’m with her now. No. Seriously? Ronnie told you? I don’t … Willowbee. Abraham Allerton from Willowbee … That’s not … Tons of them. Just one attacked, though. I can’t …” He lowered the phone and asked, “Ellie, how many vampires were on Dr. Allerton’s lawn?”
“It was dark,” she said. “But I estimate thirty? Maybe more behind the trees?”
Jay continued speaking into the phone. “Thirty. No. She doesn’t trust the police … Okay, but be careful! Don’t get killed! Have you ever heard the story of Icarus? He was a—hello? Al? You still there?” Jay looked at his phone screen. “Lost the call.”
“What was that about?” Ellie asked. “Did he hear about the attack?”
“Uh-huh. Al thinks his friends—older, more connected vampires—might know about the gathering. He volunteered to ask around.”
“Could be useful information,” Ellie said.
During the car ride to Willowbee, Jay called his sister to confirm that she understood the risk Al might be taking. As she drove, Ellie eavesdropped; it was more interesting than the podcast about sports scandals Jay was currently playing.
“It’ll help us convict the murder doctor. Hey, you stay out of it, Ronnie! He’s dangerous. I never … well … Ellie can keep me safe. Ghost dog, remember? Oh! I’ll tell her.”
He put a hand over his phone’s microphone and said, “My sister says hello! She also wants to talk to you later. After you’re done driving.”
“Hello, Ronnie Ross!” Ellie said.
Jay laughed and returned to his phone conversation. “We’re driving to Willowbee,” he said. “Research. I’ll be home for supper. If she already put peas in the meatloaf, I’ll eat around them. Carrots? That’s perfect! Thanks! Bye!”
“So,” Ellie said as Jay stowed his phone, “you don’t like peas?”
“Their flavor is … not good.”
“Fair enough. I hate tomatoes.”
“Aren’t tomatoes from the Americas?”
“Central and South, though trade with the North did happen. Doesn’t mean I have to like them.” She considered the subject. “Pizza sauce is fine.”
“What did y’all eat in the old-old-olden days?”
“The Lipan?” she asked. “Tons of stuff, but you’ll have trouble finding it these days. Unlike hamburgers, right? Next time you visit for supper, Mom can make our version of agave mash or nopales; they’re succulent and succulents.” She paused for laughter. Nothing. His loss. “Hm, what else can you eat? Tortillas, beans, wild grapes, juniper berries, and mesquite and cornmeal breads with honey. Classics.”
Ellie saw the WELCOME TO WILLOWBEE sign. She slowed and peered at the town through her window. She turned right onto Main Street and idled at a striped crosswalk. A family of three—parents and their wobbly toddler—strolled across her path, smiling. They waved. Friendly people. Ellie briefly wondered if the adults knew Dr. Allerton’s secrets. If the whole town knew.
“I’m worried about Lenore,” Ellie said. “The other night when Mom and I were attacked, she visited Cuz’s grave. Disturbed it. She wants him to come back for vengeance.”
“Are human ghosts always violent?” Jay asked. “Obviously, you’re the expert, but I’ve heard stories about nice ones. Like … okay. There’s this railroad crossing in South Texas. In the seventies, a school bus got stuck on the tracks. The bus driver? He’d forgotten to look both ways. A train was coming. The driver ran outside, tried to push his own bus, like one man could move ten tons of metal. The kids didn’t stand a chance. Their bus was hit by a train.”
“Any chance they all survived?”
“No. Half the students died. It was a tragedy. The town put a marble plaque near the railroad tracks. For a while, that was the end of the sad story.”
Ellie nodded. Hopefully, it was almost the end of Jay’s story, because they’d reached their destination. The Willowbee Public Library was a white, Victorian-style wooden building. Rose bushes grew along its northern wall, their flowers heavy yellow blooms that dropped thick petals on the green lawn. There were no mesquite or palm trees in sight. No desert plants or signs of drought. In fact, moisture-loving white mushrooms grew under the shade of the rose bushes. As if, like Dr. Allerton’s manor, the library belonged to a different latitude.
Jay continued, “Y
ears later, a young couple was driving home from the movies. They’d been on a date, and it was late. Unfortunately, their car broke down. After puttering ominously, it stopped on the railroad tracks. The girlfriend looked out her window and saw the marble plaque; she knew that it marked the spot where all those children died. ‘We’re in trouble,’ she said. ‘The train is coming.’ They unbuckled their seatbelts and prepared to abandon the car, but suddenly it started moving! Inching forward, as if being pushed. The road was completely flat, not like they were rolling down the hill. After the car had rolled off the tracks, it stopped moving. You know the scary thing?”
Indeed, Ellie had heard the urban legend before, but Jay seemed so excited to reveal the shocking ending, she faked ignorance. “No,” she said. “What is it?”
“After the car stopped moving, the couple got out and looked for the person who had helped them, but the road was empty! When they looked at the back window, though, they saw dozens of little red fingerprints on the glass. Bloody prints from six pairs of hands. Six. As if the dead kids had pushed them to safety. Now, when people stop on the tracks at night, the ghosts return to push them.”
If Ellie remembered correctly, an episode of the show Ghost Science investigated the “children of the track.” The show host, an energetic paranormal physicist with a black lab coat, could not replicate the legend’s claims. Indeed, she couldn’t even find records of the bus accident. “There is no reason to park your car on the local tracks at night,” the host had concluded, “aside from gullibility.”
“If that story actually happened,” Ellie said, “I wager that the fingerprints didn’t come from ghosts. They’re all bad news. No exceptions.”
“Even children? Babies?”
“Especially those ones.” She parked near the library entrance and cut the engine. Before heat could settle in her car, Ellie popped the driver’s side door open. “Actually, young ghosts are the most common ones. It’s believed that they didn’t have a chance to experience a full life, so they’re eager to return. Makes you wonder. They’re so different from animal ghosts. I wonder if they’re ghosts at all or something else. Something … stranger.”
“I’m surprised you don’t already know the answer,” Jay said. “As part of the secret Bride family knowledge.”
“Part of that family knowledge is the certainty that so-called human ghosts are bad news. Period. Yeah, that means we shouldn’t call them back to this world, but it also means we aren’t supposed to dwell on them long enough to confirm any theories.”
“Have you ever seen one?” Jay asked. He stepped from the car and leaned against its hood. “A human ghost?”
“Not yet.” Ellie joined him outside. A breeze that smelled of magnolias cooled her face. It was a pleasant day, the kind of toasty-bright afternoon that made ice cream taste twice as refreshing. She wondered if there was a soft-serve shop in Willowbee, one that could sell her a curly-peak mountain of pistachio ice cream on a waffle cone.
“I guess it’ll happen, if you do become a paranormal investigator. Right? Sooner or later.”
“Yeah,” she agreed. “Human ghosts are usually handled by a team. I’m not looking forward to it.”
“You don’t like working with other people?” Jay asked. Ellie sensed a hint of disappointment in his voice.
“That’s not it,” she said. “I like working with friends. People I know and respect. With these team exorcisms, you gotta cooperate with strangers. Do I really want to entrust Chloe Alamor, Hollywood Psychic, with my life?”
He smiled, and the expression lifted a weight off Ellie’s back. Jay said, “Teachers say that group work prepares us for ‘the real world,’ like we don’t already live there, but … well, if it does, the world needs changes.”
“Yeah?” Ellie asked.
“Uh-huh. You ever notice that during most random group projects, there’s one or two people who do all the work while everyone else just sits around and talks? Or there’s somebody who’s ignored because they don’t fit in with the team dynamic?”
“I’ve been that person,” Ellie said. “Treated like an outcast. I’ve also been the person to do all the work because my teammates either don’t care about high grades or know that I care about them more than they do.”
“Same here. Guess we’re learning that life isn’t fair.”
“Uh-huh,” Ellie said, thinking about her cousin. “Or how to recognize bad situations. I may have to work with toxic groups in school, but in the real world? Nope. Forget it. Chloe Alamor can find a different patsy.”
“What if I wanted to work with you?” Jay asked.
“As an investigator?”
“I feel like I’m doing something important this summer. I don’t know if I’m good at it …”
“You’ve been a huge help,” Ellie said. “To me. To my family.”
“Have I?”
“Definitely.” She nodded at the library, pointing with her face. “Research is everything. Without the information you found, like those Rate-a-Doc reviews and charity ball announcements, we’d still be at square one. And your aunt? Please give her a million thank-yous.”
“Can I get away with just a dozen?” he asked, smiling.
“I guess,” she said. “That’s plenty.”
Ellie and Jay entered the Willowbee Public Library. Its interior smelled like old paper and lemon-scented cleaner; a librarian was wiping the wooden reading tables in the center of the room. Shelves of periodicals, textbooks, and new paperbacks and hardcovers surrounded the tables. A doorway with the sign CHILDREN, YOUNG ADULT, ADULT FICTION, NONFICTION was against the opposite wall and led deeper into the library. The building had a dim, musty atmosphere. Large dust motes freely spun through the dense, sunlit air. “Excuse me,” Ellie said. “We’re looking for your bicentennial exhibit about the history of Willowbee.”
The librarian, a white woman who wore a pair of reading glasses like a crown, dropped her smudged cleaning rag on the table, as if Ellie’s question required emergency attention. “Through the door,” the librarian said, “and to the right. You’ll find an entire room that is dedicated to local history. Is this for summer-camp credit?”
“No, just our personal curiosity,” Ellie said. “I’m impressed. A whole room!”
“Of course.” The librarian seemed to believe that every public library also served as a museum. Ellie had seen small displays—a few artifacts or photographs behind a glass case—within other library foyers, but a whole room? That was new to her. It certainly belonged to a prideful town, one that had a patriotic streak. The insular kind of patriotism that functioned at a county-wide, not country-wide, level.
“Thank you,” Jay said. “Can you tell us …”
“Yes?” the librarian asked, seemingly puzzled by his hesitance.
“Never mind,” he said. “Thanks for your help.”
On their way to the history exhibit, Ellie asked, “What were you going to say?”
“I was going to ask her if Willowbee has lots of unexplained deaths, but she might take it the wrong way.”
“Good call. We want to keep a low profile.”
“Um … about that … actually, I should just shut my mouth.”
Ellie stopped walking and put her hands on her hips. “Hey, now. No fair. You can’t poke my curiosity like that without delivering. What were you going to say?”
They’d been speaking quietly, out of respect for the books and bibliophiles, but now Jay dropped his voice to a whisper. “As we drove through town,” he said, “I noticed that people were staring.”
“You mean that family on the street?”
“Not just them. There was a man walking his dog. A couple near a stop sign. A guy on his porch. Oh! When we were in the parking lot, these three women across the street. They were sitting at a table, eating lunch, and they stopped chatting and just watched us till we went inside. It was creepy.”
“I didn’t notice,” Ellie said. “Then again, my eyes were on the road. Now, wer
e they staring at both of us, or just me?” Although the cities around Willowbee had plenty of residents with Ellie’s skin tone, she hadn’t seen any in Willowbee. She stuck out, which was unfortunate, considering her desire to stay unnoticed.
“Both of us,” Jay said. “I think. It’s hard to tell, since we were side-by-side most of the time. They don’t look angry or mean. Just curious.”
“I see,” Ellie said. “They’re probably distracted by our beautiful faces.”
Jay nodded. “That’s a relief.”
Ellie didn’t have the heart to admit that she’d been joking. Then again, sometimes jokes were insightful, and wouldn’t it be funny if she suspected the looky-loos of maliciousness when they just thought she and Jay were adorable?
The exhibit was enclosed within a square, windowless room. Ellie and Jay found the entryway between two floor-to-ceiling shelves of mystery paperbacks. “Maybe it’s an omen,” Jay said.
“A good one, I hope.” Ellie led the way forward. The portrait of Nathaniel Grace hung on one wall, the same portrait that Brett had photographed and pasted to his report. Was he actually the town’s founder? When she first read that fact in Brett’s report, Ellie assumed that the kid meant “honorary founder.” Willowbee was a posthumous extension of Nathaniel Grace’s work. That had to be the case; otherwise, the timing made no sense. An English Pilgrim founding a town in Texas that was inexplicably celebrating its bicentennial? Then again, when it came to the history of the town, confusion seemed par the course.
Ellie had expected the original portrait to be more vibrant. Puritan colonists might not wear rainbow blouses, but they did have color in their cheeks, eyes, and clothing. However, the oil painting was downright dreary. The artist must have run out of pigments.
“It’s like an old movie prop,” Jay marveled. “A scary portrait hanging in a haunted mansion. The kind with eyes that follow you.”
“Thanks for that mental image.” Ellie paced back and forth, unnerved when she couldn’t dodge Nathaniel Grace’s steely glare. “So, ah, let’s start looking! If we finish quickly enough, there’s bound to be ice cream in town.”
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