Her dad laughed lightly. “I told my sister I was thinking of getting back into the dating scene, and she suggested I try Internet dating.”
“Does this mean Aunt Teresa is done trying to fix you up with people?”
“She blames herself for things not working out with Marguerite, so she’s encouraging me to try new dating avenues.”
Sadly, that whole disaster had actually been Lena’s fault. She’d pushed too hard to make her dad and Marguerite’s relationship work, even using Marcus’s matchmaking powers when she knew it was a bad idea. She thought she’d been helping her dad, but she’d only been prolonging the agony.
As Lena went into the kitchen to grab a glass of water, she could hear a news story on TV about a hospital in a nearby town that had recently been named “The Most Haunted Spot in the Country.”
“Why are they reporting on ghost stories?” she heard her dad mutter at the TV. “The news should be for real facts!”
Lena smiled to herself. If only her dad knew the truth about her secret identity, he might reconsider what “real facts” were. But even if she could tell her brain scientist dad about being a soul collector, Lena wasn’t sure he’d believe her, not even if he could do a hundred scans and studies to prove it. Besides, Lena had no desire to have her dad poking around in her brain.
“You can always change the channel,” Lena started to say. But she stopped cold when she saw the kitchen table. Every inch of it was covered in pieces of white foam that had been cut into tiny diamonds.
“Um, Dad?” she called, poking her head back into the living room. “Is that supposed to be my costume?”
His face lit up. “Yes, indeed! It’s not finished yet, of course. But when I’m done measuring and cutting the pieces, it’ll take no time to assemble them.”
“But the instructions said to use a big piece of foam and cut out armholes and stuff. That’s what Justin Alvarez is doing for his playing card costume.”
Her father shook his head. “I came up with a much better way. You’ll see. Your costume will be far more aerodynamic than his.”
“In case I need to make a quick getaway off the stage?” Lena asked.
“Exactly,” he said, not picking up on her sarcastic tone. She loved her dad, but for a super smart person, he could be pretty clueless.
“You know, Dad, I can make my own costume. It’s not a big deal.”
His dark eyebrows drooped. “But all the other parents are making them.”
He said “parents” but what he meant was “moms.” Lena was the only one in the play whose mom wasn’t around to do things like that. She knew her dad felt bad about that fact, and that’s why he’d volunteered for costume duty, even though he was a million times more comfortable with an MRI machine than a sewing one.
“Okay,” Lena said softly. “I’m sure your way is fine.” She did appreciate her dad trying to help, but maybe it wouldn’t be a bad idea to make herself a backup costume just in case.
She turned to go to her room, but her dad called, “Hold on, Chipmunk! Would you say I’m ‘ruggedly handsome’ or ‘boyishly good-looking’?”
Lena choked down a laugh. Something like “sweetly nerdy” was more fitting, but she couldn’t exactly tell him that. “How about both?”
“Good idea! By the way, how about you bring this boyfriend of yours over for dinner this week?” He said it as a question, but Lena could tell her dad had already made up his mind. “I promise I won’t try to cook. We’ll order pizza.”
“Oh, um…” She wanted her dad to meet Marcus and vice versa, but it also felt like a big step. Then again, maybe it was better to get the big meet and greet over with. At least she was pretty confident that they’d get along. “Okay, I’ll invite him.”
As Lena retreated to her room, her thoughts went back to the play. It seemed like she was the only person in the whole cast who was worried about the show. But how could Lena relax when the Cheshire Cat kept forgetting his lines and none of the other playing cards knew when to make their entrances? (During the last run-through, Justin Alvarez had actually come on three scenes early!) She knew Mr. Jackson would only tell her to “trust the process” again, so Lena supposed she’d have to try harder, even though they were running out of time. Opening night was supposed to be sooner, in fact, but a pipe had burst in the auditorium over Thanksgiving, and the show had been pushed back. Lena hoped that hadn’t been a bad omen. Not that she believed in those sorts of things.
She sighed and examined the quilt she’d been working on. As she started sorting through squares of fabric, she felt her mood lifting. Quilting usually had that effect on her. It was hard to be irrational when your hands were working on something so orderly.
The quilt was going to be her mom’s Christmas present this year. The holidays were still a few weeks away, but this was Lena’s most ambitious project yet, so she wanted to give herself plenty of time to finish it. Christmas was the one time of year that Lena saw her mom ever since she’d left back when Lena was in fifth grade. She couldn’t wait to show her mom how much she’d learned on her own, without her help.
Just when she was making some real progress laying out the pattern, Lena’s phone rang. It was her boss Eduardo, a.k.a. Eddie. Funnily enough, he was also Marcus’s matchmaking boss. Apparently there was a supernatural staffing shortage or something. But why was he calling her so late?
“I wanted to tell you that you have a collection coming up tomorrow morning,” he said in his faint Spanish accent.
“Since when do you give me so much notice?” Not that Lena was complaining. She often wished her boss would give her more than the usual half hour warning—an hour if she was lucky.
“It will also be a training session,” he said. “I’m sending a new soul collector with you. Her name is Natalie, and she’s new to the area. She’ll meet you at your house in the morning.”
“I’ve only been doing this for a few months. Are you sure I’m the right person for the job?”
There was a long pause, and Lena could hear her boss shooting zombies in the background. It was pretty ironic that the guy who was supposed to help Lena guide souls into the afterlife loved playing games where he had to fight entire armies of the undead. The only time Eddie wasn’t destroying zombies during one of their conversations was when he was testing out his newest tech gadgets—then she’d usually hear faint beeping instead of gunfire. Eddie had to be around Lena’s dad’s age, but sometimes he acted a lot more like the guys at Lena’s school.
“You were fantastic with Marcus when you had to teach him how to use your powers,” he said. “I’m sure you’ll be a natural, kid.”
Lena couldn’t help sitting up a little straighter. No one was immune to flattery after all. Her dad had even done a study on it once. “I’ll give it a shot. What’s the assignment?”
“I’ve already sent it to your phone,” Eddie said. She expected him to hang up so he could hurry back to his game, but he cleared his throat and added, “I’ve been meaning to ask how things are going with you and Marcus.”
Ew. Was her boss really asking about personal stuff like that? Still, she smiled as she said, “Good. It’s our one-and-a-half-month anniversary this weekend.” It seemed a little silly to celebrate the day that they’d kissed at her audition and swapped their powers back, but Marcus was so excited about it that she couldn’t help getting swept up in it too.
“Nothing unusual has happened recently?”
“I thought everything went back to normal after my audition. Didn’t it?”
“Of course. I only wanted to make sure it was all still going well.” Another chorus of zombie screams erupted on the other end of the line. “Gotta go. Have fun tomorrow!” Eddie added, as if anyone could have a good time collecting souls. But before she could point that out, he’d already hung up.
Chapter 4
Marcus spent Saturday m
orning slogging through a copy of Quilting for Beginners that Lena had lent him. He carefully leafed through, feeling like he should be wearing white gloves to keep from smudging the pristine pages. If it wasn’t for the “From the Library of Lena Perris” sticker pasted neatly in the front, Marcus would have thought the book had never even been opened.
The longer he stared at the book, the more his eyelids drooped. Marcus glanced longingly at the model space station waiting on his worktable and finally put the book down. So much for impressing Lena that night with his knowledge of interfacing and batting—whatever those were.
As he got to his feet, a faint “meow” echoed through his room. It was coming from the little ball of light curled up next to his pillow. As crazy as it sounded, Marcus had wound up with a pet ghost cat after he’d accidentally used Lena’s soul-collecting powers on it. He kept waiting for the cat’s soul to disappear, the way Eddie said it would, but so far it seemed happy to hang around Marcus’s house, even though he was the only one who could see it.
Marcus settled at his worktable in front of the space station that he’d recently found at a yard sale. Once he repaired and painted it, it would be good as new. He’d already started asking around at school to see if anyone would want to buy it. It would be hard to let the model go after all that work, but if he was going to get Lena the perfect Christmas present—tickets to see A Midsummer Night’s Dream, her favorite play—he would need every dollar he could scrape together. He was planning to use the allowance money he’d been saving up for his and Lena’s do-over six-week-anniversary date that night.
After a second, he glanced at the robot model displayed above his table. It was his favorite, not because it was the most impressive, but because it was the first one he’d ever worked on by himself. Grandpa Joe had guided him through it, but he’d let Marcus do all the work on his own. He sighed, suddenly missing his grandfather so much that it felt like his insides might cave in.
Loud footsteps erupted in the hallway, and Marcus managed to pull himself together before his sister threw open his bedroom door.
“Why don’t you ever knock?” he demanded. Out of the corner of his eye, he saw the ghost cat scamper off the bed and jump onto his bookcase. In true cat fashion, it knocked a magazine onto the floor with its invisible tail before disappearing into Marcus’s closet.
“Whoa. What was that?” Ann-Marie asked, staring at the magazine. To her, it must have looked like it had flown off the shelf by itself.
“The wind,” Marcus said, biting back a smile.
His sister scowled at the locked window and then, without asking, plopped down on Marcus’s bed.
“Did you want something?” he asked.
Ann-Marie’s perpetual scowl deepened. “Why did you tell a guy at the bowling alley that you know me?”
Marcus looked at her. “How did you find out about that?”
“One of the girls from the track team was there with Peter Chung, and she texted me when he told her what you’d said. Why were you talking to him about me?”
There was no way to explain things to Ann-Marie without revealing his secret. And even if Marcus could tell her the truth about his matchmaking powers, she’d probably tell him to stop drinking so much soda, since it was obviously rotting his teeth and his brain.
“I-I thought he looked familiar,” Marcus stammered. “Like s-someone I’d seen you hanging around with.”
His sister let out a cheerless laugh. “I’m surprised he even knows who I am. Unless he knows I’m the coach’s daughter or something. He does go to all the hockey games.”
“He didn’t mention Dad or hockey, but he did say you were the best runner in the district.”
His sister’s eyebrows went up. “Really?” Something like a smile crept over her face for a second, but then the scowl returned. “Well, he has a new girlfriend now, so it doesn’t matter.”
“Ann-Marie!” Their dad’s voice rang out in the hall. “Time to head to the track!” A second later, their dad appeared in Marcus’s doorway with a sports drink in his hand. “What are you two doing in here?”
“Nothing,” Ann-Marie said, getting to her feet. Marcus expected her to rush out the door like she always did when it was time to go train. But she hesitated, almost like she wanted to keep talking to him. That had definitely never happened before.
“Marcus, what’s this about you being in the school play?” his dad asked, wrinkling his nose. “I hope you’re not doing it for Lena. No point wasting your time mooning over a girl when you should be doing your homework.”
Ah, yes. His dad, the hopeless romantic. Sometimes Marcus wondered how his parents had ever gotten together. They must have been zapped by a seriously powerful matchmaker.
“I’m doing sets for the play because it’s fun,” Marcus said. In fact, painting fake trees and dragging them around was the opposite of fun, but he wasn’t about to admit that his dad was right and that he was only doing it to spend more time with Lena.
“We’re leaving in three minutes,” his dad said to Ann-Marie. Then he strode out of the room.
Ann-Marie turned to leave too, but then she hovered in the doorway for a second. “Anyway, stop telling people we’re related, okay? Especially guys like Peter.”
“Fine, sorry,” Marcus said.
As Ann-Marie left the room, Marcus caught a hint of a grayish aura around her head. Then a wave of sadness hit him like a slap. He sucked in a breath. The feeling was so overwhelming, it made him dizzy.
Only when his sister closed the door behind her did the sensation fade.
Whoa. Was it possible that Ann-Marie had a crush on Peter Chung? It was hard to believe she had time to notice guys when her whole life was about running and school, but there was no other way to explain the sadness radiating from her.
Suddenly, he felt terrible. His sister had never been the bubbly type, but he’d had no idea she was so lonely. And now, thanks to his latest match, she was more miserable than ever.
Chapter 5
Lena was stunned to find the girl she’d seen in the auditorium the previous day waiting for her at the end of her driveway in the morning. This was Natalie, the new soul collector Eddie wanted her to train? Suddenly, the strange aura Lena had seen made a little more sense. She must have sensed that this girl was supernatural like she was.
Natalie waved enthusiastically from the mailbox. She was pretty, with honey-colored hair and delicate features. Lena’s dad had once told her that people whose faces were symmetrical were considered the most attractive, which made Lena curious to measure Natalie’s face with a ruler. She was willing to bet both sides were pretty much identical.
“You must be Natalie,” Lena said, studying the girl carefully. She’d never met another soul collector before, but there was nothing about Natalie that screamed “death.” Then again, Lena hoped there wasn’t anything about her that made people instantly think of crypts and coffins. Being a soul collector probably sounded pretty grim to the average person, but Lena wasn’t killing anyone or anything, only guiding people’s souls to the After. She was like a paranormal usher.
“I’m so excited you’re here!” Natalie chirped. “I can’t wait to talk to someone about all this! It’s hard enough being new in town without having a brand-new, huge secret on top of it.”
Lena knew all about keeping secrets. It had been a relief to be able to tell Marcus about the part of her life that she had to keep hidden from everyone else. She couldn’t blame Natalie for wanting that too.
“I think I saw you at school yesterday,” Lena said. “During play rehearsal.”
The girl gave her a blank look. “You did?”
“You were in the back of the auditorium watching us doing theater games. You probably thought we were all nuts. After you left, the director actually had us sneeze as our characters.”
Natalie chuckled. “Oh, I remember now! I
was walking around the school, checking it out! I must have peeked into the auditorium!” Natalie’s voice was so light and cheerful that it sounded like every sentence out of her mouth ended in an exclamation point. “Should we get started?” she added.
“Follow me.” Lena waved her down the driveway. “So where do you live?” she asked as they turned onto the sidewalk.
“On Maple Street, right near the Y!”
“My boyfriend Marcus lives in your neighborhood,” Lena said. “He’s a matchmaker, which basically means he zaps people with love spells.”
“How fun! I had a boyfriend back home, but we broke up when I found out I was moving. He wasn’t supernatural or anything though!” Natalie laughed. “Wow, I love your bag!”
Lena held up her quilted messenger bag, one of her latest creations. “I made it a couple weeks ago. If you want, I can show you how sometime.”
“That would be great! Thanks!”
Lena couldn’t help grinning back at her. She couldn’t remember the last time she’d felt so instantly comfortable around someone. Maybe it was because Natalie was so friendly, or maybe everything Lena had gone through with Marcus and the power swap had helped open her up to people in more ways than she’d realized.
When they got to the address that Eddie had sent to her phone, Lena hopped up the steps and tried the doorknob. As she expected, the front door swung open.
“Doors are usually unlocked,” Lena whispered. “And people don’t really notice us, but I still try to be quiet. Are you ready?”
Natalie nodded and followed Lena inside. The house was small and cluttered, the walls covered in faded family photographs and dusty paintings of seascapes. They crept into the living room, where an old woman was sitting on the couch watching the news. She was stooped and thin, with an oxygen tank parked beside her on the carpet. It was clear she’d been sick for a long time.
“Can you see her soul?” Lena whispered. “It’s like a little light in the person’s chest.” According to her manual, soul collectors could see souls even when they weren’t assigned to them. Ever since she and Marcus had swapped powers, Lena had also been able to see a hint of the matchmaking auras, but she was pretty sure that was rare, since her manual didn’t say anything about it.
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