by Cady Vance
Bone Dry
Copyright © 2015 Cady Vance
All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced in any form by any electrical or mechanical means including photocopying, recording, or information storage or retrieval without permission in writing from the author.
Cover design by Paramita Bhattacharjee
Interior design and layout by Cady Vance
Dedication
To Josh, for supporting me every step of the way.
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CHAPTER 1
There are times when I listen to the moralistic words of the angel on my right shoulder rather than the wicked whispers of the demon on my left. With Kylie Wilkinson leaning across the cafeteria table, eager to hand over cash I so desperately needed, I couldn’t help but smack the halo off that perfect little angel.
“Two hundred bucks,” I said, holding my hand palm up. The eagerness on Kylie’s heart-shaped face fell into a scowl. She tucked a stray strand of glossy hair behind her polka-dotted headband and shifted in her seat.
“You’ve got to be kidding me, Holly.”
I pulled back my hand, closed my fingers into a fist and pretended to be interested in my bologna sandwich. That move got them every time. The din of cafeteria chatter rose up around us as we sat in silence. Girls laughed, plates clattered and sneakers squeaked. Five seconds passed before Kylie cleared her throat.
“Okay, wait.” She reached into her Eddie Bauer backpack and pulled out her wallet.
I kept my attention on my sandwich, nibbling away while she anxiously counted the cash. She had exactly four fifties which made me think she already knew what I charged and had been playing me to see if I’d go lower.
A guy walking by our table stopped to watch the transaction. I turned to raise my eyebrows at the tall, thin figure towering over us. Nathan Whitman, Kylie’s ex-boyfriend. He flashed a grin at me, his dark, wavy hair curling on his forehead, his high cheekbones carving a V on his otherwise boyish face. I smiled around my sandwich and hoped I didn’t have bits of meat stuck between my teeth.
“Is our friendly, neighborhood ghostbuster in action again?”
I’d taken a case for Nathan last year. He’d thought he was being haunted—they all did. Before that day, I’d considered Nathan just another bland guy navigating the Seaport High popular crowd. A preppy sailor only interested in country clubs and stock points. But after seeing the stacks of comic books in his room, I decided there might be an interesting guy hiding behind the polo shirts.
Not that I’d ever had the time to find out.
“You know me. Always taking down ghosts with my web-shooters.”
His grin widened until it spread across the entire width of his face. “Well, you know, if you ever need a trusty sidekick, I’m your man. Just don’t expect me to wear a Robin costume.”
I opened my mouth with another retort, but then Nathan seemed to notice Kylie. He glanced at her wallet, at her frown. “Hey, Kylie. Something wrong?”
“Here,” Kylie said, and I snapped my attention to the money she slid across the table. “Nothing’s wrong, Nathan.”
“Nothing?” He winked at me. “The entire school knows there’s only one reason to give Holly Bennett two hundred in cash.”
I couldn’t help but smirk. “Nothing to worry about. Just a normal case.”
His smile disappeared as his mossy green eyes searched for the truth. “You sure?”
“Okay, fine. Something is totally wrong,” Kylie interrupted. She pushed up from the table, grabbed her lunch tray of uneaten food and gave Nathan puppy dog eyes. She cocked her head in the direction of her usual corner. “Eat lunch with me, and I’ll tell you what’s up.”
He hesitated, still looking at me. “You need any help?”
I tried to imagine Nathan surrounded by black candles and charcoal rune drawings, shadows flickering on his sun-kissed skin. “No, I’ve got it. Thanks though.”
“Holly, are we good?” Kylie barely threw a glance in my direction, too focused on Nathan, who still hovered by my table. Kylie touched his arm, and he finally met her eyes. “Come on, Nathan.”
I pocketed the money and waved them away. “I’ll stop by your house after school. I have some things to do first so it’ll be around five.”
***
At home, I strolled into the back of the house to check on my mom. She was sitting in her favorite old rocking chair with bone knitting needles in her lap and staring blankly out the window overlooking the tiniest backyard in all of Seaport, a little coastal town about an hour northeast of Boston.
“Hi, Mom.” I slumped into the faded blue recliner across from her. Astral leapt onto my lap and meowed a hello to both of us.
Mom blinked a few times, coming back into herself. I glanced away from the dark, blue pillows of skin underneath her eyes and stared at the mantel over the fireplace packed with her favorite ceremonial masks from Europe.
“Hi, Holly. How was school?” she asked, her mouth turning up into a wobbly smile. It was a dimmed version of the one she used to have, and I struggled to keep my face from showing how much it hurt me to see her like this.
“It was okay,” I said. “Got some groceries just now. The usual stuff. Ramen and potatoes.” I tried to sound lighthearted, like it was a running joke between us, but my voice came out flat.
“I am so sorry, Holly.”
Her eyes caught mine, and I could see the guilt hiding behind her smile. It wasn’t her fault though. She hadn’t done this to herself. And then those brilliant hazel eyes dimmed for a moment and lost focus on the real world—the world I was a part of, the world I wanted my mom to stay in. Permanently. Not in five minutes bursts scattered throughout the day. But I knew I had maybe a minute—tops—before she was gone again.
“Don’t worry about it,” I said. “It’s not your fault. Besides, you know how much I love home fries.”
“How was school?” she asked again, reaching over to grip my hand. The knitting needles tumbled off her lap. Her face screwed up, wrinkles and shadows etching her skin. She used to be a mirror image of me: stick-straight brown hair that frizzed in humidity, tiny nose, big hazel eyes, pale pink skin that burned in the sun instead of tanned. When they’d still been together, Dad always called her cute. Said she looked the same as the day he met her at eighteen. But now, with the sagging skin under her chin and the lines curving around her mouth and eyes, she just looked withered.
I reached down to grab the knitting needles from the floor and when I returned them to her lap, she was back to gazing out the window. Face blank. No sign of my mom in those distant eyes. A tear slid down my cheek, and I brushed it aside.
“School was fine, Mom,” I said to her, because I knew she could hear me even if she wasn’t completely here. “Still not a lot of homework yet, but I have a quiz tomorrow. And everything else is fine.” I slumped lower in my chair. “Just fine.”
***
In my room, I took out the rest of the money I’d gotten from Kylie. A hundred of it went back into my pocket, but fifty went into the empty Chinese terra cotta jar Mom had gotten for me the time she’d battled a spirit wreaking havoc in the Hong Kong Stock Exchange.
The bills on my dresser blinked at me in neon lights that read, Pay me! Thumbing through the envelopes, I hunted for this week’s lucky recipient of payment. Electricity or mortgage? I didn’t have enough to cover both. But electricity was already late, and things would definitely suck worse without power. So, I grabbed the bill, opened my old laptop and logged onto Online Bill Pay.
After I’d emptied Mom’s checking account, I shuff
led over to my bed and fell face-down on the twin mattress. A real job would help—a lot. But I didn’t feel right about leaving my mom home alone any more than I already did.
Of course, if I could just fix her, we wouldn’t have to worry about money ever again.
Sure, we’d never been rich, but we’d gotten by no problem. Bills were paid on time, mini-vacations were taken, and trips to the mall were on the agenda every year before the start of school. And now I felt like our poverty was my fault for begging for the latest issue of Invincible every month. I hadn’t totally understood how much all those books and clothes had cost.
Not until a shaman had attacked my mother and stuck her mind in the spirit world so she couldn’t even feed herself.
Pushing myself off the bed, I tried to remember what Mom had been like before she’d been attacked. I hated that when I thought of her now, the first things I pictured were her trembling hands. The way her legs shook during the rare times she stood. It was only a year ago that she’d been running six miles five days a week and jetting off to Paris, Egypt or Buenos Aires when someone needed a “Spirit Consultation.” She’d been pretty famous in her line of work. Powerful, strong. She’d once taken on five spirits by herself. And won.
I dropped to my knees and pulled out the old wooden trunk I kept stored under my bed. I ran my fingers over the cold metal bandings and leather handles. It was one of two trunks that had been handed down to each generation of women in our family for what seemed like forever. And it was the only thing I had of my grandmother besides the shaman power running through my veins.
I always felt a hint of reverence when I looked at this trunk. So many shaman women over the years had used it to store their candles, their rune books, their sage leaves. At one point in time, it had been a symbol of a girl fully coming into her powers, her tenth birthday when she began learning how to astral project and speak with spirits. But my mom never wanted me to know more than how to just protect myself, so when the trunk was finally mine, I was fourteen. My grandmother had left it to me in her will, and my mom didn’t have the heart to keep it from me.
After lifting the silver-chained key over my head, I unlocked the trunk and pulled open the lid. The only thing inside other than the sharp scent of pinewood was my thick file of answers and questions.
Once I grabbed the folder, I padded through my open bedroom door and down the short hallway to our kitchen. I paused at the curtain of brown beads hanging down at the entrance, ran my fingers along their rough surface and listened to the clink of the wood knocking against each other. It had been Mom’s compensation the time she’d assisted shamans in Chile. When I touched the mystical beads and closed my eyes, I could hear the distant sound of wind howling through the Andes Mountains.
I slid through the beads and sat down at the kitchen table where I usually did my homework. Mom wouldn’t be happy if she knew what I was doing, but she probably assumed I was studying for a quiz. If she assumed anything at all.
I flipped open the file and looked at each sheet carefully, just like I did every day. Some of it was my own scribbling. Things I remembered from the month before her attack. Others were papers I’d found in her room about cases she’d done last year. An itemized account of her expenses in Budapest. A short description of an unnamed person’s spirit problem in California. I figured if I read the words enough times, something would finally click. I’d find a new lead, put the pieces of the puzzle together, finally find the shaman who did this to my mom. It was the only way to get her back.
After half an hour of examining the familiar contents, I flipped the folder shut. I was getting nowhere. I needed something new. What I had was leading me to the same dead end over and over. I needed a name, someone connected to all this. But maybe next time I looked at these pages, I’d find something. Maybe tomorrow would be different. I had to keep believing things could change. Maybe if I believed it hard enough, they would.
I heard the clicking of the knitting needles as I stood from the table. I’d never been able to figure out why she did that. There was no material there for her to knit. Sometimes I thought she was trying to remind herself of the shaman she’d once been. Sometimes I thought she was trying to use the bones to pull herself back into this world, knit herself back into the fabric of reality.
After putting the file away, I grabbed my backpack of shaman supplies and made sure I had everything I needed for Kylie’s case. Mom didn’t even blink when I went into the living room to drop a kiss on her forehead.
“I have to go see a friend. I’ll be back in a little while for dinner.”
The bone needles never stopped clicking, and I swore I could hear them well after I’d backed out of the driveway.
CHAPTER 2
The door swung open to reveal Mr. Fisher, who towered over me like everyone other than Mom. I’d inherited my measly five feet of height from her.
“Come on in, Holly. Laura’s in her room,” he said. “Still riding your bicycle everywhere, I see.”
“As much as I can,” I said, kicking off my flip flops and pushing them with my toes into the designated guest-shoe-spot. “I like the exercise.” And the lack of a gas tank.
As I turned down the hall, he called out, “How’s your mother doing?”
I paused and swiveled to face him. “Same as always. Off on one of her work trips.”
“Can you tell her I asked about her? I’d like to stop by and see her once she’s back.” He scratched a spot just above his ear. “Tell her I…miss having her as a friend.”
“No problem.” This wasn’t the first time he’d asked about her, and I didn’t see it being the last. I’d told my mom she should call to say hi, just for a moment, before pretending to run off to do something important. But she’d been stubborn about not making contact, so I’d stopped mentioning it.
“I didn’t expect to see you today,” Laura said when I strolled into her elaborately decorated room. Green was everywhere. On her walls, on her rug, on her lampshade, along with little black cartoon cats lining the edges. Her bedspread was a swirl of green and black, forming a cool abstract graphic. A mountain of green-and-black plaid pillows rose high on her bed. It was a pretty normal room, for a rich kid into pop punk. Whenever I walked in here, I realized just how odd my house was with all the beads, the masks and the Siberian drums crowding every spare corner.
“No?” I plopped down on Laura’s king-sized bed. Papers were scattered around where she sat with a laptop propped on her outstretched legs. “Got another case today. Kylie Wilkinson.”
“Really?” Laura absently spun her nose ring.
“Yeah, the usual. She thinks she’s being haunted. Objects levitating, strange markings left in her room.”
Laura placed the laptop on the bed, leaned forward and peered through a curtain of red-and-blond highlights. “That’s not me, Holly.” She gave me an evil smile. “Wish it was, but I haven’t done anything since last week with Dean. You know I’d tell you ahead of time if I planned on ‘haunting’ someone.”
I blinked once, and Laura let out a light laugh. “Looks like you have a real case on your hands this time. How many does this make now?”
“You’re serious about this.” My heart sped up. Real cases were few and far between since we lived in such a small town. Usually, Laura used her shaman powers to make victims from school think they were being haunted, and once someone came to me, we both made off with the cash after I swooped in to get rid of the problem. Sure, it was super unethical, but I needed the money. I tried to tell myself that made it okay.
“Completely serious. I had nothing to do with it this time.”
“Crap. Someone with real problems.” I shivered. Everyone who came to me thought spirits were ghosts, but I knew better. I was pretty sure ghosts didn’t even exist, but if they did, at least they used to be humans. Spirits were more like demons than anything else, and their realm was so devoid of humanity, it made haunted houses seem as lame as our high school’s mascot. What foot
ball team wants to be The Schooners?
“Well, good thing you’ve handled a real case before.” She nibbled on the end of a black-painted fingernail.
“Yeah, but not many,” I said, ticking them off on one hand. “This will only be the third real case I’ve done. Want to help me?”
She held out her hand without hesitation, like she’d wanted me to ask her. “I think it’ll be fun to be on the other side of things for once. Count me in.”
I’d been hoping she’d be up for it but hadn’t expected it. Laura might be able to levitate objects, but banishing spirits was a lot more intense than making a TV remote float. I pulled Laura's half of the cash from my pocket and dropped it onto her open palm. “Good, because I want to try the anchor thing this time. Wasn’t psyched about doing this by myself again.”
“Are you nervous?”
“No. Yes. I don’t know. The first time I tried to take down spirit, it attacked me. And then I fainted.”
Laura smirked. “That only happened because you were distracted by Nathan Whitman.”
I crossed my arms and met her laughing eyes. I’d gotten attacked because I hadn’t taken authentic shaman supplies with me. Because I hadn’t expected a real spirit in Seaport. So, naturally, its appearance in Nathan’s nerdy bedroom had taken me by unfortunate surprise. It attacked me. I passed out. And effectively ruined any chance of Nathan Whitman ever thinking of me as anything other than the weird girl who had fainted on him, even though I’d gotten my shit together, fetched real supplies and banished the spirit from his bedroom, saving him from future attacks by beings of Lower World.
“Anyway, let’s get started.” While Laura cleared the bed, I opened my backpack. If we were going to pull off the real thing, we needed plenty of supplies. Real supplies. Not the multi-colored beads and tarot cards from the local magic shop I used for show. The truth was, I never did any real magic when we conned someone. You don’t have to cast a spell to get your best friend to stop levitating a mechanical pencil.