“Seriously, Nina,” she said. “Just think about it, okay? Like I said, if you don’t believe anyway, what can it hurt to give it a try?” She paused. “Although it probably works better if you can get yourself to believe at least a little. . . .”
“Whatever,” Nina said. “I’ll think about it, okay? See you at the barn tomorrow.”
“Yeah,” Jordan said. “I’ll be there by like four thirty. Do you think you’ll be done at your mom’s art show by then?”
Nina nodded. “Definitely. It starts at noon, and she doesn’t expect me to hang around all day or anything. See you at four thirty.”
As she walked the rest of the way home, the bag felt heavy in her hand. Should she follow Jordan’s advice and try what Madame Marceline had told her to do? If nothing else, it might get Jordan to stop bugging her. . . .
When she stepped into her house, her parents were busy cooking oysters to bring along to that evening’s family dinner at Aunt Vi’s place. Bastet and Teniers were circling their feet, occasionally letting out a plaintive yowl at the scent of seafood floating through the air.
Nina smiled at the homey family scene, which made the whole idea of ghosts and voodoo seem even more ridiculous than it had before. “Need any help?” she asked.
Her mother glanced at her. “Oh good, you’re home,” she said. “We were about to send out a search party.”
“Or at least a sternly worded text,” Nina’s father added with a smile. “Just go get cleaned up and changed—we’ll be ready to leave in twenty minutes or so.”
Nina nodded and hurried down the hall to her room. Once she got there, she glanced at the paper bag in her hand, suddenly feeling foolish for even considering that a voodoo doll could solve her problems. She tossed the bag in a drawer, then kicked off her shoes.
Moments later, she’d finished washing her face and hands and changing into shorts and a T-shirt. She dropped her school clothes into the hamper in the bathroom and returned to her room, grabbing her laptop off the desk.
Soon she was logged into the Pony Post and scanning the latest entries. Haley had written something about her pony’s latest cross-country jump school over some new obstacles she and her uncle and cousins had built in one of the cow fields, while Maddie had posted a couple of new photos of herself and Cloudy. Nina smiled, peering at a shot of Maddie mugging for the camera as she hugged the palomino pinto mare around the neck. Then she opened a new text box.
[NINA] Mads, u and C look adorable as always! And Haley, congrats on getting the new jumps built before winter. I hope u can still find them once there’s twelve feet of snow on the ground, lol.
She posted that, then opened another box.
[NINA] But enough about you guys, lol. I’m sure you’re dying to hear the latest in the saga of the haunted pony girl . . .
She went on to fill them in on everything that had happened since her last entry, including her fall and the visit to the voodoo shop. She finished with a joking comment about trying the voodoo doll “by the light of the full moon this midnight.”
Once her message posted, she clicked off the site and glanced at the clock. Her parents would be ready to leave soon. Did she have time to start her homework first? The weekend would be awfully busy between her mom’s art-show opening and her planned barn time. . . .
As she was thinking about it, her cell phone rang. Nina’s eyes widened when she saw the name on the readout.
“Brooke?” she exclaimed, pressing the phone to her ear. “Is that really you?”
“It’s me.” Brooke’s voice sounded distant but familiar, even though they’d only spoken on the phone maybe a dozen times ever. “Hi, Nina.”
“Hi!” Nina’s face stretched into a grin. “I was just posting on the site.”
“I know, I was just logging on when your message came up,” Brooke said. “That’s why I called. But listen, you still have unlimited long distance on your phone, right?”
“Right.” Nina understood immediately. Brooke didn’t even have her own cell phone yet—her parents were old-fashioned like that. And she’d mentioned before that the family didn’t have a very good long-distance plan on their home phone, since they didn’t have many faraway relatives and her father made all his business calls from work. “I’ll call you right back,” Nina added.
She hung up and hit Brooke’s number, and soon the two of them were connected again. “So anyway,” Brooke said, “I was going to put all this on the Pony Post, but I thought it might be quicker just to tell you. I’ve been looking into your dad’s family tree like I said I would.”
“Cool!” Nina said, flopping onto her bed and leaning back against her pillows. “Find anything good?”
“Well, I did find out that Serena was a real person,” Brooke said. “And you’re directly descended from her through your dad and granddad and their ancestors.”
Nina nodded. She’d already known all that. “Thanks for looking into it,” she said, a little disappointed. Since Brooke had gone to all the trouble to call, she’d been expecting something a little more exciting.
“You’re welcome.” Brooke hesitated. “But actually, that’s not really why I called. Um, I read what you just posted—you know, about the voodoo stuff?”
“I was kidding,” Nina said. “Don’t worry, I haven’t gone totally nutso.”
“Good.” Brooke sounded relieved. “Because there’s really no evidence that Serena’s ghost is haunting you, you know. And you’re not usually the type of person to believe in stuff like that.”
For a second, Nina felt annoyed. It was easy for Brooke to say there was no evidence—she was way up there safe and sound in Maryland, while Nina was the one dealing with Serena!
“But I know how easy it is to start believing something you shouldn’t,” Brooke continued before Nina could say anything. “I mean, it happened to me, remember?”
“It did?” Nina wrinkled her nose, thinking back over everything Brooke had ever posted. “You believed in ghosts?”
Brooke giggled. “Not ghosts,” she said. Her voice went serious again. “But remember how I almost psyched myself out of staying at horse camp over the summer?”
“Yeah.” Nina remembered that clearly. “You thought you and Foxy weren’t good enough to ride with those snooty rich girls. Which was totally not the case, by the way.”
“I know. You and Maddie and Haley helped me see that, and I ended up having a great time and made some incredible new friends,” Brooke said. “But it’s lucky I had you guys to talk sense into me, you know? Because at the beginning I was sure it wasn’t going to work out, and once you start thinking that way, it can be really hard to stop.” She hesitated again. “I’m worried that you might be doing that now.”
“Oh.” Nina sank down onto the edge of her bed and thought about that. Was Brooke right? Was she psyching herself out, blaming Serena for everything bad that happened?
Just then she heard her mother calling her name from the front of the house. Glancing at the clock, she realized it was time to leave for dinner.
“Listen, I have to go,” she told Brooke. “My parents are waiting for me. But I’m really glad you called. You gave me lots to think about. Thanks.”
“You’re welcome,” Brooke said. “Let me know what happens.”
“You know I will.” Nina said good-bye and hung up, hurrying for the door as her name rang through the house again.
Nina glanced at her wrist as she hurried into Cypress Trail Stables the next morning. Realizing she’d forgotten to put her watch on after her shower, she checked the barn’s big, old-fashioned wall clock instead. Today was the grand opening of her mother’s art show, but the gallery didn’t open until noon. Even though Nina was already planning to head to the barn later for her ride with Jordan, she’d decided to come over and hand-graze Breezy for a few minutes. Living in tight city quarters, the pony didn�
��t get as much time outside in the paddocks as Nina would have liked, so she tried to take him out for some grass as often as she could.
“Here I come, Breeze-man,” she sang out as she hurried down the aisle toward her pony’s stall. “Ready for a little of the green stuff? We won’t have much time out there, but I know you’ll—”
She cut herself off, stopping short in the doorway. The stall was empty.
“Breezy?” she said, glancing around as if expecting the pony to jump out of a shadowy corner. “Where are you?”
There was a clatter from around the corner of the aisle, and a moment later a wheelbarrow came into view. A barn worker, a young woman named Jane, was pushing it. She stopped when she saw Nina’s face.
“Something wrong, Nina?” she said.
“Is Breezy out in a paddock?” Nina asked, realizing that had to be the answer. “Sorry for freaking out; it’s just I know usually everyone stays in on Saturday mornings because of lessons, and—”
“That’s right.” Jane cut her off. “All the horses are in right now.”
“They are?” Nina shot another look at Breezy’s unoccupied stall, half expecting to see him looking out at her. “Um, Breezy’s not in his stall.”
“Oh.” The young woman stepped over and looked into the stall. “That’s odd. You don’t think someone accidentally took him out to use in a lesson, do you?”
“He doesn’t really look like any of the lesson horses,” Nina said. “Maybe there’s a new student who doesn’t know any better, though—I’ll check the rings. Thanks.”
She rushed off before Jane could answer. There was a big group lesson going on in the main ring, but it only took Nina a second to scan the horses and see that her pony wasn’t among them. She turned and headed for the smaller ring. Miss Adaline was in there teaching a private lesson—a middle-aged woman on a large draft-cross mare who lived across the aisle from Breezy.
Nina clutched the rail, staring at the mare and trying not to panic. Miss Adaline noticed her and called for her student to halt.
“What’s up, Nina?” the instructor asked, hurrying over. “Do you need me?”
“It’s Breezy,” Nina blurted out. “He’s missing!”
“Missing?” Miss Adaline’s forehead wrinkled beneath its fringe of dreads. “What are you talking about?”
“He’s not in his stall. He’s not in the big ring. And Jane says he’s not in the paddocks.”
Miss Adaline shrugged. “Well, he must be somewhere,” she said. “Someone would have called us if there was a loose pony wandering the park. Maybe someone moved him to clean his stall.”
Nina hadn’t thought about that. Sometimes the stall cleaners shifted the horses around to make it easier to muck out the stalls.
“Thanks, that’s probably it,” she said with relief. “I’ll check the stalls near his.”
Still, she felt a little uneasy as she hurried back to the barn. Breezy knew she usually brought treats when she visited him. If he’d been in a stall nearby, wouldn’t he have heard her voice and nickered to her as usual?
Trying not to think about that, she ducked down a side aisle as a shortcut back to the area of the barn where Breezy lived. Halfway down, she heard a familiar nicker and stopped stock-still.
“Breezy?” she blurted out, spinning around.
Sure enough, her pony’s familiar spotted face was poking out over the half door of one of the stalls. Relief flooded through Nina, followed by confusion. What was Breezy doing way over here? This stall was nowhere near his own. Why would a stall cleaner walk him halfway across the barn when there were plenty of stalls closer, never mind several sets of crossties?
“Weird,” she muttered. “But never mind. You’re safe, and that’s all that matters.”
She rubbed the pony’s face, then raced to the tack room for a lead rope. Soon she was leading Breezy out of the unfamiliar stall.
As he came out into the aisle, she glanced back at him—and stopped again, panic flooding through her at the sight of a huge, reddish smudge covering half of Breezy’s side.
“Oh no—are you bleeding again?” she cried, flashing back to the morning she’d discovered that oozing cut on his nose. Dropping the lead rope, she darted to his side and searched for a cut or scrape.
But there was no sign of injury. And when Nina touched the smudge, she realized it wasn’t even blood—it was more pinkish than the brownish-red of old blood or the bright red of fresh.
“Weird,” she murmured again. “What did you get into, boy?”
She glanced into the stall, but there was nothing out of the ordinary in there. As she picked up the lead rope again, one of the other riding instructors appeared at the end of the aisle.
“Hey, Hector,” Nina called. “Do you know how Breezy got over here?”
Hector came toward her, looking surprised. “Breezy was over here?” he said. “How’d that happen?”
“That’s what I was asking you.” Nina shrugged. “I just got here and found him in this stall.”
The instructor scratched his head. “Beats me. He was in his normal stall when I helped the guys muck out a couple of hours ago.”
“Oh. Okay, thanks.” Nina swallowed hard as she glanced at her pony and the mysterious reddish mark on his side.
This is really weird, she thought. But that doesn’t mean it’s Serena’s work. Does it?
CHAPTER
11
“AFTER YOU, LADIES.” NINA’S FATHER held open the art gallery’s glass door, gesturing for Nina and Delphine to go in.
Nina smiled briefly, but her mind wasn’t really on her mom’s art show. She couldn’t stop thinking about what had happened with Breezy that morning. She’d gone around and asked every barn worker she could find, but nobody knew any more than Hector did about how the pony had ended up in the wrong part of the barn—or about what that strange pinkish mark on his side might be.
In the end, she’d barely had time to brush most of the mark off his coat before it was time to go, though she’d promised the pony he would get his grazing time after her ride with Jordan later. She’d had to sprint home to have enough time to change clothes and then walk over to the gallery with her father and Delphine.
Her mother hurried to meet them as they entered. She’d been at the gallery since early that morning making sure everything was perfect for the grand opening. She looked perfect herself in a silk dress and a pair of vintage sandals Nina had given her for her last birthday.
“You’re here!” she exclaimed. “I was starting to think you’d forgotten.”
“Never!” Nina’s father leaned down and kissed his wife. “We’d never miss your first big solo show.”
Nina was glancing around the gallery. She’d seen most of the pieces before, but they looked different here somehow—bigger and more important. “Everything looks great, Mom,” she said. “Wait, I almost forgot to ask which piece you picked to replace the one that got wrecked.” Then her gaze fell on a piece she didn’t recognize—a sculpture of a girl and a pony—and she gasped.
Her mother followed her gaze and smiled. “I was hoping you’d be so busy with your show and everything that you’d forget,” she said. “I wanted it to be a surprise.”
Nina stepped closer. The sculpture was modernist and stylized, like all her mother’s work. But Nina had no trouble recognizing herself and Breezy. She was riding him bareback beneath a huge full moon.
“Wow,” she breathed, stepping around and studying it from all angles. “This is amazing!”
Her mother smiled. “I call it Moonlight Mile,” she said. “I can’t believe I forgot about it for so long.”
“We found it packed away in the crawl space,” Nina’s father put in. “When your mother hides a gift, she doesn’t mess around.”
Nina just nodded, still mesmerized by the sculpture. It was beautiful
, but it was more than that—it really captured her bond with Breezy.
And that’s what matters, she thought. My relationship with Breezy. Not show ribbons, or silly superstitions about ghosts and curses. None of that is real—this is what’s real.
Then she flashed back to the weird pinkish mark on her pony’s coat that morning. That had been real too. Maybe she could write off the rest of the stuff that had happened to bad luck or an overactive imagination. Or psyching herself out, like Brooke seemed to think. But how had Breezy ended up in a distant stall with who knew what smudged all over him?
As she pondered that, she took a step backward to get a better look at the whole sculpture.
“Nina, look out!” her father exclaimed. He grabbed her arm and yanked her forward again just as Nina felt her arm hit something.
“Mon Dieu!” Delphine leaped over and steadied the sculpture that Nina had almost knocked over.
“Sorry!” Nina blurted out.
Her mother smiled and stepped over to adjust the sculpture. “No harm done. Besides, it’s bronze—the floor’s more likely to break than the piece.”
Nina smiled weakly, glancing down at the gallery’s pristine wooden floorboards. Her mother was probably right, but still . . .
The gallery owner hurried over and dragged Nina’s mother off to meet some important art critic who had just arrived. Nina barely saw her go. She was staring at the sculpture she’d almost crashed into, still shaking slightly from the close call.
Then she felt her father’s hand on her shoulder. “You okay, Boo?” he asked. “You look pensive.”
Nina forced a smile. “I’m fine.”
“No, seriously.” He peered into her face. “You haven’t been yourself all day. All week, now that I think about it.”
“It’s nothing.” Nina tried to smile, but it felt shaky. “Nothing real, anyway,” she amended.
Her father cocked his head. “What do you mean?”
Nina glanced around. Delphine had wandered off to look at some of the other sculptures. Nobody else was nearby, though the gallery was filling up. Nina glanced at the Moonlight Mile sculpture again.
Moonlight Mile Page 9