“What happened?” she asked aloud.
“You were outside,” Mom said. “Sitting on a swing in the playground across the street. I saw you through the window. Then he saw me paging through his copy of Unhaunted Valley, reading his notes and understanding what they meant. I confronted him. We fought.”
“Argued?” Rosa asked.
“No. Dueled. With swords and with circles. All up and down that library. He wasn’t bungling or clumsy like we always thought—and always made excuses for. Your father was good at his craft. But it was the wrong craft. And he almost won. Almost. I had all the memories of that place on my side. All of the books were with me. But he had forgetting. He tried to get the whole world to forget me. If that had worked, then you wouldn’t have remembered your mother at all. You would have seen both of your parents walk into that library, watched your father walk out later, and believed forever afterward that I had died in childbirth or something. He tried to erase me. Instead he brought the building down around us both. You saw me get out before the whole place fell. He didn’t. That is how he died. We fought. We dueled. I won.”
Logs broke apart in the fireplace with a crackling, spark-scattering noise. Wraiths danced among the sparks.
“Of course you won,” Rosa said. “You’re the best specialist alive.”
Mom kissed the top of her head. “Thank you, my heart.”
Rosa considered the new shape that the world had shifted into. “So that’s why we moved to Ingot?”
“Yes,” Mom said.
“I thought we were just hiding here.”
“We were also hiding here,” Mom admitted. “We moved for good, important reasons: to learn more about a place so beloved of Letheans, and to protect that place before Barron’s circle collapsed—because of course it was going to do that eventually. I didn’t know that it would break almost as soon as we got here, though. I thought we would have more time. And that’s the selfish reason why we came here. To hide.”
“From Dad.”
“Yes. From the ghost of your father. I wasn’t prepared to confront him again. Not yet. Good doctors are usually bad patients. Good specialists still have trouble with their own hauntings. I’m sorry. I just wasn’t ready.”
“Don’t be sorry,” Rosa said. “You should have told me, though.”
“No,” Mom said. “I shouldn’t have. Not then. You had a kind and clumsy father to mourn. It wasn’t the right time to tell you about the man he really was. You weren’t ready to hear it. But I think you are now. I hope so. Because he seems to be haunting you instead of me.”
Rosa cracked her knuckles. “He is welcome to try.”
24
THUNDER RUMBLED UP IN THE mountains. Lightning flashed and crackled between the snow-filled clouds. The windshield wipers of Nell’s pickup squeaked as they shoveled wet, heavy flakes aside.
“How are your parents?” Nell asked.
“Fine,” Jasper said.
“Really?”
“No,” he said. “Neither one of them thinks we can save the festival.”
“Really,” Nell said. “Huh. That’s no good. Your parents are usually made out of optimism.”
“Not this time,” Jasper said.
“And what do you think?”
He stared out the window and tried to decide how to answer. “I don’t know. Two sets of ghosts are fighting over the fairgrounds, and maybe they always will until one version of history completely annihilates the other one. And we can’t have a festival while that’s happening around us. We can’t sell lemonade, swords, and roasted turkey legs to tourists while ghost miners attack us for erasing them with our made-up history. Both versions can’t haunt the same place at the same time.”
Nell pulled into the driveway of the Chevalier family farm. She parked and idled there. The windshield wipers struggled back and forth.
Jasper unbuckled his seatbelt, but otherwise he didn’t move. Something itched at the back of his brain.
Both sides want to haunt the same place at the same time, he thought. The same place. It has to be the same place. But does it have to be at the same time?
“I need to find a way to get their attention,” he said out loud.
“Your parents?” Nell asked.
“No. Not my parents. The ghosts at the fairgrounds. All of them at once.”
She tapped a steady drumbeat on the steering wheel with her fingers. “That should be easy enough for the festival crowd. I imagine that trumpets and a royal fanfare would do the trick. But I don’t know what might capture the other side’s attention.”
“They move their helmet lamps like searchlights . . . ,” Jasper said, thinking out loud. “Dad thinks they’re just looking for home. The way the field used to be. Trying to find something familiar.”
“Go look for some old stuff, then. The refinery, the town meeting hall, and everything else at that end of Ingot got torn down years and years ago. But I bet you can find fragments for sale in Mildred Grün’s antique shop. If they recognize it, then they might pay a little bit of attention to you.”
Jasper buckled his seatbelt again. “Can I have another ride?”
* * *
A silver bell rang inside Grün’s Antiques as Jasper went in.
Mildred stood behind the counter, sorting a display case of dangly earrings. She was tiny, white, and absolutely ancient. But there didn’t seem to be anything brittle about her. If she ever fell down the front stairs Jasper figured that the impact would probably break the stairs rather than any part of Mildred. If she died in her sleep then she would likely wake right up on the following morning, open her shop at the proper time, and gradually build a new body for herself out of various antique oddments.
Maybe that had happened already. Jasper peered closely at Mildred.
“Are you checking to make sure that I’m still alive, child?” she asked without looking up from the earring display.
“No, Mrs. Grün,” he lied quickly.
“Good. If you’re here about some ghostly business, then you might have words with the pair currently inhabiting my ceiling. They are throwing a set of bone-handled knives between them.”
“What makes you think I’m here on ghostly business?” Jasper asked. Her sharp assumptions made him want to be cagey.
“You run with the specialists now, I hear. Soaked up some of their knowledge. Is that right?”
“Could be,” he said. “I might know those two poltergeists, too. They never drop anything.”
“It still makes me a mite uncomfortable to see knives flying over my head,” said Mildred. “If you could settle them down, I would be very much obliged.”
Jasper took five flyers for the Renaissance Festival from a stack next to the cash register. Each one showed a full-color picture of Sir Dad in midjoust. He had the visor of his helmet down, but Jasper still knew him by his armor, the crest of his shield, and the posture of confident joy.
He crumpled up the flyers. Then he tossed the five paper balls in the air, one by one, and juggled while he picked his way carefully to the back of the store. Antique things paused their habitual whispers as he went by.
The two poltergeists did not pause, but they did include Jasper in their game by throwing knives at him. He caught those knives and tossed crumpled paper back. Then he bowed out of the game to bring the full set of knives back to Mildred.
She took them gratefully. “Now, what can I help you with? You have the look of someone searching for a very specific thing.”
“Maybe,” Jasper said. “I need to find something old and local.”
“Well, take your pick. That describes almost everything here.”
He shook his head. “Something from the old refinery. Or the meeting hall. Something from way back when Ingot was founded.”
Mildred thoughtfully tapped on the side of her face. “Not too many want to remember that there was a copper refinery here, even now that all those ghosts are coming home. But I never did have trouble with that kind of am
nesia. Quite enough copper in this shop to nudge a body’s memory.” She reached out one thin finger and pointed. “You might try looking on that shelf. That one there. Behind the card catalogue, but before you get to the comics.”
Jasper searched through the things on that shelf. He found a tin bucket full of lost keys without locks, a racist board game about cowboys, and a set of porcelain dolls that didn’t seem to be haunted but unsettled him more than any haunted thing ever had.
He also found a bell the size of a volleyball. It dangled from a short length of chain, empty and clapperless, but it was made out of copper. The metal had covered itself with a dark green patina. Jasper could still read Barron’s name stamped on the side.
I think this is it. He brought it back to Mildred and set it on the counter.
She considered the bell and flipped over its little paper price tag, which read $300 in precise handwriting. Jasper felt hope sink back down to ground level.
“This was from the refinery, sure enough. They rang it to mark break times, and the very end of the workday. But I’m guessing that you don’t have the funds for it.”
“I don’t,” he admitted. “I’ll have to offer a swap.”
Mildred folded her age-speckled hands. “I’m listening.”
Jasper tried to think quickly. “I could bring over a crate of used horseshoes.”
“Those do sell,” she said. “Especially to tourists looking for small souvenirs. Not so many tourists come to town now, though. Not with the festival closed and unlikely to reopen. Besides, your folks usually donate their crates full of horseshoes to my shop.”
Jasper clenched his teeth over the words “unlikely to reopen,” but he didn’t argue. “I can offer a mint condition copy of Ultimate Fallout Number Four.”
“Interesting.” Mildred typed a quick search into her phone. “Very interesting. And valuable. Plus I haven’t read that comic yet. But it still isn’t enough. Not quite.”
“I also helped with your poltergeist problem,” Jasper pointed out.
“True,” Mildred said. “Answer me one question, then. Share more of that ghostly knowledge you’ve accumulated and we’ll call it a swap.”
Jasper tented his fingertips together. “I’m listening.”
“Good. There’s a child comes in here lately. A ghostly one. Little girl trying to track down her favorite doll. She finds it, too. I keep it out for her, and I don’t let anyone else buy it. But she always leaves the doll behind when she goes, and comes looking again the next day. That isn’t the strangest thing, though. What I can’t quite sort out is the fact that I remember this girl. Gertrude was her name. We grew up together, and she did grow up. Lived to a respectable eighty-nine years of age. But now, when she comes haunting, she haunts as a child instead of someone well and truly grown. Why? Can you unravel that for me?”
Jasper thought hard about it. “Could be an injury,” he mused. “Some kinds of hurt keep you locked in a place that you never really leave.”
“Interesting” Mildred said. “Is that what you think is going on here?”
“No,” said Jasper. “I think maybe there’s a time when you come into your own. When you’re most fully yourself. Sometimes you hold on to that through every other age, even when the rest of you changes.”
Mildred looked pleased. “Now that could be. That could well be. Gertrude was always delightfully childish, as I recall. And this makes me wonder about the age of my own true self. I’m probably supposed to say that I am really seventeen at heart, and always have been. But truthfully, I don’t think that I’ve reached my proper age. Not yet. Feels like I am getting close, though.” She took a small pair of scissors and snipped the bell’s price tag away. “I like your answer. Bring me the comic and you have yourself a swap.”
“Thank you, Mrs. Grün.”
“No thanks needed. And no need to rush. I do promise to hold on to that comic and keep it off the rack for a good long while, just in case you’d like to swap something back for it. What exactly do you mean to use that bell for in the meantime?”
Jasper tapped the bell with his thumbnail and listened to its distant-sounding ring. “What it was always used for.”
25
ROSA’S MOTHER WENT DOWNSTAIRS TO take a shower, because contact with banishment always felt icky to her. But first she planned to make more phone calls and coordinate the coming reinforcements of specialist librarians.
The grown-ups were mobilizing. The problems would be solved. Mom had promised. She insisted that Rosa didn’t need to worry about rogue Letheans—living or dead, strangers or family. Nope. Not at all. Definitely not.
Rosa stayed upstairs by the fire. She knew that she should feel hungry. The cafeteria evacuation had interrupted her lunch. The breakfast bagel felt like a ghostly echo from centuries ago. But Rosa did not feel hungry. Her stomach had forgotten what food was for. Maybe it would remember when Nell returned with grease-stained paper bags from the Tiny Diner, but right now Rosa had no appetite at all.
The fire settled down to become a bed of glowing coals. One wraith still danced above it.
Rosa scooted closer. She felt waves of heat against her face.
“Hi Tim,” she said. “I don’t know what your real name was. I don’t know if you remember it, either. But I’d like to keep calling you Tim if that’s okay with you.”
The fiery ghost flickered and bowed.
“I could see you more clearly if I had a worry stone. That’s a flat rock with a hole in the middle. I’ve got one in my backpack. But my backpack is back at the school. Which is closed and locked. Because the ghosts inside snatched dozens of voices today. And they won’t talk to me. I’m responsible for that place. Mom is dealing with the library, and the town, and all sorts of Lethean things. All I need to do is handle the school hauntings. That’s it. But I can’t. Why won’t those poisoned kids talk to me? What the absolute and unmitigated crap is the point of taking so many voices if you’re just going to sit on them and stay quiet? It doesn’t make any sense.”
Mrs. Jillynip made a shushing noise from behind the front desk.
Rosa lowered her voice. “It doesn’t make sense,” she said again.
Her own words took one step sideways inside her head. It really doesn’t. No sense at all. Which means that something else is going on.
She pulled out her phone as though drawing a sword. Texting thumbs moved fast over the screen.
We need to get back to the school, she told Jasper. Now. Right now. Right this very now.
Ok, he answered. It’ll be locked, tho. And that building never likes to let you in.
I’ll convince it, Rosa typed. Meet me there?
Meet you there.
She put her phone away. Tim continued to hover above the glowing fireplace coals, his posture and movements attentive.
Rosa reached out a hand. “Come with me? I need help from someone small and nimble.”
The wraith jumped from the fireplace to hover above her palm. She cupped both hands to shelter him. It felt uncomfortably warm, but not quite burning.
“Thank you,” she said.
Rosa left the library and walked to school through a snowy thunderstorm while carrying a ghost made out of fire.
She had work to do. This gave her something to think about, something important—something other than her father’s embarrassed smile. Had he always faked that smile? He didn’t just dabble in banishments. He hadn’t fumbled his way into dying.
Rosa walked faster to outrun that smile.
Jasper stood shivering at the front entrance of the school. He held a large paper bag, and he didn’t have a coat. Neither did Rosa. Both of their coats were still locked inside.
“What’s in the bag?” she asked.
“A copper bell,” he said. “What’s in your hand?”
“Tim,” she said.
“Hello Tim,” said Jasper.
Rosa held the ghost up to the doorknob. Reflections of his firelight danced against the metal.
<
br /> “This threshold has an unreasonable dislike for me,” she told him. “I can respect a grudge, but I can’t have this. I’m the specialist here. Doorways and boundaries are therefore my territory. Please explain this to the door and lock.”
Tim disappeared into the keyhole. Then he blazed back out. Rosa caught him with one hand.
The door unlatched itself and slowly opened.
“Excellent,” said Jasper. “Shouldn’t we have come armed, though?”
“Probably,” Rosa said. “But I was in a hurry.”
Every time she paused to think, the only thing she could think about was her father’s embarrassed and bumbling shrug of a smile.
“We could go back for sword and staff,” Jasper suggested.
Rosa shook her head. “Something wanted to empty out the school today. Something other than hauntings in need of a voice. Why? What? It might be too late to find out already.”
They grabbed their backpacks from homeroom on their way to the haunted water fountain, which still wore Jasper’s OUT OF ORDER sign. Rosa searched her pack for a pocketknife. Then she remembered her promise to Principal Ahmed and deeply regretted keeping it.
“Do you have a screwdriver?” she asked. “Or Duncan’s phone number? We need to open this up and search its innards.”
“Nope,” Jasper said. “Neither. Do access panels on water fountains count as thresholds and therefore a part of your proper territory?”
“Don’t make fun of me, Chevalier. And no. Not really. That’s mostly doors, windows, and mirrors. Things we use all the time.”
“Could Tim fit in there and pop it open?”
“Aha!” Rosa said. “Probably.” She held the wraith up to the fountain. “Would you mind? Be careful in there. Don’t get yourself extinguished.”
Tim slipped inside and rattled at the screws. It took time. The metal panel was hot to the touch by the time they pried it open. The wraith triumphantly lit up the space inside.
Tiny words and symbols had been etched into all of the plumbing.
“Does that word look like ‘lethe’ to you?” Rosa asked.
A Festival of Ghosts Page 12