“Is what weird?”
She played with the zoom toggle, focusing on a spot of darkness at the tops of the trees. “Trying to catch all of your spiritual encounters on camera. Don’t you get tired of living through a lens? Isn’t it better to experience things firsthand rather than through a screen?”
“Spoken like a true philistine,” I teased. “And no, I don’t get tired of it. The way I see it, mediumship is an art. As an artist, I’m inclined to share my work with the world.”
“Hmm.”
“So what gives, kid?” I asked. “We’ve been sitting here for two and a half hours, and I haven’t seen hide nor hair of your ghost.”
“Maybe you’re not concentrating hard enough.”
“Or maybe she’s not coming.” I rubbed my hands together, enjoying the whisk of the gloves’ polyester lining. “If she sensed my presence, she might have gotten scared off.”
Riley discreetly rolled her eyes. “Yeah, that must be it.”
“Can I ask you a question?”
“I suppose.”
“How often do you ride the snowmobile up the mountain by yourself?
She aimed the camera at the sky. It would be hell to go through and organize all of her footage later. “Why? Are you going to tell my dad?”
“No,” I said. “I was wondering if that was why you were the first one to find your mother. It sounds like both of you made a habit of venturing out in the morning before anyone else was awake.”
Riley’s silence was answer enough.
“Did you ever go together?” I asked her. “You and your mom?”
“We used to,” she said, tucking the camera into her chest. “She would wake me up before dawn and bribe the controls guy to turn on the chair lift early for us. Then we’d ski the fresh powder before anyone else. It was my favorite part of the day.”
“But the two of you stopped doing that? How come?”
“My dad got weird,” she replied. “When they started arguing every day, Mom stopped waking me up to go with her. I guess she wanted to be alone, so I didn’t ask to come. Do you believe in love?”
“Uh.” The sudden shift in topic threw me off. “Yeah, I guess so.”
“Like true love?”
“Not like the fairytales,” I said. “Everyone romanticizes true love, but it’s not like that. It’s not some sweeping grandeur that makes everything in your life sparkle and shine. To me, true love means doing your absolute best for the most important people in your life while they do the same for you. It’s not always fifty-fifty. Some days, you can only give twenty-five percent of your love, and the other person has to pick up the slack. But then it’s only fair for you to return the favor when someone can only give you twenty-five percent for the day. It should all equal out in the end. And I don’t think true love only happens with romance. It should be a part of all of your relationships.”
“Like mothers and daughters?”
“Yeah,” I said. “And friends and cousins and siblings.”
“I hate Tyler,” she replied, unvarnished. “Dad’s okay sometimes, but it’s not the same. Mom and I were different. Is it okay not to truly love my dad?”
The question tugged at my heartstrings because this was not a lesson any child should have to learn but so many often did anyway, and at a much younger age than Riley. I got the idea of it around eight or nine, but I didn’t fully understand the concept of obligatory love until much later.
“Yeah, it’s okay,” I said.
“Are you sure?”
I nodded. “Sometimes, parents aren’t our best source for love because they never learned to give their kids what they really need. To be fair though, most of them try their best, and we have to recognize that. Your dad’s doing his best to take care of you. That’s why he called me in the first place.”
“I guess,” Riley said. “So you don’t love your parents either?”
“My dad’s dead,” I told her. “I loved him a lot. My mom—like your dad—tries. Sometimes I forget that, and it’s easy to get mad at her for the things she says or does, but I love her too. It’s just a more distant love.”
Riley turned the camera on herself. “I think that’s how I am with Dad. Do you have any true loves?”
“My best friend,” I admitted. “She gets it. She gets everything.”
“I don’t have a best friend.”
“Don’t worry, you will.”
“The kids at school think I’m weird.” She rolled over to lay on her stomach. “They don’t want to talk about stuff like this.”
“You’re advanced for your age,” I reminded her. “That scares people.”
“I want to know everything.”
“That also scares people.”
“Why though?” she asked.
“Got me beat. Actually, no,” I added. “I do know why. It’s because most people prefer ignorance to enlightenment. It’s easier to focus on your own happiness when you’re unaware of everyone else’s unhappiness.”
“So they’re selfish.”
“It’s the human condition.”
The camera beeped and turned off, its battery dead. Riley put it in her backpack for safekeeping as I adjusted my seat on the tree. A nub in the bark dug into my back, and the hand warmers were starting to lose their edge as the cold started to set in again.
“Hey, Riley?”
“Yeah.”
“Detective Hawkins found your bracelet in the snow under the ski lift yesterday.”
She swung around to look up at me. “The one with the ski charm?”
“Yeah. Here.” I dug it out of my pocket and handed it down to her. “That’s it, right?”
Riley held it reverently in her gloved hands. “I thought I’d lost it. My mom gave it to me.”
“I had to convince him not to keep it as evidence,” I said.
She pressed the bracelet to her heart. “Why would he keep it—oh.”
As understanding flashed across her face, I knew Daniel’s hunch was wrong about her. I knew before too, instinctively, but her hurt expression solidified my opinion of her. Yes, she was strange and inquisitive for her age, but that didn’t make her a maladjusted child with a sick lust for murder.
“I didn’t want to ask—”
“No, it’s fine,” she said. “He told you to ask, didn’t he?”
“Yes.”
Carefully, she put the bracelet in the same pocket that carried the amethyst stone. “Can I show you something? It’s not far.”
“Okay.”
She slid off the snowmobile as I dropped out of the tree and took my hand to lead me away from the ski run. The snow was so deep that we had to lift our boots to knee level to clear each step, but Riley was persistent. A few minutes later, we stopped beneath a towering oak tree, and Riley pointed up. Above us, a treehouse teetered in the wind.
“Is that where you hold meetings with your associates?” I asked.
“My dad and I built it two years ago to watch a bald eagle nest in the next tree over.” She brushed snow from the two-by-fours nailed into the trunk of the tree and clambered up. “I don’t think he knows I still use it. Are you coming?”
I regarded the weather-beaten way up. “Do I have to?”
“Don’t worry,” she said, twenty feet above. “I check to make sure all the nails are holding every time I come up here. Move it, wimp.”
I grabbed hold of the first plank of wood and started up. The tree was easy to climb. The two-by-fours were conveniently placed where there were no nearby branches to further your ascent. Nevertheless, by the time I pulled myself into the treehouse at the top—the entrance of which was in the floor of the questionable building—I was sweating from the effort. Riley took my hand and helped me up. It was warmer in the tiny, enclosed space, but the wind whistled by so loudly, the entire treehouse shook and shivered. One wall, facing east, was half open to the elements, serving as a little balcony to the outside world. In the next tree over, the remnants of an eagle’s ne
st waited for the birds to return to it in the spring. Beyond that, the treehouse had a perfect view of the ski lift. Down below, most of the ski runs were visible.
“Earlier, you asked me how often I took the snowmobile out for a joyride,” Riley said, gazing at the lift. “I did it every single day Mom got up to ski by herself. It was a safety precaution. You shouldn’t go skiing by yourself, but Mom did it regularly. I thought if I was up here too, watching over her, I could get to her with the snowmobile if she fell or got lost, but I never expected something to go wrong with the ski lift.” She stopped, sniffled, and started again. “I saw it happen. The whole thing. She was alive when I got to her, but she was pinned underneath the chair. I couldn’t help. I couldn’t get her out. It’s my fault—”
I tugged her close and wrapped my arms around her as she buried her face in the front of my jacket and completely let herself go. For the first time since I’d met her, she felt like a little kid instead of a miniature adult, small and irresponsible with a fragile hold on her emotions. She shook with each fresh wave of sobs but cried silently. We sank to the floor of the treehouse, where she clambered into my lap like a four-year-old and hugged me until her grip faltered. I combed her hair with my fingers and held her until she was ready to let go.
“It was not your fault,” I muttered into the fake fur lining of her coat’s hood. “Do you understand me? You didn’t make the ski lift fall. Your mother’s death was not your fault. Say it.”
“It w-wasn’t my fault.”
“That’s right,” I said. My voice cracked and my throat closed up as I willed myself not to cry. “It wasn’t your fault, Riley.”
We sat there long enough for my legs to go stiff under Riley’s weight, but I refused to be the first one to pull away. Slowly, she stopped shaking and pulled out of our hug.
“You’re not a real psychic, are you?” she asked, framing her hands on my shoulders.
“I—what? Of course I am.”
“It’s okay,” she sniffed. “I knew the truth before you got to the resort.”
“You did?”
She crawled out of my lap and stretched. “It was pretty obvious. And that last episode of Madame Lucia’s Parlour gave it away too.”
I groaned and squeezed the bridge of my nose as the memories came flooding back. “I should’ve known. You’re way too perceptive for your own good. Riley, listen. I need the money, okay? Your dad—”
“I’m not going to tell him,” Riley said. “And I don’t care that you’re not a real psychic. What I do care about is whether or not you believe me.”
“About the ghosts?”
“Yeah. Do you?”
I thought of the kamikaze vase in the kitchen of my suite. The prickle on the back of my neck whenever I traversed the hallways of King and Queens alone. The screams and hooded figures in the old wing. But that was Tyler and his friends, of course.
“I don’t know,” I answered.
Riley tugged me toward the exit of the treehouse. “Come on. I’m going to prove it to you.”
Riley hatched a plan in my suite. As I set up my main camera on a tripod in the bedroom, she fussed around in the kitchen. I framed the shot, trying to get as much of the room on screen as possible per Riley’s request. When she returned from the kitchen, it was with a steaming cup of hot chocolate.
“No, thanks,” I said. “I think I got my week’s worth of sugar content from one sip of your thermos.”
“This isn’t for you,” she declared as she set the mug on the bedside table. “It’s for her.”
“Her who?”
“The nice ghost,” she said. “Remember I told you they weren’t all bad?”
“Vaguely.”
She positioned the mug on the far corner of the table and turned the handle outward as if for someone else to pick up. “This one likes me. Well, I think she does. She also likes hot chocolate.”
“How do you know?”
“She told me.”
I was growing used to the spinal shivers induced by Riley’s nonchalant confirmations of otherworldly apparitions at King and Queens, but that didn’t make them comfortable. “So what do we do?” I asked her. “Wait until she shows up?”
“No, I’m exhausted,” Riley said. She was already dressed in a pair of my pajamas, the too-long satin sleeves pushed up to her elbows. She climbed into the bed and curled up under the duvet cover. “She’s shy. She won’t show up unless we’re asleep. Come on.”
“A slumber party with a ghost,” I grumbled as I joined Riley. “Color me ecstatic.”
“Is the camera on?” she asked, punching a pillow into a mound of feathers before jamming it under her neck like a tire chock.
“Yup. It’s ready to go. If anything happens, we’ll have it recorded.”
“Perfect. Night.”
She scooted right up next to me and coiled up in a little ball of pink satin beneath the sheets. Her feet were freezing. Within seconds, she was snoring. I turned off the big lamp and rolled over to get comfortable. The mug of hot chocolate was right at eye level. Steam rose lazily into the air like a secret invitation to Riley’s ghostly friend. I clenched my eyes shut. Everything was fine. Everything was fine.
In the morning, the camera beeped like a whiny child to remind me it was out of memory. Not even the thick feathers of the pillow could mute the incessant chirp. Grudgingly, I freed myself from the warmth of the duvet and stepped out of bed into a cold, sticky puddle. The mug of hot chocolate had fallen off the bedside table and splattered its contents across the bedroom carpet. I whirled around and patted the lump on the other side of the bed. It wasn’t Riley. It was a stack of pillows. Riley was gone.
“No, no, no,” I murmured, wiping my feet on a clean section of the carpet as I crossed the room and wrenched the camera off the tripod. I rewound to the beginning of the memory card and hit play.
The scene was normal at first. There was Riley setting the hot chocolate on the table and climbing into bed. There was me, rolling around beneath the covers as I tried to get to sleep. After a while, I stopped moving. I fast-forwarded through the footage until movement caught my eye. Once or twice, it was me or Riley changing positions, but around three in the morning, something else happened.
Riley sat up out of nowhere, her back as straight and stiff as an operating table. She stared at the door to the bedroom. Slowly, her gaze tracked something across the room until she looked over my shoulder at the hot chocolate. The mug shifted a half-inch toward the edge of the table. Then it lifted straight into the air without anyone touching it.
I clapped my hand over my mouth to stifle the indescribable noise gurgling at the base of my throat and forced myself to keep watching the footage. Riley stared at the mug as it tipped slightly, almost like someone were drinking from it. When it fell, spilled, and bounced across the carpet, Riley shot out of bed and tore out of the room. I remained asleep and oblivious, alone with whatever had come to visit us last night.
7
I didn’t think as I got dressed, throwing on the first pair of jeans and sweater I could find. It was only as I rode the elevator down to the lobby and caught a glimpse of my reflection that I realized the sweater—draped over the armchair in the bedroom—had been in the splash zone of hot chocolate. Dark droplets patterned the collar and shoulders of the creamy cashmere, but I didn’t care enough to go back up to the room and change. I didn’t want to be up there alone. With the camera tucked under my arm, I charged out of the elevator on the ground floor and ran into Detective Daniel.
“Whoa, there,” he said, steadying me by the shoulders. “Where’s the fire?”
“In the old wing,” I replied without thinking. “Excuse me, I have to find Riley.”
Daniel caught the sleeve of my stained sweater. “Slow down for a second, Lucia. Is everything okay? You’re sweating.” He examined his fingers, coated in the sugary remnants of hot chocolate. “And sticky. You’re also holding onto that camera for dear life. What’s going on?”
“Madame Lucia, what are you trying to tell me?”
I whacked his shoulder. “Shut up, you know I’m a fraud, but Riley’s not. I swear, Daniel. Look at this footage.” I presented him with the camera. “Press play. I can’t watch it again. I’m freaked out enough.”
He fiddled with the monitor’s touch screen. “There’s nothing here, Lucia.”
“What?”
He tilted the camera toward. “Nothing’s been recorded on this memory card. It’s blank.”
“No.” I checked for myself. Sure enough, the footage from last night was gone. “No! Are you serious?”
“This is a joke, right?” Daniel said. “You’re pulling my leg?”
“No, I’m not. It was right here! I watched the footage five minutes ago.”
“Hmm.” He scratched his head, ruffling his mane of black hair. “Hey, did you happen to make any progress with Riley? I need to get as much information on this investigation as possible. If the kid’s responsible in some way—”
My gaze snapped up from the camera. “That poor little girl watched her own mother die. She didn’t kill her. What kind of person are you to suggest that she would? Really, Detective Hawkins, what happened to you to make you so cynical? To completely disengage your emotions? Actually, don’t answer that. I don’t want to know. You leave that little girl alone.”
“I would never—”
“Leave her alone,” I said again. “Got it?”
Before he could reply, Riley tore through the lobby screaming. Tyler sprinted after her, his face, neck, and T-shirt drenched in blood. He stayed on his little sister’s heels but let her keep just ahead of him. With his long legs, he could catch her in a second, but he was getting a kick out of the chase.
“Run, little girl!” he cooed in a creepy tone. He stepped on the back of her shoe, causing her to stumble. She left the sneaker in the middle of the floor and took off as Tyler laughed. Daniel seized Tyler by the arm when the teenager passed, and Riley jetted off toward the Eagle’s View. The blood all over him was fake and tacky, made of corn syrup and red food coloring.
The Haunting of Riley Watson Page 11