“What’s that?” Noah asked.
Wendy impatiently let out a breath, then said, “That’s a way of channeling, too. The spirit writes down what it wants to say by going through Ms. Dantès.”
Amanda Lee looked around the circle, but I noticed she didn’t linger very long on Gavin.
“Are we set?” she asked.
Wendy was the only one who nodded.
“Wonderful. Let’s hold hands.”
Amanda Lee was between Wendy and Noah. Thank goodness, because I was pretty sure her acting skills wouldn’t have been good enough for her to endure touching Gavin.
As everyone linked hands, I hung back, ready to follow Amanda Lee’s cues.
For a few minutes, she only closed her eyes and sat silently, and the others followed suit, although Noah kept peeking out from under his lashes at everyone.
Then, just as the ticktock of the near-distant grandfather clock in the foyer built up an unbearable tension, she spoke softly.
“I’m addressing the spirit in this house. We’re here to talk to you. Would you please visit with us? I’m open for you to communicate with the people here, and we want to hear what you have to say.”
Silence, chopped up only by those tick . . . tocks, tick . . . tocks.
“Don’t be shy,” Amanda Lee said. “We’re sympathetic to you.”
Farah was practically squeezing Gavin’s and Noah’s hands off, while Wendy was scrunching her eyes in concentration so hard that I was afraid she’d combust.
I stood by, waiting to see if Amanda Lee would need anything from me, even though, earlier today, she’d told me she would do all the work. Just when I thought she’d changed her mind about going through with this, she bolted up in her seat, still holding Wendy’s and Noah’s hands, her eyes electrocution-wide, her mouth open.
She looked like she had that day in Elfin Forest, when the vision of my killer had hit her.
Shit.
I readied myself to swoop in and knock her away from the table, making her break the circle link. But then she fell forward, still holding hands with the others, who seemed horrified at what was happening.
When she sat up again, she was normal, and she locked her gaze on Wendy.
“Wendy,” she said gently, in her Virginia Alicia Dantès voice. “It seems the ghost is focused on you.”
Nothing whatsoever had happened to Amanda Lee. She was just bullshitting. And I had a bad feeling that she was about to blame a poltergeist on Wendy.
The girl was already asking questions. “What do you mean, Ms. Dantès?”
“The spirit is attracted to the negative feelings you’ve been repressing,” Amanda Lee said. “Put simply, it likes you because you give it energy, but it wants to hurt everyone around you.”
She looked stunned, then bit by bit, crushed. “It’s not my mom?” she whispered.
Amanda Lee hesitated, like she really didn’t want to carry through. But then she said, “No, it’s not your—”
“Cut it out,” I said from my place near the ceiling. I supported her telling Wendy the truth about the ghost not being her mother, but I didn’t want Amanda Lee to go the poltergeist route, either.
But she forged on. “Poltergeists often center on someone who’s upset in the family, and they can produce smells and images and far worse things than the chills you’ve been feeling. They can get much worse. That’s why we’re going to banish it.”
Gavin sat back in his chair, still keeping the link alive. I had a sense that he’d been studying all kinds of ghosts on his computer since the other night, when he’d first met one.
I slowly floated downward, coming to Amanda Lee’s head, exerting pressure on her. “Just do whatever you’re going to do and then we’re done. No more putting a trip on Wendy.”
And that’s when I felt it.
Something else besides me in the room.
Something so fast and cold that it slammed me away from Amanda Lee.
My energy froze, spangling outward as I arced up and away from her, flattening against the ceiling with the force of the thing’s speed.
It retreated immediately, and went to Amanda Lee.
Below me, I could only watch in terror as she started moving like a puppet, disconnecting from Wendy’s and Noah’s hands, grabbing the pen, setting it to the paper like she couldn’t control the writing.
The pen swerved, creating sloppy words. Her breathing was quick, and I knew she wasn’t the one writing at all.
You will pay, the note said.
Shivering from the electric chill the other entity had sent through me, I saw a dark haze around Amanda Lee. What was it?
Before I could recognize any identifying features, it darted up and zoomed toward me again, still harrowingly unfamiliar, then cut through me like a blade this time.
I screamed, the sensation of a sharp edge digging into me, burying itself, energy splattering like blood.
Imitating my human death.
Amanda Lee’s voice rang out. “In the name of all that’s holy, leave us!”
It didn’t take more than that, and the thing whirled away from me as my essence wailed, feeling like ripped flesh.
With a crash, it shattered the nearest window, the curtains flaring out, the wind moaning in its aftermath.
It was like it’d done what it’d set out to do, and that was that.
The room was silent as the Edgetts gripped the table and I slowly came back together, shaking. Had Wendy been right? Had Amanda Lee opened a portal and let something far worse than me in, even though the other ghosts said meeting bad spirits didn’t happen that often?
Maybe it just took a séance.
Farah went slack and Noah hugged her to him. Gavin slowly stood.
“It’s out,” he said to Amanda Lee. “Will that be all?”
My thoughts were fuzzy, but even I knew that Gavin was wrong. Whatever had flown through the window wasn’t me. The family was far worse off now.
Amanda Lee clung to her Virginia accent, even as her voice quavered. “Let me fortify your house, just to be—”
“No. We’re done here. Thank you, Ms. Dantès.”
I thought for sure that Amanda Lee was about to tell him she’d messed up, but Gavin stepped away from the table, indicating she could leave.
“You did what you came here to do,” he said. “We’ll be fine.”
Amanda Lee paused, then cut her losses and gathered her crystal ball into her arms.
Wendy just stared at the broken window.
There was a movie I’d seen on Amanda Lee’s TV after I’d been pulled from my loop. The Silence of the Lambs. Jodie Foster, awesomely grown-up from Freaky Friday, had been an FBI trainee on the trail of a serial killer, and in one scene, she’d gone into a warehouse, where she’d found a jar with a head in it.
She’d had the same enthralled, fearful look on her face Wendy had right now.
As Amanda Lee left the room, she passed Constanza, who’d come to the entrance. The maid produced a small hissing sound as Amanda Lee walked by, hugging the crystal ball, ignoring her. Or maybe not hearing her because of the worry of what she’d accidentally unleashed.
When the front door shut and Amanda Lee was gone, Constanza talked calmly to the family.
“You don’t like her, Mr. Gavin. Me, either. So we let her go. But she was correct in one matter. Let me call someone who can make the house safe right away so the spirit never visits again.”
“It’s finished, Constanza,” Gavin said, his gaze dark.
“I know of a woman from my church,” she said doggedly. “I saw what went out the window, and I must call her tonight so we never have to worry about this again.”
Even in my fear-lined state, I knew she was talking about getting a cleaner in here.