“You can stop proselytizing, Ophelia. Pack up your Necronomicon and go home because I’m not interested.”

  “You don’t understand,” she said again, this time slower and with more emphasis, as though she wanted me to ask her to explain. But I wasn’t going to.

  I took a deep breath. “I have to pick up my son from school now, so you have to go.”

  Ophelia’s eyes grew very round, finally showing a little white at their edges. They were so dark and shiny, like the eyes of a rat. She backed away from me in slow, shuffling steps, hand coming to rest on her mouth, like she’d let too much slip.

  “Hexes and hoarfrost,” she hissed. “I thought for certain... but... ack! Damnation and daemons, nightmares and numerology...”

  She disappeared out my front door, still muttering darkly to herself. I was glad to see the back of her and didn’t exhale again until the door swung shut behind her, unfortunately not clipping her keister on the way out. Only then did her meaning begin to sink in.

  She’d thought I was one of them, or at the very least that I should be one of them. Whatever they were. Regardless, I was convinced Ophelia was something I’d never encountered before. Not a witch, certainly, but something else. Something strange. Something... even… monstrous?

  Could she be the reason for my recent string of nightmares? Hmm… that was an interesting thought.

  I opened the driver’s side door and piled into the Jeep, but when I turned the key in the ignition, nothing happened. So I tried it again and still… nothing.

  “Shit!” I said out loud and then pulled my phone from my purse, dialing Marty’s number.

  “Hi, Poppy,” he said as soon as he answered it.

  “I’m so sorry to ask you this, Marty…” I started.

  “McFly,” he corrected.

  “Right... McFly. The Jeep won’t start and I need to pick Finn up from school.”

  “No prob, I’m on it,” he answered, and then I could hear the sound of his keys jingling. “I’m headed to the car now and it will take me maybe ten minutes to get to Finn’s school.”

  “Thank you so much!” He was a godsend. And a really cute one, at that.

  “Of course. I’m happy to help out.” I heard the sound of him closing the door. “Hey, do you need me to swing by and pick you up on the way back? Or, at least I can take a look at the Jeep?”

  “Yes, that would be great,” I answered, so completely grateful for him.

  “Okay, see you soon.”

  ***

  Fifteen minutes later and I tried starting the Jeep again and this time, the engine turned over, much to my surprise. I immediately called Marty, er McFly, to tell him just to meet me at the house since I no longer needed a ride. Then I pulled into the street and headed home.

  That was weird, I thought.

  The Jeep had never not started for me before, and I could only wonder if Ophelia’s presence had anything to do with it. Maybe she wasn’t just bad news around fruit trees, but engines too?

  Or maybe it was merely coincidence…

  Two minutes later, my phone rang, splitting the silence in the car like a shrill scream. My nerve endings jumped to attention, hypersensitive after my run-in with Ophelia. The caller ID revealed it was Finn, and I clicked the button on the steering wheel to connect the call.

  “Hi, buddy, are you home?”

  Heavy breathing sounded on the other end of the phone and then Finn’s voice. “Mom, there’s a ghost in our house! Darla’s here! How is she here? Did you know?”

  “Sweetie,” I started, but he interrupted me.

  “She said you knew, and you allowed her to come here!”

  Ah, crap and a half.

  A sigh billowed out of me as Finn’s voice continued to climb. Soon he’d reach an octave only bats could hear.

  “Traitor,” I muttered under my breath. Darla and I were definitely going to be exchanging words over this. And maybe even the vacuum cleaner.

  “Mom?” Finn demanded.

  “I’ll be home in ten minutes or less, buddy,” I answered.

  Chapter Thirteen

  “Darla! Get your flashy butt over here!” I hissed, wishing the grip I had on the locket would actually throttle the irritating ghost.

  Darla appeared in the passenger’s seat as I hit the highway leading out of town. Darla flickered like a still image on a broken screen, and when she spoke, it sounded like a radio with bad reception. The deep pink, drop waist dress seemed faded to an almost cotton-candy color.

  “Keep your skirt on, dollface.”

  My anger returned in full force. I stepped on the gas again, traveling five miles over the speed limit. Finn would need more comfort than Marty could provide at the moment. Furthermore, I’d promised no more ghosts!

  I ought to have tossed the pencil case Darla had attached herself to into the compost bin or buried it in the backyard. No, I should have just burned the damned thing.

  “I told you not to let Finn see you! That was the deal!”

  “An’ it’s still the deal!”

  “No, it’s not, because you broke your end of it!” I yelled at her. To anyone driving by, I had to look like a crazy person—screaming at an empty seat beside me.

  “Tell it to Sweeney,” she grumbled.

  “I’m not telling anything to Sweeney!” I yelled. “I don’t even know what that means!”

  Darla squirmed, reaching into an interior pocket of her dress to retrieve a handkerchief. She wrung it between her slender fingers like she was preparing to hang it out to dry.

  “I didn’t do it on purpose,” she said.

  “So what the hell happened?”

  “I was just passin’ the time, honest. I was watchin’ somethin’ on the tele, some handsome fella wrestling on the tube. All sweaty and wearin’ them short shorts you know I like so much. I sort of... didn’t realize the kid had come home.” She paused a second and then batted her eyelashes at me, as if doing so would have any sort of effect on me. “And who was that handsome feller with him? Talk about a real cake-eater!”

  I pinched the bridge of my nose. It felt like someone was tapping away at the middle of my forehead with a ball peen hammer. I should have known better than to trust Darla. I eventually moved my fingers from my nose to massage the ache between my eyes.

  “How could you have been so careless?”

  “I’m sorry,” she said, shaking her head.

  “I should just chuck the pencil case and this locket into the nearest river and see where you end up.”

  Her flickering face seemed to blanch, her eyes flying open wide, her expression stricken. She managed to screw her face up into an expression so tragic, I almost apologized. And then I almost hit myself for being an idiot. Darla was, or at least had been an actress. I was fairly sure I couldn’t trust anything she said or did.

  “Please, doll. Ya can’t do that to me! I’m so young an’ who knows where I’d end up! Prolly dead somewhere! An’ I don’t wanna die!”

  “Darla, you’re almost a century old and you’re already dead,” I seethed through clenched teeth.

  “Well, regardless… I can’t go back to the house anytime soon,” she whispered with a shrug, her histrionics forgotten for the moment.

  “And why is that?”

  “Well, that Oliver Twist that brought the kid home…”

  “His name is Marty,” I grumbled.

  “It don’t matter what his name is! Because…. because he’s a ghost hunter!”

  “I’m aware.”

  “You’re aware?” she pouted.

  I nodded and frowned at her as she sat up straight—er floated up straight—and glared at me. “Well, guess what? That ghost hunter and your son are trying to exorcise me!”

  The genuine terror in her voice took some of the wind out of my sails. Irritating she might have been, but she was ultimately harmless. I sighed and seized my phone from the mount on the dashboard and ordered Siri to call Marty.

  It took three rings for him to answer and, when he did, I could barely hear him. The horrendous noise of Henner’s ghost box threatened to drown everything else out. If I strained, I could make out Finn’s shrill voice over everything else. He said a few choice words to the empty air where Darla should have been. I made a mental note to get harsher where his vocab was concerned.

  “Poppy! I was about to call you. Where you at?” Marty asked.

  “On my way home,” I said, glancing sideways at the ghost in my passenger seat. “I know this is going to sound weird… but can you hold off on the exorcism, please? Finn and I know the ghost and, despite what he says, she’s harmless.”

  “Hmm, that’s not what Finn seems to think.”

  “Well, Finn’s exaggerating. Darla won’t hurt him or anyone else.”

  “I’m just a misunderstood girl, all alone in a cold, mean world!” she crooned from beside me. I just shook my head.

  “She piggybacked on some of our things in order to escape the old house in Los Angeles,” I added.

  There was a skeptical silence on the other end of the phone. Marty clearly wasn’t fully convinced about my story. I figured that made sense. The cases he was called in to resolve were probably less than peaceful. The dead stuck around for their own reasons—most of them decidedly unpleasant. But Darla wasn’t a bad ghost, as ghosts went. Vapid, certainly, but not evil. She didn’t deserve to be exorcised, no matter how annoying she was. She might deserve a good Hoovering, though…

  “She seems to really upset Finn, Poppy. Don’t you think…” Marty started.

  “I will tell you the story when I get back,” I interrupted. “But, please stop trying to exorcise her.”

  “Okay, I’ll tell Finn.”

  Right, and I’d have to deal with my son very soon.

  We said our goodbyes and I ended the call. Exhaustion seemed to pile onto my shoulders all at once. Ophelia’s unsettling visit had knocked me off-kilter. My skin crawled from just the memory of her presence. And then the stress from the Jeep not starting…

  “Am I gonna get the Hoover?” Darla asked, her eyes wide.

  “No,” I answered with a sigh. “I’m just going to have… to do a lot of explaining.”

  She nodded and then smiled as she appeared to sit beside me with her hands folded in her lap. “Well, good thing you were wearing that locket so I could buzz myself out of the house. Otherwise, who knows where I’d be!”

  ***

  The drive took longer than I thought it should. Darla prattled on about this and that, but I couldn’t say I was paying any attention. Instead, I noticed how clouds had begun to roll in, quick and fast. A freak thunderstorm. I supposed that was Oregon, for you. On average, 164 rainy days a year. Sigh.

  I had to slow the Jeep to a crawl as rain pelted the windshield, each fat droplet sounding like a slap against the glass. The road up to the house turned into a veritable slip and slide, threatening to send us spinning through the yard and into one of the Aspen trees that lined the drive. Good thing I had all-terrain tires and four wheel drive.

  I was intensely grateful I’d packed a rain slicker in the back seat, for times like this. I slid it on, outrageously yellow in the gloom, and stepped out into the cold. The rain was coming at me sideways, and a few droplets managed to hit my face and slide in icy rivulets down into the hood of the coat. Mostly though, the slicker did its job. I kept my head down and barreled for the front steps.

  Darla was now nowhere to be seen, and I figured she’d blipped herself back inside the house. She’d appeared to grow more solid as we approached the property line. I imagined she was like a cell phone coming into range of a tower. The further away she was from home base, the harder it was for her to take shape. At the very last second, she’d blinked out of existence, probably drawn back to the pencil case like a rubber band that had been snapped.

  Finn was waiting for me at the front door, hand cupped over his eyes so he could squint at me through the rain. Guilt twisted my stomach. I should have told him the morning after Darla revealed herself.

  Maybe I could have explained that she was no threat.

  He never would have listened.

  I reached out and wrapped my arms around him, wanting to comfort him. He kept his arms stiff at his sides, small hands balled into fists. He didn’t move to return the embrace. I could almost feel the anger radiating off him. He didn’t push me away though, so he wasn’t as mad as he could have been. Still, he was mad, and that was my fault.

  I stepped into the house and closed the door behind me, then pulled back to study his face. His jaw flexed a few times, like he was chewing on an angry tirade. Eventually, he managed to swallow the urge to yell and just asked, “Did you know, Mom?”

  The guilt must have shown on my face, because he got tears in his eyes which struck me even harder. “Buddy, I can explain,” I started.

  “Mom, you promised!” he practically wailed. “You promised no more ghosts!”

  “And I meant to keep my promise,” I said, chivvying out of the doorway and into the foyer. The chill air raised goosebumps on my arms. “I didn’t know Darla stowed away until we’d already moved in.”

  Finn’s eyes narrowed. “What did she attach herself to?”

  God, he was smart.

  Ordinarily, I loved that about Finn. In this case, he was too savvy for his own good. Now that he’d decided to be angry instead of terrified, I didn’t trust him not to do something drastic to Darla. But, I also didn’t think he’d be able to find the pencil case without help. I’d squirreled it away in the upstairs bathroom, dumping the hundred and twelve tampons from the economy-sized box into my underwear drawer, stashing the pencil case there, instead. I’d thought Darla was as safe as I could make her, for now.

  But, I also knew better than to lie to my son. Firstly, he’d know I was lying and secondly, it just didn’t feel right.

  “I don’t want to talk about that until we have another discussion first,” I answered.

  “What conversation is that?”

  “I don’t want you exorcising Darla. She’s not a bad… ghost, Finn.”

  “All ghosts are bad.”

  I shook my head. “That’s not true. And Darla may be annoying, but she would never intentionally scare you.”

  “She did scare me!”

  Right. And I wasn’t sure how. “What happened?”

  “I was showing McFly my Nerf guns, and she just appeared out of nowhere and started talking to him and kept calling him Oliver something. Then she started making kissy faces at him and doing this weird purring thing like she thought she was a cat.”

  Why was I not surprised?

  “Did Marty see her?”

  “No. He can’t see ghosts.”

  “Right.”

  The mask of sullen, angry preteen melted away and Finn’s eyes were a little too shiny, his face too pale. “What if she accidentally brought Frank with her?” he whispered.

  Now we’d reached the crux of the matter. Finn had tolerated Darla at the old house. Frank on the other hand...

  “Frank is gone, Finn,” I said. “You know that.”

  “Well, what if she somehow brought him back with her?” he pressed.

  “Darla wanted Frank gone as much as you did,” I answered, remembering how frightened she was of Frank—almost as much as Finn was. “It’s just Darla here now. And I promise you she will never intentionally scare you.”

  I watched Marty walk up behind Finn. He gave me a big smile and put a broad, calloused hand on Finn’s shoulder. Finn jerked at the contact, face going white as a sheet. He half-turned, as though expecting to find the poltergeist looming just behind him. He smiled when he realized it was just McFly. Marty hunkered down so he could be on Finn’s level.

  “We’ve got our ghost hunting equipment, buddy. Even if we don’t use it to banish your ghost, we could still use it to detect any other phantom presences in the house. Would that make you feel better? To know there’s only one ghost?”

  Finn nodded slowly.

  I mouthed a fervent “thank you” over Finn’s head. Marty looked up at me and just nodded. Then he stood up and put his arm around Finn as the two disappeared further into the house and, distantly, I could hear the screechy sound of the ghost box. It sounded like they’d set up in the kitchen.

  As I approached, I could hear two voices arguing. Okay, maybe arguing was too strong a word. An unfamiliar voice was mid-diatribe and Henner interjected mildly where appropriate.

  “I swear I saw it!” Unknown man said, heat in his tone. He had a rumbling bass voice, like someone had strapped a subwoofer to his chest and set him loose to terrorize small children.

  “I believe you, RJ,” Henner said, but even from here, I could hear the placating smile in Henner’s voice.

  “I can tell you think I’m crazy.”

  “All I’m saying is you should take other possibilities into account,” Henner continued.

  “Which I have done.”

  “It could have been a black bear, not necessarily a sasquatch. Bears stand on their hind legs if they feel threatened.”

  “That’s all fine and good,” RJ continued. “But, the thing wasn’t black, Henner. It was brown. And don’t you dare say I saw a grizzly,” RJ finished hotly. “They don’t live in this state.”

  “Bears can also be brown, cinnamon or blond and stand five to seven feet tall.”

  “So what you’re telling me is you believe in ghosts, but not in Big Foot?” RJ demanded.

  “No, that’s not what I’m telling you at all! Now stop shouting. You’re gonna scare Finn.”

  We rounded the corner and stepped into the kitchen, Marty in the lead, me trailing at the end of the line, Finn wedged like the pastrami in our odd sandwich.

  I found my kitchen in shambles, courtesy of the two men inside. Henner was crouched over the spilled innards of the ghost box again. It managed to look even worse this time, thick black wires trailing like octopus tentacles across my floor. The thing looked like it might scoot away of its own accord soon. Two red lights blinked in the center console like beady little eyes glaring in my direction.

  In the distance, boxes holding all my kitchen implements continued to mock me. I still hadn’t even so much as researched general contractors, let alone hired one to start the job. I’d just been so busy lately, I hadn’t gotten around to it.