She tried banging her head again, but she was beginning to think she would never be able to hurt herself enough to provide an adequate physical shock. The red-haired woman glared at her.
‘Hey, stop that. I told you, it won’t work.’
Amanda ignored her and kept thumping her head.
‘You’re annoying me,’ the woman growled. ‘If you don’t stop, I’ll make you stop.’
The threat in her tone sounded very real. Amanda stopped. What else could she do to cause herself pain?
She tried pinching her arm. She dug her manicured nails in so hard, she actually saw a tiny drop of blood. But it didn’t hurt all that much.
Maybe she needed that mean-looking woman to carry out her threat. The thought of being attacked was so scary, for a moment she thought it might get her out of Margaret. But no such luck. She was going to have to get really and truly beaten up.
She started thumping her head again. The redhead turned to her with a look of fury. But at that moment, a guard appeared.
‘Hey, Cassidy.’
Cassidy turned out to be the red-haired woman.
‘Yeah?’
The guard opened the door. ‘Your lawyer’s here.’ The woman hurried out.
‘I want to make a phone call!’ Serena demanded. ‘I know my rights — I’m entitled to a phone call!’
‘Yeah, yeah, I’ll be back in a minute,’ the guard muttered.
Amanda noticed that Serena’s hands were clenched into fists. And it dawned on her that she could probably get Serena mad very easily, just by confessing who she really was.
And Serena would believe her. She’d been in their class, and even though she hadn’t paid much attention to Amanda when she was there, she must have learned about all the gifts. If Amanda could get her good and mad right now, Serena might just go over the edge and slug her — or at least slap her. Really, really hard. And as much as Amanda didn’t want to experience that, it could work.
‘Serena?’
‘What?’ Serena snapped.
Amanda got off the bench and came closer to Serena, within slapping distance. ‘I’ve got something to tell you.’
But that was as far as she got. The guard reappeared. ‘OK, Hancock, you can come and make your phone call.’
‘About time,’ Serena muttered. To Margaret-Amanda, she said, ‘I’ll get us out of here.’
Great, Amanda thought dismally. And then what? She had to get out of this body! She knelt down by the wall and started banging her head again, harder this time.
‘Hey, you’re going to hurt yourself!’ another prisoner yelled. ‘Guard! Guard!’
The guard reappeared.
‘I think you’d better do something about this nutcase,’ the prisoner said.
The next thing Amanda knew she was being dragged out of the cell by two guards, one holding each arm. And then she was in another cell, a smaller one, all by herself. One of the guards spoke to the other.
‘Keep an eye on her till I can find something to tie her to the bed.’
The other guard pulled up a chair just outside the cell. ‘Don’t move,’ she ordered Amanda.
Amanda didn’t move. She couldn’t. She was in a total state of shock. And yet the feeling still wasn’t strong enough to get her out of this body.
This couldn’t be happening.
CHAPTER THIRTEEN
KEN WAS DEPRESSED.
So the whole seance thing had been a scam. Cassandra was Serena Hancock, still trying to get her hands on a winning lottery ticket. That woman Margaret — she must have been her accomplice. Ken assumed the whole dead-mother thing was a made-up story so the medium could seem authentic.
Was Dahlia in on it too? Maybe, maybe not. In the confusion with the police, she’d taken off. The person he was really concerned about was Stevie. He had disappeared too, before Ken could talk to him. The poor kid. He must have been totally freaked out when he realized it was a scam.
‘Or maybe little Stevie was part of the scam,’ Jenna said.
‘Stop reading my mind,’ Ken barked. They had stopped at the bowling alley, where there was a cafe. Jenna, Tracey and Emily were celebrating their successful mission with ice cream. Ken had a glass of water.
‘Sorry,’ Jenna said.
He looked at her stonily. ‘You should be. Why didn’t you tell me what you were planning to do at the seance?’
‘I wanted to tell you,’ Emily reported, ‘but Jenna said we couldn’t trust you not to warn the others.’
Ken hadn’t taken his eyes off Jenna. ‘Maybe if you’d just told me the medium was really Serena Hancock. ’
‘I didn’t know for sure,’ Jenna said. ‘Her mind was really hard to penetrate. Not like yours, Ken. You’re totally transparent.’
‘Jenna!’ Tracey exclaimed in disapproval. She turned to Ken. ‘Jenna said this was the only way. She said you were so into the seance thing, we had to shock you into seeing the truth.’
Ken grimaced. ‘Oh, really? And since when is it Jenna’s business to shock me into seeing things?’
‘Oh, for crying out loud,’ Jenna said airily. ‘You should be thanking me, Ken. You could have been totally suckered into their little con game. You were really falling for it! You know, I saved your—’
He wouldn’t let her finish. ‘Just shut up, Jenna! And for your information, Stevie was not part of it. He’s eleven years old!’
‘So what?’ Jenna countered. ‘I once saw a documentary on TV about criminals under the age of twelve.’
‘Well, Stevie isn’t one of them. He was an innocent victim.’
‘How can you be so sure of that?’ Jenna shot back. ‘Did you read his mind?’
Ken knew he wasn’t a violent person, and he’d definitely never hit a girl. But right now, he was feeling very close to a complete change of character, so he did the only thing he could think of doing. He turned away from the girls and headed to the exit.
‘Ken! Ken, wait up!’
He turned to find Lucy coming towards him. Could the evening get any worse?
‘Do you like bowling?’ she asked. ‘I love to bowl! Maybe we could bowl together sometime soon. Like, what are you doing this weekend?’
‘Lucy, could you bug off? Can’t you take a hint? I don’t want to go out with you!’ And he stormed out the door.
Once outside, he started walking, fast. He knew he’d been horribly rude and unkind to Lucy, but he felt propelled by an anger that was out of his control. He wasn’t sure if he was more angry at himself or at Jenna — himself for being so gullible, Jenna for sticking her nose in his affairs. And for suggesting poor Stevie was part of the whole nasty business.
He slowed down. What she had said to him. ‘Ken, did you read Stevie’s mind?’ Was she saying that she had read his mind?
But how could Stevie be in cahoots with Serena? He was looking for his father’s lottery ticket, and he only went to Serena because he thought she was a real medium who could contact his father.
Unless. unless. the kid in the seance wasn’t really Stevie Fisher. Maybe he’d just heard about the situation, and he was pretending to be the boy whose father had died. Or maybe he was some kind of juvenile actor who Serena had hired to play Stevie. And they were both waiting for Ken to make contact with Mr Fisher so they could steal the lottery ticket before the real Stevie found it.
There was only one way Ken could know for sure. He had to find the kid who called himself Stevie Fisher.
He looked at his watch. It was almost nine o’clock and this was a school night, which meant he was expected home at ten and he had no idea where Stevie Fisher lived.
But he had his mobile phone. And his mobile phone had Internet access.
He took it out of his pocket, hit the web button, and got a search engine. But now what? He doubted that Stevie had a phone number listed under his own name, and he didn’t know the name of Stevie’s mother or his late father. Fisher was a common name — there could be hundreds of them.