Next to me, Louis let out a low whistle. He was looking at Eileen like she was a foxy woman who’d caught his eye.
“Careful,” I whispered, just in case she had supersonic hearing. Also, having a crush on a cleaner wouldn’t be cool.
Eileen smoothed back Constanza’s brown hair. “The purified water, salting, and incantations should work. And if I didn’t help the spirit or spirits to cross over, you call me at the first sign of anything strange. I can bring my group next time, if I have enough time to gather them.”
Sounded like a quilting club or something.
“I feel a change already,” Cosntanza said. “No bad energy in there now.”
“There was a lot of residue. Female and male. One of them has a deep determination, holding a belief that she’s doing something right. The other one, though?” She exhaled. “That’s the spirit who has an anger that goes beyond the pale.”
The dark spirit. Male. Got it. But I wished she’d found out more.
Eileen patted Constanza’s arm. “See you at church this weekend?”
“Yes. God bless you, cariño. I owe you a big dinner at Mr. A’s.”
“You don’t owe me a thing. This is what I was born to do.”
Gavin appeared behind them, and I bit my lip as all my ghost friends glanced at me. I shrugged, because I knew they were thinking what Twyla had thought earlier.
I liked being around the hunk, even while I was haunting him.
Wrong.
Eileen looked at Gavin. “Are you ready to go to your office now?”
He nodded.
Naturally, they were going to clean that out, too, since I’d done my share of haunting there.
As he and Eileen came outside, Constanza stayed on the lamplit stoop. Noah, Farah, and Wendy appeared behind her to say their thanks.
Eileen smiled. “Your cat should be home soon, too. Animals are very sensitive to spirits, and he didn’t want to be around them.”
Then, as she went to her car, she slowed, looking at it, then at the fountain, where the vehicle had been parked before. But she didn’t seem rattled up. She only glanced around, as if reading the area, looking for spirits. And when she reached into her bag of tricks to extract one of her toys, I took off. Same with the others.
We slowed halfway down the road, near a turnoff that led to the incline of a foliage-shaded driveway with a looming iron gate and gas lamps in front of it.
Even though we were laughing, Twyla managed to say, “Did you see her face?”
Everyone cracked up harder. Who thought I’d have been laughing at anything just an hour ago?
My laughter stopped first, and I glanced around the circle of my new friends. They trailed off, too.
“You guys came for me,” I said. “I still can’t believe it.”
Louis and Scott just kind of shuffled in manly embarrassment while Twyla rolled her eyes.
“Whatever,” she said. “I didn’t have anything better to do on the beach anyway.”
Like, sure.
Even Scott and Louis bit back smiles until Twyla said, “So, you gonna show us Amanda Lee now? Your haunting is over, so why not?”
Hearing her say this about the haunting made it real. But it couldn’t be over. It would never be over for Elizabeth and Amanda Lee, so why for Gavin or whoever the killer really was?
“I suppose I could take you to her place,” I said. “I need to figure out what comes next anyway.”
Louis said, “She should get you to your death spot, just so you can juice up properly.”
In agreement, we all rose into the sky as one, ready to conjure our travel tunnels. But I stayed behind just a millisecond longer, looking back at the Edgett mansion’s red tile roof in the near distance.
Thinking that there was no way this was over.
20
Amanda Lee was expecting us.
I didn’t ask her if she’d gotten a vision about us coming over before she’d gone outside and sat on her porch swing, which had a circle of salt around it to protect her. But since she’d removed all that makeup and was wearing a large turquoise cross around her neck, as well as a very-Amanda-Lee silk blouse and skirt that smelled of potpourri, I suspected that she hadn’t gotten out of her Alicia Dantès clothes and into these for nothing.
When she saw us approach, she stood, locking in on me.
“You’re safe.” She sounded like she’d been hoping and praying for me all night, maybe even keeping vigil for me, sitting under the porch light and hearing the night breathe around her.
“Safe enough.” Why tell her about how unsafe I’d been a short time before? “These are my friends. They wanted to meet you while I took a break.”
When she glanced around, I realized that she couldn’t see them like she could see me.
Next to me, Louis said, “Looks like you’re her special ghost, Miss Jensen. She’s a medium for the spirits who connect with her, but she’s not a true seer like McGlinn.”
It was like Amanda Lee was half-blind as she addressed the group. “It’s good to meet you. Who is everyone?”
I introduced Louis, Scott, and Twyla, describing them to her: the dignified World War II factory worker, the Bye Bye Birdie dude, and Schizoid Valley Girl.
All the while, Twyla hung out by my side, giving Amanda Lee the Sherlock eye.
“She’s so boho,” she whispered after I’d finished with the niceties. “Total wannabe Stevie Nicks, you know?”
I nudged Twyla, even though my elbow only buzzed against her essence.
Amanda Lee raised her brow. “Just because I can’t see you doesn’t mean I can’t hear bits and pieces. Unlike the others, you’re more static than anything.”
“Oops,” Twyla said, shutting up.
I got down to brass tacks with Amanda Lee. “Did you have any visits from the dark spirit?”
“No. It’s been a quiet night. Too quiet. I couldn’t stop thinking of what you were doing.”
“It all worked out.” I’d almost been annihilated, but no biggie. “Even when the cleaner came, I got out of the mansion, thanks to these guys. I lost some energy, but they were there to help me out.”
“Thank goodness.”
Scott had started poking around the porch, inspecting the aloe plants and sweet peas like they would tell him more about Amanda Lee’s personality. Twyla and Louis began nosing around, too. Obviously, studying a human’s life keenly interested them, especially when there’d been verbal contact.
“Do you know of an Eileen Perez?” I asked Amanda Lee. “She’s the one who came over to clean the mansion.”
“I don’t. But it sounds as if she did a good enough job so that you can’t get back into it.”
“Actually, I didn’t try to reenter. But I’ll do that after I visit my death spot for an energy boost.”
Amanda Lee’s eyes couldn’t have been wider.
“Yeah, I just told you that I’m going back.”
“I’ve already said you don’t have to—”
I held up my hands. “It’s not over till it’s over.”
There was a conviction in my voice that even caught the other ghosts’ attention. It sure as hell caught mine, because I’d never felt strongly about much before in life.
From the expression on Amanda Lee’s face, I realized something: even if we came at things from different angles, she had begun to respect me. I wasn’t her tool anymore.
Louis looked over at me from where he was checking out a colorful birdhouse, grinning. Nothing got past this guy.
Then he said, “Tell her about Gavin’s dream. She’ll be able to interpret it, right?”