“I thought that was fairies?”
“You read too many novels, Macy,” Julianne snapped. “Now. Warm up the board. I’ll go first, to show you what kinds of questions you need to ask.”
I never imagined spirits having to warm up for a performance, but I’m not exactly a spiritual kind of person. The fact of the matter was, this was Julianne’s forte, not mine.
Plus, who was I to question the witch?
Julianne inhaled deeply through her nose, then projected in a powerful voice that wasn’t any louder than a whisper, but seemed to carry all the way through the cabin.
“Spirits,” she said. “Tell me the name of the camp we are speaking to you from.”
The pointer trembled under our fingers and my heart leapt in spite of myself. Slowly, very slowly, the pointer moved from letter to letter. W-Y-T-I-P-O
“Shit,” Renard breathed.
“Watch your language in the presence of the spirits,” Julianne said silkily. “Many of them died long before your parents were born, and have old-fashioned ideas about things like that.”
Stew visibly paled and Joan nuzzled his shoulder comfortingly. It didn’t have that effect, though, since his face went bright red and his eyes widened as far as their almond shape would let them.
“Spirits, what’s the color of an apple?” he blurted out, sounding panicked.
R-E-D the board spelled out.
But it didn’t stop there.
In rigid silence, we watched as the pointer continued to move. From G to R to E-E-N-Y-E-L-L-O-W.
Julianne shot him an irritated look. “Really?”
He shrugged unhappily.
“Spirits,” Adam said with a smirk. “What did the girls eat for dinner?”
N-O-T-H-
“Stop moving the pointer, Adam,” Macy snapped. She was sitting next to him, so I guess she would know. He grinned at her, then shrugged.
“Fine, I won’t. Spirits, what did the cafeteria serve for dinner?”
M-E-A-T-L-O-A-F
“Weird,” Joan said with a shudder.
“The meatloaf or the answer?” I asked.
Macy smirked along with me. Julianne was less amused.
“Spirits,” Renard said. “Where are the Olympics being held this year?”
B-E-R-L-I-N
“Berlin,” Joan read out loud. “Is that right?”
“Yes,” Adam said, rolling his eyes.
“Well how am I supposed to know?”
B-E-I-N-F-O-R-M-E-D, the Ouija board said. Joan squeaked in terror, pulling her hands away from the pointer and jerking back like she’d been pushed. Hand on her chest, she tried to suck in calming breaths, but every inhale was a ragged mess, accompanied by an equally shaky exhale.
Julianne smiled. “It’s ready,” she breathed and nodded to Joan who reluctantly reassumed her position in the circle.
“Spirits—Did the Seymore brothers have anything to do with Kitty May’s disappearance?” she asked, going right in for the kill.
The little pointer trembled for a moment under our fingers, then swung up to the YES at the top of the board so fast that it made us all jump back, snatching our fingers away from the haunted thing.
Julianne, as spooked as the rest of us, slammed the lid shut and locked it tight. Her hands shook as she slid the board back into its velvet bag, binding it so tight that her knuckles glowed chalk white with each tie.
“There,” she said, her voice trembling. “Now we know.”
“They killed her,” Joan said numbly. “They killed her whole family.”
Macy jumped up and slammed the light switch, flooding the room with yellow light. “Ugh,” she said, shuddering all the way down to her toes. “Don’t say that, Joan. It didn’t say they killed her and her family, it just said that they had something to do with them disappearing.”
Joan hugged her knees to her chest and rested her chin on them. “What else could it mean?” she asked rhetorically. “Kitty May is gone, her house is empty—and the Seymore brothers are responsible. Besides, you heard Julianne. They’ve already gotten away with murder once.”
“They won’t get away with it twice,” Julianne said grimly. Her lips, which were usually red and full and glossy, were pressed into a thin, furious line. “We’ll make their lives hell for what they’ve done.”
Renard slapped his hands over his ears. “Plausible deniability, plausible deniability,” he chanted.
Renard’s father was a lawyer, in case you couldn’t tell.
Julianne rolled her eyes. “Oh, shut up, Renard. If you didn’t want to know you didn’t have to come.”
He lifted his chin defiantly and pulled his hands away from his ears. “I just wanted to know if you really had Grandmother Bird’s Ouija board. I can’t believe she let you bring that to camp, do you know how much that thing’s worth?”
Julianne shrugged. “’Let’ is a strong word,” she hedged. “I borrowed it because she’s taking some time off. She won’t need it until after we get home tomorrow.”
I shook my head at her in admiration and a little bit of awe.
“Ballsy,” I said. “I wouldn’t want to get on that woman’s bad side, even if I was her favorite grandkid.”
Julianne grinned at me slyly. “That’s why I’m her favorite.”
It made sense. Grandmother Bird wasn’t exactly your conventional grandmother. She was pure white with raven hair and eyes to match. Her lips were always done in black, and she only wore black eyeshadow.
She always looked like she’d stepped right out of an old black-and-white horror movie, whether she was baking cookies or running a séance.
The only resemblance I saw between her and Julianne was their porcelain skin and the shape of their faces—sharp, with high cheekbones and a pronounced widow’s peak. Julianne’s light green eyes and blonde hair were purely her mother’s.
Joan wrapped her arms around herself and gave an exaggerated shiver, looking pointedly at Stew, who pretended not to notice.
“So what do we do with this?” I asked. “I don’t really think the cops will take us seriously, not without proof.”
“You saw the pointer,” Julianne said. “That’s proof enough for me.”
“It’s not proof enough for a jury,” Renard said. “Hell, it’s not even proof enough for a cop.”
“We don’t need cops and juries,” Julianne said impatiently. “We just need them to know that we’re onto them, that’s all. Give them hell when school starts next week. Let them know that we are not to be fucked with. Get it?”
I grinned, leaning against the solid wood
