Chris Green - Only the Good Die Young

I couldn’t believe we were just hanging out, nattering away, while there was a cleaner nearby.

When I nodded at her question, Twyla and Scott thought my adventures were supercool, and he gave me a thumbs-up; she did a pivoty dance move that brought out her Lauper. Louis just crossed his arms.

I rushed to speak. “I’ll tell you everything after we put some space between us and this place. There’s a cleaner in that mansion right now.”

Twyla just about jumped out of her petticoats. “No way!”

Louis and Scott flew to the windows, pasting themselves against them for a look-see.

What?

“Death wish, anyone?” I asked.

Twyla was floating toward another window, a little more cautious than the guys. “Cleaners are, like, pop stars.” Then to the others, “Can you see them or what?”

“Nope,” Scott said.

I’d done what I could to warn them. “Maybe you should be asking if she can see you?”

“Okay,” Twyla said. “Can she?”

“No,” I said. “At least, she couldn’t see me. But she had this gauge thingamabob in her hand that read the temperature or whatever. And she sensed me, so she knew I was around.”

Louis flew to yet another window, almost like they were playing peeping leapfrog. “She might’ve been using an electromagnetometer. It’s one of the tools of the trade. Measures electrical conductivity variations.”

I shifted on the steps. “You guys, you’re making me nervous. This is a chance we don’t have to take. I guess she’s not super experienced, but who knows?”

I was cautious, not scared. And certainly not dumb.

Scott laughed and followed Louis to his new viewing spot. “We’re not in the house, Jen. And we’re all powered up besides. If the cleaner comes this way, we’ll take off in a jiff. She can’t exactly expel us from the earth like she can a domain.”

Still.

I said, “Then maybe you’ll listen to reason when I say that she was called to this place because one of those bad spirits you guys pooh-poohed the other day invaded the mansion.”

Twyla made a frustrated sound. “I knew I should’ve stayed with you today.”

Boredom. It made even ghosts yearn for ridiculous things, like getting into it with a baddie they’d taken the time to warn me about.

They made me tell them all about the séance and everything. Suddenly, Amanda Lee was even a pop star to them, too, and they asked every question in the book about her.

“You’re gonna show her to us, aren’t you?” Twyla asked in the end.

Oh, brother. “I wasn’t planning on it.”

Then Louis started asking a lot of questions about Gavin’s latest dream that I’d entered, and I realized that I hadn’t had a second to even figure out the meaning of all those symbols.

And would you believe it—one of the things that was bugging me the most about that dream was the random appearance of that pool guy. His cameo niggled at me even more than the spider and Elizabeth’s chilling walk-on.

I would figure it all out later, though, because right now the front door was opening, and we all flew back to it, taking cover behind the car. Such brave souls.

Eileen appeared in the doorway along with Constanza, who was still in her gray maid uniform. When they hugged, Constanza clung to her.

“Gracias,” she said, her cheek against the woman’s flipped-up hair. She smiled through her tears as she pulled away from Eileen, still holding on to her arms.

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.

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.