Phantoms Read online

  “We’ve been through this already,” Cordelia said. “We can’t go to the police or Dr. Roqueni. Not until she gets back, at least.”

  “Mr. Derleth, then,” Agnes said. “Or—here’s a crazy thought—our parents! I know we’ll get in trouble for lying to them about our ‘community service’ at Shady Rest, but I’d rather get grounded than killed. We could have them wear the spectercles inside Shadow School. Once they see the ghosts for themselves, they’ll know we’re telling the truth.”

  “What is getting our parents involved going to accomplish?” Benji asked. “The police aren’t going to take them any more seriously than they’d take us.”

  Benji was right. The kids were the only ones who could solve this problem. When it came to ghosts, their parents were the children, while they were the ones with knowledge and experience.

  “So what do we do?” Agnes asked.

  “Same thing as before,” Cordelia said. “Act stupid and wait it out. When Dr. Roqueni gets back, we’ll come up with a real plan.”

  “Okay,” Agnes said. “But there is one thing I want to check out while we wait.”

  “I hate this idea already,” Benji said.

  “It might be nothing. But after what happened with Esmae, I’ve been paying attention to what Laurel does with the boo-tubes, and there is definitely a second freezer where she stores the phantoms.”

  “They’re too dangerous to keep in the main office,” Benji said with a shrug. “The second freezer must be in one of the empty houses.”

  “Then how come we’ve never seen it before? We’ve searched that village from top to bottom. Where’s the freezer?”

  “That is a little weird,” Cordelia said.

  “I even casually mentioned it to Laurel one time. You wouldn’t believe how quickly she changed the subject. There’s something she doesn’t want us to know. I’m sure of it.”

  Cordelia was down for a little detective work—at least it would give them something to do until Dr. Roqueni returned. “Do you have a plan?”

  “Not yet.”

  “What happened to lying low?” Benji asked. “If we get caught snooping around, Laurel will definitely know we’re onto her.”

  “Good point,” Cordelia said. “Let’s make that step one of our plan: Don’t get caught.”

  By Saturday, they were ready to find the second freezer.

  If Laurel decided to take them ghost catching, their search would have to wait. Fortunately, it was an inspection day. Agnes had taken care of all the technical details, but in order for their plan to work, they still needed one more thing that was beyond their control. They didn’t find it until two hours after their rounds began, when they entered Dr. Gill’s house. The ghost wasn’t in front of her wedding video today. Instead, she was watching a serious-looking man deliver a lecture entitled “Breakthroughs in Dentoalveolar Surgery” from behind a podium.

  She was glowing.

  “Finally,” Cordelia said.

  Agnes pressed the red circle on the tablet. Laurel and Kyle arrived within minutes. They were all smiles, which wasn’t unusual when the kids found a potential phantom. It was the same way a foreman might react when a miner found a rare jewel embedded in the wall of a cave.

  Laurel and Kyle were con artists—and maybe even murderers—but they were good at their job. In no time at all, Dr. Gill was inside the boo-tube. The ghost’s mist was the white of a freshly polished tooth. Since Laurel couldn’t see the mist, Cordelia supposed they could have faked this part and used a regular ghost, but she wanted to be as cautious as possible.

  “Good work,” Laurel said. “That’s one less phantom to worry about!”

  Cordelia forced a smile to her lips. It was like pushing open a gate with rusted hinges. “Thanks,” she said.

  “Do you mind if I ride back with you?” Agnes asked. “I have to use the bathroom.” She dropped her voice to a whisper, as though she didn’t want Benji to hear—a nice touch. “I’d bike back, but it’s sort of an emergency.”

  This wasn’t such an odd request. The only functional bathroom in the entire village was in the main office. If Laurel and Kyle had been storing the boo-tube in the freezer for regular ghosts, bringing Agnes along would have been the easiest thing in the world. And yet there was no mistaking the look of annoyance that passed between them.

  That’s because they’re not going back to the main office, Cordelia thought. They’re bringing the boo-tube to the secret freezer.

  Laurel hesitated before speaking, but she was stuck—there wasn’t any feasible excuse to deny Agnes a ride.

  “Of course,” Laurel said. “Can you do me a solid, though, and catch up with Benji and Cordelia on your own afterward? Kyle and I have an errand.”

  “No problem,” Agnes said. “I’m sorry to bother you.”

  “Don’t be silly.”

  The moment they drove off, Cordelia took out her phone and tapped on Agnes’s name in her contacts list. A map appeared on the screen, allowing her to see Agnes’s location. Cordelia zoomed in as close as it would go and saw a red dot going down Redwood Lane—the main road that stretched from one end of Shady Rest to the other.

  “It’s working!” Benji exclaimed.

  “As long as they don’t see Agnes ‘accidentally’ leave her phone in the car,” Cordelia said.

  The dot stopped before a gray square that Cordelia assumed was the main office and remained there just long enough for Agnes to get out of the car. The phone, as planned, must have remained in the back seat, because the dot continued back along Redwood before making a left and heading across the development.

  “Go, go, go!” Benji exclaimed, pushing Cordelia out the door. They hopped on their bikes and pedaled hard in the direction of the car, Cordelia bracing the phone against her handlebars so she could follow the dot’s progress on the map. They could have just waited to see where the dot stopped and gone there after the car left, but Cordelia wanted to see what Laurel and Kyle were up to with her own eyes.

  The red dot came to a halt.

  Cordelia and Benji got as close as they dared and hid their bicycles. The location of the dot was just past the house in front of them, a majestic Victorian that had clearly been built when Mr. Knox was still alive. Going around to the front seemed risky, as there were no bushes or fences to conceal their presence, so instead they entered the Victorian through the back door and peeked out one of the front windows.

  Laurel’s car was parked outside one of the nondescript white ranches on the edge of the village.

  “What are they doing in there?” Benji asked.

  “I have no idea. We’ve been in that house before. There’s nothing inside except a bunch of creepy mannequins. Laurel said they messed up the construction and it’s not even hauntable.”

  “Or maybe she just said that so we’d skip it when doing our inspections. Pretty good way to keep us from looking too hard, right?”

  Cordelia texted Agnes to let her know their location and settled in to wait, kneeling on the floor so only the top of her head would be visible through the window. Within minutes, Laurel and Kyle exited the house. Cordelia couldn’t hear what they were talking about, but Laurel seemed to be yelling at Kyle about something. He threw his hands in the air and shook his head, as though protesting his innocence, but Laurel wasn’t having any of it. She no longer had the boo-tube. That meant it was either in the car (doubtful), at the main office (possible), or in the house.

  Just before Kyle slid behind the wheel, he gave a glance in their general direction, perhaps just taking in the fine spring day. Both kids ducked beneath the windowsill. Cordelia stared at the front door, her heart bursting at its seams, sure that Kyle was going to barrel through it at any moment.

  Instead, they heard the vroom of the motor as the car rocketed past the house. (There was no need for a speed limit in the village of the dead.) After waiting a few extra beats, they walked across the street and entered the house, acting as naturally as possible; on the off chan
ce that someone saw them, they could always claim they were doing their jobs. Someone had moved the mannequins around since the last time they had been there. Three of them—an adult and two children dressed in casual clothes—sat at a makeshift table. The mannequins could bend at the hips, but not the knees, and their legs stuck straight out in a strange perversion of sitting. Someone had fanned out five playing cards in front of each of them and placed a pile of chips in the center of the table.

  “Wow,” Benji said. “And I thought ghosts were creepy.”

  “Look,” Cordelia said, pointing at the floor. There was a trail of dirt leading through the living room. “My mom would kill me if I ever tracked dirt through the house like that. That’s why I always leave my shoes at the door.”

  “Same here,” Benji said. “Except my mom would make me sweep it up first. Then she’d kill me.”

  They followed the trail to the basement door. It was open. Cordelia could see dirt on the steps, though not as much as there had been in the living room: Kyle and Laurel had effectively used the entire first floor as their welcome mat, stamping dirt out of their treads a little bit at a time.

  They started down the stairs.

  “How is your mother, anyway?” Cordelia asked, making conversation to break the unnerving silence.

  “Better,” Benji said. “She just got promoted to assistant manager at the restaurant. My dad is making things happen too. He’s a licensed electrician, so he’s been doing odd jobs here and there. At first it was just people he knew, but word got out about how good he is, and now he’s getting calls from total strangers. He’s even thinking of starting his own business.”

  “Awesome,” Cordelia said.

  The basement was sparsely furnished with lawn furniture and two cardboard boxes labeled Washer and Dryer. Cordelia was relieved to see that there were no mannequins. Plastic faces in a dark basement was not what she needed right now. It would have been all too easy to imagine one turning in her direction.

  They split up to take a look around.

  “Things are definitely looking up, but money is still tight,” Benji said. “It doesn’t help that Sofia needs braces. I told my parents they should just let it go. So what if her teeth are a little crooked? It adds character. But Sofia wants to be an actress when she grows up. Perfect teeth are sort of a must.”

  Cordelia noticed a stained canvas drop cloth on the floor. It looked suspicious.

  “Sofia’s a good actress,” Cordelia said. She had been to a few of her plays. “She might even be great when she’s older. She can sing too.”

  “I guess,” Benji said, who was far prouder of his sister than he would ever admit. “But that doesn’t mean she has to be so annoying.”

  “She’s your little sister. That’s her job.”

  Cordelia lifted the drop cloth, hoping to see a trapdoor like the one that led to Elijah’s office. All she found was a nest of house centipedes. Three of them skittered past her foot, causing her to do an embarrassing little dance to avoid them. She turned toward Benji, hoping he hadn’t noticed, and saw him pushing on different spots in a wall.

  “I think I have something here,” he said.

  There was a tiny click, and the wall swung open on a hidden hinge.

  “Ta-da!” he exclaimed. “I noticed this basement is a lot smaller than the other ones, so I figured there must be more behind this wall. It’s a magnetic latch, like the kind they have on cabinets. You just need to push it in the right spot.” He almost looked disappointed. “It would have been nice if there was a secret lever or something. These guys might be top-of-the-line when it comes to technology, but Elijah Shadow was way better at secret passageways.”

  Cordelia replaced the drop cloth where she’d found it and joined Benji at the entrance to the secret room. It was too dark to make much out.

  Benji turned on the light.

  16

  The Hidden Cell

  The liquid nitrogen freezer was right in front of them. Cordelia opened it and counted eight boo-tubes. They all looked empty to her, since she wasn’t wearing her spectercles, but Benji was able to see Gideon’s mist, as well as Mr. DeWitt’s and Esmae’s. This was definitely the place where Laurel stored the phantoms.

  The three red doors were harder to explain.

  They stood in the center of every wall except the one with the secret entrance. Next to each door was a metal panel, also red, that reminded Cordelia of the fuse box in her garage. During a heat wave the previous summer—when Ludlow had suffered a woeful number of power outages—her dad had taught her how to operate it.

  Benji rapped on a door with his knuckles.

  “It’s metal,” he said. “Do we open it?”

  “We’re here. Might as well get our money’s worth.”

  Benji listened at the door for a moment. “What if there’s something inside that we don’t want to let out?” he whispered.

  “Like what?”

  “I don’t know. And I’d rather not start imagining possibilities right now.”

  “Let’s see what’s behind here first,” Cordelia said, opening the small metal door. Inside were two rows of switches, a USB port, and a cylindrical compartment with a nozzle at the bottom.

  “It looks like a boo-tube goes here,” Cordelia said.

  Before Benji had a chance to reply, they heard the front door open. Floorboards squeaked.

  “Seriously, Kyle,” Laurel said. Cordelia peeked out the secret door, ready to close it at a moment’s notice. “Mehar was so proud of this particular batch of videos. She predicted a fifteen-minute turnaround, maybe even less. Now she thinks I don’t respect her work because you left her thumb drive behind. You know how touchy she can be, like all artists.”

  Cordelia had never had an actual conversation with Mehar, but she had seen her around the main office. Her job was curating the videos that were played on the life windows. This usually involved combing through any social-media accounts the ghost had left behind in order to locate family videos, favorite activities, and any other major interests.

  “I’ll text Mehar and apologize again,” Laurel continued. “You get things rolling—and make it fast. I want to check on those kids. I don’t like the way Cordelia was looking at me today.”

  Kyle’s boots appeared at the top of the stairs. Cordelia pulled the secret door shut as quietly as possibly, wincing as the magnets clicked together. She backed into the room.

  “Cordelia,” Benji whispered, frantically waving her over. He had opened the red door next to the panel they had been investigating, and was now standing in a dark cell with enough space for both of them. Cordelia wanted to join him, but in order to do so she would have to cross the entire room.

  She could hear Kyle’s footsteps growing closer. There was no time.

  She opened the door behind her and stepped inside. It was an empty cell that looked identical to Benji’s. There was no light, no window. When she shut the door, it became too dark to see the fingers in front of her face.

  Click. The secret door swung open.

  Kyle was here.

  Cordelia clasped a hand over her mouth to muffle the sound of her breathing. If Kyle opened the door, there was nowhere to hide. Her only hope was to stay quiet and pray he didn’t look. She fought the instinctive urge to back away. It wasn’t like there were any hiding spots in the cell, and moving would only increase the chance she made some sort of noise. She waited. And listened. Kyle opened the metal panel and then, judging from the swish of cloth and jingle of keys, got something out of his pocket. Cordelia’s money was on the thumb drive. She heard another sound that might have been him entering it into the USB slot, and then the click of a switch.

  He had turned something on, she was sure of it. But as far as Cordelia could tell, nothing in the room had changed.

  “You done yet?” Laurel called from upstairs.

  “It’s downloading!” Kyle screamed. And then, under his breath, “How many times have we done this?”

 
It seemed fair to assume that Kyle was downloading Mehar’s videos. But to where? There weren’t any life windows in this house. And what had they done with Dr. Gill’s boo-tube?

  I’ll figure all that out later, Cordelia thought, doing her best to inhale and exhale as quietly as possible. The important thing was that Kyle had shown no inclination to open any of the red doors. As long as Benji and Cordelia stayed quiet, they should be safe.

  Kyle had just begun to sing some country song when Cordelia felt a cold prick at the back of her hand, like being touched by an icicle. She knew what it was immediately. On her very first day at Shadow School she had been touched by a ghost, and it wasn’t the kind of thing you forgot.

  She wasn’t alone in the cell.

  Kyle was really getting into his song now—judging from the rhythmic clicking of his heels, Cordelia suspected there might be some dancing involved as well. She was grateful; it helped mask the sound as she removed her spectercles from her pocket and put them on.

  Dr. Gill was sitting on the floor in front of her, as though they were about to play a game of patty cake or share secrets during a sleepover. The light that surrounded her had a pinkish hue. In the past, Dr. Gill had been the calmest of ghosts, but now there was a wild pleading in her eyes, as though she had lost something important and expected Cordelia to find it.

  “I’m sorry,” Cordelia mouthed. “I don’t know what you want.”

  Dr. Gill didn’t like that. She leaned forward, pressing her hands against the floor for balance, until their faces were only inches apart. Cordelia closed her eyes, then changed her mind and opened them again. No matter what, it was better to see. The ghost raised a finger and pointed at Cordelia, then used the same finger to point at the walls. When Cordelia didn’t react, Dr. Gill repeated the motion a second time, with rising anger in her eyes. It was clear she wanted Cordelia to do something—but what?

  “I don’t know,” Cordelia mouthed. “I don’t know.”

  Dr. Gill went through the same routine a third time, though she wasn’t pointing now—she was jabbing. Cordelia bit her lower lip. She couldn’t make a sound. Kyle was right outside her door, singing his stupid song. He would hear her. And while her mind was still struggling to make sense of what, exactly, was happening, Cordelia had an instinctive feeling that Laurel and Kyle would be very angry if they found her here.