Playing with Fire (6 page)

I didn't want to search out ghosts, but I agreed. I was scared of the info Mrs. Randazzo might spill about me if we told.

“You won't believe what happened after we left you guys last night,” Lily confided to Wyatt, Owen, and Kayla after we'd hooked up with the Teen Club for an afternoon hike up Mount Norma. I was surprised she was telling them. What happened to “our ghost”?

Pushing a tree branch aside to follow the narrow,
rocky path leading up the mountain, I listened as Lily dramatically recounted Laura's reaction. She didn't know the half of it—the maid or the flames—but our new friends were fascinated with the possibility of a ghost in room 22.

“Lily, we so have to go check it out!” Kayla gushed. She'd dressed for the role of hiker in khaki shorts, a cute denim shirt, and hiking boots. I'd just thrown on cutoffs, a purple tank, and my gray sneakers. I wondered if Kayla had a costume for every activity.

“A ghost-hunting trip,” Wyatt said.

We hung back from the group leader, who gathered the other teens under a cluster of pines for a water break.

“Ghosts aren't real,” Owen scoffed as he bent to examine another rock. He was looking for tiny fossils in the sandstones. Trilobites, he called them. He had a collection at home.

“You don't know that,” Lily countered.

“Do you have any proof?” Owen asked. “In science, it rests on you to prove it, more than I need to disprove it.”

“Fine, Mr. Scientist,” Kayla said. “We'll prove it. We'll all go to the room after we get down from here.”

“You can't,” I said. “The hall is off-limits.”

“Is it blocked?” Wyatt asked.

“Is there a sign or that yellow tape warning people away?” Kayla asked, teaming up with Wyatt.

“No,” I admitted. I shot Lily a meaningful stare.

She met my gaze, looking suddenly unsure. Was she wishing she'd kept this just between us? “We could get in trouble,” she said.

“Are you chicken?” Wyatt challenged Lily.

“Me? Please.” Lily rolled her eyes.

“Then you're in?” he asked. “Room twenty-two?”

“All the way.” Kayla scooted over a tree root and wrapped her arm around Lily's shoulder. “Aren't we, Lil?”

“Sure.” Lily looked over at me. “Good, Sara?”

“Good,” I agreed, even though I knew it was a bad idea.

A very bad idea.

We ditched the frozen lemonade cooldown in the teen activity center and took the elevator to the second floor.

“This is dumb,” Owen muttered as we filed silently down the dim hallway.

“I'm with you on that,” I said quietly.

“Yeah?” He seemed pleased.

“Locked, locked, locked.” Wyatt rattled the knob on each door. We stood in a semicircle around the door to room 22.

“This is it?” Kayla asked. “I don't feel anything.”

“Yes.” Lily grabbed the knob and twisted. “Not that it matters, since everything is locked. Maybe we should—” The door pushed open.

For a moment, we all stared in surprise. A hotel room similar to mine and Lily's lay silently before us. Two queen beds with matching green bedspreads, a desk, a TV, an armchair, and a window looking out onto the lake. Nothing special.

Kayla entered and we all followed.

Wyatt bounced on a bed. “Scoot over, ghost!”

“Yoo-hoo, anyone home?” Kayla peeked behind the heavy curtains. “Come out, come out, wherever you are!”

“That's not how Laura did it,” Lily said. “We need to be calmer.”

“Oh, like yoga. I take a yoga class in the city with Avani Patel. Do you know her? She meditates with all
the big-name stars.” Kayla sat cross-legged on the floor and folded her hands by her heart.

Lily dropped down beside her.

Owen perched on the desk, but I stayed rooted in the center of the room. The pins-and-needles feeling had started in my foot.

I knew this was a bad idea.

“There's nothing here.” My voice sounded more confident than I felt. “Let's take a canoe out. Lil, we never got to do that yesterday.”

“Not now, Sara. Meditate with us.” She followed Kayla in a series of forced breaths.

“Omm . . . om . . . ,” Owen teased.

Lily giggled until Kayla shushed her.

“Ghost, oh, ghost! Show yourself!” Wyatt commanded.

My entire body prickled with an itchy heat. I scratched my neck. Then I saw her.

Waist-length red hair falling in loose waves.

Long, white cotton nightgown. Ruffles around the wrists and collar. Nothing a girl today would sleep in.

But she wasn't from today.

She wasn't even alive.

Her body had that shimmery, real-but-not-real quality I'd seen many times before.

She looked about sixteen. Her slender bare feet poked out from beneath the nightgown.

Wyatt continued to make jokes, calling for the ghost.

He had no idea she stood right here.

No one did. Except me.

Ghost girl reached out and placed her translucent hand on Lily's dark hair.

Lily's shoulders stiffened.

Had she felt something?

The ghost girl stroked Lily's hair, as if petting her. Her dark eyes had no pupils, and she focused them on my best friend.

Lily squirmed and tucked a strand of hair behind her ears.

Ghost girl crouched down. Closer to Lily. She ran her fingers down Lily's bare arm.

Goose bumps sprang up, and with a slight shiver, Lily hugged her arms about her.

Ghost girl moved in closer. Nearly on top of her.

Closer. Closer.

What was she doing to Lily? I reached out to push her away.

A wave of hot air rushed over me as my hand connected with the spirit.

The ghost girl began to glow. A halo of orange light shone from around her body.

I squinted and pulled back. I'd never seen this before.

The air turned thick and suffocating. I gulped, desperate to wet my dry throat. My head throbbed. All I could see was the glow of orange.

Brilliant orange light.

And then the red-haired girl came back into focus.

No Lily. No Kayla. No hotel.

The red-haired girl sat on a large four-poster bed. Pale pink canopy. Ivory wallpaper with tiny pink flowers. A window with white curtains let in the humidity of a summer rain and the scent of lavender. The lake glimmered in the distance.

Another girl in a white nightgown sat beside her on the bed. Her face stayed hidden under a curtain of dark hair that the red-haired girl brushed with a silver-backed brush.

“Make my bed and light the light.”
The dark-haired girl's voice rang out clear and high.

“I'll be home tonight,”
sang the red-haired girl.

“Blackbird, bye-bye.”
They finished the verse together with a failed try at harmony.

The dark-haired girl, her body smaller and narrower, bent over and let out a giggle. A deep, infectious giggle that caused the red-haired girl to smile.

The giggle grew louder.

The room grew hotter.

My skin burned. Laughter rang in my ears.

“What're you doing? Why are you here?”

I sucked in my breath. She was talking to me!

The voice had come from Laura. She stood in the doorway, her body rigid, her eyes angry slits.

The bed and the pretty floral room were gone. So was the dark-haired girl.

The red-haired spirit remained. Next to Lily.

Wyatt motioned to Owen, and the two boys dodged around Laura and out the door. Cowards.

“We just—” Lily began to explain.

Laura held up her hand and moved toward Lily. We watched as she turned both palms skyward. “There's an energy here. A strong energy.”

“A ghost? There's a ghost?” Lily asked. She stood. There were only inches between her and the spirit.

Laura nodded. I remained frozen.

“Oh, please, I don't feel any ghost,” Kayla scoffed.

“I do,” Lily said quietly. “I think.”

“Seriously?” Kayla widened her eyes.

“Who are you?” Laura asked.

“Kayla Graham.”

“Well, Kayla, if you are going to be here”—Laura gave each of us a pointed look—“although none of you should be here, I need you to be quiet and contain your negative energy.”

Kayla opened her mouth to respond, then closed it. She'd noticed Lily was captivated by Laura.

The red-haired girl's eerie gaze remained fixed on Lily. She didn't care about Kayla or Laura—or me.

But I could feel her.

Her heat.

Her energy.

Angry. Negative.

Much more negative than anything Kayla threw off.

“She's lost,” Laura said quietly. Her eyes fluttered closed. “She wants to go home.”

“Where's home?” Lily turned, squaring her body with the spirit's shimmery form.

The ghost girl bent to grasp Lily's hand. I jolted from my stupor and yanked Lily's other hand.

“We need to go,” I announced. My voice came out hoarse. I pulled Lily with me toward the door. “I hear your mom.”

That wasn't true, but I wanted Lily out of there.

Away from
her
.

“Lily, Kayla,” I called. “Come on.”

Surprisingly, they followed me into the hall. The air felt twenty degrees cooler out here.

Laura shut the door behind us, leaving her and the red-haired girl alone in the room.

“That was amazing,” Lily gushed after Kayla left to find her parents and we returned to our room.

“What?” Lily's mom asked. “The view from the top? Did you see any animals?”

I could barely remember the hike. The red-haired girl crowded my brain.

Lily told her mom and aunt all about Laura and the ghost in room 22. As she'd predicted, Angela was all questions. “This will make a great angle for my article,” she decided. “A haunted hotel. Perhaps it will make teens want to visit?”

I stayed quiet. No one noticed. With Lily, I was always the quieter one.

My thoughts shifted to Laura. Was she okay? Should I go back?

I chewed my lip. Mr. Himoff had hired Laura. This was her job, I reasoned. Not mine.

All during dinner—a cookout down by the lake—I watched for Laura. She never showed up.

After another night in the game room and a dance tournament that the girls rocked, Lily and I slid into our beds.

I lay back on the pillow and thought about that horrible heat that had covered my body.

“Sar? You awake?” Lily asked in the darkness.

“Yeah.”

“I felt it today. The ghost. I felt it.”

“What do you mean?”

“It's hard to explain.” Lily kept her head on her pillow. “It was like a pull.”

“A bad pull?” I remembered the anger. My fear that the girl would hurt Lily. That she wanted something from her.

“No.” Her voice was heavy and already dreamy. “I think the ghost was looking for something. Do you believe me?”

“I do.”

“I wish I knew more about the ghost. It's weird to feel something—to feel someone—and not know if it's a guy or girl, young or old.”

I pressed my fingertips together. Should I describe the girl with the flame-colored hair and pitch-dark eyes? Should I explain the odd glow?

I could tell her everything.

“I think the ghost is a girl,” I began.

“Me too.”

“I kind of know it.” I took a deep breath. “Remember how I came to live with Lady Azura last year? I never told you why. Well, I guess I sort of did. I told you that my dad needed help raising me. That's kind of true, but it's not the make-lunches-for-school, take-her-shopping kind of help. It's help that Lady Azura is good at because she has powers. Powers that let her see and talk to the dead. Powers that I have too. Powers that I was born with. I can”—I squeezed my eyes tight even though the room was dark—“see the dead and hear them and talk to them.”

Lily said nothing.

My heart threatened to burst from my chest as I
waited. Was she so freaked out that she couldn't find anything to say?

“Lily?”

Nothing. The whir of the air conditioner filled the silence.

Tears pricked the corners of my eyes.

“Lil?”

I rolled over and, in the dim glow cast off from the bathroom, watched Lily's blanket move ever so slightly up and down. I heard her soft, rhythmic breathing.

Perfect. Just perfect.

I'd finally told her my secret, and she'd slept right through it.

“Wyatt's gone,” Kayla announced in a mysterious hush the next morning. We'd gathered under the canopied pavilion at the tennis courts for the teen clinic.

“Gone?” Lily cried.

“What happened?” I asked.

“Ghost attack.” Owen made a slashing motion with his racquet.

“Seriously?” Lily sucked in her breath.

“Not seriously.” Kayla snorted. “His dad had to go back to the city. Some office emergency. The whole family packed up and took off early this morning.”

“Oh.” Lily couldn't hide her disappointment.

Kayla wove her arm through Lily's. “Wyatt has the looks, but he's a pain. Trust me, no big loss. We'll hang. I'm so much more fun than silly Wyatt.”

Lily grinned. “True.”

“Clinic's starting.” I pointed to the bald tennis pro waiting on the first court with one of those machines that fires balls at you. Four other kids waited with him.

Neither Lily nor Kayla seemed to hear me.

“I love your outfit!” Lily gushed. Kayla wore a graphic white-and-navy tennis dress with matching hat and socks.

Kayla pulled an identical hat from the huge tennis bag she carried. “I have two. You should wear it. We need to protect our skin from the sun.”

Lily slipped it on. Kayla snapped a photo of their faces pushed together, grinning in their twin hats. I guess Kayla's concern about the sun didn't extend to my fair skin.