THE INGOT RENAISSANCE FESTIVAL STOOD in silence. No power tools hummed. No hammers struck. No one sang.
Jasper and Rosa picked their way through the half-repaired wreckage of the wall. Everyone else held themselves very still and watched the ghosts return.
A lute string sounded. Someone picked out a tune, one long note at a time.
Rosa spotted Uncle Fox. The musician still sat at the base of his tree, surrounded now by dozens of listening wisps.
Jasper pointed to where his parents stood together, hand in hand. He went to stand beside them. Rosa followed.
“This is something to see,” Sir Dad whispered. His voice sounded hesitant and ordinary, stripped of the accent that he loved to use. “But I’m sorry to see it. We’re done. This festival is over. Great, big, fantastical reenactment just can’t win an argument against history. Not when the real thing decides to rise up.”
Jasper swallowed. The sound of his throat sounded loud in his ears. I did this, he thought. I helped do this. We ended the unhaunting of Ingot. On purpose.
“Maybe it can,” he said. “Somehow. We’ll figure it out.” He put on the accent his father had dropped. “This is the largest and most splendid celebration of its kind to be found anywhere in the world.”
Sir Dad gave Jasper’s shoulder an awkward, affectionate pat.
“Have you seen my mom?” Rosa asked. “You haven’t met her, but she looks like me. Almost exactly like me. Except taller. I left her with Nell.”
“They’ll be near Nell’s shop, I imagine,” said Mrs. Chevalier. She stared at a tongue of blue flame as it danced above the chimney of the Tacky Tavern. Then she shook her head as though shaking off daydreams. “Over that way.”
“I know the way to Nell’s shop, Mom,” Jasper said.
“Be careful, son,” she said, but she didn’t sound worried. The thing Ingot feared most had already happened. Now both of Jasper’s parents watched the haunted festival as though it was burning to the ground around them—bright, beautiful, and ending forever.
We’ll figure this out, Jasper promised again. We will.
Rosa tugged his arm. They found Nell fussing around outside her shop. Athena Díaz stood beside her, arms crossed and eyes wide. She smiled. Hers might have been the only smiling face in Ingot.
“Specialist!” Nell called out when she caught sight of Rosa. “Two poltergeists are playing catch with my knives. On the ceiling. Standing on the ceiling. I’m pretty sure they’re poltergeists, anyway.”
“Long arms?” Rosa asked. “Large eyes? Short legs? Only visible when you glance at them sideways?”
She spoke to Nell, but watched her mother. They shared a look. That look meant something, it had to mean something, but whatever it was remained voiceless. Rosa held their eye contact carefully, worried that it might break and desperately wanting to know what it meant.
“Yes,” Nell said. “All of those things.”
Rosa nodded without looking away from her mother. “Poltergeists. Definitely.”
“They are throwing my knives around.”
“Try not to distract them, then,” Rosa suggested. “Or stand under them.”
“Thanks so very much,” Nell growled back at her. “If I’d known you were bringing all of this down on us, I might have been less helpful. Right now Mousetrap is reenacting old shows that its floorboards remember. Glass trinkets are melting in the glassware shop. The practice swords in the prop cabinet are rattling.”