WHO KNEW SHAGGY WAS this fast? I made a mental note to tell him to try out for the track team once I finally found him. If I ever found him.

The truth is, I gave up looking pretty quickly. (Though I would never admit that to Velma.) Who can blame me? By the time I made it up the beach, my calves were burning from the effort and the soles of my feet were burning from the hot sand. The crowd was packed tight, and all that weaving and bobbing to find an open path meant that, once I reached the parking lot, not only was I exhausted—I thought longingly of The Mocha and its closed door—but Shaggy was also long gone. Completely out of sight. Almost like he … vanished.

Okay, maybe an unfortunate choice of words. Little did I know that the Vanished were all anyone was talking about back on the beach. Well, the Vanished and the Lady Vampire of the Bay, that ghost all the older kids at school used to try to scare us with when we were kids. One year, probably my peak year of fear, around age seven, the bigger kids at my bus stop even started making fun of me, saying I looked just like the Lady Vampire, thanks to my red hair.

Once I knew Shaggy was gone, I did a 180 and ran right back onto the beach. I’ve always had this thing about being in the middle of the action. It’s always made me feel … I don’t know. Important isn’t the right word for it. More like involved. Like if I’m right there in the thick of things, then that means I can’t be anywhere else. Like, just for instance, alone, lost in my head. Because I hate getting lost in my head.

Plus, well, Ram was there.

I pushed Ram out of my mind and trotted back to where I’d left Velma. Except she was gone! She’d left our spot, too. Luckily, I didn’t have to look for her long. She’d made herself pretty obvious, standing up there on the jetty as Shaggy’s parents faced off against Milford. Cool—my friend’s dad and my boss were about to get into a fight, by the looks of things. And our stakeout was a bust, and Noelle had lied to my face, and I hadn’t even had coffee yet. This weekend was turning out spectacularly.

I dodged to the front of the crowd again and waved my arms up and down in an attempt to get Velma’s attention. Eventually it worked, but not before I heard all about how the jewels littering the beach were from the Vanished, ancient artifacts bestowed to the people of Crystal Cove by a bunch of ghosts. Then I heard that no, actually, the jewels were from the Lady Vampire, who was haunting our little town again, desperate to find the jewels she’d heisted so long ago. One thing was clear: In this crowd, factions were forming quickly. Ugh, I had a lot to catch up on.

“Everyone, please! Keep calm!” Lieutenant Rogers shouted. She’d finally regained the crowd’s attention. “The police department has set up collection areas all around the beach. Please deposit the jewels you’ve found on your way out. Of course, people are welcome to stay and continue collecting. As you can see, there are still a few more coming in with the tide.”

While I waited for Velma, I scanned the sea. The sheen of jewels cresting with the waves had definitely thinned, and a couple dozen people still stood in knee-high water and scooped up whatever they could grab. Some of the crowd had started to dissipate, too, dropping their jewels off as they did, and grumbling the whole time.

“Blake!” Aparna Din collided into my shoulder, breathless. “Oh em gee, I’m so glad I ran into you. Isn’t this scary?!”

I crinkled my nose. It was a picture-perfect fall day, and we were on a beach surrounded by people. “Scary?”

“You know.” Her voice dropped and she leaned in. I glimpsed genuine fear in her shining eyes. For a moment I began to grow scared myself; a flicker of panic threaded its way up my throat. Had something horrible happened to Aparna? “These jewels. At first I thought it was so cool! Like, what luck, right?”

She shook her head and then, to my utter shock, wiped the beginning of a tear from her eye. It was almost like we were having two separate conversations, that’s how confused I was. The panic in my throat made way for something else: disdain.

“But now … all this talk about the Vanished. And ghosts. And … I mean … what if these jewels are cursed, Daph? Now they just feel like a bad omen.”

She hugged me, squeezing my shoulders tight, and then added, “Whatever this is, we’ll get through it. Together. Right?” And then she was off.

I stared after her for a moment, speechless, until I noticed the new girl, Taylor Burnett, was nearby, looking at me with an odd expression. I blinked, cleared my throat, and pulled myself together. I was used to people studying me, but the intensity of her gaze was a bit unsettling. “Can I help you?” I asked.

She twisted her mouth, looking like she was going to say something, but then turned and walked back into the crowd.

“What was that all about?” Velma asked. She’d unzipped her hoodie; it was the beachiest I’d ever seen her look. I glanced down and sighed to see her combat boots were still tightly laced. I guessed even Beachy Velma had her limits.

“The strangest thing,” I told her, and relayed my conversation with Aparna and the odd moment with Taylor. “I know I was gone for a hot second, but do you think people are actually scared of these jewels?”

“Based on what I’m hearing? Yep.” Velma ticked off her fingers. “First your boss brings up the Vanished—which, as you know, reminds this town that we live on top of a mystery that’s never been solved. Then Shaggy’s dad brings up the Lady Vampire of the Bay, and even though everyone here knows that’s just a silly legend, it gets them thinking about ghosts, and hauntings, and spirits, and the unexplained.”

“And we just went through a ‘haunting,’ ” I added. “It almost doesn’t matter that it turned out to be Aunt Emma and Dr. Hunter kidnapping people!” I sniffed. I didn’t like to think about how Aunt Emma—my mom’s best friend (or, rather, former best friend)—had betrayed us, had lied to us. She and Dr. Hunter were responsible for blackmailing and ultimately kidnapping my other best friend, Marcy, along with a few other kids from town. I didn’t let a lot of people get close to me. Aunt Emma had been one of the few, and I had paid for that mistake.

“People just remember the fear,” Velma confirmed. “And now … it looks like it’s going to happen all over again.”

We took a moment to study the scene at the beach. By now, more than half the people had deserted the area; the police officers were still stationed along the perimeter, carefully—or, I noted, in some places, carelessly—placing the washed-up jewels into buckets someone had dug out of the lifeguard headquarters. Those who remained were milling about the water’s edge, kicking at the waves and digging toes through sand to make sure nothing had been overtaken by the tide. Taking the concept of “buried treasure” a little too literally, I guessed.

But most of all, what we noted about the crowd that remained was the whispers. People spoke to each other in hushed tones; they shot darting, nervous glances at their neighbors. Lieutenant Rogers was saying what looked like goodbye to Shaggy’s dad—knowing him, he was probably off on yet another business trip—and the panic in my throat thrummed, salty and vivid, when the kid from the movie theater we’d seen earlier jostled his recovered jewels in his hands and muttered, “I can’t believe anyone would think these are from a cruise ship.”

His friend, who I recognized as one of the baristas from The Mocha, nodded. “Honestly, bro, I’m happy to give these back. I don’t want haunted stuff in my house!”

I met Velma’s eyes. She pushed up her glasses. In a rush of impatience, I pulled them off her nose.

Her face registered surprise, anger, and then, finally, acceptance. “Fine,” she said, surrendering. “I’ll get some contacts.”

Then she took back the glasses, unfolded them, and placed them on her nose. “But until then, I definitely won’t be able to see any ghosts without them.”

The only bad part about my internship was the Sunday morning shift. Of course, seeing Ram pounding away at his keyboard when I arrived at the Howler offices made things slightly better. I ducked my head as I rounded the cubicles; I would die if anyone else noticed me looking at him.

It was both great and awful luck that Milford made the interns sit together in the same section. I placed my monogrammed leather tote on my chair, forcing myself to focus on my immediate line of vision, pretending that my body hadn’t noticed and already registered the existence of Ram, the closeness of him. He was right there; I could reach out and—

“Blake!”

My head snapped; my heart leapt. “Yes?” I said too quickly. My mouth was a desert and I chugged my iced coffee but then, because I’m apparently an utter child, choked on it.

As I coughed and sputtered, Ram began pounding on my back, like I was some kind of baby. My eyes watered. Part of me was ready to just give in and start fully crying, since who would know? I was botching this so hard already, why not go all in?

But Daphne Blake would never. I had a reputation to uphold, no matter how ill-conceived it was. Ram’s back pounding (well, it was really just a tapping; despite his visible sleek strength, he wasn’t a brute) had done the trick. I stopped coughing and forced back my tears. When I cleared my throat, I attempted a smile, but meeting Ram’s eyes head-on without turning purple was still a feat I hadn’t managed to accomplish.

It had been ten days since I’d first laid eyes on Ram, and I hadn’t yet been able to figure out what specifically it was about him that made me feel like I was unmoored, like my feet weren’t touching the ground. After my first day on the Howler staff, when we’d shaken hands and, palm burning, I’d had to excuse myself to the restroom—I’d needed to go somewhere private to process his face, his existence—I’d rushed home to do some research. Here’s what I discovered:

• Ram was a freshman at the small but ritzy Hartwood College, which was located a few miles outside town; he’d grown up on the East Coast and returned there often to visit his family.
• He had two little sisters back home, still in elementary school … and, based on the photos I’d found, they had him utterly wrapped around their fingers.
• He was majoring in journalism and, in addition to his Howler internship, he worked at his college newspaper while also carrying a full course load.
• It appeared, based on the photos he shared on social media, that he didn’t have a girlfriend. (Or a boyfriend, but I was really hoping he was more the girlfriend type. Because I was the boyfriend type, and I wanted desperately to tell him that. You know, without sounding creepy.)

This was just me doing my due diligence, I told myself that night. Now that I worked at the Howler, I needed to seek out the facts. It was my job to investigate my coworker. That was my story, at least, and I was sticking to it. All those walls I’d carefully erected around myself years ago, back when Velma and I had our big fight and my mom left me and my dad? They’d sunk deep into the ground, their foundations growing stronger and stronger. They felt impossible to tear down. The idea that I could let someone else venture inside them, even if just for a moment, made my heart race. The Daphne Blake everyone knew, the one I meticulously crafted, was confident and smooth and entirely self-sufficient. She needed no one but herself.

I just hadn’t realized that one day she’d feel so entirely alone. Even with Velma back at my side, even with my relationship with my mom back on track, I felt like I lived on a boat alone in a sea where I could see people on the shore but couldn’t quite figure out how to reach them. And lately, I’d really been wondering what it might be like to count on someone else. To let them in.

After I’d finished choking, I placed my bag on my desk and resisted the urge to crawl under my seat; instead, I sat down and crossed my legs.

“You good?” Ram asked. I nodded, still unable to look at him. Instead I focused really hard on powering up the rickety old computer the Howler had provided for me. It took at least five full minutes to begin functioning properly, which I was grateful for this morning, because I needed at least that much time to get over the spectacle I’d just made of myself.

But Ram had other ideas. He rolled his chair over to my desk. I caught a whiff of what was maybe cologne or, more likely, was just his own organic scent: soapy, piney, with a tinge of salt from the sea air. I breathed it in and then, conscious that I probably looked pathetic, I straightened my back and put on the Daphne mask I wore best: blank, unreadable, neutral but still pretty enough to trick everyone into thinking I was on their team. It was safe, that mask. I knew how to work it, and it had always served me well.

“What’s up?” I said coolly. I wanted another sip of my coffee, but I wasn’t eager to make a fool of myself again, so it sat, sweating, on my desk.

Ram tapped the little reporter’s notebook he always carried around. (I’d purchased three of them after seeing his during my first day on the job. Not that I would ever admit that.) “New assignment from Milford. We’re supposed to work on it together. And warning: He’s on the warpath.”

I raised my eyebrows. I’d had a hard time explaining to my mother that I’d be working at the Howler. Heck, I’d had a hard time justifying it to myself when I’d been selected. The Howler was mostly harmless gossip, sure, but it had a mean streak. Its specialty was in trying to take down the famous Elizabeth Blake. Every year, almost like clockwork, the Howler printed some kind of wild theory about my mother, about how her gaming empire was really a dastardly, devious plan to ruin Crystal Cove. Milford hated The Curse of Crystal Cove with every fiber of his being, and he made sure that came across in his editorials, and in the sometimes downright sleazy way he’d allow certain articles about my mom to be positioned. Why, I wasn’t quite sure—if anything, my mother’s game had helped cement Crystal Cove’s legend, and Milford milked our spooky reputation for all it was worth. In fact, I’d wager that Milford Jones wouldn’t even have a newspaper if not for my mother. In other words, in my opinion, Milford owed his current career to her.

Maybe, I thought as Ram scratched at a spot on his upper arm that made me nearly reach out and caress it, that was why he hated her so much.

“Why?” I asked, keeping my voice casual. If Ram knew who my mother was, he didn’t let on. Good. I didn’t want him to know just yet; I liked conveying an air of mystery.

“Well, after yesterday’s discovery at the beach, and then all the reports that came in overnight, he wants a roundup of quotes from residents, stat.”

I frowned. “Wait, what reports that came in overnight?”

Ram’s eyes, already big and brown, widened even more. “Blake. Haven’t you heard?” He leaned over and clicked my mouse a few times.

I tore my eyes away from him and onto the computer screen. He’d pulled up the police blotter that had been published just this morning. My eyes skimmed over the list. With every bullet point, my jaw dropped a little farther.

At dusk, there was a sighting of a red-haired woman in a purple cloak near the entrance to the sea caves—and the witness was sure it was the Lady Vampire of the Bay. Around eleven p.m., there were three separate reports from families who lived on or near Beach Street, each claiming to see mysterious lights twinkling on the water. An hour later, two families—one residing downtown and one uptown—each reported hearing loud popping noises. (It turned out the streetlights on their respective streets had blown out.) At three in the morning, a family called to report a break-in, but when police appeared, the house didn’t show any signs of forced entry and no items were missing (though the owners did claim their jewelry boxes had been rifled through).

The blotter, normally a two-to-three-item list, continued with another half dozen similar reports: an elderly woman calling to report “shadows that didn’t belong” in her hallway, some twentysomethings in the new high-rise condos downtown reporting a smoky haze (“reminiscent of ghosts,” the report said) in their apartment building’s garage; multiple calls about strange noises. And then, at dawn: A woman out for an early run called to report a “ghost ship” lurking on the sea near the caves. When police arrived, she was frantic, but the horizon was clear.

I exhaled a breath I hadn’t realized I’d been holding. This was the biggest spike in crime Crystal Cove had ever seen. Or “crime,” I should say, because I wasn’t sure if “ghost ship sightings” counted as criminal. Regardless, it was clear ghosts were on everyone’s mind. Crystal Cove was spooked.

“So I’m thinking you and I head over to that coffee shop, maybe to some of the restaurants, the parks,” Ram continued. “I bet we’ll find a lot of people willing to talk about ghosts.”

I nodded. “Oh, we definitely won’t have trouble finding people to talk about ghosts.”

Ram raised his left eyebrow. I hesitated. My stomach felt like it was folding in on itself; like a sinkhole had formed. I was nervous, I realized. I wasn’t sure how much Ram knew about this place, and I was going to have to tell him all of it: How, sometimes, it felt like more ghosts lived in Crystal Cove than people. How the stories about our history often felt more important, more real, than the actual goings-on of our lives. How Crystal Cove’s legends were alive and well, even though the rest of the world had long since moved on.

“You know about this place, right?” I decided to start off slowly. Around us, all the rings and beeps and swooshes of office life provided a backdrop, a normal-enough soundscape that helped me feel like what I was about to say wasn’t so … weird.

“I mean, I know it’s a tourist town that’s undergoing rapid growth.” He shrugged, his pen hovering over his notebook. “Why? You think there’s an angle we should take in our story there?”

I held up a hand. “No. I mean, I don’t know. Whatever you think. I just wanted to make sure you knew what you were getting into.”

“Sure,” Ram said agreeably. “It’s a tale as old as time. A town changing, and some of its people reluctant to embrace the change.”

It was true Crystal Cove was changing. Charming, rickety old row homes jutted up against glitzy new office buildings; families like the Rogerses, who had been here for generations, now mingled with new families who brought with them new ideas and expectations of what this place should be. The buyers of various plots of land throughout town had to follow the rules—to respect the town’s character and use the land in some way that celebrated Crystal Cove—but those rules were easy to get around in court, and in practice. We had fancy coffee shops and co-working spaces now, but despite them, and despite the influx of people and commerce, there was a part of Crystal Cove that would always remain just as it began: the site of a mass mystery. Or, as some would say: a cursed land.

“It’s more than that.” I drummed my fingers against my desk, noticing Ram’s were resting there, too. “It’s like … well, there’s a reason the thing at the beach yesterday got this town so … nervous.”

Now both of Ram’s eyebrows rose. “You can’t mean that stupid thing Milford said, right? Or that other guy? The businessman?” Ram scoffed. “They were clearly joking.”

I winced. “Um. Not really.”

Here’s the thing: How do you explain to someone who didn’t grow up in Crystal Cove what it’s like here? About how Crystal Cove’s cursed past made some people believe in a cursed future, too? As kids, Velma, Shaggy, Fred, and I would go on haunting expeditions in Shaggy’s creepy house. Velma’s family led tours about our history, about the Vanished. We Blakes had ghosts to thank for the roof over our heads and the beautiful clothes in our closets. Mystery was part of our land, and part of us.

I decided it would be easier—and likely more effective—to show Ram what I meant, rather than tell him. Let him hear firsthand what the people of Crystal Cove thought.

“How about this? We both hit the downtown areas together to get some quotes from people. Then we split up—I can go back to the beach, maybe? I bet there are people hanging out there, waiting for more jewels to wash up. And you can hit up Noelle Burnett. She owns the jewelry shop in town. I bet she’ll give you a good quote.”

It was strategic, my plan. I didn’t think Noelle would give me anything after yesterday’s little stunt in her store. Maybe Ram would be able to find out what she was hiding.

“Good plan, Blake.” Ram nodded, jumping to his feet. He was dressed in what I’d come to think of as his typical weekend wear: a funny T-shirt and hipster jeans topped with a vintage plaid blazer. And, of course, his trademark orange sneakers. Somehow, it all worked. I glanced down at my own outfit—denim jacket over a plain tank top and a pencil skirt, plus the same boots I’d worn yesterday—and couldn’t stop the flash of wonderment at how we would look together, like as partners. Or a couple.

“Right,” I said, flustered at the thought. In my haste to act casual I nearly knocked over my coffee while reaching for my bag, but then Ram grabbed it, saving me from spilling it all over myself.

“I’ve never seen someone have so many run-ins with caffeine.” Ram grinned at me.

I hated to admit it, but I positively soared our whole trip downtown, just from that single moment.