JINKIES WAS NOT UNDER the kitchen sink. She also wasn’t in the downstairs bathroom or behind the curtains in the dining room, and I saw no sign of her in the tiny room we called a basement. I crossed my fingers as I bounded up the stairs to find Daphne.

Her footsteps were no longer visible once I hit the second-floor landing; Mom had been spending most of her time up here, getting the bedrooms ready, while Dad did most of the packing back in the apartment, and as a result the floors up here were shiny and clean, free of the dust and inexplicable twigs and leaves littering the staircase. I peeked into my new-old room, the bathroom, and the guest room before noticing Daphne standing in my parents’ room, looking like … well, like she’d just seen a ghost.

“Hello?” I heard her say as I approached the door.

“Hey,” I responded.

I wasn’t expecting the scream that followed, nor the way Daphne crumpled over, as though she were fainting.

“Daph! Are you okay?” I cried. I rushed to her side, but first I flipped the switch next to the door. The overhead light flickered on.

Daphne blinked furiously and got to her feet. “What the …”

“You’re shaking,” I noticed. “What happened?”

“I … I just …” Daphne’s face was paler than usual, her skin nearly translucent. She glanced at the overhead light in a way that made me wonder if she’d ever seen electricity before.

A thought occurred to me. “Have you been walking around up here in the dark?”

“You don’t have to say it like I’m an idiot!” she wailed. “I thought you guys hadn’t turned on the power yet!”

I stared in horror at Daphne for a moment before—and I hate myself for this, truly—bursting into a guffaw.

“You’re covered in dust!” I pointed at the gray smudges trailing her arms.

“Why didn’t you turn on the lights downstairs when we got here?” Daphne complained. And rightfully so—I was still choking back laughter.

I threw up my hands. “I was in a rush to find Jinkies! I don’t know!”

Daphne shot me daggers. Ah, I knew that look well. The Daphne of the past few years—pre our making up—had just two expressions in reserve for me: utter disinterest or outright hate. (Of the two, I almost preferred the hate.)

“I’m sorry,” I relented. “I guess I should’ve told you to … turn on the lights?”

I could barely get the words out before I started laughing again. I couldn’t help it!

“I hate you,” Daphne said. “But there’s no time for that now. I saw something outside. We have to go look for it.”

“What? What do you mean?”

She hesitated. “I thought I saw something. This is going to sound crazy, but I think it was the Lady Vampire of the Bay.”

I frowned. “In the Village? Probably some random kids. Unless …” I paused. “Daphne! This is our chance to find out who’s behind all the spooky sightings. We gotta go!”

Together, we hurried down the stairs and out the front door. On the porch, we paused for a minute.

“Where did you see her?” I asked.

“Down the hill, by the old candy store,” Daphne said, nodding in that direction.

I pulled my phone out of the pocket of my hoodie and turned on the flashlight function. “Okay. Let’s go.”

We ran into the Haunted Village, passing Pizza Panic, the place where I used to work, and also the old town jail, where I’d found Daphne’s friend Marcy locked up a few months ago. There was no one around.

Daphne was lagging behind me a bit—probably because of the ridiculous high-heeled boots she was wearing. But when I turned around to urge her onward, she had a funny look on her face. Like she was genuinely scared.

“Come on, Daph,” I said. “We’re almost there. Don’t let this place get under your skin.”

She nodded. “Over there,” she said, pointing at a pair of birch trees by the candy shop. “I saw the figure disappear between those trees.”

I cast my flashlight’s beam over the pale white branches and beyond. There was no one there. And beyond the trees was the wrought-iron fence that surrounded the whole park.

I pointed my flashlight at the ground. The earth was firm and smooth—it hadn’t rained in a few days, so there was no chance of finding footprints. But something else glinted in the flashlight’s beam.

Daphne gasped. She’d seen it too. “Velma!”

We stepped closer to the fence. There, next to one of the iron posts, was a gleaming red stone the size of a large pebble.

“It’s a ruby,” Daphne breathed. She pulled a tissue out of her pocket and carefully used it to pick up the stone. It was bright and clean—it couldn’t’ve been there long.

“Someone was here,” I said slowly. A cold finger of fear seemed to run down my spine. I usually prided myself on being logical, but standing in the Haunted Village, looking down at the stone in my friend’s hand, I couldn’t help feeling spooked.

“Do you think it was really the Lady Vampire?” Daphne asked, tearing her eyes off the stone to look at me searchingly.

I took a deep breath and shook my head, feeling like myself again. “No. But someone wants us to think it is.”

I’m almost ashamed to admit it, but Daphne and I held hands as we walked back up the hill toward my house. We’d looked around for a few more minutes, but there was no other sign of the Lady Vampire, or the person impersonating her. Together we checked the doors of the stands and shops near the candy store, but they were all tightly locked. Whoever Daphne had seen, whoever had left behind the stone … whoever it was, they were gone.

Now the stone was wrapped in a tissue in my hoodie pocket. We’d decided we should bring it to Burnett’s to ask Noelle to take a look.

I took a deep breath as we climbed the back porch steps. Right now, I wanted nothing more than to go back to my shoebox-like apartment and curl up in bed. But we still had Jinkies to think of.

Daphne looked over at me. “I know, I want to go home, too. But we gotta find Jinkies,” I said.

She nodded wearily. Then she straightened up, as if she’d heard something. “V, did you hear that?”

“What?” I asked.

“Behind you!” Daphne rushed over to a small half-door hidden tucked in the corner of the porch. My mom used to store gardening equipment there… along with extra bags of cat food.

Daphne gave the door a light kick with one booted foot—the door always used to stick. Then she popped it open … and a tentative pink nose popped out.

“Jinkies!” I cried. My beloved cat was covered in a fine layer of grime, but she was here. She was found.

“You poor little kitty,” I cooed, scooping her up and kissing the tip of her nose.

At last, we could go home. We took a final lap through the house, turning off lights and putting back what we’d pulled out, and then, holding tight to Jinkies, I locked the kitchen door behind us. I glanced at the little half closet at the other end of the back porch. The wood of that old lattice door swelled in the rain and heat, which had always made it tricky to open and close. It was easy to imagine how a cat could wander in there and get trapped.

On Monday morning, after the requisite snuggling with Jinkies, I did the unthinkable: I texted Shaggy Rogers.

Everyone knew Shaggy Rogers hated text messages. And phones. And technology of any kind. I had personally witnessed his anti-technology stance evolve from its early stages; as kids, whenever Fred Jones would show off all his latest gadgets—not just phones but also video game consoles and MP3 players and Bluetooth speakers—Shaggy would roll his eyes and play fetch with Scooby instead, or take him for a walk, or ditch us all and go surfing. Back then, his mom used to ground him not because he used his cell phone too much, but because he didn’t use it enough—he’d go out and leave it at home, so she’d have no way to reach him.

Still. These days he had a phone—everyone had a phone—and I had it on good authority that Shaggy’s mom insisted he bring it with him to school every day. As a lieutenant, she was hyper focused on safety and demanded her only son be easily reachable in case of an emergency.

As a result, everyone knew Shaggy’s number. But everyone also knew not to use it. There was no point; he’d rarely answer it.

I’d fallen asleep thinking about the mystery of the jewels—especially the new jewel we’d found—and Shaggy in equal parts. Usually my best thinking happens early in the morning—I once got an A on a term paper that I didn’t start writing until five a.m. the day it was due—but that night, two ideas came to me just as drowsiness hit. So instead of sleeping, I popped out of bed to organize my thoughts and jot down my plans for the next morning.

At what I hoped was an appropriate hour in the morning, I texted Shaggy: Meet me at The Mocha before school? Breakfast on me!

Was I going for bribery by mentioning breakfast? Yes. Did I think it would work? Also yes.

I found my mom in the kitchen, sipping coffee and flipping through the Howler. I’d heard about this special weekday edition from Daphne; Milford had published a supplement that was filled entirely with content about the washed-up jewels, along with healthy doses of rumors and legends about Crystal Cove’s peculiar past. I rolled my eyes at the cover image—a sketch of what I guessed was supposed to be the Lady Vampire of the Bay—as my mom studied its pages.

“Where’s Dad?” I grumbled. The thought of sleazy Milford Jones once again capitalizing on Crystal Cove’s past—the hypocrite who hated Elizabeth Blake for supposedly doing the same thing—had apparently turned my morning ambition into straight-up grumpiness.

My mom sipped and sighed. “He’s still sleeping, mi amor.”

She left words unspoken: It was one of those days for my dad, which meant he might not make it out of bed today. I tried not to let the news affect me, but it was hard. He’d had a solid few weeks, but I knew, at least logically, that his progress wouldn’t be linear. Still. It just set the tone for the day.

As I toasted some bread and searched for the peanut butter, my mom clicked her tongue, muttering.

“I don’t know why you read that trash,” I said over the ding of the toaster. “It just makes you mad.”

“I need to know what people are saying,” my mom said with a shrug. “Besides, these kinds of stories are all part of the character of this town.”

My mother had a knack not just for talking to people with different beliefs and priorities than she had, but also for making them feel heard. It’s why she was so successful at community organizing, how she’d managed to get the town to agree to require certain stipulations in all dealings with real estate developers and local businesses. It’s why she had a list of friends and contacts, people who would drop everything and do her a favor, whenever she called.

Unlike me, her bull-in-a-china-shop of a daughter. I was either too direct, too bold … or completely invisible and meaningless. It just depended on who you were asking.

“And what are the fine people of Crystal Cove scared of this morning?” I asked sarcastically. Despite what Daphne and I had found the night before—or maybe because of it—this morning the gullibility of the town seemed extra outrageous to me.

“Velma. Dinkley.”

I froze. Uh-oh.

“I want you to listen to me carefully.”

I dropped my toast, wiped the crumbs off my palms, and trudged to the table. I couldn’t meet my mom’s eyes yet. No one likes a heaping dose of disappointment before they’ve eaten breakfast.

My mom, champion of the picket sign, defender of Crystal Cove history, placed one of her hands on mine.

“Velma. From almost the moment you were born, you were obsessed with science. You mastered puzzles before you could walk.”

I expected anger, or at least sternness, when she spoke, but her voice was gentle. Instructive.

“You demanded games that involved logic and reason and shunned all the fairy-tale magical stuff so many adults try to shove onto girls. Your brain is wired to look for evidence, to ground stories in science. And I love that about you!”

I blinked. There was a but coming, and I could tell it was going to be a big one.

“But.”

I let myself smile, but quickly erased it at the serious look on my mom’s face.

“The people of Crystal Cove have been through a lot. You might have noticed, some weird stuff happens here on occasion,” she went on. “It’s fine to be doubtful. It’s even fine to encourage people to question their biases, to trust that science has all the answers. I would expect nothing less from you.”

It was rare that my mom went into full-on lecture mode. I braced myself.

“But everyone deserves our respect,” my mother continued. “Even the people who believe in curses, or hauntings, or any number of unexplained phenomena. Because you never know what’s driven them to believe what they believe, but chances are, it’s rooted in tragedy. Or anxiety. Or fear.”

I thought about what had happened last night in the Haunted Village. I didn’t want to admit it, even to myself, but for a moment I had understood what it could be like to believe. To hear something go bump in the night and fear that anything, even the impossible, seems possible. Real.

“There are good people, smart people, who believe in spirits. You would do yourself a favor to remember that, even when someone’s beliefs seem silly to you.”

I nodded. My tongue felt too big for my mouth. She squeezed my hand before pulling it away, a signal that I could go eat my cold toast at last.

I shouldn’t have been surprised that Shaggy still hadn’t responded to me by the time I reached my second planned destination: Burnett’s jewelry store. But I admit I was a little hurt. I liked to think Shaggy and I had a special relationship, built on a shared preference for being left alone as much as possible.

Daphne was waiting for me outside. An overnight cold snap meant she was bundled up in a thick lavender parka, her red hair a curtain covering her face. When she saw me approach, her eyes lit up.

“Jinkies all recovered?”

I nodded and pointed to the door. “Shall we?”

Daphne whistled. “You’re all business today, eh?”

“It’s been a morning,” I confided. “And now I just want to get this over with.”

We had one mission with Noelle that morning: to ask her about the jewels that washed up and confirm that they were fake, and to convince her to tell the police as much. We’d considered showing her the ruby we’d found the night before, but we weren’t sure if we wanted to tell anyone about it … not yet.

Burnett’s was, as expected, completely empty except for Noelle, who was sitting behind the register talking quietly on her phone. A new flyer was taped to the register: 25% OFF ALL ITEMS! When she saw us enter, she quickly hung up.

“Hi, girls.” Her voice was cautious, guarded, but it turned hopeful at her next question. “Oh! Are you back for that beautiful bracelet? I saved it for you!”

Daphne’s expression wavered before snapping back into its neutral, unreadable look. “Not yet, no.”

“Well …” Noelle’s eyes lit up. “Are you here to pick Taylor up for the walk to school? I’m afraid you’ve just missed her.”

We glanced at each other. “Um … no?” I said weakly.

“Oh,” she said, her brow creasing. “That would’ve been … nice. Tell me, how’s she been getting on?”

“Um …” I stalled. Daphne covered for me in that casual, calm way she does.

“She’s quiet, but I think she’s warming up,” she answered. It was the right thing to say—Noelle’s expression cleared, and she nodded, seemingly content with that answer.

“I just really want her to fit in,” Noelle said, almost apologetically.

We nodded while I thought about how embarrassed I’d be if my own mother ever said anything like that to other kids at school.

While we stood outside, Daphne and I had agreed to put the past behind us and pretend Noelle hadn’t lied to our faces the other day. Daphne, true to form, pasted one of her trademark cheery smiles onto her face. (I, also true to form, did no such thing. My face was my face, and I was wholly unable to manipulate it to convey certain emotions the way Daphne could.)

“Cold enough for you this morning?” Daphne changed the subject and mimed a shiver.

“Sure is,” Noelle agreed. “Aren’t you going to be late for school?”

“On our way!” Daphne chirped.

Daphne’s perkiness was giving me a headache. “We just stopped in to double-check something with you, since you’re the expert and all,” I put in.

Noelle raised her eyebrows questioningly, and I rushed ahead. “The jewels that washed up? What’s your expert opinion on them?”

A twin set of creases formed in Noelle’s forehead. “Expert opinion about what? I was here at the store the day they washed ashore, so I never saw them on the beach.” She shrugged.

“Sure, but you’re an expert,” I pressed, stressing the final word.

“In jewelry? Yes,” she said. “So?”

“So,” I said, casting what I hoped wasn’t a desperate look at Daphne, “you probably know about the density of rubies and emeralds and all that stuff.”

Noelle sighed. “It’s probably time for homeroom, so why don’t you just get to the point?”

Ouch. “Fine. I will!” I said hotly.

Daphne jumped in. “What we’re trying to establish is whether the density of real jewels makes them sink in water. Not float. And those jewels that washed up were definitely floating.”

“Ah!” Noelle nodded. “Right. Emeralds and rubies and sapphires, all the stones that washed ashore the other day, should absolutely sink in water if they’re real.”

“Aha!” I slammed my hand down on the register. Daphne looked at me in surprise with just a tinge of alarm mixed in. “So in your expert opinion, those jewels can’t be real! It’s science.”

“Not so fast.” Noelle held up a hand. “Fresh water. Not salt.”

I paused. “Come again?”

“Real stones sink in fresh water,” Noelle explained. Her voice had taken on the overly patient tone of a kindergarten teacher. “But in salt water, the density changes. The water becomes heavier than the jewels. Many objects that sink in fresh water will float in salt water.”

“I … um …” I was speechless. That couldn’t be right. How could I have missed that simple, obvious fact? I stuffed my hands into my hoodie’s pocket and touched the tissue covering the stone we’d found. In that moment, I was relieved we hadn’t shown it to Noelle.

For the first time in my life, I hadn’t done my homework correctly.

“Sorry to wreck whatever theory you were working on, but like I told the lieutenant, those jewels were real.” She nodded twice for emphasis.

“You met with the police?” Daphne asked.

“Of course. They brought me in for help right away.” Noelle smirked. “Like you said. I’m the expert.”