I pressed my ear against the cool glass panes. Faded teal-and-gray curtains hung on the inside of the French doors, blocking my view into the room. Dad and Mrs. Randazzo spoke in low, muffled tones. I couldn’t make out many of the words.
They’re talking about me!
My stomach twisted. I wasn’t concerned about Mrs. Randazzo telling my dad that I could see ghosts. He knew that already. It wasn’t his favorite subject, but he wouldn’t freak out. But what if she spilled Mason’s secret? Or, even worse, what if she’d already told Lily what she’d heard? Was that the real reason why Lily wasn’t here?
Lady Azura’s hand gripped my shoulder. “Eavesdropping is beneath you,” she scolded. “Come away.”
This wasn’t a request. Lady Azura never made requests. Only commands. She steered me across the hall and through the thick purple velvet curtain that covered the entrance to her rooms.
“What do you think they’re saying?” I asked. “Do you know why she’s here?”
“No idea,” she said as we entered her fortune-telling room. Another curtain far in the back concealed her bedroom and bathroom. “But if they’d wanted you to hear, they would have invited you in.”
She switched on the lamps with delicately beaded shades that were scattered about the room. Lady Azura did not believe in overhead lighting. Too harsh and unflattering, she always said. A warm yellow glow settled on the mystical room and reflected against the heavy red drapes and the red tablecloth.
“You could find out what’s going on.” I moved to the large, round table and peered into the crystal ball displayed on a small polished-wood pedestal. “You could see them.”
“Sara, child, that is not a spy gadget. It is a tool to gaze beyond the realm of the physical eye.” She dropped into her oversize armchair with the nubby dark-mustard fabric. The chair was her throne. She sat there to look into her clients’ past and see their futures. She sat there when she talked to the dead.
My great-grandmother is just like me. Or I guess, I am just like her. We both talk to the dead. Lady Azura and I are the only two in our family who can. But Lady Azura can do things I can’t. She can read tea leaves and tarot cards and see visions in the crystal ball. All I saw today was my reflection staring back at me. My blue eyes, usually so clear and bright, looked stormy and dark.
“Why so worried?” She tapped her long, oval nails on the arm of the chair.
I told her everything. My conversation with Mason. My suspicions about Mrs. Randazzo.
Then I hesitated. I wiggled my phone partway from the pocket of my jean shorts. I glanced quickly at the screen. No messages. Lily was being strangely quiet. She texted all the time just to say hey. Not today.
My stomach twisted tighter.
Lady Azura narrowed her brown eyes. She hated when I looked at my phone during a conversation. She said it was incredibly rude. “Finish telling me what’s really bothering you. I sense there is more.”
“I think I should tell Lily, if her mom hasn’t beaten me to it.”
“If Beth Randazzo has exposed your secret, then we’ll deal with it.” Lady Azura held my gaze. “But I have known Beth since she was a girl. Beth is thoughtful. I doubt she would impulsively do anything to cause you and Lily to be upset.”
“You don’t know that.”
“True. If she has, we’ll pick up the pieces. But if she hasn’t told Lily, it’s too soon for you to take that step.”
“How can you say that?”
“I can say that because I am like you. I know. It’s only been a year since you found me and we started working together. We’ve barely begun. You need more confidence in your abilities.”
“What does that have to do with Lily knowing?”
“There are consequences to such a big reveal. You are too young to deal with them.”
“You’re wrong. Lily and I are both mature. We can handle it.”
Lady Azura’s gaze drifted to the ceiling. She twisted her arthritic hands in her lap. “Fear and disbelief bring on negativity. For years, I was labeled as crazy, because my reality did not fit with what others perceived. My sixth-grade teacher, Miss Lauria, was my favorite, most-trusted teacher. Every day I’d help her do crosswords in the school yard during lunch. We had private jokes, and she put my desk right in front of hers.
“One day I saw an intense aura about her. Dark and harmful. I confided in her. From that day on, she would no longer eat with me. She froze me out completely, refusing to call on me and moving me to the back of the classroom. I had trusted her and was devastated. I didn’t understand how hurtful fear can make people.”
“That won’t happen with Lily.”
“Are you sure?”
I remembered back to elementary school in California and the mean girls who called me “Ghost Girl.” They’d whisper it as I walked through the halls. I’d hidden my abilities ever since. But Lily wasn’t like those girls or Lady Azura’s teacher. She wouldn’t care or be scared.
Not at all.
I was pretty sure.
Kind of.
“Your silence should give you pause.” Lady Azura walked to the glass shelves lining the side wall. She surveyed the colorful crystals and gemstones displayed on the middle shelf. She was a big believer in the guiding energies of crystals.
She lifted a small, copper-colored crystal and brought it to me. “This is aragonite. It brings out acceptance and understanding and confidence.”
She knew exactly what I needed. Acceptance from Lily. Confidence. Lots of it.
I lifted the chain from my neck. I wore all the crystals she’d given me on a necklace. Each one had a different power, and Lady Azura always seemed to give them to me at just the right time. Sometimes I couldn’t figure out why she was giving me a particular one, but I had figured out a while ago that she always knew what I needed, often before I did. I threaded the reddish-brown aragonite next to my clear quartz bead and refastened the clasp. The necklace rested against my collarbone, and I could feel the slight pressure of the extra weight.
“Hi, there. What’s going on?”“
I turned to stare at my dad standing inside the fortune-telling room. He never came in here. Never. Fortune-telling, bringing back the dead, and all the other stuff that didn’t have simple explanations made him uneasy.
“Where’s Beth?” Lady Azura asked.
“Gone.” He pulled one of the wooden chairs away from the table and perched awkwardly on it, watching me silently.
I squirmed under his gaze.
“Mrs. Randazzo got quite a surprise earlier today. She shared it with Lily and then . . . ”
My face paled under my summer tan.
Lily knows.
Lily knows and now she’s not talking to me.
“She came right over to share it with me.” Dad leaned forward.
“She should’ve let me tell Lily,” I blurted. “It wasn’t how it was planned.”
“You know about it?”
“Yeah.” I gulped. “I figured it out when she showed up.”
Lady Azura made a sympathetic tsk-tsk sound. This was bad. We both knew it.
“How is that possible?” Dad scratched his beard stubble. “Who told you about the lake?”
“What lake?”
“The lake the big hotel is on.”
“What’s a lake got to do with Lily?” Dad was usually very straightforward, but suddenly I couldn’t follow him.
“Beth Randazzo came over to invite you to join them on vacation,” he explained.
“Vacation at a hotel with Lily?” I asked.
“So you don’t know?”
“Obviously not,” Lady Azura replied with a smirk.
“Beth’s sister, Angela, is a travel writer for InTravel magazine,” Dad said.
“I know Aunt Angela,” I said. Of course I did. She was Lily’s favorite aunt, and she spent so much time at the house that I’d heard Lily’s dad joke about charging her rent.
“Angela was assigned to write an article about a historic hotel on Lake Hoby in the Adirondack Mountains of New York, but it turns out that she didn’t understand the assignment fully until today.”
“What’s the assignment?” Lady Azura asked.
“The magazine wants her to go undercover. They don’t want the hotel to know that she’s testing their claim of being the most teen-friendly hotel in the area. They want her to appear to be an ordinary guest vacationing with her teen kids, but she has no teens.”
I smiled. I guessed where this was going. “I’m thirteen and so is Lily.”
“Bingo! Angela wants to bring you and Lily, along with Lily’s mom, to the hotel. She’s going to put you to work, trying out all the activities.”
I gave a loud whoop! Stellamar is probably more fun than most towns in the summer. It’s on the beach, the ocean is warm, and the boardwalk is filled with games and rides. But if you do something over and over, even if it is playing skee-ball or jumping waves, the magic wears off. It was almost the end of the summer, and I was ready to leave the Jersey shore for a new adventure in the mountains.
“I take it that means you want to go,” Dad teased. “Mrs. Randazzo came to clear it with me before Lily told you.”
“And that’s all she had to talk about?”
“What else is there?”
I glanced at Lady Azura and shrugged. “Nothing. Nothing at all.”
Lady Azura gave a satisfied nod, and the wrinkles along the corners of her lips deepened as she gave a slight smile. She was happy that Lily didn’t know. I was happy for a different reason. I wanted to be the one to tell her. It was my secret to share when I chose to share it.
“Something’s buzzing out there.” Dad leaned his head toward the hall.
“Oh, my muffins!” Lady Azura scurried toward the kitchen. She didn’t move very fast. She had arthritis in her hips and couldn’t climb the steep stairs to the second and third floors where Dad and I lived in the old Victorian house we shared. “I hope they don’t burn. Delilah will be so disappointed.”
Relief flooded over me. I needed a break from this house and all its supernatural energy.
I glanced down at the screen of my phone. Texts poured in from Lily. Her mom must’ve told her the trip was a go.
WE GET 2 SHARE A ROOM!! U & ME 2GETHER ON VACA!!!!!!!
!!!!!!!!! I texted back.
Then it dawned on me. The two of us together in a hotel room. Away from everyone in Stellamar. Best friends swimming during the day and sharing secrets at night in the dark. What better place to tell her?
“Are you sure you want to go?” Dad asked. “You don’t have to leave—”
“Are you kidding? I can’t wait!”
“Oh, well, yeah, I can see that.” Dad’s face fell. “I guess I haven’t been that fun, working all the time. It’s just that, kiddo, we’ve never been apart. You know?”
Dad was right. Since I was born and Mom died giving birth to me, it’d always been just the two of us. We were a pair, a team, the “dynamic duo,” Dad called us. We didn’t go on a lot of vacations, but when we did, it’d always been together.
Until now.
I felt bad. “Will you be okay? It’s only for five days, right?”
“Right.” He brightened. “I’m being silly. It’s supposed to be the kid who doesn’t want to leave the parent, not the other way around.”
“We can ease into it,” I suggested. “Practice this week like we did when I didn’t want to go to preschool. Remember how we’d do pretend drop-offs at the school the week before?”
“Ah, you’re good to me, kiddo, but I’m going have to rip the Band-Aid off quickly. There’s no time for practicing.”
“Really? When am I going?”
“Your vacation starts tomorrow.”