“COLONEL FLEETWOOD,” I SAID THROUGH gritted teeth, my eyes tearing into Kristina’s. “You’re back.”
I turned around to find a very young and very dead British soldier, immaculately dressed in a red coat. The colonel had dropped into my life a few weeks earlier when things were going rather poorly—again, the whole Sheet Man situation.
I thought the colonel would go away for good after that was resolved, but nope, he stuck around. He’d been gone the last few days so it seemed like I’d finally gotten rid of him, but here he was. Again.
“Feeling a bit chaffed, Baylor?” he said, taking note of my grimace. “A bad day at school?”
“Oh, just ignore him,” Kristina said hastily, brushing past me with a chill. “Baylor’s been mad all day because some hack journalist wrote a nasty article about him on her website.”
“Her website,” the colonel said slowly. “I know this one. That’s a component of the marvelous Internet, right? Everyone’s connected through the means of an invisible web, a different kind of worldwide web, and this website is her particular place in that system?”
“Sure,” I said, shrugging carelessly. “Why not?”
The colonel smiled proudly and looked at Kristina. “I’m starting to catch on!”
“So,” Kristina said, “did you figure it out?”
“Figure what out?” I asked.
“I did,” he said. “Here’s a surprise: It’s simple.”
“What’s simple?” I asked.
“Oh, good. Is it what I thought it was?” she asked.
“What’d you think what was?” I asked.
“Shut up, Baylor, we’re trying to help you here,” Kristina said, exasperated.
I frowned. “You di—”
“Oh, there’s that permanent scowl Carla mentioned!” Kristina said, pointing at my face as the colonel looked on in confusion.
Before I could think of anything clever to say back, Mom shouted “Dinner!” from downstairs.
“You’ll pay for that one, Kristina Bosco.”
* * *
Dinner that night was beef stew, and as my family and I sat around the table to eat, I had the distinct displeasure of having to watch Kristina and Colonel Fleetwood whispering to each other in the family room. I could only catch snippets of what they were saying over the clatter of my baby sister, Ella. She has more rolls on her little body than an Italian bread basket and a smile brighter than last month’s full moon, but for a one-and-a-half-year-old, she could make some serious noise:
“Goo-la-la-BAH!” Ella shouted.
“. . . stone . . .”
Bang bang bang. She was hitting her spoon on her feeding tray.
“. . . Rosalie . . .”
“That’s my smart girl,” cooed my mom as Ella lathered herself with mashed peas.
“. . . amulet . . .”
Just as Ella started shrieking, I couldn’t take it anymore.
“Will you stop?” I shouted at her. She looked at me, scared, and started to cry. Everyone went quiet, including Kristina and the colonel.
“Baylor,” my mom said calmly. “Is there a reason you’re screaming at the baby?”
I flushed. “I . . . I didn’t mean to. I’m just frustrated.”
“And why are you frustrated?”
“Because.”
“Oh, really? Because? ” she said, nodding sarcastically. “That’s how you’re going to answer me? You want to rethink that?”
“It involves ghost stuff,” I said. “You wouldn’t like it.”
Jack, my little brother, dropped his spoon and shivered, while my dad concentrated hard on his stew, foraging for the right vegetable-to-meat ratio.
“Don’t try to pull the ‘ghost stuff’ line on me, young man,” she said with a dry laugh. “It won’t work anymore. That ship has sailed.”
Until recently, that line would have put a stop to the conversation. She’d been feeling less afraid of ghost stuff, though, after seeing Rosalie flying unnaturally through the air, shrieking hysterically as the Bruton carried her off. I could see the Bruton carrying her, but my mom could only see some helpless woman soaring through the sky, her legs askew, her arms flailing wildly, with as much dignity as a rat caught in talons of an eagle.
“I actually just think I’m irritated by that article that got released about me,” I said with a shrug. I didn’t want to name-drop Kristina or the colonel when I didn’t even know what they were discussing.
“What article?” my mom asked, her eyes narrowing.
“From that New England Real News website. You were actually mentioned in it,” I said. “The writer sort of made it seem like we’d plotted together to hurt Rosalie.”
Her eyebrows shot up, and she looked around the table. “New England Real News? Please tell me that’s not the one that did a five-part investigative series trying to prove that vegetables are actually bad for you.”
I nodded grimly.
“Everyone done with dinner?” she asked, her eyes already darting in the direction of the office, where she could pull up the article on the computer. I’d barely touched my stew, and Dad and Jack weren’t even halfway through their bowls. “Good, good. I’m just going to . . . ” She got up and half ran to the office.
“May I be excused?” I asked Dad, who nodded half-heartedly.
“Might as well,” he said, dropping his spoon into the bowl. “Sounds like your mother’s going to be occupied for a while.”
“Fantastic,” I said, getting up and turning to the ghosts. “Kristina, Colonel—upstairs, now!”
Ella, who had already recovered from my outburst, turned to the colonel and shrieked. “Flee Flee Flee!” Ella, like most babies, could see spirits. She’d grow out of it one day, but for now, she was just another female Bosco who was obsessed with the colonel.
“My beautiful Ella,” the colonel cooed, rushing over to place his hand on her cheek. “How are you, lovely?” She laughed and smacked her cheek a few times, and I rolled my eyes.
“Gross,” I muttered. “Let’s go.”
* * *
Back in my room, I sat on my bed as I listened to them rehash what they’d been talking about.
“We knew after the Bruton fiasco with Rosalie that we needed to strengthen our protections. Candles are great, but they’re not cutting it on their own anymore.”
“So you guys came up with something new?”
Colonel Fleetwood was distracted by the photographs clustered together on the bookcase by the window. He was leaning in, carefully studying each one.
“We did,” Kristina said. “We’ve worked with our spirit guides on the best way to proceed, and Colonel Fleetwood finally got an actionable answer tonight.”
“Actionable?”
“We can do a lot on our end,” Kristina said, “but it’s even better when you can establish a physical protection to cordon yourself off from harm.”
I had a flashback to the Bruton surrounding us with fire in Rosalie’s basement—the intense heat from the fire that took the shape of people writhing in pain, the desperation on Kristina’s face as she tried to put out the flames, the mind-numbing fear that pulsed through my body as I realized I was about to die.
“Yeah, that sounds good to me,” I said brightly. “So what do I need to do?”
Kristina turned to the colonel, who was examining an old photo of Grandpa Bosco and me. He’d died years before. “Colonel Fleetwood?”
The colonel perked up, startled. “Apologies! I was distracted by the charming photo of Baylor and Douglas.”
“Douglas? You call Grandpa Bosco by his first name?”
“Well, of course,” he said, sounding confused. “He’s not my grandfather, after all.”
“Yeah, but still . . . it’s weird.”
In all honestly, I was jealous he got to see my grandpa. He said his name so nonchalantly, too, as though he and his ol’ pal Douglas hung out all the time in the Beyond, telling each other jokes and goofing around and having the best time ever. What a jerk.
“Anyway,” Kristina continued, “Colonel Fleetwood, if you’d like to explain your news?”
“Indeed!” he said. “Baylor, we’re enhancing your protection, and it’s really quite simple.”
“Do share, then, old chap!”
“Baylor,” Kristina said, her face in her hand, “why?”
The colonel pressed on. “The stone, the one you made for the talisman to defeat the Sheet Man? Its power remains, and we can harness it to protect you.”
I frowned, leaning over to my nightstand to retrieve the stone from one of the drawers. The first night I met the colonel, I had to go hunting for materials to make a talisman, an object that wards off evil spirits. I needed a piece of wood, a round stone, and an egg, and we somehow ghost-rigged the stone inside the egg and sealed it shut. I’d eventually cracked it open and used the stone to stop Rosalie and the Sheet Man.
Afterward, I’d discreetly picked it up from Rosalie’s house when we stopped by with the police after the Bruton incident. I’d kept it as a souvenir of sorts, as weird as that may sound, but it was easier to hold on to than either the cracked eggshells that had encased it or the primitive wooden bowl I’d spent hours whittling.
“This thing?” I asked. “It’s just a rock.”
“Just a rock?” Kristina scoffed. “It was able to break the negative energy that bound the Sheet Man, remember?”
“Yeah,” I scoffed back. “That one time, after we had done the magical thingamajig with the lights and the chanting.”
Kristina smiled slyly. “There’s more where that came from.”