Between my schoolwork, preparing for the move, working at the store, missing my busy college boyfriend, worrying about a two-queen scheme, and hearing bone-buckling howls in every dog bark, the week stampeded by. As proof, I had hoof marks on the side of my face when I woke up on Saturday.

A packing crew had spent the previous day boxing up our shockingly numerous belongings. That morning, a parade of moving dollies made its way out the front door, down the driveway, up the ramp, and into the huge van. Watching from a lawn chair on the front porch as the house emptied out, I felt oddly sad. It made me think of our move from California just over a year ago and of the fear and misgivings I had in leaving my home and neighborhood since birth. As if in counterpoint to this melancholy, Jack, in his old truck, rolled to a stop at the curb in front of the house. It was a nice reminder that things had a way of working themselves out.

This happy buzz was short-lived; a few minutes later my frenzied mom dispatched Jack and me to the new house with a mop, broom, and bucketful of old rags and cleaning supplies. “Kitchen first. No goofing off,” was her directive. She was not in the mood for my “KP duty, no fun allowed, copy that,” message into an imaginary walkie-talkie. At least Stanley thought it was a little funny, though he probably bought himself an extra hour or two on diaper patrol.

At our new-to-us, still-pink house, I pulled into the detached garage, a feature I knew I’d hate come winter. Jack and I unloaded the cleaning gear and were en route to the front door when a crazed and waving Marik came rushing toward us.

“Hi, there!” he called from the driveway.

So much for avoiding the guy now that we were neighbors.

“Hey, Marik,” I said.

“Today’s the day.” Marik caught up with us on the steps to the porch.

“Yep. The moving van will be along soon. We’re on janitorial duty until it gets here.” I hoisted the bucket and swung it from its handle.

“I can help.” Marik pushed the sleeves of his denim shirt up over his forearms and made a muscle of his flexors.

“What’s going on?” Jinky walked up behind Marik.

Regardless of my skittishness around both of them, a Tom Sawyerish scheme began to take shape in my head. Four people could certainly knock this thing out faster than two. “A cleaning party. One of those quirky American traditions.”

Jinky jutted her chin forward. I figured she’d seen right through my ruse. Instead, she motioned with her head toward the house. “Let’s go, then.”

I led the way; Jack, behind me, was snorting with laughter. OK, so someone was onto me. Inside the foyer, I stopped and put down the supplies. The broom clattered to the floor. Jinky jumped as if poked.

“Are you OK?” I asked.

“This place,” she said, circling the foyer with her head tilted upward. “What was this place?”

Jinky had not been in the car when Penny had told me about the Bleika Norn, the Pink Witch; her reaction, therefore, was without bias.

“Why?” I asked.

“I sense a presence,” Jinky said. “Do you mind if I look around?”

Gack. The last thing I needed was for the rune-reading shaman in the crowd to go all poltergeist on me.

“I guess not,” I said.

Jinky moved into the sitting room but quickly returned to the foyer. Moments later she started up the stairs.

“Wait for me,” Marik said.

I was not about to let them out of my sight. I was on their heels; Jack swung me a confused look, but he, too, fell in line.

Jinky paused briefly on the landing of the second floor, but then — like some kind of whiff-frenzied bloodhound — made for the attic. My attic. Just great.

On the third floor, my new space, she walked from one dormer window to the other, touching the walls as she explored the area. Marik and Jack were quiet, as if hesitant to break her concentration. I, for the record, was more in too-freaked-to-speak mode.

“I’ve lost her,” Jinky finally said, throwing her head back in frustration.

“Lost who?” I asked.

She gave me one of those pure-Jinky scowls and said, “She didn’t exactly introduce herself.”

What I wanted to sass back was: My house. My ghost. Be nice or go home. Instead, I asked, “How do you know it’s a her?”

“By the smell,” Jinky said.

“What smell? I don’t smell anything,” I said. Technically, I did smell mold and age and neglect, but those were hardly gender specific.

“It’s gone now,” Jinky said.

“What did it smell like?” I asked.

“Pink,” Jinky said.

It was an awkward moment. Did I respond as if I believed that some kind of ghostly presence — one that reeked of some sensory short circuit — was a real possibility? Granted, the four of us were Fringe-cast material, but I was operating on so many secrets and cross-pacts and intentional misleads that I stood there with taboo tongue. It felt an awful lot like swallowing a bee, post-sting, which, by the way, I’ve experienced firsthand.

“My mom will kill me if she gets here and I haven’t even started yet,” I said, making for the stairs. If nothing else, my taskmaster mom was a good diversion.

The nice thing about a paranormal work crew was that they didn’t mind getting their hands a little dirty. Jack stuck a wet rag and his head into a kitchen cupboard. Jinky took off with the Windex bottle. Marik swept the kitchen. I took a scouring pad to the kitchen sink.

“Now that we’re neighbors,” Marik said, “we’ll be seeing a lot more of each other. We could walk to school together.”

“I usually drive,” I said.

“Even better,” Marik said. “I can catch a ride.”

I noticed his subject had been an I rather than a we.

“What about Jinky?” I asked.

“She gets picked up most mornings,” Marik said. “I know when I’m not wanted.”

I coughed and then sprinkled Ajax cleaning powder into the sink, creating a toxic cloud as cover for my reaction.

“Picked up by who?” I fanned the space in front of my nose.

“A friend,” Jinky said, stealthing her way into the room. She grabbed a clean cotton rag. “Who’s asking?”

“Katla can give me a ride to school now,” Marik said, whisking a pile of dirt into the dustpan.

“I thought Abby drove you,” Jinky said.

“Not necessary anymore.” Marik rested the broom against the counter. “This is so much fun. What’s next?”

The three of us — Jack, Jinky, and I — scrunched our brows in unison. Marik’s enthusiasm for football games and downtown Walden were one thing, but grunt work?

“What?” Marik asked, picking up on our vibe. “Am I doing a bad job?”

“Oh, no, you’re doing a fine job,” Jack said. “So fine, in fact, I could just sit back and watch you. All day.”

Jinky pursed her lips in an attempt to override a smile. I lifted my eyes quickly at Jack.

“Really?” Marik puffed up with pride. Pretty scary on a guy who was probably already an XXL. “That good?”

With a groan, the moving van pulled up front. I was glad for the distraction. Marik’s zeal for even the most mundane of life’s chores was odd. And soon someone besides me was bound to comment. Ask questions. Except that smart people, like Jack, Penny, and Ms. Bryant, seemed to find him sincere, if a bit of a goober. That kind of exuberance wasn’t an easy act to pull off without coming across as an annoying cross between Ned Flanders and Forrest Gump. But Marik managed somehow.

Even Marik’s spring-to-it-ness went down a notch once my mom arrived. She was in full drill-sergeant mode. And despite most of the workers being volunteers, she kept one and all busy hauling, heaving, and deboxing.

By early evening, we were sufficiently unpacked to eat takeout Chinese on plates — real, from-the-cabinet chinaware — while seated at the dining-room table. With the discarded to-go boxes pushed to the center of the table, I passed out our cookie-spun fortunes. The doorbell rang, and Stanley, the eager new man of the house, sprang up to answer it.

“Mine says, ‘Adventure is around the bend,’” I said, ripping the paper in half.

“What does yours say, Marik?” my mom asked.

“‘One’s happiness spells another’s discontent,’” Marik said.

“I think it’s safe to assume Abby will be the happy one, even with losing her chauffeur job. She gets what she wants, I hear,” Jinky said.

“Am I interrupting?”

I looked up to discover Penny standing with Stanley under the archway to the dining room. She looked hurt and embarrassed, with her eyes downcast and her arms clutching a foil-covered plate to her chest.

I looked quickly at the scene. For all appearances, it was a party she had not been invited to. I felt awful and popped to a stand.

“Of course not,” I said. “Marik and Jinky saw the truck pull up earlier and just fell in step with the work crew.”

“I made cookies as a housewarming gift, but I see you’ve already had dessert,” Penny said, eyeing the cookie wrappers scattered across the table.

She had to have heard what Jinky said about Abby getting what she wants: Marik, in this case. Penny’s colorless cheeks and halting tone hinted at as much. Crap. Why had Jinky said that? The strength of feeling was on Abby’s side. To Marik, we were all a source of curiosity and entertainment, I guessed, one as interchangeable as the next.

“So, I told you about my new room, right?” I asked.

“Yeah,” Penny said, her voice still faltering.

“Let me show you. It’s the best thing about this place.”

Behind me on the stairs, I could hear the fwomp fwomp of her Keds, as if they too had had the air let out of them.

Once we were up in the space, my space, I finally sensed a slight shift in her mood.

“So this is cool,” she said, looking around.

Even with a bare mattress, no curtains, and a jumble of boxes, the space oozed potential.

I didn’t believe in letting things fester; my approach, like stain removal, was to treat immediately. “You’re not mad, are you?”

“No. I guess not. It just kind of looked like a party.”

“Party? Hardly. I scrubbed toilets, and Jack went after some serious cobwebs in the basement. And Jinky and Marik coming over was entirely spontaneous. I mean, seriously, why they even volunteered is beyond me.”

“I would have helped if you’d asked,” Penny said.

“Is that what this is really about? About missing out on washing windows and sweeping floors? Or was it the company?”

Exhaling, Penny’s head dropped forward. “I’m pathetic, aren’t I?”

“No. Of course not.”

“It’s useless, anyway. I heard what Jinky said. It wasn’t a complete surprise, I mean, it’s obvious that Abby has her hooks in him. And she pretty much does get what she wants. And no big secret whose name she’ll be feeding to the Asking Fire.”

The Asking Fire. Ugh. A local tradition that took place the Saturday prior to Homecoming. Girls fed the name of their hoped-for date to a supposedly mystical bonfire. OK, so it had kind of worked for Jack and me last year, but I didn’t believe there was enough magic in all the realms to transform Marik into the right guy for Penny.

“He’s an exchange student,” I said. “Temporary. So maybe it’s best.”

“I know, but I can’t help it. I really like the guy.”

Footsteps on the stairs brought the conversation to an end.

“Your mom sent me up with a load,” Jinky said, entering with a laundry basket full of my sheets and blankets. She set the linens on my mattress, all the while surveying Penny oddly.

“I should read your runes,” she said finally.

“My what?” Penny asked.

“Your runes,” Jinky said. “I mentioned them briefly during our project summary. They’re an ancient system of divination. In the right hands, they have magical properties: fortune-telling and psychic knowledge.”

“Uh. No, thanks,” Penny said with the kind of hesitation that would indicate that she saw this on par with drawing pentagrams on the floor or beheading a chicken. She was probably also still smarting from having the project topic snatched away from her like a cat toy on a string.

“Don’t worry; it doesn’t hurt a bit,” Jinky said. “And I won’t charge you, because I sense an important turning point in your life, one you should be prepared for. Kat, do you have your runes?”

Penny looked at me like Jinky had just asked me for my wand and spell book.

“They’re a bag of stones I got from Jack’s grandmother,” I said to Penny by way of explanation. I turned to Jinky. “As if I could find them in this mess.”

“Next time I’ll bring my own,” Jinky said, running her thumb along her bottom lip. “This could be very interesting.”

Again Penny’s eyes flared wide. The sound of my mom calling from the first-floor landing brought all talk of fortune-telling to an end, but I couldn’t help but notice that Penny lingered, following behind me and Jinky as if taking an opportunity to view us with fresh eyes.