THE BLACK SHADOW zoomed away and flew behind a bookcase.

“It’s a cat,” Penny said flatly. “I saw it in the window when we arrived.”

“Oh.” JJ did his best to hide his disappointment. “I was so excited for a second.” Of course, JJ didn’t consider that animals could be ghosts too. Penny had, but she wasn’t about to speak up. She was still determined to prove that ghosts didn’t exist.

JJ went down and back up the spiral stairs. He remembered the old reports that Mrs. Barclay roamed the bookcases. JJ searched for her spirit. He expected to see some kind of white apparition, but no luck.

Penny followed along. “Are you here, Mrs. Barclay?” she asked. The EMF detector only showed one light—no ghostly activity there.

They kept walking between the bookcases.

Suddenly, there was a thump behind them that made Penny jump. Several books had fallen on the floor between two bookcases.

Macbeth

The Mousetrap

Midnight at the Barclay Hotel

“They’re plays,” Penny said. Now didn’t seem like the best time for Penny to tell JJ that The History of the Barclay Hotel had fallen from a bookshelf earlier that day. “I think that one script was written by Fiona Fleming.” It had landed on the page with the list of cast members. Penny glanced at it, but not for long.

JJ said, “Maybe the ghost knocked them down.”

“Or the cat.” Penny put the plays back on the shelf. Her EMF detector lit up, but only for a split second. She was hoping to prove that ghosts didn’t exist. So no news was good news—or no ghost was good news, better yet.

“If anyone can hear me, we’d like to talk to you,” JJ said. He waited. There was about two hours of recording time on his voice recorder. He still had an hour and a half of time left on it.

Suddenly, he heard a whistling sound. It was coming from behind him, in the stacks.

JJ froze. Penny heard it too. There it was again! And the EMF detector was lighting up like a Christmas tree.

“Was that a ghost?” he asked Penny. The late Mrs. Barclay could be roaming the library right now. And he’d have it on tape!

“Poppycock,” Penny muttered.

“Look at the EMF detector,” JJ whispered.

“Huh?” Penny was excited now too. It was hard not to get caught up in the fun of ghost hunting.

JJ held his breath, and slowly walked between the stacks, careful not to make a sound. Penny followed, fully expecting there to be a logical explanation for the sound.

There! More whistling—and louder this time. That had to mean they were getting closer . . .

JJ and Penny moved to the next shelf. And waited.

The whistling was practically by their ears now.

They both tiptoed, turned the corner, and—

“BOO!”