JJ KEPT HIS eyes glued to the footage until the camera battery drained. Emma was coming into view again as the camera shut off.

Penny exhaled. Their new friend was a ghost.

JJ’s camera battery should have lasted longer, but being zapped of energy was a classic sign of a haunting. Emma had drawn the energy from the camera, in order to make herself appear.

“Who was Emma?” Penny asked. “I mean, if she’s a ghost.”

“She’s tied to the hotel somehow.” JJ opened his backpack and grabbed the History of the Barclay Hotel book he’d been avoiding this whole weekend.

“I read some of it,” Penny said. “But not all.” Chapter twenty-three covered the entire Barclay family tree. Both Penny and JJ pored over the pages, until they both caught a familiar name.

Emma.

JJ read aloud, slowly, “Mrs. Barclay passed away from a rare genetic blood disease at the age of thirty-four. Not long after, the Barclays’ daughter was diagnosed with the same affliction. She died just after her twelfth birthday. Although her first name was Constance, Mr. Barclay’s daughter preferred to go by her middle name, Emma.”

Penny said, “I talked to Mr. Barclay. He built the fun stuff in the hotel for his daughter because she was too sick to go anywhere.” She hesitated, because she knew this proved ghosts exist. “Emma is haunting the hotel.”

Penny reached into her pocket for the marble. She knew it had been given to her by a ghost, when she was in the den and JJ was on the runaway carousel.

JJ closed the book and jumped when he realized Emma was sitting right across from them. As much as ghosts can sit, anyway.

“Hi, Emma,” Penny said. She felt nervous.

“I guess you know now,” Emma said to Penny and JJ. She sounded sad.

JJ asked, “Why didn’t you tell us?”

Emma shrugged. “It was just so nice to have friends, and not worry about germs and nonsense. You know I haven’t seen another kid in years?”

“That must get really lonely,” JJ said.

Emma nodded. “You have no idea. My dad can’t see me. The chef can’t either. All they see sometimes is flickering lights—I can do that, if I concentrate. Adults can’t see ghosts. Only kids can. With the exception of Fiona Fleming—she must be a real psychic medium.”

“Can you see the other ghosts?” JJ asked. He was a ghost hunter, after all.

Emma shook her head. “We can’t see each other. I think my mom might be roaming around—in room two seventeen. That used to be her favorite because it overlooks the valley. It’s where she died.”

JJ asked, remembering what was in the History of the Barclay Hotel book, “What about the midnight hour—can you see each other then?”

Emma smiled and her eyes got misty. “No. But I can feel my mom, and sometimes I smell her perfume.”

Penny asked, “Did you have a cat?”

“Oh yes, a black one,” Emma said. “Her name was Chloe.”

“So, she’s a ghost cat,” Penny said. And she’d tickled her feet. In room 217.

JJ tried not to be too amazed by the fact that he was sitting across from a ghost. This was what he’d been hunting for this entire time, after all. “Oh my gosh, I have so many questions. I’ll start with the one that has to do with our investigation. Couldn’t you spy on people to find out who killed Mr. Clark?”

She shook her head. “It’s not that simple. Plus, I can’t go inside Dad’s office, or the dining room. When I was still . . . alive”—Emma paused—“those two rooms were off-limits. So now that I’m a ghost, they’re off-limits too.”

“JJ?” The door to the library opened, and JJ’s mom popped her head in through the doorway. “If I remember correctly, I grounded you.”

JJ froze. Uh-oh.

His mom smiled. “But since you’re in the library, reading . . . Hi, Penny.”

“Hi, Mrs. Jacobson,” Penny said.

JJ’s mom pointed a thumb over her shoulder. “It’s dinnertime, you two.”

“We’re coming.” JJ turned to look at Emma. But of course, she was gone.