A Perfect Storm Read online

  Chapter 3

  The next afternoon, Friday at last, Lily and I met after classes were over to walk home. We did this most afternoons. But today we were extra excited because Lily was sleeping over. I used to avoid having Lily over for sleepovers because of all the issues that came with living in a haunted house and trying to hide from your best friend that you could see spirits. But now that Lily knew about my powers—I had told her over the summer—I didn’t have to try and hide anything from her.

  It was three thirty in the afternoon, the sun still shining, the shadows lengthening. But there was something strange about the light. The sky was a weird, greenish color, and everything seemed sort of backlit, with an eerie glimmer. The day was still warm for the season, but since we’d walked to school that morning, a wind had sprung up. Dry leaves skittered and swirled around us, whipping our hair around our faces.

  As usual, Lily had more energy than a normal walking pace could accommodate. She bounced along next to me. Then danced a few steps ahead and spun around to talk to me while walking backward. Then broke into a skip.

  Lily never just walked. She was high energy. High enthusiasm. Just fun-loving and extroverted. A good contrast to my shy, avoid-attention, introverted self. We were opposites in so many ways, but we were alike in all the important ways.

  “So guess what I brought for the sleepover?” she asked me, her dark eyes shining.

  “Stuff to make s’mores?” I guessed.

  “Nope. Better.”

  “A movie we can watch?”

  “Nope. I better tell you, because you’ll never guess.”

  “Okay. Tell me.”

  She spun around again and faced me, skipping backward without either of us having to lose a step.

  “A spirit board!” she whispered.

  I blinked at her. “A spirit board,” I repeated. I knew what one was, of course. One of those board games where you ask a question and then move the pointer and hope a spirit answers yes or no. Or spells out a word to answer it. I’d never actually used one before. Given that Lily knew I had way more than my share of success in communicating with those from the Great Beyond, I felt perplexed by her. Why would she think I’d want to play with a game that supposedly conjured spirits, when I was already surrounded by them?

  “Huh. Well, that’s nice,” I said weakly, because she seemed to expect me to say something. “That explains why you brought such a lumpy overnight bag, I guess.”

  Her face fell. “You don’t like the idea?”

  “Well, um, it’s not that I don’t like the idea,” I said. “It’s just that, well, it’s like suggesting to a mailman that he go for a nice, long walk on his day off.”

  Lily rolled her eyes. “Come on, Sara. It’s time you started looking at your powers as something fun, rather than a burden. What if we conjure up Fred Astaire and Ginger Rogers? They could give us dancing lessons!”

  Now it was my turn to roll my eyes. “Come with me to Elber’s. My dad gave me money for groceries. You have to help me think of what to make for dinner tonight.”

  Shopping at Elber’s helped distract Lily from the spirit board idea. We found some baby artichokes and decided to make pasta with them, even though neither of us had ever cooked with fresh artichokes before.

  As we stood in line to buy our stuff, Lily texted her mother and asked her how we should prepare them. Mrs. Randazzo can do anything when it comes to food. She’s an amazing cook.

  Mrs. Randazzo texted Lily back about thirty seconds later with detailed instructions, so Lily had time to run back for lemons and parsley before I’d even finished putting the other stuff on the belt.

  When we got to my house, a car was parked out front. That meant Lady Azura had a client. We walked around to the side door leading into the kitchen, so we wouldn’t disturb her session.

  Soon we had the artichokes cleaned, cut into quarters, and simmering in a saucepan with olive oil, lemon juice, oregano, and garlic. I chopped parsley while Lily demonstrated ballet moves for me.

  “This is called a fondu combination with a relevé,” she said, standing with one arm extended to the counter edge and the other curled in an arch over her head.

  I had no clue what she was talking about, but she looked so graceful, even getting up on tippy-toes with her beat-up sneakers.

  “Lovely, Lily!” said Lady Azura. She’d entered the kitchen behind us.

  Lily twirled across the kitchen and gave her a hug. You’d think they hadn’t seen each other in months. I loved that my best friend and my great-grandmother got along so well, though. Lily was Lady Azura’s most devoted follower.

  “It smells divine,” said Lady Azura, moving toward the stove. She lifted the lid on the artichokes, and a cloud of steam rose up, bathing the kitchen in more delicious aromas.

  I grinned. “We’ve called Mrs. Randazzo four times for advice,” I said. “Otherwise we would never have thought to pull off the outer leaves and cut the pointy top part away.”

  “Guess what I brought over, Lady Azura!” said Lily. “A spirit board!” She supplied the answer without waiting for Lady Azura to guess. “But Sara doesn’t want to do it.” Lily shot me an exasperated look.

  I moved to the sink to fill a large pot with water for the pasta. “It’s not that,” I said. “It’s just that I already have a lot of spirits in my life. I don’t need any more.”

  The truth was, while I was relieved that Lily knew about my powers now, and that we could talk about them openly, I just wasn’t all that comfortable conjuring up random spirits with my best friend. Spirits were like people, and sometimes they turned out to be really different than you expected. It wasn’t something I liked to mess around with. “If you want to meet a spirit, I am more than happy to introduce you to Henry on the third floor. He is, after all, a distant relative of yours.”

  Henry definitely liked to wreak havoc, as I mentioned before, but he was also pretty cute when he was sitting still and not causing problems. Last fall, when I was just getting to know Lily, she was up in my crafts room with me, and Henry had escaped from his closet. He’d seemed to be drawn to Lily and acted up more than usual when she was around. When I told Lady Azura, she mentioned that Henry was a distant relative of Lily’s, and that explained why he’d been drawn to her. It seemed like a fun idea to have them meet. I’d told Lily about him, of course, since telling her about my powers and the spirits that lived in my house. But so far I had not tried to initiate an introduction. Most likely she wouldn’t be able to actually see him, but it was easy enough to see the chaos he was capable of causing. It might actually be fun.

  Lily shook her head. “I want to meet an exciting spirit,” she said, “not a little kid who has to spend eternity in a supply closet. I want someone who was famous, or in show biz somehow!”

  “Henry is exciting,” I persisted. “Remember how he almost knocked a bookcase over on Jayden at the Halloween party last year?”

  I looked to Lady Azura for backup. I was positive she would react with the same lack of enthusiasm I felt. But instead I saw a smile spread across her face. “Delightful idea!” she said.

  Lily shot me an Aha! look.

  “Spirit boards can sometimes be useful conduits to tapping into the spirit realm, so long as they are used responsibly,” she said.

  “See, Sara? I told you she’d be psyched about it!” taunted Lily. “Even though I am not completely sure what a conduit is,” she admitted.

  “However—”

  Oh, good, I thought. Lady Azura had added a “however.”

  “However, we certainly don’t need a spirit board in this house to contact the dead. If you’d like, after dinner, we can go to my room and have a séance.”

  Lily grinned and twirled in a circle, doing a little happy dance.

  “It’s been awhile since I contacted anyone famous, just for fun,” Lady Azura mused. “I did once contact Elvis so he could sing ‘Love Me Tender’ just for me.”

  Lily looked totally awestruck. I, howe
ver, was feeling quite the opposite. One of my English vocab words popped into my head: “apprehensive,” and it summed up how I was feeling about this whole plan.

  “But doing it just for fun?” I said. “Think about what might happen! What if something goes wrong?”

  “I am a professional, Sara,” Lady Azura scoffed. “I conduct séances all the time for my clients. It’s perfectly harmless.”

  Just then the door opened, and my dad stepped into the kitchen, bringing with him a swirl of dry leaves. So the matter was forgotten for the moment. But I didn’t have a good feeling about the evening.

  Chapter 4

  The artichoke pasta turned out pretty well. Both my dad and Lady Azura had second helpings. My great-grandmother is a tiny woman. I often wonder where she puts it all.

  After the dishes were done, my father sat down at the table to open up his pile of mail, while Lady Azura retired to her bedroom to change out of her flowing dress into something a little more comfortable. Lily and I bustled around, collecting stuff to construct giant ice-cream sundaes for ourselves.

  “Oh, I forgot about this,” said my dad, staring at a thick, cream-colored card he’d just pulled out of a thick, cream-colored envelope. “I’ve been invited to a wedding in two weeks. It’s a buddy of mine from college named Costi. He’s getting remarried. Sara, do you want to come as my date? It should actually be pretty fun. The bride, Lena, is an actress on some TV show, and Costi told me there are a few movie stars on the guest list.”

  “Awesome!” said Lily.

  I smiled. “Sure, Dad. Sounds fun. Do you know what TV show the bride is on?”

  My dad scratched his head, like he was trying to remember, and then shrugged. “I don’t remember. But it was one I’ve never heard of.” Not that surprising, actually. My dad didn’t watch a lot of TV.

  Recently I’d been a little worried about my dad. He hadn’t gone out on a date in weeks, or at least as far as I knew. He was still a handsome guy, for someone over forty at least, and I was concerned that he wasn’t having enough fun. He worked a lot, and when he wasn’t working, he was always at home, fixing up the house for Lady Azura or reading one of his mystery novels. I loved to read too, but I didn’t think he should be spending all his evenings that way.

  My dad headed upstairs early, saying he had a report to work on for Monday morning. Lily and I were just scraping the bottoms of our sundae bowls when Lady Azura emerged, wearing her “comfortable” clothes. For her that meant a lime-green cashmere pullover, harem pants, and high-heeled mule slippers. I marveled at the woman’s ability to navigate around furniture in those heels. I’d frequently heard her complain that her old bones were achy, and in fact, I had not seen her climb the stairs to the second floor in all the time I’d lived with her. Yet she walked around the house in fancy shoes with high heels. As with everything else about my great-grandmother, the woman was a bundle of contradictions.

  “Are we ready?” she asked us.

  Lily and I exchanged looks. Lily’s look was excited. Mine was unenthusiastic. Lily had to be perplexed by my attitude in general recently. My reluctance to do the séance. My distracted state at Scoops yesterday. My weird relationship with Mason. She had to be wondering why I couldn’t just lighten up.

  The thing was, I’d told her I didn’t like-like Mason, but that wasn’t exactly true. When I had told her that, I had been unsure of how I felt about him, so it wasn’t as if I had lied exactly. It was just hard for me to explain why I felt like I had such a connection with him, since I couldn’t tell her about his powers. Because of our connection, our shared secret, we talked and texted a lot. There was no way I could tell her that I’d gotten to know him really well and that now I was definitely, officially crushing on him. What I didn’t know was whether he was crushing on me too. I wished I could ask Lily for advice. She’d helped me out a lot with my first-ever crush, Jayden Mendes.

  We followed Lady Azura down the creaky hardwood floor of the hallway, through the purple velvet curtains, and into the séance room.

  I stopped in the red foyer, hesitant. Lady Azura was clearly almost as excited about this as Lily. She’d been in already and had lit the candles and drawn the shades. I smelled something cinnamony, with a hint of sweetness.

  A resigned sigh escaped me, which I hoped only I heard. I moved into the room and sat down at the round table with Lily and Lady Azura.

  Lady Azura reached out and grasped one of each of our hands. Lily and I grasped each other’s.

  “Lily, is there anyone in particular you would like me to reach? Or shall I just cast a wide net and see who’s available?”

  Lily’s eyes were as wide as saucers. “You can do that? Just see who wants to come hang out and they’ll just join us?”

  I started to protest, to tell Lily that was most definitely not how it was done, but Lady Azura silenced me with one of her looks. “Of course I can do that. Close your eyes. Empty your minds.”

  “You must not set up any barriers, either of you,” she continued. I knew she was speaking mostly to me. I tried to empty my mind. Not to block. It wasn’t easy. Like being in a dodgeball game and being told not to try to ward off the balls that get thrown at you.

  Several long minutes passed. Occasionally Lady Azura would mumble something, but it didn’t seem to me like whatever she was doing was working. Lily’s hand was warm and dry in my left hand. Lady Azura’s felt tiny, papery, but her old fingers still grasped mine firmly.

  After a few more moments, Lady Azura cleared her throat and started talking. Her voice sounded even huskier than usual. “I would like to invite our spirit friends that are in our midst to come join us. We are seeking any famous thespians or musicians from the glamorous eras. My lovely young companions wish to delight in the company of the true stars, those of yesteryear. Will anyone oblige us? Marilyn? Elvis? Johnny? Is there anyone there?” This sounded different from what Lady Azura usually said when we were conjuring spirits, but I thought maybe she was putting on a little more of a show for Lily than she did for just me.

  I tried to keep my mind open, but this all felt very silly. Stars of yesteryear? Who was going to respond to that?

  “Fred?” whispered Lily. “Ginger?”

  I opened my eyes. Lily had opened hers as well.

  Lady Azura was humming quietly. “I am sensing Irene Dunne. Frederick Arnault. Ella Chase. Please, come through. We would love to have the pleasure of your company if you would care to appear.”

  I had never heard of those old-time celebrities, but that wasn’t all that surprising, as Lady Azura and I were three generations apart, and I didn’t watch a lot of old movies.

  My eyes were drawn to something in the corner of the room. A silvery glimmer. As quickly as it had appeared, it faded away again. Then, out of the corner of my eye, I thought I saw another shimmery shape, but as soon as I looked at it straight on, there was nothing there. Was I imagining it? I remembered one evening last summer, sitting on the porch with my dad and Lady Azura, watching the fireflies. As soon as one lit up and your eye went to it, it went dark again. I’d had to stare at a dark spot near the hedge and just wait for one to flit by and light up.

  I tried this technique now. Looked at a dark corner of the room. Waited for the silvery shimmer. Nothing happened. We were alone. There were no spirits here.

  Lady Azura opened her eyes. “Sara,” she said in her regular voice, “are you intentionally blocking them?”

  “What? No!” My answer came out more forcefully than I had intended.

  I took a deep breath and continued. “I don’t think there are any spirits here.”

  Lady Azura dismissed what I had said with a wave of her hand. “They are teetering nearby. I can sense them. But they are not coming through all the way. It is as if they are being blocked.” Her eyes met mine.

  “Well, if I am blocking them somehow,” I said, looking away, “I’m not doing it on purpose.”

  Lady Azura shrugged and turned to Lily. “I’m sorry, my dea
r,” she said to her. “But I fear we will not be successful tonight.”

  Lily looked disappointed, but also a little impressed. “So Sara’s powers are so strong that she can cancel yours out?”

  “I wouldn’t put it that way,” Lady Azura said drily. “Though Sara’s powers are indeed very strong. But I suspect what is happening here is that Sara is, perhaps unintentionally, preventing the spirits from being able to join us simply because she does not want them to. She’s not comfortable with this séance. The vibes in this room are all wrong.”

  I couldn’t tell if Lady Azura was annoyed at me or not. The look on her face was hard to read as she continued talking to Lily. “I believe that I was nearly successful in conjuring these spirits, but they do not feel welcome here”—I started to protest, and she silenced me with a look—“whether that is intentional or not on Sara’s part. But they can sense it. As a result, they are stuck. Hesitant to come all the way in. Like a crowded doctor’s waiting room. The spirits are lined up and ready to come in, but the doctor isn’t seeing patients.”

  A doctor’s waiting room? This made no sense to me. I wondered if maybe Lady Azura was just making up excuses for not being able to conjure the celebrity spirits Lily had asked for. But a small part of me wondered if I had really blocked them. Could I do that? If I was being really honest, I had to admit that I didn’t want them here. Didn’t want to do a séance with my best friend and my great-grandmother just for fun. I just wasn’t comfortable with it.

  I could tell Lily was disappointed, and I felt bad about it. “I’m sorry, Lil,” I said. “If I was doing that, I didn’t do it on purpose.”

  Lady Azura clasped my hand. “We believe you, my dear,” she said kindly. “Don’t we, Lily?”

  Lily smiled at me and nodded. “No worries, Sara. I think it’s totally cool anyway. Thanks for trying, Lady Azura.”

  When Lady Azura didn’t answer, I looked at her and saw she had walked over to the cabinet where she stored her crystals. “I could also be wrong about the origin of the block,” she said distractedly as she carefully peered at some crystals on the shelf. “I sense a tremendous disturbance in the atmosphere.”