“You shouldn’t play with forces you don’t understand,” she spat. She locked eyes with Emma. “It can be dangerous. You can accidentally call all kinds of problems down on yourself.”
“I think it’s time you stop with the lame aura warnings,” Charlotte said. “You’re the one who called down all kinds of problems on yourself when you messed with us. Remember that the next time you try to get in Sutton’s head.”
“You’ve been warned,” Celeste insisted, shaking her head slowly. “The spirits will not be mocked.” She tossed her bag on her shoulder and started up the path away from them. A moment later they heard a car start and drive away.
“That was brilliant,” Madeline told Madame Darkling. The medium had already lit a cigarette and stood to the side, examining their props. Charlotte handed the woman an envelope bulging with cash, and she opened it and began counting the bills.
“I’m going to have to remember some of this stuff,” she said. “Glow paint and balloons. Nice touch.”
Emma stood back, mask still on, not joining in the celebration of the rest of the group. She watched as the woman shoved the envelope somewhere inside her robes, then took off down the same path Celeste had, toward the parking lot. Laurel wheeled a cooler out of the underbrush while Gabby and Lili built a teetering pyramid of kindling. Nisha cued up a Black Eyed Peas album on the surround sound. Soon they had a fire crackling, marshmallows speared on sticks and browning in the heat. The clearing, which just minutes before had been spookier than a graveyard, became bright and cheerful.
“That could not have gone better,” Madeline said, reclining in a camp chair. The Twitter Twins were reading aloud tweets hashtagged “séance.” They had gotten the prank trending locally within the past few minutes.
Emma pulled Sutton’s wool jacket closer around her torso. “You guys, I feel a little bad,” she said.
If there had been a DJ playing in the bushes, his record would have scratched and gone silent. The girls turned to gawk at her. Sutton rarely felt bad about anything, and she wasn’t big on regret. But Emma couldn’t help but think of how desperately she’d wanted to believe that her sister could still speak, and how lonely she’d felt in the split second after she’d realized the medium was a fraud. It had felt almost as awful as those moments after she’d found the murderer’s first note—almost as if she’d lost Sutton all over again.
“I just mean, you know … her grandma recently died. Maybe we shouldn’t have gone there,” she said softly.
Surprisingly, it was Nisha who spoke first, her voice tense.
“If she was stupid enough to think her grandma would talk to her through some cheesy lamé-wearing hack, she deserved to be punked,” Nisha said. “The dead don’t come back. No matter how much you want them to.”
Emma bit her lip. Of course solid, sensible Nisha would have no patience for the desperate, delusional hopes of the grieving. Her voice was harsh with bitterness. She sounded as if she was mocking her own grief as much as anyone else’s.
The song ended on the stereo system. In the silence before the next started, they heard the distant bark of a dog down in Nisha’s subdivision. Then they heard a low, mournful cry.
“Did you leave the sound effects on?” Laurel asked Nisha. Nisha shook her head. Something crashed in the bushes nearby. Emma strained her ears.
“Seriously, guys?” Madeline said. “Who counter-pranked? I thought we agreed not to pull those anymore. That stopped being clever in middle school. I think whoever did it should have to sit out the next prank as punishment.”
“I didn’t do it!” Laurel quickly protested. “Cross my heart and hope to die!”
Everyone quickly repeated the safe word. They looked uncertainly at one another.
“Okay,” said Charlotte, rolling her eyes. Her robe hung open, revealing a pink sequined camisole. “It’s obviously just Celeste.”
Madeline slapped her forehead. “Oh my God, you’re right.”
“But we heard her leave.” Emma frowned.
Charlotte raised an eyebrow. “Excuse me, are you new to this? She circled around somehow. There are trails all through here—it wouldn’t be hard. She’s just trying to make us think there’s some evil spirit on the loose.”
“I can’t believe she’s asking for seconds,” Laurel said.
“Just ignore her,” Charlotte said. “I’m so over that weirdo.”
The explanation seemed to be enough for the other girls. Nisha turned the music back up. The Twitter Twins replayed the whole séance on their new iPad, reading the comments that had already popped up on YouTube. “Spaceman77 says, ‘Who’s the babe in the satyr horns, she’s hawt!!’” Gabby turned to Emma, but Emma hardly noticed.
They were probably right—it must be Celeste, hoping to get back at them. But what if someone was hurt? The voice had sounded like it was crying. What if someone had gotten injured out in the woods?
Or … what if Becky had come back to the scene of the crime and taken another victim?
Emma imagined Sutton bleeding and running through the woods, trying to get away from Becky. What if someone had been in the clearing that night? What if someone could have helped her but had ignored her instead? Sutton could be alive now, at the fire with the rest of them. She couldn’t let Becky get away with it again.
She stood up and dusted off her butt. Out beyond the cheerful firelight the canyon was pitch-black. She peered up the trail in the direction she’d heard the crying.
“What are you doing?” Madeline asked, staring at her.