“I amnotdamaging their equipment. We’ll get sued.”
“I didn’t mean damaging equipment. Jesus. I meant faking evidence but making it obvious it’s being faked. Then they can’t use the footage. No one wants to watch a ghost-hunting show where the ghosts are annoying teenagers.”
She looked like I’d kicked a kitten. “You want me tofake evidence?”
“You know all that paranormal stuff. You’d be good at it.”
She was already shaking her head. “No. Nope. As an investigator of the paranormal, Icannot—”
“NowIcan’t believe we’re related. Do you have a better idea? There’s a firestarter in that mine, and if it’s there when they go in and we aren’t around to stop it, all those peopleare going to die. And besides—don’t you want to preserve the sanctity of investigation by making those guys look like the hacks they are? Don’t you want to show the world they can’t come into Addamsville and stomp around because they think it’s open for everyone?”
She hesitated. I knew that would work on her before she replied, before her expression even changed. I knew it because despite both our disbelief, wewererelated, and there was at least one thing, inherited from our mothers, that proved it.
We were Aberdeens.
“No destruction of property?” she said.
I held up a hand. “Scout’s honor.”
“No hurting people?”
“Nope.”
“What happens if we get caught?”
“I take the fall, one hundo percent.”
“Even though you’re doing this to stop a firestarter?”
“Aw, that’s so sweet, you care about me.”
“If we get caught doing this together, then I’m in trouble, too. And if both of us are caught, that firestarter is going to run loose.”
She wasn’t wrong. I hated it when Artemis wasn’t wrong.
“We could get Bach to help,” I said. “Forester doesn’t want this firestarter around, either. With a third person, we’d be more efficient. And safer.”
“No. No extra people, and no Bach.” She shuddered. “Why would you even suggest that?”
“Look,” I finally said, “I am going to help you save this town. I’m going to help you get these mouth-breather tourists out of Addamsville, because I hate them as much as you do. Even if you get caught with me, you have your mom and a sterling reputation. Nothing’s going to happen to you. I’m the trash in this situation. I’m the disposable one. We keep people safe now, worry about the consequences later.”
She gave me another long, hard look.
I stared right back and said, “Either you come with me to help, or I go do it by myself. And you know how well that went last time.”
We squared off in the Happy Hal’s parking lot in the heart of autumn, with the dark and the ghosts. Artemis’s gaze strayed to my hand. It was my fault I’d faced the last firestarter alone, and we both knew that. It was my fault Artemis hadn’t been there to watch my back. She wasn’t the bravest girl in Addamsville, my cousin, but she had a heart.
And finally, Artemis said, “I can’t let you go by yourself.”
8
That night, against all common sense, I went out to perform my good deeds. Pruning, fixing, mending. It wasn’t to make up for the fires the town believed I’d set, like Artemis thought. If I couldn’t hunt for them, I had to do something. I couldn’t suffer the full weight of Mom’s disappointment.
Just because people knew now that I’d been going out at night didn’t mean I had to stop doing it. Who was going to be out in the freezing cold at one in the morning?
I got as far as the east side and was trying to right a tilted mailbox when headlights flooded the yard around me and hollering split the night.
“There she is!”
