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Our joking around didn’t last for long, though. The closer we got to the house, the tenser Raquel became. She had shotgun in front; I was the phantom in the backseat. “How is this going to work?” she asked.
“It’s pretty simple: I sort of didn’t mention I hadn’t done this before. No need to add to her nervousness, right? “We just need a mirror. Does 156 one of you guys have a compact? You know, for powder, makeup?”
We were at a stoplight, which was why both Dana and Raquel were able to turn around and stare at me. After a second, Dana said, “Hi, have we met?”
“Okay, no makeup in the car,” I said. “But we have to get a mirror.”
A quick stop at an all — night drugstore yielded one powder compact. Although I had more substance than not, getting through the packaging was difficult for me, so I let Raquel handle it. She tore at the paper and plastic, hands shaky, making way more of a mess than necessary.
“I haven’t talked to them in a long time,” she said, prying the compact out. “And now I’m just going to show up at two a.m. and be all, hey, remember that ghost you said doesn’t exist?”
“Maybe we don’t have to wake them,” Dana said. A fine rain began to fall, and she hit the windshield wipers, with their soft slap — slap sound.
“Is this ghostbusting business loud, Bianca?”
“Urn, it can be. But it doesn’t have to be.” I hoped that was true. “We’ll try.”
Raquel had always been very clear about the fact that she Wasn’t wealthy, like most of the living and dead students at Evernight. Her neighborhood Wasn’t as bad as I’d always imagined it, though. Maybe I was just naive and thought being poor meant living in a slum like one they showed on bad TV shows, with burning cars and gang members everywhere. It was just a quiet neighborhood with small houses that didn’t have much in the way of yards. Instead of squalor and violence, everything wasjust kind of gray and run — down, with some half — hearted, sloppy graffiti on the trash cans.
“We’re lucky it’s raining,” Raquel said. “Everybody would be out on the corners if it weren ‘t.”
The house in the middle of the block belonged to Raquel’s family. We realized as soon as we got out of the car that no one was home. “Where would they be?” Dana asked, as we peered through the windows at packed — up boxes. “The furniture’s in place, so they haven’t moved.”
“With Frida, maybe?” Raquel squinted. “It looks like they’ve pulled up part of the kitchen floor. Maybe that water pipe burst again, and they’re fixing the damage.”
“They’re not home,” I said. “That’s the important thing. We can do this now.”
Raquel went very still. “I’m not sure I can.”
Dana put an arm around her shoulders. “It’s okay. If you want to stay out here, that works, too. Right, Bianca?”
I started to agree with her, then stopped myself. “You can stay out here if you want to,” I said. “But I think you should face this thing.” Her white lips pressed together, Raquel shook her head.
“Come on, Raquel! Since when do you run away from a fight?” She wouldn’t look at me any longer, but I kept going. “If you don’t see this happen, then You’ll always be scared of it. Always. But if you see us defeat it, then that’s the last way you’ll remember it. Beaten. Isn’t that what you’d rather see?”
“Back off, okay?” Dana got betvveen us. “Don’t push her.”
“No,” Raquel said. She touched Dana’s shoulder, gently edging her aside. “Bianca’s right. I’ll go in.”
As the rain fell softly around us, pattering on the metal awning overhead, Dana jimmied the front — door lock as swiftly as Lucas could’ve done.
Too bad I wasn’t in Black Cross long enough to Jearn that trick, I thought.
The door swung open with a creak. Dana tiptoed in, trying not to make a sound; Raquel, face pale, followed. I allowed myself to become mostly vapor, a soft blue mist right behind them.
“Whoa,” Raquel said, clearly taken aback. “That’s — spooky.”
“Shhh! We’re trying to be quiet here!” Dana held the compact in front of her, like she hoped to use it as a shield. I would need to take the compact from her, but that would come once I could take form again.
“That’s okay, “I said. “Sooner or later, we want it to know we’re here.”
I stretched my consciousness throughout the house, discovering that I could sense the layout of the rooms without seeing them, that I knew which one had belonged to Raquel — part of her essence lingered there.
So did something else.
The voice resonated on a frequency that Wasn’t quite sound, merely vibration, in the ether we shared. Little girl. Little girl. You’ve come back to play.
Raquel started to shake. “It’s here,” she whispered. “I can tell.”
