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“I’ve decided something. If everything goes okay tomorrow, I think I’m going to tell my agent I want to get back to acting,” Izzy said. “She’ll probably try to talk me out of it. I can earn more with a couple of sponsored Instagram posts than I can with a medium-budget movie.”

“But it wouldn’t be about the money, would it?” Cam asked.

“No,” Izzy said. “It would be about the work. And, I guess, how I want people to remember me someday.”

“Okay, in that case, we better have tea,” Cam said. “So we can both get to sleep, and you can salvage your career, and I can rescue this house, and then maybe we can each start a new chapter for ourselves.”

“Even for you, Cam, that’s a pretty hefty to-do list.” Izzy flashed a signature megawatt smile. This time, though, it seemed genuine.

No kidding, Cam thought as she turned on the kettle.

The next morning, Izzy’s team and the camera crew from People swarmed around the cafe, setting up cameras and lights. Francine was frowning at a vase that she had spent the previous ten minutes moving a fraction of an inch in various directions. For the fifth time, Cam checked the mise en place she had prepared. Everything was set. All Izzy needed to do was put it together for the cameras.

Cam went into the dining area, where Izzy’s makeup artist had set up her station and was busy powdering and contouring the star’s face into an even more perfect version of itself. Cam caught Izzy’s pale-green–eyed gaze, and she thought for a moment she could see fear there, but Izzy batted her freshly mascaraed lashes and gave Cam another confident smile.

“Are you feeling good?” Cam asked. “Do you want to go over anything one more time?”

They had drilled each step, but Cam didn’t want to leave anything to chance.

“Why would I need to do that?” Izzy said dismissively as the makeup artist flicked a sponge across her cheekbone. “I cook this meal all the time,” she added, her voice getting loud enough that the producer passing by would surely hear. “It’s like my absolute favorite to make for my girlfriends.”

Cam felt annoyance rise up in her but swiftly checked it. Fine, she thought. That was the deal she had made with Izzy, and now she had to play along. As far as anyone from People knew, Izzy was a brilliant cook, and Cam was her friend and collaborator, and the two of them had been holed up in Cam’s “darling” hometown to work on their cookbook. Cam wasn’t going to be onscreen for the video, but she was there to lend a hand if needed.

“Oh, I know,” Cam said lightly. “I’m just here to help.”

Izzy’s publicist, Rawley, wafted by, her stiletto boots clicking across the floor. She was wearing a leather jumpsuit and had a tattoo of a thorny rose vine winding around her neck. Rawley stopped to hiss quietly in Cam’s ear: “This better work.” Just as she disappeared into the kitchen, a jar from the makeup artist’s table seemed to suddenly hop off its perch and crash onto the floor, sending shimmering highlighting powder across the floor.

“Ew, this old place is drafty,” Izzy complained, leaning over to dust an imaginary bit of the powder from the hem of her designer jeans.

Cam turned away as a ripple of warm air coursed through the room. That, she well knew, was no draft. Behave yourself, Ada, she silently warned.

“Okay, if everyone is ready, it’s showtime,” the producer announced.

Cam had never been so nervous watching a performance as she was then. She had seen her mother onstage a thousand times from the backs of dark bars with sticky floors and coffee shops with mismatched chairs. But she had never worried for Flora. Her mother was always in command, her long fingers flicking over her old acoustic guitar, her voice silvery and soft. Under the lights, with an audience, Flora was perfect. Cam had always wished her mother could be as good at everything else—paying bills, remembering to grocery shop, keeping a boyfriend—as she was when she was singing.

Izzy, too, seemed to come alive in front of the cameras. She tied on an apron before tearing it off with an infectious laugh and tossing it aside. “I’m not going to wear this. I never wear one when I’m cooking at home, so I just wind up with spills all over, and I don’t care a bit,” she said. The producer nodded in approval. Izzy was being herself—or at least what Izzy wanted people to think was herself—and the cameras were eating it up.

Izzy pulled out the bowls of olives and softened gorgonzola that Cam had prepared and confidently filled the briny orbs with the cheese, setting them on a sheet pan just as she’d been taught. She wrapped them with the sheets of fat-streaked prosciutto, chatting all the while to the cameras about how she had mostly given up meat but couldn’t bear to live without Italian ham. She popped a stray bit into her mouth. “Wouldn’t want that to go to waste,” she said with a wink. Cam felt herself relax just the tiniest bit. This was going well.

The producer stopped a few times to get the right shot of her putting the pan in the oven that Cam had preheated. And while the hors d’oeuvres crisped in the oven, Izzy had her nose powdered. The cameras again rolled, and Izzy plated them onto a heavy handmade pottery platter. She picked one up and chewed it for the money shot. “Mmmmm,” she said, holding out her arm as if offering a bite to the audience. “So yummy, and so easy—you gotta try this, people!”

“Cut,” the guy behind the camera called. “We’re all good on that dish.”

Cam reset the kitchen for the pasta course as Izzy had her lip gloss reapplied. Meanwhile, the crew dove at the platter of food like a pack of dogs—clearly this was a perk of shooting food videos—and they all agreed with Izzy’s assessment. So far, so good, she thought, although the main course was the one she worried the most about.

But as the cameras picked up again, Izzy kept up the act. She plopped several pinches of salt into the boiling water, confidently telling viewers that this was an “essential” for flavorful pasta dishes. And she managed to get all the pesto ingredients into the food processor, only stumbling a little as she got the machine to work. “My old one at home is a little different,” she explained with a shrug and a laugh. Relatable, Cam thought.

Izzy forgot to taste the sauce to see if it needed any more salt—her Alison Roman trick—but managed to plate the pasta and sauce just as Cam had instructed, adding a shower of parsley on top with a dramatic flair. And suddenly, Cam realized with a lurch of her stomach, that something had gone badly awry. Izzy, she realized, had been using a canister of sugar and not salt to season the dish. How had that happened, when she herself had placed the canisters on the counter in exactly the places she had shown Izzy?

It quickly dawned on her: Ada.

The ghost was trying to sabotage the shoot.

She watched with dread as Izzy wound up for the big moment, the one Cam knew would be the key to the entire shoot. With a platter of the pasta on the counter in front of her, Izzy twirled a loop of spaghetti around her fork. Cam knew how it would taste, having been generously seasoned with sugar, both in the sauce and in the pasta water: disgusting. She felt the urge to close her eyes to avoid watching the whole thing fall apart. Would she spit it out? The crew would be furious. Rawley would be livid. And Izzy would be apoplectic.

Izzy put the forkful of pasta in her mouth, and she paused for a millisecond, her eyes widening. “Mmmmm,” she said between chews, nodding in pleasure. “Delicious!”

“Cut,” called the cameraman. “We got what we needed.”