of scared of what might happen if Isobel tries to lead the séance herself. I told her I’d ask you. Actually, I kind of told her I’d already asked you, and you said yes, so…” He gave me his best puppy-dog eyes; his smudged eyeliner made him look even more woeful.
Defeated, I gave him a look of doom. “Fine. Okay. I’ll do it. But if they start doing stupid crap like trying to invoke demons or anything, I’m out of there.”
I wondered briefly how it would look for Dad’s business if his daughter got caught trespassing in a cemetery on Halloween night, but it didn’t matter. After all, I didn’t intend to get caught.
And I’d have to not get caught twice, since I intended to drop by the cemetery the night before Halloween to do a little negotiating with the locals.
After Tim left, I sat staring at my laptop for a long time. I thought about the thing in the locker room, and how Mom might’ve handled it.
Mom would never just throw out evidence. She would analyze it and catalog it. If it turned out to be falseproof, she would note that as well, but she wouldn’t just disregard it.
I dragged the sound file out of the recycling bin on my desktop and dropped it and the JPEGs into a folder I named
Locker-Room Investigation
. Then I wrote up a brief account of the investigation and saved that in the same folder. At least I thought I could rule out an actual hell gate, since I’d gotten that EVP. But if this was something else…what was it?
I really needed someone to talk to. Not just about the locker room. About everything.
I considered e-mailing the team that had done the Ramsay Court investigation, but their website made it pretty clear that they didn’t have time for questions from amateur investigators.
That left me with just one other option—Sabrina Brightstar. I needed
someone
to guide me a little. Every time I thought about that hissing whisper in the recording, I felt more and more like I was in over my head.
Mom’s address book didn’t list a phone number or an e-mail address for Sabrina, but it did give me her real name—Mildred Schwartz—and a mailing address in Orlando. Snail mail it was, then. I wrote her a letter explaining who I was and that I was trying to find some information about my mother. I’d have to mail it closer to school, though; I couldn’t leave the letter in our own street-sidemailbox and risk Dad finding it. He’d freak if he knew who I was trying to contact.
I’d first met Sabrina and the team’s fourth member, Bryan Chambers, at one of Mom and Dad’s team dinner parties. (Bryan was notorious for freaking out halfway through investigations and hiding in the car—I knew he wouldn’t be any help, so I hadn’t even bothered trying to find him.) I remembered Sabrina as an older woman with short, frizzy gray hair and big, square-shaped eyeglasses. Her face was thin and creased, and she wore blue eye shadow all the way up to her brows. She wore tunics over flowing skirts and ridiculous amounts of clanky jewelry. She claimed to be psychic, drank a lot of wine, talked too loudly, smoked in the bathroom, and insulted my father’s aura. She’d kind of scared me.
I remembered asking Mom about Sabrina once after one of those dinner parties.
“Why does she lie so much?” I’d asked Mom. I could tell Sabrina made a lot of stuff up. She embellished every story she told, trying to make herself sound like the awesomest person in the room.
“She doesn’t lie, sweetie,” Mom said. “At least, she doesn’t mean to.” She lifted me onto the counter and leaned over so we were eye to eye. “Some people really want to be special, Violet, like you and I are special. Sabrina’s like that.She has her own abilities, but that’s not enough for her. She wants to be more like us, so she pretends sometimes. It’s not okay to make things up, but sometimes if you understand why someone’s doing it, you can cut them a little slack.”
Mom was nice like that. She’d looked
Defeated, I gave him a look of doom. “Fine. Okay. I’ll do it. But if they start doing stupid crap like trying to invoke demons or anything, I’m out of there.”
I wondered briefly how it would look for Dad’s business if his daughter got caught trespassing in a cemetery on Halloween night, but it didn’t matter. After all, I didn’t intend to get caught.
And I’d have to not get caught twice, since I intended to drop by the cemetery the night before Halloween to do a little negotiating with the locals.
After Tim left, I sat staring at my laptop for a long time. I thought about the thing in the locker room, and how Mom might’ve handled it.
Mom would never just throw out evidence. She would analyze it and catalog it. If it turned out to be falseproof, she would note that as well, but she wouldn’t just disregard it.
I dragged the sound file out of the recycling bin on my desktop and dropped it and the JPEGs into a folder I named
Locker-Room Investigation
. Then I wrote up a brief account of the investigation and saved that in the same folder. At least I thought I could rule out an actual hell gate, since I’d gotten that EVP. But if this was something else…what was it?
I really needed someone to talk to. Not just about the locker room. About everything.
I considered e-mailing the team that had done the Ramsay Court investigation, but their website made it pretty clear that they didn’t have time for questions from amateur investigators.
That left me with just one other option—Sabrina Brightstar. I needed
someone
to guide me a little. Every time I thought about that hissing whisper in the recording, I felt more and more like I was in over my head.
Mom’s address book didn’t list a phone number or an e-mail address for Sabrina, but it did give me her real name—Mildred Schwartz—and a mailing address in Orlando. Snail mail it was, then. I wrote her a letter explaining who I was and that I was trying to find some information about my mother. I’d have to mail it closer to school, though; I couldn’t leave the letter in our own street-sidemailbox and risk Dad finding it. He’d freak if he knew who I was trying to contact.
I’d first met Sabrina and the team’s fourth member, Bryan Chambers, at one of Mom and Dad’s team dinner parties. (Bryan was notorious for freaking out halfway through investigations and hiding in the car—I knew he wouldn’t be any help, so I hadn’t even bothered trying to find him.) I remembered Sabrina as an older woman with short, frizzy gray hair and big, square-shaped eyeglasses. Her face was thin and creased, and she wore blue eye shadow all the way up to her brows. She wore tunics over flowing skirts and ridiculous amounts of clanky jewelry. She claimed to be psychic, drank a lot of wine, talked too loudly, smoked in the bathroom, and insulted my father’s aura. She’d kind of scared me.
I remembered asking Mom about Sabrina once after one of those dinner parties.
“Why does she lie so much?” I’d asked Mom. I could tell Sabrina made a lot of stuff up. She embellished every story she told, trying to make herself sound like the awesomest person in the room.
“She doesn’t lie, sweetie,” Mom said. “At least, she doesn’t mean to.” She lifted me onto the counter and leaned over so we were eye to eye. “Some people really want to be special, Violet, like you and I are special. Sabrina’s like that.She has her own abilities, but that’s not enough for her. She wants to be more like us, so she pretends sometimes. It’s not okay to make things up, but sometimes if you understand why someone’s doing it, you can cut them a little slack.”
Mom was nice like that. She’d looked
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