Second Glance Read online

  “Maybe you could take this number off your call list,” Eli suggested, and he threw the portable phone across the room to smash against the wall.

  He was sitting on the floor with his hands splayed through his hair when Watson found him. The dog dropped the telephone’s battery into Eli’s lap and then stood over him. Eli rubbed his hand over his face. “If you’re hoping for a snack, Watson, you’re out of luck. Unless maybe bean curd tastes good with a Coors chaser.”

  Eli wrapped his arm around the dog’s thick neck and stared into his mournful brown eyes. It was one of the reasons Eli had picked him from the Humane Society—one look, and you knew that hound would never be happy. Which meant that Eli could not fail again.

  Working for the Warburtons, Ross had learned that the witching hour was between 10 at night and 3 A.M. Most of the thumps and bumps and visions that Curtis had seen—or pretended to have seen—occurred during that time. By 10:30, Ross and Ethan had set up the bedroom in the abandoned house to his satisfaction, if not his nephew’s.

  “Where’s all the stuff?” Ethan asked. “You know, the cool equipment. Like they have on Real Scary Stories.” He eyed the video camera dubiously.

  “Curtis says you don’t want too many bells and whistles the first time you go out to investigate,” Ross answered. “You’ll wind up getting distracted by the tools, and relying on them instead of yourself. Plus, entities disturb the magnetic field. They’re just as likely to make the equipment short out as they are to leave a trace.”

  “Still,” Ethan muttered. “Without tools and stuff we’re as lame as Shaggy and Scooby.”

  Ross laughed. “Zoinks,” he said, then glanced at his nephew’s crestfallen face. “Look. Whenever Curtis got the feeling that something was there, he’d come back with the cool equipment to back up his senses. We can do that too. Of course, first we’ll have to buy the cool equipment.”

  The camera was pointed toward one of the bedroom walls, the junk food was within arm’s distance, the sleeping bags were unrolled to form a synthetic island on the filthy floorboards. The only source of light in the room was a small Maglite set between Ross and Ethan to form a bright puddle. Ross placed a small deck of cards in the spotlight and began to shuffle.

  Ethan spoke around an enormous Bazooka bubble he’d just blown. “Considering that you think Warburton’s an asshole, you sure quote him a lot.”

  “Watch your mouth. He’s not an asshole, he’s a liar. And even though I think he makes up half the stuff he sees, he knows his shit.”

  “Watch your mouth,” Ethan parroted, then grabbed the deck. “Uncle Ross? You think the ghost here died some horrible way?”

  “I don’t even know there’s a ghost here yet. Are you going to deal?”

  “Yeah.” The boy started to divide the cards. “I wonder if it’ll be all mad at us. If it might confuse us for whoever chopped off its head with an ax.”

  “What ax?” Ross tipped his hand into the single beam of the flashlight.“Okay, so having any member of the royal family is a good thing?”

  “I can’t believe you never played this. Yeah, you want to get kings and queens. And aces. But more than that you want to get cards of the same suit in a row, like two-three-four-five-six. First you have to bet something . . . you have any cash?”

  “Reese’s Pieces.”

  “Well, whatever. A straight flush beats four of a kind, and four of a kind beats a full house. That’s good enough to start, so I’m going to draw.” He looked up. “That means pick a card.”

  “Thanks,” Ross said dryly. “I’ll raise you two Reese’s.”

  “I won’t be scared, you know, even if it comes after me.”

  If put on the spot—something he had not allowed van Vleet to do—Ross would have had to say that he did not believe any entity was haunting the Pike property. In the first place, Ross had seen nothing in all his months of ghost hunting. In the second, even going on theory, it was crazy to think of a human spirit gathering enough energy to cause the events that had been attributed to it—from the ground freezing to rose petals raining from the clouds. Though unlikely, each of those circumstances could be explained by something natural—a latent ice floe running beneath the soil, a strange evaporation.

  Then again, Ross had been wrong about things before.

  At the very least, this night was good for Ethan. Ross stretched back on his elbows and watched his nephew lay out his poker hand. “I’ve got a straight.”

  “Three of a kind. Jacks.”

  “Maybe you should play with a handicap,” Ethan suggested. He dealt a second round. “I think I’ll come back.”

  “Here?”

  “No, not here . . . just here. After I die.” He looked around the room, then at his uncle, a dare. “I mean, I won’t be done yet. You know?”

  Ross had gone to homes with the Warburtons where children had died of disease, or by accident. The mothers wore hope like mantillas, framing their faces as they waited for Curtis to give them back what they’d lost. In those cases, it was not moans and thumps and strange occurrences that had led to the call, it was the lack of them.

  He thought of his sister, and folded his cards.

  “I’m hungry,” Ethan said. He slipped away in shadow, fumbling around and causing a loud crash.

  “You all right?” Ross swung the beam of the flashlight toward the pack of junk food they’d brought, but that entire corner of the room was empty.

  Ethan spoke from behind him. “I’m here,” he said, his voice shaking. “That, uh, that wasn’t me.”

  He plastered himself up against his uncle’s back. “Let’s just take a look,” Ross murmured. Everything was quiet, now, and there was no evidence that anything had fallen. “It could have been a brick outside, or a rat.” He slipped an arm around Ethan’s shoulders. “It could have been anything, Ethan.”

  “Right.”

  “Why don’t we sit down so that I can whip your butt this time around?”

  Ethan relaxed a little. “As if,” he said, dredging up the courage to peel himself away and take a seat again.

  Ross dealt the cards, but his eyes kept scanning the dark. Nothing unusual, nothing that captured his attention. Except the lens cap of the video camera, hanging down on a black cord from the side of the apparatus, which had begun to swing back and forth.

  Although there was no breeze in the room.

  From outside came the sound of a hollow thud—a tree falling, or a person landing on all fours. “Did you hear that?” Ethan whispered shakily.

  “Yeah.” Ross walked toward the broken window and peered out into the woods that edged the back of the property. A flash of white caught his eye—the tail of a deer, a shooting star, the eyes of a barn owl.

  There was a rustle of leaves, and two distinct footfalls. A hitched wail, like the cry of an infant.

  “We may just take a walk down there,” Ross murmured.

  Ethan shook his head hard. “No way. I’m staying here.”

  “It’s probably just a raccoon.”

  “And what if it’s not?”

  Ross smiled slowly. “What if,” he said.

  Shelby was not in the habit of allowing her son to do dangerous things; it was hazard enough for him to live in this world. But Ethan had a nine-year-old’s sense of adventure and wanderlust. Believing he was part of Ross’s mission—well, maybe it would be good for both of them.

  She walked into his room, picking up his Game Boy from the floor, as well as a few cartridges that had fallen beneath the bed. A Red Sox game schedule was on the wall, along with the textbooks Shelby used to home-school Ethan, and a haiku he’d written last year as part of a unit on Japan.

  Deep in the darkness

  I wake to make the night day.

  How does the sun feel?

  Shelby sank onto his bed. She wondered if Ross was keeping Ethan safe. She wondered if Ethan missed her, just a little.

  She stared uneasily at the computer. The last time she’d decided to check