“Maybe it’s haunted hummus,” Emma joked.
The girls had spent the afternoon running last-minute errands and setting the stage for the prank. They all wore long black robes embroidered with metallic stars that Charlotte had rented from a costume shop. Everyone except Nisha, that is, who wore black jeans and a black T-shirt, like a stage tech. Her job was to hide in the bushes and activate all the “special effects” they had devised for the prank, including a portable surround-sound system preloaded with Halloween noises like groans and rattling chains. But the best part was a group of helium balloons painted with scary, glow-in-the-dark faces that Nisha could drag around on a ribbon. The girls had tested them in Laurel’s bedroom earlier. In the dark, they gave a perfectly terrifying impression of floating disembodied heads.
I was proud of my friends for coming up with such a great prank—but I felt a little sad, too. They were about to conduct a fake séance in the same place I’d spent the last few hours of my life. If only there was a way I could really talk to Emma. If only Madame Darkling was a bona fide medium and I could use her to communicate with my friends. I’d tell Madeline and Charlotte how much I missed them. I’d remind Laurel that I was proud of her, and sorry we’d grown apart. I’d tell Emma that I love her, and thanks for everything she’s done for me. I’d even say hi to Nisha and the Twitter Twits. You don’t know how much your friends mean to you until you’re forced to watch them from the far side of the breach.
Emma’s skin hummed as if an electrical storm were brewing overhead, though the evening sky was clear and starting to fill with stars. She hadn’t been in the canyon since her first day here, when she’d waited for hours for Sutton to meet her. Her mind kept busily reconstructing what she knew about her sister’s last night—the date with Thayer and the runaway Volvo that had hit him, the argument with Mr. Mercer, and then … Becky. How could Becky have killed Sutton? Had she strangled her, or had she used a weapon? She’d had a knife when the cops took her to the hospital; maybe that had been the murder weapon.
And where had she hidden the body? It could be anywhere, even the underbrush just out of sight of the clearing. Emma took a few steps toward the woods, then stopped. Someone would have discovered it by now, if it were so easy to see. Here in the dark was not the time to hunt for clues.
“Almost showtime, ladies,” Madeline announced. Emma turned back to the circle, where the girls were gathering. Anticipation hung thick in the air. Charlotte held up her hands like a camera lens, surveying the area one last time. The Twins were doing some kind of theater warm-up exercise, saying “The lips, the teeth, the tip of the tongue” back and forth to each other. Madeline started handing out small cardboard boxes.
Emma lifted the top of hers. Inside was a papier-maché mask in the form of a horned satyr, nestled in a bed of tissue paper.
“These are awesome,” Lili said. She and Gabby wore comedy and tragedy masks, one smiling and one frowning. Once they’d put them on, Emma couldn’t tell which girl was which. There was a whiskered black cat for Laurel and an eerie porcelain-doll face for Charlotte. In true diva form, Madeline had secured the only beautiful mask for herself—a red, feathered domino that covered her eyes and cheeks.
“Be careful with these. They have to make it back to the ballet closet by Monday morning, or I’m screwed,” Madeline warned.
A rhythmic chanting from behind the rocks made Emma jump. Nisha had started the music. Tendrils of “mist” from the smoke machine crept across the clearing. Even being in on the joke, Emma felt the short hairs on the back of her neck prickle. A few years earlier she’d had a job at the ticket counter for a Halloween haunted house. She remembered how silly the whole thing had looked when the lights were on—anyone could see how fake the foam monsters were, and even the professional-quality monster makeup seemed cakey and silly in the harsh light of day. But when the lights went down, when the smoke machine billowed and the music echoed creepily and the actors hid in the shadows waiting to jump out at their victims, the house became greater than the sum of its parts.
“Excuse me?” A girl’s voice broke in over the droning music. A figure emerged from the mist, looking around uncertainly. “Is this the Conference of the Dead?”
The girl’s face was hidden by a Venetian Carnevale mask in gold and white, but her hair was unmistakably Celeste’s, her braids jutting in every direction. Her robe was deep velvet and embroidered all over with esoteric symbols in gold thread.