Tendrils of mist blew across the clearing, and the music shifted to a quiet murmur. Madame Darkling turned her turbaned head toward Celeste. The Venetian mask glittered in the ambient light.
“You, dear,” said the medium. “Someone’s arrived for you. An older lady. She only crossed over very recently. A woman of letters, perhaps?”
Through the holes in her mask, Celeste’s eyes became very round. “Grandmama?” she squeaked. “Is that you?”
Emma felt a pang of guilt. It was obvious Celeste had been close with her grandmother. Maybe that was where all her otherworldly nonsense had come from—the desperate desire to believe her grandmother was still there. It felt cruel to aim for such a vulnerable spot, especially since Emma had just found it so easy to believe that her dead sister was still with her.
“She’s trying to tell me something,” Madame Darkling intoned, touching her hands to her temples. She looked like she was straining to hear. “She says she does not approve of the boy you are seeing. Gareth, I believe?”
“G-g-g-garrett, Grandmama,” Celeste said, her voice so soft Emma could barely make it out. Madame Darkling nodded.
“She says … that he uses more hair product than you do.” Charlotte broke into a fit of coughing next to Emma. “And that he doesn’t truly care for you. She says that he’s using you to get revenge on his true love, a devastatingly beautiful girl who broke his heart.”
Emma couldn’t believe Charlotte had told Madame Darkling all this. Celeste’s lips pressed together tightly.
“I knew it,” she growled. “Don’t worry, Grandmama. We’re through. I won’t waste any more time on him.”
Madame Darkling clutched her head. “Silence!” she snapped. The girls went still. From the underbrush the music built, a violin’s tense tremolo joining the low drums. A gust of wind blasted through the clearing.
When it passed, the medium opened her eyes. “Something else is here,” she said, her tone afraid. A low moan came from somewhere to the left, then seemed to move around them as if they were being circled. Celeste’s head snapped up, her lips parted.
“Grandmama?” she whispered.
Multicolored lights began flashing from the underbrush, and the sound of footsteps reverberated all around the clearing. The fake cactus writhed as if it was possessed. For a moment Emma almost forgot that it was one of their props, controlled by Nisha in the darkness.
“No,” Madame Darkling said, her voice dropping low, a strange, half-mad grimace on her face. “Grandmama isn’t here anymore, Celeste. This is a malevolent being. Everyone, remain strong in your minds and intentions and we can banish it together. Forces of evil, leave us be. Forces of evil, leave us be …,” she began to chant.
A scream echoed from somewhere, and then another answered it on the other side of the clearing. Celeste gasped, one hand flying to her lips, the other pointing upward at the leering green faces swooping overhead. She whimpered and scrambled backward, scuffing the circle of salt with her sandals.
“You have broken the sacred circle!” Madame Darkling cried, raising a trembling finger to point at Celeste. Celeste opened and closed her mouth like a fish. She glanced wildly around, her face pale under her mask. Emma watched something move in the shadows behind her. It was Nisha, reaching out from behind a rock with a peacock feather in her outstretched hand. She tickled Celeste on the back of the neck and vanished before the other girl turned.
“Celeste …,” a strange voice crooned from the bushes. Nisha had cued up the best of their sound bites, a superdistorted recording of Charlotte calling Celeste’s name in a creepy singsong. Nisha had warped it and added reverb until it was scarcely recognizable. The same call came from the other side of the clearing, and then from a third angle. Soon they were surrounded on all sides by the voice.
Goose pimples sprang up along the back of Emma’s neck. Even I shuddered, and I knew perfectly well that I was the only ghost in the canyon tonight.
“The spirits have come to claim you!” Madame Darkling screamed.
Celeste was huddled over, her hands covering her head, trembling. The chorus of voices overlapped and grew to a fever pitch, an insane babble. But just when Emma didn’t think she could take any more, the sounds stopped at once.
“Gotcha!” the other girls screamed on cue, all except Emma.
Light flooded the clearing. The girls whipped off their masks, clutching their sides with laughter. Madeline had tears pouring down her cheeks. Laurel could barely breathe, crouched over her knees in hysterics. Nisha sauntered out of the bushes smirking.
Celeste blinked into the bright lights, a dazed and blank expression on her face. She didn’t remove her mask but stayed crouched in the leaves and dirt.
Charlotte tossed her hair to fluff it after having it crushed under the mask. “How’s Sutton’s aura looking now?” she sneered.
“Did you get it on tape, Nisha?” Madeline asked. Nisha held up her iPhone.
“It’s uploading to YouTube as we speak.”