The Dead Girls of Hysteria Hall

 

Janie patted Mom’s arm. “We can wait a couple of minutes. Just till you feel better. You know what? Actually, maybe I’ll just call the police. Where’s your phone?”

 

“It’s in my purse,” Mom said.

 

“Where’s your purse?”

 

Mom barely managed to shake her head. “I don’t know.”

 

“No problem,” Janie said. The forced nonchalance of her words did not match the rigidity of her shoulders as I followed her back to the day room.

 

She went right to the piano bench, looking for something.

 

She’d left her phone here.

 

“Oh, come on,” she muttered, bending to look at the floor.

 

“Penitence,” I said, and she appeared. “Did you move a cell phone off the piano bench?”

 

She cocked her head. “A what?”

 

“A little box,” I said. “A flat, shiny box.”

 

“Oh, the one she carries around,” Penitence said. “No. But … you said it was shiny?”

 

Um. “Have you seen a non-shiny box?”

 

She sighed. “No, but the girls love shiny things. I’d imagine they’ve added it to their collection.”

 

“Which girls?” I asked.

 

“The pair,” she said. “The ones in their nightgowns. Died in ninety-six. Tuberculosis. Rosie and Posie, or whatever their names are. If something goes missing, it’s a fair bet they took it.”

 

The nosy girls. “Where do they live?” I asked. “The lobby?”

 

“I’m not sure,” she said. “But I doubt it. I believe the grand Southern lady rules the lobby. I’d try the third floor. That’s where they lived when they were here.”

 

Janie pushed the hair away from her face, wearing a defeated expression as she went back to Mom’s room.

 

Mom was asleep, but her face still looked drawn and tense.

 

“She’s okay,” Eliza told me.

 

“Someone took Janie’s phone,” I said. “She can’t even call for help. I need to go to the third floor. But …” I glanced at Mom and Janie. They were sitting ducks.

 

“I’ll help,” Eliza said. “I can provide a distraction. Draw attention to myself.”

 

“How?” I asked.

 

She shrugged. “I’ll think outside the ball.”

 

“Box,” I said.

 

Her eyes glittered. “Perhaps I’ll take a little stroll about the grounds.”

 

“Are you sure that’s a good idea?” I asked.

 

The usually stoic line of her mouth quirked up on one side. “No. But you must admit it’s an interesting one.”

 

“Be careful.”

 

She nodded. “I’ll have Florence help me. We’ll be fine.”

 

*

 

As I reached the third-floor landing, I saw Maria standing a short distance away from the top step.

 

“Back off,” I said. “I’ve poured salt on uglier monsters than you.”

 

She shrank away.

 

There was a peculiar, agitated feeling among the ten or so ghosts lined up against the hallway walls. I didn’t see the two giggling girls among them, though. One, a girl about my own age wearing a straitjacket, growled and lunged as I went by. Another, a woman in her thirties, stood in the center of the hall with her mouth open and eyes shut, her fists clenched and her body jittering around in a silent scream.

 

Something had rattled them.

 

The enormity of the house hit me all at once—the thieving girls could literally be anywhere, and the things they took could have been in any of a million hiding spots. I paused in the hallway, awash in despair. It wasn’t going to work. How could you find something small in a place this big?

 

I was outside Cordelia’s office, and as I cast a glance inside, I had a sudden flash of memory: Whenever I need something, I seem to be able to find it here. Could she have meant that literally? That things went missing and turned up in her office? It didn’t seem possible, but at the same time it felt like the most obvious thing in the world.

 

There wasn’t time to agonize over it. I went inside, using one of Cordelia’s books to break the line of salt and then immediately repair it behind me.

 

I walked to the desk and started looking through the drawers. The top ones were packed full of a lifetime’s worth of paper clips, rubber bands, entire rolls of unused postage stamps, and a motley collection of pens and pencils. Plenty of implements for letter writing but no sign of my sister’s cell phone—or any other stolen shiny objects.

 

So what was here? Where were the answers I’d been so confident I would find, back when I was alive? What did I think would be waiting for me? Because there had to be something.

 

Aunt Cordelia had left me her house for a reason. She wanted me to do what she hadn’t been able to do. She would have found a way to tell me … But how?

 

Of course. She would have written me a letter.

 

I remembered the letter Janie had pulled from the desk blotter. What had it said?

 

And I have something to share with you …