“Go away,” I mumbled. Tristan was my nightmare alone. And he was the last person…ghost…whatever, I had any interest in talking to now.
“Daniel, I understand this might not be the most opportune of times. But I need you to listen to me,” Tristan insisted.
I took a deep breath. Spirits were far more frightened of the living than the living were of them. The dead needed to be questioned carefully. Coddled, if you were trying to avoid scaring them away. “Think of them as cats,” my dad used to say.
But that assumed I wanted to be welcoming.
“Daniel,” he said urgently. “Don’t open the door. Whatever you do, remember not to open the door.”
My pulse raced. “I see you haven’t gotten any less cryptic since I saw you last time. Besides, I’m in the freaking park,” I said, and waved at the trees around me. “Do you see any doors here?”
Twigs snapped behind me, and I turned to see Russ striding toward me. I should have known that it would be Russ who would follow; Russ was always there when I needed him.
He scooped up my phone and handed it to me without a word, not even a question about who I’d been yelling at. The phone’s screen flashed. At least that was still working.
I jammed the phone in my pocket and looked to see if Tristan had stuck around, but there were only trees where he’d been. “Sorry for back there,” I said to Russ, even though we both knew my words were only half-true.
“You don’t owe me an apology,” he said. “But Clive Rice might have other ideas.”
My anger surged back stronger than before. Clive Rice, Guild President, was everything I hated about the whole organization. Smug. Secretive. Power hungry. “Rice and his Guild can take a flying leap as far as I’m concerned. And as for Ian Mackenzie…” The tensing of Russ’s jaw stopped me. “Seriously?”
“If I can accept that you hate the Guild, can’t you accept that for me, they’re the only game in town?” Russ asked. I was sure he was as sick of having this argument as I was.
I waited to see if he was going to reply to my mention of Ian, but of course, he didn’t. If we couldn’t discuss the Guild, then the topic of Ian was definitely off limits.
“There are other towns, you know.” I said.
“Not for me, there aren’t,” he replied, holding his ground.
And this was it. This was always it. Russ was certain he would serve his time as a member of the Youth Corps, which was mandatory for everyone in their senior year of high school. But that wasn’t enough for him. No, he was jockeying to be named Student Leader of the Corps despite the fact that there hadn’t been a Student Leader since Ian had done it his senior year. Then Russ planned to earn a full-time job with the Guild and eventually run St. Hilaire. No one had ever accused him of lacking ambition.
I stretched my shoulders, willing my muscles to loosen, my anger to dissolve. I hated fighting with Russ. “Can we not talk about this right now?”
He shrugged and thankfully changed the subject. “Are you coming to the festival tomorrow?”
“Yeah,” I said. “Laura would kill me if I weren’t there.” The year-end festival was St. Hilaire’s biggest annual party and my younger sister’s favorite day of the year.
“Good,” said Russ. “I’ll meet you there. I have something I promised to take care of first.”
I started to ask what he had to do that was so important, but from his determined expression, I could tell it had something to do with the Guild, and I knew not to ask, if I wanted to avoid a fight.
* * *
I kept to the side streets on the way home. The volunteers who worked at the Healing Pavilion were folding up prayer shawls and packing them away for the winter. Other workers were cleaning up the fairy gardens, collecting the wishes and charms left by the tourists. News traveled fast in St. Hilaire, and even here, I heard grumbling about how “that Hampton boy” had ruined the séance, and how my parents would be “so disappointed if they were still alive.”
I did my best to ignore the comments and somehow made it home without a confrontation. As I walked through the house and up the creaky stairs to the second floor, past frame after frame of Hampton family photos dating back generations, Laura called out, “Are you okay?”
No, I thought. I’m nothing like okay. But Laura worried, and I didn’t want to add to her stress. She had to know that it was my phone going off at the séance, but I knew she wouldn’t bring it up unless I did first. So, when I poked my head into her room, I simply said, “I’m glad it’s the end of the season.”
She smiled, looking very much like our mom, with dimples in her cheeks. “I’m so happy you’re coming to the festival. Really. You’ll see. You’ll feel better once the last of the tourists leave.”
I moved to the door before I said something stupid to ruin her good mood.
“Hey,” she said. “There’s a letter for you downstairs.”
A letter. No one I knew would send me a real letter. It was probably just some junk about how to increase your “marketing dollars” or one of those “I’ve heard you’re a psychic, and I’m hoping you can help me” notes that poured through our mailboxes.
“I’ll check it out later,” I said. “Right now, I’ve got to change.” I pointed to my now-wrinkled and still-uncomfortable suit.
“Dec,” she said, her brown eyes softening. “I know it’s been a hard couple of years, but…Mom and Dad would be proud of you.”
I opened my mouth, hoping the right words would find their way out, but they wouldn’t come.
Without answering, I went to my room and started to undress. My anxiety lessened with every item of “Hey, I’m a medium; hire me” clothing I removed: stiff shirt, heavy jacket, worn belt. And everything I put on, ripped jeans, crumpled gray T-shirt, made me feel more myself and less the standard-bearer of the Hampton line that everyone in St. Hilaire expected me to be.
When I tossed the pile of clothing to the back of the closet, my eyes caught on the two pictures I’d hung on the inside of the door.
The first was of my parents on their honeymoon. Even now, I had a hard time understanding how they’d made it all the way to Jamaica and still had come back to St. Hilaire to hold séances and talk to people’s dead relatives.
My parents were only nineteen in the photo, two years older than me, but they were already in love and somehow already comfortable with their futures. The photographer caught them draped around each other, drinks in hand, bright smiles pasted on their faces as if they couldn’t believe their good fortune.