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And suddenly I’m blinking into the daylight. The door to my cottage has swung open and little Teddy is standing on the porch, peering into the darkness. He raises a finger to his lips, gesturing for us to be quiet. Out in the backyard, Adrian calls out, “Ten Mississippi! Ready or not, here I come!”
Teddy ducks inside and quietly closes the door. Then he looks around the cottage, marveling at the votive candles and the blacked-out windows and my kitchen table with its ring of sea salt. “What are you playing?”
“Honey, this is called a spirit board,” Mitzi says, inviting him to take a closer look. “In the right hands, it’s a tool for communication. To speak with the dead.”
Teddy looks to me for confirmation, like he can’t believe Mitzi is telling the truth. “Really?”
“No, no, no.” I’m already out of my chair and guiding him back to the door. “It’s just a toy. Just a game.” The last thing I need is Teddy telling his parents about a séance. “We were just pretending. It’s not real.”
“It’s very real,” Mitzi says. “If you respect its powers. If you take it seriously.”
I open the door and see Adrian across the yard, searching for Teddy in the trees along Hayden’s Glen. “Over here,” I call out.
He comes jogging over and Teddy darts past my legs, sprinting across the grass, still caught up in their game of hide-and-seek.
“Sorry about that,” Adrian says. “I told him to stay on the pool deck. I hope he didn’t ruin anything.”
“It was already ruined,” Mitzi says. She’s gathering her things, snuffing out candles and collecting trays of incense. “There are no spirits in this cottage. There never were. This is just a story she’s made up to get attention.”
“Mitzi, that is not true!”
“I’ve used this board a hundred times. It’s never acted this way.”
“I swear to you—”
“Swear to your Scarlet Knight here, okay? Cry on his shoulder and maybe he’ll feel sorry for you. But don’t ask me to waste any more time.”
She shoves her books into her bag and then storms past me, nearly tripping as she descends the stairs of my cottage.
“What just happened?” Adrian asks.
“Anya was here, Adrian. She was inside the cottage. I swear to you, I could feel her standing over me. Moving my arm. But the letters were gibberish. We couldn’t spell anything. And then right in the middle Mitzi lost her shit. She started screaming at me.”
We watch from the porch as Mitzi wobbles across the lawn, veering left and then overcompensating to the right, unable to maintain a straight line.
“Is she all right?” Adrian asks.
“Well, she’s pretty high, but supposedly that’s part of her process.”
A dejected Teddy comes walking across the yard. He seems to understand that something bad has happened, that the grown-ups are upset. In a hopeful voice, he asks, “Does anyone want to chase me?”
Adrian apologizes for leaving but says he has to go. “I need to get back or El Jefe will flip.”
“I can chase you,” I tell Teddy. “Just give us a minute.”
Clearly this isn’t the answer Teddy wants. He trudges across the yard to the pool patio, unhappy with both of us.
“Are you going to be all right?” Adrian asks.
“I’m fine. I just hope Teddy doesn’t say anything to his parents.”
But I’m pretty sure he will.
16
After the pool party, Teddy goes up to his bedroom for Quiet Time and I stay downstairs in the den. Maybe I don’t want to know what he’s doing up there. Maybe things will be better for me if I stop asking so many questions.
In the afternoon we take a long walk in the Enchanted Forest. We follow Yellow Brick Road to Dragon Pass and down to Royal River, and I try to spin a new story about Princess Mallory and Prince Teddy. But all Prince Teddy wants to discuss are spirit boards: Do they need batteries? How do they find the dead person? Can they find any dead person? Can they find Abraham Lincoln? I keep saying “I don’t know” and hope that he’ll lose interest. Instead he asks how much it costs to buy a spirit board, if it’s possible to make one.
