The moment Anna walked into the ranch house’s bright living room, the pain of her headache subsided, but just a little. Geneva knelt on the wood floor, surrounded by boxes of files and office furniture in the latter stages of assembly, screwing the base of a battery compartment back into the belly of her mysterious EMF invention. It resembled a smooth, bulbous super-soaker type of water pistol, but smaller, sleeker and encased by dark-tinted fiberglass.
Geneva looked up and smiled, her eyes crinkling at the corners. She wore a long flowing sundress in the same shade of yellow as the walls on her new bedroom. Her sandals had a vibrant floral design. Anna figured this was the kind of look that was easier to pull off in California.
“So, where’s Jack?” Geneva asked.
“He had stuff to do at home,” Anna said, registering Geneva’s disappointment. “How’s your hotel?”
“Lovely,” Geneva said, “but I’m looking forward to the day I can move in. This place already feels like home.”
Anna sat at the large white drafting table that was to become the main workstation and got to work untangling a printer cord. She was squinting at the back of a computer, trying to find the printer port, when the doorbell rang. Pete, as his name tag stated, stood on their doorstep.
“Delivery from holy water dot com,” he growled when Anna opened the door, wheeling in a cart stacked with three jugs. His goatee looked ridiculous hanging off his baby face.
“I need your signature.”
Pete handed Anna a pen and then snatched it back the second she signed her name, scratching her hand with his thumbnail. Anna glared at him. He wasn’t even going to apologize? The cold glint in his eyes made her think twice about saying anything, but she shut the door after him with extra vigor.
Anna returned to the drafting table with one of the jugs and began pouring small amounts of holy water into the array of vessels and spray bottles that Jack liked to keep handy.
Geneva abandoned her invention, wheeled an office chair next to Anna, and sat down.
“Do you mind if I watch?”
“Nope,” Anna said, funneling holy water into a spray bottle.
“So,” Geneva said, “if a spirit attaches to an object or person you do…an exorcism?”
“If it attaches to a person, you do an exorcism. To an object? It’s a clearing.”
“But isn’t holy water strictly a priest kind of thing?”
Geneva had watched too many movies. “Rituals to purify water for the purpose of warding off evil were done by the early Egyptians, Greeks, Romans, Jews…everybody did it,” Anna said, “because it works.”
Geneva lifted the jug of holy water off the drafting table and examined it. “There was a study suggesting that water molecules react to their emotional environment,” she said. “Maybe that’s why anyone tapped into Source can make holy water.”
Anna nodded. “My dad used to make it when I was a kid, but he lost his mojo and now has to order it, and it ain't cheap.”
“What about nonhuman, negative entities?” Geneva asked. “Does holy water work on them?”
“Demons?”
“Have you ever come across one?”
There was a stretch of silence before Anna answered. “Years ago.”
Sensing the subject was better off dropped, Geneva busied herself with a box of files. After a few minutes, the doorbell rang again. It was Freddy, wearing jeans that seemed to bag more than usual. He was late, again. Anna bit the inside of her cheek to keep from admonishing him, reminding herself that he was there to help. It was getting harder to control her temper.
“Where's Dor?” Anna said.
Freddy shrugged. “Didn't pick up her phone. She’s been kinda weird lately.”
Anna wouldn’t mention Dor’s situation with Cindy until she and Freddy were alone. She felt a twinge of guilt for not checking on Dor last night, but then the pain behind her eyes sharpened. Jack’s illness, setting up the office, Doreen’s mom, the creep factor in Bloomtown—how did it all end up on her shoulders? Freddy stared at her as she struggled to calm her sudden anger.
Anna pointed to the beginnings of a smaller workstation in the corner. “You can start with getting that scanner working.”
“Hi, and you're welcome,” Freddy said. He stood inside the door, arms crossed. He was cute when he was feisty and had agreed to give up a weekend to help her out. So why was she fighting off another wave of irritation?
“Thank you for coming over,” Anna said.
Freddy brushed by her, smelling like a mix of fresh laundry and the slightly musty Freddy smell Anna was very familiar with. He must have ridden his bike over.
“Freddy,” Anna said, “this is Geneva. She's working with my father—um—with us.”
Freddy’s eyes went a little wide. Was it Geneva’s clingy yellow sundress or that Anna was stepping up as the heir apparent? Probably both.
“Nice to meet you,” he said.
Geneva bowed her head and clasped her hands together. “Namaste.”
Freddy blushed.
“It means she recognizes the soul part of you or something like that,” Anna said. “Right?”
“Pretty much,” Geneva said, winking at Freddy.
The woman really knew how to throw a guy off balance. Anna imagined trying that namaste stuff with Craig. Nah, he wouldn’t go for it.
Freddy wheeled an office chair over to the workstation in the corner. “What’s this?” he said, picking up a small plastic box with a series of lights on it.
Anna squinted. “An EMF reader.” She grinned at Geneva. “The old-fashioned kind.” She took it out of his hand to get a closer look. “Looks like it’s busted. Stuck on the highest reading.”
“Really?” Geneva said. “May I see that?”
“What’s an EMF?” Freddy asked.
Geneva scrutinized the device. “An electromagnetic field. It’s a physical field that emits a low-frequency radiation. You’ll find one around anything electrical.”
“Oh yeah, sure,” Freddy said, “so wiring, cell phones, appliances, all that stuff?”
“Yes,” Geneva said, “and more.”
“Spirits, too,” Anna said. “You can use it to track the location of an entity, or the object they are attached to.”
“Ghosts are electrical?” Freddy was dubious.
“Not exactly,” Geneva said. “It’s possible that they gather electrical energy from the living, harvest it from our auras. And when they get enough of it they can use it to get people’s attention, do spooky stuff.”
Freddy gave Anna the side eye. “Our auras?”
Geneva graced him with a patient smile. She took the batteries out of the EMF reader and popped them back in.
“All living things are electrical, Freddy. There are low-frequency bio-electromagnetic fields inside cells. Even nonliving things like rocks have magnetic fields.” Her fingers found the crystal on her necklace. “One theory is that the magnetic fields of certain elements can intermingle with our auras and potentially strengthen them.”
“You study the supernatural?” Freddy asked.
“Well, yes, I’m here to learn, but I'm also an inventor.” Geneva pointed to her invention, lying on top of the glass coffee table, still in pieces.
“Cool. What is it?” Freddy asked, coming alive in a way Anna hadn’t seen in a while.
“Something that will make this”—Geneva held up the older EMF reader—“obsolete.” She turned to Anna. “According to this thing, we’re standing on power lines instead of wood.”
Anna nodded. “Broken, right?”
“That, or something in this house is throwing off massive electromagnetic fields.”
“Nothing is even plugged in, except for one computer and that radio.” Anna walked over to the radio. “And it’s not even on.”
Anna flicked a switch on the radio and the smarmy voice of Bloomtown’s very own shock jock filled the room.
“The geniuses at NASA are now saying we're getting one or two m
ore big blasts from the sun, and I mean mongo big, and then this once-in-a-lifetime solar storm will finally be kaput. Let's hope the chumps at NASA know better than the local chimps we got predicting the weather. That Channel 2 guy with the big ears, now am I nuts, or does he look—”
Static overwhelmed the signal and a series of deafening cracks boomed out of the speakers, making them all wince. Geneva shut the radio off.
“Could the storms be causing those high readings?” Freddy asked Geneva.
Geneva shook her head. “Not levels this high. Not on the ground.”
Anna took out her phone. “Let me see if I can get online.”
“Internet's down,” Freddy said, fussing with the radio as Geneva knelt next to her invention. “That’s why I was late. I spent the whole morning trying to check my email to see if I got into that school in Florida. Then my mom made me clean my room. She wants to rent it out if I get in.”
Wait. What? “What school in Florida?” Anna asked.
“I told you about it,” he said.
That’s right. He had mentioned a school on the day of the failed puppy excursion, but she hadn’t taken it seriously.
“Some stranger will stay in your room?” she said, shaken. “Gross.”
“Chill, I haven't even gotten accepted yet. If I do get in, the rent money will keep me off PB&J.”
Freddy, leaving Bloomtown? Leaving her and Dor? Anna pushed down a growing panic, imagining Freddy in a new, palm-treed town with new and cooler friends, a girlfriend.
“Can I take a look?” Freddy asked Geneva, gesturing to the pieces of fiberglass on the coffee table.
Geneva nodded.
“How will this make EMF readers obsolete?” Freddy asked.
“It’s an electromagnetic field imager,” Geneva said, “an EMI—or Emi, as I like to call her. EMF readers”—Geneva pointed at the older device, still registering through the roof—“can only pick up energy, but they can’t show you exactly where it is and what it looks like.”
Anna tipped the jug on the drafting table, pouring holy water through a funnel into an empty bottle of Windex. Was Freddy flirting with Geneva? No, he couldn’t be. She was old enough to be his mother. He was probably just excited to meet a real scientist. Besides, why would Anna care if he was flirting? She wouldn’t. Holy water splattered on the wood floor. Crap. She needed to pay attention.
Geneva got to her feet. “After I finish unpacking, I'll do the last couple tweaks on Emi and give you two a demonstration.”
Freddy stared longingly at Emi. “Any way I can help?”
“You good with a screwdriver?”
Freddy nodded.
“I can vouch for his total geekness,” Anna said.
“Gently reattach the base of the signal trigger.” Geneva pointed to Emi’s underbelly. “Right here.”
“I’m on it!” Freddy said with unnecessary loudness. He cracked his knuckles and dropped to the floor like a spaz.
Geneva raised an amused eyebrow at Anna, said her good-byes and disappeared down the hall to her bedroom. Anna watched her go, perplexed. The woman just gave Freddy free rein over her invention. Anna wasn't sure if she was a good judge of character or just flaky. Probably a bit of both.
“Wow,” Anna said to Freddy. “I think you just had a nerdgasm.”
Chapter Eleven
hey girl
Back at home, Anna made her way down the second-floor hallway and heard the faint creak of the basement door closing downstairs. She knew better than to disturb Jack when he worked down there. The door was always locked and Jack kept the key in his back pocket. Like the grass on their front lawn, Jack bent easily with the wind on certain subjects, but when it came to his all-important things in the basement, he was a brick wall.
Anna closed her bedroom door behind her, finding relief, as always, in the orderly structure and soft palette of her bedroom. She sat cross-legged in front of her full-length mirror, tweezers in hand. She had her mother's brows, full with a nicely shaped arch. She didn't mess with them much, but it had been a while and she was due for a pruning.
In the mirror she could see the framed photograph of her mother’s face behind her on the bureau. The faded freckles on Helen Fagan's nose and cheeks were visible on her clean and smiling face.
Jack took the candid shot on their honeymoon in Puerto Rico. It wasn’t posed like other pictures of her parents, both of them wearing pasted-on smiles. Those were all lost long ago in the ocean of Jack’s hoard. There were no pictures of Helen on display anywhere else in the house. Anna suspected that seeing his wife’s picture was painful for her father, that he saw the demon and its gleeful, malevolent grin instead of the woman he married. So why then did she leave a large picture of her mother centered on her bureau, knowing it was the first thing he'd see if he came into her room? Was it to punish him or to keep him and his mess out? She wasn't sure.
Anna braced against a stab of grief, raking her fingers through the small rug in front of the mirror. The grief deepened the pain thudding behind her eyes. Pain that built into a tortuous crescendo until, finally, something clicked inside her skull and a chaotic need flooded through her. Anna had to see Craig’s Instagram, now.
The pain settled when Anna found her phone. She began reading the comments that girls, especially Sydney, had posted on his page. She looked at the mirror, seeing the inadequacy of her frizzy hair, the small bump on her nose, the dull pallor of her skin. Disgust rose in her chest. There she was in all of her non-glory, not her exactly, but the collection of parts and blemishes that were so obviously not good enough. How could she help Dor, or anyone in Bloomtown, if she could barely stand her own reflection?
Geneva’s faint voice echoed inside her. Mirrors can be a doorway into your soul, if you really look at yourself. Was it possible? Geneva said that one must be brave to mirror gaze. Anna had her share of imperfections, but bravery she had in spades. Didn’t she?
Anna dropped her phone and locked eyes with her reflection, fighting the urge to dismiss the whole thing and go back to analyzing her enormous pores. But after a minute or two of quiet breathing, a distant calm began to soften the edges of her unease. She continued to hold her own gaze. Who was she anyway?
There were gold flecks in the hazel of her eyes that she’d never noticed before. Anna stared, fascinated by this undiscovered part of herself. Then, a stirring in her solar plexus, a strange awakening that felt both light and powerful, a force that lifted her head, making space in her chest and throat. A rush of cool air filled her lungs, muting the pain in her head.
This lightness, it reminded her of something: a memory, a glimpse of a fireplace illuminated by beams of light. Her breath tasted mildly sweet, as it had when she was a kid in gymnastics class. She would tumble and bend so much that after a while, muscles hot and loose, she felt almost detached from her body yet in total control of it. But that wasn't quite it.
Anna felt more like she had in the hours after swim practice in junior high. Swimming lap after lap through the water, she’d catch flashes of her coach standing poolside when she turned her head to suck in air. Always the swimmer in front of you and counting breaths; stroke, stroke, stroke, breathe. At the wall, a flip turn and push off, followed by moments of coasting, arms straight, head down. Stroke, stroke, stroke, breathe. Over and over, slicing through the water until it became mindless. After practice she’d felt clear and calm, her body warm and tired, her breath sweet.
Her phone emitted a loud ping, the alert for an incoming text message. Anna ignored it, keeping her focus on the mirror. More pings erupted from her phone, louder than usual and demanding her attention. The dull pounding in her head lurched back to life and fought for dominance against the new lightness inside her.
What the hell was wrong with her phone? The pain behind her eyes surged and she closed her eyes, gritting her teeth against the wave of rage that accompanied it. No. She didn't want to be taken over by this dark mood. She looked to the mirror again, determined to recon
nect with the glimpse of serenity she’d discovered. But something caught her eye, a movement.
Every muscle in Anna’s body stiffened. The picture of her mother in the mirror no longer reflected Helen Fagan. It was the demon from eight years past, its tongue flickering out of its grinning mouth. Anna’s jaw clenched, and the picture once again framed the face of her smiling mother. The loud pings continued from her phone. Anna picked it up with shaking hands. It was a text from Craig Shine.
hey girl
And just like that a crazed joy bloomed inside her, despite the foreboding atmosphere that now surrounded her phone. Even in her frazzled state Anna recognized that foreboding as a warning from her intuition, a warning she’d had before.
At ten years old, Anna had wandered away on a class trip to a nearby park. She ran ahead of the group, planning to jump out of the trees to scare Freddy and Dor. But she quickly lost her bearings and came across a path in the woods. The trees around the mouth of the path took on the same dark quality now encompassing her phone. Stay away. But danger and excitement are often interchangeable in young minds, and Anna started down the deserted path. Almost immediately a man came out of the trees, clean-cut and dressed in a blue tracksuit. She moved aside for him to pass but he followed her stride, remaining directly behind her, quiet and menacing.
The panicked teacher yelled her name, out of sight but close by, and the man darted into the trees. He wore sneakers without shoelaces, his shoes flopping open as he ran. Long white cords dangled from his clenched fists. Anna still thought about Park Man and what he would have done to her. Would she have fought back or remained frozen in terror, succumbing to some nightmarish, violent fate?
And here she was again, pressing on into possibly dangerous territory. Or maybe she was just losing it? It was just a phone, not a pedo in a park! The transformation of her mother’s picture was probably a hallucination brought on by stress. Anyway, it wasn't important. Nothing was more important than Craig.
hey girl.
All of existence shrank down to those two little words, and her jittery heart flapped about in her chest like a newly caged bird. Another jolt as her phone rang. It was Doreen. Anna forwarded her call to voice mail and replied to Craig’s text.
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