by Marilyn Kaye
Margaret and Cassandra returned, and to Ken’s surprise, Cassandra was holding a tray with glasses. Margaret carried a pitcher of red stuff.
‘This is homemade strawberry punch,’ Cassandra announced. ‘I have a good feeling about tonight – that it’s going to be special. So I thought we’d have a little pre-seance celebration.’
‘Shouldn’t we have the celebration after the seance?’ Ken asked. ‘I mean, if it’s successful?’
‘One has to establish the ambience for success,’ Cassandra declared as she set the tray down. ‘Success is more likely to come when the appropriate feelings are in the air.’
Her reference to ‘feelings’ bothered Ken. He looked at the punch suspiciously. ‘Is there alcohol in this?’
Cassandra let out a tinkling laugh. ‘Of course not, Ken. I would never serve an alcoholic beverage to young people. I don’t even drink alcohol myself – mediums rarely do. We are afraid it could dull our senses and make us less accessible to the spirits.’
He felt foolish for having asked. He should have known Cassandra would be the responsible type.
‘Margaret, will you pour?’ Cassandra asked.
Margaret picked up the pitcher and turned her back to the others to face the coffee table. Ken approached her.
‘Can I help?’ he offered.
‘No!’ Cassandra answered for her. ‘Margaret can do it herself. Aaah!’
Surprised by the strong reaction, Ken turned to Cassandra. But she wasn’t protesting his offer of assistance. The scarves that covered her face were coming off. And they weren’t just falling – it was as if invisible hands were ripping them from her.
Invisible hands . . . that could only mean one thing. One person. ‘Tracey!’ Ken yelled in outrage. She must have followed him! But in an instant his fury turned to something else. Something more closely related to utter shock.
The medium’s face had been exposed, and he recognized her.
‘You!’ he cried out.
At that very moment there was pounding on the door. ‘Go away!’ Serena Hancock shouted.
‘Police! Open this door immediately or we’ll break it down!’
‘Good heavens!’ Dahlia exclaimed. ‘Isn’t this exciting?’ She went to the door and opened it. Two uniformed police officers strode in. Ken gaped, and his mouth dropped even further when, just behind the policemen, Emily and Jenna entered. And then Tracey was there too.
Emily pointed at the student teacher/medium. ‘That’s her! That’s the woman who threatened me two months ago at Meadowbrook!’
‘She’s crazy!’ Serena screamed.
‘I recognize her too,’ Jenna declared.
‘So do I,’ Tracey cried out.
‘So do I,’ Ken echoed in a whisper. He was still in a state of shock. But somehow he managed to blurt out, ‘I think there’s a scam going on here.’
One of the police officers produced a pair of handcuffs. Ashe was locking Serena’s hands together behind her back, the woman yelled, ‘I’m not going down alone for this.’ She jerked her head at Margaret. ‘She’s in on it too! Margaret Robinson!’
‘That’s not true!’ Margaret declared hotly as the other officer began to cuff her. ‘I’m not even Margaret!’
But the police weren’t giving either of them the opportunity to protest further. The two women were hustled out the door, leaving behind three stunned seekers of guidance from the spirit world – and three girls with expressions that were just a little bit smug.
CHAPTER TWELVE
AMANDA WASN’T SURE IF she was frightened or furious or some combination of the two. Sitting on a bench, her back pressed against the wall, she tried in vain to calm down. This just wasn’t happening.
She was in jail. Amanda Beeson, the queen bee of Meadowbrook Middle School, was behind bars. OK, it wasn’t Amanda Beeson’s body in the holding cell, but it was Amanda Beeson who felt imprisoned.
She wasn’t alone. Serena was there too, pacing the floor, muttering to herself. And there were four other women, none of whom looked very nice. They weren’t pacing or shaking or acting nervous though. In fact they all looked like they’d been in prison before. One of them was even sleeping!
Serena-Cassandra glared at her. ‘Stop crying!’ she snapped.
Amanda hadn’t even realized there were tears running down Margaret’s face. She certainly had every right to cry. She didn’t deserve to be here! She’d even tried to stop Serena’s evil scheme from succeeding. The prescription Serena had given her . . . Amanda had had it filled at a pharmacy, but only so she could see what the pills looked like. Back at Margaret’s place, she’d emptied the pills into the sink and replaced them with similar-looking little white mints that wouldn’t do anyone any harm. While Serena would think Margaret was dropping a sleeping pill into the glass meant for Stevie, he would simply receive a glass of punch with a little mint flavouring. He wouldn’t fall asleep. Ken would tell him where the lottery ticket was, Amanda would reveal herself and expose the scheme, and she’d be a hero!
But instead she was one of the villains. A common criminal. Was this the kind of person Margaret was? She wondered if Margaret had ever been in jail before. Maybe Amanda should be acting a little more nonchalant about all this. But what did it matter now? She actually wanted the guards to know she wasn’t Margaret!
Unfortunately, she really didn’t know how she was going to convince them of that. Had anyone ever used bodysnatching as an excuse to be released from a prison? She seriously doubted it. No one would believe her.
There was only one way out of this mess. She had to get out of Margaret’s body and back into her own, which at that very moment was probably lying in her nice, soft bed being waited on and coddled by her mother.
She took some deep breaths and tried to think rationally. How had she got out of bodies before? Falling, hitting her head – it was usually something like that. When she had been invisible-Tracey, an accidental kick in the head had sent her back into herself. During the bank robbery, when she was Sarah, a slip on the floor did the trick.
Tentatively, she leaned back and tapped her head against the wall. Nothing happened. Her head didn’t even hurt. She forced herself to bang her head a little harder.
One of the other prisoners, a hard-looking woman with bright red hair, stared at her. ‘What are you doing?’
‘Nothing,’ Amanda said quickly.
The woman sniggered. ‘It’s not going to work, you know.’
‘What?’
‘Hurting yourself to get out of here. You’d have to spill some serious blood. And even then you’d only end up in the clinic here. You’d still be behind bars.’
Amanda remembered another kind of shock that had worked in the past.
She thought back to when she occupied Ken’s body. During that time, she formed a – a relationship with a dead boy named Rick. When Rick had said he wouldn’t contact her any more, she’d been really upset. That strong feeling had pushed her out of Ken and back into herself.
But here she was in jail. Wasn’t that shocking enough to get her out of Margaret? Apparently not.
She tried banging her head again, but she was beginning to think she would never be able to hurt herself enough to provide an adequate physical shock. The red-haired woman glared at her.
‘Hey, stop that. I told you, it won’t work.’
Amanda ignored her and kept thumping her head.
‘You’re annoying me,’ the woman growled. ‘If you don’t stop, I’ll make you stop.’
The threat in her tone sounded very real. Amanda stopped. What else could she do to cause herself pain?
She tried pinching her arm. She dug her manicured nails in so hard, she actually saw a tiny drop of blood. But it didn’t hurt all that much.
Maybe she needed that mean-looking woman to carry out her threat. The thought of being attacked was so scary, for a moment she thought it might get her out of Margaret. But no such luck. She was going to have to get really and truly beaten up.
She started thumping her head again. The redhead turned to her with a look of fury. But at that moment, a guard appeared.
‘Hey, Cassidy.’
Cassidy turned out to be the red-haired woman.
‘Yeah?’
The guard opened the door. ‘Your lawyer’s here.’ The woman hurried out.
‘I want to make a phone call!’ Serena demanded. ‘I know my rights – I’m entitled to a phone call!’
‘Yeah, yeah, I’ll be back in a minute,’ the guard muttered.
Amanda noticed that Serena’s hands were clenched into fists. And it dawned on her that she could probably get Serena mad very easily, just by confessing who she really was.
And Serena would believe her. She’d been in their class, and even though she hadn’t paid much attention to Amanda when she was there, she must have learned about all the gifts. If Amanda could get her good and mad right now, Serena might just go over the edge and slug her – or at least slap her. Really, really hard. And as much as Amanda didn’t want to experience that, it could work.
‘Serena?’
‘What?’ Serena snapped.
Amanda got off the bench and came closer to Serena, within slapping distance. ‘I’ve got something to tell you.’
But that was as far as she got. The guard reappeared. ‘OK, Hancock, you can come and make your phone call.’
‘About time,’ Serena muttered. To Margaret-Amanda, she said, ‘I’ll get us out of here.’
Great, Amanda thought dismally. And then what? She had to get out of this body! She knelt down by the wall and started banging her head again, harder this time.
‘Hey, you’re going to hurt yourself!’ another prisoner yelled. ‘Guard! Guard!’
The guard reappeared.
‘I think you’d better do something about this nutcase,’ the prisoner said.
The next thing Amanda knew she was being dragged out of the cell by two guards, one holding each arm. And then she was in another cell, a smaller one, all by herself. One of the guards spoke to the other.
‘Keep an eye on her till I can find something to tie her to the bed.’
The other guard pulled up a chair just outside the cell. ‘Don’t move,’ she ordered Amanda.
Amanda didn’t move. She couldn’t. She was in a total state of shock. And yet the feeling still wasn’t strong enough to get her out of this body.
This couldn’t be happening . . .
CHAPTER THIRTEEN
KEN WAS DEPRESSED.
So the whole seance thing had been a scam. Cassandra was Serena Hancock, still trying to get her hands on a winning lottery ticket. That woman Margaret – she must have been her accomplice. Ken assumed the whole dead-mother thing was a made-up story so the medium could seem authentic.
Was Dahlia in on it too? Maybe, maybe not. In the confusion with the police, she’d taken off. The person he was really concerned about was Stevie. He had disappeared too, before Ken could talk to him. The poor kid . . . He must have been totally freaked out when he realized it was a scam.
‘Or maybe little Stevie was part of the scam,’ Jenna said.
‘Stop reading my mind,’ Ken barked. They had stopped at the bowling alley, where there was a cafe. Jenna, Tracey and Emily were celebrating their successful mission with ice cream. Ken had a glass of water.
‘Sorry,’ Jenna said.
He looked at her stonily. ‘You should be. Why didn’t you tell me what you were planning to do at the seance?’
‘I wanted to tell you,’ Emily reported, ‘but Jenna said we couldn’t trust you not to warn the others.’
Ken hadn’t taken his eyes off Jenna. ‘Maybe if you’d just told me the medium was really Serena Hancock . . .’
‘I didn’t know for sure,’ Jenna said. ‘Her mind was really hard to penetrate. Not like yours, Ken. You’re totally transparent.’
‘Jenna!’ Tracey exclaimed in disapproval. She turned to Ken. ‘Jenna said this was the only way. She said you were so into the seance thing, we had to shock you into seeing the truth.’
Ken grimaced. ‘Oh, really? And since when is it Jenna’s business to shock me into seeing things?’
‘Oh, for crying out loud,’ Jenna said airily. ‘You should be thanking me, Ken. You could have been totally suckered into their little con game. You were really falling for it! You know, I saved your—’
He wouldn’t let her finish. ‘Just shut up, Jenna! And for your information, Stevie was not part of it. He’s eleven years old!’
‘So what?’ Jenna countered. ‘I once saw a documentary on TV about criminals under the age of twelve.’
‘Well, Stevie isn’t one of them. He was an innocent victim.’
‘How can you be so sure of that?’ Jenna shot back. ‘Did you read his mind?’
Ken knew he wasn’t a violent person, and he’d definitely never hit a girl. But right now, he was feeling very close to a complete change of character, so he did the only thing he could think of doing. He turned away from the girls and headed to the exit.
‘Ken! Ken, wait up!’
He turned to find Lucy coming towards him. Could the evening get any worse?
‘Do you like bowling?’ she asked. ‘I love to bowl! Maybe we could bowl together sometime soon. Like, what are you doing this weekend?’
‘Lucy, could you bug off? Can’t you take a hint? I don’t want to go out with you!’ And he stormed out the door.
Once outside, he started walking, fast. He knew he’d been horribly rude and unkind to Lucy, but he felt propelled by an anger that was out of his control. He wasn’t sure if he was more angry at himself or at Jenna – himself for being so gullible, Jenna for sticking her nose in his affairs. And for suggesting poor Stevie was part of the whole nasty business . . .
He slowed down. What she had said to him . . . ‘Ken, did you read Stevie’s mind?’ Was she saying that she had read his mind?
But how could Stevie be in cahoots with Serena? He was looking for his father’s lottery ticket, and he only went to Serena because he thought she was a real medium who could contact his father.
Unless . . . unless . . . the kid in the seance wasn’t really Stevie Fisher. Maybe he’d just heard about the situation, and he was pretending to be the boy whose father had died. Or maybe he was some kind of juvenile actor who Serena had hired to play Stevie. And they were both waiting for Ken to make contact with Mr Fisher so they could steal the lottery ticket before the real Stevie found it.
There was only one way Ken could know for sure. He had to find the kid who called himself Stevie Fisher.
He looked at his watch. It was almost nine o’clock and this was a school night, which meant he was expected home at ten and he had no idea where Stevie Fisher lived.
But he had his mobile phone. And his mobile phone had Internet access.
He took it out of his pocket, hit the web button, and got a search engine. But now what? He doubted that Stevie had a phone number listed under his own name, and he didn’t know the name of Stevie’s mother or his late father. Fisher was a common name – there could be hundreds of them.
And then he had a better idea. He accessed the town newspaper, which had its own search capability. He typed in the name Fisher and added the word which just might give him the Fisher he was seeking: obituary.
Bingo! There it was – an obituary from two months ago. Melvin Fisher, age forty-two, of seventy-two Apple Creek Road. Killed in an automobile accident.
What did people do before mobile phones? Ken wondered. Within seconds he had a map on the little screen and directions to Apple Creek Road.
When he arrived, he found a dead-end street lined with small cottage-style homes. He approached the door of number seventy-two, but he didn’t get close enough to knock.
A window opened and a voice called out, ‘What are you doing here?’
Ken sighed with relief. The boy he knew as Stevie Fisher was looking through the window.
‘I just wanted to see if you were
OK,’ he said. ‘You disappeared when the police arrived.’
‘No kidding,’ the boy said. ‘I didn’t want them thinking I was one of you people.’
‘What do you mean?’ Ken asked, walking towards the window.
‘Don’t come any closer or I’ll call the police myself!’ Stevie yelled. ‘How come you’re not locked up?’
‘Because – because –’ Ken sputtered, ‘I wasn’t in on it! I thought it was a real seance too!’
‘Yeah, right. Just get out of here.’ Stevie slammed down the window.
Ken couldn’t believe it. Stevie thought he was in league with the fake medium. Now he was even more depressed.
He was late getting home, but fortunately his parents were caught up in watching a soccer game on TV and hadn’t noticed the time.
‘Join us,’ his father called from the den. ‘It’s a terrific game.’
‘No thanks,’ Ken said. ‘I’m kind of beat. I’m going to bed.’
He knew his parents were probably looking at each other in bewilderment, and his mother was wondering if he was sick.They didn’t think anything was more important to Ken than soccer, even if he didn’t play himself any more. He loved his parents, but there was so much they didn’t know about him.
In his room, he flopped down on the bed and stared at the ceiling. He certainly hadn’t lied to his parents about being tired. He was thoroughly, utterly exhausted by the bizarre chain of events that had made up the last few hours. He hoped he would be able to fall asleep easily. He didn’t want to think about this crummy day.
Ken?
Not now, Jack. I’m beat. And I’ve had a really bad day.
I just wanted to tell you . . . I’m sorry.
About what?
About what I asked you to do for me. About going out with Lucy.
The experiences of the past couple of hours had practically erased Jack’s request from his memory. And he flushed as he recalled how awful he’d been to Lucy at the bowling alley.
Jack . . . I really don’t want to do that.
