“I know.”
I maybe said it a little too enthusiastically, because he paused. I’d never known him to pause when he was lecturing us. Granted, he didn’t lecture us often. He lowered his eyes and said, “That’s the first time you’ve gone there, right? There hasn’t been more going on before that I didn’t hear about?”
“I would have made sure you heard about it.” Sadie cut a chunk off her pizza wrap. “Don’t worry, I yelled at her this morning, too. She’s probably heard enough of it.”
If I agreed, Sadie would say I had not heard enough of it, so I kept my mouth shut. They wouldn’t be tearing into me if they knew the real reason we’d gone into the mine. They wouldn’t be acting like I’d actually done all the things the town thought I did. But that had been one of Mom’s first rules: Dad and Sadie can’t know about the firestarters. That just meant that now Sadie was on Dad’s side for everything, even though she knew as well as I did that our reputation in town was mostly because of him.
“Anyway,” Sadie went on, “I have some news, too.”
“Did you also go late-night spelunking?” Dad asked.
“Hah, no. I don’t have a ring or anything, but uh—Grim proposed.”
I choked on my water. Dad’s face lit up. He almost knocked over his drink reaching across the table to grab Sadie’s hand.
“What? Really?”
“When did that happen?”
Sadie beamed at Dad and scowled at me. “A couple of days ago. I didn’t say anything because I wanted to announce it when Dad got home.”
“Grimmie proposed to you and you didn’t tell me?” I said. “I’m surprised he didn’t use a Fruit Loop as a ring.”
“We thought about it. The hole is too small.”
“Well, details,” Dad said. “You’re getting the Fool to cater, right?”
“We still have to figure out how we’re paying for it.”
He shrugged. “Just do what me and your mom did and have the ceremony at town hall.”
“Or elope,” I said.
Sadie threw a piece of lettuce at me. I flicked water back.
Dad caught sight of something at the bar. “Hey, your ghost hunters are on TV.”
Across the bar, the Harrisburg news crew stood outside the entrance to the Hillcroft Coal Mine. The No Trespassing sign took up most of the shot.
“Great,” I said.
The TV was muted, but a black band of captions scrolled across the bottom of the screen.
“. . . and last night the crew was disturbed by two Addamsville teenagers playing a prank. No one was injured, but the teenagers were taken into the custody of the Addamsville Police Department. Dead Men Walking leader Tad Thompson has stated they will not press charges. . . .”
“Of course they won’t press charges!” I said. “They stole our footage and they don’t want anyone to find out!”
The captions went on. “. . . the show has delayed its official investigations in order to allow this weekend’s homecoming festivities to take place without interruption, but this evening they plan to do additional filming of another famous haunted location: Grimshaw House, located on Addamsville’s south side. The crew will be accompanied by a police escort to ensure no incidents occur.”
“Oh.” Sadie’s face fell. “Grim’s not gonna be happy about that.”
I already had my phone out to text Artemis. There would be plenty of witnesses around the house, not to mention at least one of the police officers, and if we hounded the police about getting the footage back, the DMW crew might hand it over. Hopefully Chief Rivera had a warrant or something to search their equipment more thoroughly.
A shot of Grimshaw House, paint chipped and weeds overgrowing its lawn, appeared for a moment on the TV. A haunted house if there ever was one, though of course no ghosts showed on screen. It should have belonged to Grim, but the will that passed the property down to the next Grimshaw had been lost years ago, and the town had sold it to Hermit Forester. That alone was enough to make me think there was something funky about it, though I’d never figured out what.
“They found the treasure in that place yet?” Dad asked. There was a theory that the Grimshaws had hidden their railroad fortune somewhere in their house. No one had found it yet, but not for lack of trying: it had been a favorite break-in spot for teenagers when my mom was young, but none of them had ever escaped without being horribly injured. Falling down stairs, tripping on things that weren’t there, getting electrocuted by bad wiring. Even the Birdies didn’t go near it now.
“Nope,” I said, “the definitely-totally-real treasure remains hidden.”
“Is Grim still trying to find the will?”
“He’s looked,” Sadie said. “We both have. There’s nothing in the library about it, just old articles about the family. If the town council knew where it was, you’d think they’d have told him about it.”
“I wouldn’t be so sure,” Dad said. “The Foresters have owned that place a long time. Imagine the town council prying a Goldmine house out of the hands of one of the old families, especially after all these years. And even if they did, and Grim got the will back and found out he was the heir to the house, he’d have to take Forester to court.”
And if there was anyone in town who didn’t have the money to take an old family to court, it was Grim. Grim, the oldest living Grimshaw, surely the heir to the house. Grim, who had never hurt a single living creature in his whole life.
The door to the Fool chimed. A large group of men shuffled into the restaurant. Their cheeks were chapped rosy red, their shoulders huddled up around their ears. Most wore junkyard jumpsuits under their coats, some the jeans and blue shirts from the auto shop. Buster Gates’s wrecking crew.
Buster Gates looked like a bulldog that got stung in the face by a hornet. He shared no resemblance to Lorelei, his daughter, and he was the actual polar opposite of Grim, his nephew. How he ever got on the town council is beyond me, though it was probably money. He cheated people out of their junk and their car repairs, treated Grim like an indentured servant, and occasionally tried to run over teenage girls with his stupid ogre truck.
Buster said hi to Ecky Sanders, the bartender, and he and his group made their way toward the pool tables. I shrank into my seat to hide. Dad noticed my reaction and turned.
“Hey!” Dad raised a hand. “Buster boy! Long time no see!”
“No, Dad, no,” Sadie said, but Dad was already standing.
Buster and his group stopped a table away and sized Dad up like a bull with a matador. Buster snorted and lifted his chin.
“They let you out already?” Buster said. “Thought you had another couple decades.”
Dad laughed; either he didn’t see the looks on their faces, or he didn’t care. “No, three and a half years and I’m done! How’s everything been? Junk business doing okay?”
Buster narrowed his eyes. He wasn’t the smartest pig in town, but even I couldn’t tell if Dad was messing with Buster, or if Dad honestly didn’t realize he and Buster weren’t friends anymore. I grabbed Dad’s sleeve and tugged on it.
“Did you know your girl’s been attacking people?” Buster said, nodding to me. “Trespassing on private property, putting her nose where she shouldn’t, and now setting fire to houses, not just herself. George Masrell’s dead, and she’s still the prime suspect.”
Dad’s smile faltered. “Come on, Buster, you know Zora wouldn’t do something like that.” He took my hand off his sleeve and put his on my shoulder. “She’s made some bad choices in the past, but we all have. She’s trying to make up for it now, and that’s all we can ask.”
I rolled my eyes. Did he really think flimsy appeals like that would sway a town like Addamsville?
“You call robbing this town a bad choice?” The faces in the crowd behind Buster grew darker. A lot of people had been touched by Dad’s scheme. A lot. “You robbed Masrell, too, and he helped send you to prison. How do we know you didn’t do this?”
“That’s n
ot—”
“Some of us think it’s time you and your litter”—Buster gave me and Sadie a sideways look—“find a new town to trash. Get that eyesore of a trailer off the bluffs.”
Dad cooled. “You can say whatever you want about me, Buster, but I’m not gonna let you talk about my girls that way.”
“What girls?” Buster said. “I only see dogs. At least your bitch wife had the decency to go die in the woods.”
I grabbed Dad’s hands at the same time Sadie shoved herself between him and Buster. I had never seen my dad angry, and I had never—never—seen him angry enough to hit something, but the moment the words left Buster’s mouth, white rage flashed across Dad’s face.
“We’re going.” Sadie shoved her way around the tables, pulling me and Dad behind her. “We’re going, we’re going right now. Ecky, here’s a couple of twenties, keep the change. Going, going.”
Only when we were outside did Dad pull his hands out of mine. A furrow deepened between his eyebrows; with his new gray hair, he looked years older.
“I didn’t think it’d be that bad,” he said.
“People never liked us,” Sadie replied.
I didn’t say anything. Dad wandered toward the Chevelle, looking lost. It was good for him to hear that. Maybe he thought time in prison had been enough of a punishment, maybe he’d never gotten the full story of what had happened after he’d left. What people thought of us. How they treated us. It was his fault, and there was no point in sugarcoating it.
Dad gave me the Chevelle keys. “Maybe you should drive home, Zoo.”
I watched him get in the backseat. He needed to see the ramifications of what he’d done, but that didn’t mean I had to let Buster Gates get away with calling my mom a bitch.
I marched back to the Fool and got as far as the sidewalk before Sadie yelled at me from the car. I didn’t hear what she said, but the sound was enough. I stopped.
Threatening Buster—even yelling something at Buster that could be vaguely construed as a threat—was one of those things that wouldn’t help anyone. It wouldn’t even make me feel better. All it would do was reinforce the idea that the Novaks were quick to anger and couldn’t control themselves. I balled my fists, squeezing the Chevelle’s keys so hard my fingers burned.
Ten. Nine. Eight. Seven. Six. Five. Four. Three. Two. One.
A deep breath.
I walked back to the Chevelle.
14
Dad went to bed early that night. He didn’t want to stay in the bedroom he used to share with Mom, and we refused to let him sleep on the broken-down couch, so I took the couch and he was in my room. He was exhausted, he said, and just wanted to sleep. Sadie moved from the kitchen nook to the bathroom and back again, wearing paths in the floor, while I went over my excuse for leaving.
“I have to go to work.” I shut off the TV.
Sadie stopped by a big box of Mom’s old clothes and gave me a blank look. “No, you don’t,” she said. “You don’t work again until tomorrow, after the homecoming parade.”
I should have figured she’d been keeping track of my work schedule.
Her eyes narrowed to slits. “You’re going out somewhere, aren’t you? And you don’t want me to know where.”
“No.”
“I can see your face, you liar. You’re going to sneak out. Is this about the DMW crew again? What are you doing, going to Grimshaw House?”
“No.”
“Is Artemis going to be there? Are you getting her in more trouble, too?”
“Christ, Sadie, shut up.”
“You are not going. I forbid you to go. You’re asking for a shitstorm of epic proportions, and we’ve already got a big one on our hands.”
“And you’re going to stop me . . . how?” I already had the keys to the Chevelle. I was faster than Sadie, and I was banking on the odds I could get to the car before she could grab me. “I don’t want to start anything. Artemis and I are going to get her footage back. Not steal it. There are going to be other people around, and at least one cop. Nothing illegal is going to happen, I promise.”
“You also said nothing was going to happen the day you went out and set fire to the Denfords’ cornfield, and now you only have eight fingers.”
My cheek twitched.
“If you’re so worried about it,” I said, “come with me. At least then you can do recon and tell Grim what’s happening with his house.”
Sadie opened her mouth to argue, then closed it. She looked toward the bedrooms.
“Do you think Dad will be okay?”
“Here by himself? Why wouldn’t he be? You leave me here alone all the time.”
“Yeah, but people are scared of you.”
And they weren’t scared of Dad. They just hated him.
“Fine,” Sadie said, and followed me out.
Grimshaw House had exactly thirteen ghosts.
A conveniently spooky number. It made a cute tourist story. Thirteen ghosts, all of them Grimshaws or servants of Grimshaws:
Edward Grimshaw, the one who built the house, who sometimes sat in the rocking chair on the front porch;
Lillian, his wife, who could be seen falling from the upstairs window with her white dress billowing;
Edward Jr., stumbling down the upstairs hallway with a bloody wound in his gut from an intruder;
Edward Jr.’s five children, four of whom died of horrible diseases and one of drowning in the lake;
Hattie, Edward Jr.’s sister-in-law, who committed suicide at the age of fifty-three after her husband died in a railroad accident;
Malcolm, Hattie’s grandson, looking out the back window over Addams Lake;
Gerald Mosker, the cook;
Martha Lansing, the maid, and a distant relative of Officer Jack Lansing;
And a nameless gardener who could sometimes be glimpsed around the corner of the house.
These were the stories. I had never seen these ghosts; the house itself had a faint twinge of the supernatural about it, and Mom had guessed it was because the Foresters had lived there for a short time after Forester House burned down in the eighties. She’d checked inside, though, and hadn’t found any firestarter entrance. The residual feeling was enough for all the ghosts in the Goldmine to give the house a wide berth, never coming within the confines of the yard.
When we arrived, the sun was setting and the sky behind Grimshaw House was deep orange, and the front windows were dark. The Dead Men Walking van was parked out front, and Eric the tech guy and Mike the sidekick stood nearby with the producer. The front door of the house was open to a gloomy hallway, giving the face of the house the impression of a distressed old man trying to throw up something he shouldn’t have eaten. A police car sat in the driveway, and Norm stood on the crumbling porch with his arms crossed over his chest. He kept a sharp eye on the small crowd of people across the street, many dressed in DMW memorabilia and taking video with their phones. A lot of them had set up shop on the lawns of the houses there, spreading out with their coolers and their lawn chairs. I recognized the college kids I’d pointed in the wrong direction on our way to the mine. One person even had an umbrella. I wanted to ask if they knew they were camping on someone’s private property, and that the interesting thing going on across the street didn’t give them license to hang out wherever they wanted. A few ghosts stood over them, and though they had no expressions on their faces, their presence felt very purposeful. Disapproving.
Grim sat on the hood of his car a little ways down the street. I parked the Chevelle behind him. He wasn’t looking at the house; he faced northwest, toward Black Creek Woods and Piper Mountain.
Sadie touched his arm so we didn’t startle him. I wasn’t sure it was possible to startle Grim. He swung his head around like an owl and smiled sadly at us.
“What’s the matter, Grimmie?” I asked, though we all already knew.
“Nothing, really,” he said. “My problems aren’t that big when compared to others’.”
Being forc
ed to live with your abusive uncle who made you work at his stupid, dangerous junkyard because you had no money to live anywhere else or get a better education, and having to watch people tromp around your family’s home when you weren’t even allowed inside, and knowing that some jerk in the town hall lost the papers that might make your life five billion times better didn’t seem like a small problem to me, but Grim was fundamentally a better person than I was.
Grim turned toward the house and the rest of us followed his gaze. Tad Thompson appeared at the front door, trailed by Leila, who held two cups of coffee and looked like she was going to dump one of them over Tad’s head if he didn’t stop talking.
“I feel bad for her,” I said. “If I had to spend all day with that guy, I’d end up murdering him.”
“Maybe don’t say that out loud,” Sadie said.
“Oh, right, I’m a cold-blooded killer.”
“What are you doing here?” Grim asked.
Sadie sighed. “Zora wanted to get back some footage these guys stole from her and Artemis at the mine. These jokers pretended they didn’t have it when Rivera asked.”
“But she said she’d look into it,” I added. The fact that Norm was here and not the chief didn’t reassure me, but I still had to try.
Artemis showed up a few minutes later. She came speed walking down the street from the direction of Hillcroft House, wearing a thick cable-knit scarf and cute little ankle boots. She huffed like she’d just finished the Indy Mini. A quick glance at the fans and a wary look at the DMW van was enough reassurance for her to hop across the street and join us.
“Hey,” she said. “Are you ready?”
“I figured you’d drive down here,” I said.
“Mom grounded me for, like, three months. No car.”
I doubted that extended to hunting firestarters, unless Aunt Greta was trying to take Artemis’s help away from me to keep her safe. “How’d you get out of the house?”
“I told her I was going to a friend’s to study for the physics midterm.”
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