Mom moved forward.
Isabelle held up her arm, palm outward like a barrier. She had pressed that palm against Mr. Barron’s chest right before she reduced him to a pile of smoking bones.
Rosa drew her sword, suddenly unsure that her mother could handle this. But Mom reached out, took the ghost’s threatening hand for the third time, and held on.
“Hello,” she said. “That’s my voice you’ve borrowed.”
Isabelle drew herself up. She grew taller. Old possessions fell from shelves and shattered against the floor. The wind picked up their pieces and used them to give more substance to the towering ghost.
“Mom?” Rosa whispered, too softly to be heard over the swirling, shrieking noise.
Her mother maintained her grip. “Take a moment to collect yourself,” she said, loud but without shouting. “This tantrum is unworthy of you.”
“How dare you intrude?” The ghost took up even more space with the booming sound of her borrowed voice.
“You are in my house now,” the specialist said. “I live here. My daughter lives here. We can make you welcome here. We can honor your memory, and your memories. Are you prepared to earn that respect?”
Isabelle grew larger. The wind howled louder. “I will not be silenced again.”
“Then borrow my voice when you need it,” Mom offered. “But I will have it back now.”
The two stared each other down. Rosa clenched her grip on the hilt of her sword. Then she loosened that grip, just a little, to stay nimble and fight-ready.
Nell put a hand on Rosa’s shoulder. “I think she’s got this, kiddo.”
The ghost diminished. The whirlwind of her gown stopped howling. She bent her arm and wrist as though expecting Athena to kiss her hand, and glared as though expecting Athena to burst into flame.
“I accept,” Isabelle said.
“Welcome home,” said the specialist.
The wind held its breath. Scraps of paper, shards of glass, and swirling dust all hit the floor.
Mom dusted off her hands.
“Is anyone else hungry?” she asked. “I need to eat something more than a stale bagel and a tasteless turkey leg.”
Rosa dropped her sword and nearly knocked her mother over with a tackle hug.
30
MOST OF THE RESTAURANTS IN Ingot had already shut down in their sudden panic. Every one of them was haunted now, and few knew how to handle that. But Nell’s favorite burger place, the Tiny Diner, employed a chef from out of town. He remembered how to properly appease unhappy ovens, and the waitress knew to set an extra plate at every booth and table. The diner stayed open.
Rosa kind of liked this place. Every booth had its own personal jukebox bolted to the wall. Theirs sported a handwritten OUT OF ORDER sign, but it still hummed off-key to itself.
The food turned out to be decent. Not as good as the restaurants on Eat Street, two blocks south of Rosa’s old library in the city, but still decent. Both Rosa and Jasper neglected to chew and practically inhaled face-size burgers whole. Then they slurped milkshakes through thick straws.
Rosa elbowed her mother in the ribs.
“Hey! What was that for?”
“Nothing,” Rosa mumbled around the straw. Then she did it again, just to hear Mom protest again, just to make sure that she still could.
Nell insisted on paying the tab, and on walking Jasper home afterward. “I need to see how your folks are holding up,” she said. “I also need make certain that you don’t get stepped on by trees between here and there.”
Jasper was concerned about his parents, but not at all worried about walking trees. He waved at Rosa. “See you.”
“See you,” she said. “If your household spirits don’t let you sleep, try stacking a pile of pebbles under the bed. They like piles of pebbles. And I can come talk to them tomorrow.”
Jasper nodded. “Pebbles. Got it.”
He could have said more. He wanted to say more. We did it. We saved this place. Or maybe we didn’t save it, because everything is different now. I’m still glad. The town is dead. Long live the town. But he didn’t say any of it. He felt too stuffed full of burger and milkshake. Besides, he knew that Rosa understood.
The squire and the blacksmith walked away in the evening wisp light.
The two appeasement specialists went home to their library. They heard screaming along the way.
“Should we check in on that?” Rosa asked.
“Nope,” her mother said. “Bedtime. And those sounded like screams of annoyance to me. No danger. No distress. They can wait. We’ll have plenty of work to do in the morning.”
She sounded tired. But she did not sound weary, defeated, or in any way haunted, and her voice belonged to her own purposeful self.
Rosa took her mother’s hand and said nothing loudly.
Once home they moved the couch so as not to climb over it. Contagious yawns passed back and forth between them. Mom sprinkled a little sage into the kitchen sink to keep the garbage disposal from grumbling, and then she smiled and said good night as though the day had been ordinary.
Rosa closed her bedroom door.
She opened the curtains over her window mural and watched as a wind swayed the painted trees.
She listened to her bedspread, a quilt patched together from other, older blankets, as it murmured in mismatched fragments of lullabies and bedtime stories.
Her familiar belongings stirred inside cardboard boxes, remembering themselves.
“I’ll unpack tomorrow,” Rosa told them. “I promise.”
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
A Properly Unhaunted Place owes its existence to the help and support of these magnificent people:
Alice Dodge; Peter S. Beagle; Kekla Magoon; Karen Meisner; Rio Saito; Leah Schwartz; Nathan Clough; Ivan Bialostosky; Elise Matthesen; Haddayr Copley-Woods; David Schwartz; Stacy Thieszen; Barth Anderson; Sara Logan; Bethany Aronoff; Jon Stockdale; Melon Wedick; the Larsons Evan, Bryce, and Shelley; the blacksmiths at Oakeshott; the scholarship of Ken Mondschein; and the professional excellence of Barry Goldblatt, Tricia Ready, Annie Nybo, and Karen Wojtyla.
Raise a glass.
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
William Alexander won the National Book Award for his debut novel, Goblin Secrets, and won the Earphones Award for his narration of the audiobook. His other novels include Ghoulish Song, Ambassador, and Nomad. William studied theater and folklore at Oberlin College, English at the University of Vermont, and creative writing at the Clarion Workshop. He teaches in the Vermont College of Fine Arts MFA program in writing for children and young adults. Like the protagonist of Nomad and Ambassador, William is the son of a Latino immigrant to the US. Visit him online at WillAlex.net and GoblinSecrets.com, and on Twitter via @WillieAlex.
Margaret K. McElderry Books
Simon & Schuster · New York
Visit us at simonandschuster.com/kids
Authors.SimonandSchuster.com/William-Alexander
ALSO BY WILLIAM ALEXANDER
Goblin Secrets
Ghoulish Song
Ambassador
Nomad
MARGARET K. McELDERRY BOOKS
An imprint of Simon & Schuster Children’s Publishing Division
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This book is a work of fiction. Any references to historical events, real people, or real places are used fictitiously. Other names, characters, places, and events are products of the author’s imagination, and any resemblance to actual events or places or persons, living or dead, is entirely coincidental.
Text copyright © 2017 by William Alexander
Illustrations copyright © 2017 by Kelly Murphy
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Book design by Sonia Chaghatzbanian and Irene Metaxatos
The illustrations for this book were rendered in pencil.
Jacket design by Sonia Chaghatzbanian
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Names: Alexander, William (William Joseph), 1976– author. | Murphy, Kelly, 1977– illustrator.
Title: A properly unhaunted place / William Alexander ; illustrated by Kelly Murphy.
Description: First edition. | New York : Margaret K. McElderry Books, [2017] | Summary: “In a world full of ghosts, Rosa and Jasper live in the only unhaunted town—but must spring to action when they realize the ghosts are lying in wait to take the town back”—Provided by publisher.
Identifiers: LCCN 2016031757 (print) | LCCN 2016059961 (eBook) | ISBN 9781481469159 (hardcover) | ISBN 9781481469173 (eBook)
Subjects: | CYAC: Ghosts—Fiction. | Haunted places—Fiction. | Libraries—Fiction. | Books and reading—Fiction. | Mothers and daughters—Fiction. | Supernatural—Fiction.
Classification: LCC PZ7.A3787 Pro 2017 (print) | LCC PZ7.A3787 (eBook) | DDC [Fic]—dc23 LC record available at lccn.loc.gov/2016031757
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