And where had she hidden the body? It could be anywhere, even the underbrush just out of sight of the clearing. Emma took a few steps toward the woods, then stopped. Someone would have discovered it by now, if it were so easy to see. Here in the dark was not the time to hunt for clues.
“Almost showtime, ladies,” Madeline announced. Emma turned back to the circle, where the girls were gathering. Anticipation hung thick in the air. Charlotte held up her hands like a camera lens, surveying the area one last time. The Twins were doing some kind of theater warm-up exercise, saying “The lips, the teeth, the tip of the tongue” back and forth to each other. Madeline started handing out small cardboard boxes.
Emma lifted the top of hers. Inside was a papier-mâché mask in the form of a horned satyr, nestled in a bed of tissue paper.
“These are awesome,” Lili said. She and Gabby wore comedy and tragedy masks, one smiling and one frowning. Once they’d put them on, Emma couldn’t tell which girl was which. There was a whiskered black cat for Laurel and an eerie porcelain-doll face for Charlotte. In true diva form, Madeline had secured the only beautiful mask for herself—a red, feathered domino that covered her eyes and cheeks.
“Be careful with these. They have to make it back to the ballet closet by Monday morning, or I’m screwed,” Madeline warned.
A rhythmic chanting from behind the rocks made Emma jump. Nisha had started the music. Tendrils of “mist” from the smoke machine crept across the clearing. Even being in on the joke, Emma felt the short hairs on the back of her neck prickle. A few years earlier she’d had a job at the ticket counter for a Halloween haunted house. She remembered how silly the whole thing had looked when the lights were on—anyone could see how fake the foam monsters were, and even the professional-quality monster makeup seemed cakey and silly in the harsh light of day. But when the lights went down, when the smoke machine billowed and the music echoed creepily and the actors hid in the shadows waiting to jump out at their victims, the house became greater than the sum of its parts.
“Excuse me?” A girl’s voice broke in over the droning music. A figure emerged from the mist, looking around uncertainly. “Is this the Conference of the Dead?”
The girl’s face was hidden by a Venetian Carnevale mask in gold and white, but her hair was unmistakably Celeste’s, her braids jutting in every direction. Her robe was deep velvet and embroidered all over with esoteric symbols in gold thread.
“I bet you she just happened to have that robe hanging around in her closet,” Laurel whispered. Emma grinned behind her mask.
The girls nodded slowly. Madeline, now transformed into some kind of glowing mystical creature, gestured to the empty space in the circle. Celeste stepped hesitantly down the path to join them, the whites of her eyes clearly visible behind her mask as her gaze darted around the clearing.
Despite Emma’s skepticism about Madame Darkling’s authenticity—when the curtain came up she was all pro. A theatrical intensity infused every gesture she made. She walked around behind them counterclockwise, sprinkling salt to mark out a circle. “Within this circle we invite all benevolent spirits who would communicate with us. All those who would do us ill are banished to the outer darkness.” Her voice seemed to have mysteriously acquired a strange, choppy accent. Emma locked eyes with Charlotte across the circle and had to bite her lip to keep from laughing out loud.
The medium rejoined the circle, waving her hands over a small cauldron that Emma recognized as a fancy potpourri diffuser. She reached into a little leather pouch around her neck and drew out a pinch of some kind of dried herb. When she sprinkled it into the fire the flame grew brighter. The smell that came off it was something like mint tea mixed with a locker room.
And then, suddenly, her eyes snapped up and locked right onto Emma.
“You,” she said, her voice throaty. “Someone is here for you, dear.”
Emma was glad that the mask on her face was covering her confusion. Had Madame Darkling forgotten who was who? Maybe this was just an opening act, her way of building up to the final reveal.
The music from the underbrush was low and ominous, a soft rumble of chanting monks. “I sense loneliness. Pain,” said the medium. The cauldron’s low flame played across her face. In that moment she looked like a witch, eyes alight with unearthly knowledge. “Someone who died too young.”
And then, somehow, I detached myself from Emma’s senses for the first time since I’d died.
I drifted away from her, around the circle toward Madame Darkling. I could smell the herbs, feel the heat of the fire and the coolness of the breeze, all on my own—not just through Emma. It wasn’t like having a body again so much as connecting with this place. The moonlight on the clearing, the wind, the soil, the quiet chorus of crickets, the mesquite branches gnarled against the sky like skeletal fingers—it was as if all of those things were connected and I was one of them.
Had this faux medium managed to inadvertently tap into something real? Or maybe my body was close, and being near it made me feel a little more alive again.
“Can you hear me?” I asked the medium. Her eyes flickered in answer. She didn’t seem to see me, but maybe she felt me.
“Tell her,” I said, speaking as clearly as I could. Madame Darkling’s pupils were wide in the darkness. “Tell her I wish I could have met her.”
“I wish I could have met you,” Madame Darkling said, her voice flat and distant. Emma gasped softly.
Emma closed her eyes. This couldn’t be real. She didn’t believe in ghosts. But more than ever, she wanted to believe. She tried to quiet her thoughts, to empty her mind and wait for another message to come. I’m listening, she thought desperately. Sutton, are you here? Is that you?