Believing (Lily Dale #2)(4)

Now the air is fragrant with bacon, and she can hear pans clattering in the kitchen as she creaks slowly down the steep stairs. She left the bracelet behind. The clasp is probably still loose, and she doesn’t dare risk losing it again.

Yeah, that, and you’re still too spooked to wear it again.

Dressed in jeans and a long-sleeved black top from the Gap, she’s toting her heavy backpack, bulging with school supplies her grandmother picked up for her. Her iPod is tucked into one of the pockets, just in case she finds herself with some downtime.

Missing is her cell phone. She never left the house without it back in Florida, but there’s no need to carry it around now; she can’t even get a signal here in Lily Dale.

Nor can she get online to check her e-mail, IM with her friends, maintain her MySpace page, write in her blog, surf the Web . . .

To do anything on the Internet, she has to go next door to use Odelia’s neighbors’ computer. Luckily, the girl who lives there, Evangeline Taggart, is her age and has fast become a good friend to Calla. The computer belongs to her aunt Ramona, who’s raising the orphaned Evangeline and her brother, Mason, but she said Calla’s welcome to come use it anytime.

Still, it’s not the same. In her old life, Calla was used to being plugged into the world around her. Well, maybe not the world immediately around her . . . but, electronically, to the world beyond her family’s doorstep.

Here in Lily Dale, she can be in tune only with her immediate surroundings.

Maybe, she’s starting to realize, that’s made her more sensitive to . . .

Well, a new kind of energy, which has nothing to do with electronics.

Even now, as she reaches the shadowy front hall, a sound reaches her ears: steady rapping.

She looks around, half expecting to see another inexplicable shadow . . . or perhaps a manifestation of Miriam, the resident ghost, who lived in this house a hundred years ago. She likes to make things go bump, not just in the night, but all day long.

Nope, no Miriam. This time, the rapping sound is coming from somewhere outside.

Calla glances out the window and immediately spots the very human source. One of Odelia’s neighbors across Cottage Row is using a hammer to nail a sheet of weather-proofing plastic over the windows of his little house.

Farther down the street, a pair of heavyset women in plaid flannel shirts load boxes into the SUV parked in front of another cottage that’s already been boarded up.

Wow. People are leaving town in droves.

The official Lily Dale “season” just ended on Labor Day weekend. According to Evangeline Taggart, the place empties out as most of the resident mediums head for warmer climates to avoid the harsh western New York winter.

They sure don’t waste any time, Calla thinks, watching a car towing a U-Haul trailer rumble past.

Beyond the lofty trees and Victorian rooftops of the little houses across the way, the sky is heavy with rain clouds. Cool air gusts through the screened window. Shivering, Calla pulls it down a little. Her thin Florida blood isn’t used to weather like this—not in September, anyway. Her grandmother mentioned that the first snowflakes start to fall around mid-October, and the wintry weather doesn’t fully let up until May.

Not that it matters, because Calla expects to be out in California with her dad by the time the real snow accumulates and winter gets under way. Which is kind of a shame, because she’s seen snow only once in her life, on a family ski trip to Utah.

Leaving the chilly air and the misty gray view behind, she heads into the kitchen, where the overhead light dispels the gloom.

She remembers seeing the room for the first time a couple of weeks ago and comparing it to her Florida home’s sleek, modern, expensive granite-and-stainless-steel kitchen with custom cabinetry.

Here, the floors are green-and-white linoleum and the walls are papered in an ivy pattern, peeling at the seams. There are white metal cabinets with metal handle pulls, an outdated olive green fridge and stove, and pale green countertops crammed with everything anyone could ever need in a kitchen, and cluttered with a lot of stuff nobody but Odelia could possibly ever need anywhere.

Today, the room—like the rest of the house—seems charming. Homey. Familiar.

“Happy first day of school!” Standing at the stove, Odelia looks up from the griddle where she’s frying . . . something.

It doesn’t look like eggs, or pancakes. It pretty much looks like . . .

“Mush.” That came from Odelia.

“Mush?” Calla echoes.

Odelia lifts the corner of the griddle and points at the yellowy goo. “Fried cornmeal mush. Ever had it?”

“Nope.” And she isn’t particularly anxious to try it.

“Really? I’m surprised. It’s a real southern thing. I’d think growing up down there . . .”

“Yeah, well.” Calla shrugs. “I guess we’ve never eaten much Southern food. Maybe since Mom is—was—from here, and Dad is from Chicago . . . I don’t know.”

“Well, then, you’ve been missing out.” Odelia slides a spatula beneath one of the blobs and expertly flips it. “There’s nothing like starting the school day with a stick-to-your-ribs breakfast like fried mush and a side of bacon. I’ve got some under the broiler.”

“I always just had cereal at home.” Organic, unsweetened cereal. “Mom’s pretty much a health nut. I mean . . . she was.”