Believing (Lily Dale #2)(56)

She looks up at the sky and finds it in motion as endless masses of purple-gray clouds shift across.

Should she go back for an umbrella? It doesn’t look like this is going to let up anytime soon.

“I’ve got one,” Evangline’s voice calls, and she looks up to see her friend descending the steps next door, beneath a huge black umbrella.

“How’d you know what I was thinking?” Calla asks with a grin as she splashes down the path to join her.

“I saw you look up at the sky, and I noticed you didn’t have an umbrella. What else would you be thinking? Not that I’m not psychic,” Evangeline adds cheerfully. “Just . . . you don’t have to be, to figure out some things.”

No. But you might have to be, to figure out others. Like why she’d have dreamed, last night, about Olivia Newton John. The details were fuzzy when she woke up, but Calla knows she was wearing a 1950s-style ponytail and letterman’s sweater. Like she did in the movie Grease.

As they make their way up Library Street toward the mediums’ league building, she tells Evangeline about it, and about the disembodied voice singing “Hopelessly Devoted to You” in the school auditorium the other day.

“What do you think it all means?” Calla asks.

“I have no idea.”

“Okay, then, what about this? I’ve seen human silhouettes a few times on the wall next to mine . . . and there’s no one there beside me where someone would have to be standing.”

“Shadow ghosts.” Evangeline nods.

“You’ve heard of them?”

“Yeah, but I’ve never seen one. Sometimes they’re supposed to just look like mist or a cloud darting around, but sometimes they’re actual human shadows. Kind of creepy.”

“Ye-ah!” Calla says in a no-kidding tone. “Especially when you’re totally alone, at night. So are they just . . . regular ghosts?”

Evangeline hesitates. “I don’t know much about that.”

Yes, you do, Calla thinks. You just don’t want to tell me. Why not?

“Maybe you should ask Patsy,” Evangeline adds quickly, as if sensing Calla is about to press her on it. “She’s the teacher for this class we’re going to.”

“Patsy Metcalf, registered medium and spiritual consultant?” Calla recites.

“You already know her?”

“Just her sign.”

“Well, I promise you’ll love her.”

A minute later, they step into the building. As Evangeline collapses the umbrella just inside the door, Calla looks around.

The old-fashioned structure seems to consist of one circular room with what appears to be a small kitchen and bathroom off the back. The color scheme is a soothing blue and white, with farmhouse-style beadboard halfway up the wall. There are tall windows all the way around, topped with stained-glass panels in shades of blue.

In the center, a ring of folding chairs is clustered around a lit candle. A few people—a college-aged man with a beard, a pair of older women, and another girl—are already sitting in them, chatting quietly. Calla recognizes the girl: it’s Lena, whose locker is near hers at school.

Their eyes meet, and Lena gives her a welcoming, but obviously surprised, smile.

“Where do you want to sit?” Evangeline asks, leading the way toward the circle of chairs.

“I’ll just sit over there on the sidelines and watch.” Calla feels self-conscious and is beginning to wish she hadn’t come.

“You can’t do that. We need your energy here in the circle.”

She frowns, wondering if Evangeline is just making that up to convince her.

Before she can respond, the door opens and a petite middle-aged woman blows in with a gust of damp chill.

“Yuck!” she exclaims, shaking her short brown hair like a wet dog. “It’s miserable out there this morning! Hi, everyone.”

“Come on,” Evangeline says, dragging Calla toward the teacher. “I’ll introduce you.”

“I don’t know . . . I think I should just go,” she murmurs, but it’s too late.

“Patsy, this is my friend Calla,” Evangeline announces. “She’s sitting in on the class today, remember?”

“I do. You’re Odelia’s granddaughter, right?”

“Right.” No secrets in this town. Calla is glad she didn’t lie to her grandmother about where she was going this morning. She’d probably have found out anyway.

Why not just tell her in the first place? she asks herself as Patsy instructs her and Evangeline to sit in the two chairs to her immediate right.

Because this is complicated, that’s why. It’s not like you’re taking piano lessons or something.

No, her being here is wrapped up in Mom and Kaitlyn and Erin, and Calla doesn’t feel like sharing any of that with her grandmother just yet.

Now, though, it looks like she’ll have to. She wonders how long it’ll take for word of her being here to get back to Odelia.

As other students arrive and fill the circle, Patsy goes around the room, handing out today’s lesson plan, which centers around something called thought forms.

After everyone holds hands for a brief prayer—new to Calla, whose family never even went to church—Patsy goes through the lesson plan step-by-step. As she discusses techniques mediums use to tune in to people’s—and spirits’— thought vibrations, Calla finds herself captivated.