Connecting (Lily Dale #3)(11)

When she catches him, though, he lowers his eyes again to the page.

Calla sighs inwardly.




After school, backpacks over their shoulders, hoods raised against the cold breeze, Calla and Evangeline trail a couple of other school kids along Dale Drive toward the entrance to Lily Dale.

At this time of year, nobody mans the gatehouse, with its sign that reads LILY DALE ASSEMBLY . . . WORLD’S LARGEST CENTER FORTHE RELIGION OF SPIRITUALISM.

Beyond, the winding lanes of the town are deserted against a cold gray backdrop. Clumps of late-summer flowers, blooming profusely in defiance of an almost perpetually sunless sky, bend and shift on fragile stems in a brisk wind off the choppy lake waters.

“. . . so then I casually mentioned to him we might be out of town that weekend,” Evangeline is saying, “just in case he was thinking of asking me. What do you think?”

“Hmm?” Distracted by a sense of uneasiness that’s been nagging at her all day, Calla’s barely been listening to Evangeline’s long-winded account of what happened between her and Russell Lancione during study hall.

“Never mind. It doesn’t really matter. It’s not like I—hey, what are you looking at?” Evangeline follows Calla’s gaze off to the right, in the opposite direction of Cottage Row and home.

Leolyn Woods is over there.

“Nothing, just . . . want to take the long way home today? I feel like getting some fresh air.”

“Fresh air?” Evangeline asks dubiously, as a strong gust whips a clump of frizzy orange hair over her face. “You’re joking, right? It’s like a hurricane out here. Any more fresh air and we’ll be dangling from a tree branch somewhere.”

Her words are punctuated by the familiar, furious silvery clanging of metal wind chimes, as common above local doorsteps as medium shingles are.

And it isn’t just wind chimes. Calla has no idea whether all Lily Dale residents are as big on indoor clutter as Odelia, Ramona, and a handful of others have proven to be, but they all seem to love outdoor clutter. Birdbaths, garden gnomes, fluttering American flags or smaller nylon ones imprinted with harvest pumpkins and autumn leaves. Now that election season is here, political signs have been popping up, too.

Calla hasn’t been able to pinpoint any practical or spiritual reason for the jumble of exterior ornamentation. It simply appears to be, to the Lily Dale landscape, what neon-lit signs are to Las Vegas: part of the local tradition.

“The thing is,” Calla tells Evangeline, with another glance toward Leolyn Woods, “we always go the same way, every single day.”

“Uh, maybe because that’s where we live?” Evangeline frowns, shaking her head a little and longingly watching her brother, Mason, bear to the left up ahead, toward Cottage Row and home.

“I’m taking the long way today,” Calla decides. “You don’t have to go with me, though.”

“But why do you—” Suddenly Evangeline’s round face breaks into a grin. “Oh!”

“What?”

“I know why you want to go that way.”

She does?

“You do?”

“Sure.”

Then why is Evangeline smiling? There’s nothing amusing about a ghost showing a person an old map marked with an X.

And anyway, how could she know?

How does anyone around here claim to know anything? Calla reminds herself.

Okay, Evangeline does claim to be a budding psychic medium, but as far as Calla can tell, she’s got a long way to go. It’s highly unlikely that she had a psychic vision of the book and the map.

Still, Calla decides to humor her. And in Lily Dale, you really just never can tell.

“All right,” she says patiently. “Why do I want to go that way?”

“Blue.”

“Blue? Blue what?”

“You mean Blue who. Blue Slayton. Duh. I bet he’s hanging over at Jeremy’s today, right? Jeremy lives there—on East Street.” Evangeline gestures off in the distance, beyond the path toward the woods.

Actually, he isn’t. He had soccer practice right after school. But Evangeline just gave her a good cover story, so . . .

“Oh . . . fine. You got me.” Calla feigns a sheepish grin. “That’s why I want to go that way. You coming?”

Evangeline hesitates.

Come on, Evangeline . . . come with me . . .

Calla really isn’t anxious to go into the woods alone. She’s been there before, and it’s a creepy spot. The locals claim Inspiration Stump and its surroundings are a highly charged vortex of spiritual energy, and judging by her own reaction to the place, Calla suspects they’re right.

“Why not.” Evangeline shrugs and looks down at her chubby build, even more roly-poly than usual in her down jacket. “I could use some extra exercise. Let’s go.”

As they walk along, she resumes the saga of Russell Lancione and his unrequited crush on her, claiming not to care but spending an awful lot of time analyzing everything he’s said and done.

Calla hates to cut her off, but they’ve reached the turn-off for Leolyn Wood, and as a conversational rule, Evangeline rarely pauses for air.

“Hey, let’s walk through there!” Calla exclaims, as though she just thought of it.

Evangeline breaks off in the middle of a sentence. “What?”