Awake at Dawn (Shadow Falls #2)(98)

She couldn't blame her mom, but damn. For the first time since it all happened, Kylie worried about how her mom might really feel with her going away to boarding school. And maybe she even understood her mom wanting to sell the house.

"Doesn't it feel so good to be back?" Her mom hugged her.

Being back? Not so good. The hug felt nice, though. So nice it even made the house feel less awkward.

When Kylie went into her room, she couldn't help but laugh. On her nightstand was a whole set of pamphlets on all the sex-related topics Kylie had missed while away. The one on top, obviously the one Kylie's mom thought most important, covered info on safe oral sex. Oh yeah, crucial need-to-know information. Kylie was planning on running out tonight and having oral sex.

Her mom had the entire weekend scheduled with items from her We Gotta List. We gotta bake your favorite cookies. We gotta go eat at a new pizza place. We gotta be at the haunted house at six.

When, Kylie wondered, was she going to have time to run out and have "safe" oral sex?

Kylie added a big Gotta to the list. Gotta convince Mom to sign me up for boarding school. Even with her reservations about leaving her mom, Kylie was a supernatural and felt like a fish out of water back at home.

At six that evening, after baking cookies and enjoying some together time with her mom, Kylie crawled her fish-out-of-water butt into the car to go to the ghost hunt. And she seriously hoped that the B&B owner didn't mind if she brought a visitor along because sitting in the backseat- still bloody, still puking-was Kylie's ghost, who wasn't any more communicative here than she'd been back at Shadow Falls.

And to prove the point, the ghost disappeared before they arrived at the B&B. Once they'd all gathered in the lobby of the B&B, the owner, a tall, heavyset woman in her late fifties, with dyed red hair, waved them into a semicircle. "Welcome. Welcome to Anderson's B&B. My name is Celeste Bell. Some of you may remember me from my many television appearances."

Kylie didn't but several of the other guests nodded their heads. Celeste was a professed ghost whisperer who had appeared on some cable show as an expert on haunting. She wore a long white gown, as if dressing spooky would help intensify the experience.

"The house was built in the late eighteen hundreds by Joshua Anderson, but tragedy struck before he ever moved in when his young bride was killed on their wedding day in a carriage accident. Joshua took his own life in the master bedroom. The place was subsequently sold and reopened as a saloon. More tragedy soon followed. Now, before we get started, let's talk about the rules."

The rules were simple. Stay together. No unnecessary chitchat. Celeste also insisted they turn off their cell phones because that kind of energy could chase away ghosts.

Funny, Kylie thought, her experience said ghosts really liked tinkering with her cell.

Kylie actually checked Celeste's brain pattern to see if maybe she was supernatural, but nope. The ten attendees, with the exception of Kylie and her mom, were all card-carrying senior citizens who no longer had to show their IDs to get their free coffees at their neighborhood Chick-fil-A.

Moving slowly as a group, half of them using walkers, they followed the woman through the first floor of the house. In each room, Celeste stopped to tell another haunting tale, most from the house's days as a saloon. Thus far, the place looked ghost-free.

While Celeste may have sucked as a ghost whisper, she was a good storyteller and she had everyone on pins and needles listening to the spooky tales.

"Now, we're going to have dinner. And I'll tell you about what happened in the early nineteen hundreds. Go ahead and sit down."

Celeste motioned to the dining room table, with plates already filled with spaghetti. "For some reason," she whispered, "this room is always a bit colder than the rest of the house."

As if on cue, the temperature in the old parlor dropped a good forty degrees. Kylie's ghost materialized next to her. The patrons all huddled together, hugging themselves, as steam rose from their lips. The look on Celeste's face would have made attending the ghost hunt worth it if Kylie hadn't seen the look of sheer terror on her mom's face.

"It's okay, Mom," Kylie whispered.

"It's so friggin' damn spooky." Her mom never said friggin' or damn.

"Probably just a trick," Kylie lied.

"It's time. Time for you to do something!" the ghost screamed. Show me what I have to do, Kylie said in her mind.

Right then, every cell phone in the room started ringing. Well, all of them except Kylie's. Her phone croaked like some demented frog. And since they had all been turned off, that brought some serious gasps. But not as serious as when the chandelier crashed down on top of the table, sending plates of spaghetti shooting across the room.

Celeste, the professed ghost whisperer and cable TV "celebrity," fainted.

Kylie didn't know people using walkers could move so fast. But not fast enough for her mom. Kylie thought for a second that her mom was going to knock a couple of them out of the way to take the lead spot heading out of the dining room.

Kylie knelt beside Celeste. As the last of the guests fought their way out the door, Kylie heard one of them say, "Who is Trey Cannon?" Kylie looked up at the elderly man.

"Don't know," said another lady. "But that's who called me, too." Kylie grabbed her phone, and sure as hell, she had a voice message from Trey.