A Festival of Ghosts Read online

  Cold rain began to fall on them. The ditch-diggers ran for their truck to wait it out. Rosa and Jasper took shelter on the front porch of the Talcott family home, which was massive and wrapped around most of the house. Thick white columns held up the porch roof. Rain struck that roof as though trying to punish it for something terrible.

  “What now?” Rosa asked. “Knock on the door and say hi? We’re not welcome here. We’re not friends with anybody here. Bobbie keeps threatening me. Humphrey once fired a homemade flamethrower at you.”

  “Then he’ll be very surprised to see us,” Jasper pointed out. “Maybe he’ll drop his guard and say something useful.”

  “You’re saying that I should try to look intimidating.”

  “Yes,” said Jasper.

  Rosa nodded once. “I can do that.”

  She knocked on the door.

  Humphrey opened it.

  13

  HUMPHREY WAS AN EIGHTH GRADER, older and taller than either Rosa or Jasper, but he jumped as though they both towered over him in a menacing way.

  “Hi,” Rosa said.

  “What . . . ?” Humphrey glanced down at the garden and then looked quickly away. “What are you . . . ?”

  “We’re just worried about you,” Rosa said, her voice politely concerned. That sounded even more menacing, coming from her. “We’ve heard your family name in ghostly whispers.”

  Humphrey’s eyes opened wide. “Come in.”

  Rosa glanced at Jasper. Freaking him out seems to be working, she thought.

  Jasper shrugged. We do outnumber him, said the shrug. He probably won’t try anything violent.

  “Hurry up,” Humphrey insisted. He waved them in and then shut the door quickly.

  Rosa looked around. They stood in a foyer with a polished stone floor and a very large chandelier dangling above. A curved and theatrical staircase seemed made for greeting dozens of important guests with prepared speeches.

  “Nice place,” she said.

  “What did you hear?” Humphrey’s voice broke. He tried to clear it. “Were you standing close to Bobbie? Was something whispering behind her?”

  Nope, Rosa thought. Drops of water from a cursed drinking fountain spelled out your last name and we have no idea what that means. But she didn’t say any of that aloud.

  “Whose voice is it?” Jasper asked without confirming or denying that they might already know.

  Humphrey obviously wanted to tell them. He also looked hesitant and suspicious again. “If I tell you about it, you’ll make it worse.”

  “Of course we won’t,” said Rosa. “Even if you deserve worse. My family business and calling is to make things better between the dead and the living.”

  “Things got much worse after you moved here,” Humphrey said.

  Rosa shook her head, exasperated. “You’re mixing up causes and effects there, genius. Just because something happened after I moved here doesn’t mean it happened because I moved here. If you get a perfect score on a quiz right after you get a haircut, that doesn’t mean the haircut made you smarter.”

  Humphrey cranked up the scowling levels of sarcasm in his voice. “Right. Sure. Coincidence. But I saw Jasper break the circle that kept Ingot safe. And I know you were working together. He used a big candle and a weird ritual. He invited them all back inside. I was there. I saw him do it.”

  Jasper crossed his arms. “The circle was already broken. You were there when that happened, too. You saw me fix the breach and bring them home gently, before the wild flood of their homecoming killed everyone in town. That is what you saw. But you were shrieking like a terrified hamster at the time.”

  Humphrey looked like he wanted to slap Jasper with a glove and challenge him to a duel fought with ornate Victorian pistols. Rosa stepped between them.

  “I’m bored,” she said. “This argument bores me. If you want my help, then just tell me whose whispering voice you’re so worried about.”

  “I can’t,” Humphrey said. “I can’t say her name. She’ll hear me. She’ll know.”

  Rosa sighed. “We’ll make a protective circle, then. Are you the only one home?”

  Humphrey nodded. “Mom’s at work. Dad is traveling this week. Bobbie’s at her dance class for at least another hour.”

  “Good.” Rosa tossed Jasper a length of string. He pressed one end to the marble floor while she used the other to draw a perfect and unbroken circle with a piece of chalk. Humphrey sputtered about marking up the floor. Rosa ignored him until the circle was done. Then she yanked him inside and snapped her fingers.

  Light dimmed and grew fuzzy around them. The sound of rainfall faded.

  “There,” Rosa said. “You’re safe. Nobody else can hear you.”

  The older boy did not seem calm, or comforted, to stand inside a sanctuary circle. His eyeballs looked like they wanted to leap out of their sockets and go hide all by themselves.

  “Try not to bolt,” Jasper said. “If you were a horse I’d put a blanket over your head and sing to you until you stopped freaking out. Would that work? Should I try it?”

  Humphrey’s face shifted from panicked to glowering. “You don’t understand.”

  “Make us understand,” Rosa said.

  He tried. The words did not come easily. His voice seemed to crawl out of his mouth when he finally spoke. “My gran is haunting us. Grandmother Talcott.”

  “Your father’s mom?” Rosa asked.

  “No,” he said. “My mom’s mom. She kept her name, and passed it on to us. The mayors of Ingot have always been Talcotts.”

  “Good to know,” Rosa said. “So what’s wrong with a grandmotherly haunting? Most people have ancestors lingering around. Lullabies from my mom’s mom are sewn right into the quilts she made.”

  “It isn’t like that,” Humphrey said. He made a face as though his own voice tasted bitter to him. “Gran was horrible. She’s still horrible. Mom won’t talk about her. She just says things like, ‘We didn’t have the easiest relationship,’ and then changes the subject. She doesn’t admit that her mother was horrible. But we know. We can tell. And now Gran is haunting Bobbie. She whispers in her ear. All the time. Insulting her. Cutting her down. Pinching her skin to make sure she gets her attention. Gran is probably at dance class right now, relentlessly criticizing every move that Bobbie makes. And the more she does it, the more . . . alike the two of them get.” His face scrunched up as if he were struggling to hold on to his tears.

  “I’m sorry,” Rosa said, and she was, though she also felt disappointed. This doesn’t sound like it has much to do with the voice-stealing water fountain.

  Humphrey turned on her, obviously mad about almost crying in front of witnesses. “It’s your fault. You brought the hauntings back. Bobbie thinks we can make it all stop if we just get rid of you. Run you out of town on a rail.”

  Rosa felt a lot less sorry. “Do you know what that means? To run someone out of town on a rail? It was a kind of public torture. They’d strap you to a sharpened steel rail and then carry it bouncing through the streets to the edge of town, where they’d dump whatever bloody mess was left.”

  “Oh,” Humphrey said. “Gross. It doesn’t mean ‘to put someone on a train and send them away’?”

  “No,” Rosa said. “It doesn’t.”

  “How do you know that?”

  “I’ve always lived in libraries. And I also know that sending me away would solve precisely none of your problems.”

  “Then tell me what would!” the older boy demanded. “But don’t tell me that Gran needs to be appeased. Don’t expect any of us to forgive her.”

  “Relax. I don’t have any talent for forgiveness either.” She rubbed the piece of chalk between her fingertips in a thoughtful sort of way. “Tell me more about your gran. Tell me what she loved.”

  “I don’t care,” Humphrey said.

  “I’m not asking you to care,” she told him. “I am asking you to tell me about things that your grandmother loved when she was alive.�
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  “Hurting people,” he said. “Making herself feel stronger by tearing her daughter and her granddaughter down.”

  “I believe you,” Rosa said. “What else?”

  “Nothing else.”

  “Come on. What else? Even cartoon supervillains love their pets, or their gold-plated furniture, or the portraits of themselves that they commission each year on their birthdays. I am already convinced that your grandmother was vile. Please also tell me about something that she loved.”

  Humphrey continued to glower. If he were a supervillain, Rosa felt certain he would drop her through a trapdoor and into a fighting pit filled with were-dinosaur clones.

  “I can help,” she promised him. “But first you have to tell me what I need to know.”

  He looked away. His fingers cracked as he clenched them together. “The garden,” he said. “Gran loved the garden.”

  “Excellent,” Rosa said. She clapped her hands and rubbed them fast as though trying to start a fire with a twig. “Did she have a favorite part of the garden? Or a favorite plant?”

  “Tulips.” Humphrey told her. “They’re all gone. My dad tore them out.”

  “Perfect,” said Rosa. “You need to plant some more. You’ll also need a plaque or stone marker. It should have the usual sort of thing carved into it. ‘In memory of Whatshername,’ with birth and death dates. Something like that.”

  “We won’t honor her,” Humphrey insisted. “I won’t forgive her.”

  Rosa tried to stay patient, but she made impatient noises. “I didn’t say, ‘In loving memory.’ Pay attention. These words matter. This is all important. You need to set a marker in the ground next to some tulips. After that you need to say something, over and over and over again, right on that very spot. Your sister needs to say it, too.”

  She paused to make sure that he was listening.

  “What?” he finally asked. “What do we need to say?”

  “ ‘This is yours, and nothing else.’ ”

  “But I don’t want to give her anything.”

  “I know,” Rosa said. “You still have to. And you get to set the terms for exactly how you are willing to honor her. Give her this, and only this. She’ll take it. She’ll stop following Bobbie around and stay right there, inside that spot, if you dedicate it to her. ‘This is yours, and nothing else.’ Nothing else.”

  Humphrey sniffed. “That’ll work?”

  “Yes,” she said. “It will. Do it soon. Plant those tulips. Nell MacMinnigan can probably forge a plaque for you.”

  “Okay,” Humphrey said. “Thanks.”

  “Don’t worry about it.”

  Rosa stepped outside the circle. The rainfall instantly became louder. She fetched a wet paper towel from the kitchen—which was a large, white, shiny place that looked clean enough to perform sterile surgeries on the countertop. That extreme level of cleanliness made Rosa feel like a germ. She hurried back and wiped away all evidence of chalk from the floor.

  “Are you okay to stay here?” Jasper asked Humphrey. “You can come over to the farm instead.”

  “Or the library,” Rosa suggested. “We can pretend to do homework.”

  “No,” he said. “Thanks. But I should stay. I want to be here when Bobbie gets home.”

  “Okay,” Rosa said. She dug a small vial of dark liquid out of her tool belt. “Here. Take this.”

  He didn’t. “What is it?”

  “Homemade ink mixed with saltwater. Use it to write notes to your sister. Tell her about the tulips. Your grandmother won’t be able to read anything you write with this.”

  Humphrey took the vial as if he thought it might explode.

  Rosa opened the front door and left.

  “See you,” Jasper said in a stoic sort of way, which felt like the right tone to use. It let them both ignore emotions that Humphrey clearly wanted to ignore.

  “Bye,” Humphrey said with equal stoicism. Then he shut the door.

  14

  JASPER AND ROSA STOOD ON the front porch of the Talcott family home. It was still raining.

  “Well,” she said, “that was a little bit satisfying. I guess. But I don’t see how their horrible grandmother connects to any of the hauntings at school.”

  “Maybe they don’t connect,” he said. “The mayors of Ingot have always been Talcotts. Always. So your soggy notebook might have been talking about any generation of them, past or present.”

  Rosa sighed. “Time to hit the library, then. I’ll have to look at maps to see what’s under the Lump, and page through town records to find out about all of those other Talcotts. Which means I’ll have to talk to Mrs. Jillynip. I don’t want to talk to Mrs. Jillynip.”

  “We all have our burdens,” Jasper said with mock sympathy.

  Rosa made a pbbbbbbbbbbt noise at him. “Do you see those two royal ditch-diggers anywhere?”

  “Geoff and Po,” Jasper said. “And no, I don’t. I think they’re still hiding from the rain.”

  “Good. Let’s go peek at the gardening cart that they were obviously trying to hide from us.”

  Punishing sheets of water continued to fall from the sky and pummel the ground.

  “Rather not,” Jasper said.

  “Me neither,” said Rosa.

  “Ready, set, go,” he said, and they went.

  Rain almost knocked them over as they ran downhill. Sneakers slipped in the wet grass and mud. Momentum made it difficult to stop. They almost fell directly into the freshly dug ditch, but instead they skidded to a halt at the very edge.

  Rosa looked down. “That looks pretty deep for an electric dog fence.”

  “How deep are dog fences supposed to be?” Jasper wondered.

  “I have no idea,” Rosa admitted. “But I’m suspicious anyway. Let’s check the cart.”

  They crouched beside the gardening cart and lifted up a corner of the tarp.

  Copper scrap was hidden beneath it. They saw pots, pans, pennies, and lengths of pipe all welded together. Some of the copper looked shiny and new. The rest was covered over with dark green patina.

  The word “lethe” had been carefully etched into every piece.

  “Barron’s wall,” Rosa whispered. “These are all salvaged bits of that circle. The Talcotts are making their own private banishment fence.”

  The sheer depths of her anger almost delighted her.

  Rain calmed down to drips and drizzles. Car doors opened and shut nearby. The ditch-diggers were returning to work, so Jasper and Rosa bolted. They ran all the way back to the road and away.

  It had stopped raining completely by the time they got to the library, but they were already soaked all the way down to the toes of their socks. They stood dripping in the front lobby while Rosa phoned her mom. “Hi. Are you home? Good. Can you bring a couple of big towels upstairs?”

  Athena Díaz brought towels upstairs. She brought the bedraggled and towel-wrapped kids downstairs, put the kettle on, and went digging through boxes of old clothes for something dry that Jasper could wear.

  Rosa squelched into her own room to get changed. The quilt on her bed hummed three or four different lullabies simultaneously. It sounded discordant. She still loved it.

  “Thanks for not being horrible,” she said to the echoes of her grandmother.

  The quilt hummed happily in answer.

  Rosa joined Mom and Jasper in the living room. Dozens of books loaned from other library branches filled up the place in unsettled piles. Mom had brought her work downstairs. Now she shifted those piles around to clear some couch space for Rosa and Jasper, and to clear the coffee table for steaming mugs of peppermint tea.

  “Tell me your troubles,” Mom said.

  Rosa tried to tell her, but she couldn’t, because she recognized the slacks and button-up shirt that Jasper had changed into. Both had once belonged to Rosa’s father.

  She gulped down a mouthful of tea so that she wouldn’t have to say anything. Then she almost coughed it back up because the tea was still h
ot.

  Jasper explained instead. “The Talcott house is badly haunted, so they’re building a fence around it—a buried circle made out of copper.”

  “Ah,” Mom said. “I’m not surprised. Nell and I found a patch of ground in the mountains where Barron’s circle had been cleared away already. Now we know where all that missing copper went. The mayor is trying to make her own personal gated community between the living and the dead.”

  “You don’t sound worried about that,” Jasper noticed.

  “Oh, I’m not,” said Ms. Díaz. Then she went on to explain—a little too quickly—why she was not worried at all. “That fence isn’t likely to work. Burying a bunch of metal that local ghosts are allergic to won’t necessarily lock those ghosts out—not unless Mayor Talcott has trained for years in the forbidden arts of banishment. I’m pretty sure that she hasn’t. But I’ll go meet with her anyway, just to be safe. Maybe I can help her with home appeasements and talk her out of the whole thing.”

  “Rosa offered Humphrey some of that same help,” Jasper said.

  “Good.”

  Both of them glanced at Rosa. Rosa looked away and sipped her tea. It was still very hot.

  “Good,” Mom said again. “Jasper, are you staying for dinner? I’ve got some microwavable things that don’t taste terrible. Or I could make pancakes. I might make pancakes. I did mean to get groceries today, but these irate piles of books have kept me busy.”

  “No thank you,” Jasper said. He sensed Rosa’s discontent, because he was Jasper. “Pancakes do sound good, but I should get home.”

  He leaned sideways to bump his shoulder against Rosa’s, which meant See you tomorrow, and also, We’ll be able to handle whatever haunted nonsense tomorrow brings.

  She understood, and pushed back with her own shoulder. That meant See you tomorrow, and also, I’m sorry that the unexpected sight of my father’s old clothes are making it difficult for me to breathe.

  Jasper probably didn’t catch the second part. He left with a plastic bag full of his own soaked clothing.

  “What’s wrong?” Mom asked once they were alone.

  Rosa didn’t answer right away. Instead she picked up a pile of unhappy books and tried to help sort them. Her mother did the same. They made separate stacks of the books that refused to open, the books that kept swapping sad and happy endings back and forth, and the books that pushed subtext too close to the surface.