And then the figure looked directly at True, her eyes glowing a sudden, intense, manic blue.
True gasped and, without thinking, clutched Orion’s hand. “Do you see that?”
“What?” he asked, whipping his head around.
“There, in the mudroom.”
But then she blinked, and the figure was gone. Orion turned back to her, frowning. “I don’t see anything. What is it?”
Coming to her senses at his words, True quickly yanked her hand away and took a shaky sip of her Dr Pepper. “Nothing. I thought I saw someone but… I, uh, obviously imagined it.” Moon Ridge Madness was definitely getting to her. Social contagion. Folie à deux. “Just a trick of the light or something.”
Orion’s lips lifted in a lopsided smile that made True’s heart gothud.“Or was it a ghost?”
For just a split second, Onny’s and Ash’s words flashed through her mind, how they said they’d seen the Lady of Moon Ridge tonight. And then she remembered that Onny and Ash had oncemade themselves sick by drinking a dubious nettle tea they’d bought online that was supposed to “lift the veil and illuminate the presence of fairies in the woodland,” and she got ahold of herself.
True gave Orion a weak smile.Donottruth-spout. Don’t be the annoying skeptic at a magical midnight gala.Before she could think of a suitably diplomatic response to his question, though, she was interrupted.
“OP, my man!”
They both turned at the exuberant male voice. It belonged to Isaiah Akinde, a Nigerian American football player who True knew also attended North Pointe, the private high school Orion went to. True wasn’t popular enough to run in the circles that included Isaiah, but she’d witnessed enough Moon Ridge High students swoon over him to know who he was. Plus, he and Onny were good friends.
“Isaiah!” Orion got up from the couch and one-arm hugged his friend, who clapped him on the back. Isaiah was dressed in all black—a tight black T-shirt hugged his muscular frame, while black pants fell from his slim hips, and black boots clad his giant feet. His tongue out as he grinned, Isaiah turned around to show the back of his T-shirt to Orion. A message in glow-in-the-dark letters saidGHOST ADVENTURES.
“You went with the Zak Bagans costume!” Orion exclaimed, as Isaiah turned back around. “Nice.”
“I like yours.” Isaiah nodded appreciatively. “I think our whole group’s representing well. Tyler and Priya are around here somewhere, too, dressed like Ed and Lorraine Warren.”
“Excellent.” Orion laughed, and then his gaze snagged onTrue. “Oh, hey. Do you know each other? True, meet Isaiah. He’s a senior at North Pointe, like me. Isaiah, this is True, aka Marie S-curie.”
“Nice to meet you,” Isaiah said, just as True said, “We’ve already met.”
They stared at each other for a second, the air stiff with awkward energy.
“It’s okay,” True said, finally, releasing Isaiah from the prison of his social faux pas. “I’m Onny’s friend; that’s how I know you.”
Isaiah’s face brightened at the mention of their mutual friend. “Oh yeah, Onny’s great.”
There was a pause while they all smiled at each other in that super-fun, stilted way people do when they don’t know what else to say but also don’t know how to extricate themselves.
Setting her soda can on the coffee table, True stood; her neck was beginning to hurt from looking up at the two tall guys. Also, it was a way to distract from the cringey silence Isaiah had somehow added to her and Orion’s twosome.
Not that, they were, you know, a twosome. Or a couple. Or an anything, really.
“So why are you guys all dressed like ghost hunters, anyway? You mentioned a… group? Are you in a band or something?” If they started talking to her about their band, True could kill another twenty minutes easy, thus inching her closer to freedom.
“No.” Orion and Isaiah exchanged a laughing look before Orion turned to look down at her. “We’re in a group called the Ghost Boosters. We investigate paranormal phenomena. We have a pretty big YouTube following.”
“Six hundred eighteen subscribers and counting as of this morning,” Isaiah put in, hooking his thumbs in his pockets. “We should get a big bump after we upload our Halloween episode. We spent the night at Moon Ridge Cemetery last night. Got some primo footage of a full-body apparition. We’re thinking it’s the Lady of Moon Ridge, rising for the quadricentennial. Her star’s missing, so it makes sense.”
Except it didn’t. If her star was missing, shouldn’t she havefallenfrom theskyrather than risen from the ground? True looked from Orion to Isaiah and then back again. She didn’t think they’d appreciate her logic.
“Right,” she said instead, in what she hoped was a neutral way.
Ghosts. A paranormal investigator. True may have let herself believe for a moment that she’d seen something inexplicable earlier, but now that her brain had settled down, she knew the figure had to have an explanation based in science. On the other hand, Orion and Isaiah seemed to have no such compunctions about whateverthey’dseen last night.
It was clear she was out of her depth; kudos to them for chasing their dreams—or spooky nightmares—but she needed to disentangle herself posthaste. A scientific mind could only take so much talk of the supernatural before it combusted spontaneously. Maybe she could sequester herself in Onny’s parents’ library for the remainder of the evening.Maybeshe could even find Igor and snuggle with him by the fire (she’d just have to keep an eye on him and make sure he didn’t decide to get all dominant and mark Onny’s dad’s wall of rare books as his territory). For the first time all evening, True felt almost cheerful.
But Orion was still speaking, oblivious to her hatching escape plan. “It’s pretty cool. We’ve even got all the equipment—you know, the EMF meter, the night-vision cameras, the Spirit Box.…”
