“No, it was too high up for that.” Claire reached as high as she could. “It was hovering at least this far off the ground. And it didn’t look like any sort of normal light. It was all… all…”
“Shimmery,” Hetta whispered.
“Yes, exactly,” Claire looked at Hetta with newfound interest. “So you’ve seen it too?”
“We’ll get to you in a minute, Hetta,” Leonie said. “What happened next, Claire?”
“I’d heard the stories about the camp ghost, but I hadn’t believed them until that moment.” Claire’s cheeks went pink. “I was so scared that I shifted on the spot. I jumped straight into the nearest tree and hid.”
“Very sensible,” Shan said. “Did you see anything else?”
“Not really.” Claire’s blush deepened. “I, um, had my eyes closed. But I think it came pretty close. It didn’t make any sound, but I could see the glow even through my eyelids. And I smelled it, too.”
Leonie didn’t think ghosts were known for having B.O. “What did it smell like?”
Claire made a frustrated gesture. “Like a person, but also…not. Like part of the forest had come alive and started walking around. I don’t know how to describe it any better than that. It wasn’t like anything I’d ever smelled before. Or since.”
Not just a counselor out for a midnight stroll, then. Leonie’s unease deepened. She hadn’t truly thought there could be anything in the woods, but Claire had clearly seensomething.
From Shan’s frown, he was unsettled by Claire’s testimony too. “Did it seem aware you were there?”
“No,” Claire replied. “I can change color in my animal form. Hardly anyone can spot me when I’m camouflaged. Itwent straight past without stopping. When I was sure it was gone, I bolted for the tents. I tried to tell the other girls what I’d seen, but they were half-asleep and cranky at being woken up. Beth told me it was just a dream, and to go back to sleep.”
Rufus held up a hand to let the others know he was saying something telepathically.*I overheard them talking. I knew Claire was telling the truth, even if no-one else believed her.*
“Did you tell Buck or Honey what you’d seen?” Leonie asked Claire.
“I didn’t really have a chance.” Claire shrugged. “In the morning, I just wanted to get away from there as fast as possible. I was scared that if I told the counselors, they’d want me to show them where it had happened. Then later that day, Honey announced she was leaving, and we were all so busy trying to stop her, the whole thing kind of fell out of my head. By the time everything calmed down, there didn’t seem to be any point in telling the grown-ups.”
“Well, thank you for telling me now.” Leonie turned to Hetta. “You’ve seen something similar, Hetta?”
Hetta hesitated. “Um…”
*Whenever people start telling ghost stories around the campfire, Hetta always goes quiet,*Rufus murmured in her mind.*Archie asked her once if she’d ever seen it. She said no, but I could tell she was lying. She’s never wanted to talk about it.*
“It’s all right, Hetta,” Leonie said gently. “You can tell us.”
Hetta twisted her hands together. “You promise I won’t get in trouble?”
“I promise.” She could guess what was worrying the girl. “I already know you sometimes snuck out of the cabin last summer to shift in secret. Did you see something while you were out in the woods?”
Hetta nodded. “It was only one time. It started raining while I was out, and it washed out my scent trail. I couldn’tfind my way back to camp. I didn’t know what to do, so I just kept walking, getting more and more lost.”
“Oh, sweetheart.” Leonie knew that Hetta had never been in any real danger—with her animal form, she could scare off even a grizzly bear. Still, she must have been frightened. “As soon as someone noticed you were missing, we would have come to find you.”
“That’s what I was scared of,” Hetta said. “I didn’t want to get kicked out of camp for breaking the rules. I don’t know how long I walked, but it felt like hours. Eventually, I just sat down and started crying. And then the ghost came out of the tree.”
They all blinked at Hetta. At least, she assumed they all did. It was hard to tell with Shan, but she had the impression he was as nonplussed as the rest of them.
“It… came out of the tree?” she said to Hetta.
“That’s right.” Hetta stretched out her arms as far as she could. “There was this giant dead tree with two twisted branches, like hands clawing at the sky. And the ghost came out of it. Though I didn’t know that was what it was at first. I thought it was someone from camp out looking for me, and at that point, I was too tired to worry about getting in trouble. So I scrambled up and ran toward the glow, waving and yelling, but it just disappeared. Then, as I was turning around trying to figure out where it had gone, I saw it again, shining through the trees. I tried to catch up with it, but every time I got close, the same thing happened.”
“You must have figured out pretty fast that it wasn’t a counselor,” Leonie said. “Why did you keep following it?”
“It’s not like I had much choice,” Hetta said, a bit defensively. “It was that or sit around in the rain all night. Besides, whenever I slowed down or stopped following, the light would come back. It would kind of bob around, like it was trying to get my attention. And…”
“And?” Shan prompted when Hetta didn’t continue.
