Whatever Tiff might have replied was lost in a sudden stampede of running feet. The whole pack burst through the shattered door, making Shan’s dramatic arrival seem positively discreet in comparison. Her room was abruptly full of panicked campers and overlapping apologies.
“Tiff, we’re so sorry?—”
“It wasn’t supposed to?—”
“Itoldthese idiots this was?—”
“We didn’t mean?—”
“Kids!” Leonie deployed her voice like a knife, cutting through the babble. All the campers instantly fell silent. “One at a time, please. Who wants to tell me what’s going on?”
The campers exchanged nervous glances. Beth opened her mouth, but Tiff beat her to it.
“Spencer and I snuck out of camp to try to summon the ghost. And it worked.” Tiff did not sound nearly as thrilled about this as might have been expected. She drew the blanket tighter around her shoulders. “It appeared right behind us. It told us to run.”
“It wasn’t the ghost,” Finley said.
“It was!” Tiff insisted. “I heard it! A weird, spooky voice, right in my ear!”
Rufus pushed his way past his friends. He was in griffin form, feathers poofed out and fur bristling. Clambering onto the bed, he bumped his beaked head against Tiff’s, letting out a worried chirp.
“It wasn’t a ghost,” Finley repeated. “It was Rufus, Tiff.”
“Rufus?” Tiff looked down at the griffin. “But—you don’t talk. Not out loud, anyway.”
“He does sometimes,” Finley said, echoed by a confirming squawk from Rufus. “It’s just hard for him to get the words out, so he doesn’t do it often. Rufus says he’s really sorry. He didn’t mean to scare you.”
“Well, he kinda did,” Archie said. “Just not that bad.”
“He was supposed to pretend to be the ghost,” Estelle explained. “That way, you’d be able to truthfully tell Shan that you’d really seen it.”
Ignatius glowered at the other campers. “These idiots reckoned Rufus had the best chance of being able to get around Shan’s ability. So they announced that he definitely shouldn’t follow you, and under no circumstances was he to do anything that might make you think there was actually a ghost. Be glad you didn’t have to listen to them trying to plot. It was physically painful.”
Tiff sniffed, wiping her nose on the blanket. “So Spencer was right? You guys were setting us up?”
“I’m afraid so,” Finley said. “We’re truly sorry. We shouldn’t have tried to trick you.”
“We just didn’t have time to come up with a better plan,” Archie said, also shamefaced. “Not with Shan planning to leave first thing in the morning.”
Leonie’s heart missed a beat. “Shan, is that true?”
Shan fidgeted, pushing his sunglasses further up his nose. “My presence here no longer seemed useful.”
“Whoa.” Archie did a double take, staring open-mouthed at Shan’s hands. “You haveclaws?”
Shan hid his hands behind his back as all the kids’ heads swiveled in his direction. “In any event, I was not abandoning the investigation. Since it seemed unlikely we could learn anything more from the campers, I thought I would be of more use out in the forest, guarding the camp from a distance.”
Had he planned to leave without even telling her? She couldn’t ask in front of the kids…not that she really needed to ask, anyway. From the way Shan was staring at the floor, jaw clenched, she already knew the answer.
Not now,she told herself fiercely, ignoring the burning knot of pain in her chest. She couldn’t fall apart in front of the campers.
Still, there was no longer any need to maintain one pretense, at least. Rufus had clearly told his friends about Shan’s ability. There was no point in trying to maintain the fiction that he’d been investigating their fictitious ghost sightings.
“Kids, pretending to have seen a ghost yourselves was one thing.” She massaged her forehead, abruptly tired. “Getting the unicorns involved in faking more hauntings wasn’t great, but at least none of the other campers took it too seriously. But you crossed a line with this stunt. You truly frightened Tiff, and you plotted to deceive your fellow packmates. I’m disappointed in you.”
Beth looked on the verge of tears. “We’re really sorry, ma’am. We honestly didn’t mean to scare Tiff and Spencer.”
“Yeah, we thought you’d be excited, Tiff,” Estelle said. “And Spencer wouldn’t believe in ghosts if one appeared right in front of him. So we figured he’d be fine, too.”
