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"I hesitate to ask," I said, after a while of sitting there listening to the
wind chimes and Spike's steady growling. "But where are we?"
That question was answered when, a second later, the door to the bungalow
burst open and a woman whose hair was the same whitish yellow as Cee Cee's
only so long that she could sit on it yoo-hooed at us.
"Come in," Cee Cee's aunt Pru called. "Please come in! I've been expecting
you!"
Cee Cee, not even glancing in her aunt's direction, muttered, "I just bet you
have, you psychic freak."
Remind me never to tell Cee Cee about the whole mediator thing.
C H A P T E R
11
"Oh, goodness," Cee Cee's aunt Pru said. "There it is again. The ninth key.
This is just so strange."
Cee Cee and I exchanged glances. Strange wasn't quite the word for it.
Not that it was unpleasant. Far from it. At least, in my opinion, anyway. Pru
Webb, Cee Cee's aunt, was a little odd. That was certainly true.
But her house was very aromatic what with all the scented candles she kept
lit everywhere. And she'd been quite the attentive hostess, giving us each a
glass of homemade lemonade. It was too bad, of course, that she'd forgotten to
put sugar in it, but that kind of forgetfulness apparently wasn't unusual for
someone so in touch with the spirit world. Aunt Pru had informed us that her
mentor, the most powerful psychic on the West Coast, often couldn't remember
his own name because he was channeling so many other souls.
Still, our little visit hadn't been particularly enlightening so far. I had
learned, for instance, that according to the lines in my palm, I am going to
grow up to have a challenging job in the field of medical research (Yeah!
That'll be the day). Cee Cee, meanwhile, is going to be a movie star, and Adam
an astronaut.
Seriously. Anastronaut .
I was, I admit, a little jealous of their future careers, which were clearly
a great deal more exciting than my own, but I tried hard to control my envy.
What I'd given up trying to control and Cee Cee apparently had as well
was Adam. He had told Aunt Pru, before I could stop him, about my "dream," and
now the poor woman was trying pro bono, mind you to summon Deirdre Fiske's
spirit using tarot cards and a lot of humming.
Only it did not appear to be working because every time she started to turn
the cards over, she kept coming up with the same one.
The ninth key.
This was, apparently, upsetting to her. Shaking her head, Aunt Pru that's
what she'd told me to call her scooped all the cards back into a pile,
shuffled them, and then, closing her eyes, pulled one from the middle of the
deck, and laid it, face up, for us to see.
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Then she opened her eyes, looked down at it, and went, "Again! This doesn't
make any sense."
She wasn't kidding. The idea of anyone summoning a ghost with a deck of cards
made no sense whatsoever & to me, at least. I couldn't even summon them by
standing there screaming their names something I'd tried, believe me and
I'm a mediator. Myjob is to communicate with the undead.
But ghosts aren't dogs. They don't come if you call them. Take my dad, for
instance. How many times had I wanted even needed him? He'd shown up, all
right: three, four weeks later. Ghosts are way irresponsible for the most
part.
But I couldn't exactly explain to Cee Cee's aunt that what she was doing was
a huge waste of time . . . and that while she was sitting there doing it,
there was a cat trying to eat his way out of my book bag in Adam's car.
Oh, and that a guy who might or might not have been a vampire but was
certainly responsible for the disappearances of quite a number of people was
running around loose. I could only just sit there with this big stupid smile
on my face, pretending to be enjoying myself, while really I was itching to
get home and on the phone with Father D, so we could figure out what we were
going to do about Red Beaumont.
"Oh, dear," Aunt Pru said. She was very pretty, Cee Cee's aunt Pru. An albino
like her niece, her eyes were the color of violets. She wore a flowing
sundress of the same shade. The contrast her long white hair made against the
purple of her dress was startling and cool. Cee Cee, I knew, was probably
going to look just like her aunt Pru someday, once she got rid of the braces
and puppy fat, that is.
Which was probably why Cee Cee couldn't stand her.
"What can this mean?" Aunt Pru muttered to herself. "The hermit. The hermit."
There appeared, from what I could see, to be a hermit on the card Aunt Pru
kept turning over and over. Not of the crab variety, either, but the
old-man-living-in-a-cave type. I didn't know what a hermit had to do with Mrs.
Fiske, either, but one thing I did know: I was bored stupid.
"One more time," Aunt Pru said, sending a cautious glance in Cee Cee's
direction. Cee Cee had made it clear that we didn't have all day. I was the
one who needed to get home most, of course. I had an Ackerman dinner to
contend with. Kung pao chicken night. If I was late, my mom was going to kill
me.
"Um," I said. "Ms. Webb?"
"Aunt Pru, darling."
"Right. Aunt Pru. May I use your phone?"
"Of course." Aunt Pru didn't even glance at me. She was too busy channeling.
I wandered out of the darkened room and went out into the hallway. There was
an old-fashioned rotary phone on a little table there. I dialed my own number
after a brief struggle to remember it since I'd only had it for a few weeks
and when Dopey picked up, I asked him to tell my mother that I hadn't
forgotten about dinner and was on my way home.
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Dopey not very graciously informed me that he was on the other line and that
because he was not my social secretary, and had no intention of taking any
messages for me, I should call back later.
"Who are you talking to?" I asked. "Debbie, your love slave?"
Dopey responded by hanging up on me. Some people have no sense of humor.
I put down the receiver and was standing there looking at this zodiac
calendar and wondering if I was in some kind of celestial good-luck zone
considering what had happened with Tad and all when someone standing right
beside me said, in an irritated voice, "Well? What do you want?"
I jumped nearly a foot. I swear, I've been doing this all my life, but I just
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