Page 11 of How to Fake a Haunting

My heart shot into my throat. I turned in a circle, trying to find where the creeping, disconcerting music was coming from.

Callum had dropped to his knees and had his hands pressed to his ears. “Make it stop!” he shouted. “Please, Lainey, make it stop!”

I kept turning, but the music moved with me, along with the storm and Cal’s frantic words.

“Shut up!” I cried. “Shut up and let me think!” I glanced down the hallway, but Bea had not come to see what all the yelling was about.

Thank goodness for noise-canceling headphones.

I gripped the edge of the marble island and tried to focus.

Lightning flashed. I blinked and gripped the island harder, staring at various spots around the kitchen.

My computer . . . off. The charging station .

. . free from both our cell phones. The iPad was in Bea’s room.

Paper towel dispenser, knife block, fruit basket, ceramic canisters .

. . nothing there that could play music.

Toaster, refrigerator, coffee bar outfitted with espresso machine and Keurig .

. . nothing there either. And yet, the music was coming from somewhere in the room.

Wait! My gaze shot back to the coffee bar.

Besides the appliances on its surface, there was a rack for mugs, bags of coffee, some fancy bottles of syrup, and a small fern in a black cylindrical planter.

But what was that beside the planter? I rushed across the kitchen and grabbed the object, which was also black and cylindrical.

There were several buttons on top of it: volume up, volume down, mute, and a button with a circle on it .

. . maybe record? I had no idea, but I thought I recognized the device.

“Stop,” I said. The music didn’t stop. I turned the device upside down, but there were no words, no instructions. “Alexa,” I guessed, “stop!”

The music stopped. Though the rain continued, the silence after the grating guitars and eerie lyrics (Open your eyes, the singer had commanded.

See what’s right in front of you. There are ways to see what’s hidden in the dark.) made my temples pulse with the effort of processing the relative quiet.

It was only in that quiet that I realized the song hadn’t just been disorienting; it had been familiar.

But I wasn’t sure why, couldn’t place it, no matter how hard I tried.

I looked up, Echo in hand, and met Callum’s gaze.

His face contorted. “What the hell is that?”

Think. Adelaide must’ve put it here, so don’t blow this.

“It’s an Echo,” I said, aiming for a tone somewhere between sheepish and abashed. Anything to keep from sounding like I was lying. Callum didn’t look like he thought I was lying; he looked bewildered. And angry. “A smart speaker,” I said.

Thunder boomed, but from much farther away.

The storm was moving on. “I got it at work,” I continued.

“A colleague-recognition program they recently started.” I stared at the speaker in my hands.

“I never set it up, though. The Verizon guy must’ve seen it in the drawer”—I tapped my foot against the coffee bar—“and plugged it in when he was checking the router. Remember last week?”

Verizon had unequivocally not been to the house last week; Verizon hadn’t come to our house since we’d moved in, but Callum didn’t know that. Callum didn’t know anything about bills or utilities or appointments. “It must have malfunctioned in the storm or something,” I finished.

Callum picked himself up off the floor, his face a far angrier storm cloud than those still racing along outside the windows.

He turned his thunderous expression first on the device in my hands, then a warier one in the direction of the wall from where the knocking had come.

I hadn’t noticed the knocking had stopped.

I was too busy fuming over the fact that Adelaide had apparently gone rogue.

And on the very first night. Should I have pretended not to hear the music?

Or had my spontaneous reaction worked out for the better?

I needed to talk to Adelaide, to ask her what the hell she’d been thinking, how she’d been hoping I’d react.

“I can’t deal with this shit.”

At the sound of Callum’s voice, gravelly and hard, I jerked my head up. “Huh? Can’t deal with what?”

Callum didn’t answer. He walked to the counter, placed one hand on its cool marble surface as if to steady himself, and glanced down the hallway.

“Are you going to bed?” I asked.

Again, he didn’t respond, just turned and looked at the spot where I’d found the Echo. His eyes narrowed. “That was fucking weird. And why would some Verizon guy randomly plug that thing in?”

His words were slurred, but I could still detect the unease behind them. “I don’t know. But what else could it have been?” I waited for him to accuse me, to question me, but he didn’t.

Cal grabbed his bag of fast food, stomped down the hall, climbed up the stairs, and slammed the door to his bedroom. I stood in the kitchen, feeling like I’d been thrown out to sea without a lifeboat. What now? The answer came floating down through the stairwell.

“I’m done watching my show!” Bea shouted.

I sighed. Get Beatrix to bed. By then, Callum will be passed out, and you can barricade yourself in the playroom and call Adelaide. Find out what the hell happened tonight. What the hell she was thinking.

A last low growl of thunder sounded, like a retreating wolf. I returned the Echo to the coffee bar. Seeing Callum freak out in his drunken stupor had been beyond satisfying.

Make it stop! he had cried. Adelaide had been right from the start: Cal would be far easier to freak out by virtue of his constant intoxication.

The trick would be to raise the intensity and frequency of the episodes so consistently that even he would remember what was happening, cataloging each new fright, balancing them like dominoes along the already fragile floor of his mind, waiting until they were all lined up before Adelaide and I set the final one toppling.

Beatrix called for me again, and I hurried up the stairs. As I went, I couldn’t help a small, contented smile. I’ll be goddamned, but this crazy plan of Adelaide’s just might work.