Page 19 of How to Fake a Haunting
Adelaide strode to her Prius at a breakneck pace, and I hurried to follow.
“That guy was an asshole,” I said once we were inside the car. “How do you know him again?” When she didn’t answer, I added, “Today was such a bust.”
“Maybe.” Adelaide put the car into reverse. I couldn’t read the expression on her face. “But maybe not. There’s one other thing I have scheduled for today.”
“What’s that?”
Adelaide pulled out of the lot and stepped on the gas. “You’re not going to like it.”
My stomach tightened. “What am I not going to like?”
Adelaide stared straight ahead, not answering.
“Adelaide. What am I not going to like?”
“Well . . .”
Still, she said nothing, until I couldn’t take it anymore. I grabbed her arm.
“Hey, I’m driving here.”
“Tell me what I’m not going to like.”
“All right, all right,” Adelaide relented. “We have a meeting at your house at noon.” She grimaced. “With Joe and Morgan Tallow.”
My mouth dropped open, but Adelaide pressed on. “You know, to drum up some new ideas.” She merged onto the narrow road that ran along the river, avoiding my stare.
“What do you mean, ‘drum up ideas,’ Adelaide? Ideas from Joe and Morgan Tallow? Are you nuts?”
“Hear me out, okay? We pretend we’re reconsidering their proposal for haunted tours at the mansions and ask them what they see when they encounter haunted phenomena, how it manifests, et cetera.
After we’ve gotten what we can out of them, we thank them, tell them we’ve decided we’re not going forward with the tours, and send them on their way.
After that, we’ll have all new material, and we can come up with some really kick-ass hauntings! ”
“You realize we cannot just meet with Joe and Morgan Tallow, right? I cannot tell them we’re considering their proposal.” I frowned. “And why my house? If Callum came home, we’d be screwed. Why not your house?”
Adelaide’s cheeks flushed until they were almost the same color as her hair. “I sort of had company last night. He’s still there.”
I stared. “Who?”
“Don’t worry about it. We’re talking about the Tallows.”
I was too mad to focus on Adelaide’s unexpected confession. “We are talking about the Tallows. The Tallows. If Kathy found out—”
“She’s not going to.”
“But if she did, we’d be accused of putting the mansions’ integrity in jeopardy.”
Adelaide rolled her eyes. “Don’t you think that’s kind of bullshit in the first place? Spiritualism and the occult have their place in the history of the Gilded Age. Joe and Morgan are—”
“Joe and Morgan are going to take advantage of us. You have to call and cancel.”
“Have I led us astray yet? No. So will you trust me? I’ve been reading their research online, and I think we can get some really great, really wild ideas from them.”
The twisting in my gut wrung tighter. “You said yourself, with all the novels and horror movies out there, why would we ever want for inspiration?”
Adelaide’s hands tightened around the wheel. “Because that’s all fake. Everything we’ve done to Callum, I mean, who knows if that’s how an actual haunting would manifest. It’s just some shit Hollywood came up with to look good on camera. To elicit screams. We want to elicit madness.”
She pried her eyes away from the road long enough to give me a discerning look. “If Joe and Morgan Tallow have witnessed even one thing that was real, and we can get them to tell us about it, imagine what that could do for our arsenal against Callum.”
“Oh, I’m sure they’ll tell us they’ve seen things that are real. And I’m sure it’s the same shit they post on their YouTube channel to get followers.”
The sun filtering through Adelaide’s hair patterned the console red. She stared out the windshield.
“I don’t think we should be bringing anyone else into this. First the wildlife guy, then Chris, now Joe and Morgan Tallow? We’re casting too wide a net. It can only lead to trouble.”
We rode in silence while I fumed. After what seemed like an eternity, Adelaide stopped at the last red light before my neighborhood.
“Have you forgotten why we’re doing this?
” she asked softly. “The endless little deaths Callum subjects you to, your need to protect Beatrix? Think of this meeting with Joe and Morgan as one step closer to getting past all that.”
Would it bring me one step closer to getting rid of Callum?
Or one step closer to losing my job and having to rely on Callum’s income to support my daughter?
I resisted the urge to scream. Why was everything so goddamn difficult?
We were on my street now. I stared at the lines of sage along the neighbor’s property, their sky-blue blossoms bursting out from the waving stalks while resignation and dread swirled within me.
“Forget books and movies,” I tried one last time. “Let’s pretend something came up and go back to your place. We’ll get online, look at the historical records of demons, possessions, that sort of thing. That makes way more sense than dragging two more people into—”
“We’re already here.” Adelaide checked her makeup, threw off her seat belt, killed the engine, and opened the door. “And so are they. Come on.”
Panic clogged my throat like bloom-choked stems. The Tallows’ dust-caked Mazda had pulled up beside Adelaide’s Prius. Short of a black hole opening up beneath me, I was going to have to face them.
I climbed from the car, all the trust I’d put in Adelaide settling like a weight at the bottom of my stomach.
Praying what we were about to do wasn’t going to turn my career into the same sort of living nightmare to which we were subjecting Callum, I turned toward the Tallows and pasted something like a smile on my face.