Page 21 of How to Fake a Haunting

I forced myself not to react. What the hell was Adelaide doing? Why turn the Tallows’ attention to the house when we’d been getting all we needed from a good old-fashioned discussion?

Morgan looked around, but not before fixing me with a discerning stare.

I don’t need to believe in the supernatural to know this woman has razor-sharp powers of perception. She knows we’re not being straight with her. She knows things aren’t what they seem.

“This house?” Morgan asked.

“Yeah, you know, just for fun,” Adelaide said.

“Oh, I don’t think—” I started, but Adelaide cut me off.

“We wanted to learn more about ghosts and the supernatural. Why not see Joe and Morgan in action?” She turned to face them.

“I mean, if that’s okay. I’m sure lots of houses have psychic energy, right?

And, if there’s nothing like that here, at least we’ll get to see how all your fancy equipment works. ”

Adelaide turned back to me. I could practically see the gears turning in her head.

“Think, Lainey,” she said. “If we did want to incorporate anything into our programming—I’m not saying ghost tours, but maybe the history of spiritualism as it relates to the Gilded Age, or something along those lines—it would be great to have a modern benchmark to work up to. ”

Adelaide’s gaze had turned penetrating, entreating me not to mess this up.

So, she wanted to get Joe and Morgan moving around the house, operating their equipment, in order to generate ideas with which to haunt Callum later?

I supposed we did need new concepts. While I could scratch out Callum’s face in framed photographs easily enough, I couldn’t exactly slide a Prince Rupert’s drop into a straw.

No matter how badly I wanted Callum out of the house, out of my life, I didn’t want anyone losing an eye.

“Okay,” I relented. I tried to smile at Morgan but feared it came out a little pained. “As long as you have your equipment with you and everything, it would be nice to see how one of your investigations plays out.”

“Normally, I would ask a series of questions,” Morgan said, sounding somewhat perplexed.

“You know, age of the house, its current condition, any previous inhabitants or on-site deaths, what had happened to make the current inhabitants think it was haunted.” She looked around. “The house is fairly new?”

“It’s six years old,” I responded.

“You built it?”

“Yes.”

“From a professional perspective, if someone asked me to run an investigation on a six-year house with only one set of inhabitants, I’d decline, as all tests would likely turn out negative,” Morgan said.

Even as she said it, I saw her squirm beneath Adelaide’s penetrating gaze.

“But since it’s to see the equipment in action and to”—she stared hard at me—“further our working relationship, I’m happy to oblige. Joe, hon, want to grab everything out of the car?”

Ten minutes—and one clandestine text to Callum ensuring he was still at work—later, and the living room was full of various bags and camera cases.

An hour after that, Joe was compiling spreadsheets of data from digital thermometers and Geiger counters.

Morgan sat across from him on the couch, cataloging files.

She’d recorded several minutes of audio in each room, as well as video footage while standing in front of every reflective surface in the house.

“Joe and I will review everything in the studio,” Morgan said, and shrugged. “But that’s basically it. If we were to find anything in the data we collected today, we’d give you a call and schedule a time to return.”

Joe finished zipping the laptop into a briefcase. “Did you ladies see everything you needed to see?” he asked.

How do I know if I saw what I needed to see when I don’t know what I’m supposed to be looking for in the first place?

Adelaide wasn’t so indecisive. “Yes, thank you. So interesting. Lainey and I have a lot to talk about.” She stared at me pointedly.

“Don’t you think we could sell Kathy on an exhibition featuring spiritualism throughout the Gilded Age?

We could highlight the progression in ghost-hunting tools from the mid-nineteenth to the early twenty-first century. ”

I nodded dutifully, but even if I’d wanted to come clean to the Tallows now, the afternoon had left me exhausted. I wanted everyone—even Adelaide—to leave so I could lie down for a few minutes before picking up Beatrix.

“Yes,” I forced myself to say when Adelaide continued to stare. “Thank you, Joe, Morgan. I guess we’ll be in touch with any additional questions.”

Joe shouldered a duffel bag and the briefcase before reaching for Morgan’s hand.

“And we’ll be in touch with you if Morgan finds anything unusual in your files.

” His tone was jokey, but I guessed he was making fun of the fact that Adelaide and I had convinced him and his wife to investigate a house even we didn’t believe was haunted.

We offered to help with the bags, but Joe declined, so Adelaide and I walked the two of them to the front porch.

We smiled from the doorway as Joe loaded up their car, and waved as they pulled out of the driveway.

Between the Tallows and their equipment, and Todd’s Wildlife Extraction Services truck, it was a good thing there were so many trees between us and the neighbors.

I could imagine their puzzled glances, the questions, the Something odd’s going on over at the Taylor place comments.

This was the last time, I thought. The last time I let Adelaide bring someone else into this.

When the Mazda had disappeared down the street, I closed the door and walked to the living room, where I collapsed onto the couch. Adelaide sat opposite me, tucking her feet beneath her.

“I told you I wouldn’t steer us wrong,” she said.

I gave her a weary, befuddled look. “Aside from learning the Tallows aren’t the money-hungry hucksters I’d always thought them to be—and hearing about their awful loss—I don’t see how that was the lesson in how to fake a haunting you wanted it to be.”

Adelaide gaped at me. “Of course it was! I can mess with the frequency of the transistor radio Cal uses on the golf course. And that thing Morgan said about people feeling like they’re being suffocated by a heavy blanket?

I could pull Cal’s comforter off him while he’s sleeping, soak it with water, wring it out a bit, and lay it back on top of him.

He’ll wake up freezing and anxious from all that extra weight on his chest.”

I started to interject, but Adelaide was on a roll. “And the stuff about children’s toys moving around the house? That’s genius. How have I not tapped into the entire subgenre of creepy kids in general? But the best thing we learned today? I mean, come on, do I even have to say it?”

She stopped her rambling and looked at me. “Do I?” she asked.

I groaned, sinking farther into the pillows. “Yes, you have to say it, because I have no idea what you’re talking about.”

Her eyebrows raised, then furrowed. She looked flummoxed I hadn’t reached the same conclusions she had.

“The Prince Rupert’s drops, obviously. If one of those drops was enough to fool two people who’ve seen it all over the last ten years, it will be more than enough to freak the shit out of Callum. ”

I sat up, blinking at Adelaide. “Did you somehow miss the rest of Morgan and Joe’s story?”

Adelaide’s look of disbelief didn’t waver.

“I can’t believe I have to voice this, but we cannot initiate an explosion of glass in my house, whether it will give off Poltergeist vibes or not. Did you not hear what happened to Joe? He lost an eye!”

Adelaide waved a hand. “That hoaxer dude probably didn’t think things through. But if you and I plan everything down to the last detail, we can make it go off without a hitch.”

I forced myself to take a breath. Adelaide had given up weeks of her life to stage this haunting. She was probably desperate to speed things up. Still, was she really suggesting we detonate a tiny glass bomb in my kitchen?

“We cannot use a Prince Rupert’s drop to scare Callum,” I said, relieved to hear the evenness in my tone.

“I have to protect Beatrix. Bringing her into this haunting in any way would mean the end no longer justifies the means. As much as I want to protect her from Callum, I also don’t want her to witness him blowing off half his face or several fingers, or for Callum to get seriously hurt.

There are plenty of other things we can—”

“But we have to—”

“No, Adelaide! Just, no.”

“Maybe if we put a handful of boba straws in your cabinet now, Callum will get used to seeing them. That way, if you change your mind—”

I jumped up, exhaustion morphing from lethargy and a desire to be left alone into a blistering migraine and all-out rage. What was she not understanding here?

But even as that rage roiled through me, another part of me understood her ambition.

When Adelaide had first proposed the haunting, I never believed it would work.

Not really. I’d only agreed to it as a distraction from my problems as opposed to having any real hope that it would result in Callum leaving.

But now that we were in the thick of things, I felt differently.

Very differently. We’d accomplished so much in a few short weeks.

We could pull this off, and we could probably pull it off faster if we went with an impossible-to-ignore type of stunt like the one Adelaide was proposing.

Despite this, I still couldn’t get over my fear, or my anger.

“I’m not going to change my mind,” I said.

“In a way, I wish I could, or that the Tallows had given us another viable option, but I’m still pissed you set up a meeting with them in the first place, no matter how well you think it went.

You’re making decisions without me, and it’s not cool, Adelaide.

It’s my house—my family—that these things affect.

I’m not letting you bring your fucked-up Paranormal Activity vision anywhere near my daughter. ”

I took a breath, but it didn’t calm the anger and confusion shooting through my blood and churning my stomach. I threw a hand in the direction of the door. “I’ve got to pick up Bea soon. You should go. I’ve got to clear my head of this fucking haunting for five goddamn minutes, and I—”

I was about to say more, but Adelaide stood.

Without a word, she turned and walked across the living room.

I heard her clear the foyer and open the front door, slamming it behind her as she left the house.

The silence that followed was pronounced, amplifying my confusion as to whether I’d done the right thing in being so dismissive.

I stared into the black mirror of the television screen until my eyes burned and my brain buzzed, with no idea what to do next.