“I’m just saying it doesn’t always have to be spirits and magic. Sometimes hauntings are in your mind. It doesn’t make them less real.”

Thomas nods and takes a breath. “Okay, that’s true. But I still think a shrink is the wrong way to go.”

Carmel makes a growling noise. “Why do you have to jump straight to a spell? Why are you so sure it’s paranormal?”

This is as close as I’ve ever heard to a Thomas and Carmel argument. And as special as it is to listen to your friends argue over whether or not you have a mental illness, I’m starting to get the urge to go back to class.

Stop poking your nose around where it doesn’t belong, before someone cuts it off. There’s something else going on around you, like a storm.

I don’t care.

In the sixth row of the theater, in the third chair in, Anna winks at me. Or maybe she just blinks. I can’t tell. She’s missing half of her face.

“Let’s go talk to Morfran,” I say.

* * *

The bell over the antique shop door jingles and there’s the click-click-clatter of dog toenails on hardwood before Stella collides with my legs. I give her a few scratches and she gazes up at me with huge brown eyes like a seal pup’s before moving on to Carmel.

We aren’t the only ones in the shop. Morfran’s talking to two women, forty-something ladies in sweaters asking questions about one of the china washbasins. Morfran laughs and starts telling them a cozy little historical tale that may or may not be true. It’s weird to watch him with customers. He’s so nice. We try not to make too much of a ruckus on our way to the back room. After a few minutes, we hear the women saying good-bye to Stella and thank you to Morfran, and seconds later, he and the dog walk through the curtain into the back, where he keeps the stranger and more obscure occult supplies. My mom’s candles enjoy a table in the front window. She’s gone mainstream.

The way Morfran’s looking at me, I expect him to produce one of those doctor’s flashlights and check my pupil response. His arms are crossed over his chest, bunching up the black leather of his vest and covering the Aerosmith logo on his t-shirt. When Thomas tosses him a freshly packed pipe of tobacco, his hand shoots up and catches it, and his eyes never leave my face. It’s hard to believe that the kindly antique shop proprietor and this man of dark magic are one and the same.

“You kids here for an after-school snack?” he asks as he lights up. Then he checks his watch. “Can’t be. School’s not out for another five hours.”

Thomas clears his throat uncomfortably, and Morfran’s furry eyebrow lifts in his direction

“You flunk out and you’ll be picking crud out of everything I buy up at swap meets this summer.”

“I’m not flunking out. It’s the last two weeks. Nobody even cares anymore really.”

“I care. Your mama cares. And don’t you forget it.” He nods at Carmel. “What about you?”

“Perfect grade point average,” she replies. “And it’ll stay that way. It’s all about results, my dad says.” Her smile is sweet, apologetic but confident. Morfran shakes his head.

“You talk to that Brit friend of yours?” he asks me.

“Yeah.”

“What’d he say?”

“He said to let it go.”

“Good advice.” He draws on his pipe; the smoke obscures his face as he exhales.

“I can’t take it.”

“You should.”

Carmel steps forward, her arms crossed over her chest. “Why should he? Can you stop being so cryptic? Maybe if you’d just tell us what’s going on, tell us why we should let it go, then maybe we would.”

He exhales and looks away from her, sets his pipe down on the glass countertop. “Can’t tell you what I don’t know. It’s not an exact science. Not a news bulletin. It just blinks up, in here,” he says, and points to his chest. “Or in here”—he points to his temple. “It says stay away. It says let it go. People are watching you. The kind of people you don’t mind just watching, but you hope they never show up. And there’s something else.” He draws again on the pipe, looking thoughtful, which is really the only way you can look when smoking a pipe. “Something is trying to hold this back, while another thing is trying to draw it on. And that’s the thing that concerns me most, you want to know the truth. Makes it hard to hold my tongue.”

“Hard to hold your tongue on what?” I ask. “What do you know?”