Rules for Ghosting (15 page)

The man's eyes took on a faraway look. Oliver kept his own eyes on the ground. Even so, he almost missed the gentle
whir
as the smiling roller skate scooted out from behind a dark corner, sliding neatly under Wiley's foot. Busy contemplating his future importance and worldwide acclaim, Wiley brought his foot down with purpose.
Slam
went the foot and
zip
went the skate and
whoosh!
went the ghosterminator.

It was the most impressive tumble Oliver had seen yet. Wiley slid a full six feet down the hallway, teetered on the edge of the rounded staircase, then gave in to gravity and toppled onto his backside.
Boom, boom, boom!
It seemed impossible, but Wiley managed to bounce on his behind all the way down the sixteen steps leading to the living room. Obviously unhurt but bright red with embarrassment, Wiley leaped to his feet at the foot of the staircase. He shook his fist at Oliver.

“You scheming scoundrel! You rotten shrunken head!” he bellowed.

Oliver immediately swallowed his laughter and dashed down the stairs. He still had to deliver his message.

“Wait, Mr. Wiley,” he said, reaching the landing slightly out of breath. “I'm so sorry about your fall. I had nothing to do with it, I promise! But about the ghost stuff … I, er, wonder if there might not be more things you could find before you go. Outside, maybe?”

Wiley took two steps but seemed off-balance. He lifted his
shoe and there, stuck to the bottom, was the grinning yellow beanbag. Wiley yanked it off angrily. “I repeat: I've gotten what I came for and I will not stay in this abominable house for another minute!” He hurled the beanbag across the room—

Where it connected with the center of Mom's face. Yellow smiley face wiggling on the tip of her nose, Mom was momentarily stunned. A chorus of delighted laughter came from the upper landing, where JJ's prank had garnered the best results ever, and Oliver shuddered at how this would shape their future life of crime. But in an instant Mom swiped the beanie smile off her nose. She marched over to Wiley, hands on her hips.

“You are going precisely
where
, Mr. Wiley?” she snapped. “Have you inspected the heating system, as agreed upon yesterday? What were the results of this inspection and what is next on your to-do list?”

Wiley cowered. “Of course, Mrs. Day. The boiler and the heating vents are all in perfect running order—I inspected them thoroughly myself and they could not be in better condition. Ship as ship-shape, in fact. As to the other work …” He wrung his hands regretfully. “I truly wish I could stay longer. But the fact is that I've received an urgent call from a client who—”

“Mr. Wiley,
I
am your client right now and I am telling you that your work is not yet complete. Come right this way—I have two tasks which must be taken care of immediately in preparation for tomorrow's party.”

Oliver took one step backward, then another, moving very
quietly and stealthily. A sigh of relief escaped him. Wiley wasn't going anywhere for a while; Mom would see to that. Satisfied, he started to run toward his room.

But just as quickly he realized that his running feet weren't moving anywhere: a hand had ahold of the back of his collar. “Young man,” Mom said. Could her arm really stretch that far? Oliver turned around. It was Party Zombie Mom all right, with one hand on his shirt and the other gripping Wiley's sleeve, making sure her two latest victims couldn't get away.

“Decorations,” Mom said to Oliver. “I've ordered a bunch of supplies and piled them all up in the living room. Poppy's in there getting started, so that's a task for the both of you: by the end of the day tomorrow I want this house to look thoroughly haunted.”

Oliver gulped. “Haunted?” He glanced at Wiley, who gave an uneasy chuckle.

“Yes, haunted!” said Mom, letting go of both shirts and waving her arms, like a conductor directing symphonies of streamers and choruses of confetti. “I want the works: spiderwebs on the ceiling, spooky lanterns in dark corners, skeletons creaking from the upper railing. A hanged mannequin, perhaps? There are some noise machines, so make sure there are evil cackles at random intervals. Beyond that …” She shrugged. “Be creative.”

Oliver opened his mouth. “You want all that by tomorrow night?”

“Welcome to Silverton Manor,” Mom said grandly. “Your very own neighborhood haunted house.”

“Now look here,” came a new voice in the hallway behind them. Rutabartle marched down the hall. “I hope you don't mind I came right in—the front door was open—but I couldn't help but overhear and Mrs. Day, I have to say that this haunted house business has gotten completely out of control. You assured me it would be a party—a simple affair, a neighborhood introduction. And now you seem to have this whole notion …”

Oliver didn't wait to hear any more. He slunk off toward the living room. Poppy was there waiting for him, looking every bit as glum as he felt but, thankfully, already channeling her hyperactivity into action. “We might as well get this out of the way,” she said. She'd thrown all the dust coverings into a huge pile in the corner, and every bit of floor, couch, and coffee table space was covered in neat piles. The inside of a cereal box was propped up on the mantel, showing a rough sketch of the main gathering hall, the staircase, and the upper hallway, with appropriate decorations planned out for each.

Oliver whistled. “Wow! You've been busy.”

Poppy glowered at him. “Don't you dare tell Mom. If she ever catches on that I'm good at this stuff, she'll have me doing it all the time. The important thing right now is to get it done and fast. Then we can start searching for clues.” She looked shiftily from side to side. “You know … for the
ghosts
. And I've got some great ideas about where we can start.”

The rest of the day passed in a blur. Oliver wondered from time to time where Dahlia was, and whether she was busy searching, or if the loss of her ghostly friend had made her too sad to do much. Somehow, Oliver didn't think so. Ghost or not, Dahlia seemed to be plenty capable, and he figured she had more than one trick up her see-through sleeves. It also occurred to Oliver that his plan to try to stay in Silverton Manor had fallen completely into the background
again
. He would get back to it soon, he told himself. Right now, the ghosts' dilemma took priority.

Still, in spite of their lightning-fast decorating pace, and even though they gobbled their lunch and barely stopped for any breaks at all, it was nearly five o'clock by the time he and Poppy hung the last streamer and sprinkled on the last coating of chalk dust.

With a groan, Oliver checked his watch. “Finally—I thought we'd never be done! We have at least another hour until dinner. Wanna start upstairs?” He wondered when Poppy had gone from pest to ally, but he couldn't deny he had been glad for her help with this decorating—and he'd be glad of her help with the searching too. Even tagalong sisters had their uses, he guessed.

“One more thing,” Poppy said, with a gleam in her eye. She darted toward the living room and came back out a minute later lugging a giant mound of white cloth.

“The dust covers from the furniture?” Oliver said. “What's all that for?”

Poppy tossed him half of the pile. “You have to go around and cover all of our best decorations with this. Throw one right over the top. If it looks like we're not finished with our job yet, Mom won't give us anything else to do. We'll have all the way till tomorrow night to search. If she sees we're finished, well … then we're finished.”

Oliver was getting more and more impressed. “I think that's the best idea I've heard all day,” he said, and Poppy beamed.

Somewhere on the other side of the house, they could hear Wiley's voice rising above his mother's. “No, Mrs. Day, I most assuredly cannot. I'm grateful for your hospitality, but I cannot stay one moment longer. Yes, I
might
be able to return next week. But unfortunately, this assignment cannot wait.”

Oliver looked at Poppy with wide eyes. Wiley was definitely leaving this time. What could they do? And then a thought came to him—it was risky, and he wasn't even sure it would work. But he had to give it a try. Tossing his half of the sheeting back onto Poppy's pile, he said, “You do the sheets, Poppy. I've got to take care of something.”

He barely heard Poppy's shouted “HEY!” as he darted toward the main entrance and slipped out the front door into the chilly late afternoon.

All day, Dahlia had been alternating between moving around the house, checking and rechecking areas they'd already searched, and using her Clearsight to keep an eye on Oliver and Poppy. But both living kids were completely absorbed with their party decorating. She could only hope that once they finished their work they could all regroup and figure out what to do next.

For her part, Dahlia favored exploring the sealed-off attic room. More and more she'd started to feel it was somehow important. She'd gone just about everywhere else, aside from the rooms filled with living people and useless living-people stuff, and it made sense that this room held some important secrets. But how could she get to them when she couldn't get inside? She'd drifted all the way around the square box of a room, running her hands along every edge of the walls surrounding it. A few times she thought she'd felt a tremor come
from the room, like maybe some force was inside, keeping her out. But she couldn't figure a way in.

Outside, the late-afternoon sun was setting over the trees, and Dahlia sighed. She'd been focused on this room all day and nothing had come of it. It was time to go back to checking the rest of the house. She had to rescue Mrs. Tibbs, and to do that, she needed her Anchor.

No sooner had she thought this than the rev of an engine caught her ear. She flashed through the walls into the front courtyard, where she gasped in astonishment. With a jaunty wave and an eager step, Rank Wiley was folding his long, lean body into his tiny pickup truck.

“Yes, yes,” he called, as he slammed the door shut and shifted the vehicle into gear. “I'll be back first thing on Monday, you have my word. Well, good-bye!”

Dahlia shot down onto the bed of the truck. Oh, no! He was taking Mrs. Tibbs away. What could she do? Forcing her mind into focus, she grappled with the tarp. It was tied down tight with bungee cords securing the various boxes, bags, and suitcases, and Dahlia couldn't get enough power to pry it up. Apparently, sitting on a branch was one thing and moving anything that required force was another. Or was her emotional state affecting her focus? Giving up on interacting with the objects, Dahlia shot her hand through them. There was the Spectrometer, and there was that evil black box. It burned her hand when she accidentally brushed against it, and Dahlia couldn't help wondering how Mrs. Tibbs felt inside her little
prison.
How
could Dahlia get the box out of the truck? She forced all her energy on making contact with the sides of the box, concentrating as hard as she could.

Too late she realized that the truck had begun to move, and she looked quickly up. Silverton Manor's front gate hung wide open, and the truck would pass through just fine. But no opening would be wide enough to let Dahlia through. She could feel the Boundary getting closer—she punched the surface of the tarp as hard as she could—and closer—the material was fraying ever so slightly, and a tiny hole started to appear—and closer—in another second she would break through and the force of momentum would be enough for her to propel the canister out—

SLAM!
The truck sped through the Boundary, and Dahlia was thrown back across the courtyard, skidding down into the ground and tangling up with a colony of expired earthworms.

The truck roared away around a far corner.

Dahlia had lost Mrs. Tibbs.

For several minutes Dahlia stayed where she was, hardly noticing that somehow she had managed to stabilize her form so she was now sitting on top of the ground. It didn't matter. Nothing mattered. What would happen to Mrs. Tibbs? Would the Ghouncil intervene, if the Liberator was away from Silverton Manor? Did they even know what had happened, and if they did, would they care? Dahlia's eyes burned and her heart ached and the world around her pulsed a dull blue-gray.

Pushing back her fears that it was over, that she had failed, that all hope was gone, she forced herself to focus on making a plan. Plan B, specifically. She'd failed to keep Mrs. Tibbs from being taken from Silverton Manor. Now she
had
to redouble her efforts to break through the Boundary, so she could leave the manor and find Wiley's house. She wasn't sure what would happen after that, but she would find a way. “There's no way my very first ghost friend is going to end up on that nasty ghosterminator's dissecting table,” Dahlia said, clenching her fists and squaring her jaw.