Misty lifted her hands in exasperation at my apparent idiocy. “Hello? Who else would it be? And why would it start right after Chris proposed?
Alona froze. “Proposed?” she whispered.
Misty gave an uncomfortable shrug. “He's going away to IU and I'm staying here. He wanted us to be engaged first.”
Alona sat up. “You can't do that,” she said, shaking her head.
“I think what she means is you're young,” I said quickly. This conversation was going to kill me. “Can we get back to the signs, please?”
Misty was looking back and forth between us like we were crazy, which wasn't far from the truth today. “Okay,” she said slowly. “Picture frames knocked over, covers pulled off me in the night, footsteps in my room but no one is there, and sometimes, when I'm falling asleep, I hear someone call my name.” She shuddered.
And… picture frames fall over, covers slip off, people often think they hear footsteps or someone calling them when they're half asleep.
“Oh, and she wrote her name in the steam on the mirror in my bathroom.”
She shook her head. “No, it was just there one day when I got out of the shower.”
Huh, well, that changed things a little. Maybe it wasn't a guilty conscience. But that didn't necessarily mean it was a ghost, either. A living person could do all of those things she mentioned, including the mirror writing. Steam up the mirror, and write the words you want. Then, when the mirror is covered in steam again, the words reappear. Maybe a living someone wasn't pleased with this new development in Misty's love life and had decided to express it as “Alona.”
“I can't believe you're getting married,” Alona said. “What are you going to do for a maid of honor? It better not be Leanne.”
Misty gaped at her, but before she could respond, the door to the back rooms opened, catching everyone's attention.
An elderly woman in a tidy black suit and heavy black shoes shuffled out, clinging tightly to the arm of a guy who had to be Malachi the Magnificent. For one, he was wearing a cloak. In August.
The sight of that was enough to shake Alona from her sulk. “Seriously?” She snorted. “I'm beginning to think this guy doesn't understand the difference between a magician and a medium.”
Probably a lot of people didn't. It was all in that mysterious realm of “might be real” to most. And if this guy was willing to play up the mystical part of it, that likely helped sell the bill of goods.
Other than his cloak, “Malachi”—no way was that his real name — didn't seem too extraordinary. He was maybe in his mid-twenties, a thin, kind of dweeby guy with curly red hair and heavy black-rimmed glasses. The effect, actually, was of someone who'd gotten lost on his way to a Harry Potter or Lord of the Rings costume party.
Great.
A few steps behind the elderly woman and the caped douche bag, a young guy in an Al Capone — era suit and hat followed, looking kind of pissed.
“You're not listening. That's not what I said at all,” he shouted at Malachi.
Next to me, Alona stiffened, and I knew she'd heard the ghost, too.
But Malachi just smiled fondly at the old woman and walked her over to the main door. She squeezed his hand, leaving him with a wad of cash, which he quickly tucked inside his cloak.
I relaxed, relief warring with disappointment. Malachi was a fake. We weren't any closer to finding a solution for Alona or figuring out what my dad had been doing checking out all these fake ghost-talkers. But at least we didn't have to claim Malachi in our ranks.
I leaned over to Alona. “When he takes the next person in, we'll get out of here.”
She frowned at me. “No way. What about her?” She tipped her head toward Misty, who was staring at Malachi like he was a walking ray of hope.
I shook my head. “I don't think it's anything we can fix.”
She opened her mouth to protest, but stopped as Malachi moved to stand in the center of the waiting room.
He bowed his head and placed his fingertips at his temples.
“Oh, please,” Alona muttered. “Doesn't this drive you crazy?” she demanded of me.
I grimaced and looked around, but Malachi seemed to have the rest of the room captivated. “What do you want me to do?” I whispered back to her. Denouncing him as a fraud would only cause more problems for us, and we didn't need that.
Misty shushed us.
Malachi rocked back and forth on his heels. “I'm sensing several spirits here who'd like to communicate.”
“Yeah, I have something to communicate,” Alona muttered, maybe not quite as quietly as she should have. “Jerk.”
He looked up sharply and searched the room until he identified Alona as the source, which probably wasn't too tough. She was glaring at him as if she'd have set him on fire if she could.
He gave a forced magnanimous chuckle. “I see we have a doubter in our midst.”
Heads, belonging to both the living and the dead, turned toward us.
