CHAPTER 5

“I’m so glad you could finally join me, Isolde,” Torin said, smiling as he crossed a large gilded room. He was wearing a fancy suit of emerald-green velvet rather than his usual outfit of black pants and white shirt, so I knew I was dreaming.

Again.

“I told you, no dreams,” I said, but he just shrugged.

“Yes, but that was ages ago.”

“It was two weeks ago,” I countered, even as I took the golden goblet he offered me. My hand glittered with rings, and the dress I was wearing was so heavy I wanted to sit down. “And if memory serves, I’ve been telling you to cut out the dream-walking thing for the past five years.” I smoothed my skirt. “Why can I never wear my regular clothes?”

Torin sipped his own drink. “My world, my dress code. Besides, you look lovely.”

There were never any mirrors in these dreams, so I had to take his word for it.

“Was this your house?” I asked. Liveried servants lined one wall, holding trays with more goblets. Music was playing somewhere nearby, but I couldn’t quite pin down the song.

“Free me, and you can see for yourself.”

Scowling, I handed him back his cup. “That’s never happening. No matter how many times you invade my dreams to play dress-up.”

He took my hand in his, and I was surprised by how warm his skin was. Torin had never touched me in these dreams before. “I’m simply trying to show you that I’m not all bad. That freeing me will not unleash some sort of plague onto the world. This is all I want,” he said, nodding at the room. “My old life back.”

I jerked my hand from his. “Your ‘old life’ ended nearly half a millennia ago. This”—I waved a bejeweled hand— “doesn’t exist anymore. Outside of rap videos, at least.”

Torin leaned against the wall with an extravagant sigh. “You make me sad, Isolde.”

“And you bug me. Now get out of here and let me dream about…I don’t know, whatever it is normal teenage girls dream about.”

Turning his head, Torin studied me. His eyes were green, like mine, but whereas mine were shot through with gray, his had flecks of gold, like a cat’s. Or maybe they were just reflecting all the gilded crap in the room. “Do you even know how to be a normal teenage girl?”

I backed up, wobbling in my brocade dress. “I guess I’ll figure it out, won’t I?”

His grin was slow and lazy. “Indeed. And speaking of—”

The room began to fade, and another voice said, “Here you go.”

Something landed in my lap, jolting me out of sleep.

Mom was sliding into the driver’s seat of the car, and I rubbed my eyes. That’s right. I wasn’t in a sixteenth-century ballroom. I was in the parking lot of a Walmart. I felt the dream curling around me, but I shook it off as I sat up, inspecting the bag Mom had tossed at me.

“I got everything they had that was set in high school,” she told me, starting the car.

Reaching into the bag, I pulled out several box sets of TV shows. I held up one, making a face. “Um, Mom, unless regular high school involves me having to avenge the murder of my boyfriend’s identical twin who turns out to actually be my boyfriend, I don’t think this is going to be a huge help.”

“Better than nothing.”

The car sputtered and lurched as Mom turned onto the highway, and I fought the urge to ask why we couldn’t have gotten a new car for this job.

Mom had managed to find us a tiny rental house in the tiny town of Ideal, Mississippi. Maybe the town founders had called it “Ideal” as a joke. Other than a few strip malls and neighborhood after neighborhood of houses exactly like ours, Ideal didn’t have that much to offer.

Except for a high school that may or may not have a major-league haunting going on.

We pulled into the driveway of our house. Like the house on either side of it, it was covered in beige vinyl siding, and while it was definitely a step up from the cabin, it was still depressing.

I helped Mom lug the rest of her purchases in, and was about to head up to my room to watch my brand-new TV shows on my brand-new computer when Mom stopped me.

“Should we… Do you want to go back and get you some new clothes? I didn’t even think about that.”

My entire wardrobe consisted of black jeans, black T-shirts, and a selection of hoodies. Those were black, too, except for the pink one Finn had once gotten me as a joke. “I’ll be fine,” I told her. I’d seen enough kids to know that, while I wouldn’t exactly be a supermodel, I wouldn’t look like a total freak, either.

Mom nodded. “Okay. What about your cover story? Should we go over that one more time?”

I just barely managed to keep from rolling my eyes. We’d been over my cover story at least half a dozen times on the drive from Tennessee to Alabama, and then again on the drive from Maya’s to here. I could have recited it in my sleep. The gist of it was that I was Izzy Brannick—Mom let me use my real name since this was my first time doing a case solo—and I was from Tennessee. My mom had taken a job in the next town over, but we moved to Ideal because the schools were better. Short, simple, sweet.

Still, I repeated it to Mom. When I was done, she seemed satisfied, although I had a feeling I’d have to do it again before school tomorrow. “Anything else you want to talk about?” Mom asked, and I shook my head.

“You good for the rest of the night?” Mom was already glancing down the stairs.

“Sure,” I told her. “Go…do your thing.”

Mom’s “thing” was locking herself in the spare bedroom and poring over books and journals and weird magical documents. I wasn’t sure if she was searching for something that would help us on this case or just boning up on her General Monster Research. And there was that little part of me that wondered if she was looking for clues about Finn, but I never asked. I didn’t even know where any of that stuff had come from. It had just started showing up at the house right after we moved in last week. From more of Mom’s “friends,” I guessed.

Once I was in my room, I sorted through the DVDs, trying to decide which one to watch first. The one with the girl who falls in love with an alien sounded the most interesting, but I figured it, like the Secret Twin Murder Show, wouldn’t be that useful. So in the end, I picked the show about the poor girl who transfers to the rich-kid high school, Ivy Springs.

The cover was pretty boring, but by episode three, I was so into it that I didn’t even notice Torin in my mirror until he cleared his throat. Frowning, I reached out and clicked pause right before Everton, the rich boy, told Leslie, our impoverished heroine, that he had feelings for her. “What?” I snapped at Torin.

“Just checking in on you. You could be a little thankful, you know. Getting out of my own mirror requires considerable power on my part.”

“First of all, no, it doesn’t,” I countered. “You zip in and out of those things all the time. And secondly, I would be thankful if I wanted to talk to you, but I don’t, so I’m not.” I had too much on my plate right now to deal with Torin. Especially since I was still irritated about the dream invasion.

“That is unkind,” Torin sniffed. In the mirror, he was sitting on my bed. Mom had let me pick out a new bedspread yesterday, but I’d been so overwhelmed by all the patterns and the flowers and the pop stars that I’d ended up picking a plain green blanket that looked almost identical to the covers I’d left behind.

Ignoring Torin, I started the show up again. Everton confessed his love, Leslie swooned, and just as they were about to kiss, Torin piped up, “Those two seem insipid.”

I shot a look at him. “Shut up.”

“I mean it. And doesn’t that lad have another girl? This can really only end badly for everyone involved.”

In spite of myself, I smiled a little. “I guess I should get used to this kind of drama.”

Torin smiled back. “Certainly scarier than staking vampires, isn’t it?”

I wondered what it said about me that watching a teen soap opera with a four-hundred-year-old warlock felt, well…normal.

“I don’t know why I’m doing all of this,” I said, not taking my eyes off the screen. “Or why Mom is going to all this trouble. If there’s a ghost here—and I kind of doubt it—it won’t require my going to this school for, like, months or renting a house. We could just get in, get out—”

“Isolde, do not be so dense.” In the mirror, Torin was leaning back on his hands, ankles crossed. “Your moving here has nothing to do with any ghost. Granted, there’s a chance a haunting is happening at Betty Crocker High—”

“Mary Evans,” I corrected, but he blew a hank of blond hair out of his eyes and shrugged.

“But clearly, Aislinn’s true motivation here is to let you experience a taste of regular human life. She’s gruff and difficult, that woman, so of course she’d rather die than tell you, ‘Oh, Isolde, guilt over your sister’s disappearance has left me swimming in a veritable sea of angst—’”

“Stop it.” Standing up, I flipped off the television and turned to face Torin. “Just…if you can’t help with Finley, then don’t talk about her, okay?”

Torin pursed his lips slightly, tilting his head and studying me. Then he said, “I did not mean to offend. I simply wanted to make sure you understood why you’re really here, Isolde. This isn’t about hunting a ghost. It’s about your mum trying to do something for you that she never did for your sister.”

Snorting, I headed for the door. “Mom doesn’t think like that.”

“I’ve known her longer than you have,” Torin called, and I froze, hand on the doorknob. I’d never really thought of it like that, but yeah, Torin had been in our family for centuries. He’d seen Mom grow up. Had known my grandmother, my great-grandmother, all the Brannicks stretching back to the sixteenth century.

Leaning forward, Torin gave his best sheepish smile. “Now, can we please stop quarreling and finish this program? I really do want to see what fresh hell is unleashed next.”

I hesitated, and Torin clasped his hands on his knees, sitting up straight. “I promise to behave.”

Somehow, I doubted that, but to be honest, I really wanted to see how that episode went. So I settled back on the floor and turned the TV on. Leslie and Everton kissed, his girlfriend found out, and the episode ended with Leslie running down the street in tears while some seriously whiny music wailed in the background.

“Well,” Torin said as the credits began to roll, “take heart, Isolde. At least a ghost will be less terrifying than that.”