Wade Travers did a little dance of sheer happiness.

He wasn’t much for dancing, unless he could feel up Honey while he was doing it.

But this intel was just too good.

He had known something was up with Nikki Fortune. She never partied like the rest of them, never hooked up with anyone. All she ever wanted to do was play tennis, though by his dad’s account she sucked at it.

But now it all made sense. She wasn’t at Maxwell’s to be a drama teacher - she was a journalist, there to write a story about those goofy aliens.

Breaking her up from Indiana with this info would be like taking candy from a baby.

Candy sounded good, actually.

He slipped his phone from his pocket.

Wade:

Hey, I need some candy. And another bottle. Not a girly drink this time.

Jim:

What kind of candy?

Wade:

I dunno, just candy. Bring it now, I gotta think.

He threw the phone on the bed before Jim could quiz him to death.

He needed to think and he needed to sleep. The night noises were getting worse and worse. The past few nights, he’d had a hard time drifting off until the sun was rising over the lake.

And this morning, when he went downstairs, he could have sworn someone had been looking through his stuff.

That wasn’t possible though. He would have known if someone had come here. And no one ever did. Except Jim.

His mind went back to the waving curtain in the living room.

He shivered and then put it out of his mind.

He was going to be out of here soon. He just needed to focus.

Wade grabbed his notebook.

Underneath where he had slashed out Nikki & Indiana = Honey & Kitt, he began to write again.

1) Tell Indiana that Nikki is writing about him and the other goofy aliens.

2) Tell Honey and Addy that Nikki is undercover.

3) Watch them all lose their shit.

He underlined item number three and then made a quick drawing of six stick figures looking dismayed.

Excellent.

Yes, that was exactly how it was going to be.

The wind blew and the house began to groan. Something on the stairs creaked.

Suddenly the ghost story was in his head again. He could hear his dad telling it over the fire pit one summer when Wade was little. The old man had knocked back a few, and his face was red and swollen. In the firelight he had looked almost demonic.

Little Wade had shivered as he listened.

“There’s a cabin on that island. Do you know why they call it the honeymoon cabin?”

Wade shook his head and the teenagers all giggled.

“Back in the 1800s,” his dad continued, “all of Maxwell’s belonged to one family.”

Wade could see that his dad liked that idea. If one family owned it all they must have been rich. And Wade’s dad respected money.

“The tradition back then,” his dad told them, “was for newlyweds to row across the lake to the island and spend their honeymoon in total privacy.”

At that point, his dad waggled his eyebrows and the teenagers all laughed.

“The last time the honeymoon cabin was used,” his dad said, leaning in confidentially so that the firelight made his face seem to dance, “the family’s oldest daughter was getting married. Back then, younger girls couldn’t get married until their older sister had married, or else she would be considered an old maid. And this older sister was picky.”

Wade’s father’s nose wrinkled up at the idea of a picky woman, so Wade wrinkled up his little nose too.

“Finally she chose someone. Some guy who everyone had thought was interested in her little sister. Anyway, he asked the older sister to marry him. Her parents were happy. The sister was happy. Everyone was happy.”

Then Wade’s dad would lean in even closer, and his voice would drop to a stage whisper.

“Until the day of the wedding. That was when the younger sister disappeared while everybody else was dancing. Her parents sent servants to try and find her in the places she liked to spend time - the strawberry patch, the pavilion…”

“The pavilion?” little Wade had echoed, astonished that the very pavilion where he played was a place where the little sister had played.

“Yes.” His father nodded. “Anyway, at twilight the oldest daughter and her new husband rowed across the lake, as planned.

“They got to the cabin, and she was scared when she saw a big rifle hanging over the front door in the living room. The husband explained that it was in case of bears or wolves on the island. He offered her a snack of tea and biscuits, which he told her the servants had packed for them.

“She took the cup and plate, but she was too nervous to eat or drink. Not wanting to hurt his feelings, she waited until he left the room for a moment, and then dumped the biscuit in the trash and the tea in the mug out the window.

“Then he invited her to bed,” Wade’s dad said with another raise of his eyebrows.

Predictably the teenagers laughed. But Wade didn’t understand why they thought it was funny to go to sleep. Of course he knew better now. Sex jokes were the best.

“And so she went into the bedroom first,” his dad continued, “and changed into her nightgown. Then she crawled into bed and waited for him.

“She waited a long time, but the husband didn’t come.

“At last, she snuck out of the room and heard voices coming from outside. So she tiptoed to the window and looked out, and there on the front porch was her new husband, with her younger sister under the light of the moon.”

By the way his dad said with and the way the teenagers giggled, little Wade had known he must mean kissing.

“In disbelief, the older sister spun around the room,” his dad continued. “And that was when she noticed a dead mouse in the wastepaper basket, with biscuit crumbs all over it.

“Then she realized what had happened. Her husband had wanted to marry her younger sister after all. He had married her instead, but planned to murder her by poison, leaving her younger sister eligible to marry.

“Furious, the older sister grabbed the rifle from over the front door, burst outside and shot the husband dead.

“Her younger sister screamed and then went silent. She was frozen in place before her sister, naked and shocked.”

Wade had wondered why the little sister would have been naked. But his father continued the story before he could ask.

“The older sister didn’t have the heart to murder her sibling. Instead, she walked to the far side of the island and threw herself off the rock face. Women didn’t swim in those days. She drowned almost immediately.

“The younger sister never married. Instead, she spent the rest of her life caring for her heartbroken parents, who were never the same.”

That was a terrible story. Little Wade had been very sad. He was not a good swimmer either. He did not like the idea of jumping off the cliff on the island and into the cold, dirty lake.

But then his dad put the cherry on top.

“They say,” his dad whispered, “that their ghosts still haunt the island. If you go out there after dark, you might hear the gunshot, the scream and the splash of the older daughter throwing herself into the lake.”

Mr. Travers had leaned back in his lawn chair, a smug look of satisfaction on his face.

And little Wade had gazed across at the island and seen the moonlight flash against the upstairs window of the cottage.

The one he was looking out of right now.

His entire body convulsed with fear, and Wade wanted out right now. There was no time for a clever plan. He needed to take action now.

He grabbed the phone again and pulled up Honey’s contact info.

Wade:

Honey, Nikki Fortune isn’t who she says she is. She’s a journalist undercover, writing a story about the aliens. I just thought I would give you a heads up.

There, that ought to do it. Honey wasn’t that sharp anyway. Better to be obvious and straightforward.

He waited for Honey to text him back, to thank him for saving her from her lying friend.

Nothing.

He texted again.

Wade:

Just Google her name and Vanderbilt, and you can see what she majored in. And when she graduated. She’s not even a student anymore, Honey. You got duped.

Satisfied, he put the phone down again and hummed a brave little tune to drown out the sounds he was sure were just the house settling.