The voice was deep and male. For a moment, I feared we’d called up the jewel thief. Then he stepped forward.

  My dad.

  Hair flattened from sleeping on his right side, he looked back and forth between me and Lady Azura. He held a large black umbrella.

  “Is it raining?” I asked lamely.

  “I thought someone had broken in. It was the first thing I could grab in the foyer.” He reached back and flipped the light switch. “What on earth is going on here?”

  Lady Azura seemed suddenly very interested in the age spots on her hands.

  “We were having a séance,” I explained. “We’re trying to contact an old client of Lady Azura’s who just died. She needs our help. Well, we kind of need her help too.”

  Beads of sweat appeared on Dad’s forehead. It was warm in the room, but that wasn’t why.

  “At three in the morning?”

  “It’s important,” I said. “It’s an old mystery, and I had a dream and we may be close to solving it.”

  He seemed about to say something, then changed his mind. My powers were still new to him, and he was treading lightly.

  Instead he turned to Lady Azura. “You know better. At least, I should hope you do. Sara is a child. She has school in only a few hours. I’m not sure how I feel about this séance stuff, but I do know that it is definitely not happening in the middle of the night on a school night.”

  Lady Azura nodded. “I’m sorry, Mike.” I wondered if she really was.

  “Sara, up to bed now.”

  “But, Dad, I felt her here—”

  “Now.”

  I knew that tone. There was no arguing. I stood to go.

  Tomorrow, Lady Azura mouthed.

  “Okay, what’s with the gloves?”

  I looked down at my thin black gloves. “You don’t like them?”

  “I don’t understand them,” Lily confessed as we walked home from school on Monday afternoon. “Are you in the Tour de France, or is it some eighties Madonna look where you forgot to cut off the fingertips?”

  “Neither. It’s my own fashion statement. I thought they looked good with this outfit.”

  That wasn’t true, although I didn’t think they looked totally awful with the black pants and neon pink shirt I wore. But then again, I’m not exactly the most fashionable girl in the world. I usually rely on Lily for that stuff.

  But I couldn’t tell Lily the real reason I’d worn the gloves to school. I couldn’t tell her that I was afraid to touch things. Anything. This morning at breakfast, I’d touched Lady Azura’s bread box and saw a young version of her trying to stop a little girl from crying by making a peanut butter sandwich. Then I’d touched the front door handle and was transported into the life of one of Lady Azura’s clients, the strange woman who always wore a black raincoat. All the mental walls I tried to build crumbled.

  I couldn’t block out the psychometry today. I think maybe it was because I was so tired. Lady Azura was still fast asleep when I left, so I couldn’t ask her what to do. Gloves were the only answer.

  They actually worked. Plus, Avery told me she thought I looked “fierce.” “Maybe I’ll start a new trend,” I suggested.

  “Or not.” Lily smiled at me, amused for the first time today. Today was Shelter Day.

  We approached her front walk slowly. Even with her three brothers and a sister inside, the house would feel quiet without Buddy. Lonely.

  Then we heard him.

  Barking and scampering excitedly on the other side of the door.

  “He’s still here!” Lily cried, pushing her way into the house and scooping up the little dog. Buddy licked her face. His tail never stopped wagging.

  “Hello, Lily? Sara, is that you, too?” Mrs. Randazzo called from the kitchen.

  “Mom! Buddy’s here, does that mean—”

  “It just means we’re waiting for your dad to get home, Lily. The plan is still to take Buddy to the shelter later. I’m sorry, sweetie.”

  Lily’s face fell.

  I didn’t know what to say. “What if his owners never come? What does the shelter do then?” I dared to ask as Buddy followed me and Lily up to her room.

  Lily sprawled face-first onto her bed. “I hope they find him a good home.”

  “It won’t be as good as your home.”

  “Right? It’s so unfair.” She sounded as if she was barely holding back tears.

  I dropped my book bag on the floor by the desk and watched Buddy curl up by the foot of Cammie’s bed. Did he feel as good as I did when I slept here? Part of the family too?

  Switching on Lily’s iPod, I turned up the speaker volume. Pop music filled the room. I hoped to drown out the depressing silence. After one song played through, I reached up to the shelf over her desk. “Listen, I need to borrow Buddy Two. Just for a little while.”

  “What?” Lily raised her head. “You gave him to me. You can’t take back a present.”

  “I’m not taking him back. Just borrowing him overnight.”

  “Oh my God! My parents take Buddy One away, and now you’re taking Buddy Two! What’s going on?”

  “It’s not like that.” My timing couldn’t have been worse. “He’s broken. My dad will fix him for you. I’ll bring him back tomorrow.”

  “He looks fine to me.” She stood, lifted the heavy little iron dog from the shelf, and examined it.

  “I promise I’ll bring him back.”

  “Yeah, well, my parents promised that someday we’d get a dog. Then the best dog in the world appears, and do we get to keep him? No!” Lily held on to the dog tightly. “Buddy Two may be the only dog I’ll ever have. My only reminder of the real Buddy.” She clutched Buddy 2 and reached down to pet Buddy 1, who wagged his tail by her side.

  Now what? There was no way I could convince her to hand over the metal dog, especially when she was already so upset.

  But the key was inside. I was sure of it. I needed to get it out.

  “Knock, knock.” Lily’s mom poked her head into the room.

  “Hi,” I said.

  Lily ignored her.

  “Lily”—she crouched next to her daughter—“I just spoke to your dad on the phone. Actually, we’ve been talking about this a lot. All week. I’m not promising anything, but we’ve seen how good you’ve been with Buddy. Your brothers, too.” She ran her fingers through Buddy’s fur. “Maybe the shelter is not the right place for Buddy.”

  “Do you mean we’re going to keep—”

  Mrs. Randazzo held up her hand, stopping Lily. “I don’t mean anything. All I mean is we’re going to examine different options. We’re going to have a family meeting tonight. A discussion.” She stood, and Lily did too.

  “What options?” Lily placed Buddy 2 on the edge of her desk and eagerly faced her mother.

  “That’s what we’ll discuss. Maybe there’s something we’re missing. Let’s wait for your dad, okay?”

  “Mommy!” Cammie wailed from downstairs.

  Mrs. Randazzo headed toward her. Lily hurried along beside her mom, peppering her with questions. Buddy followed too.

  I stood alone in Lily’s room.

  Would she get to keep Buddy? I couldn’t tell.

  I raised the cast-iron dog to my ear and shook it hard. Did I hear something rattling faintly inside? Or was I wishing I did?

  I ran my hand over its body. A seam ran down its middle, and on its stomach I spied a tiny metal screw. I would need a screwdriver to open it.

  “Come on, Buddy. Let’s go back to Sara!” Lily called. I heard the optimism in her voice. I could also hear her footsteps growing closer.

  It was wrong. Totally wrong, I knew that. But before I could debate it with myself, I buried Buddy 2 deep in my book bag, slung it over my shoulder, and hurried into the hall.

  I’ll bring Buddy Two back tonight, I promised myself. I’ll pretend he fell into my bag by mistake.

  I met Lily on the stairs. “My stomach kind of hurts, and I promised Lady Azura I’d be home after school to help her,” I said. Neither was a lie. “Text me after the family meeting, okay?”

  “Okay.” Lily watched me head out the front door.

  My book bag felt unusually heavy, and I did feel sick. I had just stolen from my best friend.

  We couldn’t open it.

  I tried every screwdriver Dad kept in the shed, and none would budge the screw. “It’s rusted shut.”

  Lady Azura regarded the metal dog sitting on the table in her fortune-telling room. “We will have to wait for your father.”

  I glanced at the clock on my phone. How long until Lily discovered I’d taken Buddy 2?

  “Shall we pick up from last night? Call back Irene?” She began to ready the room.

  I helped, but my mind was on Lily. Would she buy the dropping-in-my-bag-by-accident story? I doubted it.

  Lady Azura began the séance, rang the crystal bell, chanted, and called to Irene.

  Should I tell Lily the truth about Irene? About my powers?

  I wasn’t paying attention. Not to Lady Azura, not to the tingling that ran up my leg, not to the temperature of the room. Irene completely startled me when she appeared alongside me. Shimmering. Still no hands. Barely visible. Yet here.

  Lady Azura told of the man in black and the key.

  Irene knew this already. “The man . . . the man who stole from . . . my gardener . . . Erik.” Her voice was as faint as her body. Lady Azura gripped my hands tighter as if to heighten the connection.

  “Your gardener did it,” Lady Azura repeated.

  “Erik passed too . . . years ago. We met here . . . he told me . . .”

  I wondered where here was.

  “And your jewels?” Lady Azura asked. She remained trancelike as she spoke.

  “Erik . . . locked up in a box . . . key.”

  “We have the key.”

  “Seatight. Tell Thomas to go to Seatight.” For a moment her pearls glowed, and then she was gone. I felt the air return to the room.

  Lady Azura and I released our grip and took deep breaths.

  “Who is Thomas?” we both said at the same time.

  “Everything’s jumbled.” Lady Azura leaned back in her big chair. “Irene had her family jewelry stolen by a man dressed in black.”

  “Who turned out to be Erik the gardener. He died, and then he confessed his crime to Irene after she died too. Although I’m not sure where they had this conversation.”

  “That doesn’t matter. We know Erik locked up the jewels someplace with a key,” Lady Azura continued. “And that key, we think, is hidden inside this rusted metal dog.”

  “Which for some reason looks like the dog Lily’s brothers happened to find when I was over their house.”

  “Exactly.” She nodded. “The key opens a box with the number forty-three, where I presume the jewels are hidden. We are supposed to give the key to someone named Thomas.”

  “But we can’t get the key out. We don’t where box forty-three is, and we don’t know who Thomas is.”

  “Exactly.” Lady Azura’s eyes clouded over. “I fear I have failed again. Irene’s jewels may stay missing forever, and there’s nothing either of us can do.”

  Chapter 13

  I sat on the dusty attic floor, staring at the black wardrobe trunk. I was supposed to be in my room doing my homework while we waited for Dad. Lady Azura had gone to lie down. She was frustrated that we couldn’t help Irene.

  I unbuckled the latches and pried the trunk apart. Inhaling the smell of my mom, I surrounded myself with her dress bags, pulling them around me like an embrace.

  “Do you know what I can do?” I asked.

  I suspected she didn’t. Lady Azura said my mother hadn’t had powers herself. I wondered what she would’ve thought about me had she lived.

  I wanted her to be proud of me. Would she be?

  I’d lied to Lily about Buddy 1 and Buddy 2.

  A dead woman wanted me to find her stolen jewels. She gave me clues, yet I didn’t know where to look.

  If I unzipped a bag and took out a dress, my mother would come back. She’d tell me what to do. How to make everyone happy.

  If I have to have these powers, I thought, all I want is for them to make things good for people. Otherwise, what was the point?

  I counted the dresses again. Fifteen. Fifteen chances to see my mom. No, fourteen. I’d used one already. I didn’t know for sure, but I suspected that was how it worked. One dress, one glimpse.

  I had to choose wisely.

  I reached out . . . and slid the trunk closed.

  Not today.

  I didn’t need her today.

  I didn’t need séances with spirits.

  I didn’t need to touch an object to get answers.

  Suddenly I had an idea how I could help Irene. Just me, Sara Collins, with no paranormal help.

  All I needed was my computer.

  I made my way up to my room and booted up my computer. Then I stared at the keyboard, unsure how to begin.

  “She had a son,” Lady Azura had once told me. She wanted to pass on her jewels on to her son. Could Thomas be her son?

  I typed “Thomas Meyer” into the search bar. Over seven thousand hits appeared. “Popular name,” I said, scrolling through them.

  Nothing looked right. Businessman from Germany. Poet in Arizona. Maybe I’m wrong, I thought. Maybe Thomas is someone else. A friend? The police officer?

  My finger paused, and I stared at the twenty-fourth name listed on the screen. Thomas Meyer, Dean of Students.

  The website was Lincoln College in Pennsylvania.

  What were the chances?

  I opened the site and clicked on Thomas Meyer’s biography. He’d been educated in New Jersey. A formal photo showed a white-haired man in a dark suit.

  “That’s him,” I said aloud.

  I couldn’t believe it. The man I’d seen at the rest stop, looking for Buddy, was named Thomas Meyer.

  Were Buddy and Irene connected?

  It didn’t take long to track down a phone number for Thomas Meyer at the college. My hand trembled as I woke Lady Azura from her nap and handed her the scrap of paper. “It’s Thomas’s number.”

  Lady Azura went into the kitchen to call him. I stayed behind.

  Did Thomas have anything to do with Buddy? I wondered. Or had that rest stop vision really been about the key and Irene? Had I gotten them confused somehow?

  The bad feeling I’d had when I left Lily’s house grew worse. What had I done? Lily probably would forgive me for taking Buddy 2 away, but if she found out I had searched out and called a man who would take Buddy 1 away, that would be bad. End-of-a-friendship bad.

  “You found him, Sara.” Lady Azura returned, beaming. “He is Irene’s son.”

  Was that good? I wasn’t sure.

  “Luckily, he remembered hearing his mother talk about me, otherwise I am sure he would have hung up. He is going to meet with us.”

  “Here?”

  “Yes. In a couple of hours. It turns out his daughter and his grandchildren still live in the family home in Harbor Isle. He has another daughter who lives in Ocean Heights. He’s used to coming down this way.”

  “Did he mention a dog?”

  “No. Of course, neither did I. One thing at a time, my child.” She touched the silk turban wrapped around her head. “I need to let down my hair and change my clothes. We’re having company.”

  The doorbell rang two hours later. Thomas Meyer and his wife entered our foyer just as Dad came through the back kitchen door.

  They both looked just as they had in my vision. Thomas, with his light, bright-blue eyes, and Helen, with her darker skin and coffee-colored eyes.

  Lady Azura tried to explain everything to Dad and the Meyers. She told them that Irene had told her about a hidden key, “the key that opens the forty-three,” and how that would lead them to the missing jewels. She didn’t mention me or my visions or the psychometry, except to say that I had bought the cast-iron dog at the Bargains on the Boardwalk as a present for my friend, and that was where she believed the key was hidden. I knew she had to leave me out of it, but part of me wished I could join in the conversation and let them know how I had helped. How Irene had come to me.

  Dad and Thomas Meyer asked a lot of questions, but I had trouble paying attention. The man and woman I’d seen frantic at a rest stop were now sitting at my kitchen table, smiling and marveling at the story Lady Azura was telling them. How strange was that?

  Neither Lady Azura nor I mentioned Buddy. It wasn’t a plan or anything. He just never came up.

  “Well, I guess it’s my turn to lend a hand,” Dad said, surveying the array of screwdrivers on the table. He went out to the shed and returned with a spray can. “This lubricant will loosen the rust.”

  He alternated between the spray can and the screwdriver, working on the rusted screw with the patience of a bonsai artist. The four of us watched nervously. Would he be able to open it? Would the key be inside?

  “It’s been such a strange month,” Thomas Meyer said suddenly. “My mother died a couple of weeks ago. She’d been sick for a long time. In some ways it was a relief to no longer see her in pain.”

  “What was wrong with her?” I asked.

  “Cancer. It started as bone cancer in her hands, at the joints and in her wrists. It did terrible things to her hands. It eventually spread.”

  That explained her hands.

  “We’ve spent so much time down this way lately,” Helen mused. “We’ve been upset about Irene, so we’ve visited a lot with our daughters and their families. Our one daughter is single and lives in Ocean Heights. The other is married and lives in Harbor Isle with her family. Just a few exits down on the parkway.”

  “We were here not even two weeks ago, pulled over at the Stellamar rest stop, and we lost our dog. He ran away.”

  “That’s awful,” my dad said. He didn’t know the connection either.

  I couldn’t say anything. All I could think of was Lily.

  “Buddy does that, runs away.” Helen shook her head. “Tom and I haven’t been very good with that dog. He’s a frisky one. He used to be our grandchildren’s pet.”

  “What happened?” Lady Azura asked.

  My heart had dropped to my knees. Lily would have to give Buddy back.

 

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