It was the girl I'd been seeing since I'd started at Hecate, but she didn't look anything like a ghost; she looked very much flesh and blood.
"Well?" she asked, raising one perfect eyebrow. "Are you coming or not?"
I glanced over at Jenna. All I could make out was a dark lump. By the sound of her steady, even breathing, I knew she was still asleep.
The girl followed my gaze. "Oh, don't worry about her," she said with a dismissive wave. "She won't wake up and sound the alarm. No one will;
I've taken care of that."
Before I could ask what she meant, she turned and swept out the door.
I sat frozen until she reappeared in the doorway and said, "Oh, for
Christ's sake, Sophia, let's go!"
Now, I knew that following a ghost was a Very Bad Idea. Everything in my body said that. My skin felt clammy and my stomach was in knots.
But I found myself pushing off my covers, grabbing my Hecate blazer off the back of my chair, and catching up to her at the top of the stairs.
"Good," she said. "We have a lot of work to do and not much time."
"Who are you?" I whispered.
She flashed me that irritated look again. "I told you, you don't have to whisper. No one can hear us."
She stopped on the stairs and threw her head back, shouting, "Casnoff! Vandy! Sophia Mercer is out of bed and up to mischief with a ghooooooooooost!"
I instinctively crouched down. "Shhhh!"
But just as she'd promised, there was no sign that anyone had heard her. The only sound was the muffled ticking of the grandfather clock in the main foyer and my own hard breathing.
"See?" she said, turning to me with a bright smile. "Taken care of.
Now come along."
She ran down the last few steps, and before I knew it, we were outside on the front lawn. The night was cool and damp, and the grass squished unpleasantly under my feet. I looked down to make sure I was only standing on grass and noticed that my feet seemed a weird shade of green. Then I noticed I could see my shadow even though there was no moon.
I whirled around to look back at Hecate and gasped. The whole house was encased in a huge opalescent bubble that glimmered with dull green light. The bubble was in constant motion, undulating and shooting off pale green sparks. I had never seen anything like it; never even read about a spell like that.
"Impressive, isn't it?" the girl said smugly. "It's a basic sleeping spell that renders the victims totally insensible to the world for at least four hours.
I just . . . enlarged it."
I didn't like the way she said "victims."
"Are they . . . are they okay?"
"Oh, perfectly safe," she answered. "Just sleeping. Like in a fairy tale."
"But . . . Mrs. Casnoff has spells all over the place. No one could just come in and do a spell that big."
"I can!" the girl said. Then she grabbed my hand. Hers was as solid and real as mine. I was sure Mrs. Casnoff had said ghosts couldn't touch us.
But before I could ask, the girl started pulling me away from the house.
"Wait. I can't go anywhere with you until I know who you are and what you're doing here. Why have you been following me?"
She sighed. "Oh, Sophia, I had hoped you were a little more perceptive. Isn't it obvious who I am?"
I studied her knee-length flowered dress and bright green cardigan.
Her hair was shoulder length, curly, and held back from her face with bobby pins. Glancing down, I saw that she was wearing heinous brown shoes. I felt a little sorry for her: ghost or no, no one should have to go through eternity in ugly shoes.
But then I looked into her eyes. They were large and wide set, and even though the green light was reflected in them, I could tell that they were blue.
My eyes.
British, from the forties, and had my eyes.
"Alice?" I asked, my heart in my throat.
She smiled broadly. "Excellent! Now, just come with me and--"
"Wait, wait, wait," I said, holding a hand to my head. "You're telling me that you're the ghost of my great-grandmother?"
That irritated look again. "Yes."
"So what are you doing here? Why have you been following me?"
"I haven't been following you," she answered hotly. "I've been appearing to you. You weren't ready for me before, but now you are. I've worked very hard to get to you, Sophia. Now, can we please stop all this chattering and get down to business?"
I let her drag me away, mostly because I was afraid she might zap me if I didn't, but also because I was genuinely curious. How many people get pulled out of bed by their great-grandmother's ghost?
We walked away from Hecate and down the steep hill toward the greenhouse. I wondered if she was taking me there for training, but when we arrived, she veered off toward the left and pulled me into the woods.
I'd never been in the forest that surrounded Hecate, and for very good reason: it was spooky as hell. And of course it was doubly so at night. I stepped on a rock in my bare feet and winced. When something soft brushed against my cheek, I gave a little shriek.
I heard Alice murmur a few words, and suddenly a large orb of light appeared in front of us, bright enough that I had to shade my eyes. Alice muttered under her breath, and the orb jerked upward as if someone had it on a string. It floated away until it was about ten feet over our heads, casting light in all directions.
You would think that the light would make the woods less creepy, but actually it was worse. Now shadows moved across the ground, and I caught the occasional flash of animal eyes. We came across a dry creek bed, and to my surprise, Alice leaped nimbly into it. I followed, a lot less gracefully, tripping on loose soil and cursing.
If I'd thought the woods were spooky, they had nothing on the dry creek. Rocks were sharp against my bare feet, and it seemed that everywhere
I looked, there were dark hollows and exposed roots that looked like the entrails of some giant animal. In the end I just grabbed Alice's hand and kept my eyes shut until we came to an abrupt stop.
I opened my eyes and immediately wished I hadn't.