Parrish

  It was unnerving.

  “There’s an old house a few blocks from here that has record of an Eva living there,” Deacon said.

  “The Eva with no last name?” Brighton asked.

  “Exactly,” Jefferson put in.

  It was odd to hear an even tone from him. He was either manic and joking around, or somber and sounding like an undertaker. There was no middle ground with Crazy Parrish Number One. Sometimes his voice would take on a bored, droll quality, but that was about as normal as it ever got.

  “We think she’s our best bet because the timelines seem to match up pretty well,” he went on. “Plus the house is within walking distance, so we can give the Jeep a rest.”

  “And what do we do when we get to this house?” I asked. “Just come right out and ask if the place is haunted?”

  “We’ll just be very upfront and honest with them and ask if they’ve experienced anything odd,” Jefferson said, again being way too normal. It was actually kind of making me mad. The act didn’t suit him at all. “If they have been having experiences, we’ll offer to investigate.”

  “I don’t know that they’ll go for it but I guess it’s worth a shot . . . assuming it’s even the right Eva.”

  “That’s enough of a ‘yes’ for me,” Deacon said. He stood and led the way with Brighton by his side.

  Jefferson gave me another forced smile, stood, and followed behind them, leaving me to catch up as usual.

  Being short was the worst sometimes.

  “Do you really think this person is going to let four complete strangers into their home?” I asked Jefferson in a hushed tone.

  We were walking far enough behind Brighton and Deacon that they wouldn’t be able to hear us. Plus, Deacon was currently acting as a tour guide and pointing out all of the historical sites to Brighton, sounding exactly like a textbook.

  “I think it’s worth a shot.” He turned toward me, wearing that infuriating fake smile again.

  It wasn’t even the kind of fake smile that was meant to be sarcastic and make you mad. It was the kind that was meant to smooth over a bad situation, and it was awful.

  “Would you stop doing that,” I breathed in irritation.

  “What would you like me to stop doing now, Sadie?” he asked in a sweet voice.

  “Everything you’re doing right now. This whole thing,” I motioned to his tall lanky figure. “The fake smiles and saying what’s socially acceptable in this situation we’re in.”

  “Stop being normal?” he asked in an overly innocent tone.

  He was doing this on purpose. He was acting normal to show me how annoying it was to worry about what people thought all the time.

  Brat.

  “Okay, fine, you made your point. I hate it when you don’t act like you,” I said with a roll of my eyes.

  “But you also hate it when I am me, so where does that leave us?” he asked, the dismal tone back to his voice as he returned to his version of normal.

  “Listen,” I said, grabbing his arm and stopping our walk. Brighton and Deacon didn’t even notice as they continued their mini tour. “I’m really sorry about what I said back in Tennessee. I was super tired and you caught me off-guard with that kiss, so I panicked. And then you started saying all of this stuff about the mean things I was doing and—let’s face it—no one likes to be called out on something they’re doing.”

  “Especially hot-tempered Cuban girls,” Jefferson added with a knowledgeable nod.

  I actually smiled a little. “Especially hot-tempered Cuban girls.”

  “You know you pull out the ‘hot-tempered Cuban’ card a lot,” he said, “but from what I’ve learned about your sister, who’s obviously also Cuban, she’s an even-tempered saint.”

  I gave him a look to tell him the topic of my sister was off limits.

  “I’m sorry for how I acted that night and can we please get back to normal?” I asked.

  “So obsessed with normal,” he sighed with a sad shake of his head.

  “I meant our normal, which isn’t normal at all.”

  “Yes, Sadie, we can get back to our normal.” He looked down at me with those huge eyes and his lips tugged up in one corner.

  I might have glanced down at his lips for a split second longer than I should have, but I quickly pretended I was just glancing at something else. Of course, I instantly regretted it when he said, “Can I still kiss you?”

  “Absolutely not,” I answered a little too quickly.

  “But what if I really want to?” he asked again, his half smile turning into a full-blown wicked grin.

  I blushed profusely.

  “Really want to,” he said again, being way too honest and calm about what he was saying.

  “Crazy Parrish,” I mumbled under my breath uncomfortably. I quickly turned on my heel and jogged to catch up with the other half of our group. I was literally running away from my problems.

  I could hear Jefferson laugh behind me and I hated myself for loving the sound of his laugh.

  Chapter 17

  “Brighton is the most normal looking of the group, so she should do it,” Jefferson said very matter-of-factly. He was standing much too close to me.

  He smelled good, his normal cinnamon scent coming off of him in waves. Why on earth did he always smell like cinnamon?

  We were all gathered on the sidewalk outside of the tiny brick home where our Eva may or may not have lived back in the 1900s. It hadn’t taken us long to find the home, but now that we were there, we couldn’t quite figure out how to get inside.

  “You’re joking, right?” Brighton asked. “Have you seen me speak to a stranger? I’m like Woody Allen.”

  “But look at you,” he emphasized. “You’re all blonde and . . . stacked.”

  “Stacked?” I asked with a laugh.

  I mean, it was true Brighton had the body of a supermodel, but it was so awkward to hear someone like Jefferson point it out. I didn’t think he was capable of noticing a female figure unless it was a ghostly reflection in a photo.

  “He’s got a point,” Deacon said under his breath, although we all clearly heard him.

  Brighton’s little blush was the most adorable thing ever.

  “Why can’t Sadie do it?” she asked. “She’s the most normal one here.”

  “Yeah, but she looks like she’s twelve,” Jefferson said. “They’ll think she’s selling Girl Scout cookies.”

  “Ouch,” I said, narrowing my eyes at him.

  “Deacon and I can’t do it,” he went on, ignoring my hurt ego. “We’re too . . .”

  “Tall?” Deacon offered.

  “Crazy?” I added. “British? Weird?”

  “Off-putting,” Jefferson finished.

  “Would it be too intimidating if all four of us went to the door?” I asked. “I mean, only one of us would do the talking, of course.”

  “Yes!” Brighton exclaimed, finding her “out” and grasping to it for dear life. “That is definitely what we should do.”

  I shrugged at the boys and linked my arm through Brighton’s, walking with her up to the front door. There was no way this was ever going to work, but I wasn’t in the mood to break into this person’s house either, so we didn’t have much of a choice.

  “You knock,” she whispered to me, grasping my hand much too tightly while the Parrish boys discussed something on the sidewalk.

  They were probably trying to figure out a way to overturn the decision I’d just made for the group.

  “Here goes nothing.” I knocked lightly on the old wooden door. “She’s probably going to think we’re Mormons or Jehovah’s Witnesses.”

  I could hear a woman inside, calling through the house to tell someone she’d be right back before answering the door. The woman couldn’t have been any older than thirty and she had curly brown hair and a kind face. This might not be too difficult.

  “Hello.” She smiled, raising her eyebrows a bit
at us in an unspoken question.

  Brighton squeezed my hand even tighter.

  “Hi, I’m Sadie,” I began, not quite sure how to word my insane question. “Um . . . there’s not really a great way to say this without sounding crazy, so I’m just going to come right out and say it.”

  The woman kept her smile in place, but I could see that she was now a bit worried about whatever message I had come to deliver to her.

  “We’re paranormal investigators and we’ve been working on a case recently that led us here. You may not know, but is there any chance someone named Eva used to live here a long time ago? Around the early 1900s?”

  The woman’s smile instantly faded as her hazel eyes widened. Now it was my turn to smile awkwardly at her as she silently stared back.

  I exchanged nervous glances with Brighton, wondering if the woman was about to call the cops on us, just as Jefferson and Deacon walked up to the door.

  “So can we come in or not?” Jefferson asked with a deep sigh, being as tactless as humanly possible.

  I stepped on his foot subtly, hoping it would shut him up.

  “I’m sorry about him,” I said to the still silent woman. “Is now a bad time? Should we come back later?”

  She shook her head as if realizing there were people standing in front of her. “No, I think you should come in.” She looked at the two Parrish boys a trifle nervously.

  I couldn’t really blame her. If two lanky, weird British boys showed up on my doorstep, I wouldn’t just take them in off the street. I’d made that mistake once and look where it had gotten me.

  “I’m Ally, by the way,” she said, beckoning for us to follow her inside.

  The old brick house was small but felt very homey and lived-in. I had a small pang of jealousy over the fact that she had such a cozy home when I was less than excited about going back to our tiny hotel room after this was all over.

  Ally’s fridge was covered in crayon drawings and plastic magnet letters, and down the hall, I could hear the sounds of a little girl squealing over something. She led us toward the giggling in her daughter’s room.

  “This is Layla,” Ally said with a smile, motioning to a girl who looked to be about five years old, sitting on the floor and surrounded by dolls. “And here’s the reason I don’t think you’re completely nuts.” She handed me a stack of papers.

  I flipped through them. Jefferson was practically draped over my shoulder trying to see too. Page after page held crayon pictures of two girls, one smaller girl with the name “Layla” written above it, and the other a taller woman with the name “Eva.”

  My mouth almost dropped open in shock as I looked up at Ally. “Did your daughter draw these?”

  “She did,” she said. “About a year ago she started naming all of her dolls ‘Eva.’ I didn’t really think anything of it except that I wasn’t sure where she had heard the name. Then she started telling me about an imaginary friend whose name was Eva, and how this was her house before it was ours.”

  Ally let out a small shudder, looking down at her little girl. Layla had already started ignoring us again, opting for playing with her dolls.

  “Have you had any experiences yourself?” Jefferson asked.

  I wished he would change his tone to be more personable and less accusatory, but I didn’t think chiding him in front of Ally would make us look great, so I stayed silent.

  “We haven’t had anything bad happen really, and I’ve never felt unsafe. But I have had times when I’ve thought someone was in the room with me, or times when I think I see my reflection in the mirror, but when I look over, there’s no mirror beside me . . . but I swear it was me I saw out of the corner of my eye.”

  “Doppelgänger,” Deacon murmured to Jefferson.

  “Or mimic,” he replied. “Which would be infinitely more fun.”

  “Jefferson,” I said, hoping he’d take a hint and stop talking about this woman’s problems like they were a gift. “Has Layla seen Eva?”

  “She says she has, but you never know with kids.” Ally shrugged. “Honestly, until I started seeing and hearing things myself, I still thought she was playing around.”

  “But you say you’ve never felt uncomfortable here?”

  “Never,” she said. “Even when I’ve heard things, I’ve never really been scared. Just startled.”

  “That’s good, at least,” I said. “I’m sure there’s nothing for you to worry about. Sometimes a presence can just attach itself to a place; it’s not like Poltergeist where the entire house is suddenly going to turn on you.”

  “That’s reassuring,” Ally said with a small laugh. “Honestly, if you had knocked on my door a few months ago I would have laughed at you. I never really believed in this stuff.”

  I smiled at her reassuringly. I couldn’t blame her for being a skeptic. I hadn’t always been so sure of the paranormal.

  “I know this is probably a really weird thing for us to ask since you don’t know us . . . but would you be willing to let us investigate your home to see if we can figure anything out?” I was sure that she would say yes, now that we had proven we knew our stuff.

  “Preferably at night, and without you and your family in the house,” Jefferson added, making me want to slap him.

  Of course he had to go and make it sound like we were asking her to leave her home so we could rob her.

  Ally looked over at her daughter for a moment and then back to us, seeming unsure.

  “It’s just easier if there’s no one else in the house who can contaminate the investigation and cause any additional sounds or shadows that we might not be expecting. Do you have a relative or someone you could stay with?” I asked, trying to smooth over Jefferson’s lack of tact.

  “I’m really sorry,” she said after a moment. “I don’t think it’s a good idea. My husband, Brian, is out of town until tomorrow, and I wouldn’t really feel comfortable letting strangers hang out in my house at night without talking to him about it.”

  Jefferson rolled his huge eyes in a painfully obvious way. He might as well have come right out and said he thought she was completely useless.

  “That’s totally fine, Ally,” I said with a bright smile.

  Crazy Parrish Number One was now narrowing his eyes at every person in the room. He was quickly descending into “Angry Jefferson.”

  “Go ahead and talk to your husband when he gets back tomorrow and let us know what you guys decide. We don’t want money or anything; we just want to check the place out and see if we can pick up on anything that might be going on here. Here’s my number. You can just give me a call tomorrow.”

  “I will,” she assured me. She didn’t sound like she was shutting us down completely, which gave me hope.

  We walked silently to the front door, Brighton still squeezing the life out of my hand and the Parrish boys moping.

  “Thank you for letting us into your home,” I said, still not wanting to scare this woman off when we were so close to investigating our next location.

  “I’ll call you tomorrow,” she said with a smile, closing the door behind us.

  The second the door was closed, Brighton took a long puff on her inhaler and released my hand.

  “Well that was an epic waste of time,” Jefferson scoffed as we started walking back to our hotel room.

  “Because of you,” I said. “Why can’t you just keep your big mouth shut and let me do the talking so you don’t scare everyone away with your Jefferson-ness?”

  Deacon laughed. “Oh, congrats mate, you’re now an adjective.”

  “It’s not funny, Deacon,” I snapped. “I really think Ally was going to let us investigate tonight before Crazy Parrish Number One had to be himself and ruin everything.”

  “What is your problem, Sadie?” Jefferson asked.

  “You are my problem,” I answered, feeling the heat rise into my cheeks. I wasn’t sure why I was getting so upset. It really wasn’t that big of a
deal.

  Brighton looked monumentally uncomfortable with my little fit. “Jefferson’s right, Sade, you need to just calm down for a second.”

  Of course, all that did was send me over the edge.

  “Go ahead and side with him again, Brighton.”

  “Again?” Jefferson asked.

  “Just forget it,” I said.

  I couldn’t understand why they were calling me out for being the only normal one there.

  “I’ll see you guys back at the hotel room,” I said.

  And with that, I stormed away in the opposite direction, thinking maybe I could head back to the library to do some research, even though it was probably closed by now. Even as I was walking away, I knew I was being completely irrational. I wasn’t quite sure why I had suddenly become so angry, and I felt like an idiot for lashing out at my friends over Jefferson doing what he always did, but I still couldn’t help myself.

  I could feel my phone buzzing in my pocket but I ignored it. I wasn’t in the mood for Brighton telling me I needed to apologize to Jefferson, and I didn’t want Deacon trying to smooth everything over with a joke. All I wanted was two seconds where I wasn’t smashed into a small space with the three people I saw every day.

  My breathing was heavy as I walked, not so much because I was walking particularly fast, but because I was so mad at everything at that moment. It didn’t take me long to get downtown, and when I finally did, I stopped inside of a bookstore, thinking it was a safe place to hang around without getting strange looks. That’s what bookstores were for, right? Hanging out?

  Grabbing a random book off the shelf without looking at it, I sat in one of the big overstuffed arm chairs, holding the book up over my face so people wouldn’t see my scowl. I had absolutely no intention of reading whatever I had picked up; I just needed an excuse to sit in silence for a moment to think about what had just happened.

  Besides my sudden outburst that I really couldn’t explain (even though I was completely justified in my rage), I thought about how close we had been to investigating Ally’s house. I could tell she was seconds away from letting us check things out, until she saw the Parrish boys in all of their awful glory. That had been what changed her mind. Maybe if Brighton and I could go back and do the investigation alone she’d be more receptive.