Nope, it was going exactly where I’d thought.

“I saw her ghost.”

Izzy and I froze as Mr. Henderson studied our faces intently, waiting for us to react to his big news.

Finally, Izzy said, “Well, that’s ridiculous.” She then let out a slightly hysterical-sounding laugh. “You couldn’t have seen her ghost. Ghosts don’t exist. Can you imagine? What a thought. Ghosts in this day and age? Preposterous!”

I put my hand on my aunt’s shoulder. Did I mention Izzy rambled when she got nervous?

She snapped her mouth shut and patted my hand by way of saying thank you.

“Oh, Isabel, Isabel, Isabel,” Mr. Henderson said in a patronizing tone that had unfortunately become all too familiar. It was a really good thing Nora wasn’t with us this morning. “You need to open your eyes to what’s going on all around you. There are forces at work in this town. Strange powers here in Evenfall that you couldn’t possibly understand.” He stopped to look up at the trees. I almost looked up too, but resisted the urge, feeling fairly certain there was nothing up there. “Really, when you think about it, ghosts are the least of our worries.”

You’d think, given I’d spent the majority of my life seeing and talking to ghosts, I wouldn’t easily dismiss someone telling me they had seen one of their own. But as I mentioned, our neighbor was a special case. With special interests.

And it was all our fault.

Mr. Henderson was naturally the type of neighbor who liked to peek around curtains, but we had, unfortunately, provided him with the opportunity to see some things he really shouldn’t have, and in short, we had created a monster.

It had all started when another one of our neighbors, Minnie Abernathy, had accidentally left her gate open, setting her overprotective rottweiler free just as our lovely mail carrier, Bertha, was heading back to her truck. The dog had gotten it into his head to make a run at her, but, as luck would have it, Izzy was outside at the time watching the scene unfold. With the snap of her fingers, she turned a puddle to ice just as the dog was about to lunge, sending him harmlessly skidding out of the way. As a result, Bertha was able to get back in her truck, and Minnie was able to secure her dog. Crisis averted, right?

Not quite.

Regrettably, that particular incident had taken place in the middle of July, and Mr. Henderson, seeing the entire event unfold—save the snap of Izzy’s fingers—made it over to examine the ice before it had fully melted.

For the record, Nora had had a word with Minnie’s dog shortly after that particular event. She was quite good at reasoning with animals—aside from Dog, of course, who was a bird unto his own—and the canine had been beautifully behaved ever since.

Unfortunately, the same could not be said for Mr. Henderson.

That incident had fostered a curiosity in our neighbor, and he had been on the lookout for strange goings-on on our street ever since. We had tried our best to be careful, but there may have been a few other incidents our neighbor had witnessed that hadn’t helped the situation. Like when a cloud of purple sparks had exploded from the kitchen’s chimney after an experiment of Izzy’s had gone wrong. Or when a pumpkin of ours grew three hundred pounds in a single day after Nora had come to the conclusion our Halloween decorations needed a little extra something. No, those incidents had not helped.