“So it’s just me, Pepper, and Jesus?” Pita shook her head. “No, the more participants the better. We can generate more psychic energy that way. Pepper, are you sure we can’t let Rosa join?”

“Please?” Rosa said.

“Oh…well…okay,” Pepper said, and he didn’t seem to care one way or another. He was definitely not in top showmanship form. “Now,” he went on, “spirits seek warmth and light. Candles would be best, but since we don’t have any, we’re going to have to improvise.” Moving slowly, like an old man with aching joints, he opened his bag and withdrew an LED lamp that could either be mounted on his video camera or held via a handle. He turned it on and set it in the middle of the floor, so it shot a beam of white light to the ceiling, scattering the shadows nesting there.

Pita appeared dubious. “That doesn’t look very séance-like.”

“It going to have to do. Also, we need food.”

“Food?” Jesus said.

“You don’t have incense, do you?”

“No…”

“So we need food, something with a strong aroma.”

“I didn’t bring any food.”

“I have vodka,” Jack said.

Pita frowned at him. “Why do you have vodka?”

“I brought it.”

“You can’t go a day without alcohol?”

Jack ignored that. “Will vodka work, Peps?”

“Better than nothing.”

Jack withdrew a bottle of vodka from his daypack, unscrewed the cap, and set the bottle next to the LED light.

“The ghost is only a little girl, Pepper,” Pita said. “I don’t think she drinks vodka.”

“She’s not going to drink it,” he told her curtly. “But the smell can help attract her.”

Next, Pepper instructed them to form a circle and hold hands. Elizaveta sat between Jack and Rosa, Jack’s big hand in her left one, Rosa’s little hand in her right one. Pita was to Jack’s left, then Nitro, then Jesus, then Pepper.

“To summon a spirit…” Pepper began, then frowned, as if he’d just realized something. He cleared his throat. “There might be a problem, Pita. To summon a spirit, you need the spirit’s name.”

“But we don’t know the girl’s name,” she said.

“We can’t summon her without a name.”

“Well, that was a quick séance,” Jesus said, and started to stand.

“Sit down, Jesus!” Pita said. “We’ll just make up a name. She’s the only ghost on this island, right?”

Elizaveta was watching Pita, trying to figure out whether she was having a lark, or whether she truly believed they were about to summon the spirit of a little girl who died fifty years before.

What was it Jack had said?

The neurons that fire together wire together.