Maggie walked over to a stuffed mummy doll Lily had on her bed and noted the horror poster on the wall. “Your daughter’s really into the dark stuff, huh?”

“She never was the unicorn and rainbows kind of girl,” I said, smiling.

“Bo’s the same way—that horror shit. I think all the teenagers are.” Maggie set the mummy down. “I’m guessing she’s really into Ghost Girl, then?”

“That urban legend?” I rolled my eyes. “It’s all she can talk about.”

Maggie nodded. She stepped to the other side of the room and gazed down from the large round window. “I figured that’s why she picked this place as her bedroom.”

“What do you mean?” I joined Maggie at the window. Could you see the railroad bridge from here? No. At least, I couldn’t. All I could see beyond our street were the trees that shielded the lake.

“So you don’t know.” Maggie was close enough that I could smell her chewing gum—peppermint. Her eyelashes had clumped from the large amount of black mascara, making them look like little daggers. “Ghost Girl was a real person. Her name was Daphne.” She pushed off the window ledge and stopped in the center of the room, the light from outside casting odd shadows on her face. “And she lived right here. In this bedroom.”

“What?” As far as I knew, the Browns had owned this house for decades.

“Weird, right?” Maggie said. “She was staying with her aunt and uncle.”

I tried to remember everything Lily and Ellen had mentioned, but I only half listened whenever they’d brought it up. A young girl. A wedding dress. Jumping off the railroad bridge. And Ellen’s words, coming out of the darkness. I’ve seen her. Many times. “Seriously? It’s real? I thought it was just a story?”

Doug snorted. I’d forgotten he was there.

“A lot of people do,” Maggie said. “Maybe because Ghost Girl is such a stupid name. She wasn’t even a girl. She was twenty years old.”

Daphne. Daphne Brown. Of course. That name had sounded familiar, and now I knew why. “The scholarship,” I murmured.

“That’s right. The Daphne Brown Merit Scholarship that the Hive put their little Full Moon show on for.” Maggie seemed exhilarated. She sat down on Lily’s bed, rubbing her hands along the comforter. “It happened on Halloween, you know. During one of their block parties, about a dozen years ago. Daphne was babysitting all their kids that night. She left the kids”—she made a sweeping gesture with her arm—“right here in this very room. They were the last ones to see her alive.”

A chill crept over me, thinking of the kids. They’d all been so young. Who had been there? Kendra’s sons, Cole and Sam? Bettina’s daughter, Sloane? Pia’s son and daughter, Rachna and Jason?

And Ellen—well, Nora?