Chapter 2

A while later, I sat on the curb, my knees drawn up to my chest, waiting.

After exiting the fun house, I'd run into Bobby—literally. He'd listened as I'd tried to explain. Then he'd handed me off to Keme, told Millie to call park security, and gone into the fun house. Keme had let me walk around for a while as my body tried to process the adrenaline still rushing through it. And then, when I started to tremble, he'd sat me at the edge of the park path. He'd put his arm around me, and while he didn't exactly growl at the people who came too close to us, I was pretty sure once or twice he bared his teeth. Millie joined us, and she must have called Indira and Fox because they showed up a few minutes later, and then all we could do was wait.

I kept replaying it in my head: the disorientation of sound and shadow, the fun house mirrors, the twisted reflection of Hemlock House, my own low-grade panic that had sent me racing into Davy Jones' Locker in the first place. And then seeing the woman. How still she'd been. The slackness of her face, and how I'd already known, even though I hadn't wanted to believe it, that she was dead.

In case you ever have the same issue, let me tell you that finding dead bodies never gets any easier. Maybe it does for some people, I guess. For me, though, it was still a shock. I can't honestly say that I felt grief or even pain—I had no idea who this woman was. I did feel, though, decentered, pushed out of my usually safe space at the center of the universe. And beneath that, a pang of awareness: that we were all mortal, that I would die too, and that this woman's death, whoever she was, was a loss.

When I roused myself from those thoughts, I was surprised to find Keme rubbing my back. His face was still set in a warning glare, but I realized that it had been some time since someone had passed close to us. Millie sat on my other side, holding my hand, and Indira and Fox hovered nearby. The sounds of the park were distant, and it took me a moment to realize this wasn't a side effect of the shock. Park security was cordoning off the area around Davy Jones' Locker, under the supervision of a man wearing a blazer and carrying a crackling walkie in one hand. Then Deputy Dahlberg appeared, followed by Deputy Tripple. Dahlberg was great—she was blond, and she wore her hair (and there was a lot of it) in a bombshell blow-dry, but she was also kind and competent. Tripple, on the other hand, was bald and had a surprisingly wrinkly scalp, and he was…less so.

"Again?" he said to me. "Really?"

Keme started to stand up.

I caught Keme's arm and whispered, "No."

Keme didn't break free, but he did follow Tripple with his eyes, and Tripple let out a little laugh as he headed toward the fun house.

Indira said, "He's forty years old, and he's still a sandbox bully."

"He's a coot," Fox said.

(They didn't actually say coot , though.)

"I think he's insecure because Dash is so much better at solving crimes," Millie said.

We all looked at her.

"What?" she asked.

At that moment, a golf cart rolled up, accompanied by the purr of its motor. The man driving it was white, on the young side of middle age, with a dishwater blond mullet. He wore an expensive-looking wool coat, and maybe that explained why his face was red and he was sweating—but I was pretty sure it had more to do with nerves. He exchanged a few terse words with the guy with the walkie, who pointed at me, and then he made a beeline toward us.

"Dagan Glass," he said, stretching out his hand as I stood. Between this guy, Tony, and Chester, I'd done enough handshaking for the next six months. "I'm so sorry to hear you had a negative experience at Shipwreck Shores. We're going to do everything we can to make it right."

I honestly couldn't come up with anything to say to that.

Apparently, Fox didn't have the same issue. "He found a dead body. It's not like he dropped his sno-cone."

Dagan blinked. "Yes, well…We'll see about that." And then he fished around in his expensive-looking coat and came up with, I kid you not, six admission tickets for Shipwreck Shores. He even fanned them out like they were playing cards. "I hope you won't let this negative experience keep you away from Shipwreck Shores. Please accept this gift of a complimentary visit for you and your friends, and if there's anything I can personally do to make sure you have a great experience, please let me know." He even smiled, although the sweating kind of ruined it. "Don't forget to treat yourself to our chocolate-dipped strawberries, exclusively available during the Sweethearts Festival."

Before any of us could say anything—before any of us, I was pretty sure, could even process that—he pressed the tickets into my hand and strode back to join the guy with the walkie.

"What a coot," Fox said.

"Negative experience," Indira said. "Honestly."

Keme gave me a long look that was surprisingly effective at communicating what he thought about the whole interaction.

"He reminds me of one of those talking dolls where you had to pull the string and she talked," Millie said.

"Chatty Cathy?" Fox asked.

"No."

"Baby Loves to Talk?" Indira asked.

"No."

"What was the one that was possessed and chopped up all those families in New England?" I asked.

Millie just rolled her eyes at that, but she said, "Furby. And no. You had to pull the string, and she talked and talked, and sometimes your mom said, ‘Okay, that's enough,' and then one time someone put her in the trash by accident?"

"Gabby Gabster," Keme said.

It was always a surprise to hear his voice: not quite a man's voice, but already pleasantly gravelly in a way that was going to drive people crazy (in a good way).

I was the first one to recover. "Really? This is when you decide to chip in?"

He made a very rude gesture.

"Oh my God, YES!" (Millie, obvs.) "GABBY GABSTER!"

I'd never seen law enforcement shush someone at a crime scene, but Deputy Dahlberg didn't miss a beat.

Millie looked like she was going to continue sharing her memories of Gabby Gabster (albeit slightly more quietly), but at that moment, Bobby stepped out of the fun house. He didn't look over at us as he moved to join Dagan Glass and the security guy. Bobby said something too quiet for me to hear, and Dagan and the security guy reacted in totally different ways. The security guy frowned, eyebrows knitting together. Dagan, however, flushed. The color deepened as he waved his hands and said something back to Bobby. The security guy asked a question too, although more calmly. Bobby answered and started to step away. Dagan turned, tracking Bobby's movements. He put his hands on his hips. And then, loud enough for his voice to carry down the path, he asked, "Is this some kind of joke?"

Bobby didn't answer. As he passed Dahlberg, he said, "Take a look, would you?"

Dahlberg nodded and moved into the fun house.

"What's wrong?" I asked. "What happened? I didn't touch anything, I swear to God. I mean, I tried to find a pulse—"

"I know," Bobby said. He was considering me carefully, and there was a slight pause before he said, "Tell me again where you saw this woman."

"In the bedroom at the top of the stairs. You mean specifically? She was on the floor near the bed. Uh, facing the door, I guess, because I could see her when I stepped into the room."

"The master bedroom?"

"Yes, the master bedroom. I mean, it's not a real house, Bobby. How many bedrooms does it have?"

"One," Bobby said, and then he rubbed his jaw. "And there's nobody in it."