So Iris and Eric had been staying home and painting rocks for it: rocks with ladybugs, butterflies, and birds. They also painted a big sign that Old Mac was going to hang from a post with chains: MISS EVELYN’S BIRD GARDEN. They painted a rainbow with lots of birds flying over it in the background.
But Eric’s heart wasn’t really in the rock painting or sign painting. He was thinking about the Ghoul. He was determined to find it. It was all he talked about. He wanted—no, he seemed to need—to find the Ghoul, just so they’d believe him.
The next night was the full moon, and he had come up with a plan to trap it.
He had this idea that they could lure the Ghoul out and surround it in the clearing by the stream. They’d have a salt circle all set up with just one part missing. Once the Ghoul landed in the circle, they’d lay down the rest of the salt, and it would be trapped. They could try to talk to it, learn what it was and what it wanted. If it gave them any trouble, they’d do the Spell of Banishment.
For Vi, the Ghoul was the least of her worries these days. Figuring out where Iris had come from and what was going on at the Inn was at the forefront of her mind.
Now Miss Ev was arguing with Old Mac about the size of the rocks he’d been gathering—“symmetrical,” she kept repeating, and Vi was pretty sure Mac had no idea what that meant. He was adjusting his scarecrow hat, looking down at the rock in Miss Ev’s hand—her “ideal size and shape” of rock. “Think about a bowling ball. Not a big one, but one of the little ones they use for candlepin bowling.”
He looked at her blankly. “Most rocks ain’t round like that, Evelyn,” he said.
“That’s absolutely true,” Jess said.
“He’s got a point,” said Tom as he scratched at his bare arms.
“It doesn’t need to be perfectly round,” Miss Ev said, shaking her head like the whole thing was hopeless. “Just rounded. And more or less the same size. It looks funny when you’ve got a huge boulder next to a little baseball-sized rock, don’t you agree? That’s what I’m saying about symmetry.”
Old Mac licked his lips, adjusted his straw hat.
Vi looked at Patty. “Any other updates?” she whispered.
Patty sighed. “Well,” she said.
“What?”
Patty had her eye on Old Mac and Miss Ev as she leaned close to Vi and said in a low voice, “I probably shouldn’t be telling you this, but someone came to the Inn yesterday. She showed up and started asking a lot of questions. Got your grandmother and my uncle all stirred up. Did your grandmother happen to say anything to you about it?”
“No.” Vi shook her head. Though Gran had been in a lousy mood when she came home from the Inn last night—she’d gulped down two martinis before she even started making tuna casserole for dinner. “Who was she? A family member?”
Gran said sometimes that family members were harder to deal with than the patients.
“I think she was a reporter. Or journalist of some kind.”
“A reporter?”
“Yeah.” Patty nodded. “She made kind of a scene in the front room, and Dr. Hildreth and my uncle whisked her away to the meeting room.”
“But what did she want? What was she saying?”
“I don’t know. But I do know it got Dr. Hildreth and Uncle Thad all upset. After she left, the two of them went down into the basement for hours.”
“I need to get down there,” Vi said. “Tonight. I’ll get down there tonight.”
“How?”
“I’ll take my grandmother’s keys.” Vi thought of the key ring in Gran’s purse—the purse that never left Gran’s side.