Page 79 of Shadows in Bloom

Now, lightning flickers over Ophelia’s room, mingling with the candlelight coming from her nightstand, closely followed by a low rumble of thunder.

It’s still raining pretty hard from the sounds of it—slanting against the window in uneven bursts. Occasionally, a tree branch can be heard thwapping against the siding of the house.

The crappy weather only heightens my growing unease as I watch Ophelia put her hands on the rounded, triangular board that the spirits will supposedly guide across the letters to speak with us. A planchette, I remember reading it’s called.

This isn’t the first time we’ve tried it since we found it at Yolanda’s Antiques last month. The older woman seemed confused when we brought it to her to ring up. Reluctant to sell it. There wasn’t even a price sticker on it.

But Ophelia is nothing if not charming when she wants to be.

She may or may not have also paid three times more than what it’s probably worth.

“Be careful,” Yolanda warned when we went to leave, the board wrapped in paper. “Don’t forget to cast out the spirits and say goodbye when you’re done. It’s imperative that you close the door you open.”

Ophelia and I had shared a grin at that, fighting a laugh. We nodded and promised we’d be careful, before taking off and heading straight for the beach. It was an uncharacteristically warm, sunny afternoon for it only being May.

Not surprisingly, nothing happened. Well, it moved, but it had more to do with Ophelia pushing it and pretending she wasn’t more than anything.

The second time we played with it was last week. We’d been storing it at the beach, in a small crawl space between the rocks where no one was likely to find it.

Again, the thing didn’t move on its own.

That is until we got up to leave…and Ophelia gasped and dropped it like it burned her.

Which is exactly what she claimed to have happened. I didn’t believe it, of course. She’s a good liar, I’ll give her that—always has been. But she has her tells, if you know how to drag them out of her. For one, her eyes get real big and round the longer you stare at her when she’s trying not to give anything away. Which is quickly followed by a laugh bursting out.

Case in point…

I rolled my eyes as she broke into a fit of giggles, and picked the thing up off from where it landed in a shrub. Only to nick my fingertip on something sharp. A thorn or nettles, probably.

I didn’t think too much about it until we’d made our way over to the crawl space, and I noticed I was bleeding. Not a lot, but it was smudged over the planchette.

With a frown, I wiped it off on my jeans, before shoving it between the rocks, with the board Ophelia had just slid in there.

As we turned and started to walk away, I don’t know what prompted me to pause and glance back. But when I did, I found the planchette laying on the ground in the open, a foot away from where I’d just hidden it, pointed toward us.

Ophelia ooohed when she noticed.

Rushing back toward it, I scooped it up, and was about to shove it back with the spirit board, when Ophelia stopped me. Said we should bring it home with us. “We’ll sneak it upstairs. I’ll make a diversion while you hide it.”

Something niggled at the back of my mind—a warning—but I chalked it up to just being paranoid. It’s just a silly game after all. Rationally, I know it’s not real. I probably just didn’t secure it, and it slid out.

And yet tonight, in the dark, with a storm raging outside, I can’t fight this nagging feeling that bringing it back here was a bad idea.

Like we’re…tempting fate or something.

You’re being ridiculous and you know it.

As if sensing where my thoughts went, Ophelia scoots a little closer, knocking the uneven edge of the board against my shins, and says, “It didn’t burn me last time?—”

“Obviously,” I say dryly, gesturing at the hand she was holding it with

She sticks her tongue out at me. “Shut up, bitch,” she says jokingly.

I mock-gasp. “Rude.”

“Anyway…” she says, still smiling, drawing attention to the single dimple in her right cheek. “As I was saying, it didn’t burn me. But I swear it did get hot for a second.”

“Uh huh.”

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