Light as a Feather, Silent as the Grave

Chapter 2

Men in their early fifties died of heart attacks all the time; that was just a statistical fact. But most men Mr. Portnoy's age didn't also have daughters who had the ability to kill simply by willing someone's death. On the drive home from the cemetery, I shuddered just thinking about the fact that Mischa's trust in me had resulted in the end of her father's life. We were pitiful, foolhardy idiots for having thought for a second that we'd outsmarted evil.

I was the one who had convinced her to resist the commands she'd been receiving to recruit souls. Mischa had told me she feared that the evil spirits who had been communicating numbers to her since the winter — numbers that she thought were intended to tell her exactly how many kids she was supposed to trick into playing games with her so that the spirits could collect them — would hurt one of her parents if she didn't comply. Her theory had made sense; it was the same belief that had convinced Violet to follow the spirits' orders when the curse was on her. I had encouraged Mischa to call their bluff, and to my great regret, they hadn't been bluffing. I'd sent so many fervently written emails and text messages as encouragement for Mischa to resist the temptation to play any kind of games with kids at her private school that might result in a prediction of their death. And Mr. Portnoy had paid the ultimate price.

"McKenna." Mom's voice pulled me out of my back seat reverie. "Pizza for dinner?"

She had obviously been trying to catch my attention and now expected an answer. "Sure," I replied. Pizza was pretty much the last thing on my mind.

"I wonder if Federico's is delivering yet," Mom mused as she dialed the restaurant's number. Usually they began delivering again in the spring, but there was still so much snow on the ground, it was doubtful they'd already resumed service.

Hours later, we sat in uncomfortable silence around the dinner table eating pizza that Glenn had volunteered to pick up across town. Maude, my mother's beloved dog, whimpered at her feet, begging for a bite.  If Glenn hadn't been there, Mom surely would have caved and given her as much pizza as she wanted. My mother was a stickler for keeping the television off during meal times, but I would have welcomed the distraction of celebrities competitively dancing or the nightly news.

"There was an article about the Portnoy girls in the Gazette just a few weeks ago," my mother told us, trying to inspire some conversation. "They both won all kinds of awards at some big gymnastics competition in Milwaukee."

I pulled a piece of pepperoni off my slice, a little grossed out by the pools of grease collecting in the pockets of the meat's surface. Pizza was not something I ever ate in Florida when I was staying with my dad and his girlfriend, Rhonda, who was an extremely health-conscious nurse. "I know. Mischa won first place in the whole state. There's some big-time Olympic coach trying to convince her to move to Los Angeles for the rest of the semester to train for the competition in June."

"Well, that's very exciting," Glenn said. "Imagine, an Olympian coming from little old Weeping Willow!"

His wonder was interrupted by our front doorbell ringing. I was so startled that I jumped in my chair. It was a rarity that anyone came over to our house at night; our town, especially when there was snow on the ground, was not one in which it was common to drop in on neighbors after the dinner hour. "I wonder who that could be?" my mother asked, blotting grease from her mouth with her napkin. She pushed away from the table to go find out. I could practically see the conflict etched across Glenn's face as he tried to decide whether to accompany my mom to the door, or if that would raise eyebrows if a nosey neighbor was checking in on us.

I leaned back in my chair to peer through the doorway of the kitchen and into the living room as my mother opened the front door. Her body blocked my view of whoever had rung the bell, and I heard her greet our visitor in a voice too quiet for me to discern what she was saying. When the encounter lasted longer than it would have if it had simply been a door-to-door salesman or a neighbor letting us know that Glenn had left his headlights on, I wandered into the living room to find out who had stopped by.