Mitch took the camera from his shoulder and placed it on an end table. “You should stand by the fireplace and introduce yourself, then tell the viewers where you are and get into a little history of the house. Make sure you start with the murders twenty years ago and work your way down. We need to hook people right away.”

“Is there any way we can start a fire?” Nina asked. The words formed a swirling mist as they left her mouth.

“It’ll be better if we keep the scenery stark,” Rusty said, framing the scene with Paul alongside the fireplace that was almost big enough for a man to stand within. The stones had been charred black. It looked like a gateway to a bad, bad place. “Just aesthetically speaking.” He walked out of the room and into the library.

Paul rubbed his hands together. “Rusty’s right. I know we’re all cold, but we have to set the opening scene just right. Nina, do you want to stand next to me or the other side? After I do a little history thing, you can talk about what you’ve sensed ever since you came to the island.” For some reason, Nina gave him the creeps. It wasn’t necessarily the fact that she could see and talk to the dead. Eddie could too, supposedly, and the only thing he worried about with Eddie was getting a swift uppercut in defense of Jessica. The guy was wiry but something in his look told Paul he was happy to put a hurt on him if needed. He was glad they were outside with the kids.

Mitch said, “We’ll list your credentials underneath you during post-production.”

Nina opted to stand on the other side of the fireplace. Paul ran his fingers through his beard, putting any stray hairs back in place. He took a deep breath. No pressure. The entire financial fate of the family was only resting on this. Nope, nothing to worry about at all.

“Rusty, you ready to roll?” Mitch called out.

“I thought I was,” he called back. “I can’t get my camera to work.”

Nina turned to Paul and said, “Must be battery drain. Happens all the time when there are strong spirits near.”

Rusty came out shaking his head. “The battery’s fine. All I’m getting on video is a black screen. How’s yours, Mitch?”

The big man looked through his viewfinder. “I’m locked and loaded. How about I shoot the opening scene a few times from different angles?”

Sighing, Rusty said, “You’re gonna have to. This sucker is dead for the moment. I’ll have to mess around with it some more and see what I can get.” He went back to the library, shutting the door behind him.

“You want to tell Daphne and Tobe not to come down?” Mitch said.

“I already did,” Paul assured him. “I also said we’ll have them on-camera tomorrow night when we really get into things.”

“They all right with that?” Mitch asked. “Your sister looked pretty pissed before.”

“She’ll be fine,” Nina said before Paul could respond. “Let’s shoot this damn thing.”

Mitch took his place opposite them, attaching the camera to a tri-pod. There was going to be a ton of hand-held work in the shoot. Adding some steady shots throughout would keep viewers from getting seasick.

He held up his hand. “Okay, in five, four, three.”

He pulled down the last two fingers silently. Paul took the cue and started to speak when the lights went out with an audible pop.

“Goddammit!” Mitch growled.

“Are you kidding me?” Paul said. Bits of dying sunlight seeped through some cracks in the blinds, making it possible to move without tripping over the few pieces of furniture in the room. “Rusty, did you do anything in there to kill the juice?”

The library door slid open. Rusty said, “Why are you filming in the dark?”

“You have light in there?” Paul asked.

“Yeah.”

Mitch clicked a flashlight on and pointed it at the ceiling light. He reached up and unscrewed the bulb. “Sucker blew.” He went over to the pair of lamps on the two end tables, just out of the framed shot by the fireplace. The bulbs squeaked as he unscrewed them. “These too.”

“You mean to tell me, all three bulbs burned out at the exact same time?” Paul said.

Nina whispered, “The children are here.”

Paul said, “Well, since you can talk to them, can you tell them to please stop breaking our bulbs? It’s not like I can walk down to the store and pick up more.”

He hoped his cavalier attitude was good enough to cover the icy fear that had settled into his gut. It was one thing to talk about ghosts, quite another to have them messing around with things in the physical world. But this is what they wanted.

I’ll never think of “be careful what you wish for” the same way again.

“I can’t just talk to them like I can to you,” she said. He heard her move about in the darkness. A shaft of light stabbed his eyes when she opened a set of blinds.

“Isn’t that what Eddie can do?” Paul asked. She had said Eddie’s talent was prodigious.

The slight dig at Nina brought a dangerous curl to her upper lip. Mitch said, “I’m going to find some more bulbs and we can try this again.”

Paul felt something tickle the back of his neck. He slapped it hard, thinking a small bug had gotten tangled in his hair.

“What’s the matter Paul, you don’t like it when the dead get curious?” Nina said with a mocking laugh. He shivered, a head-to-toe seizure that made the edges of his brain go fuzzy.

What the hell have we gotten into?

Alice and Jason led them to a tight, circular gathering of trees. The kids easily ran through the largest gap. Jessica and Eddie had to squeeze through sideways.

“See?” Alice said, pointing down.

Three rectangular tombstones, each no more than two feet high and simply bearing etched crosses in their faces were lined up within the small clearing. The weathering of the stones was the only way to tell their order of placement. The oldest was covered in sickly yellow lichen. Its edges had been worn down over time. The one next to it had a large crack running diagonally. It looked as if a stiff breeze would finish the job and sheer the stone in half.

The last headstone looked relatively new, the bleached stone in stark contrast to the older, weathered markers.

Jessica knelt down, brushing her fingertips over the stone faces, running along the groove of the carved crosses.

“Are there any names on the other side?” she asked Eddie. He stepped around them and shook his head. “Nothing.”

The fading beams of sunlight worked through the tree gaps, illuminating the headstones like a stage light. It was as if they wanted to be found in their bizarre hiding place.

“It’s like a little, natural church in here,” Eddie said.

“The Last Kids don’t ever come here,” Jason said. Jessica noticed how close Alice and Jason were standing next to Eddie. They looked plenty scared.

“Thank you for showing us,” she said. She could see the house not more than fifty feet away. She wasn’t sure she and Eddie would have ever spotted these tombstones if it weren’t for the kids. They’d been hidden in plain sight—sort of. “Why don’t you head on up to the house and see your mom and dad? Eddie and I will be inside soon.”

Jason regarded her with open skepticism, but she could tell he was anxious to get away from the tiny graveyard.

Alice said, “Don’t stay long, Ms. Backman.”

She grabbed her brother’s hand and led him out of the circle of trees. Jessica watched them until they went inside.

“What the hell is this?” she asked Eddie. “Maybe it’s a pet cemetery or something. Who buries a person without at least putting their name on the marker?”

Eddie knelt onto the leafy ground, laying his palms flat.

“There definitely aren’t any pets down there,” he said. “It’s people. You want to find out who?”

“How? I’m not getting a shovel.”

“You remember when we connected with that spirit in New Hampshire?”

She’d never forget. With Eddie as a conduit, he’d been able to bring her in direct contact with the hideous energy of a man who had committed suicide just blocks away. She also remembered it hadn’t ended well.