Gilda Joyce: The Bones of the Holy Read online

  Table of Contents

  Title Page

  Copyright Page

  Dedication

  Chapter 1 - Spy Report

  Chapter 2 - The Sleepover

  Chapter 3 - Darla

  Chapter 4 - The Mysterious Gift

  Chapter 5 - Spy Report #2

  Chapter 6 - It’s Not Going to Happen

  Chapter 7 - The Confrontation

  Chapter 8 - A Rude Awakening

  Chapter 9 - The Journey

  Chapter 10 - Wedding Planner and Spy

  Chapter 11 - Darla and Mary Louise

  Chapter 12 - The Spell

  Chapter 13 - A True Southern Bride

  Chapter 14 - The Ghostly Friend

  Chapter 15 - Gossip Girls

  Chapter 16 - The Girl at the Gate

  Chapter 17 - Darla’s Story

  Chapter 18 - Gilda’s Ghost Tour

  Chapter 19 - The Woman in White

  Chapter 20 - The Message in the Dollhouse

  Chapter 21 - The Ghost in the Mist

  Chapter 22 - The Truthful Letter

  Chapter 23 - The Secret Invitation

  Chapter 24 - The Bones of the Holy

  Chapter 25 - The Woman Who Died Twice

  Chapter 26 - The Burial Ground

  Chapter 27 - The Guardian Angel

  Chapter 28 - Aren’t You Jealous?

  Chapter 29 - Gopher Stew

  Chapter 30 - The Freedom Trail

  Chapter 31 - The Message in the Dream

  Chapter 32 - Halloween Day

  Chapter 33 - The Pendulum Speaks

  Chapter 34 - Ghostwriting

  Chapter 35 - Joining Forces

  Chapter 36 - The Secret History

  Chapter 37 - What Lies Beneath

  Chapter 38 - The Ghost-Pirate

  Chapter 39 - The Secret in the Cistern

  Chapter 40 - The key

  Chapter 41 - Charlotte’s Diary

  Chapter 42 - The Lie

  Chapter 43 - The Wedding Specter

  Chapter 44 - Feats of Strength

  Chapter 45 - The Grand Entrance

  Chapter 46 - The Confession

  Chapter 47 - Eugene’s Story

  Chapter 48 - Still Single, Still a Doofus

  Chapter 49 - Psychic Sisters

  Chapter 50 - The Eyes of the Dead

  Acknowledgements

  also by Jennifer Allison

  also by Jennifer Allison

  Gilda Joyce,

  Psychic Investigator

  Gilda Joyce, Psychic Investigator

  The Ladies of the Lake

  Gilda Joyce, Psychic Investigator

  The Ghost Sonata

  Gilda Joyce, Psychic Investigator

  The Dead Drop

  DUTTON CHILDREN’S BOOKS

  A division of Penguin Young Readers Group

  Published by the Penguin Group

  Penguin Group (USA) Inc., 375 Hudson Street, New York, New York 10014, U.S.A. • Penguin Group (Canada), 90 Eglinton Avenue East, Suite 700, Toronto, Ontario M4P 2Y3, Canada (a division of Pearson Penguin Canada Inc.) • Penguin Books Ltd, 80 Strand, London WC2R 0RL, England • Penguin Ireland, 25 St Stephen’s Green, Dublin 2, Ireland (a division of Penguin Books Ltd) • Penguin Group (Australia), 250 Camberwell Road, Camber well, Victoria 3124, Australia (a division of Pearson Australia Group Pty Ltd) • Penguin Books India Pvt Ltd, 11 Community Centre, Panchsheel Park, New Delhi–110 017, India • Penguin Group (NZ), 67 Apollo Drive, Rosedale, Auckland 0632, New Zealand (a division of Pearson New Zealand Ltd) • Penguin Books (South Africa) (Pty) Ltd, 24 Sturdee Avenue, Rosebank, Johannesburg 2196, South Africa • Penguin Books Ltd,

  Registered Offices: 80 Strand, London WC2R 0RL, England

  This book is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents are either the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously, and any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, business establishments, events, or locales is entirely coincidental.

  Copyright © 2011 by Jennifer Allison

  All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, or any information storage and retrieval system now known or to be invented, without permission in writing from the publisher, except by a reviewer who wishes to quote brief passages in connection with a review written for inclusion in a magazine, newspaper, or broadcast.

  The publisher does not have any control over and does not assume any responsibility for author or third-party websites or their content.

  CIP Data is available.

  Published in the United States by Dutton Children’s Books,

  a division of Penguin Young Readers Group

  345 Hudson Street, New York, New York 10014

  www.penguin.com/youngreaders

  ISBN : 978-1-101-55104-2

  http://us.penguingroup.com

  To my friends

  in the Sunshine State!

  PROLOGUE

  THE DREAM

  Gilda walked through a jungle where animal bones grew from the ground like trees. She was on a quest to find someone, but she had no path to follow--no map or clues.

  She entered a clearing and found a moonlit cemetery where a woman in white twirled and danced beneath the moon. Gilda knew this woman was not quite human. Her dark hair was a shadow, her dress a ghostly whorl of smoke.

  Amidst the tombstones, Gilda sensed turbulence--the whispered arguments of trapped spirits. Intermingling voices spoke in different languages and old dialects--laughing, crying, and arguing with one another.

  “I’m looking for someone who’s still alive,” Gilda said.

  “In this place, the dead walk among the living,” said the phantom-woman.

  A little bell rang, drawing Gilda’s attention to a wooden coffin that lay on the ground. A knocking sound came from inside. Struggling, Gilda managed to pry open the coffin lid.

  Her heart sank when she recognized her mother’s chalk-white face inside.

  1

  Spy Report

  TO: GILDA JOYCE

  FROM: GILDA JOYCE

  RE: SPY REPORT

  Okay--I know snooping in someone’s suitcase is wrong, but sometimes it’s also necessary. My reason for spying: Mom suddenly announced that she’s going on something she called a “Mom’s Getaway” trip to Florida. That’s right; she’s heading for the beach and leaving me and Stephen behind in Michigan. I mean, I can understand leaving my older brother behind. But me?!

  “You mean to tell me, you’re abandoning us and heading for the Sunshine State?!” I protested. “You’re leaving two defenseless teenagers to scrounge for scraps of lunch meat in the city Dumpsters, while you burn your freckles on some nude beach?”

  “Very funny, Gilda,” said Mom. (I admit it: Mom is fun to tease because she never has a good comeback.) “Anyway, it’s just for a short weekend,” she explained. “You’ll survive without me for two days.”

  Mom had a point: I’ve been telling her for years that I’m old enough to stay home by myself. I also knew that it wasn’t really Mom’s fault that I wasn’t invited. Her friend Lucy had won two flights to Florida in a fund-raising raffle. Even so, I was jealous, and I wasn’t about to make it easy for Mom to leave without me. “Some parents might worry about leaving two teenagers home alone,” I said.

  “I’ll ask Grandma Joyce to come over and check on you,” Mom replied.

  I wasn’t too pleased about this since Grandma Joyce has a way of turning a perfectly fun pizza-and-a-movie night into a tedious clean-up-the-whole-house night. “That’s okay,” I sighed. “Grandma Joyce doesn�
��t need to come over. We’ll be fine.”

  I suppose it’s a little ironic that I’m jealous of Mom’s trip. I guess I always assumed that if Mom ever went anywhere, it would be to somewhere boring--perhaps a bedpan-cleaning convention in Ohio or a nineteenth-century slipper museum in downtown Detroit. I never expected Mom to announce a trip down to sunny Florida without me!

  Just then, the phone rang, and Mom jumped up like a jackrabbit to answer it. I noticed that she disappeared into the hallway to take the call, which seemed a little suspicious. While she was talking, I took the opportunity to peek at some of the clothes she had hidden at the bottom of her suitcase. What I saw hidden under her beach towel made me even more suspicious. NEW things. A new black bathing suit instead of her usual mom-style floral tankini-with-attached-skirt. A new sundress with matching sandals. Earrings and a necklace. A toothbrush. DENTAL FLOSS. (Okay. I guess those last items were normal enough for Mom.) Still. Mom doesn’t buy new things very often since she’s been saving money to help pay for Stephen’s room and board at college next year. And she definitely doesn’t dress up just to see her friend Lucy, whom she sees dressed in hospital scrubs practically every day of the week.

  I pressed my ear against the wall, trying to hear what Mom was saying on the phone. I couldn’t make out any words, but I heard the familiar nervous giggling that usually signaled a first date. I’ve been hearing it every few weeks, ever since Mom joined that online dating service over the summer, so I had a gut feeling Mom was talking to a man--and not just a friend either.

  What is Mom up to? I wondered. What is she hiding?

  “Who was that?” I asked, trying to sound nonchalant when Mom returned to finish packing.

  “Oh, just Lucy, reminding me to pack some sunscreen.”

  “Are you SURE it was Lucy?”

  “Why wouldn’t it be Lucy?”

  One thing I’ve learned in my career as a spy and sleuth: When you confront a person with something (“Did you steal my sandwich?”) and they answer your question with another question (as in, “Why would I want to steal your sandwich?”), the chances are good that they actually DID the very thing they’re denying. Especially when you’re dealing with an inexperienced liar like Mom.

  As I stared at Mom’s open suitcase, watching her nervously fold and refold clothes with her freshly manicured hands, I distinctly felt a psychic signal--that little tickle in my left ear I sometimes get when something unusual is about to happen. Sometimes it means there’s spirit activity in the area. Other times, it’s a premonition of danger.

  I realize I have no proof, but I’m almost certain that Mom is hiding something about this trip to Florida. I just need to figure out what and why.

  2

  The Sleepover

  I dunno,” said Wendy. “It looks kind of clownish.”

  Gilda and Wendy stared at Gilda’s hair in the bathroom mirror. Wendy had been Gilda’s best friend for years, and most often, Gilda appreciated Wendy’s honesty. Other times, like now, it annoyed her.

  The experiment with red hair dye hadn’t turned out the way Gilda had hoped. She had imagined returning to school on Monday as a more interesting version of herself—a sultry, sophisticated, and intriguing redhead—and she figured her mother’s absence for the weekend provided the perfect opportunity to attempt the experiment.

  But this red looked far too bright, even for Gilda’s adventurous taste. It looked as if she had dipped her hair into a pot of orange acrylic paint.

  Wendy had bravely (and somewhat uncharacteristically) joined Gilda in the hair-dying experiment, but as it turned out, the red hair dye scarcely showed on her darker hair.

  Gilda eyed Wendy’s faintly auburn black hair with resentment. “Why isn’t your hair red, too?” she demanded. “You must have cheated.”

  “Cheated how?”

  “I don’t know. You didn’t put enough hair dye on there or something.”

  “I didn’t realize we were having a contest to see who can look most like a Raggedy Ann doll,” Wendy retorted.

  “Well, we were. So there.” Gilda considered her options: She could go back to the drugstore and buy a darker shade to cover the bright red. The problem was that she might not have enough money left in her purse to buy more hair dye after a weekend of movie theater and shopping mall excursions with Wendy.

  “Hey,” said Wendy as she clicked through some Internet links on her cell phone. “It says here on this Dye Your Own Hair website that grape Kool-Aid is supposed to tone down red hair color. It also says that if it’s temporary hair color, it won’t lighten dark hair like mine.”

  “Oh.” Gilda squinted at the empty package of hair color. “I guess it would have been a good idea to read the directions first.”

  “You said you read them!”

  “Well, I didn’t read all the fine print. I read the quick ’n’ easy steps.”

  “It’s a good thing you aren’t planning to be a surgeon or something.”

  “I doubt surgeons are sitting there reading the directions as they cut into people.”

  “You know what I mean.” Wendy took the hair-color box out of Gilda’s hand. “We’re lucky this is temporary color.”

  “See? I knew what I was doing.”

  “It will wash out in about thirty shampoos.”

  “Thirty?! I don’t have that kind of time. We’ll have to try the Kool-Aid.”

  “So go down to the kitchen and get the Kool-Aid. Let’s try it.”

  “We don’t have any toddlers around here, Wendy. Now I have to ask Stephen to drive me to the store. Which means I’ll never hear an end to the jokes about this.”

  “I could go with him,” Wendy quickly offered.

  A bit too quickly, Gilda thought, annoyed that Wendy still had a crush on her older brother. Why does she even like him? Gilda wondered. Sure, he’s tall and his skin has cleared up a lot lately. And I guess he acts more confident now that he’s been accepted into college. Still, Wendy has no idea just how self-centered Stephen can be.

  Stephen and Wendy had gotten to know each other better at a math camp over the summer. While Stephen had felt a very secret spark of attraction to Wendy during their conversations about quantum mechanics, he maintained that she was “too young” for him, since he was a senior and she was only a sophomore. Besides, Wendy was his little sister’s best friend. Nevertheless, Wendy harbored hope that Stephen would change his mind and see her as a potential girlfriend.

  “I mean,” Wendy added, “you could stay here so Stephen won’t see your hair. I’ll go with him and I can run into the store and pick up the Kool-Aid.”

  “I should have known this whole sleepover was just a ruse to see my geeky brother,” Gilda complained.

  “It’s not. I’m just trying to help you solve this hair problem.” Wendy tapped on her cell phone again. “Stephen’s at work now, right?”

  “Probably just finishing.”

  “So I’ll just call him and see if he can help us get some Kool-Aid.”

  Wendy held the phone to her ear and smiled broadly at Gilda’s hair, struggling to suppress her laughter. “Hey, Stephen? It’s Wendy! Hey, congratulations on getting into University of Michigan, by the way. That’s awesome! The School of Engineering? Cool!”

  Gilda sat on the edge of the bathtub. She hoped Wendy and Stephen wouldn’t get into one of their long conversations about math.

  “Well, I’m just here with your little sister—”

  Gilda stood up.“‘Little sister?!’ Hello! You’re not my babysitter, Wendy!”

  Wendy pressed her finger to her lips, shushing Gilda. “Oh, no, we’re at home—I mean, at your house—and everything’s fine,” Wendy continued. “She just had a little mishap in the bathroom here and we need some grape Kool-Aid ASAP.”

  “Give me that, please.” Gilda wrenched the phone from Wendy’s hand.

  “Stephen?”

  There was a silence on the other end.

  “Stephen? Are you there?”

 
; “Yes. I’m just leaving work. What are you guys—like, seven years old? You better not be doing something dumb that will get me into trouble.”

  Of course he’s only worried that Mom will be mad at him, Gilda thought. “There’s no problem,” Gilda assured him. “We just need some Kool-Aid for a new recipe we’re making.”

  “What kind of recipe calls for Kool-Aid?”

  “The one we’re making.”

  “Wendy said you did something in the bathroom.”

  “Wendy gets confused about the names for different rooms in our house.”

  “Don’t believe her, Stephen!” Wendy shouted in the background.

  “Stephen, it doesn’t matter why we need it. Can’t you just pick it up on the way home? I mean, I’m sure Mom wouldn’t want me standing outside at the bus stop in the middle of the night just to go to the grocery store. She’d be pretty upset if she found out my older brother couldn’t be bothered to help me finish making my award-winning Artificial Grape Surprise Soufflé recipe.”

  Stephen sighed. “Oh—all right. I’ll get you the Kool-Aid.”

  An hour later, Gilda towel-dried her Kool-Aid processed and shampooed hair, which had now mellowed to a lighter shade of red-brown. “That’s better,” she said, eyeing her reflection in the full-length mirror in her bedroom. “Now it’s kind of caramel.”

  “It is much better,” Wendy agreed. “But I’d say it’s closer to the shade of Chicken McNuggets.”

  “Which reminds me,” said Gilda, deciding to ignore Wendy’s joke, “we need to think about our Halloween costumes.”

  Halloween was Gilda’s favorite holiday, since it involved dress-up and disguise, not to mention ghosts. She threw open her closet door and surveyed the combination of ordinary clothing, disguises, theatrical costumes, and vintage flea-market finds that made up her wardrobe. As a result of a clearance sale at a Halloween party store in Detroit, she had recently expanded her impressive collection of hats and wigs.