Graveyard Slot, Michelle Schusterman [top novels to read txt] 📗

red with exertion. Abril followed a few seconds later, at a less frantic pace. Jamie opened his mouth when Hailey plopped down next to him, but she waved at him to be quiet before he could say a word.

“Yeah, I know, I was supposed to call you, but whatever, Jamie, I was with Abril and she knows where she’s going and it’s not like Dad’s even gonna care. Anyway.” Hailey took a deep, shaky breath. “Oscar, you took a picture of Brunilda’s journal, right?”

“Yup. Several.”

Hailey grabbed the Elapse out of my lap and flipped it on. She scrolled through a few photos, then turned the viewfinder so we could see. “Okay, look at it really closely,” she said, flipping to the next picture, and then the next. “Leather cover. Look at the stitching, the red-and-yellow pattern. And then here, the initials BC engraved in a bronze plate in the corner. Look at the shape of the plate—like a sand dollar, right?”

I leaned closer. “Right . . .”

Turning the camera off, Hailey stuck her hand in the little purse slung across her shoulders. “In other words, it looks exactly like . . . this.”

She pulled a leather journal out with a flourish, beaming proudly. For a moment, we all stared at it: the red-and-yellow stitching, the bronze sand-dollar plate with the initials BC. Jamie made a move to grab it, but Hailey held it out of his reach. “Did you take that from Guzmán?” he exclaimed, and she shook her head and smiled.

“Nope. Check it out.” Hailey opened the journal and held it so we could watch as she flipped through the pages. “Blank. It’s brand new.”

“There’s a small shop that sells handmade leather journals, bags, things like that,” Abril explained. She looked almost as excited as Hailey. “El Dólar de Arena. The Sand Dollar.”

“I saw it when I was with Mi Jin yesterday,” Hailey added. “Then this morning when I studied Guzmán’s journal up close, I noticed the plate was shaped like a sand dollar, and I remembered it looked like the sign for that shop.” She bounced a little on her knees. “So Abril took me, and we found a journal exactly like Brunilda’s, and they do custom engraving, so I had them make one with her initials.”

“Then I asked the owner if he knew Guzmán,” Abril said. “I described him—very tall, you know? He’s pretty memorable—and the owner said yes, he remembers someone like that coming in about a year ago and buying a journal like this.”

“So it’s not really Brunilda Cano’s journal,” Hailey finished triumphantly. “Guzmán bought it, and he wrote all the entries. I know that doesn’t prove he’s faking the séances, but it’s something, right? Maybe for some reason he’s lying about her being possessed!”

“Maybe he’s lying about her even existing,” Jamie said, giving me a pointed look.

“No, Guzmán has official records of her,” Abril said. “Inés told us. He shared it all with his students—her birth certificate and death certificate, things like that. She saw them.”

“Maybe he faked those, too.” I sat back against the wall, still gazing at Hailey’s journal. “He didn’t get them from the library—Jamie and I couldn’t find anything about her there. All those books on local history and genealogy, all those records, and there was literally nothing about Brunilda Cano in the card catalog. But we found that picture Guzmán has, the one of the convent. The caption says the nun he told us was Brunilda is actually named María Carmen Romero.”

“Then we went to the cemetery behind the church,” said Jamie. “María was buried there, and lots of other nuns. No Brunilda.”

“So . . . so you think Guzmán invented her?” Abril’s forehead was crinkled. “But why would he do that?”

I slipped my camera back in my pocket. “I don’t know, but we need to find Jess and tell her before P2P bases an entire episode on the ghost of a person who doesn’t even exist.”

CHAPTER TWELVE A DEADLY CASE OF MISTAKEN IDENTITY

To: acciopancakes@mymail.net

From: Maytrix@admin.P2P.net

Subject: Just a heads-up

Hi, Kat!

Hope everything’s going well in BA. Just wanted to alert you to something that came up on the forums recently, since you haven’t logged in for a while. A new user named kbold04 joined and posted some inappropriate stuff in the thread about your blog and . . . well, you, to be honest. Another member alerted me to his post pretty quickly. IMO, the content qualified as harassment, and I deleted it and sent him a warning. Then he posted the same junk again (what a shock, right?). We have a three-strikes policy, so next time he does it, I can just delete his account.

The problem is, if this guy is really persistent, he can just create a new account. We get trolls all the time—usually they give up after a while. Hopefully this one’ll just go back under his bridge.

Can’t wait for the catacombs episode! I really love Graveyard Slot, btw. So glad you and Oscar are on the show.

Maddy (aka Maytrix)

P2P Fan Forum Founder/Admin

PS—jamiebaggins was the member who told me about both posts. Thanks to him, they were barely up for an hour. He’s really been looking out for you! ;)

“HEY.”

I jumped when I heard Oscar’s voice behind me, and I closed my inbox quickly before sliding my phone into my pocket. My heart was still racing from reading Maddy’s e-mail. I wasn’t sure which was worse: knowing the same person was saying all that horrible stuff about me in the forums, or knowing that Jamie had read it and didn’t say anything. Both made me feel the same: angry and ashamed.

“Hey.” I scooted over on the sofa as Oscar sat next to me. “Are they still talking about Guzmán upstairs?”

Oscar nodded. Hailey had given Jess the journal a few hours ago, and I’d explained everything we’d learned about Brunilda to the rest of the cast. We were supposed to meet Guzmán and his students for the séance in less than an hour, and they were debating how to handle it: confront