The moment they arrived back at Cynthia's house, they dashed upstairs to her room and dumped the armloads of files onto the floor. They had gotten all mixed up, having been dropped out a window in such a haphazard rush, and some were wet or torn. Fortunately, nothing seemed to be damaged badly enough that it was unreadable.

Alex began trying to reorganize the various sheets of paper, placing them in the correct folders as best she could guess, creating a number of stacks on the bedroom floor. Cynthia mostly stuck to trying to clean off the ones that had been smeared with mud and grime, and lay out the wet ones to dry.

"You think we've got anything useful here?" she asked.

"I hope so," Alex replied. "I'd hate for Spooky Jay to have sacrificed himself like that for nothing."

Cynthia chuckled, shaking her head. "You make it sound like he died." Alex knew she was poking fun at her, but was too focused on arranging the documents into piles to respond.

"Hello, mija," Mary Lopez's voice came from the doorway, startling Alex so badly that she visibly recoiled. "What are you girls up to?"

"Just working on a project for school," Cynthia replied casually. She was a much better liar than Alex, who decided to keep quiet and continue shuffling papers as inconspicuously as possible.

"Well, if you're hungry, there's snacks in the kitchen," her mother said.

"Okay, thanks mom," Cynthia replied, a bit rudely as she reached over to push the door closed again.

"Look at these photos," Alex said, handing a stack to Cynthia. They were not the gory, post-mortem pictures of dead bodies one often saw in police shows, but instead a collection of images that showed strange symbols similar to what they had found in the confessional booth and Ellison Park. Some were drawn onto walls, others etched into wood or painted on the ground, but they all had similar designs.

"There's more of these than I would have thought," Cynthia commented.

"Yeah," Alex agreed. "They were all found in the general vicinity of someone who died. Some of them were a lot more mundane than Heather Cole or John Ferguson, though. I never would have thought to even suspect some of these people's deaths were related to the ones we knew about. There's over a dozen different cases here."

"Do you think all of these people are wraiths now?"

Alex gave a grim nod. "It's very possible." Her eyes fell to a picture of what appeared to be a stack of books lying on the floorboard of a car. There was a handwritten note attached to it.

"What's that?" Cynthia asked, seeing Alex's interest.

Alex read the note, apparently written by Detective Prescott himself. "There was a stack of occult-related books found in John Ferguson's truck. They later disappeared from the evidence room."

"Well that definitely sounds like a clue," Cynthia said.

"That's not all," Alex said, her voice growing excited and manic. "The books had sign-out cards on the inner cover... from the Blackhaven University Library."

Cynthia just stared back at her expectantly, as if waiting for her to continue. "Uh... I'm sorry, should that mean something to me?"

"Blackhaven is a ghost town about fifty miles outside of Arcadia City," Alex explained. "It was abandoned back in the late seventies, when some kind of chemical accident resulted in the evacuation of the entire city. There's been dozen of articles and a couple of documentaries about it. A lot of people think it might have been some kind of covered-up government experiment or something."

"How do you even know about this stuff?"

Alex shrugged. "It was interesting." She felt certain that if Lucas was here, he'd have known about it, too. "But here's the most interesting part; there have been rumors over the years, crazy conspiracy theories that say it was really because of an experiment that was performed at the university there. People say that they were trying to combine science and black magic to contact the dead, and in so doing unleashed some kind of terrible curse upon the town."

"Is this the part were agents from some shadowy government organization with no name come in, and find connections to the Illuminati and alien abductions?"

Alex rewarded her commentary with a wry smile. "Something like that. Seriously though, it would explain some stuff. See, there's been studies, but scientists have never found any evidence of anything toxic in the air or soil. The official statements never specified what kind of accident took place, just that it had released a potentially lethal chemical agent into the ecosystem. Some of the citizens were interviewed afterwards though, and they reported all kinds of strange symptoms from the people that were affected."

That last part had caught Cynthia's attention. "What kind of symptoms?"

"Erratic behavior. Paranoia, delusions, and occasional hallucinations. There were physical symptoms, too. A lot of people reported getting violently ill, vomiting, experiencing cold chills and low blood pressure. Doctors couldn't find anything wrong with them, though. There were reports that some people even died under weird circumstances. We're talking Curse of the Pharohs weird."

"And you want to go there?"

"It could be really dangerous," Alex admitted. "You don't have to come with me."

Cynthia made a rude sound as she got up off the bed and clapped a hand down on Alex's back. "Yeah right, like I'd let you go alone."

"Seriously, it could be bad for you. Spooky Jay can at least see them, but you..."

"Spooky's probably not going to be available for a little while," Cynthia insisted. "There's no way you're going by yourself, and the only other person with any clue about what's going on is that Professor Richter guy, who might be on the other side. I'm all you've got, chick."

"Okay," Alex said with mixed emotions. She felt bad about dragging her best friend into such dangerous situations, but on the other hand, it was comforting to know that Cynthia always had her back. She would just have to make very sure to protect her.

The following day, Alex tried calling and texting Spooky Jay several times, but received no response. This wasn't surprising, of course; they had known he would probably get arrested. She wished she knew how things were going for him, though. Were they going to press charges?

As she had promised, she crossed the street to Ellison Park during her lunch period to visit with Lucas and fill him in on what had been going on.

*     *     *

"So you think there might be a forgotten city infested with evil spirits," Lucas said. "And you want to go there because...why?"

Alex took a deep breath, and the cold autumn air chilled her lungs. She pulled her scarf up over the bottom half of her face as the orange and brown leaves swirled across Ellison Park, dancing on the wind like little faeries.

"If we can figure out what happened there, then maybe we can figure out how to stop it from happening here," she replied. Saying it out loud, it sounded a lot dumber.

"Well, I'm coming with you, then," he said, placing his fists on his hips and puffing up his chest dramatically.

Alex glared at him quizzically. "I thought you couldn't leave the park."

Lucas shook his head, grinning. "Not anymore. Ever since you visited me the other night, I've been able to go out and wander around. I just came back here to meet up with you."

"That's weird." Alex peered around again to make sure no one was paying any particular attention to her as they walked down the winding path through the trees, since it would appear to a casual observer that she was talking to herself. Last week, hardly anyone came into the park, probably because everyone had heard about the boy who was murdered there. Life goes on, however, and people quickly forget, and people had once again began going for a jog or taking their dogs for a walk here, at least during the daylight hours.

"I don't know, maybe not," Lucas offered. "Spooky Jay says ghosts tend to get tied to locations because there's something they can't let go of. Maybe seeing you again was what I needed."

Alex smiled in encouragement, but there was a bittersweet sentiment to that idea. If Lucas was right, that meant he was ready to pass on through the Black Gate. The only thing keeping him here was the fact that Arcadia City's psychopomp was still missing.

"So where have you been, now that you're free to roam?" she asked, taking a long step over a puddle that had formed in the path.

"Went home," he replied. "That was depressing. My parents are dealing with it in their own way, trying to launch a full-scale 'War on Gang Violence' in the community. It sucks that it's pretty much a wasted effort, but I guess it at least gives them something to focus on besides their loss."

Something about the last sentence made Alex feel uncomfortable. It was strange to hear someone refer to their own death as someone else's loss.

"They'll be okay," he continued. "I'm really worried about Juliette, though. She's taking it a lot harder than I would have expected. The whole time I was there, she didn't really do anything, she just kind of laid around moping. She'll hardly talk to anyone, either. It's like she doesn't know what to do with herself anymore."

Alex felt a pang of guilt. "I talked to her the other day. She knows I'm hiding something."

Lucas stopped walking for a moment, and Alex came to a halt as well, turning to face him. He was watching a little blonde girl playing fetch with a German Shepard that probably weighed more than she did. "Maybe you should tell her the truth then," he said.

"She'd never believe it," Alex protested.

"Not at first," he agreed. "But if I go with you, you can be my ghost translator. Like those psychics you see on TV. If you tell her things you couldn't possibly know on your own, she'll have to believe you."

Alex bit her lip nervously and looked away. The idea of being involved in such an intimate situation between siblings and playing middleman petrified her. It ranked somewhere in-between putting on a solo singing act in front of the whole school and showing up to a party in nothing but her underwear on her scale of terrifying social situations.

"Okay," she said, reluctantly. She still wasn't entirely convinced that it would work, but if there was anything she could do to make things better for Lucas or his sister, she had to at least try.

"I'll ask her to meet with me tomorrow after school, by the tree out front." She decided it would be best not to bring Juliette to the park—that might freak her out. Part of her wanted to put it off until later, to focus on Blackhaven, the wraiths, and the missing psychopomp. Waiting until later wouldn't help anyone, though, and they wouldn't be able to leave town until the weekend, anyway. It was better to do it sooner rather than later.