Chapter 12
Leonie had no idea what Shan had said to Rufus, but it seemed to have worked.
Her nephew was quiet after their conversation—not that he was ever anything else.
Still, there was a thoughtful depth to his silence throughout the rest of the day.
More than once, she caught him watching Shan out of the corner of his eye, as if trying to figure him out.
The campers all had a free period in the afternoon, where they could hang out in their cabins or on the fields without direct supervision. It let the different packs and age groups socialize with each other, as well as giving the adults a much-needed break.
Normally, Leonie spent the time circulating among the other staff, listening to any concerns and giving advice.
Today, however, she took her coffee—and her co-counselor—to a secluded bench down by the lake.
Kids weren’t allowed near the water unsupervised, and with most of the staff relaxing in their cabins or the communal break room, there was little chance of anyone wandering past.
Shan followed without question, but seemed ill-at-ease in the tranquil surroundings.
Rather than joining her on the bench, he stood with his feet braced and hands folded behind his back, like a sentry on duty.
His hidden gaze stayed fixed on the lake, scanning the gently rippling waters as though a sea monster might erupt at any minute.
“Shan, even if some of our pack know who you really are, the rest of the kids don’t,” she said, amused. She patted the seat next to her. “But they’ll figure it out soon enough if you keep acting like my personal security detail. Unclench and sit down.”
He folded himself onto the bench, sitting stiffly upright at the furthest edge. “What are we doing here?”
“Waiting.” She blew on her coffee to cool it. “I have a hunch it won’t be for long.”
Sure enough, Rufus appeared within five minutes, glancing around as he hurried toward them. To her slight surprise, he wasn’t alone. Two girls accompanied him, with matching bemused expressions. They both started when they caught sight of her and Shan.
“Hi, kids,” Leonie greeted them. She turned to her partner. “Shan, these are two of Rufus’s packmates from previous years, Hetta and Claire. Girls, this is Shan. He’s my co-counselor this summer.”
“Hello,” Claire said to Shan, which just showed how far she’d come from her first summer at camp. When Leonie had first met her, she’d been so shy, she would never have spoken so easily to a stranger. “Rufus wanted us to meet you. I think.”
“We’re not mythic shifters, so we can’t hear his telepathy,” Hetta explained. She was a small, slight girl, with a rather timid manner. No one could ever have guessed her animal. “But that doesn’t stop us from being friends.”
Rufus nodded. *Ask them what they’ve seen in the woods.*
“Girls, Rufus seems to think you can help us,” Leonie said, since she was the only one who could hear his mental voice. “Have you ever seen anything odd while you were at camp? Out in the woods, perhaps?”
“You mean the camp ghost?” Claire said, and Hetta flinched.
“You believe you have seen it?” Shan asked Claire.
“No.” She drew herself up, chin jutting out defiantly. “I know I saw it. Even if everyone apart from Rufus thinks I’m just a big scaredy-cat who’s easily spooked.”
*She isn’t,* Rufus confirmed.
“I know you aren’t,” Leonie said gently. “Would you tell us what happened?”
“Sure. This was back in my first year of camp, when I was just a little kid.” Claire heaved the nostalgic sigh of an eleven-year-old reflecting back on the foolish days of her youth.
“Buck and Honey took us out camping, deep in the woods. I woke up in the middle of the night needing the bathroom. We were supposed to take a buddy if we needed to go, but all the other girls were still asleep, and I was really shy back then. I didn’t want to wake anyone up, so I crept out of the tent all by myself. ”
*I was asleep along with everyone else,* Rufus put in telepathically. *So I didn’t hear any of this.*
Claire spoke over the top of Rufus’s mental voice, unaware of this commentary.
“I was nervous that one of the boys might wake up needing to go too, so I went pretty far from the campsite. Anyway, I, uh, did my business, and turned around to head back.” She stopped, swallowing. “And that’s when I saw the ghost.”
Shan leaned forward, elbows on his knees. “Could you describe exactly what you saw?”
“It was…a light.” Claire seemed to grope for words. “Just a kind of pale glow. Floating between the trees.”
“Could it have been someone with a flashlight?” Leonie asked.
“No, it was too high up for that.” Claire reached as high as she could. “It was hovering at least this far off the ground. And it didn’t look like any sort of normal light. It was all… all…”
“Shimmery,” Hetta whispered.
“Yes, exactly,” Claire looked at Hetta with newfound interest. “So you’ve seen it too?”
“We’ll get to you in a minute, Hetta,” Leonie said. “What happened next, Claire?”
“I’d heard the stories about the camp ghost, but I hadn’t believed them until that moment.” Claire’s cheeks went pink. “I was so scared that I shifted on the spot. I jumped straight into the nearest tree and hid.”
“Very sensible,” Shan said. “Did you see anything else?”
“Not really.” Claire’s blush deepened. “I, um, had my eyes closed. But I think it came pretty close. It didn’t make any sound, but I could see the glow even through my eyelids. And I smelled it, too.”
Leonie didn’t think ghosts were known for having B.O. “What did it smell like?”
Claire made a frustrated gesture. “Like a person, but also…not. Like part of the forest had come alive and started walking around. I don’t know how to describe it any better than that. It wasn’t like anything I’d ever smelled before. Or since.”
Not just a counselor out for a midnight stroll, then. Leonie’s unease deepened. She hadn’t truly thought there could be anything in the woods, but Claire had clearly seen something.
From Shan’s frown, he was unsettled by Claire’s testimony too. “Did it seem aware you were there?”
“No,” Claire replied. “I can change color in my animal form. Hardly anyone can spot me when I’m camouflaged.
It went straight past without stopping. When I was sure it was gone, I bolted for the tents.
I tried to tell the other girls what I’d seen, but they were half-asleep and cranky at being woken up.
Beth told me it was just a dream, and to go back to sleep. ”
Rufus held up a hand to let the others know he was saying something telepathically. *I overheard them talking. I knew Claire was telling the truth, even if no-one else believed her.*
“Did you tell Buck or Honey what you’d seen?” Leonie asked Claire.
“I didn’t really have a chance.” Claire shrugged.
“In the morning, I just wanted to get away from there as fast as possible. I was scared that if I told the counselors, they’d want me to show them where it had happened.
Then later that day, Honey announced she was leaving, and we were all so busy trying to stop her, the whole thing kind of fell out of my head.
By the time everything calmed down, there didn’t seem to be any point in telling the grown-ups. ”
“Well, thank you for telling me now.” Leonie turned to Hetta. “You’ve seen something similar, Hetta?”
Hetta hesitated. “Um…”
*Whenever people start telling ghost stories around the campfire, Hetta always goes quiet,* Rufus murmured in her mind. *Archie asked her once if she’d ever seen it. She said no, but I could tell she was lying. She’s never wanted to talk about it.*
“It’s all right, Hetta,” Leonie said gently. “You can tell us.”
Hetta twisted her hands together. “You promise I won’t get in trouble?”
“I promise.” She could guess what was worrying the girl. “I already know you sometimes snuck out of the cabin last summer to shift in secret. Did you see something while you were out in the woods?”
Hetta nodded. “It was only one time. It started raining while I was out, and it washed out my scent trail. I couldn’t find my way back to camp. I didn’t know what to do, so I just kept walking, getting more and more lost.”
“Oh, sweetheart.” Leonie knew that Hetta had never been in any real danger—with her animal form, she could scare off even a grizzly bear. Still, she must have been frightened. “As soon as someone noticed you were missing, we would have come to find you.”
“That’s what I was scared of,” Hetta said. “I didn’t want to get kicked out of camp for breaking the rules. I don’t know how long I walked, but it felt like hours. Eventually, I just sat down and started crying. And then the ghost came out of the tree.”
They all blinked at Hetta. At least, she assumed they all did. It was hard to tell with Shan, but she had the impression he was as nonplussed as the rest of them.
“It… came out of the tree?” she said to Hetta.
“That’s right.” Hetta stretched out her arms as far as she could.
“There was this giant dead tree with two twisted branches, like hands clawing at the sky. And the ghost came out of it. Though I didn’t know that was what it was at first. I thought it was someone from camp out looking for me, and at that point, I was too tired to worry about getting in trouble.
So I scrambled up and ran toward the glow, waving and yelling, but it just disappeared.
Then, as I was turning around trying to figure out where it had gone, I saw it again, shining through the trees.
I tried to catch up with it, but every time I got close, the same thing happened. ”
“You must have figured out pretty fast that it wasn’t a counselor,” Leonie said. “Why did you keep following it?”
“It’s not like I had much choice,” Hetta said, a bit defensively. “It was that or sit around in the rain all night. Besides, whenever I slowed down or stopped following, the light would come back. It would kind of bob around, like it was trying to get my attention. And…”
“And?” Shan prompted when Hetta didn’t continue.
Hetta looked a little embarrassed. “Well, it just felt right. I somehow got this sense that it knew I was lost, and wanted to help me, even if it wouldn’t let me get too close.
It led me all the way back to the camp. I saw it shining through the trees as I snuck back into my cabin.
I think it was sticking around to make sure I was okay.
So if there is a ghost, at least it’s a nice one. ”
“Well,” Leonie said rather weakly. She looked at Rufus. “You didn’t know about this?”
He shook his head, eyes wide. *I would have told you earlier if I had. I only knew she must have seen something, like Claire.*
“Have you ever seen anything similar yourself?”
*No,* he replied, though his mental voice sounded somewhat hesitant. *But sometimes when I’m out in the woods, it doesn’t feel right.*
Shan was looking back and forth between them. She held up a finger in a ‘give me a sec’ gesture. “Not right? How?”
Rufus seemed to struggle with the question. *Just… not right. The animals. The birds. They’re not alarmed, but they don’t move like they should. Like something else is there, too. Watching through their eyes.*
“I’m sure there’s a perfectly rational explanation,” she said, trying to sound convincing. “Thanks for telling us about this, kids. I’ll look into it. In the meantime, I’d appreciate it if you kept this to yourselves. Stories like this have a way of getting out of hand.”
“Sure,” Claire said. She shrugged. “Who would believe us, anyway?”
Leonie watched all three kids head back to camp. “What did you make of all that?”
Shan rubbed his mouth. “The girls were telling the truth.”
She hadn’t doubted it. “Claire seems pretty certain she hadn’t smelled whatever she encountered before.
And I don’t think Hetta could have just seen someone from the camp.
Any of the staff would have reported finding a lost kid in the woods.
I suppose it could have been a camper, but…
it doesn’t feel right. Another kid picking the exact same night as Hetta to sneak out, and stumbling across her? ”
“And the sheriff reported that adults have seen strange lights in the woods, too,” Shan said grimly. “This requires more investigation, Leonie.”
“A strange smell and a spooky tree.” She blew out her breath in frustration. “It’s not much to go on.”
Shan nodded. “I wonder if any of the other campers have similar stories to Claire and Hetta. Ones that they don’t talk about.”
“We can’t just go around asking everyone if they’ve seen the camp ghost.” She stood, picking up her clipboard. “But I know someone who can.”