Chapter 1
Dear Diary,
Danni has been with us for two weeks now, and there's no sign of her leaving. Kay checks up with Officer Micheals whenever she sees him, but the police haven't been able to track down her family and there are no records of her anywhere. I don't know what Kay is going to do when school starts up. Danni had to be moved to the basement, while she and the twins are as thick as thieves most of the time, at night they get into fights. What movie to watch, whose turn it was to sleep in the cot, what movie to put on, whether to open the window at night, on and on. Plus there's that social worker, Mrs. Marks. She's a nosey old buzzard. She's had her nose in all our lives ever since Danni came. I mean, even I will admit when it comes to parenting, Kay is pretty laid-back, live and let live. Heck, it's how she runs the shop too.
"Danni! Where are those books for the ghost hunters?" Kay yelled down the stairs.
Danni rolled her eyes, looking over her comic book at the stacks of new books across the basement from her cot.
"Danni! They're waiting!"
Danni pushed herself up off the cot, tossing the comic onto the cardboard box she used as a nightstand.
She rummaged through the books, checking the slips of paper that held the names of the people who'd ordered them. Kay had a rule, be organized early so you could goof off and be completely unorganized later. Danny scanned the slips as she tossed the boks the side, lazily. Finally she found one entitled "Ghost Portals; Accidents of Nature" She remembered Vlad used to have a half-finished portal in the corner of his lab. The Maddie program had once explained to her that Vlad had "redirected resources to the cloning project" some time ago. Unbidden, the memories of her father clouded her vision. His smooth, comforting speech, his intenseness, his strange love for people who packed things, and the way he mooned over the Maddie program, who had practically been her mother.
Danni stuffed the book under her arm. She'd thrown all that away. Though sometimes she wished she could go back to Wisconsin…
Danni climbed up the stairs. They exited into the kitchen next to the stove. She then went out the open door to the main room where Kay kept most of the sale books. She could see Damien lounging on the couch with a Spider-Man comic as his twin practiced twirling a basketball on his finger.
"I got the book." She plunked it down on the counter Kay was leaning on, laughing at a story one of the ghost hunters was telling.
"Thanks… Oh Danni, there are two. I'm sorry, I should've told you that." Kay apologized. "Could you run down and find the other?"
Danni nodded, turning to leave.
Behind her she could hear them talking.
"So that's the famous Danielle."
"She's a good kid." Kay answered proudly.
Danni stopped, hiding behind the kitchen door.
"So she's a runaway?" the ghost hunter asked.
"No one knows. Whenever we ask her, she shuts down completely."
"Have they found any leads?"
"Not one. It's like she didn't even exist before she landed on my doorstep. Poor kid."
Danni hopped down the stairs. Kay didn't know how close to right she really was. How old was she really, a few months? Hitting the bottom stair, she walked over to the book pile again, staring at it glumly.
She started rummaging through the pile again. Charisma's new design books were in. There was the usual pile of self-help books, a few Sherlock Holmes novels, and a travel guide to Ohio. Sometimes she wondered just who Kay was selling all this junk to.
Finally she came upon the slip for the ghost hunters, tucked in between the pages of a slimmer book called "Ghosts and Their Nature; Evil or Misunderstood?"
Danni flipped to the pages the paper had been slipped into.
"There are a variety of reasons given for why a spirit may become a ghost; A sudden, unexpected death, unfinished business, an attachment to their mortal surroundings, or a violent emotion at the time of death. Many ghosts seem to exhibit anger towards the world, suggesting that their death was untimely and unfair. Some seem merely lost, going through the motions of their past life, possibly unaware of their own passing."
Danni closed the book back up. It didn't say anything about half-ghosts, or what would happen if a ghost were destroyed. She almost wondered if that were possible. But the nagging thing in the back of her head was what would happen to her.
"Danni, good!" Kay beamed at her, "Barb and the others have to get going."
Danni snapped out of her thoughts. She handed the book to Kay, who turned and rang it up on her out of date register.
"Kay, I've got to ask," Barb said, leaning over the counter as Kay slid the books into a brown paper bag, "Where did you get that thing, the museum?"
Kay looked confused for a moment, the lock of white hair falling into her face.
"The register, why don't you get a new one?"
Kay laughed.
"Don't you know? It's all part of the charm of Cranny booksellers, we haven't updated our technology since Prohibition."
The two women laughed, and Barb turned to leave, giving Kay a little wave as she dragged her fellows out the door after her.
Kay leaned on the counter, watching her two boys relaxing in the noonday sun coming through the shop window.
Danni lifted herself upon the counter.
"Hey girlfriend, what's got you all moody and pouty?" Kay asked.
"Nuthin'."
"Nuthin' huh?" Kay leapt up onto the counter next to Danni. "You don't have a "nuthin'" face on."
"Never mind."
Kay studied her young ward's face. Danni was in a pouty mood again today. Try as she did, Kay couldn't find any way to cheer her up.
"Okay, since you're not going to tell me what's on your mind, we're going to make tea and sit out in the courtyard drinking and getting your mind on gossip and other pleasantly distracting things."
Damien and David practically jumped out of their seats.
"Gotta go, Mum!" said Damien.
"We've got a game!" said David.
"Bull." Kay rolled her eyes. "But if you want to go, you can go."
David and Damien cheered.
Kay laughed. "Come on Danni, I'll show you how to make the infamous Lemon Family Tea."
"Can I go with the Demons instead?" Danni asked, referring to Natalie's nickname for the twins.
Kay sighed. "Sure. Keep an eye on them for me, and get back before dark." Danni nodded, running to join the boys.
Kay retreated to the kitchen. She'd have some tea made for the lot of them once they got home.
