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spirits.
    “Whatever,” I said. I could feel the tension practicallycrackling in the air between us, so I ignored them and leafed through a magazine until they left.
    And then I burst into tears. I felt just the way I had before I’d moved to Whitfield. For most of my life I’d been an outcast, a motherless freak who’d had to hide my “gift”—though at the time I’d thought it was a curse—from everyone. And then, even though I’d come to Whitfield and Ainsworth School kicking and screaming, I’d discovered that this place was where I really belonged. This was where I found my great-grandmother and my aunt, two people who had loved me since I was born. This was where I’d met Peter, and where I’d learned that there were other people like me in the world. This was where I’d found magic.
    But now it was as if none of that had ever happened. The people here didn’t want me any more than the jocks at Las Palmas High had. Even Peter was supposed to keep his distance from me, if he knew what was good for him.
    Know, plan, act, keep silent.
    As if outcasts like me had any other choice.

C HAPTER
    •
SEVEN

    Then there was the matter of dog poop. I think every Muffy in dorm C made me a gift, presented in one way or another, of dog poop. There was so much poop in front of my door that I had to move out of the dorm and in with my aunt and great-grandmother until I could clear my name.
    “Try not to be persuaded emotionally,” my aunt Agnes said as I sat with my head in my hands, recalling the bags of dog poop with which my fellow students had conveyed their feelings about me. “Feelings aren’t facts.”
    “It’s a fact that everyone hates me.”
    “Now, now, dear,” Gram said sweetly. “We don’t hate you.”
    That’s when you know you’ve hit rock bottom, when your relatives are the only people who can stand to be around you.
    “Oh, stop sniveling,” Aunt Agnes said irritably. “Your universal unpopularity, whether true or not, is of no importance. What is a fact, however, is that actions leave traces. Even magical actions.”
    I looked up. “Do you think it was magic?”
    “Of course it was magic. Four healthy sixteen-year-old girls don’t suddenly keel over within ten seconds of one another from food poisoning.”
    “I thought that was rather far-fetched myself,” Gram interjected. “Even if the food was dreadful.”
    “They’d been dabbling, ” Aunt Agnes pronounced, as if she were accusing Summer and her friends of injecting heroin. “There are ways magic can be worked through cowen. They’re perfect dupes, after all. Since they have no knowledge of magic, they have no fear. The question is, who worked it?”
    That was the question, all right. “Well . . . the Ouija board may have had something to do with it,” I repeated stolidly.
    “Please, Katy,” Gram said. “Even in the hands of real witches, Ouija boards have all the power of a camera battery.”
    “Not necessarily,” Agnes said with a reflective tilt of her head. “Spirits have been known to manifest through a Ouija.”
    “Yes, spirits, ” Gram said. “Insubstantial thought forms. Spirits can hardly knock one unconscious.”
    Agnes tapped on the dining room table with her long no-nonsense index finger. “That room must be explored, because there are almost certainly traces to be found.”
    “Traces of what?” I wondered.
    She raised an expressive hand. “Dust, often. An odor, perhaps, or a stain.”
    I blinked. Dust, odors, and stains? Had she ever seen a high school dorm room?
    “But surely Penelope—Miss P,” Gram said, nodding at me, “would know to hire a scenter.”
    “I’m sure she has already,” Agnes agreed. “Or at least is looking for one.”
    “A center?” I asked. “Like the tall guy on a basketball team?”
    Gram burst out laughing. “I keep forgetting you haven’t been here long,” she said.
    “A lot of young people don’t know about them, Grandmother,” Agnes said. “After all,