Ghost Town by Phoebe Rivers

isn’t interested in fixing it.”
    â€œReally? That seems so wrong.”
    He shrugged. “I complain all the time, but theyjust ignore me. They think I’m some dumb teen.”
    â€œWhich you’re not.”
    â€œWhich I’m not.” He grinned. “I see Lily hasn’t poisoned you yet. I need to do the morning run-through. I do the first check, then Mike, the manager, does the final one before we open. Do you want to see Midnight Manor unplugged? The acoustic version?” he asked.
    â€œSure.” I knew I should be getting home, but suddenly I wanted to see exactly what was in this house.
    â€œWhat’s wrong? You have that weird worried look again.”
    â€œThere’s something about this place,” I began. “It feels . . . off. Like something bad is going to happen. Do you ever feel it?”
    â€œYes.”
    â€œReally?” I couldn’t control my excitement.
    â€œYes, I feel that people are going to think this haunted house stinks and stop coming, and I’m never going to get enough money for that camera.” He pretended to shiver. “Bad feelings.”
    â€œVery funny,” I muttered.
    I followed David through the house as he checked each room.
    Midnight Manor looked so normal with all the lights on and all the mechanical scares off. I pulled my camera from my back pocket and snapped photos of random objects—brass doorknobs, mechanical skeleton hands, old candelabras.
    â€œLook how much stuff needs repair.” David pointed out tracks to be oiled, dozens of lightbulbs to be changed, curtains to be seamed. I took photos of it all. I wasn’t going to use this stuff for a collage. I was hoping that the old man’s disaster would show itself through my lens. But nothing here looked as if it’d cause a tragedy.
    â€œYou know that bad feeling?” I decided to try one more time. “I just feel that something’s going to happen here.”
    â€œKind of like a sixth sense, huh?” David said. “Okay. What’s going to happen?”
    â€œI don’t know,” I admitted.
    â€œDo you know when it’s going to happen?”
    I shook my head “No.”
    He laughed. “Your psychic powers need work.
    You don’t know too much, do you?”
    I blushed. He was right. I was more confused than ever.
    â€œMermaid’s tears.” Lady Azura peered over my shoulder that afternoon on the front porch.
    I gazed up from sorting the treasure from my morning beach walk. “What?”
    She pointed to the sea glass I’d gathered. “That’s what my friends and I called sea glass when I was young.”
    â€œReally? Why?” I sat cross-legged. Shells and glass surrounded me in carefully organized piles.
    Lady Azura adjusted the enormous brim of her woven, oversize sun hat. It was something a glamorous 1940s movie star would have worn. I wasn’t sure why she had it on, because the sky was still overcast and a light rain drummed the porch roof. It must go with the long white dress, I decided.
    â€œThe story starts with Poseidon, god of the sea,” Lady Azura began. “One day, a sailor’s boat was caught in the powerful winds and the waves of a storm. The sailor was being pulled under andwould surely drown, and the mermaids swam to help. Poseidon, angered that the mermaids dared to interfere with his control of the sea, banished them to below the surface. They were never to help another human in peril. The mermaids were so sad, that whenever they saw humans swallowed by the sea, they’d cry and their tears would harden and wash up to shore.”
    I scooped the green and clear glass in my hand. The glass was no longer sharp and angular. Decades of being in the sea, pounded by waves against the rocks, had smoothed the glass and made it frosted. “That’s a neat story.” I reached up and placed a few glass pebbles in Lady Azura’s hand.
    She