One

The sun splashed across the grounds of the Olde Ellis Town Cemetery, but it didn’t cut through the day’s November chill.

Mystery wondered if the cool weather had less to do with the season and more to do with the ghosts.

The Olde Ellis Town Cemetery was full of them, obviously. All cemeteries and graveyards were. Most people didn’t notice that these places were haunted . . . because most people couldn’t smell ghosts . . . but Mystery wasn’t like most people.

On her eleventh birthday, her Tía Lucy had given her a towering chocolate cake that teetered slightly and a stack of presents, but the universe had given her something else too, something supernatural:

The ability to detect the noxious smell of ghosts.

When Mystery had blown out the candles that day, the burning smell, along with something acidic, had lingered in her nostrils. The smell had stayed with her for days, coming to her without rhyme or reason, changing its notes slightly to include scents like wood or fruit or flowers, but always with a strong base of metal, ozone, smoke, or battery acid.

It had taken some trial and error, but with her best friend Garrett’s help, she’d discovered that the scents were strongest when a new corpse arrived at Garcia Graves & Funeral Home, where she lived and cared for the recently deceased with her aunt, and in the Olde Ellis Town Cemetery. So they’d determined that she was, unfortunately, smelling ghosts.

The discovery had been shocking at first, but now, at the age of thirteen, she’d grown used to it. Annoyed by it, even.

The spirits of the Olde Ellis Town Cemetery were like skunks. When they were agitated or upset, the cemetery reeked like a corroded battery. The smell was even stronger during the summer, the hot weather amplifying the scent until it was so acidic that she could taste it on her tongue, tangy and metallic, like the world’s worst sour candy.

Ghosts didn’t bother Mystery, usually. She wanted to avoid them when possible, but as long as she didn’t have to see them, she was content to go about her life and her chores, which consisted of keeping the cemetery tidy and helping her Tía Lucy with tasks around the funeral home.

In the northwest section of the cemetery, Mystery had already raked three piles of fallen leaves from around her favorite tree, a crooked young white birch surrounded by much older trees. The wind should have carried away the leaves, but they were heavy, clumped and soggy with rainwater. Mystery, bored with the work of raking them, took a break, and for the second time that afternoon, she returned to the nearly impossible task of trying to relocate a large boulder.

Tía Lucy hadn’t asked her to move it, but having to rake around the stone was annoying. So Mystery braced her knees, pushed her fingers into the damp earth until they had a slight grip on the rock, and grunted as she pulled with every muscle in her body.

But the rock was almost the size of her torso, and just like her, it was stubborn and content to sit right where it was. So Mystery joined it.

“Fine. Stay there. I hope you erode,” she said. Then she rested her hands against its speckled gray surface and sank into what was left of the dying grass.

“Are you hugging that rock?” a voice called from the woods that surrounded the cemetery.

Mystery rolled her eyes. “Yeah, we’re getting married at noon,” she said without a smile. She pulled a few blades of grass from the dirt and threw them in the direction of the voice, but they were carried away by the wind before the speaker stepped from the trees.

“What do you want, Garrett?” Mystery said. She crossed her arms and imagined they were a barrier—­a fortress against her ex–­best friend.

A long-­limbed, reedy Black kid with a mid-­taper Afro appeared in the open clearing.

“I come in peace,” Garrett said. A camera dangled from a purple-­and-­gray strap around his neck as he held up his hands and wiggled his long fingers. His eyebrows did seem to be arched in genuine concern . . .

No. Mystery crossed her arms even tighter. She would not let Garrett off the hook so easily. Not this time.

And there wouldn’t be a next time.

“My aunt had to refund the money for the casket, and I got grounded for a month.” Mystery set her large unblinking brown eyes on the boy and waited. Her forest-­green glasses started to slip down the bridge of her nose, but she felt that pushing them up in the moment would take away her edge. So she only wrinkled her nose slightly and waited. After a five-­second staredown, Garrett’s face finally dropped toward the ground.

Mystery thought Garrett deserved a heck of a lot more punishment than a death stare, but at the moment, her options for rebuke were limited.

The two of them had lived through plenty of adventures together since they were little kids. But somehow, Mystery was always the one who got into trouble. When they were eight years old, they’d both sliced up Tía Lucy’s rose garden with a make-­believe sword made from a branch, but only Mystery had spent the days after sweating in the sun as she dug holes to pot new plants. When they were ten, Garrett had convinced her to visit the old clock tower with him to see if the rumors about a ghostly figure were true. But when Sheriff Warner showed up because someone had reported seeing lights in the abandoned structure, only Mystery had been caught in the beam of his flashlight.

And just four weeks before, at the age of thirteen, Mystery still hadn’t quite learned her lesson. At Garcia Graves & Funeral Home, an entire casket had tipped over and cracked, mere minutes before the family was scheduled to arrive for the viewing. Naturally, Garrett had disappeared, and Mystery had been left holding the bag. Literally! She’d been caught holding a little pouch that contained the deceased’s false gold teeth, which Garrett had asked to see.

That day, Mystery had truly thought that Tía Lucy might disown her and leave her with child services. And Mystery wouldn’t have blamed her aunt. When Tía Lucy had found Mystery bundled in a blanket in the cemetery nearly twelve years before, she couldn’t have known that she was taking home a baby who would eventually turn into a casket-­tipping teen.

But instead of making her some other family’s problem, her aunt had only grounded her for a month and taken away her phone privileges.

Garrett took a small step toward her. “I texted,” he said. As if that absolved him of his latest disappearing act.

Mystery thought of all the times Garrett had vanished and left her to answer for both of their crimes. He might not have been able to smell ghosts like she could, but he seemed to be tuned into some secret stay-­out-­of-­trouble frequency that she couldn’t hear.

“Oh, my bad. You texted!” She cut her eyes at him. “You know, you should quit it with this photographer stuff and just be a magician. You could make millions with your disappearing act.”

But . . . Mystery felt a tiny tug of guilt at these words when Garrett’s shoulders dropped a little. He was telling the truth. When Tía Lucy had finally handed over her phone, Mystery had powered it up and it had chirped and beeped and vibrated for two minutes straight as it flooded with hundreds of texts from Garrett.

Mystery, what happened?

Was Tía Lucy mad?

Did you get into trouble?

Why aren’t you texting me back?

I came by today, but Tía Lucy cursed me out in Spanish. I don’t know what she said . . . I’ll try again tomorrow.

Mystery . . . I’m sorry . . .