The rest of camp for that day passed by agonizingly slowly. Jesse found himself constantly checking his phone for the time, counting down the minutes until they would be released. It wasn’t that the camp wasn’t fun, it was just that he’d much rather be heading over to Doctor Rotbart’s lab so they could get some answers about their haunted house experience.

  Since they took care of the ghost of Jospeh Waylor, the last house on River Street stood quiet once again, with no sign that it had ever been haunted in the first place. Subsequently, the rumors floating around their school also died down, with the student body quickly moving on to something new to fixate on, whatever it was. Since it wasn’t monster related, Jesse didn’t really pay attention. All he knew was that their school year ended relatively quietly, which he was thankful for.

  Finally, at four o’clock in the afternoon, Hank dismissed everyone for the day with a reminder to come back to the pond at ten tomorrow. After the announcement, everyone quickly dispersed, the other kid’s parents having arrived to walk them back to their houses in Gravewood. Since Evelyn was also heading back to Rotbart’s lab, she decided to escort them.

  “I’ve never seen you four around before,” she remarked as they walked down the forest path. “Did you move in while I was gone?”

  “Uh, no, we don’t live here,” Jesse said. “We just visit a lot.” Though at this point, maybe they should consider moving in.

  “Where were you?” Alicia piped up, genuinely curious. Whatever Evelyn had been doing, she had been gone from Gravewood for at least half a year.

  “Europe, this time. Spain, Italy, Belgium, and a few other places I didn’t keep track of. I like to travel around a lot and I’ll usually leave for a couple months at a time. Gravewood’s my home, but I want to get out there and see the world, you know?”

  Noah eyed her metallic skin. “And did Dr. Rotbart... make you?”

  “He made my body, but I was a human before I met him. But that’s a story for another day. We’re here.”

  Dr. Rotbart’s lab was on Lurker Lane, the closest road to the side of the forest where Crystal Green Pond was, so the walk was brief. As they climbed the stairs to the front porch, Evelyn held one of her fingers towards the doorknob. With a few mechanical whirs, the finger shifted, folding in on itself as it transformed into a key, which she then stuck in the lock. Her finger rotated on its joint until the door was unlocked with a soft click.

  After that display of engineering, she led them down to the basement lab.

  “Doctor, I’m back!” she announced loudly. “And I brought visitors.”

  But Rotbart wasn’t in the room, only Adam was. He was standing over an operating table that Jesse was fairly certain hadn’t been there the last time they visited, his face as expressionless as ever. Resting on the table like a patient awaiting a procedure was the ceramic body of Sophia, the animated doll who had terrorized them early May, now fully intact. Her dull, painted eyes stared up at the ceiling, devoid of all life.

  Evelyn crossed over to the table, barely sparing a glance at the doll. “Heya Adam. Did you miss me?”

  “You were gone only a few hours.”

  “So, I take it that’s a yes?”

  “Where’s the doctor?” Alicia asked, looking around.

  “He went upstairs to grab something,” Adam told them. “He should be back any second now.”

  Jesse inched closer to examine Sophia, and couldn’t help but be impressed at the doctor’s handiwork. There were no cracks in her pale skin, nor any sign to indicate that she had ever been broken in the first place, save for the one that split her red animation brooch down the middle, which had been sealed with some sort of resin-like substance. It was hard to believe that not too long ago she had been up and active, threatening them over a mysterious lighter.

  As that thought occurred to him, he stiffened. “Hey, how certain are we she won’t try to attack us again when we reactivate her?”

  “The doctor estimated a twelve percent certainty,” Adam said, which didn’t really comfort him, until he followed up with, “But that is why I am here. I will be able to subdue her if she starts causing problems.”

  “Me too!” Evelyn chimed in. “If she tries any of her little tricks you guys mentioned, I’ll be able to see right through them.” She tapped the lens of her eye for emphasis. Her being a robot must mean she can’t be tricked by illusions.

  That was a relief. Jesse did not want a repeat of the nightmare scenarios from the haunted house and judging by the expressions on his friend’s faces, they felt the same way. They never spoke to each other about what they had seen, coming to a silent agreement to let whatever had happened at the last house on River Street stay there.

  “Did Dr. Rotbart tell you everything that happened with Sophia?”

  “Yep. He’s also told me a lot about you kids, though I didn’t expect one of you to be so short.” She grinned at Ashton, who Alicia was holding against her hip from when she picked him up to help him down the stairs.

  “That one is not part of their monster hunting group,” Adam said. “He is only a child.”

  She rolled her eyes. “I know that, I was making a joke.”

  “You need to work on your sense of humor.”

  “Oh, yeah, ‘cause you’re such a stand-up comedian. Go on, tell us a joke.”

  “The other day, I went to a graveyard-” he began automatically.

  “One that you didn’t hear from Rotbart,” she clarified.

  He pursed his lips, silent.

  “That’s what I thought, big guy.”

  Siobhan raised a brow. “So, are you two like siblings or something?”

  “Yes!” Evelyn said at the same time Adam said, “No.”

  “We are like siblings, aren’t we?” she said, ignoring Adam’s protests. She seemed delighted at the comparison.

  “What’s going on in here?” A German accent came from the stairs. Dr. Rotbart chose that moment to enter the room.

  “Doctor, would you consider Adam and I to be brother and sister?”

  He adjusted his goggles, brow furrowed. “Hmm... I don’t know, I’ve never thought about it before. But I didn’t give birth to you.”

  “But you created my body and that’s basically the same thing, right?” she insisted. “Plus, you made Adam.”

  “Er, well... I suppose when you put it that way...”

  “Excuse me for a moment.” Adam abruptly stalked across the room, Rotbart stepping to the side as he left up the stairs.

  “Good job guys, we scared him off.” Evelyn held a thumbs up.

  Dr. Rotbart frowned. “That was all you.” He looked over to Jesse and his friends and he faltered as if noticing them for the first time. He cleared his throat. “Please pardon my assistants, they can be quite the handful. Anyway, I’m glad you all could make it. As well as this young fellow who I don’t believe I’ve been introduced to yet.”

  “Doctor, this is my little brother, Ashton.” Alicia stepped toward him to introduce the two, still holding Ashton against her hip.

  Stolen content warning: this content belongs on Royal Road. Report any occurrences.

  “It’s very nice to meet you, young man.” He extended his robotic hand for handshake. Ashton grabbed a hold of two of his fingers, intrigued by the metal digits. “An inquisitive fellow,” he noted, smiling at Alicia. “I see he takes after you, fraulein.”

  “Ugh, I told you to stop calling women that,” Evelyn admonished. “It makes you sound a hundred years old.”

  “It used to be the gentlemanly thing to say, you know,” he muttered. “Anyway, now that we’ve all calmed down a little, I suppose it’s time to get down to business.”

  The doctor crossed to the operating table where Sophia was, taking his place at the end where her head laid as everyone else gathered around.

  “This doll, Sophia,” he gestured to her body. “While I was piecing her back together, I analyzed her materials and deduced that she was created in 1868, the same year on her tag here.”

  So that was at least one concrete thing they knew. And based on what little information they had learned about Jospeh Waylor, they could assume that he was likely the one who had made her.

  “There’s nothing out of the ordinary in regards to the doll itself. As far as I can tell, she was made with normal porcelain, normal paint, and normal fabric for her clothes. But her amulet tells a different story.”

  He picked up a small medical flashlight from a tray near the table, shining it on the brooch so that its red jewel sparkled.

  “An animation amulet is an artifact filled with magical energy that can bring inanimate objects to life,” Dr. Rotbart explained. “Most amulets only have a limited amount of energy, giving objects a limited amount of life; they can obey simple commands given to them by their enchanters, but they can’t really be considered sentient. This one however, possesses an unusually large amount of energy, the likes of which I’ve only seen once before in my lifetime. It is this copious amount of energy that caused Sophia is behave as if she were a living, breathing person.”

  “So she wasn’t being possessed by Jospeh Waylor?” Siobhan clarified. They had pretty much already figured that out, but they needed to be sure.

  “No,” he confirmed. “Nor any other ghost for that matter. As far as I am aware, that is not an ability that they... possess.”

  “Don’t make me hit you,” Evelyn warned.

  “Anyway, from what you’ve told me, I’ve gathered that while the doll’s body was the source for this Jospeh Waylor fellow, the amulet is what actually brought her to life. So when they both broke during that nasty fall from the third floor, Waylor passed on at the same time Sophia ‘shut down’ so to speak.”

  Noah frowned. “And fixing her didn’t bring Waylor back?”

  “It doesn’t work like that, I’m afraid. Once a ghost’s final connection is severed, there is no bringing them back.”

  Before Jesse could fully digest this new information, he heard shouting echoing from upstairs. A few seconds later, Adam entered the room again, but he wasn’t alone. With him, he carried Bella Cardenas under one arm and Brom the jack-o-lantern under the other.

  “This isn’t necessary,” Bella said calmly, though her face was red from embarrassment. “You can put us down now-”

  “Unhand me, you oaf!” Brom was not as calm.

  “Miss Cardenas?” Dr. Rotbart asked, confused. “And... the talking pumpkin. What are you doing here?”

  “I heard strange noises from outside and went to investigate,” Adam reported. “These two were lurking around.”

  “I wasn’t lurking!” she said defensively.

  “Adam, you can put them down, they’re harmless.”

  As the hulking assistant obliged to the order, Jesse whispered to Rotbart, “I would keep an eye on the jack-o-lantern if I were you.”

  “Bella, what are you doing here?” Alicia asked.

  She took a second to brush herself off before answering, “Siobhan told me about you guy’s haunted house adventure, and how you came to Dr. Rotbart for help with analyzing a magical problem. Well, I just so happened to be in the area, so I thought-”

  “She got jealous,” Brom tattled.

  “I did not! I am not! Besides, there’s nothing to be jealous of, since I’m certain Rotbart won’t be able to help you, seeing as this is a magical problem.”

  Rotbart gasped as Evelyn snickered behind him. Jesse exchanged wide-eyed glances with his friends. When they had first decided to ask the doctor for help, they had no idea it would spark some sort of magic vs science debate.

  “Excuse me,” Rotbart started, holding a hand to his heart in indignation. “I’ll have you know this falls entirely within my area of expertise as a scientist.”

  “Oh really, do you even have experience handling animation amulets?”

  “Of course I-”

  “From this century?”

  He shut his mouth.

  Bella nodded. “That’s what I thought. All of your methods are outdated. You need someone who is up to date on all the latest magic.”

  “That doesn’t matter, the amulet is from the nineteenth century, well before your time. Besides, my methods are true and tested, unlike that unreliable nonsense you call ‘witchcraft’.”

  Now it was her turn to gasp. “Witchcraft is older than any other science! We’ve just adapted as the years have gone on, unlike you, who doesn’t trust anything that doesn’t run on a steam engine.”

  “Such hypocrisy. The very nature of science is that it evolves as knowledge does. It’s magic that is really the one stuck in the past.”

  “Okay!” Jesse decided he needed to step in before they were there all day. “Bella, we didn’t come to you with our doll problem because we didn’t want to bother you. It was the middle of the night when all this went down. Besides you’re busy with other things, aren’t you?”

  He knew that, as the only witch in in Gravewood, Hank tended to contract her help with various projects around the neighborhood a lot, but she waved off his concerns. “I can multitask, and don’t ever worry about bothering me. I’m sure the doctor here has other things he should be focusing on as well.”

  “Ha!” He let out a laugh. “Multitasking is my middle name. And unlike someone, I don’t need to sleep, so I can keep working on projects with minimal breaks.”

  “Alright, ladies, you’re both pretty.” Evelyn moved to stand in between them, holding out her hands in a placating gesture. “Can we put this to rest already? These five didn’t come here just to watch you two argue.”

  “I did,” Brom said. “Keep going, I want to see who wins.”

  Dr. Rotbart adjusted his glasses. “Yes of course, there’s one way to settle this. Everyone, stand back as I revive the once dead Sophia.”

  Jesse quickly backed up, hugging the wall of the laboratory as his friends and Rotbart’s assistants did the same. Alicia still had Ashton in her arms, and positioned him so he was between her and the wall, shielding him with her body. Bella rolled her eyes, but joined them as well, and once the doctor had determined everyone was safely out of range of the operating table, he pulled down a switch that was attached to the wall.

  There was a mechanical whir from above as a previously unnoticed hatch in the ceiling opened and a large contraption unfolded itself. Jesse thought it looked like one of those lasers from spy movies that the villain would try to bisect the protagonist with, and he watched as the tip of the machine came to a stop to point directly over Sophia’s brooch.

  Once it had settled, Rotbart pulled another switch, and the tip began to glow white before small crackles of lightning surrounded the machine, growing larger in size and intensity. Once the electricity was powerful enough, it shot down in a concentrated beam at the amulet, coursing through Sophia’s body and enveloping the operating table in a net of lightning.

  Through the bolts of white lightning, Jesse could see her hand twitch ever so slightly.

  “It’s alive, it’s alive!” Rotbart cackled maniacally before clearing his throat. “Excuse me, I rarely get the opportunity to use that line.”

  When the laser had apparently reached its limit, the doctor shut it down, the lightning dissipating as the machine folded back into the ceiling.

  Everyone in the room watched the doll with bated breaths, but the seconds ticked by and she remained motionless on the table, her eyes still dull and lifeless.

  “Inconceivable...” Dr. Rotbart muttered, taking his goggles off to wipe on his lab coat, as if he couldn’t believe what he was seeing. Or not seeing.

  Bella scoffed. “For you, maybe. Stand back and let me show you how a real witch does it.”

  Nudging her way past a glowering Rotbart, she placed her hands over Sophia, hovering just inches above the brooch, and began reciting an incantation. Jesse, of course, couldn’t understand the words, but he thought he caught a few snippets that sounded like what he’d heard Siobhan practicing before. He glanced to the side and saw his best friend completely enraptured by Bella’s magic as a purple-colored energy flowed out of her palm and into the jewel. When she finished, she let her hands fall back to her side, a triumphant look on her face.

  It didn’t stay there for long, however, as the doll remained motionless.

  Bella frowned. “That should have worked.”

  “Not so high and mighty now, are you?” Dr. Rotbart said smugly. It didn’t matter if he had failed to resurrect Sophia if his rival had failed as well.

  “Maybe there just wasn’t enough energy.” She placed her hands over the brooch again. “If I could just- AH!”

  She screamed, drawing her hands back as the doll on the operating table suddenly bolted upright.

  Jesse instinctively scrambled back, putting as much distance between himself and Sophia as he could, while all his friends did the same. Adam leapt in front of Evelyn and Dr. Rotbart, ready to shield them from any trouble.

  Sophia sat on the table, her neck slowly craning as she looked around at each of them. She didn’t make any threatening moves, but Jesse still felt the hair on the back of his neck stand up when her eyes passed over him. They hadn’t exactly been on good terms the last time he had seen her awake.

  But the next words out of her mouth replaced all of his fear with confusion.

  “Hello. Who are you all?”

  ...What?

  “Do you... not remember?” Jesse hesitantly asked.

  She tilted her head to the side. “Remember what?”

  Jesse couldn’t help but compare her now to when she had been at the last house on River Street. Back then, her voice had been cruel and taunting, her face twisted into a cold smile, but now her words were soft, her expression remaining neutral.

  “Let me handle this.” Dr. Rotbart stepped forward, clearing his throat. “Miss Sophia, as you are not immediately attacking us on sight, can we conclude that you don’t wish us harm?”

  Way to handle this, Jesse thought. But what she said next left him stunned.

  “Who is Sophia?”