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gentle contours, and some sharp rises in the land. It doesn’t look all that different from the rest of the rolling hills of southern Ohio, until you climb up the observation tower, and then . . .” I trailed off, realizing everyonewas staring at me in amazement. Too late, I clapped my hand over my mouth.
    â€œJosie, you really could fill in for Sienna, especially if we get her notes,” Damon started, then looked crestfallen again. “I rented a van for this excursion. I was going to drive—”
    â€œAw, hell, Damon, I can drive,” said Sally. “I can drive anything.”
    â€œAnd I can point out the sights on the way there, while Josie looks over Sienna’s notes,” Cherry said.
    â€œYou know, this could work!” Damon sounded happier again. “What do you say, Josie?”
    What could I say? They were all four of them looking eagerly at me. And—as I’d explain over and over again later on to anyone who’d listen—I just wanted to help.
    So of course, I said yes.

4
    â€œAnd to our left, we have a cornfield!”
    Cherry, who was in the front passenger seat of the full-size van, swiveled around to face the rest of us. I was in the seat behind her, which meant I was facing her, but she ignored me, gazing over the top of my head at the passengers behind me. When I nervously glanced over my shoulder, I noted that all eight—Skylar, her mom Karen, and six other psychics—were craning to look out the windows on the left.
    No Ginny Proffitt, though. We had waited for her as long as we could, but finally decided that the meeting she had mentioned to me must have gone on longer than planned. Several people were worried that Ginny would be angry about us leaving without her, but everyone needed to get back in time to set up for that night, so Damon reassured everyone that he’d be sure to bring Ginny on a private tour of Serpent Mound after the psychic fair ended. Everyone seemed relieved by that solution, and I wondered how many people had been on the receiving end of Ginny’s wrath, which I’d experienced in the Red Horse parking lot.
    â€œThe cornfield belongs to the Crowleys,” Cherry went on. “who have lived in the Paradise area for four generations . . .”
    I turned back around in my seat and stared out the window on my right at another cornfield, which looked just like the one on the left, although the Fowler family owned it.
    â€œIf you get a break tonight from the psychic fair, you might want to visit the Crowleys’ gently haunted corn maze. The maze, cut out of an acre of corn, will have young ghosts, goblins, and witches—” Cherry giggled, apparently confusing psychics with witches, “—and other Halloween characters from the United Methodist Church of Paradise’s Youth Group. The maze is a fundraiser for the Crowleys to offset some medical bills of a family member—a ten-year-old-boy—who has cancer.”
    A murmur of sympathy arose behind me, and I felt a wave of sympathy, too, which never lessened even though I’d heard the story many times. I attended church with the Crowleys and knew that young Ricky Crowley-Ypsilanti had childhood Hodgkin’s disease, a form of lymphoma. Ricky was lucky in that his disease was in stage I, meaning found in only one lymph node area, and so far he had responded well to chemotherapy.
    But the emotional and financial burden was tough on his family. His mama, Maureen Crowley, was divorced, had just lost her job as a secretary in Cincinnati, and didn’t have any health insurance. Ricky’s grandpa, Ed Crowley, had passed away from a heart attack the previous August. Maureen and Ricky had moved back to the Crowley farm, with Maureen’s mama, Rebecca, who still grieved for her husband, and with her Uncle Hugh, Ed’s brother. Just a week before the psychic fair, Ricky had taken a bad turn and was in Children’s