“It’s time, Ihaan. You must play ‘Lucilla.’ Then will you understand why you feel so close to Kate.” The voice. It turned out it belonged to Ro.
***
It took Ihaan a minute to understand what Ro wanted him to do. Eventually, it hit him—his leaf. Ro wanted him to play the leaf whistle. He pulled his necklace over his head, but just before he brought the leaf to his lips, Ranger Amelia ruined the ritual.
“Sensei Kate, what are you doing?” Amelia crawled out of the tent in search of a place to relieve herself, but her eyes landed on Kate staring into the blank unknown. Unlike her, she did not see Ihaan or the animals. However, Amelia felt like the temperature had dropped twenty degrees, which meant one thing. “What are you doing?” she repeated.
“Amelia, we need to leave,” answered Ranger Kate.
“Why?”
“Because we are invading His home.”
“I knew it! I knew we should have never taken up the Challenge!” By then, Ranger Amelia knew the Ghost of Ontario was present, and she wasn’t happy. She scooped up a tree branch beside the tent and held it like a sword. “Where is he? I’m ready to pulverize! He’s the reason why the Lady Evelyn-Smoothwater Provincial Park’s haunted!”
“Amelia, please!” begged Ranger Kate. “He is not as evil as he seems.”
“How do you know? How can you be sure he isn’t a murderer?”
Murderer? Did that crazy lady just call Ihaan a murderer? He only wanted to meet Ranger Kate, and Amelia ruined the moment. Was she trying to scare him away from the provincial park? Not on his watch. The Lady Evelyn-Smoothwater Provincial Park was his home.
It took a minute, but Ihaan soon realized his lost memories weren’t the only reason Ro woke him. There was something else, something that would surely change Red Squirrel Lake forever.
Ihaan hurried to Ranger Kate and grabbed her hand. However, in Amelia’s eyes, she just saw her partner’s arm fly forward. Not only that, but she knew what the Ghost of Ontario’s weakness was. Even though she couldn’t see him, she felt him.
“I know what his weakness is,” she half-told herself and Ranger Kate.
“What?” Ranger Kate asked.
Ihaan wanted to ask the same thing but couldn’t because Ranger Amelia aimed at his feet and chucked her tree branch. It smashed him in his right ankle, the ankle that strangely hurt when he woke. Yelling, he freed Ranger Kate’s hand and grabbed it.
Ihaan fell onto his side and curled into a ball.
Ranger Kate gasped. “Ihaan! No!” She reached for her lips and glared at Ranger Amelia. “You hurt him!”
When Ihaan fell, he lost his leaf whistle. A gust of wind blew it into Ranger Amelia’s hand. He couldn’t play ‘Lucilla’ without it and protect the forest. Who was Ranger Amelia?
The Spirit Animals were not happy that she attacked their protector.
Ro knew it all along. Ranger Amelia was not human. Only a Spirit could hurt another Spirit. The whole reason why she didn’t see Ihaan or her and her friends was because she had taken on a temporary form.
She backed away from the campsite when Ranger Kate knelt beside the wounded ghost.
From where she stood, Amelia waved the necklace to show off. “Thanks for the leaf whistle!”
“Why, you little—!” Ranger Kate jumped to her feet, her face red like lava, and sprinted toward her, but Amelia threw down her hand.
As soon as she did, a blast of dirt exploded from the ground and swamped Ranger Kate. She also summoned storm clouds in the sky. A rumble of thunder came from them, but that was the last Kate saw of her for a little bit. Amelia had somewhere else to be.
ns 15.158.61.51da2
