Elatsoe by Darcie Little Badger

 

Elatsoe is a 17-year old Lipan Apache girl living in Texas. She, like her ancestor "Six-Great" (her six-times great-grandmother), has the ability to conjure ghosts from the underworld, including her faithful dog Kirby who remains her companion after his death.

One night, Elatsoe gets a feeling that something bad is about to happen and assumes something is wrong with her parents, who are out on a movie date. She decides to ride her bike to the movie theater, and on the way, she spots her friend Jay attempting to climb an old bridge. Jay and his girlfriend have just broken up and he wants to cross out the heart he had previously spray painted with their initials on it. Elatsoe talks him down and finds her parents at the movies, who tell her everything is fine. However, later that night, Elatsoe's cousin comes to her in a dream and tells he he has been murdered by a man named Dr. Abe Allerton in a town called Willowbee. In the morning, Elatsoe learns that indeed her cousin has died, though in a car crash which police rule an accident. 

Elatsoe and her parents are sure her dream was very real, though, and Elatsoe travels to Willowbee to spend the summer with her mother as well as her cousin's widow and baby and try to solve her cousin's murder. Even though she knows she could wake his ghost to get more information, Elatsoe knows she must not, as human ghosts can be terrifying and much harder to control than animal ghosts. Willowbee seems completely unremarkable, even idyllic. The only thing that seems strange to Elatsoe at first is that despite this being Texas, during summer and in a drought, every lawn and ourtood space in town is lush and green, with many yards even having so much moisture in them that mushrooms seems to grow everywhere. Jay, who is part fae, eventually recognizes these as a type of magical mushroom needed to create fairy rings.

She meets Abe Allerton at the wake, and he seems completely normal and very nice, which makes Elatsoe even more suspicious, especially when he asks where her cousin's body is buried. Suspicions deepen when, on a drive with her mother, Elatsoe realizes Abe Allerton's house is crawling with Vampires (who are usually pretty decent people) and one of the vamps attacks their van. Also, Elatso and Jay can't understand how the town of Willowbee (which they learn was founded by Abe Allerton's ancestor Nathaniel Grace) is celebrating a bicentennial when there should have no European settlements in this part of Texas 200 years before. They begin looking into town history at the local library, where they find a note to Abe Allerton's ancestor from Teddy Roosevelt, thanking the man for healing his mangled leg after a bear attack. Since there is no historical evidence of this attack, Elatsoe and Jay become suspicious of the healing that Willowbee and its small medical clinic (run by Abe Allerton) is famous for. It is at around this time that Elatsoe notices townspeople begin staring at her everywhere she goes, especially when she is accompanied by Jay. 

One night, Elatsoe has another dream visit from her cousin, who speaks to her cryptically about leeches, all the water being stolen, and fairy dances. Jay does some investigating into bear attacks in Willowbee and finds that a mangled corpse was found in a farmer's field in 1906, just around the same time Teddy Roosevelt claimed to have been helped with his injury. Elatsoe begins so believe  the Abe Allerton and his ancestors posses the power to transfer someone's injuries into someone else's body. She puts together a theory that Abe Allerton was in a drunk driving car accident on the day of her cousin's death, and when her cousin stopped to try to render aid, he used this power to save his own life, at the expense of her cousin's own. She believes she can prove it by exhuming her cousin's body to check and see if a tattoo of Abe Allerton's now appears on her cousin's body.

On another night, Elatsoe has a terrifying dream about her cousin using his baby son Gregory (who appears to share Elatsoe's gift of waking the dead) to somehow tether himself to the human world. Elatsoe is not sure if this is a dream or reality, because when she awakes the baby is in her bed and not in his crib. That same morning, Elatsoe gets a frantic phone call from Jay's sister Ronnie, who cannot get hold of her fiancé Al, a vampire who in an effort to help, was last seen at an all-vampire club in Austin, asking questions about the parties at Abe Allerton's house. Ronnie is terrified because the club manager told her the home has a reputation as a place where young vampires go and are never seen again. Even more terrifying: Elatsoe fears her cousin's ghost is planning a revenge killing spree at a ball scheduled at the mansion that very night. They also discover that Elatsoe's cousin's body has been dug up. 

Elatsoe, Jay, Elatsoe's mom Vivian, Ronnie and several of her friends attend the ball, but they split up and Elatsoe and Ray are caught by a vampire who explains to them Abe Allerton has been helping to keep certain vampires alive much longer than their already long lifespan (normally around 100 years, give or take). After running away from the vampire, Glorian, by conjuring the ghost of a wooly mammoth who was once her granmother's pet, they find Al locked in a cryogenic coffin in a dungeon and struggle to free him, but Glorian catches up to them and a fight ensues. Eventually the group is able to lock Glorian in one of the cryo-coffins and get away, only to find that the ghost of Elatsoe's cousin has killed several people. 

Elatsoe tries to reason with the ghost, but it tells he he is no longer her cousin, just a manifestation of his rage and need for revenge. Meanwhile in another part of the house, Elatsoe's mother discovers that Ronnie and her friends have come armed with silver stakes, in case they have to fight their way our of the vampire-infested party. Vivian tells the girls that killing someone is not to be taken lightly and shares the story of the time when, as a 13 year old, a man tried to kidnap her at knifepoint and she unleashed the mammoth ghost on him, killing him.

Just as she finishes her story, Al finds the group, and they all realize somehow time has advanced, it is now 9PM, and the attendees of the ball are being attacked by something and they are trapped in a room by a mystical barrier. Vivan attempts to call forth the ghost of the mammoth but finds she has seemingly lost her connection to the underworld. 

Meanwhile, at the ball, the ghost has wreaked havoc and has manifested as the mangled body of Elatsoe's cousin. It demands that Abe Allerton use his own son's life force to heal him and show his powers to the towns people. But, Dr. Allerton reveals the townspeople are well aware of his powers, and allow him to do what he does because they know it keeps the town prosperous. The ghost goes completely wild, trying to kill everyone in the ballroom until one of Abe Allerton's hired exorcists is able to get close enough to touch it, sending it back to the underworld. 

During the aftermath of the party, Elatsoe confronts Abe Allerton, telling him the world will find out about what he has done. Allerton however, tells Elatsoe that this is not the first time the town has been faced with near destruction. In fact, he tells her there are several other descendants of Nathaniel Grace in other cities, and that each time something happens to threaten the town, they simply relocate it somewhere else: Willowbee has only been in Texas for 30 years or so and was originally founded in Massachusetts. He and his friends then begin a ritual to move the town, but before they can succeed, Elatsoe uses her powers to call on the ghosts of every dog her family had owned since the beginning of time, using their energy to pull them, herself, and Allerton into the underworld. 

There, Allerton is attacked by the angry ghosts of all the people he had killed. While Elatsoe manages to will herself back to the real world, but Allerton tries to drag her back and she is only able to return because Kirby's ghost sacrifices himself to save her. She finds she is no longer able to conjure his ghost after her return. 

Some time later, Jay and Elatsoe are back in school, and Elatsoe's dad has brought home an 8-year old labradoodle named Snickers, whom Elatsoe is training. Out of the blue, while Jay and Elatsoe are talking college plans, and whether another Willowbee could occur, Kirby's ghost re-materializes under Elatsoe's bed, making friends with Snickers.