by Laura Briggs
"After more than two months?" said Molly, with a puzzled smile. "Is that why you spend so many evenings hiding up in your room all alone?"
It wasn't — that was the manuscript's doing, just like it had been in Los Angeles, although I wasn't ready to tell Molly about my aspirations and the quest for the Ink and Inspiration. "I like a long period for settling into a new place," I answered. "I like writing really long emails at the end of a day. Besides, it's not like I don't have friends in the village. You, the rest of the staff, some other people I've met." My reply was getting vague, and my eyes were resisting the urge to focus on Sidney yet again. I shouldn't be able to pick him out of a crowd so quickly.
"Sidney Daniels is single, too, I think," said Molly, as if she knew exactly where I was looking. A jolt of surprise shot through me like a lightning bolt. "At least, he doesn't have a girlfriend in the village that I know of. And he's a handsome bloke."
"True," I admitted. "But ... I really am sticking with the 'friends only' policy. It's still a little too soon for me to be thinking about anything romantic. With anybody." I shook my head for emphasis.
I was right about this. I was sure. I was sticking to my resolution, remembering that my goal from the Tucker Mentorship program was the important part of my being here. Besides, I was already way behind in that goal just by giving in and staying here instead of going to London, where I had almost been guaranteed a token gesture of help from a professional author, at minimum.
So had I been lured back to this place instead by Alistair Davies' private writing suite at the hotel ... or Sidney Daniels' charming smile? I suddenly thought it was safer for the answer to remain a mystery.
Molly and I played an Allantide party game involving crossed broomsticks suspended above us, with melting candles burning on the hafts, and apples dangling from strings below. It was like bobbing for apples in the air, only with the danger of fire involved, so I wondered if there had ever been any lawsuits over this old tradition — especially as a little hot wax burned one side of my nose when I narrowly missed the big apple I tried to bite into. Tonight, however, the only consequences for me and any other injured party in the game were shrieks and laughter.
"I always lose," said Molly, with a sigh. "I've never caught one. I'm simply not quick enough." She brushed her hair back from her reddened cheeks.
"It's hard," I said. "I never caught one when bobbing for apples. They always evaded me. One even sank to the bottom to get away." That's how lousy I was at the game.
"Do you want some cider?" asked Molly. "I need a bit after all that excitement."
"No, thanks," I answered. "I'll see you back at the sandwich table." I turned to go, and bumped into the werewolf. "Sorry," I apologized. "Nice costume, by the way. I guess you couldn't wear your postman's uniform to the party, could you?"
The werewolf's head lifted. "It's me," hissed Riley.
"You?" I lowered my voice, quickly. "I didn't recognize your voice earlier."
"I'm disguising it. Trying to go unnoticed and still have a bit of fun tonight," he answered. "Why else would I be sweatin' under a plastic mask all night? This thing has air holes like tiny little pinpricks." Riley did indeed look red and perspiring underneath that plastic hood.
"Then why come?" I asked him. "Colonel Pendlegraft is threatening to have you put in jail or hire a solicitor and take you to court."
"I know ... but I promised I was coming to this party ages ago. I couldn't resist." Even now, Riley's glance was traveling hopefully towards the band, where a crowd of very attractive girls were waiting for the next dance tune — a flirtatious gleam entered the porter's eyes. "I figure if Winnie shows up, so long as she can't recognize me, she can't flirt with me ... and he can't break my neck."
"Be careful," I said. He pulled the mask in place again.
"With a nature like mine? Caution and stealth are my middle names," came the muffled reply, in a bad imitation of the local accent.
"You told me before it was 'quick' and Patrick," I answered.
"Close enough," he said. "Now, if you'll permit me to steal away, I'll be off to greet some old friends."
I rolled my eyes. My werewolf companion was gone, and I was now surrounded by villagers in paper masks and face paint. Behind a red devil's half mask, I recognized Sidney's hazel-brown eyes.
"The devil?" I asked, lifting one eyebrow. "Isn't that a little on the nose for you?"
"It is nearly Mischief Night," he answered. "Besides, plenty of people around here will tell you I have a bit of the devil in me. But don't tell them it's not true," he added, lowering his voice to a whisper. "What else would they have to gossip about if not my outlandish ways?"
"I can imagine plenty of gossip abounds about you," I said, with a smile tugging at the corners of my mouth. "I see the way the neighbor ladies look at you whenever they walk past the vicarage. And it's not your good looks they're noticing with their disapproving glances."
I think Sidney blushed — or was it just the way the light reflected off his mask's shiny paper? "That's the price of being a rover and a rambler," he answered. "They look at me and see traveling stranger, a potential Lothario, and a sneak thief all rolled into one. At least you don't believe I'm all bad, do you?"
"Nobody who takes in stray dogs could be all bad," I answered. "Or who has friends like yours." I wasn't thinking of me, of course, but of Dean. That afternoon at his cottage had proven that Sidney might truly be his only friend; and in the odd aggressiveness with which Dean first spoke to me, I sensed not just loneliness, but a friendship valued as irreplaceable. Sidney might be the only person he knew who didn't pity him, and who was eccentric enough to enjoy playing at painter's student one day and itinerant chef the next.
"You haven't met all my friends," Sidney reminded me. "Some of them might be quite awful, you never know."
"Are they Lotharios, thieves, and strangers?" I asked.
Sidney's smile became lopsided. "Maybe more the manipulative and underhanded types," he said. "It's a special breed that can convince someone to part with treasures based on certain philosophies."
That sounded like a con artist's or a swindler's trade to me. I wasn't quite sure what to make of it — was Sidney implying his friends were shadier types than I first imagined?
Before I could ask any curious questions, a woman's scream erupted from the other side of the barn. A scuffle followed, with argumentative voices rising as two figures struggled with each other on the fringes of the dance floor. One of them in country dress and boots, the other in tweeds — it was Riley and the colonel grappling, overturning a small table of carved turnips which smashed in a mess of pulp and wax on the dirt floor.
"I didn't touch her!" Riley shrieked. "Have you gone mad?" He shoved the colonel fiercely, then ducked a punch from the big man's hand — not quite fast enough, since it clipped his nose and sprayed the front of his shirt with blood.
"Hold him!" I heard Sidney's voice as he seized one of the colonel's arms, a stout farm boy the other. Gomez and Norm were holding back Riley, whose face was blazing red with fury despite the blood trickling down it.
"You'll pay for this!" bellowed the colonel. "I've got witnesses. I'll see you in jail, you guttersnipe!"
"But I didn't touch her!" Riley shouted back. At this point, a ginger-haired woman in a low-cut blue linen dress, looking disheveled with one sleeve torn, rushed into the colonel's arms.
"Take me home, darling Reggie," she sobbed. "Take me away from this horrible place, and from that awful man." Her gaze sneaked a glance at Riley, a piteous one filled with tears and accusations as her lower lip pouted dramatically.
"I'll put the law to you for what you've done to my Winnie! Either we settle this between us by my terms or you'll rot in a cell for your ways. I'll not have you ruin my wife's reputation — I'll not stand to see you free and easy in this place after she suffered your unwanted attentions —"
"Unwanted attentions?! She's the one chasing me!" said Riley, and not for the first
time.
"Hush," said Gomez. "Do you want to make things worse for you?"
"Settle my terms or face the law!" Colonel Pendlegraft led Winnie away, whose sobs grew louder and more dramatic the further away they traveled. Riley lunged one last time in his opponent's direction, then went slack and sank wearily to the floor as Gomez and Norm released him. I seized a napkin from the food table and tried to staunch the bleeding from Riley's right nostril.
"Best take him home," said Sidney to me, quietly. "A bit of ale and a rowdy evening can give people very stupid ideas. We don't want the colonel returning with a constable."
"But I never touched her," Riley insisted, although his voice sounded despairing. "Honest. I was only trying to get away — I don't know how that happened to her dress, but it wasn't me."
"Come on now." Sidney hauled him up from the floor, one of the porter's arms around his shoulders. We ushered Riley out through the barn's side door, which Gomez opened for us. The air was sharp and cool outside, but didn't seem to be helping the effects of the ale that Riley had sampled at the party, as he stumbled along between us.
"Where does he live?" Sidney asked. "Riley — where's your place?"
"He's going to sue me — I can't pay ten thousand quid," said Riley. "I'll have to quit me job and flee ... I won't even have to quit. Once Mr. Trelawney hears of this, I'm a dead man. Dead at long last...." Was he sobbing? I couldn't be sure.
"Let's take him to the hotel," I said. "I don't think he's been going home lately anyway. He's afraid to — the colonel has a better chance of finding him there than in a hotel full of guests."
"I thought your only guests were a wealthy nobleman and his family."
"It feels like a full hotel," I answered. The family rows were certainly loud enough for a hundred guests instead of only twelve. There were bound to be more on the horizon, with the earl's final séance scheduled for the eve before All Hallows Eve itself.
Sidney grunted as Riley's staggering form steered us both off the path. "Let's find someone to give us a ride," he suggested.
_________________
When the curtains opened, I felt bright sunlight hot against my face. I opened my eyes and realized I hadn't overslept in my little room on the hotel's top floor, but on the floor of the laundry room, where I had fallen asleep sitting in the corner, waiting for Riley to go to sleep.
The person who opened the curtains turned to survey me and Riley, who was lying on one of the folding tables, curled on his side while clutching his werewolf mask. With a blink and a groan, he, too, sat up, rubbing his sandpaper jaw, where dried blood flaked from his nosebleed.
"Good morning." Mr. Trelawney's tone was dry.
Mr. Trelawney? I scrambled into an upright position, realizing my hair was disheveled, my plaid skirt and tights were outlandish, and that a paper mask was stuck to the top of my head. And Riley — Riley looked like death and disaster had partnered to create a bloodless corpse with a hangover. At the sound of the manager's voice, the porter had all but fallen off the table.
We were dead. Utterly, hopelessly dead. "Please, sir," I began, getting to my feet. "This isn't how it looks, I promise."
How it looked could have any number of explanations, with me and the porter sacked out together in one of the hotel's facilities as traces of last night's party clung to us. But it looked like perfect grounds for firing a reportedly-lazy employee and his apparent accomplice in good times, and given Riley's thin ice, how could we possibly escape it? My legal working papers were still a figment of my imagination only — getting rid of an employment violation like myself would be a boon to the hotel.
"I'm a dead man," Riley moaned, thinking the same thing I was about our situation.
"You look the part," said the hotel manager. Still dryly, and with a touch of sarcasm. Was there any other tone for him, I wondered?
"Let me explain," I began.
"There's no need for explanations, Miss ... Kinnan," he supplied, after remembering that he still didn't have my legal name on file. "I'm quite aware of last night's events. As is half the village, apparently."
"I'm a deader man." Riley buried his face with a deep groan. "I know. I know what you're going to tell me. I'll pack me things. Just be gentle in your scolding. My head is split in two like a fortune teller's apple."
"I have every right to address your behavior, which has been fairly disgraceful up to this point," said Mr. Trelawney. "You have been late, you've been inattentive to your duties, to put it in polite terms. You have painted the staff of this hotel in unfortunate colors, given the effort we must make to be above reproach in terms of conduct. Moreover, you have lied on multiple occasions about your activities. Including to me."
Riley was shrinking with every word. That intimidating tone of voice, particularly for this last remark, was spelling out his doom. I was next, probably, and I dreaded just as badly what he would say about me, especially if he knew about my part in Riley's jailbird episode.
"Therefore," continued the manager, "I will expect better of you in the future. This will be your final warning on the subject, so I would advise you to take it to heart. If so, there will be no further occasion to discuss this matter."
Riley and I exchanged glances. "You're better off to fire me now," he said, gloomily. "The colonel's going to have me arrested for assault unless I pay him damages for — for tarnishing his wife's reputation and upsetting her nerves, or some such thing." He gazed at the floor. "I've got no way of proving it was the other way around."
"I spoke with a friend of mine in the Ministry of Defense," said Mr. Trelawney. "Who gave me some rather surprising information about the colonel — or, rather, a series of incidents involving Mrs. Pendlegraft which ended with an exchange of money to avoid legal ramifications. I suggested it would be rather bad form for the colonel to add yet another incident to his list, and my friend agreed." He opened the second set of curtains, letting in more light. "I think the colonel will take to heart his advice on dropping the matter. And, quite possibly, moving on before his actions are exposed in a ... most unfavorable light ... to those above him."
We exchanged glances again, this time with shock and amazement. "You did that?" Riley repeated, as if he hadn't quite heard it the first time. "For me?"
"Miss Kinnan, kindly fetch Mr. Bloom's uniform from the staff wardrobe," continued the manager. "And change into something more suitable also. I believe you have duties this breakfast hour?"
"Yes, sir," I answered, and scurried to obey, leaving an astonished Riley waiting for my return.
Mr. Trelawney had contacts in the British government? Who knew? And to exert his influence to save the hotel's wayward porter seemed unbelievable. Especially when you recall that the last warning Riley received was supposedly his last one, too.
I changed into my maid's uniform after delivering Riley's black and white ensemble, and arrived back at the butler's pantry in time to collect the first trolley of breakfast trays destined for our guests. Doctor Pitt only ate some sort of wheat germ porridge, the psychic's was a special whole-foods diet which cost the hotel chef extra effort to prepare, and young Bill's consisted entirely of buttered muffins and bacon.
I knocked twice on the psychic Miss Norridge's door. "Come in," she called. I slipped my key in the lock, then entered with the covered tray, finding the medium in her suite's little sitting room, in a meditation pose before what reminded me of a crystal gazing ball.
"Breakfast," I said. "Where would you like your tray?"
"Here," she said, indicating the table before her. She tucked the crystal out of sight, and snuffed an incense stick which had been burning in a metal lotus blossom stand. "If you would, open the window, please. A cool, fresh breeze is always invigorating after meditation."
I unlatched the window and pushed it open. The breeze fluttered the curtains, and also the postcards which decorated the dressing table nearby. I saw one similar to the earl's, of the mysterious-looking woman in the evening gown. So that must be
Madame Evenstar.
"The earl was telling me about seeing your grandmother onstage," I said, as I tied the curtains' sashes. "He sounded quite enamored with her talent."
"She was a woman with a great many admirers, it's true," said Natalie. "She entertained commoners and kings. I'm not as good as she was, really. She practiced for years — experts would conduct closed door séances and psychic sessions with her, and she passed every test they conducted."
"Wow," I said. "The earl — he says your gift really reminds him of her. I remember you said something once about inheriting it from your grandmother and mother."
"It's not truly inherited," said Natalie, who lifted the dome from her serving tray and began nibbling the apple slices and chopped nuts on her plate. "They taught me and I learned from them. I inherited their instincts and intuition. Those are what give me my gift."
"I don't understand," I said, with a puzzled smile. The psychic snapped a piece of fruit in half.
"You see the world around you every day," said Natalie. "It's the same thing I see. Now — imagine that you looked closer. Close enough that you see it rearrange itself in small ways, so the unnoticed is noticeable ... the obscure becomes important. Then you understand the gift I have. It's simply seeing what others can't or won't."
Psychic auras were beginning to sound like electrons viewed through a telescope. I wanted to laugh when the term 'x-ray vision' crossed my mind, like an old episode of Batman come to life.
"So you 'see' the psychic things around us that most of us miss?" I replied. "Can you see what I'm thinking right now?" I added, jokingly.
"No," answered Natalie, quietly. "Because there's nothing for me to see. My psychic auras do have substance. They're not quite as ethereal as people imagine them to be ... otherwise, I couldn't close my eyes and concentrate on their image. Besides, you said you wanted your future — and yourself — to remain unread. I know how to keep secrets, too."