I could hear the Tank-Top Twins murmuring instructions as Mr. Dale systematically waved a mysterious black box back and forth above the desk. It reminded me of the way people in movies used Geiger counters to see how much radiation was being admitted from a UFO or something.
Yes, it really had come to this. And the worst part was, having them around doing all their weird ghost hunting stuff, actually made me feel better.
“What exactly are they searching for?” I asked from my position on the floor. Too tired to keep standing, I’d hunkered down beside Aunt Victoria’s feet as she sat in the armchair looking through photos.
“Lynne and Penny thought they could feel a cold spot hovering over the desk there, so Tom’s using an EMF meter to check the electromagnetic field,” Cassandra’s mom said.
“Cold spot?” I echoed.
“Ghosts will often manifest their presence by a sudden drop in temperature,” one of the tank-top twins said, waving her hand over the desk. “If a ghost is nearby, we might be able catch some kind of spike in the electromagnetic readings.”
In other words, a ghost could indeed cause ice to spontaneously form on a wall for no good reason I could think of.
“What does the electro-thinger say?” I asked.
“It doesn’t seem to be registering any sort of flux at all at the moment,” Mr. Dale said, adjusting his glasses as he squinted down at the small LCD screen on the device.
“I knew we should have brought the infrared thermometer instead,” his wife said, shaking her white ponytail over the sad oversight. She patted her husband’s arm consolingly.
Oh, sure. Now the ghost up and decided to disappear, just when we were finally armed with machines that could prove I wasn’t losing my mind. I thought of the horrific face leering at me from the wall last night.
“Have you ever found any monster-like ghosts while hunting?” I asked.
Bad idea. Everyone in the room looked up from what they were doing to stare at me in surprise. Aunt Victoria cocked her head to one side, like she couldn’t quite make up her mind if I’d meant the question to be funny or not.
Cassandra’s mother smiled as if I’d made a good joke. “Rest assured, my dear, mass murdering ghosts like Freddy Krueger don’t really exist in the paranormal realm, no matter how exciting they might seem in the movies.”
This coming from a woman who’d told me, not one hour ago, that she liked to pack up her daughter and RV every summer and explore famous haunted spots from coast to coast.
“Ghosts can be scary sometimes,” Cassandra said, completely serious. “Especially if they’ve got issues to work out.”
Wasn’t that just what we needed around here? A ghost with issues. Hiding out in the walls, no less. What I couldn’t figure out was if the ice ghost was the same one as the music box ghost? Or the shadow ghost? Or the moving prism ghost?
I decided to quit this particular train of thought while I was still ahead.
“Let’s scan the closet,” one of the tank-top twins suggested. Both the Dales and her twin followed after her, waving the little black box before them as they disappeared behind the bookshelves.
“Look at this.” Cassandra’s mom handed Aunt Victoria a photograph she’d just pulled from one of the quickly dwindling boxes. I leaned in to get a better look at the photo in Aunt Victoria’s hands. It was a picture of a sweet-faced infant with large angelic eyes, long lashes and lots of dark curls on the top of its head. The Gerber baby looked like strained peas next to this child’s adorable little cherub face.
“The handwritten note on the back says it’s Xavier Kensington at two months,” Cassandra’s mom said.
I stared at the photograph in silence. That sweet looking baby had turned into a murderer. Not to mention a creepy ghost—with issues. I couldn’t get my head around it.
Aunt Victoria gave a soft murmur of appreciation. “He was heartbreaker right from the start, poor boy.”
“Poor boy?” Cassandra said. “How can you even feel sorry for someone like that? Xavier Kensington was rich and powerful. The guy was also—smoking hot.” Cassandra’s voice sizzled over the last word, like butter frying in a pan.
“I imagine it was not an easy appearance to keep up,” Aunt Victoria said, slowly shaking her head. “There would be lots of expectations put on a single young man in his position. He must have been under a lot of stress.”
Cassandra gazed up at the painting above her head for a moment, then waved a hand in front of her as if to cool down. “Why don’t guys look like that anymore? Too bad he was a killer.”
“The best-looking ones always are, dear.” Cassandra’s mom wiggled her eyebrows and gave her daughter’s arm a teasing pat as she moved past her to start on a new box of photographs.
Their mother and daughter relationship seemed pretty solid. Like good friends bantering back and forth. Watching them made my chest feel like someone had just jammed a sharp object into the softest part of it. Mom and I never had a relationship like that. She was too busy doing everything possible to keep me alive just one more day. Not something that lent itself to many moments of lighthearted banter.
Aunt Victoria glanced down at the piles of black and white pictures littering the couch and floor around us. “Margaret’s cousin, Roberta, was married to an amateur photographer. That must be why there are so many pictures of the family here.”
“Would you look at this.” The eyes of Cassandra’s mom grew wide as she flipped through the book in her hand. “It looks like some kind of child’s journal.” Cassandra’s mom walked the book over to my aunt and handed it to her. “Look at the handwriting.”
I leaned in closer as Aunt Victoria flipped through the first few pages then stopped, staring down at the words on the page. Her eyes narrowed in concentration.
“This is Emily Kensington’s copybook,” she said in a quiet voice.
“Her what?” Cassandra got up off the couch and came over to squint down at the book in Aunt Victoria’s lap.
“Back in the old days, upper class girls were educated in their home by a governess,” Aunt Victoria said, looking at Cassandra and then me. “The governess would give her student an assignment and they would be required to write it down in a copybook. The governess would check the book at the end of each lesson, correcting and going over any mistakes.”
Aunt Victoria put her finger on a wobbly sentence written halfway down the page and began to read aloud.
Miss Mills says I must praktis my writing in this book. She says my writing is atroshus atroshious terrible. She says I am a stupid girl. She says I will never learn. Miss Mills is the one who taught me, so if I can not write she must be a bad teacher!
“The whole next page in covered in lines,” Aunt Victoria said with a smile. “I will not be pert with my elders—repeated at least a hundred times.”
“Bust–ed.” Cassandra gave an appreciative chuckle. “Emily must have known her governess would read that. But she wrote it anyway. I like this girl.”
“A young freedom of speech activist budding amid the shadows of the Victorian Era. Too bad she never made it to adulthood,” Cassandra’s mom said. “The girl would’ve made one heck of a suffragette. Something the world was sorely in need of back in those days.”
Cassandra wagged her finger in the direction of Xavier Kensington’s portrait. “Now aren’t you ashamed of yourself? Robbing the world of a future women’s rights leader.”
“Cassandra!” her mom said in a shocked tone. “Never talk down to the spirits of the dead, especially in jest. They can hear you, love. Always.”
“Yeah, yeah, got it.” Cassandra winked at me behind her mom’s back.
Cassandra’s simple but friendly acknowledgement of my existence startled me. By the time I realized that I should have smiled back at her in return, instead of staring like a dazed goldfish, the moment had passed.
So, I was a little rusty in the making friends department—tell me something I didn’t already know.
I cou
ldn’t help but wonder if Cassandra’s mother was right, though. What did Xavier’s ghost think of us pawing through his private things and gossiping about him and his family like this? Were we going to make him even angrier than he already was? But finding out what happened over a century ago was the only way I would be able to figure out what was going on in this house.
I moved closer to Aunt Victoria in order to study the copybook.
“Did you want to look through it?” Aunt Victoria said, holding out the book toward me. I took it gingerly from her hand. Flipping to a random page I read:
I HATE sums and figures. I do not care what twice times four is. X says it IS important. He promised that if I will do all my figures for Miss Mills today, he will teach me the sum for love. I am cureeus what the sum for love might be. It sounds very intresing. But X will only show me if I do the sums first. I love X. He is better than a brother to me.
Reading Emily’s innocent words made me feel hollow inside. X had to be Xavier. Seeing firsthand how much little Emily idolized her older cousin just made her demise all the more tragic. How odd that Xavier devoted so much of his spare time to entertaining a little girl he only meant to kill in the end.
But had he meant to?
Involuntarily, I remembered the Stanhope lens attached to the wrist of the miniature groom doll. The one with Emily’s portrait hidden inside. Commissioning an artist to custom make such a device must have cost a great deal of money and time. This suggested that Emily was deeply treasured by the owner of the Stanhope. Was the little charm attached to Xavier’s doll because it had belonged to him? Did this mean he cared about Emily once, just like her copybook implied? If so, how had it all gone so terribly wrong? At what point had tender affection turned to homicidal hate? And there was one other unanswered question that bothered me.
What was the equation for love that Xavier had promised to show Emily?
I gingerly turned to the next page in the old copybook, hoping Emily might have recorded the answer there.
“Victoria?”
Gabrielle’s uncertain voice caused me to turn in surprise. Gabrielle stood in the open doorway blinking at each and every person in the room in confusion.
“What’s all this?” Gabrielle scanned the messy room with rapid efficiency. She took in the abandoned granola bar wrappers all over the floor and the boxes covered in dust and cobwebs, now sitting on the clean furniture. When she came to the open bookcase, Gabrielle’s eyes almost popped out of her head.
That was the moment the Tank-Top Twins and the Dales chose to reappear. Their faces intent with focus, the four of them crept forward in a tight cluster, waving the EMF Meter before them, like some kind of high-tech divining rod.
“What is going on in here?” Gabrielle demanded of them. “What have you done to the bookcase?”
“There’s no need to be alarmed, Gabrielle,” Aunt Victoria said, her voice a blanket of calm.
“Do you know what time it is?” Gabrielle asked Aunt Victoria in a small voice. “The museum opened ten minutes ago.”
Aunt Victoria blinked, just once. “Did it really?” she said, glancing mildly down at her wristwatch. “Wren discovered a storage closet last night, and we’ve all been caught up in avidly exploring the historical documents hidden inside it.”
“Historical documents?” Gabrielle said in stunned disbelief. “Are those century-old, hand-written letters strewn all over that sofa?”
“I think they might be love letters written by Margaret Kensington’s husband while they were courting,” Cassandra’s mom said, bouncing on the balls of her feet in excitement. “I only read through a few of them, but those I did were extremely touching.”
“You handled them with your bare hands?” Gabrielle’s voice dropped to a horrified whisper.
Aunt Victoria and Cassandra’s mom wiggled their gloved fingers at Gabrielle. Cassandra picked up the gloves she’d been using before she decided to eat another granola bar and waved them in the air.
Guiltily, I tried to hide Emily’s copybook behind my back. I wasn’t wearing gloves.
Gabrielle gave us all a suspicious look, as if maybe we weren’t telling the truth. “If you handled them without gloves or a clean cloth to protect the brittle hundred-year-old paper, the damaging oils and dirt on your skin could ruin them.”
With the skill of a trained bomb technician, Aunt Victoria defused the situation in one sentence.
“You are perfectly right, Gabrielle,” she said. “Those of us touching the actual documents are gloved up. The others just carried the boxes out of the closet.”
Turning to the rest of us she continued. “Would all of you help us pack these things up? We’ll take them to the kitchen and get everything better organized down there.”
The ghost hunters all jumped in to help, carefully piling everything back into the boxes. I dragged myself slowly to my feet. Once at rest, my body had serious issues with being moved.
Aunt Victoria put a comforting arm across Gabrielle’s shoulders. “Just imagine the kind of interest a significant find like this could bring for the museum. Historians and antique collectors will be breaking down our doors when they find out.”
“Not to mention reporters,” Cassandra had somehow materialized at my side. I glanced at her in surprise as I realized it was me she was talking to. “A secret room hidden in the walls of a haunted house—a story like that’s got the six o’clock news written all over it.”
“Yep, the fun just never ends around here,” I muttered.
“What do you mean?” Cassandra turned wide, curious eyes on me.
I looked silently back at her, unsure of how to respond. I was sitting on more secrets then there was water behind the Hoover Dam. Not something that lent itself to striking up new friendships. But Cassandra was only passing through so there was no need to tell her about my cancer, or my family’s accident. And if anyone might understand about the strange stuff I’d witnessed going on in this house, the daughter of a ghost hunter might be the best bet. Too bad I didn’t even know where to start.
“Hey, you okay?” Cassandra’s expression crinkled as she searched my face in concern. I’d been quiet much too long.
Oh, yeah. Way to convince her you’re not demented right from the start, Wren.
“Sorry, but I don’t function well when I’ve been up since the wee hours of the morning,” I said, smiling like it was no big deal.
“Been there, done that,” Cassandra said, giving half a yawn.
Nice recovery!
Aunt Victoria must have overheard us, because she walked over and placed a hand gently on my shoulder. “I’m sure it won’t take long for all of us to put all this stuff away, Wren. If you’d like to go back to your room and grab a little nap, that’d be okay.”
“No, I’m fine, really,” I said a little too quickly, forcing myself not to look in Cassandra’s direction. Did she think it was weird that my aunt thought I needed a nap so early in the day? “I would like to get dressed in some real clothes though. Are you sure you guys will be all right picking all this stuff up without my help?”
Aunt Victoria nodded once before removing her hand from my shoulder. Her eyes watched me carefully as I turned to go.
“See ya around, Wren,” Cassandra said with a hesitant wave of her hand. That’s when I realized that I’d never properly introduced myself to her. She’d probably picked up my name when Aunt Victoria said it just now. Was I totally lame at making friends, or what?
I mentally kicked myself all the way to the bedroom. Only after arriving there did I realize I was still clutching Emily Kensington’s copybook tight in my hands. I’d been too distracted by my crash and burn with Cassandra to notice. I dropped the copybook onto my bed in irritation. It accidently flipped open to a random page and Emily’s long forgotten words leaped up at me:
X says if I am good for Miss Mills today, he will take me for a ride on his horse, Cupid. I love Cupid. He is the most beeutiful dappled gray with velvet soft ears.
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Cupid, huh? I glanced over at the doll of Xavier Kensington, a boy who once owned a horse named after the god of love. He also liked to take his little cousin on rides just to make her happy. The more I learned about Xavier, the less like a murderer he seemed.
I got dressed as fast as my exhausted body would allow. After running a useless comb through my hair, I headed back to the study, carefully locking the west wing behind me.
When I reached Xavier’s study, I found it completely empty. Cassandra’s half granola bar still sat at one end of the sofa, but all the other snack wrappers had been picked up and the boxes were gone. Everyone was probably down in the kitchen getting the photos and papers organized.
I picked up Cassandra’s granola bar and headed for the door. Halfway there, I noticed the bookcase still slightly ajar. The Dales and the Tank-Top Twins had forgotten to close the door behind them after getting their EMF readings. I shoved the bookcase closed with my hip. The shelves slid shut with a soft gasp of air and the mermaid queen’s head snapped forward, locking into place.
I turned and found myself gazing at the painting of Xavier Kensington. Those teasing green eyes drew me momentarily over to get a better look.
In my dream he’d stood so tall beside me. And those gorgeous green eyes seemed—what? Gentle? Frightened? Sad? Perhaps a bit of all three. Did murderers even have the ability to feel those kinds of emotions?
A soft muffled sound whispered within the room behind me. Like the rustling of cloth as someone shifts their weight from one foot to the other. I looked sharply over my shoulder, half expecting to find one of the others had returned. The room was empty.
And yet, it didn’t feel empty. Not the way it was supposed to.
Like a dog with an itchy sixth sense, I cocked my head to one side, trying to understand what it was that bothered me. I nervously scanned the room. No ice faces graced the walls. The only shadow moving was mine.
I used to wake up in the hospital recovery room sometimes and know Dad or Mom was sitting beside my bed even before I opened my eyes. I could sense them there watching me sleep, their love and concern enveloping me in warmth and safety.
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