by Gwen Gardner
I nodded. “Are you? You’re bleeding…”
He wiped blood from his lip with the back of his hand. “I’m fine.”
“Where are Simon and Riley?” I asked.
“I dunno. Come on.” He gripped my hand and took off at a run.
Before we reached the next corner, a scream rent the air. Riley. We ran faster. Bursting around the corner, we careened into Simon.
“Where’s Riley?” gasped Badger.
“She screamed. It came from down there”—he pointed toward the end of the street—“but I can’t find her.” His gestures were frantic, but he tried to keep it under control. “All right. Let’s split up,” he said. “She’s somewhere on this block. You two start here. I’ll start at the other end. We’ll work our way in.” He was already halfway down the passage before he completed the last sentence.
“Do you think one of them has her?” I said. Riley’s disappearance filled me with new dread.
“I dunno. But we’re going to find her,” he said. “You take that side. I’ll take this one.” He turned back quickly and pointed at me. “Don’t leave my sight.”
I nodded.
We systematically worked our way up the alley. We looked up every stairwell, keeping pace with each other from opposite sides. Moving quickly from one alley and stairwell to the next, I worried about Riley. She went after Simon, and ended up…where? Every once in awhile I spotted Simon dart from one side of the alley to the other. We nearly reached the end of the block, when I looked up a dimly lit stairwell, when at the top I witnessed a couple locked in as passionate a kiss as I’d ever seen. Simon and Riley.
“Ahem.” I cleared my throat and they broke apart. I glanced back over my shoulder, then back at them. “Do you two have a death wish or what?” I hissed.
Badger would not be pleased. Nope, not pleased at all. Simon was definitely not good boyfriend material for his little sister. Of course, he didn’t understand that Simon really cared for Riley.
“Badger!” I yelled over my shoulder. “She’s here. Simon found her.” They came down the stairs.
Badger ran across the alley. “Are you all right? What happened?”
“I’m fine. Just a little shaken is all,” said Riley. “You two took off. I waited for Indigo, but then this bloke came toward me. I got scared and screamed.” She laughed nervously. “I think he was more scared than me. We ran in opposite directions.” She looked around at the lifting mist. “I found myself alone, so I hid. Up there.” She indicated the stairwell.
“Why didn’t you stay put like I told you to?” Simon glared first at Riley, then me.
“Like you told us to?” Riley’s hands went to her hips. “Who do you think you are? You’ve no right to…”
“Never mind that,” I said. “Did anyone get a good look at any of those guys?”
We shared glances, but nobody spoke up. That little fiasco got us exactly nowhere.
Chapter Nine
Frankincense Monster
We headed home after Badger gave Riley and me a dressing down for not listening to Simon. You not only went chasing bad guys, but you split up and put yourselves in danger, blah, blah, blah. That’s about all I heard.
On the way home, Simon tried to convince me the kiss I witnessed wasn’t what it seemed. Riley had been scared. Simon was handy. That was all.
I rolled my eyes at him. “Although you pointed out recently how blind I could be, the fact is that I’m not blind. I know what I saw. I know what I sense when I’m around you two.”
He opened his mouth to argue…
I waved my hand in front of his face. “Hello? Remember me? I’m the psychic you live with? Don’t even bother denying it. There’s something between you.”
“All right. Maybe there is.” He relented a little. “But this really is different. It happened once and it won’t happen again.”
“I hope not, Simon. Badger - he wouldn’t be pleased. I’d hate for there to be a rift between you.”
“I get it, Indigo. I’m not good enough for her.” His lips firmed into a thin line.
“That’s not it at all,” I said, “and you know it. Badger sees you flirting with every girl in sight and he doesn’t want Riley to be just another one of your girls.”
He heaved a big sigh, annoyed. “She isn’t just another girl.”
We let ourselves in through the back kitchen door. Uncle Richard sat at the table eating leftover roast beef and potatoes. As a rule, he left early in the morning and arrived home late from his job as a solicitor. Eating leftover dinner at this time of night was the norm.
His smile only reached as high as his cheek bones. Blond-haired and blue-eyed like my dad, they were identical twins. But that’s all they shared, like matching bookends with every genre of books in between.
I adored him, of course. I loved being able to ‘see’ my dad. But disappointment always mingled with the pleasure, because he wasn’t my dad. I had to love him, though. He took me in.
“What are you two up to? It’s a bit late to be out, isn’t it? Staying out of trouble?” he asked.
“Yep,” I answered, my face warming all over. Yep - I’m going to hell on the bullet train. We were all sorts of busted for investigating Bart’s murder and putting ourselves in danger. Not to mention the lying and the resulting month of groundedness. If he knew about another investigation, not to mention being followed again, we’d be wading through deep dung.
“Good.” He patted me awkwardly on the shoulder. “Good night, then.” He went up the back staircase to his room and bed.
Simon stood beside me, his face as unreadable as a poker player. All manner of emotions swirled from the tension built in those few short moments. A strain existed between him and his father that I didn’t completely understand. Simon blamed himself for the accident, and he thought his father blamed him, too. But I didn’t think so. No, it had to be more complicated than that.
Muted television sounds drifted up from downstairs, but I tried to ignore them. I had dozed off when a commotion erupted from Simon’s room. A muffled yell, then footsteps pounded down the hall. My door flung open and banged into the wall.
I sprang up in bed, my heart pounding in my ears.
Simon ran in. Bryan shot around him into my bed and Franny floated right through him in her haste to get inside my room.
“What the bloody hell is going on?” Simon yelled in a stage whisper, shivering from head to toe.
“Bryan, what is it child?” Franny soothed Bryan while Simon continued to babble.
“I was sleeping and then something yanked the covers off and then the flippin’ bed turned ice cold and I felt something, I don’t know what, climb into bed with me…”
“It’s okay,” I interrupted. “It’s only Bryan.” Bryan had dived into my bed and curled against my side like a giant cold foot. I shivered and pulled the blanket up to my chin.
“What happened?” I asked Franny, while Simon stood uncomprehending and Bryan clung to my arm.
“We were only watching the telly, dear, and Bryan screamed and flew up here, as if terrified for his life…”
I sighed. “Watching what?”
“Frankensomething.”
“Frankenstein?” I couldn’t help the exasperation in my voice. “Franny, you can’t let a three-year-old watch scary movies, especially not in the middle of the night.”
“They were watching Frankenstein?” asked Simon, incredulous.
“He was a perfectly lovely creature, dear. Not scary at all, really.”
“Maybe not to you, but you’re used to scary, er, different creatures,” I said.
“They were watching Frankenstein?” Simon repeated.
Franny looked at Bryan. “I am sorry, child, I didn’t know.” She paced-floated, grief-stricken. “It’s been ever so long since I’ve been around children. Not since I was a child myself, a hundred and twenty-five years ago.”
“It’s not real, Bryan,” I told him. “Just make-believe.”
&
nbsp; “Scared,” he mumbled, around the thumb in his mouth, hiding his face in my arm.
“I’m sorry,” Franny repeated. “Come to Aunt Franny.” She drifted to the chair and held out her arms.
Bryan hopped across the bed and flew into her arms. He sat in her lap, sucking his thumb, while she rocked him and sang a lullaby:
Sleep my child and peace attend thee,
All through the night
Guardian angels God will send thee,
All through the night
Soft the drowsy hours are creeping
Hill and vale in slumber sleeping,
I my loving vigil keeping
All through the night.
An old and haunting melody, it soothed Bryan. His eyelids drooped.
Simon still stood in the middle of my room, staring at me.
“It’s okay now,” I said. “Franny’s rocking him and all is well.”
Simon sighed. “All right. If you say so. I’m going back to bed.”
“No!” Bryan cried.
“No, not yet,” I told Simon. “Bryan wants you to stay for a bit.”
“Oh. Right.” He headed to the armchair to sit down.
“No! Not there. Franny and Bryan are there. Over there.” I pointed to the bay window where a couple of pillows and blankets lay. Not long enough for Simon, but if he pulled up his knees, it would do.
“I hope they’re not going to make a habit of this,” said Simon. “A guy needs his beauty sleep. You hear that Bryan?”
Bryan smiled around his thumb.
Simon propped his pillows into the bay window seat, spread two blankets over his legs, and lay down with a sigh. As his eyes drifted closed, he hummed the lullaby.
Now that Bryan quieted down, I could find out what Franny learned about Mrs. Cuttle.
“Rumor has it that Sadie Cuttle’s place is highly active.” Franny, dressed immaculately as usual, wore a peach colored dressing gown that highlighted her amazing black hair. Even when worn down, as now, it shone like a midnight sky full of stars, and hung in waves to her waist. She tucked Bryan next to Simon on the bay window bench. Simon cinched the blankets up to his nose and closed his eyes.
Franny floated back and forth in front of me. Clearly, something else occupied her mind.
“What do you mean by highly active?” I yawned. In my bed beneath the covers, I propped the pillows behind my head. Since Bryan had been back, I’d been sleeping in my bed, rather than the kitchen armchair to make sure he had access to me. Which meant other spirits had access to me as well. Whether or not I got any sleep was a crap-shoot.
“I mean it’s incredibly haunted, to put it in living terms. The house is old and has seen a lot of death. It attracts spirits looking for a place to be.”
“That makes sense. Maybe that’s why ghost-dog made his way there.”
“It could be.” She sounded worried.
“What else?”
She stopped pacing and turned to me. “That energy-sucking Soul Collector is there.”
I sighed. That could be why so much colorful activity took place there. The Soul Collector probably tried to recruit souls—or steal them, more likely.
“Indigo.” She knelt down beside me and laid chilly hands on my arm. “Stay away from there. That evil thing wants you. Nobody trusts it.”
“Nobody, as in…”
“The entire spirit community of Sabrina Shores.”
Crap. That’s what worried me. A whole community of spirits resided in that town. Even worse, they sounded organized. I’d never heard of such a thing.
I shook my head. “By community, do you mean, like, town meetings and gatherings? Sporting events? Church? School?”
“Yes. Only different. Some spirits continue their lives, uh, after life. They do the same things they always did. But it’s different. Strange. You get used to it.”
“Strange? Strange how?” My heart beat faster. This was new, scary.
“There are things, beings.” She stopped, clearly struggling.
I gave her time, waiting wide-eyed.
She continued. “Monsters, some of them.”
I gasped. “Monsters?”
“Oh, not like the one on the telly that scared Bryan, that Frankincense monster. No, these were human once, only mutated by what they became in life. Most of them, anyway.”
“Frankenstein,” I corrected absently, more focused on the most part of the statement. “What do you mean by most of them?”
She shrugged. “Some of them I don’t think could ever have been human, dear.”
“Like the Soul Collector?”
She nodded. “We coexist peacefully for the most part, but sometimes we have our differences. We try to integrate the community, but the huge range of differences…sometimes it’s not easy. Sometimes…” She left off.
“What? Sometimes what?” I held my breath.
“Sometimes spirits simply disappear. Like a second death. Nobody knows where they go.”
“A second death,” I repeated. “Maybe they just leave, go somewhere else?”
She shook her head. “We have reason to believe it’s not voluntary.”
“Is the Soul Collector behind it?”
“They think that is part of it.”
“Only part?” I didn’t know what to think. I started out inquiring about Sadie Cuttle and ghost-dog in order to help them cross over. Instead, I uncovered an after-life conspiracy. And the possible leader was my mortal enemy. And not only that… “I think he’s after Bryan…” I whispered.
Franny shot up. “No,” she hissed back in a whisper. “I’ll not let him take that sweet child.” She popped out, leaving only a puff of ice-cold air.
Chapter Ten
Quixley Street Mansion
After school on Tuesday I called Mrs. Cuttle’s niece, Roxanna Cuttle-Jones. Until we got the forensic results on the paint chips or Riley called with the information on D.S. Michael Potter’s employee file, we were free until Friday’s meeting.
“Mrs. Cuttle-Jones, please,” I said in my most cultured and mature voice. The English make fun of the twangy American accent, but I did the best I could.
“Speaking,” said a voice, much more hoity-toity than mine.
“I’m calling about the house listed for sale on Quixley Street?”
“Oh yes. A lovely Victorian mansion. It used to belong to my aunt, Sadie Cuttle. Sadly, she passed a few years ago.”
“I’m sorry to hear that. I knew her vaguely.” Yes, I lied. I’d have a nice long talk with God about it later. Even so, she couldn’t see me squirm. “She owned a dog, didn’t she?”
“No, she didn’t like dogs, especially big ones. She was afraid of them.”
“Oh, that’s right,” I answered. “I remember now. Can I ask what she passed from?”
“Old age. Her mind started to go at the end. She imagined all sorts of things. All of a sudden the place became haunted and she saw the ghost of a dog, a bulldog of all things, and then a black shadow lurking in corners. She scheduled an appointment to see a doctor, but she had an accident and died before I could take her, God rest her soul.”
“I’m sorry to hear she had a troubled end.” And I was. Mrs. Cuttle remained here and still troubled. Her mind hadn’t gone at all - she really saw those things. “I’d like to see the inside. Would you be able to show me around tomorrow?” I could get Franny to do my makeup and hair to help me look older, so I’d be more believable as a buyer. She did it for me once and was quite good at it.
“I am sorry,” Mrs. Cuttle-Jones said, “but I have a previous engagement. But if you’d still like to see it, a spare key is kept under the back mat.”
She warned me that the mansion might be a bit rundown, but nothing that couldn’t be repaired by loving hands.
I thanked her and said I’d be in touch. The arrangement would work out rather nicely. I received her permission to go inside and look around. She didn’t know I wasn’t really in the market for a house, so the small dishones
ty could be forgiven…okay, maybe not so small. I’d just have to extend my conversation with God. But a good deed would be done if I could help cross over Mrs. Cuttle and the dog.
I hung up as Simon came in the back door. He looked as tired as I felt after our sleepless night. I honestly don’t know how Uncle Richard slept through it. Since his workday typically lasted fourteen hours, though, I guess he completely passed out when his head hit the pillow at night.
“Hey,” he said, throwing his book bag in the corner.
“Hey back.”
He flopped into an armchair next to the fireplace. Cold ashes reflected his gray mood. He hadn’t even grabbed food yet, truly a first.
I rebuilt the fire and warmed a pot of potato soup. We needed cozy. Warm bellies and a warm fire. And a nap.
“Thanks,” said Simon as I handed him a bowl of soup and a roll. “I didn’t have the energy after last night’s fiasco.” Purple shadows surrounded his bloodshot eyes. I knew I looked just as bad, but operating on very little sleep came, if not easily, then out of habit, to me. Spirits tended to be more active at night.
We ate our soup and Simon added more wood to the fire. The house settled into quiet.
“I spoke to Mrs. Cuttle’s niece this afternoon,” I said.
“Yeah? What’d she say?”
“She thought the old lady lost her mind. Old age, she’d said.” I relayed the conversation to him. “So, do you want to go with me? Later, I mean.”
“Sure.” He grinned tiredly. “Because we don’t have nearly enough spirit activity in our lives.”
I grinned back. “Welcome to my world.”
Until we figured out how to send Bryan back to the other side, afternoon naps in my kitchen armchair would be the order of the day. Closing my eyes, I let silence and warmth lull me into a semi-comatose state…until the door gave an almighty shake, as if a 9.0 magnitude earthquake shook the foundation of the entire neighborhood followed by a sonic boom—
I sprang out of my armchair and crashed into Simon. His arms went around me, eyes wide with shock. Cups rattled against their saucers. Pots and pans swung from hooks. Ashes rained down the chimney and burst into the kitchen, sending gray clouds erupting into the room.