The cold air has given way, too, to a more comfortable evening coolness. I stare in wonder as the hairs on my arms begin to settle back into place.
For a long moment, we sit quietly together, breathing hard and fast as our bodies begin to warm again, as the chills gradually alter to fever, to flushed excitement. I stare at Trudy; her blue-violet eyes are as wide as my own eyes feel, and her lips are softly parted, as if she wants to say something but can’t quite summon the words, or a voice.
I gather her into my arms, sighing out. “Are you all right?”
“Yeah. I’m…freaked out but okay. I think. How about you?”
“Same.” I laugh, drawing back to make a joke about voyeuristic ghosts, to try to lighten the mood and chase off my own unsettled feeling, but my eyes fall to Trudy’s kiss-swollen lips, and before I have a moment to pause, to think, I’m kissing her again, and she’s kissing me back, with twice as much fervor as before. She pushes me down to the floor and snakes her naked leg between my knees. She makes short work of my shirt, grabbing it by the collars and tearing it open with a little growl. Buttons scatter over the floorboards, pinging against the cracked wood trim.
“Easy there, Miss Strange,” I grin, reaching down to tease her with my fingers.
“Sorry. I guess ghosts really turn me on.” She bites my nipples as she moves against my fingers, lips sliding into a sexy sideways smile. “You know,” she says, lifting her head to regard me impishly, “I think I’ve just acquired a new fetish.”
I push my fingers deeply into her as her fingers begin to slide over my own hot, aching wetness. I moan and half-laugh, full of adrenaline, short of breath. “Haunted sex?”
“Mm. I could try it in cemeteries, and abandoned buildings, and—oh…oh-h-h,” she moans. “Okay, enough talking. Time for Miss Strange to give Miss Dark some strange, dark lovin’. Up for it, superhero?”
But she doesn’t allow me a chance to respond: her mouth locks onto mine in a hard, breath-stealing kiss, and all thoughts of the ghost on the staircase drift out of my mind, as easily as a gust of wind moves through an open window—and then, just like that, ceases to exist.
Chapter Three
My eyes skim over the two-columned list for the third time, and for the third time, I groan and clutch at my hair, shaking my throbbing head. I didn’t get much sleep last night; I tossed and turned on my blanketless bed, and my restless thoughts kept cycling through the memory of Trudy lying naked beneath me—superimposed with the sight of the dimly glowing ghost who interrupted our kisses, the ghost who apparently resides in my house.
It’s crazy, surreal. I don’t believe in ghosts—didn’t believe in ghosts. But now…I don’t know what to believe. I don’t know what to do. I’ve never had a living roommate, much less a see-through, floating-over-the-stairs, disappearing-into-thin-air roommate.
I had hoped my sister’s arrival and assessment of the house’s renovation requirements would give me something to focus on, a more-than-welcome distraction from paranormal concerns. But the list of repairs she handed me five minutes ago made my blood pressure rise for a new, all-too-mundane reason.
“Cord, are you sure we have to—”
Cordelia holds up a silencing hand, her long red nails looking wildly out of place against the backdrop of her paint-spattered denim overalls. “Alex, come on. I’ve known you your whole life. I changed your diapers, taught you to drive a stick. Do you trust me or not?”
“I trust you, but—”
“Look.” She reaches for my hand and tugs me over to the staircase, pushing me down until I’m seated on one of the bottom steps. My skin prickles at the sensation of sitting here, where the ghost hovered, phantom skirts billowing around her phantom legs, but I clear my throat and bite my lip as Cordelia squeezes beside me and gives me a gentle but pointed stare. “I crossed the border to help you, all right? I’m not going to leave you high and dry in this big old dust-and-mildew factory. I’ll repair everything for you that I can, teach you how to use some sexy power tools, and I’ll help you find professionals to take care of the rest of it. This old lady’ll be restored to her Victorian glory before you know it. Have faith!”
I nod my head vaguely, slumping against the wall. “I’m sorry. I’m just…feeling overwhelmed. But I appreciate the help, Cord.” I smile into her warm green eyes. “You know you’re my favorite big sister.”
“I’m your only big sister, you jerk.” She punches me playfully in the arm, and I pretend to be mortally wounded. As usual, she rolls her eyes at my less-than-convincing dramatics. “Anyway,” she says, gesturing to the list, now folded, in my hands, “the work that has to be done may look monumental on paper, but in reality…” She pauses to consider. “It’s only massive. Colossal at worst.”
“I’m pretty sure colossal is bigger than monumental.”
“Hey, which one of us has a Master’s degree in English, hmm? For all the good it did me,” she mutters, mouth slanting into a rueful smile. After graduating from college, Cordelia had intended to get a job at one of the big publishing houses in New York. But then she met David Lavalier at a mutual friend’s party, and before long, they were picking out silverware patterns and launching a successful husband-and-wife contracting company. Cord jokes about the romantic, shoebox apartment lifestyle she might have led in the big city, but in truth, I’ve never seen her happier than when she’s on the job. She has a natural knack for building and design, and—like me, like Dad—she loves getting her hands dirty.
“Don’t question my words,” she says, with a faux-arrogant flourish of her hand, putting on a nose-in-the-air, snooty tone of voice, “and I won’t question your…digging for treasure, or whatever it is that you do on those silly little vacations of yours.”
Smirking, I reach an arm behind her back and tug on her long brown braid. “I really missed you, you know.”
She bumps against my shoulder, bowing her head. “Missed you, too, world traveler. I still find it kind of hard to believe that you’ve bought a house—”
“To sell,” I add quickly. “I bought a house to fix up and sell. Not to stay. I’m not—”
“I know, I know. I wasn’t accusing you of settling down, God forbid. As she has told me, oh, nine thousand and seventeen times, Alexandra Dark is incapable of settling down.”
“Stop teasing,” I smile softly, lowering my gaze. “Anyway, I haven’t made a name for myself yet. I haven’t found my holy grail. So I’m not done,” I wink at her, bumping her shoulder again, “digging for treasure. Maybe someday, when I’m as old as this house and content with my contribution to the annals of archaeology, I’ll…” My grin widens; I glance sideways at my blatantly skeptical sister.
“Right. And maybe someday I’ll fly in a rocket ship to the moon. Who are you kidding? You’ll breathe your last breath in the desert, and they’ll have to pry your quote-unquote holy grail out of your cold, dead hands.”
“Probably,” I laugh, shoving off from the step and offering Cordelia a hand as she begins to stand up, brushing dust from the seat of her overalls. “So, where has that rugrat of yours run off to?”
“Oh, knowing him, he’s probably leapt over Niagara Falls—twice—by now.”
But when we find him in the backyard, Jack is quite innocently squatting on the overgrown, browning grass, watching a green dragonfly flit over the wildflowers. He has a little notebook on his lap, and it looks as if he’s been trying to draw the dragonfly with his number two pencil; unfortunately, I think he’s inherited the Dark family’s artistic talent—or lack thereof. His dragonfly looks a bit like a sausage wearing an overcoat.
“Jack, darling, tell your Auntie Alex what you got up to yesterday. I’m sure she’ll be interested to hear all about your adventure.” Cord turns toward me with an arched brow. “When Jack realized that we were coming to visit you, he wanted to find you a present.”
“Not a present, Mum, a treasure. I almost caught it, but then it slipped out of my hands. Next time I’ll catch it,” h
e says, and begins working at his drawing again.
Glancing to Cord, I see her mouth the word snake; she shivers, making a disgusted face. Cordelia’s always had a fear of snakes. Weirdly, though, she’s fond of spiders and had a pet tarantula when she was in eleventh grade.
I laugh softly. Then I lower myself beside the sandy-haired boy, hands on my knees, and nod toward his drawing. “Is that your field notebook there?”
His eyes—the same green-gold eyes that his mother has, that I have, that my mother had—light up behind his glasses, as if a switch has been flipped. “I draw bugs in it, and sometimes fish. We went to the aquarium and…” Dropping the pencil to the ground, he begins flipping through the notebook’s pages. “Here it is! Look!” He presents me with a scrawl that might be a crab, or a hand, or a tree. “I saw an octopus!”
“Oh, how exciting,” I smile at him, regarding the drawing with interest. Well, he drew eleven tentacles and colored the flesh with scribbles of yellow-green crayon, but I guess the sketchy creature does resemble an octopus, now that I have some context. “You know, I kept a notebook just like this when I was a little girl.”
“I know. Mummy told me.”
I peer over my shoulder at Cordelia; she’s beaming down at the two of us with an expression that can only be described as glowing. “Look at you guys, like peas in a pod.” She sniffles a little, quickly swipes at the corner of her eye. “It’s just… I’ve waited five years for this moment. I’m so happy that you’re here, Alex,” she says, adding quickly, “even if it’s only for a temporary stay.”
“I’m happy I’m here, too,” I tell her, standing up to wrap my arms around her in a long, tight hug. Her hair smells of wood dust, along with a faint hint of jasmine perfume—our mother’s perfume, I realize. Drawing back, I smile at my sister and my nephew, feeling more content than I have in a very long time. “What do you say we take this junior explorer out for lunch somewhere? I don’t know about you guys, but I’m starved.”
Jack springs to his feet, the notebook falling from his lap to the grass, abandoned just like his pencil. “Could I have macaroni and cheese?” he asks, looking hopeful in the bare, wholehearted way that only a child really can. “And chicken nuggets?”
“Of course, kiddo.” I ruffle his hair, resting a hand on his shoulder. “I don’t exactly have a kitchen, and I haven’t checked out the local eateries yet, but I’m sure we can track down some mac ‘n’ cheese for you. Ready to go, sis?”
Cord smiles at me, nodding her head as she begins to aim for the house. “Let me make myself presentable. Be back out in a minute. You two get better acquainted while I’m gone—and stay away from that pond, young man,” she calls, as the back door closes behind her with a sharp-sounding click.
I shift my gaze toward the vacant lot adjacent to my backyard. There are small orange flags separating the two spaces, but no fence, nothing to keep Jack out should he become curious enough to explore. The pond Cordelia mentioned, roughly the size of a hotel pool, is near the back of the property. Dragonflies skim its surprisingly clear surface, and cattails line its muddy bank.
Jack falls down to the ground again, scooping up his notebook and pencil, peering all around—up, down, left, right—as if he’s determined to find something, anything, worthy of a sketch.
I sit down cross-legged beside him, idly pulling up bits of dead grass.
I’ve never been comfortable with children, have never, for a moment, wanted any children of my own, but I’ve adored Jack Lavalier since I saw his first photograph, taken at the hospital right after his birth. I’d sent Cord a Turkish blanket and some yellow booties as gifts, and tiny, red-faced Jack was wearing both the blanket and the booties in the picture. His eyes were wide open: he looked half-fascinated, half-shocked. Something happened in my chest when I looked into his newborn eyes, and that same something is happening right now, as I watch Jack’s five-year-old hand clutching at the pencil, making clumsy lines on the wrinkled white page.
I draw in a breath to ask him about his adventures, to ask him to describe the treasures he’s unearthed in Toronto, his hometown, but he pauses in his sketching and looks at me with such eerie, unexpected intelligence that I close my mouth and tilt my head at him, waiting, curious, for him to speak.
But once he does speak, I wish I had interrupted him and veered his train of thought in another direction. Because, in his little-boy voice, he very earnestly tells me, “Auntie Alex, there’s a ghost in your house,” and then returns to his sketch of a desiccated leaf.
I remain still, watching him, unable to summon a response or even move, though my neck muscles have begun to ache. Auntie Alex, there’s a ghost in your house. I haven’t told Cordelia about what happened last night—and, to be honest, I never intended to. Though she's practical-minded and, for the most part, very down to earth, she has always had a passing interest in paranormal novels and somehow acquired a Ouija board when we were growing up—until our mother found it and made her throw it out with the trash. If I mentioned the staircase sighting to her, she’d be too eager, too excited; she’d want to explore every nook for more unexplained activity. She’d want to buy another Ouija board to contact the ghost and learn its history.
I only want it to go away.
Its presence makes me uneasy. It makes me doubt…everything. It makes me wonder if I know anything for certain at all.
Biting my lip, I still Jack’s drawing hand with my fingers; he glances up at me, surprised, and says, “Don’t be afraid.”
“What?” I feel my skin grow clammy, and my heart skips a beat. “I’m not… I’m not afraid.”
“She won’t hurt you, Auntie Alex.”
“Who won’t hurt me?” I whisper, shaking my head. I try to swallow, but my throat is too dry.
Jack’s attention returns to his notebook. He draws some jagged lines on the leaf that I assume to be veins, sighing softly. “Bess,” he says, as if that were obvious, as if I should have known, and then asks, “Can I get a milkshake, too, Auntie Alex? Chocolate. Chocolate’s my favorite.”
---
Yawning, I tug at one side of the comforter as Cordelia tugs at the other, pulling it taut across the inflated air mattress. It’s nearly midnight, and it’s been a long, full day of restaurants, shopping, and playgrounds, capped off by a brilliant display of fireworks over Niagara Falls. Jack is already fast asleep, curled up like a baby fox in his Batman sleeping bag spread out on the floor.
I sit down on the cushy air mattress with a sigh, smoothing my hand over the velvety soft beige blanket. We stopped at Target in the afternoon to stock up on essentials—toilet paper, a mop, a broom, feather dusters, liquid cleaners, laundry detergent, flashlights and batteries, gummy worms (for Jack), and warm flannel sheets and faux down blankets. The comforter on my own bed is striped, gray and black.
Despite its small size, Cordelia chose the bedroom next to mine as sleeping quarters for herself and Jack, rather than the big master bedroom at the top of the stairs. “This one feels cozier,” she said, when she stepped into the room where—according to Marie—Godrick’s mother had lived and, unfortunately, died. I didn’t mention that to Cordelia. And, as far as I know, Jack hasn't shared his eerie knowledge of the ghost in my house with his mother yet, though I'm bracing myself for the inevitability.
My sister sits down on the mattress beside me, pats my hand, and offers me a tired smile. “Jack loves you,” she says quietly, nodding toward her dreaming, messy-haired kid. “I mean, he's always idolized you—his adventurous Auntie Alex—but now that he's met you, I'm afraid he won't ever want to go back to boring old Toronto with me.”
“Well,” I say, considering, “I could use a pint-sized cohort on my digs, to squeeze into the nooks and crannies I'm too big for.” I gaze at him fondly. “I think we'd make a good team.”
“You would,” Cordelia agrees, chuckling. “But don't suggest it to him. He'll take you seriously. I swear, that kid is five going on thirty. He wants to grow up entirely too f
ast.” She arches a brow at me. “Remind you of someone?”
I widen my eyes in faux innocence.
“Come on, Alex. You were driving Dad's jeep by the time you were eleven. And you were kissing girls in the baseball field dugout before you reached junior high.”
“Shows what you know,” I laugh. “My first kiss was with Shelby Maxwell in second grade.”
“Second grade?”
“Mm. She made the first move, actually. Told me she'd trade me her dinosaur sticker for a kiss-on-the-lips-no-spitting. And who am I to turn down a dinosaur sticker? It was holographic.” I offer my sister a sly look. “I guess I always have been in kind of a rush to 'grow up.'” I make air quotes with my fingers. “But for his sake, I hope Jack enjoys his childhood while it lasts. It would've probably done me some good to play more.”
“Yeah, you never quite got the knack of playing.” Cordelia smiles, shaking her head. “You used to build organizer cubes for your rock collection out of your Legos.”
I grin. “While you made unicorns and lopsided castles.”
“Speaking of lopsided castles...” She nods at the room around us. “We're going to turn this place into a palace, you know.”
I shrug noncommittally. “I don't need a palace. Just a house that I can sell.”
“Beautiful houses sell faster.”
“Well,” I smile at her, “you're the expert. My real estate fate is in your hands.” I stare at the walls thoughtfully; then Cordelia yawns. I pat her knee, gazing into her sleepy green eyes. “All right. Enough chitchat. See you in the morning, sis.”
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