by Lisa Shea
I looked to Marc.
He nodded.
I motioned to Gertie and Prudence, and in a moment the four of us had stepped outside the library door.
I said, “We’re going to go talk to Bryane now. I don’t have any sense of how dangerous it might be to try to transport Sarah’s spirit to see Anna, or vice versa. I want to make sure we talk with an expert. We don’t want to risk either of the girls’ well-being.”
Gertie nodded. “It could be that each one is somehow tied to their location. Whatever it costs, you figure out what the safest course of action is.”
Prudence drew me into a hug. “Thank you for all your help on this, Amber. Sarah is a special little girl.”
She turned to Marc. “And thank you for all your assistance, Marc. I’m sure this isn’t easy on you.”
His face remained still. “I’m happy to do what I can. Good day, ladies.”
Prudence’s words rolled around in my head as we crossed the main living room. It occurred to me that Prudence and Gertie were contemporaries of Josephine’s. Undoubtedly they’d had far more interactions with each other during Salem’s various charity events.
Did they know something about Marc that I didn’t?
We came out to the front porch. Sarong Vixen was there waiting, her mouth wide in full charm mode. She handed Marc a folded-up piece of paper. Her voice had turned sultry. “Just in case you’re free some evening.”
He took it from her and stuck it into his pocket.
I’m sure she watched us the entire way down the walk and around the corner.
I found I was grumpy at her behavior. What kind of a hussy did she think she was, throwing herself at a married man like that? Yes, he was handsome. I was coming to see that with every passing hour. But he was taken! And who cared if his wife was already having an affair? He deserved the chance to fix things if he wanted to.
But did he?
Another part of me was grumpy that he didn’t tell Sarong Slut right out that he was married. He was raising her hopes by taking her note. Now she’d wait by her phone dreaming of that call.
Or did he actually intend to call her? Was he going to cheat on Alex? Not that she hadn’t done it first, but it was still wrong. Or had he been cheating all along, and that’s why she turned to Roger? Had it been his fault –
Marc asked, “Is everything all right?”
I blinked. I’d forgotten that I was walking alongside a police detective. He was experienced at reading faces and moods.
My cheeks flushed crimson with heat. “Just … just lots to think about right now. Knowing the right thing to do.”
He didn’t look as if he wholly believed me, but he nodded. “And you think that Bryane Browninge will have the answers we need?”
“Well, I know at least that he has experience with spirits. Real experience. Half of the popular paranormal books out there are written by people looking to cash in on gullible readers. The authors have never even seen a spirit, never mind know how to work safely with one. It seems better to go direct to a source. To get first-hand information.”
“I agree. I’m just not sure that I trust a man who -”
We rounded the corner, and his words cut off.
I knew the feeling.
The house before us was an exact replica of Samantha and Darren’s home on Bewitched. The front was a traditional gray two-store structure on the right with a covered porch and gray shutters. On the left was a brick bump-out with a bay window on the first floor and a triangular peak complete with built-in birdhouses. An attached garage was on the far left.
The front lawn was meticulously manicured; a curved brick path lead to the front door.
Marc shook his head. “Oh my.”
I nodded. “Oh my, indeed. But you can imagine how this façade sucks people in. So many people around here love the show. The shiny-clean version of a witch who can do pretty much anything she wants. Who has a pliant high-salary husband and beautiful, talented daughter. Classic sixties escapism.”
He gave a wry chuckle. “Right. A world where blacks and Hispanics and other minorities knew their place. Where there weren’t any open gays or lesbians or transsexuals. It was ideal if you were white, straight, and upper-middle-class. For the rest of people, it could be a nightmare.”
Didn’t I know it. “Bewitched began in 1964. In 1964, three civil rights supporters were lynched by the Ku Klux Klan in Mississippi. The disconnect was fairly extreme.”
He gave a soft shrug. “And in modern times we have homeless people starving to death on the streets while for entertainment people watch reality shows of rich people living in mansions. Maybe it’s just always been that way.”
I wasn’t sure. Something about this fake house in front of me, with its representation of an idealized, comfortably-off white family safely protected from the realities of the world, made me uncomfortable.
Marc nudged his head. “Well, I guess it’s time. Let’s step into an alternative universe.”
We walked up the brick path.
Chapter Thirteen
Marc gave me one last look.
Then he pressed the doorbell.
A moment … two …
The door drew open.
It wasn’t Samantha, but it just as well could have been. Her hair was honey-blonde and shoulder length. Her makeup on her oval face was flawless. Her knee-length dress was dark blue with white polkadots.
She smiled sunnily at us. “Welcome! My name is Wilma. Bryane is waiting for you in the den.”
We followed her in. I had to give Bryane credit – he had done an admirable job of decorating the interior. From the olive green carpet to the tan sofa, from the painted white brick wall to the heavy wood furniture, it reeked of sixties sitcoms. A world where problems were simple and friends monochromatic.
Bryane was sitting behind his one-ton desk when we came into the den. A pair of heavy dark leather chairs was before it. He came around to greet us with a smile. “Amber. It’s been too long. You look absolutely beautiful.”
Despite my preparations, I blushed. I waved a hand over to Marc. “This is Marc Courtright. He’s helping me with this research.”
Bryane’s hand moved to give Marc’s a steady shake. The two men locked gazes. Bryane said, “Marc. It’s a pleasure. Welcome to my home.”
It was easy to see how Bryane did so well at his marketing efforts. If he’d been good looking in my youth, now he radiated the aura of a movie star. His thick, golden-blond hair formed a tousled mane around his head. His eyes were brilliant blue and sparkled when he laughed. His teeth were even and straight. His build was that of a soccer player – lean and well-built. He was wearing a black shirt, unbuttoned a few down from the top, and perfectly fitting slacks.
A glistening BryaneTM BrowntagleTM hung in the open spot at his neck. This was no mere $99.99 model. This was the full $29,999.99 version in platinum, inset with diamonds made from the carbon of his mother’s and father’s ashes.
When I thought of the many other ways in which $30,000 could be used to help the members of our community …
Bryane waved a hand. “Please, have a seat. How can I assist you today?”
We sat side by side. Marc looked over at me.
I drew in a breath. “Well, Bryane, we have come to you because we have a question about how spirits … work. How they connect with a specific physical space.”
He leaned forward with interest. “Ah, this is intriguing. Do you have a spirit in your bookstore, Amber? It seems the perfect place for a spirit to while away the hours.”
I shook my head. “No, not the store.”
I had to be careful here. I fully believed in Bryane’s technical ability with spirits, but I didn’t trust his mercenary nature. I needed his help – and I still wanted to keep the girls safe.
I held his gaze. “We’ve encountered a spirit whose physical body appears to have died back in the sixteen hundreds. This spirit is … well, lost, in the sense that she doesn’t remember
her family. She doesn’t know how to get back home.”
He sat back, nodding. “It happens to spirits, you know. Especially if they’re caught in a strange location. It’s hard enough for our human elders to remember all the details of their youth, and that’s usually just seventy years or so. Imagine stretching that out over hundreds of years, and imagine you are stuck in an unusual room. Those memories of your early days can become quite faint or lost altogether.”
“That seems to be what happened here. I’m trying to do research to figure out where she came from. Where she belongs. I’m guessing if I can get her back there, that she might be able to finish her transition?”
“That could be,” agreed Bryane, seeming to genuinely muse about the possibilities. “Sometimes a lost spirit just needs to get back to their home. Somewhere they feel they belong. That might ease the agitation they feel enough that they can finally make the crossing.”
He leaned forward. “But sometimes it’s not necessarily about a specific place. Sometimes it’s about a person or situation. Say a child was separated from her family, for instance. She might hardly care about a kitchen or a table – but she could care dearly about her parents. Her siblings. It could be those human connections which have her in a state of unease.”
I found Bryane a little too accurate with his examples for comfort. I wondered just what kind of a network of informants he had, and what they had figured out.
He thrummed his fingers on the table. “It could be other things, too. An event. An experience. Something they were unable to emotionally process.”
Marc said, “So sort of a PTSD?”
Bryane lit up. “Exactly! That’s exactly it. Something is unresolved in the spirit’s world and it is eating away at them from within. Even if they try to squash it down and pretend it isn’t there, it is. It is carving away at them.”
He waved a hand. “In our modern times we have techniques for coping. Therapy. Discussion. Art and music. We can work through the issues. But spirits do not have that luxury. They remain trapped in their cycle.”
I blinked. “I hadn’t thought about it like that. That it was an emotional issue which trapped a spirit in our world.”
Bryane grinned. “Listen to you. Our world. Do you think there are different worlds? Don’t you remember all our conversations?”
I blushed. I certainly did. Him and me, sprawled on a blanket on the beach, talking on for hours and hours about things which seemed so important. So incredibly important. It was as if we were soulmates.
And then he’d slept with Candy.
I said, “If you could just tell us –”
Wilma came bouncing into the room. “Bryane? There’s an urgent call on line one.”
Irritation crept into Bryane’s perfect jawline. “I’m in an important meeting.”
Wilma’s manicured finger pointed at the phone. “They say it’s an emergency.”
Bryane sighed. He turned to me. “I’m so sorry. This will just be a moment.
He picked up the phone and punched the button. “Bryane.”
He listened.
His lips pressed.
He snapped, “Don’t touch anything. I’ll be there in five minutes. You hear me? Don’t touch one thing.”
He put down the phone and stared at it.
Then he was up out of his chair. “I’m so sorry, Amber. I have to go. How about we meet for drinks at The Black Cat at two? I’ll see you then. Wilma will see you out.”
And then he was striding out the door.
I looked to Marc in surprise. “Wow, that was strange.”
He gave a low chuckle. “One of his clients was probably having trouble with her $2,999.99 BryaneTM EctoCleanerTM system. I guess you’ll have to take this up again later on.”
About the very last thing in the world I wanted to do was to have drinks alone with Bryane, but I felt guilty about roping Marc into all of this. “I guess if you’re not available, I’ll understand if –”
“Oh, I’m available,” he reassured me. “I just thought you’d rather have time alone with your ex.”
My blush reached my neck now. “Who said anything about him being my ex?”
He lifted his eyebrows.
I forgot. Coply instinct.
I sighed. “All right. Yes, we dated for a while in high school. Until he decided to use those psychic powers of his to draw in some alone time with Candy. And then it was Danielle. You get the picture. I felt like the laughing stock of the school by the time I realized what was going on. It’s part of why I moved away the moment I graduated.”
“But you’re back now?”
I nodded. “My Aunt Marilyn ran the bookstore. In the later stages of her cancer, she needed help, and I was glad to lend a hand. After she passed, it all came to me.”
“I’m so sorry for your loss.”
I nodded.
Wilma came burbling into the room. “I’ve made sure to add your drinks appointment to Bryane’s schedule, so he won’t forget. Now, please come this way and I’ll show you to the door.”
My footsteps made oval indents in the carpet as we passed. I wondered if an army of Samanthas would hurry out the moment we left to bring the home back into its immaculate state of being, ready to draw in the next victim.
Chapter Fourteen
Marc glanced at his phone. “Well, we’ve got two hours until drinks. You up for some lunch?”
My stomach rumbled, and he laughed. “All right, then. I’ll take that as a yes. How about the Sea Level?”
I smiled. “One of my favorite places. Sure.”
Our feet set in motion. The day was gloriously sunny, and I soaked it in. It was days like this which made me adore Salem. Which had me understand why those settlers back in the 1600s had chosen this coastal area to build their village.
My phone chirped.
I glanced at it. “Cassandra reports that she’s been able to eliminate three more possibilities from the list. It’s like solving a puzzle, apparently. We know Sarah was born first. Somewhere in Sarah’s nine years of life, there were at least two boys born. And when Sarah was around seven, a daughter Anna was born. Sarah died about age nine, and Anna died about age eighteen.”
“If we can just get the two of them in the same room together, I bet all sorts of new memories would flow. We might finally get the details which identify who they are.”
I gave a small smile. “Well, we might be able to find that out tonight, even without moving either girl. Last night Anna was scared off by Roger’s outburst. It could be that Anna does remember her last name, or the street she lived on, or other details. She lived to be eighteen – she might remember the first names of her parents. She’d gone past the stage of just thinking of them as ‘Mother’ and ‘Father’.”
“Even if we do find out what family they are from, our end goal is to bring the two girls to that home, I would think. Or at least to each other.”
I nodded. “That seems to be the right thing to do. But we need to do it safely. In a way that doesn’t risk their … does life seem the right word to use?”
We had reached the restaurant, and he drew the door open for me.
We stepped in.
The place had that relaxed seaside vibe that I loved so much. Stainless steel, weathered wood plank, and blue-glass lights hanging from the ceiling which gave it a nautical feel.
I smiled to Marc. “This feels like home to me.”
“Huh,” he said, glancing around.
I raised a brow. “Oh? You prefer a different décor?”
The bartender waved a hand to us, and we took a pair of seats alongside the window overlooking the marina. There was just something so soothing, looking out over the row of boats leading to the open ocean. As if the possibilities were limitless.
Marc’s gaze held trepidation.
I smiled. “What. You live in Salem and you don’t like the ocean?”
“Just not used to it much,” he admitted. “It’s over a thousand miles to an ocea
n from Laramie. There aren’t even any big lakes there. Just rivers and streams. Some ponds.”
I blinked in surprise at him. “Laramie? Like in Laramie, Wyoming?”
The waiter brought over the menus, and we spent some time perusing the menus. Marc went for the BBQ burger while I opted for the baked oysters with jalapeno, walnut, and bacon butter. We got a pair of beers to go with that. The drinks were promptly brought.
Once the waiter was gone, I turned to Marc. “Wow. I think of Prudence as being from far away, with her growing up in Providence. I was half-crazy to go to college all the way out at UMass-Amherst. But for you? I can’t even imagine the culture shock of going from Wyoming to Salem.”
“You aren’t joking,” he replied. “In Wyoming the spaces are large. High. But here in Salem? Everything’s closed in. Tight. It’s like the sky’s lower down.”
He took a sip of his beer. “It’s almost … claustrophobic, I guess. You can’t see beyond the next hill.”
I pointed out at the ocean. “But that’s about as wide open as you can get. Right there.”
“It’s not solid,” pointed out Marc. “No landmarks. No trees or buttes. Back in Wyoming, if you were to collapse on a deer trail, someone might find you. There’s hope. But on the ocean? You fall into that water, you’re lost forever.”
Denseness wrapped me. “Not always.”
His gaze shadowed. “Oh, I’m so sorry. I forgot.”
I waved a hand. “That’s all right. It’s something we all live with, around here. The danger of the sea.” I gave a small smile. “And its allure. It’s a real calling, you know. Some people just adore it. Spend every land-bound moment dreaming about it.”
His gaze went out to the watery expanse. “I guess so.”
Our meals arrived, and we fell into a comfortable quiet as we ate. Seagulls soared far overhead, reminding us of our limitations.
Marc asked, “What do you think Bryane meant by different worlds?”
I chuckled. Apparently his mind had the tendency to wander, just as mine did.
“Bryane and I used to talk about those concepts quite a lot in high school. We’d be here by the ocean for a lot of those discussions. Down on the sand, though, of course. Not in a fancy oyster house.”