by Tamara Berry
He seems slightly taken aback. “Well, of course I do. Why wouldn’t I?” He leans closer even though his voice doesn’t lower any. “In fact, that’s the only reason I mentioned it at all. From some of the things Fern has told me . . .”
Once again, I’m back to carefully calculated silence. I’d love to hear some of the things Fern has told him, but I don’t necessarily want him to know that.
He straightens again. “He’d do anything for the family, that boy. He’s loyal. Well, stands to reason he’d have to be—he was born and bred here.”
“They were good friends growing up, weren’t they?” I ask. “Nicholas and Thomas?”
Cal looks pleased at my having filled in the blanks of his somewhat obscure speech. “Like brothers,” he agrees.
I think of my own brother, Liam, so angry at the world, so angry at me for making what I can of it. I think of my sister, too, who hasn’t felt an emotion of any kind—at least, not the kind I’m capable of understanding—in over a decade. As complicated as my relationships with them are, there’s not a whole lot I wouldn’t do for either of them.
Even murder?
This time, I can’t tell if the voice is Winnie’s or if it comes from somewhere deep inside me. The answer, however, is one hundred percent my own.
Yes. Even murder.
Enlightening though the realization is, it doesn’t bring much in the way of clarity. Family loyalty is a strange thing and, as my instincts prove, a powerful one. But who is loyal to whom here? Is Nicholas preserving the house for Rachel’s sake, or his own? Is Thomas so attached to the Hartfords that he’d resort to killing a man to protect them, or is he just another in a long line of victims to their villainy? And where does Rachel fit in their schemes?
The continued seriousness of the conversation seems to be palling on Cal, as though being anything but congenial is a physical trial. I’m feeling rather wearied myself, which is only natural when all of my suspicions have been turned on their head.
“Thank you, Cal,” I say as I extend my hand in a gesture of goodwill. “I appreciate you taking the time to warn me. You have a high level of extrasensory sensitivity for a man of your age.”
His grin spreads as he pumps my hand. “Do I?”
“Not everyone would be able to tap into the castle’s emotional vibrations the way you have. You’re aware of undercurrents even the Hartfords seem to have missed, despite their long tenure here.”
“I am, aren’t I?”
Cal hasn’t yet let go of my hand, still moving it up and down in a hearty grip that’s likely to leave me feeling sore for days. Which is why it’s such a surprise when the movements stop, his palm clasping mine with sudden force. “Madame Wilde, if you want to leave this place, I can make it happen.”
“What?” I ask, taken aback. I try to extract my hand from his grip, but I’m caught in its crushing power. “What do you mean?”
“I know the inspector asked you to stay until they find out who belongs to those bones, but I know people. I have friends.” He pauses. “I can get you safely out of the country, no questions asked.”
It’s a strangely generous offer, especially coming from a man I was planning on publicly accusing in just a few short hours, and I can’t help being affected by it. Like my first evening here, when he surprised me with snack foods, Cal’s kindness is both unexpected and comforting.
“But what about Xavier?” I ask, even though the ghost is the least of my worries right now. “I can’t just leave the Hartfords at his mercy.”
He finally relinquishes his hold on my hand, dropping it with one last squeeze. “No, of course not.”
“Besides, I’m a woman who sees things through to the end,” I add, though I suspect I’m not convincing Cal so much as I am myself. “There are too many unanswered questions for me to feel comfortable leaving now.”
It’s nothing more than the truth. Unanswered questions seem to be all I have anymore.
“A woman with a work ethic,” Cal says with a nod of approval. “Can’t argue against that.”
I think that’s the end of it, our interview closed and a chance for me to investigate this room more thoroughly for séance purposes, but Cal allows himself one more serious moment first.
“If you change your mind, Madame Wilde, all you have to do is say the word. I can have a chopper here within the hour.”
Chapter 23
By the time the entire Hartford family enters the parlor, the gothic wonderland effect has taken hold. What my decorations haven’t supplied, atmosphere has; there’s nothing like poor lighting and drafty breezes to make even the most cheerful house seem haunted.
And this house, shadowed with death and shrouded in mystery, is hardly what one would call cheerful in the first place.
“Please, come in,” I say, inviting Cal, the four Hartfords, and Thomas across the threshold as if welcoming them to my home rather than their own. Of course, they quickly quash any feelings of superiority I might be feeling with their invariable comments on the changes I’ve wrought.
“Did she add more cobwebs to this room?” Fern asks with a shudder. “Just when I thought this place couldn’t get any worse . . .”
Rachel leaps to my defense. “I think it’s gorgeous—like a haunted bordello. I can’t believe you did all this in one day, Eleanor.”
“I only hope she didn’t permanently remove the Gainsborough,” Vivian mutters to no one in particular.
Cal is the last to offer his insight. “Well, look at that,” he says in a voice that booms off the walls despite my addition of various scarves and sheets. “I barely recognize the place.”
As if to reassure himself that I haven’t, in fact, magically exchanged one centuries-old room for another, he yanks at the corner of a scarf, pulling down a strip of fabric and all five of the thumbtacks holding it in as he does. “Hard to see with all this fluff dancing around, though, if you don’t mind my saying.”
As a matter of fact, I do mind, but I paste a bland look on my face and invite him to sit at the table in the center of the room instead. In true séance form, I’ve arranged the furnishings around the outside of the room so they’re out of the way. All that remains in the center is a round table covered in a blood-red velvet damask cloth I discovered in the linen cupboard. I even managed to weight the edges at various intervals with fishing sinkers from the garden shed. They have a handy way of tickling knees and causing my audience to take sudden fright.
“Why are there eight chairs around the table?” Rachel asks after counting the seats under her breath. “There are only seven of us. Is someone else coming?”
“I imagine it’s reserved for Xavier,” Nicholas murmurs. “How predictable.”
He’s right, of course, but I don’t appreciate the way the family’s running commentary is ruining the mood. “He is the guest of honor, after all,” I say with some severity.
Rachel gives a delighted gasp and drops to the chair closest to her. “Can we please leave this one next to me open? I want to be the one he sits next to.”
Fortunately for me, she’s chosen the chair I intended to keep empty for our mythical final guest. I try not to do too much in the way of seating arrangements and making decrees when planning a séance like this, since they tend to alert the crowd to a pre-arranged agenda. One way to accomplish this is to use the most uncomfortable-looking seat for the ghost and to set it up as far away from the door as possible.
It worked, of course. It almost always does.
“I’ll ask everyone to place their cell phones and other electronic devices in here,” I say and pass around a wicker basket to hold their various pieces of tech. “We want as pure an environment as possible.”
Everyone complies as the basket is moved around. Only Cal seems strangely loath to part with his phone.
“I’m expecting a call,” he explains, casting a lingering look at his screen. “Business, you know. It doesn’t stop, even for the dead. I’ve been saying so all week.”
/> “Oh, are you planning on leaving us soon, Cal?” Vivian perks up at this, all pretense of talking in whispers and setting the mood now laid to waste. “What a pity. We’ll miss you.”
“He’s not going anywhere, Mother.” Fern winds her arm through Cal’s and draws him to the nearest chair. “He’s just making a joke.”
Cal rubs the side of his nose and flashes a guilty look at his beloved. They, like most of the people in the room, have dressed as I requested, wearing formal wear that would work equally well at a wake or a wedding. Only Thomas has opted to stick to his usual attire, his jeans and plaid now a familiar sight.
“Now, love. You know I’m going to have to get back to New York eventually.” Cal’s guilty look transfers to me. “No offense, but this isn’t the kind of house party I’m used to. Ghosts and bones, you know.”
Nicholas’s eyebrows lift. “Believe me, Cal, when I say this is new territory for all of us.”
Determined to take hold of this séance before it gets any further out of control, I snuff the tapered candles I have located around the room’s perimeter. In order to keep all eyes where I want them—namely, on me—it’s important to cloak the rest of the room as much as possible. A single table lamp is the only light in the room. I place it behind me so that it silhouettes my figure, which is shrouded in a black lace tablecloth I’ve cut down into a makeshift mantilla. The effect is only slightly marred by the fact that it smells like mothballs.
Without waiting for anyone to comment on that, too, I sit opposite the empty chair. Next to me, Fern lowers herself to her own seat, sniffing at the theatrics that cast her so firmly in a supporting role. “This had better work,” she says. “I’m getting mightily tired of playing Xavier’s games.”
Since I assume she’s using Xavier as a euphemism for Madame Eleanor, I don’t answer. Especially not when Nicholas takes the seat on my other side.
“Please bow your heads and take the hands of those seated next to you. It’s important that the chain remains unbroken.” I keep my voice low as two palms are slipped into my own. Fern’s hand is soft and cool; Nicholas’s is strong. He also shifts so that the entire length of his leg presses against mine, his foot brushing against my toes.
I think for a moment that he’s flirting with me—using my temporary distraction to lay an amorous assault on my nether limbs—but his low chuckle corrects that assumption. He’s just checking to see if there are any levers or bells I plan to hit with my feet, the jerk. He’s loving this.
Well, two can play that game.
“I’d also like you to link feet at this time,” I add. “Cross your ankle with your partner’s and leave your feet flat on the floor. This will strengthen the chain and also ensure that no one is doing anything to disrupt the spirits.”
“Touché,” Nicholas says under his breath as he follows my command.
It’s not the most comfortable way to sit, all of us tangled up like a game of Twister, but it’s a fairly common trick I employ when facing a restless, cynical crowd. Table thumping and lifting with the knees are no longer used by any medium worth her salt, but those tend to be the main two things people look for.
“Now, I’m going to ask all of you to channel your thoughts toward the other world. Not to Xavier, specifically, but to the ethereal realm he inhabits. We’re not trying to make contact with him so much as with the afterlife in general. He’s one small part of a vast network. We must first access the network before we can access him.”
“Like dial-up,” Vivian says knowledgeably.
Across the table, Rachel snickers.
“Bow your heads and clear your minds,” I command.
The bowing of heads is how I plan to get things started. I can make the moment last for as short or as long as I’d like, and according to my best guess, I have about a minute before the cold air is going to move through the room.
My usual methods are similar to what I did at the Levitt’s house, with an air conditioner on a timer, but Thomas never stopped by to unlock my door, so I’m sadly air conditioner-less. I had to make do by copying the methods used by our bird bandit.
There was no evidence of a pigeon’s nest inside the parlor chimney, but there is a damper on the flue. Anyone who wanted to propel pigeons into the room could have easily put the birds in the chimney ahead of time and attached a string to the damper. One quick, discreet tug, and the flue would have been opened at just the right moment.
At least, that’s how I would have done it. The fact that there was a broken bit of twine underneath an unused log at the back of the fireplace only helped convince me. Someone in this room has a deep creative streak.
I can’t tug a piece of twine without giving myself away, but I did open the flue and then shove a piece of wadding in there, precarious enough that it shouldn’t stay up for long. As soon as it falls out, the cold from outside should pull all the air out of the parlor, which is warmer than usual thanks to my hard work heating it with a toaster oven I borrowed from the kitchen.
Before the cold fully hits, a low hum fills the room. It begins at the doorway and echoes back toward our table, courtesy of a little voice-throwing trick it took me about two years and a lot of YouTube videos to perfect. The result is that a cold air creeps from one direction, the voice from another. They meet in the middle of a table, causing a shiver to move down more than one spine in the room.
“It’s happening!” Rachel cries in a soft voice. Someone—Vivian, I think—shushes her.
I allow a tremor to move through my body, the same kind of jerky spasm that happens right before a person falls asleep. Without allowing the low hum to stop, I slump in my chair. Depending on how alarmist you are, you might either think I’ve fallen asleep . . . or that I’ve died.
There’s no stopping the outbursts after that.
“What happened to Madame Eleanor?”
“Is she—?”
“Has she reached Xavier?”
Jerking upright once again, I crunch down on the pill I’ve been holding under my tongue. It contains about a quarter of a teaspoon of the liquid from inside the glow stick Nicholas and I found in the kitchen catch-all, piped into a vitamin capsule from Vivian’s medicine cabinet. It’s not the most delicious substance in the world, but the bitter tang results in a convincing glow inside my mouth and over my teeth.
And that’s it, really. With a wide-eyed look of wonder, I greet the table with a serene smile and an air of innocence.
“Hello.”
“Xavier?” Vivian leans forward and squints. “Is that you?”
I release a bark of laughter that’s bitter around the edges. “Who’s Xavier?” I ask with a slight British lilt. A week in England, and I can feel the upper-crust tones taking over already. “The name is Powell. Walter Powell.”
I can feel a ripple of confusion move through the circle. It’s evident in jerking hands and low murmurs, in the way disbelief wars with excitement. Sitting patiently, I wait for the excitement to win. It usually does.
“Walter?” Fern eventually asks. As expected, she doesn’t sound pleased at yet another manifestation appearing to steal the spotlight. “Who’s that supposed to be?”
“Another ghost?” Cal grunts. “I hope you’re not as bad as that other one.”
“How did you die?” Rachel asks. “Was it murder? Are you the bones?”
I don’t want to give too much of the story away, so I recite the message from the note left in my floorboards. I don’t have it with me anymore, since it, like most of my belongings, is still trapped in my room, but the gist of it isn’t hard to paraphrase.
“The dead walk at night. The spirits ever fight.” I allow a strong shudder to shake my frame. “Those who betray will step into the light.”
Beside me, Nicholas grows perfectly still. My eyes are busy doing this freakish rolling thing that always gets people’s screams going, so I can’t gauge his reaction. With one last jerk of my head, I release a preternatural howl and drop the hands of both Nicholas an
d Fern.
“Someone is trying to push me away,” I cry in the voice of Walter Powell. “Someone else is here.”
“Xavier!” Rachel gasps.
I bring my hands to my head as though in intense pain. In reality, there’s one last deception for me to bring into play. I hadn’t been kidding when I told Nicholas that I was a tricks of the light and wind power sort of girl. Nor was I bluffing when I assured him I could pull off a séance even without my bag of tricks.
The sole lamp, so efficient in the way it’s casting light around the room, isn’t just there for effect. I replaced the bulb so that it’s supporting a much higher wattage than the voltage allows—a dangerous wattage, in fact. It’s either going to fizzle out or, assuming the electricity around this place has been updated from the knob-and-tube wiring of the 1930s, cause a breaker to trip. Either way, I get a nice burst of darkness.
It takes a little longer than I’d have liked, but the breaker trips after another ninety seconds or so, plunging the room into darkness. With the heavily covered windows and door closed tight, it’s the kind of darkness that nightmares are made of. Since I don’t want to get caught in the fray of people running around and tripping over furniture, I stay exactly where I am, slightly slumped so that I’ll look plenty exhausted by the time I’m roused back to awareness.
Which is why it comes as such a surprise to find myself yanked up and out of my seat within seconds of the curtain coming down. Even more surprising is the fact that I’m being yanked by a tight bolt of fabric around my throat.
I think, at first, that it’s a side effect of the natural mayhem; until someone gets to a window or flings open the door, there’s bound to be a little thumping and bumping taking place. But my airways don’t open as I’m pulled out of the chair and dragged toward the back of the room by my mantilla. I realize, too late, that either end has been crossed over my throat and is acting as a noose being pulled from behind. My heels kick ineffectively at the floor, and I grab at the fabric, trying to loosen its grip.