The Secrets of Ghosts

by Sarah Painter

  It would’ve been so much easier if Violet had just told her what had happened. Katie felt bad for her frustration. Violet was bored and had, most likely, suffered some horrible fate all those years ago. She probably deserved some excitement and happiness in her afterlife. She rubbed her grainy eyes and drained the rest of her coffee. Perhaps if she read about the Beauforts as a family she’d stumble across something.

  An hour later, Katie was none the wiser. The Beauforts were an ancient and moneyed family, connected closely to the royals — although not as close as they’d like. Apparently they’d tried all kinds of manoeuvres to get close to the throne back in the day.. Katie liked that. Amoral, but ambitious. At least they’d known what they’d wanted in life.

  She researched The Grange, too. It’d been a family home of the Beauforts for many years before, although the family moved out en masse in 1987. The house was left empty for a number of years before Patrick got hold of it. He turned it into a hotel six years ago.

  Katie rang Patrick and got the name of the person he dealt with when buying the hotel. ‘You’re not going to ask them any strange questions, are you?’

  ‘No,’ Katie lied. ‘Just investigating. You know.’

  Patrick had bought the house through Strakers solicitors and the seller was a Mr Roberts who, it turned out, had only set foot in the place once. He had bought it on behalf of his client, a Texan oil magnate called Boon who wanted an unusual anniversary present for his fourth wife. Katie couldn’t find a contact for Boon, although she did find him listed on the board of several companies.

  Katie searched for news stories about the house or surrounding area during 1987 but didn’t find anything. Of course, Violet would know. It would be simplest to just ask her. She didn’t know why Gwen was so against her talking to ghosts. It was fun.

  *

  The next day, Katie went into The Plum Suite and called Violet. There was nobody there, no cold spots and no sign of Violet’s doll’s house. Katie tried not to feel disappointed. She tried to tell herself that it would be a good thing if she turned out to have had a dose of heatstroke after all.

  As she locked the door the hairs on the back of her neck suddenly stood up.

  ‘Oh,’ Violet’s voice said. ‘It’s you.’

  ‘I wish you wouldn’t jump out like that,’ Katie said, forcing herself to look at Violet. When she wasn’t with Violet, she couldn’t stop thinking about her, hoping to see her again, but the first few moments were still alarming. She was looking at a dead person. A ghost.

  The alarm wasn’t helped by the fact that Violet was looking particularly spook-like today. She was floating a foot or so above the hall floor and looked cross. ‘I would say “boo” but you’re no fun,’ Violet said.

  Katie swallowed her panic; the fear made her snappy. ‘I’ve been reading about your family. What made them all leave in eighty-seven?’

  Violet shrugged elegantly. ‘I haven’t the faintest idea.’

  ‘Okay. What were they like, the people who lived here? After you, I mean.’

  Violet looked at her oddly. ‘I don’t know. I died, you know.’

  ‘But you’re here now.’

  ‘I died and the next thing I know I’m waking up to the sound of the world caving in. A loud, grumbling, roaring.’

  Katie frowned. ‘What—?’

  ‘It was machinery, of course. Not a dragon or an earthquake, but everything felt very odd and fuzzy for those first few months. It might’ve been a digger. That man. Mr Allen. He’d hired one to tear up the vegetable garden. If my father had been alive, he would have had him shot.’

  ‘You don’t remember the years in between?’

  ‘I didn’t know there had been years, not at first.’

  Katie tried to digest this. ‘Were you frightened?’

  ‘A little bit, perhaps.’

  ‘I’m sorry.’

  ‘It’s hardly your fault,’ Violet said, suddenly sounding a lot more grown up. ‘Besides, the fear was small and didn’t last. It was almost as if I felt fear because I thought I should. As soon as I stopped forcing it, it went away.’ Violet looked sad at this memory.

  Another question had been bothering Katie. If Violet couldn’t touch things, who had tipped the urn off the balcony? ‘Are there other people like you here?’

  ‘Ghosts?’ Violet said. ‘I don’t know. Maybe.’

  ‘Are they here now?’

  Violet gave her a funny look. ‘Why? Can you see some?’

  ‘No. But something threw a vase at my friend’s head and I couldn’t see that. I wondered if they were invisible, or something.’

  ‘I’m invisible,’ Violet said. ‘Usually, anyway. Sometimes little children can see me and animals, I think, but you’re the first grown up.’

  Katie took a deep breath. ‘These other ghosts. Is it possible one of them tried to kill Max?’

  Violet tapped a lip. ‘I couldn’t really say. I’m pretty sure there are other spirits in this house — I hear them sometimes. Banging. Strange music. And there’s a very cold wind in the servants’ old hallway.’

  Katie couldn’t believe her ears. The ghost was being haunted. ‘But you haven’t met any?’

  ‘Nobody like me. There might be some weaker spirits.’ Violet looked thoughtful. ‘They’re more like echoes. Barely here.’

  Katie’s skin prickled. She looked around, wondering how many echoes were in the room with them. She didn’t like the thought that there were things she couldn’t see.

  ‘I wish I could touch things,’ Violet said. There was longing in her face and Katie tried to imagine what it must be like, drifting through this world, unable to touch anything, affect anything.

  ‘Do you—?’ Katie began but Violet disappeared.

  ‘Thanks, Casper,’ Katie muttered. She sat on the bed and stared around the room, trying to feel if there were any other spirits hanging around. Gwen would say that she needed to relax, but Katie didn’t know how that was possible. In this world, a hundred and one things could hurt you, and that was before she knew about the ghosts.

  Katie took the back stairs to the kitchens and bumped into Max coming the other way. He was wearing black shirt and trousers and had a name badge that said ‘Lee Smith’.

  ‘Where are you going?’

  ‘Just looking around,’ Max said. ‘Investigating.’

  ‘Barton hasn’t checked in, yet, you know.’

  ‘I know that.’ Max smiled at her. ‘But I’m still looking for my watch, too. I’m a man of mystery with many missions.’

  ‘Not very mysterious,’ Katie said. ‘You seem a bit forthcoming for a con man.’

  ‘But you said you could tell if I was lying and I’m hoping you’ll decide I’m a good guy and give me my watch out of the goodness of your heart.’

  ‘I don’t have it.’

  ‘But maybe you’ll tell me if you find it. You know, now that we’re friends and colleagues.’

  Max’s brazen confidence was difficult to deal with. And he was standing too close, which made thinking especially difficult. Katie settled on, ‘Does this kind of approach usually work?’

  ‘No idea,’ Max said. ‘I usually lie my socks off but I told you. New leaf.’

  Katie was a couple of steps above Max so their faces were level but if she continued she’d have to squeeze past him on the narrow stairs.

  As if reading her mind, Max turned to the side, flattening himself against the wall to make room. Just when she’d decided he was an untrustworthy lech, he did something like that.

  Not allowing herself to think about it too much, Katie angled her body to face his and kissed him.

  The reaction was immediate. Max grasped her shoulders and kissed her back. She opened her mouth and the kiss deepened. Her body’s reaction went from zero to sixty in the half a second. Katie had never had such a visceral reaction to being touched before. It made her feel wildly awake. Alive. She clasped her hands behind his head, pulling him closer, making the kiss harder and deeper.<
br />
  Max swung her around so that she was against the wall and pressed up against her. Her body sprang to life, a thousand tiny points of sensation, every single one of them wanting to be touched.

  Max had one hand on her neck, the other roamed across her body, trailing fire wherever it went. Katie arched her back, pressing herself against him, and a tiny sound escaped from her mouth. It was a small moan and she instantly felt self-conscious. What was she doing necking like this on the stairs? She was embarrassing herself. She felt cold. Max’s hands on her body felt suddenly heavy. He was still touching her, but the sensation was gone. His tongue in her mouth was suddenly just a lumpen thing. Stuart had been right: she wasn’t very sexual.

  Katie concentrated on getting the feelings back. She kissed Max, trying to remember how to move her lips. She thought about Gwen and Cam, barely able to keep their hands off each other. The passion and affection fizzing between them at practically every moment. Katie wanted that. Maybe that was what she should’ve been training in all these years — forget magic. Although it would be beyond weird to talk to Gwen about sex. She was too much of a mother figure. It took Katie a moment to realise that Max wasn’t kissing her any more. His face was a couple of inches from hers and when she met his gaze, he tilted his head and smiled tentatively. ‘Are you okay?’

  ‘I’m fine,’ Katie said. Katie’s honesty policy allowed for white lies and she didn’t want to hurt Max’s feelings. It wasn’t his fault she was dead from the neck down.

  ‘I kind of lost you there, didn’t I?’

  ‘I was thinking about my aunt,’ Katie said.

  Max let go of her. ‘That’s not as sexy as you might think.’

  ‘Sorry,’ Katie said. ‘It’s not you. It’s me. That was very nice. Thank you.’ And then wanted to slap herself in the head. ‘Very nice’? ‘Thank you’? She tried a quick smile. ‘I’d better get on.’

  ‘Fine.’ Max stepped back. ‘No problem.’ He turned and took the stairs, two at a time. No doubt desperate to get away from her.

  *

  Katie had been so busy with Violet and Max at The Grange, and then with reading over the notes she’d made on the Beaufort family and Googling ‘ghosts’ and ‘helping ghosts’, that she made herself late for her training session with Gwen. She walked towards End House, her head swimming with the overload of information. She’d decided she wasn’t going to talk to Gwen, though. She wanted to solve the mystery on her own and then say, ‘Ta-da, look what I did.’ She was going to prove to Gwen that this was her power, that she could cope on her own.

  Gwen was out on the road and walking away from the house when Katie arrived.

  ‘Sorry, honeybunch. Rain check on tonight?’ Gwen hoisted the rucksack higher on her shoulder and started down the road. ‘I need to visit Fred. His garden is getting out of control.’

  ‘I’ll come, too,’ Katie said. Some fresh air and a bit of exercise would do her good after being hunched over her laptop for hours. ‘It’s not like I’ve got anything better to do.’

  Gwen shot her a sideways look. ‘Aren’t you seeing anyone? It’s been ages since Stuart. You should be out there, having fun.’

  Katie did not want to talk about her love life. ‘How is Fred, anyway?’

  Gwen looked away. ‘Not so good. He’s pretty much housebound, now. His eyesight has pretty much gone and his legs are too painful to walk far.’

  ‘Can he even see his roses?’ Katie said once they’d got to Fred’s terraced cottage. She was looking at the massive flower bed that covered most of the front garden, and remembering, abruptly, how much she hated weeding.

  ‘In his mind, he can,’ Gwen said.

  Katie thought about asking why Gwen was spending her evening tending roses that Fred Byres was probably never going to see. That was her aunt, though. Caring. Giving. She was a natural earth mother, really, which was why it was odd she didn’t have kids of her own.

  ‘We need to add this to the mulch.’ Gwen pulled a plastic bag with the words bone meal on the side out of her rucksack. ‘And pull up any weeds, check for greenfly, signs of distress, the usual.’

  Katie put one hand on her hip. ‘Distress?’

  ‘Brown leaves, sickly petals.’

  Katie shook her head. ‘They’re just flowers.’

  Gwen gave her a long, thoughtful look, until Katie started to feel uncomfortable. Instead she grabbed the bag of fertiliser and began opening it.

  ‘You’ll need scissors,’ Gwen said, but Katie had already gouged a hole in the bag with one of her nails and was now ripping it open. ‘What is this stuff, anyway? It stinks.’

  ‘Bone meal.’

  ‘For real. I thought that was just the name. So, roses eat bones. I knew there was a good reason I didn’t like them.’

  ‘You mean, besides the thorns and their old lady image problem.’

  ‘I’d forgotten about the thorns,’ Katie said, picking up one of the thick pairs of gardening gloves off the floor. ‘Nasty sneaky bastards, luring you in with their pretty flowers and then, wham, spiking you.’

  ‘Worse than spiking you,’ Gwen said. ‘They hook you. Ever tried pulling a rose thorn out of your skin? It’s not just painful, it’s bloody difficult.’

  ‘Why the hell are they so popular?’

  ‘Beats me.’ Gwen shrugged. ‘I don’t care why Fred likes them, just that he does. While he’s under my care I’ll do whatever I can to ease his pain. Believe me—’ Gwen stopped weeding and stretched for a moment ‘—this is the easiest of it.’

  ‘I’m sorry about Fred,’ Katie said, lifting up the head of a yellow rose to check underneath the leaves for aphids.

  ‘Thank you, honeybunch,’ Gwen said. ‘And thank you for helping me with this. I know it’s not your idea of a good time and I know things aren’t progressing exactly the way you want them to, but I’m sure things will work out in the end. Sometimes the only way forward is through.’

  Katie thought about telling Gwen that she’d made progress, that she was going to solve the mystery of Violet’s death and give her eternal peace, but she hugged the information to herself. She shook her head. ‘You’re such a wise woman, these days. Do you ever say anything that isn’t, like, totally profound?’

  ‘Cheeky sod,’ Gwen said, smiling. ‘Heed my warning, grasshopper.’

  After they’d finished in the garden, Gwen rummaged in the front pocket of her rucksack. ‘I almost forgot. I’ve got something for you.’

  Katie was arching her back, trying to stretch out the ache. Weeding was hard work.

  ‘I made you this.’ Gwen held out a tiny silk pouch. ‘Thread it on a chain and wear it. It should keep spirits away. Stop you being bothered by any more ghosts.’

  ‘Violet doesn’t bother me,’ Katie said. ‘She’s actually quite nice—’

  ‘She’s a spirit. She shouldn’t be here.’ Gwen held out the pouch. ‘Just take it. Please.’

  ‘Okay.’ Katie tucked the pouch in her pocket.

  ‘You don’t know what she wants,’ Gwen said. ‘She might seem nice, but her essence is kept here for a reason. That reason might not be good.’

  ‘I hear you,’ Katie said. She had absolutely no intention of warding off Violet. She was going to help her. It was her purpose. Her power.

  Gwen was looking at her as if she knew exactly what she was thinking. ‘Just be careful.’

  ‘It’s fine,’ Katie said. After all, even if Violet did turn out to be a bad spirit or whatever Gwen was worried about, it wasn’t as if she could do anything. She couldn’t touch things. She was completely harmless.

  Gwen looked at her watch. ‘It’s time for Fred’s dinner. Do you want to join us?’

  Katie shook her head. ‘I can’t. I’m going out with Anna.’ It wasn’t true but she couldn’t face seeing Fred when he was so ill. Another sign she wasn’t cut out for the life she’d chosen. She pushed the thought away.

  Gwen was looking at her as if she knew she was lying. Which she probably did. ‘Fair enough
,’ Gwen said, but she didn’t look happy. ‘I can’t make you.’

  ‘I know it’s part of the deal, but he’s got you. I don’t need—’

  Gwen held up her hand. ‘You don’t have to explain to me. Nobody likes this stuff. Nobody finds it easy.’

  As Katie made her way back to her flat, she couldn’t shake Gwen’s unspoken words. Nobody found this stuff easy, but if she wanted to be a Harper, she had to deal with it anyway. That was part of the package. For the first time, Katie felt a pang of uncertainty. What if she didn’t want to follow in Gwen’s footsteps, after all?

  *

  That night, Katie wrapped a teaspoon each of lemon thyme and dried valerian in a square of cotton muslin and put it underneath her pillow. She’d been too afraid to try any of the remedies for nightmares in the journal Gwen had given her, but, now that her power had appeared, maybe she was going to get better at spells again. Maybe everything would just magically unlock.

  The journal was red leather and Gwen had presented it to her with great ceremony when she ‘came of age’ on her seventeenth birthday. Gwen had always said that seventeen was more significant than eighteen because at seventeen you could pledge your life to another or drive a potentially lethal machine, both of which were far more significant than being able to buy a pint of lager.

  Maybe, four years later, she was finally going to be able to use it properly.

  Katie felt calmer than she had in weeks. Everything was going to be all right now. She was on the right path. She had come into her power and all she had to do was to embrace it. She fell asleep easily, one hand tucked underneath her pillow to feel the comforting softness of the cotton muslin and the herbs inside.

  *

  She was back in The Yellow Room at The Grange. She could see Mr Cole, whole and healthy, moving around his room. Part of Katie knew she was dreaming, that this was the same dream she’d had before, but it wasn’t strong enough to change the story. She watched helplessly as Oliver Cole undid the buttons on his shirt. He turned and caught sight of her, his mouth falling open in an expression of terror.