by Keta Diablo
"She must be. Both times I’ve seen her, she begged me to use the mirror to help her. She looks sad, heartbroken." A tear escaped the corner of one of her eyes. "Destroyed."
His head spun. While he’d heard lots of ghost stories, this one made his skin crawl. Most people, when they sought help from the Tremayne Agency, were scared. The fear made their voices higher-pitched and their speech faster. Not with Anna. She spoke about the woman as if she was real. Someone to be pitied instead of someone to be frightened of. "Has this ever happened to you before?"
"The dreams, like I told you, have been happening since I had scarlet fever but I’ve never been moved by an object like this mirror."
"Mrs. Wemberly gave it to you?"
She nodded. "She got it second-hand and thought it should belong to me."
The whole situation was weird and he was itching to settle into his office chair with a stack of agency manuals on the desk in front of him. "Does she know about your dreams?"
"She does. She has a gift of her own."
"What’s that?"
"Certain objects make her feel things."
It was just too much. His boring life in Reno had imploded in a matter of days. "You believe her?"
"Absolutely."
He had no reason to think that Anna wasn’t all there. She’d shown no signs of impairment. She wasn’t crazy. At least he didn’t think she was, but it bore watching. "Why don’t you take the rest of the day off and rest?"
"While that’s very kind of you, I’d rather work for my keep."
He rose. "Don’t go back downstairs until you’re feeling well."
"I won’t," she said. She smiled but beneath she looked tired. "I promise."
"See you in a couple of hours." He pulled the door shut behind him.
* * *
An hour later, dressed in her new perfectly fitting yellow frock and straw hat, Annabelle closed the door and headed downstairs to the office. The new getup gave her a dash of confidence and despite the fainting spell, she had a spring in her step. The black kid leather, side-button boots added a couple of inches to her height and the pink lipstick made her lips look large and plump.
She felt like a vastly improved version of herself.
While she didn’t feel quite like herself yet, she thought the work might give her time to think about how to help the woman in green.
Cleaning the one-room office wasn’t exactly demanding work. Since her mother’s death, she’d learned how to keep a house and this place was much smaller than the shack she’d shared with Papa. The sun was different here in Reno and she loved the way the yellow light slanted into the front window, making the planks on the floor shine with an amber glow. Less than an hour after she’d arrived, she’d swept, mopped and dusted all the furniture. She was in the middle of organizing his dime novels by release date when he placed his hat on his head and rose.
After she was satisfied it was dust-free and ready for customers, she took a couple of the agency manuals off one of the shelves and sat down in the chair behind his desk. The worn book was called "Handling Hauntings: The Agency Way." From the first paragraph, Annabelle was hooked. Not because the book was so good but because it was so wrong.
Dead wrong.
For the past four years, she’d spent her dream life among the dead and this book was totally and complete rubbish.
On page twenty-seven, the manual said that the only way to contact the departed was through a complicated ritual that used beeswax candles scented with sandalwood, a vial of rainwater and a silver coin.
That was news to her. Especially since she’d been contacted both in dreams and through a second-hand mirror.
The image of the woman in green flashed through her mind again. If only she had some clue as to the woman’s identity, she might be able to offer some help.
Had the hand mirror belonged to the woman? Were those initials hers or was the fancy object simply a way to communicate? And why had nothing happened until she looked into the mirror?
Annabelle rose and pulled another manual from the bookshelf. Communicating with the Departed: A Primer.
The book probably wouldn’t tell her anything she could use but she was at sixes and sevens. She had no idea how to help the woman and no idea what might happen if she didn’t.
* * *
Cole walked to The Blade, determined to solve the case well before Preston Astonbury made it to Reno. After the sounds he’d heard last night, he intended to prove that the noise had a rational and logical explanation.
Even if his heart and his gut told him he was dead wrong.
In the bright sunlight of early afternoon, The Blade looked even more deserted than it had last night. The emptiness suited him because he planned to go over the building with a fine-toothed comb.
He started on the front porch. After running his hand along the railing, he examined every plank on the floor. Nothing was loose or damaged. He looked under the porch and saw no evidence of animals making a home beneath it. There were no trapdoors, no secret stashes of gold or cash.
Convinced the sound wasn’t coming from the front porch, he stood and looked out at the street. The only sounds he heard were the normal ones: the jingle of spurs, the neighing of horses, the clickety-clack of buggy wheels.
A typical day in Reno.
He pulled the key, the one Katherine Busbee had given him, from the pocket of his coat and unlocked the door.
Totally still, he stood in the center of the floor and listened.
Nothing.
Only a fly buzzing past him in a dizzying circle.
If there really was a ghost in The Blade, he had no idea how he was going to get rid of it. After completing all the required courses and working alongside other agents back in St. Louis, this would be the first time an actual ghost was involved.
For now, he was going to treat it exactly as he would a normal investigation.
Turn over every rock, look under every chair and over every doorframe.
It took him nearly three hours but he swept the entire building from top to bottom. Cole checked every corner, every closet, behind every table, under every chair and he found nothing out of the ordinary. Nothing but spider webs and tiny shards of broken glass.
He sat down at one of the circular tables near the bar and pulled out his notepad. There was either a gap in the numbering scheme of the room or he’d missed a bedroom. It was too much to hope that the secret to the haunting lay in that room and as soon as he walked in, he would solve the mystery of the god-awful sound and collect his paycheck. He hoped anyway.
Rising from the table, he walked up the stairs and scanned the dark hallway, counting each door as he went. Tucked into the corner of the second floor, the room took advantage of the helter-skelter architecture of The Blade. At the door to Room 3-B, he paused. The doorknob was cool to the touch and he wrapped his palm around it and took a deep breath before turning it.
He stepped inside and closed the door behind him.
The room was like all the others. Although each one had a slightly different look, a newer coverlet or an extra mirror, they all had the same bone-aching sadness, a loneliness so deep there was no word to describe it. He stood at the window and looked out over the rooftops of Reno. In the far distance, he saw the snow-capped mountains and he wondered if the woman who worked here had looked at them, too.
Beside the window, there was a rickety dressing table, the white paint chipping off in large flakes. Her things were still arranged in neat lines. Powder, cream, lipstick. A couple of necklaces, a few shiny things that she might have put in her hair. Nothing out of the ordinary. It could have been any woman’s toilette, anywhere in the country.
It was as if she’d walked downstairs and she’d be back any minute. That part was probably accurate. Mrs. Busbee hadn’t mentioned that any of her girls had quit, just that they’d refused to work until the ghost was banished.
Something about the room pulled at him, like a strong current. Cole looke
d around again, trying to take in every detail but he couldn’t quite figure out what was tickling his whiskers. He wasn’t leaving until he figured it out.
He started with the armoire, moved to the dresser and then to the shabby nightstand. Everything looked cheap, ordinary. Exactly like the things he’d expect to find in the room of a soiled dove. On the bedside table, there were a couple of books. He flipped them open to the title page and found that both of them were inscribed to Sally.
He felt terrible about snooping through a woman’s personal possessions without her permission but in this case the stakes were high. He was quite sure that the woman, whoever she was, would be too relieved when he solved the case to complain about the particulars.
But the trouble was he wasn’t finding anything.
He was going to have to dig deeper.
It was tucked into a corner of the backside of the headboard. He tugged the small, white envelope loose and sat down on the bed to read it.
August 1875, San Francisco
Dearest Julia,
I wish you could see this place. A golden city, filled with buildings that remind me of the continent. It’s like all the dust and grime of the West has been magically scrubbed away and a golden city has been revealed. There’s every kind of food, every kind of store. The only thing bigger and grander than the churches are the jails. If you were here, I’d buy you a new dress and take you to the opera. You wouldn’t believe a place like this was just on the other side of the mountains. I’ll be back in Reno by September and we’ll start making plans for forever. We’ll honeymoon in San Francisco, taking daily walks along the Pacific.
All My Love,
G—
While this letter might belong to the current occupant of this room, it was highly unlikely. Not only was it six years old, it was addressed to Julia.
Although he wasn’t sure it had anything to do with the trouble that had caused The Blade to close temporarily, he tucked the envelope into the inside pocket of his duster and rose. He’d read it again when he got back to the office to make sure he hadn’t missed anything important. He was nearly to the door when the room went cold.
In May, in the middle of the afternoon, Reno was anything but cold. It wasn’t the dry, crackling heat of August but the temperature was inching toward eighty and in this room, which faced south, cold was the last thing he should’ve felt.
Maybe he’d lost his sense of direction and a breeze was moving through the room. His eyes darted to the window, wondering if it had been left open or if there was a crack in the wavy glass but it was closed tightly.
The door, too, was closed just like he’d left it when he entered the room.
Cole tried to ignore the cold fire that shot up his spine and nested in the crown of his head. It tingled the same way it would have if he’d thought a cougar was hiding behind the bed.
Once again, that old memory of a cougar’s scream filled his ears.
He might not believe in ghosts but he knew fear.
The room was empty yet it didn’t feel that way.
Cole took a deep breath and reminded himself that he was a reasonable, logical man. That terrible keening last night had made him doubt himself. Nothing more. He was the only one in the room, of that there was no doubt.
He chewed on his lip and edged his mind back onto the straight and narrow.
In order to solve this case before Preston Astonbury rolled into town on the newest locomotive on the Virginia Truckee Line, a shiny black Baldwin named Empire, Cole had to focus on the facts.
There’s a logical explanation. There has to be. There will be.
Pivoting on one heel, he looked into the stand mirror opposite the window. It was a well-made piece of furniture, not what he’d expect to see in a room like this. It was an expensive extravagance and he wondered about how it came to be in this room. He walked over to it and ran the tip of his index finger along the smooth finish. Mahogany. Intricately carved. Not a speck of dust on it.
The mirror belonged in one of the bedrooms of one of the mining baron’s in Virginia City. Not here.
It might seem like a small detail but something in his gut told him that it was an important part of the puzzle.
He was learning the hard way that he really shouldn’t go around mirrors.
* * *
Annabelle was halfway through Communicating with the Departed: A Primer when Cole came back to the office. He placed his hat on the rack beside the door and leaned on the sofa. His masculine scent, the spicy sweetness of Bay Rum, tickled her nose again and she tried to ignore the pull to move closer to him.
"Learning anything?" His grin revealed two perfectly symmetrical dimples.
"That these manuals are nothing but poppycock, complete and utter rubbish." She placed the book on the desk. "Who’s writing this stuff? Certainly not anyone who’s ever actually seen a ghost."
"There’s no such thing as ghosts. I’ve solved twenty-seven cases and none of them involved anything remotely close to a ghost." There was a hard edge to his voice, one she hadn’t heard before and it gave her pause.
She’d known he was a skeptic but the idea that an agent for the Tremayne Agency didn’t believe in ghosts at all was hard to process. "So you’re a liar? You take people’s money and don’t take care of the spirits who haunt them?" The question came out of her mouth before she gave it any real thought. It wouldn’t be the first time her mouth had gotten her in trouble.
"I’m not a liar." His face went red. "I do honest work for honest pay."
"Does the boss know that you’re a skeptic?"
He looked as if all the air had gone out of him and he shook his head. "No, he doesn’t."
"I could help you on cases," she ventured. "The ones that involve real hauntings."
"Look," he said, a patronizing smile on his face. "I understand that you believe they’re real, but they’re not. It’s your imagination playing tricks on you. You’re a delicate woman in a difficult place. The fainting spell you had earlier probably had a lot more to do with heightened emotion than it did with some mysterious woman in green."
"How dare you!" Blood rushed to her face, her fair complexion betraying her. "Just because I’m woman doesn’t mean I don’t know what’s real and what isn’t."
"I only meant to say that ghosts defy logic."
"So do men," she quipped. "But here you are telling me what’s what."
Even though he narrowed his eyes and tried to look stern, a grin spread across his face. "You might look delicate, but I am beginning to suspect that I have a real spitfire on my hands. It’s a good thing I’ve always wanted a sassy wife."
Chapter Five
"I’d like to propose a deal," Annabelle said the next day. Papa had always said she was too mouthy for a woman but now that she was alone in Reno without even his protection, spotty as that was, she had no other choice. If she was going to get back to Kentucky anytime soon, she needed to make some money.
She sat on the sofa across from Cole’s desk. After arranging her dress and tucking a loose strand of hair back into the loose bun, she looked up through her eyelashes at him. "I’d like to be an agent."
"It doesn’t work like that."
"But your ad in the paper said that you were looking for agents." She pulled the ad from her bag and placed it in front of him. "Right here and you even said so yourself."
By the way he bit his bottom lip, she knew she had him there. "But you don’t meet the requirements."
"Who’s going to tell?"
He exhaled. "I’m an honest man."
"Then why haven’t you called my father?"
"Honesty can sometimes be a matter of perspective." He took a cheroot from the top drawer and lit it. Fragrant, blue-gray smoke filled the small office. "I’m not comfortable with you investigating cases."
"Why not? Am I too much of a girl?"
"That has nothing to do with it. Tremayne has several very successful female agents."
"Then why won’t you
give me a chance?"
"Because it’s safer for you to stay in the office until your father stops looking for you. If you’re bustling about Reno, he might spot you."
She hadn’t thought of that. Hiding her identity was still new to her. She looked down at her yellow dress. While it was more beautiful than anything she’d ever owned, she wasn’t entirely sure it was enough to convince her father that she was someone else. He’d see right through the rouge and powder and her hair, even when it was wound neatly in a bun and hidden under her hat, would be a dead giveaway if a lock fell loose and framed her face. "We could show him the marriage certificate."
"We could. If he was kind enough to come back here and look at it before he forced you onto a coach headed for Virginia City."
Annabelle hated feeling so vulnerable. She wondered how many of her hens had already been butchered and tossed into the dinner pot. The thought made her sick to her stomach. "I can’t hide forever."
"No but you’ll have to hide long enough for him to forget he’s looking for you."
She hoped she’d be in Kentucky by that time. "Maybe you’re right."
"I am," Cole said. "Put on your wedding band and let’s go down to The Lick Skillet and get some lunch. It’s about time Reno realizes I’m a married man."
A delicious shiver raced through her body. She’d never given much thought to marriage. She’d been too busy avoiding Papa’s frequent blows and trying to keep the two of them fed. When her father had announced his intentions to marry her off to Paul Cheever, it had soured her on the institution. But now, considering the man standing in front of her, maybe marriage wasn’t so bad.
* * *
Cole had never been one to make friends easily and that hadn’t changed when he’d opened the office here. He’d always been more interested in books and newspaper than athletics or social sports. Being a Tremayne Agent was a curious thing. He was certain that most folks in town knew who he was and what he did, but they pretended not to unless they needed to engage his services. No one believed in ghosts until they believed their house was haunted.