by Lisa Cach
“I’ll use it myself before I let you put it on,” Case said.
“Would you?” she said in obvious relief.
“Oh, so you’ll trust it if he uses it, but not me?” Eric complained.
Megan shot Eric a look. “Do you blame me?”
He stared at her a minute, then smiled with his mouth only, his eyes flatly on Megan. “Nah, I don’t blame you. I have to earn your trust after what I did. I’m just glad you’re giving me the chance.”
Megan opened her mouth as if to speak but then shook her head and said nothing.
Case clapped his hands together to break the tension. “So, the plan is for a séance tonight?” he asked lightly. “I’m suddenly imagining old aunties wearing costume jewelry and conjuring ectoplasm.”
Megan laughed. “No ectoplasm here. I’ll put myself into a light trance, and you’ll ask the ‘spirits’—if there are any—questions that they might answer to me.”
“And this works?” he asked doubtfully.
“Who knows? You’ve heard all my doubts already, but if I’m going to get my furniture, I’m going to have to come up with something, aren’t I?”
“Furniture?” Eric interrupted.
Megan looked over her shoulder at Eric with a saucy, taunting flip of her hair. “Case will give me twenty pieces of furniture if I’m the key to making his house habitable, not you.”
“And all I’m getting out of this is free meals.”
“It’s a bet,” Case clarified. “If she loses, she has to clean and restore all the furniture in the house.”
Eric laughed. “I’ll bet you’re hoping I do a good job. So, where are the hot spots in this place? I should set up cameras there, and we’re going to want to use one of them for the séance.”
“The upstairs hall at the north end of the T seems to be one.” Case looked at Megan for confirmation.
She nodded. “But I haven’t been all through the house yet. There might be others. Looks like it’s time for an expedition.”
Eric gathered a few pieces of equipment, and the three of them left the grand salon. Case led the way upstairs, the staircases growing progressively narrower as they went up.
“The most water damage was up here,” Case said as they reached the servants’ floor with its low ceilings.
Eric pointed a handheld electric thermometer down the wall-less hallway of studs, his eyes on the digital display. “I’m not getting any cold spots.” A moment with another instrument, and he declared, “No energy fluctuations in the electromagnetometer.” He whacked its side with the palm of his hand. “The power’s going!”
Megan laughed softly. “You sound like Scottie on Star Trek. ‘I’m not getting’ any readin’s, cap’n! The warp drive’s down!’ ” she said in a bad Scottish accent. “‘We’ve got no ghoosts!’”
Case chuckled, and even Eric cracked a smile. They took a quick tour of the empty floor, then Case opened the door to the attic stairs.
As with the rest of this part of the house, he’d had to remove the rotted lath and plaster in the stairwell. “I had to replace half the floor due to rot, but it’s safe now,” he explained as he flipped a switch. Bare fluorescent bulbs down the length of the space flickered on. “I shoved all the furniture and trunks over to the other side while I did it. The water storage tank, for runoff from the roofs, is back there in the corner.” He pointed beyond the pile of furniture.
“Ohhhh,” Megan warbled as her gaze fell on the furniture. She made a beeline for the dusty mass. Her hands hovered over a chair and then a dresser, as if not knowing where to start. She looked back at him, hope in her eyes. “May I?”
“Be my guest.”
“Did you have any encounters up here while you were repairing the roof and floor?” Eric asked, walking slowly down the attic space, pointing his instruments at nooks and crannies. He looked in puzzlement at the electromagnetometer. “Huh. Working now.”
“No encounters I could swear to,” Case said, following Eric’s slow exploration. Behind them, Megan shifted furniture and made soft sounds of delight, talking excitedly to herself. Case felt as if he’d just given her a well-chosen birthday present.
“What type of stuff happened?”
“Electrical problems for no apparent reason,” he said, looking pointedly at Eric’s misbehaving device. “Tools disappearing and then reappearing elsewhere. Nothing that couldn’t happen in normal circumstances due to shorts and a lapse of attention or memory.”
“But you don’t think that’s what it was.”
“I’m not careless with my work.”
Eric glanced at him.
“Ever hear any noises up here?” Eric asked.
“Footsteps and doors closing. But the footsteps were probably the crows on the roof. The wood amplifies the sound.”
“And the doors could be drafts. Gotcha.” Eric raised his digital camera and snapped off a few shots of the empty half of the attic. He turned and took a step closer to Case and lowered his voice. “You know, there are some things you should know about Megan.”
Case narrowed his eyes, suspicion roused. “Oh? Like what?”
“Well, she puts on a good act of being an innocent victim, but—”
“Case! Come look at this!” Megan cried out.
They both turned. Megan had dragged a small occasional table away from the pile and was kneeling beside it with a wide grin on her face.
Case turned back to Eric, his curiosity about what Eric had been about to say overwhelmed by distrust of his motivations. His own voice low, Case leaned forward and warned him, “Watch what you say about Megan, Eric. I judge people on their actions, not on hearsay.”
“Case!” Megan implored.
“Coming!” He looked back at Eric. “Are we clear?”
Eric touched his brow in mock salute. “Crystal. And I trust you’ll give me the same benefit of judgment.”
Case nodded curtly and went to join Megan. “What have you found?” he asked, trying to set aside the ill temper that Eric’s words had stirred up.
“All sorts of stuff! The Smithsons must have shipped a lot of furniture from back east at some point. This table, it’s from the 1700s. It’s got some minor damage, but if I’m right about it, it could bring ten or twenty thousand at auction.”
“For that?”
Megan laughed. “That’s probably what the Smithsons thought when they put it up here to make room for all their spiffy new Victorian furniture.”
Case looked at the pile. “Good Lord. That little table could pay for new cabinets in my kitchen.”
Megan’s glee faded. “I wouldn’t feel right about taking this as one of my twenty pieces.”
He looked at her in surprise. “No, the table’s fair game, if you win.”
“Really?” Megan ran her hand slowly over the carved leg of the table. “It’s beautiful, but jeez, I think of what ten or twenty thousand could do for me and the shop…. You wouldn’t think that a tiny table could matter so much in a person’s life, would you? But it’ll change everything.”
“How?”
“I want to buy the building my shop is in. I have some money saved for a down payment but not nearly enough.”
Case’s stomach turned. “How long have you been saving up?”
“Mom and I together started saving about eight years ago. We knew the owner was getting old and would sell sooner or later. The building’s actually on the market now, and I’ve been worried sick that someone would buy it before I could raise the money.”
Case closed his eyes for a long moment. He’d taken a couple hours to talk to the Realtor, review the preliminary financial information, and put in an offer on the building yesterday. It was a good deal in an improving neighborhood, and he’d needed to act fast to beat out the three other potential buyers sniffing around. “Why didn’t you get a loan on your house for the down payment?”
“It would have stretched me too thin. And I thought I had more time. But now, if I win the bet, I can get
enough money from the furniture for the down payment. Thank God there are people out there willing to pay obscene amounts of money for side tables!”
Maybe he didn’t have to tell her about the offer. She wasn’t going to win the bet, anyway. There was always the chance his offer would be refused, too, or that the deal would fall through for other reasons. Telling her about it now would piss her off for no reason.
Business was business. The building was a good investment, and he wouldn’t let her unrealistic hopes of owning it herself stop him from buying it.
“Maybe there’s more like it in the pile.” She grinned. “It’s like a treasure hunt, isn’t it? But so far, the only other thing that intrigues me,” she said, going over to the pile and tugging a trunk away from the other furniture, “is this thing. It’s hard to resist a locked box.”
“We could break it open,” he said without enthusiasm. The fun had gone out of this game.
“Break the lock? No! I have a drawer full of old keys in my shop; something in there ought to open this. I could probably open any locked piece of furniture in the house, come to think of it.”
“There’s nothing up here, far as I can tell,” Eric said, joining them. He noticed the trunk. “What did you find in there?”
“Nothing yet,” Megan said, and got up off the ground, brushing fine sawdust off her knees. She didn’t want to include Eric in the delight of discovery she was enjoying with Case.
She immediately felt bad for the selfish thought. Maybe she was being too hard on Eric. She glanced at him with his sloppy clothes on his marshmallow frame. He hadn’t ever been malicious toward her, after all. He was just…Eric, lost in his own obsessive world, and even less skilled than she at dealing with people. “Shall we continue the tour?” she asked brightly, giving Eric a quick smile. They’d be working together, and his horrible helmet might help her win the furniture.
She still didn’t feel quite right about taking the colonial table. Maybe she and Case could split the profits. She smiled at the thought and followed Case back down the stairs.
Eleven
“I’ve seen everything on this floor except for that one room,” Megan said, eyeing the far end of the corridor with a trickle of apprehension. She didn’t want to see Ol’ Hollow Eyes again.
“Then let’s go visit it,” Eric said. “I went in all those rooms earlier, and there wasn’t any activity, but maybe it will be different with you present.”
“Delightful.”
Case put his hand on her shoulder, giving it a squeeze. She turned her head and smiled at him. It was good to have him there; it seemed that nothing would be able to hurt her.
The master suite was just as she remembered, only the strong emotions she’d gotten from it before were muted now. It was often that way for her: the first impression of an object or space was strong, but, like a noise she’d grown accustomed to, the sense of a thing faded into the background on subsequent encounters.
The bedroom with the hideous gold carpet told her nothing new, either.
Somehow she’d become the leader in their small expedition, and she found herself standing in front of the one door she hadn’t opened before, Case and Eric waiting behind her.
“This is when the shadow appeared at the end of the hall,” she said.
Eric jerked a glance over his shoulder, then, seeing Megan watching him, pulled himself up a little straighter and turned, aiming one of his meters down the hall. A moment later, he said, “I’m not reading anything.”
“Small mercies,” Case murmured.
“Amen,” Megan agreed under her breath. She put her hand on the knob but was reluctant to turn it. The room behind the door had taken on unknown horrors in her imagination, all the worse for her not having been brave enough to go into it on her first tour of the house.
It wasn’t going to get less scary for standing there, though, she grumbled to herself, and twisted on the knob.
It refused to turn.
A moment of surprise went through her, then relief. She didn’t have to go in!
She twisted again and rattled the knob, just to be sure. “It’s locked.”
“It can’t be,” Case said.
Megan stepped aside, confident.
Case put his hand to the knob, twisted, and then a clear click was heard and the door swung open. “See? Just a little sticky.”
Megan frowned, then cast a glance at Eric. He raised a brow at her. They’d come across this type of thing before, and it wasn’t always a sticky latch at fault.
Megan followed Case into the room. It was nothing like the kitsch monstrosity next door. It was like stepping back into time, to the world of a hundred years ago.
The walls were covered in faded paper of violets and ribbons. The wood floors were graced with a single large area rug, moth-eaten now. The bed, wardrobe, washstand, and nightstand were all of heavy dark wood, carved with stylized floral patterns. Several framed charcoal drawings and watercolors adorned the walls.
“It’s charming!” Megan said.
“And undamaged except for the usual insect and rodent problems,” Case said. “I saw no reason to clear it out. None of the other rooms was as nice.”
Megan walked over to the wall and leaned close to the largest of the pictures. The dirt of years obscured the glass surface, making tantalizingly vague the features of a male face drawn in charcoal. She reached up and rubbed the side of her hand against the grit.
A wave of sexual desire washed over her. She sucked in a breath and staggered back.
“Megan?” Case said, putting his hand on her shoulder.
His touch was like a bolt of lightning to a summer field, setting her on fire and burning out all restraint. She turned and threw herself at him, her arms wrapping around his neck, her mouth seeking his.
Case staggered under her assault, losing his balance and falling back onto the ancient mattress of the bed. Megan stayed on top of him, her fingers digging into his hair, her body grinding against his. He was too stunned to protest, and too stunned to enjoy it for a moment. But then his body took over, his hands sliding down to cup her buttocks and pull her against his firm arousal.
Her lips took hungry possession of his, her tongue delving deep as she made whimpering moans of frustrated desire. Her kisses trailed down his neck to the opening of his shirt, and she parted her legs over his thigh, rubbing her sex against him.
“For God’s sake, get a room,” Eric said.
The words brought Case back to the brink of sanity. Eric was standing three feet away, watching them with his arms crossed.
What the hell?
Megan moaned again and slid her hand down the front of his pants.
Case grabbed her by the shoulders and lifted her off him. “Megan! Snap out of it!”
Her pupils were wide black pools of desire, blank of awareness. She puckered and made kissing noises, stretching toward him.
Eric bent down and examined her face. “She’s in a trance.”
“Get her out of it!”
Eric shrugged and slapped her.
“What the f—!” Case cried, even as Megan twisted in his hold and sent her foot flying into Eric’s gut.
Eric doubled over and fell to the floor, gasping.
Megan’s body relaxed in Case’s hold. He watched as consciousness flooded back, her eyes widening as she took in her position. She scrambled off him, and he sat up.
“What happened?” Megan asked, her voice shaking. She touched her fingertips lightly to her lips, as if wondering what she still felt upon them.
“You went freaking insane!” Eric gasped from the floor.
“Case, did you hit him?”
“You don’t remember?”
She shook her head, but then her head stilled and her eyes went wide, her face turning scarlet. “Oh.”
“You do remember.”
She leaned away from him. “I’m so sorry! I wasn’t in my right mind. I never would have jumped on you like that if I had been.”
>
“I’m not complaining.”
Megan put her hands over her face, mortified.
“What about me?” Eric asked from the floor, sitting up and holding his gut. “I think you rearranged my internal organs.”
“Sorry.”
Eric rolled his eyes and got to his feet. “It was that picture that set you off.” He picked up one of his fallen instruments and aimed it at the picture. He shook his head, plainly not getting any readings. “Useless piece of…” he muttered, then grabbed the hem of his T-shirt and rubbed it on the picture glass. He stood back to take in his handiwork. “Decent-looking guy, if a little smarmy.”
Megan and Case got off the bed and moved beside Eric. Megan was careful not to look at Case, her embarrassment still fresh.
Attraction again stirred in Megan as she looked at the man in the drawing, but along with it was instinctive mistrust. The face was that of a young man, early twenties perhaps, his hair parted on the side and plastered into place with macassar oil or something similar, one rakish curl draped over his left brow. The artist had captured an insouciance to his appearance, his lips faintly quirked, his lively dark eyes a little too familiar with the viewer.
“I wouldn’t trust him as far as I could kick him,” Case said darkly. “I’d keep one hand on my wallet, too.”
“Oh, I don’t know,” Megan said. “I could think of worse ways to spend an evening than sitting on a balcony, having him whisper sweet nothings into my ear.”
Case scowled, and she laughed.
“Frat boy,” Eric said, frowning with dislike at the picture.
Megan shook her head. “If this picture were in my shop, it would sell to the first woman through the door.”
“And her husband would return it the next morning,” Case said.
“I suppose it’s a credit to the artist’s skill that we’re all having such a strong reaction,” she said. “I mean, separate from my reaction. That was something else.” She leaned closer, looking for any hint of a signature. “Not signed.” She stepped back and examined the other pictures on the walls. “Did you find any art supplies in the house?” she asked Case.