[Anthology] The Paranormal 13- now With a Bonus 14th Novel!

by Dima Zales

  "Perhaps it wasn't Jacob who told me about your father's collection of books on demonology, perhaps it was someone else." I hoped I sounded convincing but I suspect I came across like a flighty female. "The fact of the matter is, I have an interest in demons and I'm hoping you'll be kind enough to allow me to make use of your library to further my studies."

  Culvert pushed his spectacles up his nose. "You're interested in demons?"

  "Yes. It's a natural extension from my other activities, don't you think?"

  His mouth twisted in thought. "I suppose so. Is there any demon in particular you want to study?"

  "Shape-shifting demons."

  He paused. "Well that's a coincidence."

  "Why?"

  "A book on shape-shifting demons was stolen from my library just last week."

  4

  Jacob and I exchanged glances. The coincidence was too close for my liking. One week a book on demonology is stolen and the next a shape-shifting demon just happens to be summoned from the Otherworld? Unlikely.

  "Stolen!" I said to Mr. Culvert. "By whom?"

  George Culvert drummed his fingers on his knee, sighed, drummed some more then finally answered me. "I'm sad to say that it must have been one of the servants. I can see no other explanation. No one enters during the day without Greggs the footman letting them in and the house is locked up at night. It must have been someone who lives here and since Mother and I do not need to steal it … " He sank back into the chair, his shoulders slumped, his head bowed. He looked like a deflated balloon. I knew what it was like to have a trusted servant steal from you. Bella's predecessor had taken the payment from one of our séances before we'd had a chance to put it away. Celia and I had been devastated when we saw the money fall out of her apron pocket.

  "Perhaps it wasn’t a servant. The book could have been missing for some time," I said. "Months even. If it's an obscure one and your library is large, you wouldn't have noticed it. You probably had any number of people come into the house in that time."

  "Good point," Jacob said with admiration.

  Mr. Culvert shook his head. "The missing book is large with a beautiful red leather spine. It made quite a hole in my shelves and I noticed it missing immediately. I questioned the servants of course, but none owned up to the theft. However I'm quite certain it was one particular maid. She has been with us for only a month, and as the newest member in the house, I'm afraid suspicion naturally fell on her. Besides, the girl was very nervous when I questioned her."

  "She's still with you?" I asked.

  He nodded. "I couldn't dismiss her without evidence and I never found the book despite having the housekeeper search the room the girl shares with two other maids."

  "We'll speak to her later," Jacob said.

  I'd been thinking the same thing but wasn't sure if involving George Culvert any more than he already was would be a good idea. On the other hand, the more we spoke to him, the more I liked him and thought he could be trusted with all the information we knew. He might even prove helpful.

  And I had a feeling he wouldn't think I was mad for talking to a ghost.

  Before I could think further on the matter, he stood and offered me his hand. "Would you like to come with me to the library, Miss Chambers? We might as well get started on your research topic."

  I took his hand and heard a grunt from Jacob. I casually raised my brows in his direction, challenging him to tell me what bothered him so much about the courteous action, but he merely grunted again and turned away. We both followed Culvert down to an enormous room on the ground floor filled to bursting with books. The library took up two entire levels and every spare space of wall was covered in shelves crammed with books of all shapes and sizes. Each wall had a ladder to reach the higher volumes, and two big arched windows framed with heavy crimson drapes allowed light into even the furthest corners. For night, cast iron gas lamps topped with crouching angels were bolted to the vertical sides of the shelves and were also positioned on pedestals beside most of the chairs. The mahogany furniture looked heavy with solid, stumpy legs ending in clawed feet, so unlike the spindly pieces in the drawing room. There were two leather-inlaid desks, one small and one large, and deep reading chairs upholstered in red leather that looked soft enough to curl up in. A small fire burned low in the enormous hearth to keep the chill away and the thick rug covering most of the floor gave the room a warm, welcoming feel. It was my idea of heaven.

  "You like it." Mr. Culvert seemed genuinely pleased.

  "It's wonderful," I said on a breath. "Are they all works dedicated to demonology?"

  "Not all. Only half of that wall there." He indicated the wall opposite the door, the only one where the shelves weren't interrupted by windows or the fireplace. "The rest are volumes on other supernatural phenomena, and there's a few novels and medical texts too. My father's tastes were eclectic."

  Even Jacob looked impressed. He went straight to the demonology books and scanned the shelves. "This might be a good one to start with, Emily."

  I came up beside him and extracted the book he indicated. "An Introduction to Demonic Phenomena."

  Culvert pulled out a chair at the large central table. "Would you like to sit while you read?"

  "Thank you, Mr. Culvert."

  "Please, call me George."

  I smiled at him. "And you shall call me Emily."

  "That's a little informal on such short acquaintance, don’t you think?" Jacob said, suddenly standing behind me.

  I wanted to retort that he and I had dispensed with formalities on an equally short acquaintance but I couldn't alert George to his presence. Not yet. And I suspected Jacob would tell me the normal rules didn't apply to him anyway because he was a ghost.

  I sat in the chair—I was right, the leather was soft and welcoming—and flipped to the table of contents. Jacob returned to browsing the shelves while George closed some books he had open on the other side of the large desk and tidied his notes.

  "George!" came a shrill voice from outside the room. "George, do you have your nose buried in a blasted book again?" A striking woman dressed in a burgundy satin gown with excessively puffed sleeves and a cascade of ruffles on the skirt strode into the library. She stopped abruptly when she saw me and fixed me with a glare that could have frozen the Thames in summer. "Oh. You have a guest." She didn't sound pleased although she seemed surprised.

  I lifted my chin and gave her a sweet smile in return. It was a tactic I'd seen Celia use at our séances. Whenever she was faced with a skeptical audience member, she would charm them. It worked most of the time. "Emily Chambers," I said, rising. "Pleased to—."

  "I wasn't addressing you."

  I plopped back down in the chair. So much for charm.

  I felt rather than saw Jacob move up beside me. "Would you like me to pull the pins out of that ridiculous hair style and poke them one by one into her ear?"

  I laughed then tried to stifle it but only ended up making a horrid snorting sound. Mrs. Culvert's glare—for I'd guessed it to be her—turned even frostier. I could not, however, quaver anymore, not after Jacob’s offer. She did indeed have a rather ridiculous hairstyle, scraped back so tightly it made her eyes slant. The ridiculousness was amplified by her tiny hat with the very tall feathers shooting straight up from the crown in a V-shape. I'd not seen anything like it.

  George placed a book on the table and gave me an apologetic grimace. "Mother, this is Miss Emily Chambers. She was a friend of Jacob Beaufort."

  "Beaufort!" Mrs. Culvert's eyes widened and she suddenly smiled. It was dazzling and changed her face from one of severity to friendliness. The transformation was remarkable, if insincere, and I could see she must have been a beautiful woman in her youth. She had the same well-defined cheekbones as her son and a luscious, wide mouth with perfect teeth. "Such an illustrious family, and such a lovely boy was poor Jacob. So handsome and charming. Clever too. Cleverer even than you, George." This she said with a satisfactory gleam in her eye. George
merely shrugged.

  "Maybe she's not so bad after all," Jacob said.

  "Shame he died," Mrs. Culvert continued with a sigh. "And in terribly mysterious circumstances too. I hear his poor mother hasn't quite got over it."

  I glanced up at Jacob. A muscle pulsed high in his jaw and his fingers dug into the leather backrest of my chair. The indentations would have been noticeable to anyone who cared to look. I went to touch his hand to obscure the marks and calm him but he vanished. He reappeared near one of the long windows overlooking Wilton Crescent, his straight back to me.

  "My dear Miss Chambers," Mrs. Culvert said, coming up beside me and standing in the exact place Jacob had vacated. She continued to smile but I now thought it stretched, almost gruesome. "How well do you know the family? Could you introduce me to Lady Preston I wonder?"

  Lady Preston? Who on earth was she?

  "Mother," George warned.

  "I believe they throw the most lavish parties," she went on. "Or they used to. There haven't been any parties there since poor Jacob died." She stopped smiling for all of a second then the beam returned, harder than ever. "Perhaps a party is exactly what they need to take their mind off their loss. What do you think, Miss Chambers? We can have one here. I'll send the Prestons an invitation but if Lady Preston refuses you simply must speak to her and insist. Tell Lord and Lady Preston their daughter needs to enjoy herself again. It’s not wholesome to keep a young lady of spirit away from Society. She should be enjoying herself, attending balls and teas and meeting young men." Her gaze flicked to George, then back to me again. "She must be about your own age, hmmm?"

  If I was following the conversation correctly—and that was an If with a capital I—then the Prestons were Jacob’s parents and Jacob was nobility!

  Good lord, and I'd been addressing him by his first name all this time. I turned to him but he'd disappeared again. Thank goodness. Apart from the awkwardness of knowing he was so far above me on the social ladder that we might as well have been on different ladders entirely, I was also beginning to feel sick on his behalf having to listen to the awful Mrs. Culvert prattle on about his family in such a heartless way.

  "Mother," George said again but to no avail. She was completely ignoring him now. It was as if he wasn't even in the room.

  "Thank you for the invitation," I said although I wasn't sure I was actually invited without the Beauforts or Prestons or whoever they were. "However I must decline. I'm otherwise engaged that evening."

  Her smile wilted like a lily in the hot sun as my snub hit home. She hadn't given me a date.

  Her cold stare turned on George and I felt sorry for him. To his credit, he didn't flinch. He was probably used to her. "I'm going out for the rest of the day." She strode to the door, her broad skirts rippling like waves in time to her vigorous walk.

  "Sorry," George said when she was gone. He glanced around the room. "Is he terribly mad now?"

  All the blood drained from my face and plunged to my toes. "Uh … who?" I felt like a fool for even asking. He knew about Jacob. Of course he did. He was a clever man and I was hopeless at lying and keeping secrets. "He's gone," I said, answering my own question.

  "Tell me when he returns so I can apologize."

  "I didn't realize it was that obvious. How did you work out he was here?"

  He smiled. "You are the pre-eminent spirit medium in London, you used his name as an introduction to me and you kept looking at certain spots about the room as if you were listening to someone speak. Oh, and you picked out the most useful book on demonology without even browsing the spines first."

  I bit my lip and the blood returned to my cheeks with a vengeance. Now I knew why I was a terrible liar—because being caught out gave me such an awful feeling that I preferred not to risk it, hence the lack of practice. "I'm awfully sorry, Mr. Culvert. It was very wrong of me to mislead you."

  "You agreed to call me George."

  "George, as I said, I'm very sorry. Can you forgive me?"

  He grinned and he had the same beautiful smile as his mother, although his was by far the more spectacular because of its sincerity. "Of course, although I'm not sure there's anything to forgive. Not telling me about Beaufort's ghost was understandable. I imagine not everyone is so … believing in your abilities."

  "Not everyone, no. Not even all of the people who pay us to perform séances in their drawing rooms. I'm afraid we are still very much seen as a novelty act. A harmless entertainment for ladies."

  "You're not entirely thought of in that light, let me assure you. Some are beginning to take you seriously. I'd heard about you and your sister at one of my Society for Supernatural Activity meetings. One of the members had witnessed a séance you conducted and was convinced you were genuine. I wanted to see for myself and tried to convince Mother to have you perform here for her friends while I watched on but she'd have none of the paranormal. She said she'd had enough of that nonsense when Father was alive."

  "Then I'm glad we finally get to meet in this way." I indicated the bookshelves, the luxurious furniture. "This is a far more interesting setting. Perhaps one day, after this is all over, I can come back and summon a spirit for you."

  "Thank you! That would be fascinating." He frowned. "But what do you mean, after all this is over? Does it have something to do with shape-shifting demons and why you want to study them?"

  I nodded and finally told him the story about the demon's release. "Dear God," he murmured when I'd finished. He removed his glasses and rubbed the bridge of his nose. "This isn't good. Not good at all."

  "Jacob told me it's very dangerous."

  He nodded and put his glasses back on. "It is. But … didn't he tell you everything about them? Why do you need to read books?"

  "It seems he's not privy to some details. How is it directed, for instance? Is there another way to return it to the Otherworld? Which cultures know of its existence? That sort of thing. We hoped you might be able to help us while we wait for the amulet peddler to return tomorrow."

  "Of course, I'd be happy to. My own knowledge of the shape-shifting variety is somewhat lacking but I'll tell you what I know and then we'll search the books."

  "Excellent. Let's see … ah yes. Jacob thinks it can only be killed by a weapon that has come from the Otherworld. But what kind of weapon?"

  "It must be a blade of some kind—sword, dagger, axe, that sort of thing. Oh, and the demon's head must be severed from its neck by the blade."

  Ugh. "Next question, how does it harm people?"

  "Through good old fashioned physical violence, but of course its capabilities are dependent on the form it takes. In other words, if it changes into a snail, it cannot claw someone's heart out. No claws on snails you see."

  "Perhaps it could slime them to death."

  He laughed, loudly. "Very amusing." He continued to laugh much too vigorously. I hadn't thought it that amusing, particularly considering the gruesome nature of the conversation but I didn't say so. He seemed to suddenly notice I didn't share his enthusiasm for my own joke and his laughter died. He cleared his throat and said, "Did you know it could kill ghosts too?"

  "Kill ghosts? That doesn't seem entirely logical. Ghosts are already dead."

  "What I meant was a demon can extract a ghost's soul." He tapped his chest. "From here. The soul can be quite literally pulled out. Not by us of course."

  Why didn't I know this? Why hadn't Jacob told me? "And what happens if a ghost's soul is removed?"

  "You don't know?" I shook my head and he pushed his glasses up his nose. "Well it ceases to exist at all, in any realm," he said. "It has no energy, no cognitive abilities. It becomes … nothing."

  Oh. No. To become nothing would be, well, a fate worse than death to use a cliché.

  "So your friend Jacob must be careful," he added.

  "Yes," I said weakly. "Extremely." This information put Jacob’s involvement into an entirely different context—this assignment could destroy him.

  "Now, that's
all I know. Shall we each find a book and begin?"

  We spent the next three hours looking through books, making notes and cross-checking facts. Jacob didn't return but I didn't mind. I suspect I would have found it difficult to concentrate with him in the room. He was rather distracting. George and I worked quietly until a footman interrupted us with lunch, which George had requested to be served in the library.

  "What's he like?" George asked, in between bites of warm ham. "Jacob Beaufort's ghost, I mean."

  I paused, the fork half way to my mouth. Jacob was handsome, magnificent, intriguing and compelling. I found it hard not to look at him when he was in my presence, and hard not to think about him when he wasn't. "He seems nice," was all I said. Gushing about a ghost, particularly to a man, seemed foolish. It was times like this I wish I had a female friend of my own age to talk to. Celia wasn't quite the understanding type when it came to discussing men, dead or alive, unless it was with a view to matrimony and even then she would want me to temper my descriptions. "I was surprised when you said Jacob didn't really notice people at school though," I said. "He seems very aware of others." He'd definitely noticed me. My face still burned just thinking about his intense stares.

  George shrugged. "Perhaps he's changed since his death. I hardly knew him but I do know that his awareness of others did not extend to those outside his circle. How did he die, by the way?"

  "I was hoping you could tell me. We haven't discussed it and I don’t want to ask … just in case." I put my fork down, no longer hungry. It had just struck me that I'd hit on the reason why Jacob was so solid, so real to me—perhaps he'd taken his own life. I'd never met a ghost who had, so maybe solidness was a characteristic of those spirits. I swallowed past the lump lodged in my throat. The thought was so awful I didn't want to think about it let alone voice it.

  "You think he … ?" George shook his head so vigorously I worried it would roll off his neck. "Even from my limited knowledge of him I can tell you Beaufort wasn't the sort. I've never met anyone so full of life, so content with his lot. Not to mention he had so much to live for."