Amber rolled her eyes, but before she could say something the woman really deserved to hear, her father's hand landed gently on her shoulder and squeezed, not as gently--sign language for "Be quiet."
"Theo," he said. "Is everything ready? You have the keys?"
"Certainement," she said and sailed from the room.
"Better watch out, Dad," Amber whispered. "She's bilingual and I think she wants you."
"Don't start," he whispered as Pelinore returned dangling a set of keys in one hand and clutching a manila folder in the other.
"Here you are, David," she said grandly. "The keys to your dream house." She gave them to him, letting her hand brush familiarly against his, then opened the folder and turned, standing close to him so he could see the papers within. "I just need you to sign a couple more items, then we can go. Nothing to be concerned about."
"You're going with us?" David asked, as he took the folder and sat down in one of the chairs.
"It's customary. I like to walk my clients through and make sure everything's just right. If you'd prefer I didn't ... "
"No, no. I'd like that. I'm, ah, just surprised you're willing to come out to the house."
"Why?" she asked, fishing and flirting.
"The ghosts," Amber said, smiling sweetly.
"Oh, you aren't afraid of ghosts, are you, dear?"
"No. But I'll bet you are." The words popped out unbidden.
"Amber." Her father glared at her.
She looked meek, then tried not to flinch when Theo Pelinore's arm snaked around her. "That's all right," she said, imposing a one-armed, sideways Huggy Thing. "Amber said nothing wrong. Don't those old stories frighten you, dear?"
Don't call me dear. "They frighten most people," Amber replied, covering nicely. "That's why I thought they'd scare you." Her dad glanced up, then went back to reading. Carefully, she pulled away from the woman. Then she heard herself add, "Of course, since you're trying to sell the house, you couldn't admit it even if you were afraid, could you?"
"That's enough." Her father sounded seriously pissed.
"Sorry."
"Nonsense," Pelinore said. "David, your daughter is refreshingly honest. Don't be angry with her. Amber, maybe some real estate agents would sell a house they didn't believe in, but I won't. If I thought there was anything dangerous in Baudey House, I'd never represent it. It wouldn't be ethical."
You lying bitch. Amber masked her evil thoughts behind a gentle smile. "So you don't believe Baudey House is haunted?" she asked, determined to end the conversation without pissing off her father any further.
The woman hesitated, fiddling with a thin silver chain around her neck. "If there are spirits in your new home, they won't be dangerous," she said finally. "Spirits are just poor misguided souls who need help finding their way into the light."
Amber resisted the urge to roll her eyes. She glanced at her father, but he wasn't paying any attention--he never did when she wanted him to--so he hadn't heard that darling Theo was one of those--a New Ager. She turned back to Pelinore and saw the polished quartz crystal dangling from the end of the chain. "What a pretty stone," she said sweetly. "What kind is it?"
The real estate agent smiled, pleased. "It's a quartz crystal. Do you know anything about the power of crystals?"
"No." Damn, her dad still wasn't picking up on this. "They have powers?"
"Oh, yes. To heal, to protect." She let the stone drop back under her shirt. "I wear it against my skin for complete protection."
Panty liners work just as well, Amber wanted to say. Instead, she smiled again. "Does it protect you against ghosts?"
"Does what protect you from ghosts?" Her father had finally zoned back in. Better late then never. "All done," he added, holding up the folder.
"Oh, Daddy, Miss Pelinore has-- "
"Call me Theo, dear."
"Theo has a quartz crystal," she said, doing Dorothy in the Land of Oz. "She says it can protect you and I wondered if it keeps ghosts away since we're moving into a haunted house and everything."
He stared hard at her, obviously wondering what she was up to. She tried to look innocent.
Theo broke the silence. "I think Amber's a little nervous. Have you ever seen a ghost, dear?"
Don’t call me dear. "Daddy says there's no such thing."
"Enough," said her father, rising. He meant it, too. "You'll have to forgive Amber," he continued. "She's having a little fun at your expense."
"Oh, David, can't you see she's frightened? Sometimes it's hard for adults to understand children's fears, don't you think?"
"Amber has experienced a variety of ghostly phenomena," he said dryly. "She's not your average child."
Amber decided it would be best not to protest being called a child at this point.
Pelinore studied him a minute, then understanding dawned on her face. "Oh, oh yes, of course," she said nodding. "She's a teenager, an adolescent. I should have realized . . . how foolish of me."
"Realized what?"
"Why, poltergeist activity. All those hormones racing through her bloodstream, and what with her father writing all those scary books, well…"
"You don't know what the h--"
Before she could say more, her father came up behind her and clamped his hands firmly on her shoulders. "Amber," he said softly, "Hush." Surprisingly, the hands sent no warning this time, even though he had to be as pissed at her as she was at Theo Pelinore.
"My daughter," he told the woman, "is far too well adjusted to cause poltergeist activity. In the course of my research, I've explored many allegedly haunted houses and Amber has frequently accompanied me. She's--we've--seen all sorts of phenomena over the years."
"Things that would curl your hair," Amber couldn't resist throwing in. It earned her a mild be-quiet squeeze.
"Spirits?" Pelinore's eyes were huge, her breathing shallow.
Turned on by ghosts, Amber thought as she watched the way the old bimbo did her heaving bosom thing right in her dad's face.
"Not in the sense of lost souls. These spirits are memories, sort of like the scent of old perfume on a handkerchief you might find in an attic trunk." Amber listened, as her father warmed to the subject. He was a sucker for this stuff and it showed in his every word. "Or you might think of them as imprints, loops of emotional tape. For instance, if the people in a village walk a certain path through the woods every day, year after year, to go to the well, the path gets packed down hard. But then they dig a new well on the other side of the village and stop going to the old one." He cleared his throat. "But for years after, the path remains, indelibly imprinted into the earth."
Pelinore looked like she was going to have an orgasm.
"Ghostly footsteps going up and down the hall of a haunted house are the same thing, only aural," he continued. "And apparitions floating along the hall are the visual equivalent. It's rare to have a strong enough imprint to elicit both, though some of the reports on Baudey House confirm it." He grinned. "I can hardly wait."
Boy, was that ever the truth. Her dad had been talking about this place ever since Amber could remember. He talked about anything that was haunted--Amber never quite understood his fascination with such things--but Baudey House was always his favorite. Her dad believed that most hauntings, like the Amityville Horror, were nothing but hoaxes, but he said there were so many reliable reports on Baudey House, that he believed at least some of the stories were true. He wanted to visit it, he wanted to write about it, and when he found out it was up for sale, he wanted to buy it.
Amber smiled crookedly. When she was a little kid, he'd set her on his knee and tell her stories by the hour, just like other parents, except that he didn't retell Goldilocks and the Three Bears, or Sleeping Beauty. Instead, he told her about the Bell Witch, the Hitchhiking Ghost, the Haunted Nunnery in England, and about Christabel Baudey and her infamous collection of dolls.
To be fair, that had been her favorite story and she'd begged him to tell it over and over agai
n. As the story went, Christabel's father had taught her voodoo and when she moved here, to the house Amber and her father were going to live in, the unhappy--and very wicked--girl spent her time making dolls that looked like real people. Christabel used voodoo to kill the people they represented, and then she'd store their souls inside the dolls, so that she’d have lots of slaves to serve her in the afterlife. As a child, sometimes Amber pretended that she was Christabel and she'd treat her dolls like they contained her friends and enemies. Her "friends" got to wear pretty clothes and attend tea parties, and her enemies, like her evil second grade teacher, Mrs. Mulestrap, were treated to public nudity and lying on top of ant hills in the driveway. She stifled a chuckle as she wondered if Christabel, assuming her spirit was still hanging around Baudey House, could arrange for her to have Luke Perry as her love slave in her afterlife.
"David," Pelinore was saying, "You're not asking me to believe that all hauntings are just the results of repetitive acts, are you?"
"No, no. Intense emotions cause the really interesting hauntings, like some reported at Baudey House. The most powerful are rage and fear. We pick up on those very easily. If we don't recognize them for what they are--simple residue--then anyone at all sensitive to others' emotions will become uncomfortable if it's a mild haunting or terrified if it's intense, especially if it's capable of producing phenomena. It's all electricity, Theo, charges in the walls, in the air, and the stone walls in Baudey House are perfect repositories. The emotion from a living human produces energy too, and when you combine the energy of a person's fear with the charge already present in the house, you can get some pretty spectacular stuff." He shook his head appreciatively. "The combination is quite powerful."
"You're saying ghosts don't walk if there's no one there to watch them?"
"Depends on the strength--if it's a heavy imprint, I think activation takes virtually nothing. I could be wrong. That's one of the things I'm going to research in Baudey House."
Amber realized he'd go on like this all night, if she didn't stop him. "Dad, it's getting late."
Pelinore licked her lips and smiled patronizingly. "You believe in ghosts, but you don't believe in ghosts, is that what you're saying, David?"
"I believe in certain phenomena, because I've seen them. Since I've never seen any proof of souls tied to the earth, I don't believe that. If I do, well, I'll be happy to reconsider."
"And you, dear, do you agree with your father?"
"About hauntings, yeah." She looked Pelinore straight in the eye. "If you've seen one faucet dripping blood, you've seen them all."
"Amber, knock it off. She's a little cocky about her nerves of steel," he explained.
Pelinore was still stuck on the faucet remark. "You've actually seen that?"
"Sure," Amber replied nonchalantly.
"A garden-variety haunting combined with rusted-out pipes and iron deposits," her dad explained. "The minerals turned the water red."
Pelinore nodded and smiled a big false smile. The woman wanted ghosts, not rational explanations. "David, you surprise me. How do you write believable ghost stories when you're such a skeptic?"
"A skeptic doesn't disbelieve any more than he believes. He merely questions and investigates." He smiled. "Theo, I love ghost stories and I'd love to experience the kind of spirits you're talking about." He shrugged. "Who knows? Maybe I will in Baudey House."
"It'll be fun," Amber said. "Cold spots, bloodstains, crazy laughter. But Dad'll nail them all."
Her father chuckled. "I'm sure we will."
"Just remember," Pelinore said darkly as she waggled a finger at them, "sometimes the spirits need help, not derision. Now, if you'd like to see your new home, you can follow me. It's easy to get lost here after dark."
"Dad can get lost--"
He squeezed her shoulder, inducing immediate silence.
A few moments later, they waited in the idling truck while Theo Pelinore locked up. "You're getting off too easy, Amber," her father said sternly. "Your behavior was miserable."
"No, it wasn't. You always tell me to stand up for myself. So I did."
"You toyed with her and that wasn't nice. She obviously knows very little about supernormal phenomena and it was rude to lead her on."
"I'm sorry but, Dad, she's a crystal-packer. You heard her. She probably ohm’s herself to sleep at night and goes to a crystal-packing shrink slash channeler for past life regressions every week. She probably thinks she was Cleopatra in her last life."
"That wouldn't surprise me," be said begrudgingly, "but that doesn't mean you can be rude. She's just ignorant."
"And she wants to convert you. Dad, if she thinks she was Cleo, then you were her Antony."
"Come on, kiddo, don't exaggerate."
"Dad, you never see it coming!" Amber blurted in frustration.
"She was practically drooling on you."
"You really think so?" He sounded pleased.
"It was disgusting."
"Daughter, dear, you think all attractive women are disgusting."
"No, I don't." She hesitated, not daring to bring up Melanie--her dad would have a spaz. "What about Jackie? I liked her." Jackie was his hair stylist back home and she wasn't a predator. They'd gone out three or four times after Melanie left.
"She was very nice. But that's all. There wasn't any fire."
"You only like women who abuse you."
"Amber." His voice filled the car with godlike wrath. "That is enough."
"Sorry." She had a hard time not overstepping the bounds when he behaved so blindly. Fortunately, Theo Pelinore's car pulled out right then, saving her from a sermon.
Chapter Three
Byron’s Finger: 8:07 P.M.
Following Theo Pelinore's Volvo out of the hills and into town took only fifteen minutes, but Amber refrained from mentioning this to her father, who was intent on the taillights glaring through his dusty windshield. A few moments of observed silence constituted a truce as far as he was concerned. She watched the lights, too. God, the woman drove a beige Volvo. How yuppie and boring could you get? It wasn't really beige, of course. It was probably called "Pueblo Sand" or "Club Med Tan" or something equally snotty, just like Pelinore herself.
Amber stared out the windshield. Wisps of fog floated like ghosts in the Bronco's headlights. She'd been more happy than sad when her dad had announced they were moving out here. He'd always wanted to live on the west coast, and now he could afford the house of his dreams. Besides, his doctor kept telling him he was going to keel over from a heart attack if he didn't get away from the stresses of big city life. Amber figured that meant Melanie, the fans, and all those business lunches in Manhattan. When they'd discussed the move, he'd admitted to her that he'd been too caught up in the business and glamour and that now he just wanted to go off somewhere remote and write books. She liked that he confided in her and she liked the idea of making new friends who didn't know beforehand that her father was the David Masters. Unfortunately, from the looks of things, there would be plenty of fans to contend with in Red Cay, too, and that didn't make her happy, for her father or for herself.
As they passed through town and continued along on the coast road, the fog thickened. After about a half mile, Pelinore put on her right signal and turned off at a peeling old sign that said Byron's Finger.
"I live on Byron's Finger," her dad said, breaking the silence at long last.
She snickered. "But do you know where it's been?"
He grinned, but was too busy trying to navigate in the dark to reply. During their drive across country, they'd passed many miles telling stupid jokes.
The road was gravel. She could hear it crunch under the Bronco's wheels and wondered if Pelinore's Volvo was getting pitted. She hoped so. "Dad?"
"Hmm?" He was sitting forward, squinting over the wheel, trying to see where he was going.
"Will the electricity be on?"
"It's supposed to be."
"Gas?"
"Everything'
s electric. You'll get a hot shower, don't worry."
"And the moving van's arriving tomorrow, right?"
"Right." He glanced at her. "Anything else?"
The big question. "Are we going to get a good night's sleep tonight?"
"Yes." He pointed. "Haunted houses never act up on the first night. It's tradition."
"Dad?"
"What?"
"It's one thing to go check these places out, but do you really think it's smart to buy one? I mean, maybe we should just rent it first?"
"Are you worried, kiddo?"
The concern in his voice was genuine. "No," she said, then added, "Maybe a little. I mean, this place really has a reputation. I mean mondo."
"Yes... It does. If too much is going on-- which I doubt, judging by everything else we've ever encountered--we can take steps to neutralize it or, hell, I'm rich now, right?" He smiled at her. "We can move out. We don't have to live there forever, Amber... "
She groaned on cue.
"You will notice, my dear, that I didn't buy a murder mansion before I could afford a second home, just in case. Your old man's not stupid."
"Just crazy." She squinted into the fog. "This is taking forever. Are we almost there?"
"We're almost there. If Theo'd go over five miles an hour, we'd get there a lot quicker. The whole finger is only an eighth of a mile long, so it can't take much more time."
"The house must be at the very end."
"Not quite. The lighthouse is at the very end. We hit the house about five hundred feet before that."
"The fog's getting so thick, we probably will hit the house." The sifting white mist and the muted roar of the ocean on either side of them made her feel lost and vulnerable. A wisp of fog threaded in front of her face like a beckoning finger. Shivering, she closed the side window.
"There," said her dad. "There it is. Baudey House." It rose out of the fog, the steep, gabled roof speaking of severity and discipline. The house, a Richardsonian Romanesque mansion, seemed to glower at them from beneath its two sharp-browed gables above the third floor windows. The heavy crossbeam supporting the front portico looked like a grim mouth.
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