“Get out,” I ordered, my voice no louder than a whisper. “Get out!”
The man ignored me. Instead he leaned back on the pale teal sofa cushion and propped his scuffed brown leather shoes, one by one, on the polished wood table.
Lady Azura would go crazy if she saw his feet on her furniture. Absolutely crazy. A scream pushed up through my body, stopping at the base of my throat.
“This is not your house!” I cried in a voice much quieter than I intended. I had wanted to scream. “Get out!”
The man turned toward me. He was old, probably in his seventies. His white shirt had a yellow stain by the collar, and he was mostly bald. His eyes held a milky, faraway gaze. “I am a guest. An invited guest.”
A guest? What was he talking about?
I turned and finally ran. Racing through the darkened fortune-telling room, I pushed open the second curtain leading into Lady Azura’s bedroom.
All the shades were drawn. I could make out Lady Azura sleeping on her large bed. A thin blanket covered her small body, and a black silk mask shielded her eyes. The citrusy scent of her face cream filled the air. I took a deep breath, calming myself, wondering how to wake her. Old people startle easily.
Then I heard rustling against the back wall.
The clacking of hangers.
The crinkling of tissue paper.
In the dimness, I saw the faint silhouette of a stocky woman standing in front of Lady Azura’s opened closet. She bent over and tried on a pair of high heels. Lady Azura’s high heels!
I gaped in surprise. The woman tossed the shoes aside and pawed through the hanging dresses.
I finally found my voice. “Lady Azura, get up.”
Lady Azura gave a slight groan but kept sleeping.
The woman pulled down a hatbox.
“Stay out of there,” I called. I shook Lady Azura’s knobby shoulder. Her body felt so frail. “There’s a woman going through your closet! She’s touching your clothes!”
She woke immediately. Pushing the eye mask up onto her head, she blinked several times, bringing me into focus.
“Look!” I pointed to her wrecked closet.
Lady Azura turned and registered the woman hunched over several shoe boxes. She brought her hands up to rub her temples but didn’t speak.
“Your clothes!” I tried again. Lady Azura loved her clothes. She was one of the most fashionable women I’d seen outside a magazine. “And there’s a strange man in the sitting room. He’s touching everything, and he has his shoes on the furniture!”
“I see,” she said calmly. She didn’t jump out of bed. She didn’t scream. She just sat there, watching.
“Wait. You’re good with this?” I sounded hysterical. I thought that was the appropriate response when you discovered strangers going through your stuff. My head started to pound.
“No, I am not good with this.” She swung her legs around and stood. She stepped toward her closet. “Eleanor? Eleanor, can you hear me?”
The woman turned, caught with two leather handbags in her arms. She looked familiar.
“Eleanor,” Lady Azura continued calmly in her low, raspy voice. “We’ve talked about respecting possessions.”
“You know her?”
Lady Azura nodded. “This is Eleanor. The man in the sitting room is her husband, Dwight. They will be staying with us for a while.”
“Staying with us? Who are they?”
“Sara, I expect you to have better manners and say hello first.”
My gaze flicked between Lady Azura and the old woman still holding the handbags. She had a softness about her—round cheeks, plump body, a marshmallow cloud of white hair. She grew almost fuzzy in her softness as I stared. Suddenly I remembered her. She’d been waiting out front earlier. She and her husband. The man with the limp. They had entered the house behind the long-haired woman.
They were ghosts.
As I took a closer look, I realized that I couldn’t see all of Eleanor’s body. Sections shimmered, then faded in and out. Her legs were almost translucent.
As long as I have been seeing ghosts, they still sometimes catch me by surprise. Like now.
I looked to Lady Azura. She nodded in Eleanor’s direction.
“Hello,” I managed, even though this didn’t seem the time for manners. “Why are they here?” I asked Lady Azura.
“Mrs. Merberg, my last client today, was having a rough time. She has become a magnet for the spirits of her extended family. They have all descended upon her. She can’t see them, but she can feel them. The poor woman hasn’t slept in days.”
“What does she want you to do?” I asked. Eleanor gave me a hopeful smile. I gave her a feeble smile in return, so as not to be rude, but I definitely wasn’t in the mood to act like the welcome wagon.
“She wants them gone,” Lady Azura explained. “The trick is to figure out what is needed to send each one on his way. Eleanor and Dwight were Mrs. Merberg’s aunt and uncle. They’ve been the most exhausting to her, so I offered to have them stay here until I can sort through all the issues.”
“But they’re touching everything.” Eleanor was now running her hands over a pile of sweaters.
“Yes, they seem to be very nosy. Mrs. Merberg had the same problem with them poking into everything in her house. She was not able to deal with them, but I can.” Lady Azura moved alongside Eleanor. “Eleanor, you must stop. Otherwise, I cannot allow you to stay. Understand?”
Eleanor began to shake. Being scolded by Lady Azura was like being sent to the principal’s office. I could feel her regret flowing out of her unstable body and into mine. “I am sorry.” Her voice was muffled, as if she were speaking underwater.
I gazed at shoes spilling out of shoe boxes, silk scarves piled on the white carpet, and gauzy tops slipping off the crooked hangers. “I don’t get it. You won’t let me even go in your closet. You won’t let anyone touch your personal things. How can you let them?”
“Eleanor and Dwight have been on a search since their deaths last year.”
Another crash echoed from the sitting room. Dwight again.
“What are they looking for?”
“I have no idea,” Lady Azura admitted, “and neither do they. I suspect that once they find it, they will be able to rest in peace. It is a mystery that must be unraveled.” She gazed in dismay at the mess. “The sooner the better.”
“Have you ever done this?” I asked. “Invite ghosts into your home?”
“Never under circumstances like this, but Mrs. Merberg drove up from South Carolina, because she read about me and feels only I can help her. I could not say no. I am needed.”
Lady Azura couldn’t hide the pride in her voice.
“I think turning our house into a hotel for ghosts is a bad idea,” I said. “A very bad idea.”
“Sara, you worry too much,” Lady Azura chided me. “They will be good guests. Won’t you, Eleanor?” Eleanor shimmered in and out focus. A sweet smile was plastered on her face, but her eyes roamed about the room.
Planning where to go next.
Lady Azura has it wrong, I thought. These ghosts were going to be trouble.
Chapter 3
“Whoa, Sara! What happened?” Lily cried as she and Buddy burst through the back door the next afternoon.
I pushed my tangled hair out of my face and surveyed the kitchen. It was worse than I’d realized.
“Come on, spill it. Wait, you already did!” Lily slapped her leg and laughed. “Get it? Spill it? Oh, Sara, you just smeared chocolate in your hair!”
“Huh?” I looked down at the melted chocolate on my hand, then felt my sticky hair. “Yikes!”
“So I repeat, what happened?”
Good question, I thought. But I didn’t have a good answer.
“I’m baking double-double-chocolate cookies.” I held up the wooden spoon dripping with dark chocolate. I’d just finished melting chocolate and butter in a double boiler.
I didn’t say that while I was sti
rring, two ghosts had pulled out every pot, pan, and utensil in the kitchen in a frantic search. I didn’t say that these same ghosts opened drawers and cabinets but had never closed them. I didn’t say they’d even dug their hands into the bags of flour and sugar.
“It’s a mess in here.” Lily frowned and tugged Buddy’s leash to keep him from cleaning the floor with his tongue. “Do you know what you’re doing?”
“I totally know how to bake these. I didn’t . . . I mean it wasn’t me who . . .” I stopped. What was I going to say? My imaginary friends made the mess? “I like to be creative when I cook. Free-form. Experiment.”
Lily leaned against the counter, eyeing me uncertainly.
“These are going to be great,” I insisted. I stirred the thick chocolate until it turned smooth. “What’s up?”
“I’m bored. Joey, Sammy, and Jake are at baseball practice, and Mom took Cammie food shopping. I was supposed to stay home and clean my room for the company that’s coming, but Buddy and I went for a walk. Whose car is out front?”
“Repeat client for Lady Azura. The same woman who was here yesterday.” When Mrs. Merberg arrived, Eleanor and Dwight had followed her into the fortune-telling room. I was glad they were gone from the kitchen. “What company?”
“That’s what I came to tell you. No, Buddy, don’t lick that.” She pulled Buddy away from a sprinkling of cocoa powder on the floor. “The Meyer family. They’re coming tomorrow to see Buddy.” She squatted next to her dog. “Aren’t they, Budsters?”
“Mason, too?” I asked, hoping my question sounded casual.
Lily studied me a moment, then grinned. “You like him.”
“Like who?” I measured a teaspoon of baking soda, and added it to the bowl of flour. I’d lined up all the ingredients before I’d started.
“Him. Mason. You have a crush on him!”
“Maybe. I don’t know. I mean, his picture is cute, right?”
Lily jumped up. “Totally cute. You two would be so good together!”
“How do you know?” I wanted it to be true. I’d been thinking about him so much. Ever since—
“You’ll look good together. You both have blond hair, and you both look sporty, even though you are kind of a spaz. It’s important to look good with your boyfriend.”
“We don’t even know each other,” I protested. “He’s not my boyfriend.”
“Yet.” Lily clapped her hands together. “Ooh, I am totally into this. This is the first boy since Jayden that you’ve liked!”
I’d been crushing on Jayden Mendes all last year. Just when it seemed he liked me back and I was going to have my first real boyfriend, his parents moved his family to Atlanta. What Lily said was true. Since Jayden, I hadn’t been interested in any other boys. Until Mason.
“I don’t even know him,” I reminded Lily. Except I did. Kind of.
I’d had visions of Mason when Buddy first showed up. I’d seen him when he couldn’t see me. I’d felt something.
A connection.
The same thing had happened with Jayden—I’d had visions of him, too, before I actually met him. But my visions of Mason were different. They were somehow . . . stranger.
Lily paced the kitchen. Buddy followed. “Okay, here’s the plan. When Mason and his family get to my house, I’ll talk you up. You know, ‘My best friend Sara is so pretty, and Sara is so creative, and Sara makes the best chocolate cookies ever and—’ ”
“Don’t go overboard,” I warned. “He’ll be bummed when he meets the real me.”
“I’ll lose the stuff about the cookies,” she joked. “Anyway, I’ll build you up but not too much. Then I’ll text you without him knowing. When you get it, you’ll casually wander down the street. Out taking a stroll. You’ll stop by my yard, and I’ll introduce you, and there’ll be fireworks—”
“Fireworks?”
“Like in cartoons! He’ll gaze into your blue eyes and fall madly in love.” Lily sighed. “It’s perfect. What are you going to wear?”
“I have no idea. My red skirt? Or the striped tank dress?”
“A dress says you’re trying too hard. I think you should do jean shorts and a cute top.”
“What cute top? Do I have a cute top?”
Lily reviewed every top I owned. That’s how close we’d become this year. She knew every piece of clothing in my closet without having to open the door.
I leaned my elbows on the counter and listened to her rank my tops from cute to not so much. My gaze settled on the big five-pound bag of sugar and its blue and yellow design.
Blue looks nice with bright yellow, I thought, staring at the bag. I wished I owned a yellow top. Yellow says sunny, happy, and fun. Mason would like a sunny girl.
All of a sudden, the heavy bag of sugar flopped onto its side. Sugar crystals cascaded onto the floor.
“Whoa!” Lily cried. She grabbed for the bag at the same time as I did. We flipped it upright. “How’d that happen?”
I glanced nervously around the room. No Eleanor. No Dwight. “No idea. It’s weird.”
“Buddy, no!” Lily pulled the panting dog away from the mound of sugar. Quickly I knelt down to scoop up the mess. Lily helped.
“Remind me not to have you bake my birthday cake,” Lily kidded. “You’re kind of a disaster in the kitchen.”
“Have you finally decided what you’re doing for your birthday?” I asked. For weeks, Lily had been coming up with party ideas, loving them, then rejecting them. Indoor rock climbing. A beading workshop. A spa party. A 3-D movie.
“Not yet. What do you think about the frozen yogurt place by the lighthouse?”
“I like it, but after we eat yogurt, then what? I mean, yogurt eating doesn’t take all that long.” I went to the sink to get a sponge. “How about the mall?”
Lily joined me and poured water into a bowl for Buddy. “I want boys at my party too. They won’t shop. All they’ll do is hang at the food court.”
“Tick-tock, tick-tock,” I sang.
“What’s that mean?”
“Your birthday is next week,” I reminded Lily. “You’re running out of time.”
“I don’t want just any party.” Lily twirled a strand of her hair. It fell in waves way past the middle of her back.
“Maybe I should send out an e-mail invite today.”
“An invite to what?”
“To my party at a surprise location.” Lily grinned. “I like it. Kind of reverse surprise party!”
“Except even you don’t know what the surprise is.”
“I will. Soon—” Lily gasped. “Sara, quick, the milk!”
I whirled around. The carton of milk had fallen over. Milk spilled across the counter, waterfalling onto the floor. Buddy’s nails clacked against the linoleum in his dash to lap up the white pool. Lunging forward, I grabbed the carton, stopping the flow of milk.
“How’d that spill?” Lily asked. Her brows knit together in confusion. “You and I weren’t anywhere near it.”
My heart thumped loudly in my chest. I searched the kitchen. Where were Eleanor and Dwight? Why couldn’t I see them?
“Who are you looking for?” Lily demanded. She’d brought over a dish towel.
“No one.” What could I say? “A ghost?” I offered, trying to make it sound like a joke.
“You think?” Lily’s voice turned hopeful. “That would be so cool if Lady Azura called in a ghost.”
“Yeah, it would.” No, it wouldn’t, I thought.
“Maybe this house is haunted. Did you ever think of that?” Lily asked.
“All the time,” I admitted.
Should I tell her? Was now the time to tell her? I didn’t know.
I hurried to the sink to get the sponge again. Buddy slurped the milk on the floor, but the counter was a swimming pool.
Lily’s eyes shone with excitement. “It could be a ghost, or it could be some sort of other paranormal phenomena. Maybe there’s some weird energy in the room that made the milk carton spill over. St
uff like that definitely happens.”
I knew all about weird energy—I’d had to deal with that, too—but I was sure that the chaos in my kitchen was being caused by a spirit. It just hadn’t shown itself to me. Yet.
“Actually, Lily—” A stream of icy water sprayed me in the face! I shielded my eyes with my hands. Water spurted as if by magic from the faucet. I hadn’t even touched the knobs. Then I saw the hand.
A thumb covered the faucet just enough so the cold water sprayed me. In slow motion, a body materialized. A small eight-year-old boy. Short hair tucked into a wool cap. Dark eyes filled with mischievous glee. Old-fashioned clothes.
I reached around him and turned the water off.
“Gotcha!” the boy cried. He jumped in delight. Sparks of pent-up energy prickled around his body.
Henry. The boy’s name was Henry. He was one of the spirits who lived in the house. Henry was kept locked in a closet way up on the third floor, because he was trouble.
Big trouble.
What was he doing down here? I wondered.
I knew the answer immediately. Eleanor and Dwight had let him out. They’d probably opened every closet in the house by now.
There are secrets behind those doors, I thought, annoyed. Things that need to stay hidden.
Suddenly I sensed Lily watching me. No longer laughing. Just watching from across the kitchen.
I bit my lip and tried to think. Henry caused destruction wherever he went.
He broke things. He tore things. He’d knocked over the sugar and spilled the milk.
Henry eyed the kitchen, plotting his next trick, unable to stay still.
Lily eyed me.
I closed my eyes. Water dripped down my face. Think, think. I had to get Henry out of here. But how? I couldn’t talk to him. Not in front of Lily.
“Sara, what just happened with the sink? We should go get Lady Azura. I’m telling you, stuff like this happens in the movies sometimes. It’s almost always something paranormal that caused it. Like a ghost, or—”
No, no, I couldn’t talk about this with her right now. Not with Henry running rampant. I’d learned firsthand that he could be dangerous if he wasn’t dealt with.
Kindred Spirits Page 2