Muses

by Elizabeth Andre

  Lily looked indecisive for a couple of moments.

  “You know, you can tell us anything. I mean that,” Maya said. She leaned in close to Lily, smelling something fresh and floral, but didn’t touch her. “Because anything you tell us could help us in this investigation.”

  “Well, Aunt Kate told me that it seemed like their visits were more violent lately than what seemed appropriate.”

  “There’s such a thing as appropriate violence?” Jason sounded puzzled.

  Unfazed, Lily kept talking. “She said she couldn’t believe that they’d be so angry simply because Uncle Richard told them he no longer needed them to be his muses.” She shrugged.

  “Is that what she told you? That Richard had dismissed the spirits?” Steve was suddenly more alert.

  “Yes. He told her that he felt that his creative juices—his phrase, I guess—were flowing nicely again and that the sisters had become a hindrance, so he decided that it was time for him to go it on his own.” Lily looked around at the hunters as if expecting an immediate answer. None came.

  Inwardly, Maya groaned. She knew before getting here that they were most likely dealing with angry ghosts. She knew that Richard had dismissed them after they’d helped him for so many years. With dismay, she imagined that he had been clumsy about it. She still wondered how he had gotten them to agree to be his muses in the first place.

  “That was probably the wrong thing for him to do,” said Lily, looking sad again. “But my uncle’s dead now. Why are they still here? I emailed Kate right after the ghost brushed her hair in front of me and asked her if she’d ever seen anything like that.”

  “And had she?” Steve asked.

  “Never,” Lily said. “You’d think, now that Richard’s dead, they’d leave or stop or whatever. It seems like he was the one they were interested in, but they’re still here. And my uncle may be with them.”

  “They’ve always been here,” said Eddie with all the gravitas he could muster. “And it’s fascinating that your uncle has joined them. Lovely coffee, by the way.”

  Penny popped up from the sofa, her coffee cup now empty. “Time to get to work. I think I’ll head upstairs and see what’s what. Hey, Jason, let’s go.”

  “Your wish is my command.” Jason picked up his EDI meter and followed Penny out of the living room.

  “I’m with them,” Julie said as she, too, got up from the sofa. “See you guys later.”

  “Happy hunting,” Maya said.

  Maya and Eddie paced around the living room, avoiding each other’s gaze. For Maya, this was because she wanted to feel she was alone. She figured it must be the same for Eddie. She could feel something, but it was frustratingly just out of her reach. She had spent most of her life inadvertently talking to ghosts. They came to her. Over the past few months she’d tried to be more proactive and reach out to them. That frequently worked.

  What’s blocking the sisters from contacting me? she wondered.

  Before she knew it, she had drifted into the study. It really did look like someone had had an epic tantrum here. She walked around slowly, stepping over stacks of books when necessary. She stopped at the window and looked out. The night was overcast making the sky was starless and curiously light with a faint orangish hue predominant. Light snow was forecast but hadn’t started yet. She turned away from the window and saw Lily standing in the doorway watching her. It startled her. She really had felt alone.

  “I’m sorry I interrupted you,” Lily said. “I shouldn’t be here.”

  “Well, I usually like doing this sort of thing alone.”

  Maya had gone on a few dates with other women since her anti-climactic outing with Julie on Halloween. None of those women had triggered anything like the flutter that was filling her stomach now. She suspected Lily was the cause, although it could be ghost hunting, which sometimes scared her. Frequently, it was exciting. Whatever the cause, she was feeling something she hadn’t felt in a long time.

  “I need to focus,” said Maya. She regretted it the moment she said it, but she had to remember that Lily was a client. This was work.

  “No problem. I’m gonna go boil some more water for tea.” Lily waved and left, passing Steve and Eddie who were on their way into the study.

  “You guys, Lily just left because I said I need to be alone to get to know a haunted space better.”

  Steve put his hands up as if in surrender and rolled his eyes. “All right. Just let us know when you’re done. Come on, honey,” he said, taking Eddie’s arm.

  The two men turned to leave. There was a whoosh and a loud bang as the door between the study and living room slammed shut.

  A faint odor, vaguely like burnt flowers, filled the room.

  “I didn’t do that,” Steve said.

  “Neither did I.” Eddie tried turning the doorknob. It wouldn’t move.

  “C’mon. Let’s put some elbow grease into it,” said Steve.

  The smell got stronger.

  Steve and Eddie attempted to shoulder the door open. They pulled at the knob and tried to pry the door open at the edges. They barged into it a few times, but the door wouldn’t budge. Maya put her hand on the door and then pulled it back almost immediately.

  “The temperature of the door is dropping.” She looked at her hand. “Really cold.” No damage that she could see.

  “They’re here,” Eddie said in a high-pitched, girlish voice. He was a few inches shorter than his husband and lacked a beard, but the words still sounded silly coming from a grown man.

  The temperature in the room plunged. Maya grabbed a sweater that was draped over the back of a chair. She closed her eyes, hoping she could feel something other than the cold and a vague sense of the supernatural. She needed to know what the sisters wanted.

  Steve took this phone out of his back pocket and dialed a number.

  “Hey, Julie. It’s Steve. We’ve got something happening down here. Yeah. Something has locked us in the study.”

  Eddie was pulling on the window. “I unlocked it, but it isn’t budging.”

  Maya walked over to him. “Is it nailed shut?”

  “I don’t think so,” Eddie said.

  “Yeah. We’re locked in here. The door and window are sealed. Are you okay? Hello? Jules?” Steve took the phone away from his ear and dialed Julie’s number again. “Damn. Now there’s no signal.”

  Maya got out her phone. “I’ll see if I can get hold of Lily.” She tried dialing the number. “I’m not getting a signal either.”

  Chapter Nine

  Lily in the kitchen

  The relief Lily felt because Maya and her crew were here was indescribable. She decided to just leave them to it and headed to the kitchen for a quiet cup of tea while they worked. For months life had been so chaotic. There was her uncle’s death and her aunt being accused of his murder. There was Kate leaving with Owen, and then there were these ghosts. She thought that staying at Kate and Richard’s would be good for her studies, but the tumult had been a distraction from working towards a master’s in biomedical engineering. She’d tried to escape into fiction, trying to read some of the books from her uncle’s collection. That had been marginally successful.

  She glanced at the cats chowing down on their food and wished they could talk and give her their take on the situation. She wanted to know what her uncle and aunt’s relationship was really like. They seemed fine, even with a less than conventional arrangement, but in the months before her uncle’s death something had been simmering. When she talked to Kate about Richard after his death, she sensed some resentment, but she was unable to get Kate to reveal what the resentment was about.

  The kettle had just started whistling when Abner hissed and Athena made a sound that resembled scoffing. Lily quickly turned off the stove and turned to look at them, thinking they were going to fight, but instead watched as they darted out of the kitchen. Although she’d grown up with cats, she’d always been puzzled by their behavior. Her sister always told her to accept
that cats will be cats and try not to find some meaning in what they did. Lily had always preferred the family’s dogs.

  “Whatever, kitty cats,” she murmured.

  She made herself a cup of tea and took a seat at the kitchen table. She wondered what sort of strategy Maya and Julie would come up with to get the ghosts out of the house. Halfway through the tea, she realized her feet and then her legs were getting numb. The numbness crept up from her toes and on up until she felt like she was in an all-encompassing straitjacket. The tea was hot, but she felt so cold. She was scared but couldn’t speak, and then she realized how silent the kitchen had become. The noises she took for granted—the ticking of the kitchen clock, the distant and muted street sounds, the murmurs from the rest of the house where Maya and her team were working— were gone. There was nothing but silence.

  Then she heard words that were barely a whisper.

  See. Watch. Wait.

  She had little time to ponder what to do and the meaning of those words because two hazy figures drifted into the kitchen. She recognized one. It was the young woman she had seen last night, brushing her hair as she sat at the foot of the bed. The other figure was female and appeared to be about the same age. They talked animatedly, although she couldn’t hear what they were saying, and laughed, obviously devoted friends. The longer they stayed, the clearer and more distinct they became. Lily saw that they didn’t resemble each other enough physically to be related. The shape of their faces, the set of their jaws, and other physical details were different enough that Lily was sure they weren’t sisters.

  The one she’d seen brushing her hair on the foot of her bed for several nights was most likely one of the ghostly sisters who’d been her uncle’s muses. She was sure of that. The other one must have been a good friend of this youngest sister. There was definitely friendly devotion, but Lily saw something else. There was an intimacy between the two that went beyond friendship. She wondered if they were aware of that. They seemed carefree and appeared to simply enjoy being in each other’s company.

  Then a third figure appeared. She was definitely one of the sisters. The familial resemblance was striking. She seemed to regard her sister’s friend with some suspicion. The two younger women didn’t appear to notice the older woman’s disapproval.

  Even if those two girls don’t know what’s going on between them, that sister does, Lily thought.

  After a few minutes, the young woman who wasn’t a sister left. She walked through the kitchen and passed Lily, smiling broadly. After she was gone, the older sister blocked her younger sister from leaving the kitchen. The younger sister set her mouth in a scowl and looked away, as though willing herself to be anywhere but here, while the older sister appeared to talk to her sternly. She shook her finger at the younger woman who slapped at the finger. Both women looked shocked. This was clearly something the younger sister had never done before. Lily hated not being able to move. She wanted to scream but couldn’t. Someone wanted her to see this. It was important, even though Lily didn’t yet know why.

  At last, the younger woman pushed her way past her older sister. Tears streamed down her face as she left, following the same path as her friend. The older sister seemed angry. She turned toward Lily. The sister’s brown eyes were suddenly black, dark, hollow spaces that shimmered. The figure grinned and stepped backwards through the doorway before disappearing. She took the cold with her, and Lily could move again. She wiggled her fingers and toes. She moved her head from side to side, testing her renewed freedom. Then she realized she needed to breathe.

  She hadn’t been holding her breath the whole time, but it felt like it. She gasped for air and gulped down the rest of her tea, even though it had gone cold. When her tea was finished, she sat back in the chair, her chest heaving.

  Who wanted me to see that and why?

  She thought it might be the older sister. She was the one, after all, who had taken the cold with her and set Lily free. Lily knew she had to learn more about the sisters—who they had been and what had happened to them.

  Chapter Ten

  Julie on the second floor

  The window that had been broken in December was still boarded up, but otherwise the Vinettes’ master bedroom looked as if nothing had ever happened there. Julie looked up at the ceiling fan light fixture, a faux Art Deco thing, which was turned off at the moment. She wasn’t sure she liked it. The nightstands on either side of the bed had books piled on them. One pile contained romances and biographies. An e-reader balanced on top of it. Julie walked around to the other nightstand and flipped through the pile there. It contained a book of military history—a rather weighty tome—a book on French history immediately before and after the revolution and a couple of science fiction paperbacks. At the bottom of the pile was a magazine focused on outdoor pursuits such as fishing. Identical, sleek, minimalist lamps took up much of the rest of the space on each nightstand.

  “What do you think the dude, Richard, said to get them to be his muses?” Jason asked. He was fiddling with something on his EDI meter.

  Julie shrugged. “Who knows? Maybe we’ll never really know the full story because he isn’t here to tell us.”

  “You don’t think Lily’s reliable?” Jason asked.

  “No, it’s not that. What she’s already seen has been hard for her to take in, and I’m not even sure she knows the whole story. Richard didn’t even say that much about them to his wife. He appears to have said even less to his niece.”

  Jason scoffed. “He was probably embarrassed that he asked for help from ghosts. Then again, maybe they offered to be his muses.”

  Julie picked up a picture frame from the vanity. The picture depicted Kate and Richard in happier times. It looked like the photo was about a decade old. They were on a beach somewhere. They happily held up drinks with paper umbrellas. “It’s hard to know what the truth is.”

  “Well, there’s nothing wrong with this.” Jason held his EDI meter aloft. “It’s not picking up any activity at the moment. I thought there’d be something.”

  “Hey, you guys!” Penny walked into the bedroom, brandishing her video camera. “Ready to get some epic footage.”

  “Nothing epic going on here.” Julie glanced at Jason who had been nursing a crush on Penny for several months, although he recently started dating a young woman he’d met through one of his roommates. He seemed really into her.

  “Which sucks.” Jason smiled at Penny briefly and went back to trying to get readings on his EDI meter.

  Julie’s phone rang. It was Steve calling from the study.

  “What do you mean you’re locked in?” said Julie. “I didn’t see a lock on that door. Not possible.” Then the phone went dead.

  “Something’s happening.” Jason peered intently at his EDI meter before standing up on the Vinettes’ bed and holding the meter up near the ceiling. “Yeah. It’s happening.”

  At that moment, the door to the hallway and the one to the en suite bathroom slammed shut.

  Penny scanned the room frantically with her video camera. Julie ran up to the bedroom door. She touched the knob, gingerly at first, then she pushed and pulled on it with all her strength.

  “Looks like we’re locked in, too,” said Julie. She glanced at her phone. No signal.

  Jason got off the bed to help his sister with the door. It wouldn’t budge. Penny kept filming.

  “Say something for the camera,” she said.

  “Okay. We’re stuck in here. What the hell do they want?” Jason kicked the door for added dramatic effect. Then he backed up and ran toward the door to add momentum to his body weight and strength. He crashed into the door, but it didn’t budge. All he succeeded in doing was banging his left shoulder. He winced and rubbed it.

  Suddenly, all the light bulbs in the room shattered. It was as if they’d been crushed by a strong hand, plunging the room into darkness.

  Penny yelped.

  Julie felt around for her backpack, trying to avoid the shards of broken
light bulbs that were everywhere. Jason’s EDI meter was the only source of light. The little red and orange lights, that were blinking crazily, were hardly enough. She needed her flashlight. She found it and clicked it on.

  “Say something!” Penny ordered as she peered through her camera.

  “Like what?” Julie asked. A smell that had been just beyond her senses was getting stronger.

  Penny sighed. “Talk about what just happened.”

  “Okay. Okay.” Julie took a deep breath. The smell of burnt flowers filled her nose. “So, we’re in the bedroom of Richard and Kate Vinette. We’re here trying to get a handle on the ghosts that are giving the Vinettes so much trouble. One of the ghosts may have even murdered Richard. Right now, we’re locked in. The ghosts…”

  “You know, I think you should lead with the fact that we’re trapped in here because of the ghosts,” Penny said.

  “And don’t forget about how the ghosts broke the light bulbs and that’s why we’re in the dark,” Jason added.

  Julie rolled her eyes. “Everybody’s a critic. I’ll start over.”

  But she didn’t get the chance. The smell of burnt flowers got even stronger and filled the room. The temperature dropped precipitously in a few seconds. Jason found himself pushed across the room and forced against the door to the bathroom.

  “God damn it!” Jason wheezed. “It feels like there’s an anvil on my chest! Ahhh.” A sound like a gurgle came from Jason.

  “It’s them!” Penny said, more for potential viewers than Julie or Jason’s benefit.

  Of course, it was them, thought Julie.

  Penny trained her camera on the bedroom window that wasn’t broken and zoomed in. “Look! It’s frosting over.”

  Then, the furniture started to move