by Paula Morris
“We’re right outside the armor store,” he shouted. “Sal — can you hear me? Do you want me to … come to you? Where are you?”
“This is just awful,” Peg said, shaking her head. She pulled her coat tightly around her. “I feel so terrible for Sally’s parents. First the break-ins, now this.”
Sally was making her way toward them, pushing through the crowd. She was wearing some kind of foil blanket like a cape over her T-shirt and sweatpants.
“Rob!” she cried. She rushed up and hurled herself into his arms. Then Peggy hugged her, and Jeff stepped forward to hug her as well, and Miranda wanted to hug her, too, because Sally was shaking so much and because she looked so distraught.
“It’s lucky that I was still awake,” she told them, her teeth chattering. She and Rob exchanged quick looks. Lucky, thought Miranda, that they weren’t still down in the cellar when the fire broke out. For once, Rob’s panic attack was a godsend.
“Very lucky,” Peggy said, rubbing Sally’s arm.
“As soon as the smoke alarm went off, I ran downstairs, but the fire was already — it was already behind the bar. Some of the bottles were broken, and … and there was this line of fire on the floor, and I thought that the whole place was going to explode. My father sprayed it all with the extinguisher, but it was spreading and … and we just had to get out.”
“And you’re all okay?” Peggy wanted to know, not sounding as certain as she did five minutes ago. “We saw the ambulance …”
“My parents — they inhaled smoke, and my father burned his hand. Nothing too bad, though. He’ll be okay. My mother, she’s just in a nightgown. That’s why they gave us these.” Sally flapped the foil cape. “My father didn’t even have his shoes on.”
Her eyes filled with tears, and Miranda felt herself welling up, too.
“Take this,” said Peggy, rapidly unwinding her scarf and draping it around Sally’s neck.
“Will your father fit in my shoes?” Jeff asked. He crouched down and started unlacing one of his sneakers. “I can run home and get another pair.”
“You’re all right,” Sally said, brushing away her tears. “Derek from the Punch Bowl gave him a pair of his. Everyone’s being so kind. The police got here really quickly. And the fireman — the one in charge …”
She turned around to point, but there were too many people in the way.
“He said …” Jeff prompted.
“He said it didn’t look too bad, all things considered. No danger of the roof coming down. It looked bad to us, though.”
The crowd was oohing now, the way they would at a fireworks display, because snow had started to fall. Sally lifted her face to the sky, and Miranda did the same thing, looking up at the flakes dropping through the cloud of dark smoke. They splattered onto her face, soft and wet. They were implausibly clean.
Rob was back on Sally’s phone, this time talking to her father.
“It’s out,” he reported. “Just downstairs that’s damaged. Just the bar in the front.”
“Just,” said Sally, shaking her head. She looked at Peggy and Jeff, whose faces were as worried as hers. “It’s our livelihood.”
“They’ll be closed for weeks,” Jeff murmured to Peggy as Sally walked away, hand in hand with Rob, to rejoin her parents. Snow splotched the paving stones around them. “Come on, you two. There’s nothing we can do to help tonight. Let’s go back and try to get some sleep. This snow looks like it might be sticking.”
“What about Rob?” asked Peggy, looking around for him.
“He’ll be all right,” Jeff said, gently steering her away. “He’ll make his own way home when he’s ready. I gave him a spare key. The lady in that pie shop downstairs made a set of spares for us this morning — she thought it might be useful with four of us coming and going.” Jeff handed Miranda a key of her own.
So Rob had managed to get a key to the flat that night after all, Miranda thought, following her parents down Stonegate. This wasn’t quite the situation he’d imagined, though. It all could have been much worse, she realized, shuddering at the thought of it. Sally and her parents could have been trapped upstairs. Or Sally and Rob could have been trapped in the cellar. If anything had happened to him, her parents wouldn’t have been able to bear it. None of them would be able to bear it. It was silly, Miranda knew, to cry about something that hadn’t even happened, but she couldn’t help herself. She was glad her parents, walking arm in arm, couldn’t see her.
Miranda turned to look back at the smoldering pub, watching the smoke rise like mist. A dark-haired girl walked toward her, looking around wildly, as though she was searching for someone. She must be freezing, Miranda thought: Her long dress was gauzy and flowing, more like a summer party dress than something you’d wear outside on a winter’s night. Strangest of all, she wasn’t wearing any shoes. As she overtook Miranda, weaving like some dark butterfly, Miranda felt a sudden blast of icy cold. The whoosh of it was so strong, Miranda felt herself falling, as though someone was pushing her out of the way. She staggered a few steps, reaching out a hand to stop herself from tumbling onto the cold cobbles. The girl in the floaty dress drifted on, still looking from side to side. This must be the ghost that Nick had talked about, the one he’d heard about but never spotted — the girl searching for her lover. “Women are the only ones who’ve ever seen her,” he’d said.
“Miranda!” Her father was calling for her, waving her down Little Stonegate, and she hurried to catch up. High above them, people leaned out their windows, calling to each other across the street. One person was asking if they should all evacuate, and another was shouting at them to turn on the radio for the latest report.
On Back Swinegate, in the narrow entrance to a snickelway, one person stood gazing up at the sky. A young guy, with tousled dark hair. He might have been watching the gray cloud of smoke billow and disperse in the wind. He might have been watching the snow, heavier now, pelting down on his upturned face. Whatever it was he was looking at, he was absorbed in it. The one thing he couldn’t see, Miranda realized, was her.
She squeezed between her parents, letting them each take hold of a gloved hand. They all quickened their pace, scuffing through the snow, arms swinging. This time, she thought, just this once, she’d seen Nick first.
Yellow police tape blocked the front door and windows of the inn, but Rob led Miranda down the side alley, past the trapdoors to the cellar, and through the yard door. It was twelve hours since the fire. The police had declared it arson: Both the internal cellar door and the back door had broken locks.
“I don’t get it,” said Rob. They were all crammed in the doorway leading to the flat upstairs, peering through to the front bar. All the tables, stacked with upturned stools, were charred. The inn’s front windows had been boarded up. The ceiling was streaked with black, and the bar itself — doused with alcohol before being set alight — looked like a giant hunk of charcoal. “Someone broke in through the back door. Why did they need to get into the cellar, too? Nothing was taken or moved this time, right? And they set the fire behind the bar, not in the cellar at all.”
“That’s the million-dollar question,” said Sally. “I thought maybe whoever was setting the fire only broke the lock to the back door to make us think that was the point of entry.”
Sally wasn’t exactly cheerful this afternoon, but she was trying to be much more upbeat about everything — kind of like Jenna would have been, Miranda thought. The inn would need to be closed for only a week, maximum, she’d said. They could even start doing business again in the back before the renovations on the front room were finished. They wouldn’t lose out on all the Christmas business.
“You mean, they had access to the cellar, like the vandals did?” Rob nodded slowly, as if he thought that made perfect sense. “Maybe through the trapdoors. And they used the cellar as a way in.”
“Did you tell the police?” Miranda asked.
“Oh yes,” Sally said. “And they asked me if I’d go and put th
e kettle on, to make them a cup of tea.”
“Don’t those guys watch, like, Miss Marple?” said Rob. “They should know that cops don’t always know best. Especially ones who don’t even carry guns, and wear helmets that look like upside-down sand pails with starfish stuck on them.”
“Can we help clear up?” Miranda asked. “We’re only here until Monday but …”
“I know,” said Sally, pouting, and she and Rob gave each other long looks. It was like a high school production of West Side Story, Miranda thought, except without the memorable songs. “I hope seeing this place doesn’t make you … doesn’t bring back memories of your accident.”
Miranda opened her mouth to put Sally straight, to tell her that on the night of the accident, the car hadn’t caught on fire. But she didn’t really want to talk about the accident. And neither — judging by the way he flinched a little at the mention of it — did Rob.
“It’s okay,” he said briskly. “Miranda, I’m going to be here helping today and probably tomorrow, too.”
Miranda didn’t think mooning around Sally would be very useful to her parents, but, hopefully, Rob would be better at cleaning up burnt furniture than he was at cleaning out the bathroom sink.
“I thought we had to go and hear Dad deliver his paper on Richard III,” she said. “That’s tomorrow afternoon, remember?”
“You can be the family representative.” He patted her on the head.
“Gee, thanks.” She glanced from Sally to Rob. The meaningful moment was continuing. They certainly didn’t need her around, getting in the way of their significant looks. “Well, let me know if you need an extra pair of hands tomorrow morning. I’m going back to the flat now — okay? Rob?”
“Later,” he said, punching her on the upper arm. He was trying to be affectionate, Miranda knew, so she tried not to rub her arm too ostentatiously as she made her way out through the pub kitchen and into the snowy yard.
Miranda decided to walk the long way home, past Bettys, down busy Davygate and along Parliament Street. Maybe she’d buy her mother some flowers in the market, to wish her luck for tomorrow night’s concert. Her mother had rehearsals all day in Victory Hall, even though its heating had been malfunctioning all week, they could hear mice running around inside the walls, and the singers were threatening a revolt unless something called a Zip, used to make endless cups of tea, was fixed pronto.
At the flower stand, Miranda picked through buckets of cellophane bundles, finally choosing something aptly called, according to the flower seller, snowdrops. She wound her way past the stalls, careful not to slip on the snow-smeared cobbles.
It wasn’t a surprise, really, when she saw Nick in the market, leaning against the brick wall that framed one of the cut-throughs to the Shambles. He was chewing on a match, one leg bent so his boot rested on the wall. The light fixed to a post on a nearby stall caught his snow-dusted hair, and the sole glass button still dangling from his coat. Maybe he was waiting for her, she thought, approaching him; maybe it was coincidence. But at least he wasn’t leaping out from behind her, for a change.
“Hey,” he said. It was strange seeing him in daylight. He looked very pale and tired, dark shadows under his eyes.
“Hey.” Miranda felt shy with him. The kiss had complicated things. She wasn’t sure what it meant, or if he regretted it. Did she regret it? Miranda didn’t know. One thing she knew, though: They couldn’t take it back.
“Tomorrow night,” he said, throwing the match onto the ground. “Don’t go to the concert. Come out with me.”
“But it’s my mother’s concert,” Miranda protested. “She would be really upset if I wasn’t there.”
“She won’t know. She didn’t even see you at the rehearsal.”
“My father will know.”
“Tell him you’re going to sit somewhere else. Tell him you’re going to sit with friends.” Nick seemed agitated, rocking back against the wall.
“He doesn’t know that I have any friends here,” Miranda said archly.
“Please,” said Nick. He was reasoning with her, not pleading. “It’s our last chance to spend time together.”
“We could spend time together this evening. Tomorrow. You could come with me tomorrow afternoon to hear my father’s paper on Richard III, if you want.”
Nick frowned at her, as though she were stupid.
“I can’t see you at all until tomorrow night,” he said. “And then that’s it. You’ll be gone on Monday, and so will I.”
That’s it. So this is what happened after a kiss, Miranda thought. Things ended.
“Um … what about after the concert?” she suggested, though she didn’t really know how she was going to manage shaking off her family. There was going to be some sort of after-party in a restaurant on Swinegate.
Nick bowed his head. His dark hair was tipped with crystals of icy snow.
“After is too late,” he said, still looking down.
Miranda wanted to see Nick again: That was the only thing she knew. She wanted to be alone with him. She wanted to feel him touch her hand again, his long fingers gently stroking her skin. Maybe she even wanted him to kiss her again. “I just … I don’t know,” she said.
Nick jerked his head up and looked her in the eyes. There was something in his gaze that was beyond intense. Something wild, like the look of a cornered feral animal.
“You have to,” he said. “Please. I’ll come for you around eight thirty tomorrow night, all right? I’ll knock on your door. If I’m late, don’t worry. I’ve just been … held up. Wait until I get there.”
Miranda fingered the cellophane wrapping of the flowers. She didn’t know what to do. Her heart was thumping. She wanted to see Nick again, but it was going to mean lying, and hiding, and skipping out of something…. It was all so complicated.
“Please,” he said again. “It’s important. To me. To you, I hope.”
“Yes,” she said, turning her head to avoid his gaze. It was too much. All of this was too much. “Tomorrow at eight thirty.”
“Wait for me,” Nick said. “Promise?”
“I promise,” said Miranda, and he bent toward her, as though he was going to kiss her again. But he didn’t kiss her. He just looked at Miranda, really looked at her, as if seeing her clearly for the first time.
When she got back to the flat, nobody else was home. Miranda was relieved. She didn’t feel like talking to anyone. She was still thinking of Nick walking away through the market. The shape of his shoulders, the flare of his coat. She felt guilty, horribly guilty, at the thought of skipping out on her mother’s concert. But not seeing Nick again would feel much worse. She’d never met anyone like him before. However strange he was, however abrupt and mysterious, he understood her. He understood ghosts. It was okay.
Miranda dumped the flowers in a tall drinking glass filled with lukewarm water, and arranged them on a place mat on the table. Upstairs in her room, she flopped on the bed, too agitated to nap. She reached out a hand for Tales of Old York, but it wasn’t on the bedside table. It wasn’t on the floor, either, though Miranda thought she might have knocked it there. It wasn’t anywhere in the living room or — after she pounded down three flights of stairs to check — in her jacket pocket. She remembered slipping it in there on her way out … when was it? Yesterday morning? When she’d been walking around last night with her hands in her pockets, she’d felt it — or had she? Miranda couldn’t remember. After that kiss, everything had been a blur. But even when she looked through everything all over again, Miranda still couldn’t find the book. Yesterday she’d had it. Today it was gone.
CHAPTER FIFTEEN
Miranda had two conferences to attend on Sunday. The second, that afternoon, was taking place in the King’s Manor, where the Richard III Society was gathering again to hear scholarly papers, drink coffee, and discuss exciting new theories about what might or not have happened at the Battle of Bosworth Field.
The first conference was that morning, in the
bathroom, with Rob.
“I call this meeting to order,” he said, attempting to sit on the closed toilet seat and, at the same time, rest his bare feet on the towel rail. “Ow!”
“What’s wrong?”
“Someone’s turned that thing on. My toes are scalded.”
“Ssshhh! Stop making so much noise. Why are we in here, anyway? We could be having this conversation in your room. Or mine.”
“But this is our meeting room,” said Rob, looking at her as though she were stupid. “And I’m trying to get used to sitting around in small spaces. Okay. Present — Rob Tennant, chair, and his top advisor, the dormouse. On the agenda — one item only. How do I get out of going to the concert tonight?”
Miranda sighed. She wasn’t in the mood for Rob’s minor problems: She had other things on her mind. Last night she’d woken up sweating after the strangest dream, where she was the girl in the floaty dress, running along the street desperately looking for someone. There was a guy up ahead, but it was too misty to see clearly. At first he looked like Nick, then he looked like Rob. However fast she ran, she couldn’t catch up with him.
“Well?” Rob demanded. “Could you put on your thinking cap?”
Miranda couldn’t help laughing. This was something that Peggy used to say to them when they were little kids.
“Okay, okay,” she said. “People can sit anywhere at this concert, right?”
“Except for the front row, which is reserved for VIPs. That’s where Dad and Sally’s parents will be sitting, and Lord Poole, and us. And the husbands of the Sorceress and all the Witches.”
“So we go along with Dad, as planned. And then we tell him that a big group of Sally’s friends are coming along, and they’re sitting farther back. We want to sit with them, is that okay, blah blah blah. He’ll say yes, because he’s busy talking to Lord Poole, and Mr. and Mrs…. what’s Sally’s last name?”
“Framington.” He said it lovingly. Miranda rolled her eyes.