Seances Are for Suckers Read online

  “So you’re not leaving?” Nicholas asks, still watching me.

  I shake my head.

  I can tell he’d like to add something more, his lips hovering open, but Fern interrupts her brother with an irritated sigh. “No one seems to care whether or not I stay put,” she says, sounding more like her teenaged daughter than a grown woman.

  “I care,” Cal says loyally, just as Vivian harrumphs and points at her with her spoon.

  “Oh, please,” she says. “I’ve been trying to get rid of you since you came of age. If I thought something as simple as a ghost would finally dislodge you, I’d have invented one years ago.”

  Chapter 5

  Bedtime at Castle Hartford is disappointingly early.

  Although I’d harbored hopes of after-dinner drinks, or, more importantly, after-dinner snacks, Vivian announces her intention to call it an early night soon after we finish our soup.

  “We rise early in the country” is all the explanation she offers. While her declaration makes sense to me on one level—the level of farmers, for example—I doubt any of this lot rise with the dawn to toil in the fields out back.

  I look to my other hosts in supplication, but no one bothers to meet my eye. Fern and Cal I can excuse on account of the fact that Cal’s hand has been on Fern’s leg under the table the entire meal. Rachel, too, I let off the hook, since the last thing any teenager wants is to entertain strange psychics while her mom canoodles with a man in a linen jacket. But Nicholas—my employer, my host, my savior. What a louse he turns out to be.

  “I’m also going to call it an early night,” he says, pushing back from the table. “I need to apply myself to some kind of work if I’m going to be making a lengthy stay in this godforsaken place.”

  Why he’s so keen to oust the unrestful undead from a godforsaken place he dislikes so much, I have no idea. Nor do I have an opportunity to ask him about his work, because he languidly exits the dining room without a backward glance. One by one, the entire family trails away behind him, leaving me all alone with six bowls of uneaten soup.

  “Don’t take it too hard,” a male voice says at my back. “They’re like this with everyone.”

  There’s a slight lilt to the man’s accent, pleasing to the ear. I turn to find Thomas leaning against the door frame, a large tray tucked under one arm. He’s still in flannel and work boots, a look incongruous with the setting but somehow suited to his gilded ruggedness.

  “Everyone?” I echo.

  “Oh, yeah. Last month, they had a baron come to stay. They served him butter sandwiches and made him bring his own linen. You must be important—you have sheets on your bed and everything.”

  I laugh. Thomas’s friendly, lopsided grin allows for nothing else.

  “Don’t hold it against them,” he adds and moves confidently into the dining room. Since he whisks out the tray and begins loading it with the not-so-used dishes, I assume he performs this routine on the regular. “These old families have to be odd—it’s all they have left. The money’s gone, and the houses are falling down around them. Eccentricity is all that remains.”

  “I take it you’re from around here?” I ask. I grab my own bowl and cup and place them on the tray. Thomas makes a move to stop me, but I ignore him and continue helping.

  I’ve only cleansed one other house that had permanent on-site staff, and it wasn’t as awkward as I was afraid it would be. The family in question had a live-in nanny who refused to keep working unless they got rid of the spirit that stared in the window outside the baby’s room and turned on the electric toy piano in the night. They promptly hauled me in to allay her fears—and allay them I did. The piano ended up being a manufacturer defect, and the spirit in the window was the ghostly face of the neighbor’s bichon frise escaping his kennel.

  “Born and raised,” he says, thus confirming my suspicions. “My family has lived in the gatekeeper’s cottage between here and the village for five generations.”

  “Wow. That’s some staying power. It must be a nice cottage.”

  He shrugs. “It’s no Castle Hartford, but I get by.” He pauses in a way that I know and recognize. “So you’re a medium, huh? What’s that like?”

  Ah, yes. The inevitable question, wholly inadequate yet somehow the only thing anyone ever asks me. There are lots of professions out there that define a person—teacher, doctor, politician, whore—but none of them, with the possible exception of that last one, take over an entire personality quite so effectively as medium. As soon as someone hears what I do for a living, it’s impossible for them to separate my job from who I am as a person. Any and all conversations from that point forward revolve around the spiritual world.

  I try not to take it to heart. After all, the alternative would be for them not to talk to me at all.

  “Every day is full of dark, mysterious wonder,” I say.

  He laughs, showing a slightly crooked hitch to his two front teeth that only serves to increase his attractiveness. This is no cold, mocking lord of the manor. He’s a man, pure and simple. “I suppose I deserved that. Rather a stupid question, isn’t it?”

  Very. But I appreciate his willingness to admit it, so I reply with one of my own. “What’s it like being a . . .” I struggle for the right word only to settle on “servant?”

  “Every day is full of dark, mysterious wonder,” he replies easily. “But I prefer to be called a man-of-all-work. Yard work, household repairs, carting around luggage, serving the meals—if a task requires two legs, two arms, and a strong back, I’m the one to get it done.”

  I eye him askance, my stomach rumbling. “Are you also the cook?”

  This time, his laughter fills the room. It brings a kind of light to the space, a simple joy lacking in the earlier company. “You think I’d admit to it even if I was?” He shakes his head. “No, that’s one job I’m not asked to perform. Mrs. Hartford does all the cooking around here. She insists.”

  “How generous of her,” I say and leave it at that. It’s not good to insult one’s employer-slash-hostess too much on the first day.

  By this time, we’ve managed to get most of the plates loaded up. Thomas lifts the tray to his shoulder, unburdened by the fifty or so pounds of porcelain he’s carrying. Man-of-all-work, it seems, is a title he’s worthy of.

  “I can take it from here.” He winks as he heads for a door near the back of the dining room. “Thanks for the help.”

  “Wait—” I call after him. I’m not a hundred percent sure what I want him to wait for, but I suspect it’s mostly a desire not to be left to my own sorry company for the rest of the night. I decide to make use of the moment to pump him for information about Xavier. “The ghost—have you encountered him?”

  His eyebrows lift a fraction. “Recently?”

  “Ever,” I say. When I notice his brows go even higher, I rush, “I only ask because manifestations of his sort react differently to non-family members—act out more violently or refuse to show themselves altogether. They’re oddly loyal, these spirits.”

  “Oh, I’ve seen him,” Thomas says, and with such quick solemnity, I believe him. Maybe not that he’s seen an actual ghost—because, come on—but that whoever is causing Xavier’s antics has done it within his range of vision. “He’s not a bad sort, when all is said and done. A few flickering lights, a laugh down a dark corridor. He saved me from falling down a stairwell once.”

  “Really?”

  Thomas shrugs, his good-natured smile back in place. “One of the boards was loose. I was carrying a stack of old lumber to burn in the kitchen, so I couldn’t see it. He flitted right past me—all wispy and white—and scared me so bad I dropped every last piece of wood.”

  “That doesn’t sound very helpful,” I say.

  He laughs. “No, and so I thought, too, at the time. But later, when I was cleaning up the mess I’d made, I noticed a pried-up board about halfway down. If I’d gone two steps farther with that heavy load, my foot would have snagged on the board and se
nt me flying instead. I figure I owe Xavier, if not for saving my life, at least for keeping me from a few broken limbs.”

  I’m intrigued enough to continue questioning Thomas about his experience, but he gives no indication of wanting to linger. Since that tray has to be growing heavy by now, I send him off with a smile.

  I also make a plan to track Thomas down later to further our acquaintance. Ghostly fogs aren’t impossible to fabricate, and I don’t doubt that he could have easily dropped that wood and come up with a Xavier-related explanation later, but there may be more to his story than he’s letting on.

  And until I get to the bottom of this haunting and walk out the door with cash in hand, everyone’s story is one I’m interested in hearing.

  * * *

  Since it appears I’ll be on my own for the duration of the evening, I decide to make a thorough investigation, starting with—what else?—the yellow bedchamber. As the locus of supernatural activity, it makes the most sense for me to start my search there.

  To aid in my efforts, I shed the top two layers of my costume, setting aside the wispy sheaths and scarves in favor of efficient floral leggings and a camisole. I also remove my shoes, since I don’t want anyone to overhear my movements and realize just how detailed my investigation is about to become.

  Without further ado, I begin my search.

  The yellow bedchamber is appropriately named, although someone with more romantic leanings could have gotten away with calling it the golden room. The wallpaper is a lovely faded yellow that I know, from peering behind the hanging pictures, was once a glaring, horrible orange. The paintings, all of landscapes at sunset, are in gilded frames that hang so heavily they’re starting to pull at the plaster of the wall. Although the floor is traditional wood, it’s covered with a warm russet carpet that owes much of its luster to regular wear and tear. The whole effect begs for antique furniture and porcelain fixtures, but for some reason, most of the furniture in the room appears to have come from IKEA.

  And I mean that literally. With the exception of my bed—a huge, ornate four-poster pushed up against the wall it shares with Rachel’s room—everything else appears to have been brought in on the cheap. The minimalist chrome chair set up against the floating plastic desk even has the price tag attached.

  “Okay, so if I were an ancient being trying to scare a fierce old lady and her wealthy offspring, where would I be?” I mutter. Pulling the chrome desk chair to one corner, I climb on top and start poking.

  Poking is the official term I like to use in situations like these. Although I do a lot more than poke—I push and prod and twist and knock—the idea is the same. I’m testing the visible boundaries of the house to discover what kinds of secrets lay beyond. Hidden panels, attic access points, vents, rotted wood, rats’ holes, birds’ nests . . . you name it, I’ve seen it. Old homes are riddled with defects and areas where anything can get in.

  And a castle like this one? I can’t decide whether I’m more excited or overwhelmed at the prospect of what I’ll find.

  After a few hours of searching, however, I’m ready to call the yellow bedchamber a bust. Although there are more than a few damp, bulging patches, the walls are largely intact. The fireplace—inside which a fake, flickering electric heater buzzes—is completely closed off, and there isn’t even a secret passageway to the room next door.

  It’s incredibly disappointing. It’s also disconcerting, as I’m not sure what this will mean for the rest of my stay. If this room is where Xavier spends the most time, it must be because someone is sneaking in at night and making that appear to be the case. My staying in the room will most likely preclude any more nocturnal wanderings, as it will be difficult for the ghost to slip in without my noticing.

  I guess I’ll have to pretend that I scared Xavier off and request a new bedchamber. It makes me look unprofessional to fail to make a connection in the most haunted room in the house, but there’s not much else I can do about it.

  By the time I finish, it’s closing in on eleven o’clock. Early for a medium’s bedtime, but between the jet lag from my flight and the lack of food in my stomach, I’m starting to feel the hours weighing heavily on my shoulders. I decide to make a night of it.

  I slip between the sheets with an extra heap of blankets and my phone—the former because the yellow room is much brighter than it is warm, the latter because I like to wind down with a few games of mahjong before I sleep. Before I can open the app, however, a flashing red light indicates I missed a call.

  I don’t have to look to know it’s from Liam. My brother always worries about me when I’m in a new house, which is equal parts sweet and condescending. He finds people who believe in ghosts to be highly suspicious, and I’m pretty sure he thinks I’ll end up kidnapped or murdered one of these days.

  That’s why I always give him the address in advance, with specific details about my employers. I also remind him that if I do disappear, he’s obligated to show up and claim that my angry, disrupted spirit has taken up residence in the home and nothing short of confessing to the murder will cause me to leave again.

  He doesn’t find this plan nearly as amusing as I do.

  It’s still early in the day where he is, but I’d rather not get into a lengthy argument over the phone, so I text him instead.

  alive, well, starving

  My messages tend to be short and to the point. Like I said—the virtual world and the spiritual world don’t always get along. Up until last year, I used a flip phone.

  I watch the dots on my screen flashing as Liam painstakingly types out a novel in response. How can you be well and starving at the same time? Don’t they have food? Maybe you could take one of the mounted deer heads from the wall and eat that.

  It’s not the worst idea he’s ever had, and if I saw any mounted deer heads, I might take him up on the offer. But although there are tapestries and paintings and even antique dueling pistols hanging in various locations, I have yet to see anything with eyes.

  already tried, exhausted now, going to bed

  His response this time is much slower in coming. I’m afraid he’s taken it upon himself to provide a play-by-play breakdown of his scintillating plans for the school gymnasium, but all that eventually comes through is Sleep tight and call me tomorrow, okay? I don’t like you being so far away.

  I want to remind him that I would have been equally far away, at least in terms of mileage, if I’d gone to Mexico, but there’s no point. I know what he means. He doesn’t like me working so far away. His overprotective brother impulses kick in hardest when he knows he can’t come to my immediate aid.

  I like to think he’d have been that way no matter what, that his genetic code predestined him for a lifetime of fraternal worry, but there’s no denying when—and how—the anxiety first began.

  The poor guy. He’d been out of town on our eighteenth birthday, out visiting college campuses and planning his future. Not in the twisted wreckage of the car with me and Winnie and Mom. Not at the bleak hospital in the hours that followed, our only parent dead, our sister nearly so. All the horror of that day was mine alone to bear, and he’s never quite gotten over it.

  Welcome to adulthood, kids.

  stop worrying so much I text back and don’t wait for a response. Why bother? Nothing I say matters. Liam will still worry and I’ll still be here, and there’s nothing either one of us can do to change those facts. Unlike the ghost world, the land of the living has rules, and we have to follow them.

  With a sigh, I tuck the phone under my pillow and switch off the bedside lamp. It’s a space-age-looking thing, a metallic ball that sends light splaying in every direction, but I don’t mind the incongruity. The details, the feelings, the mysteries—none of them matter. All I need is a decent night’s sleep, and I’ll be able to face this job with all the attention it requires.

  And a decent night’s sleep is exactly what I intend to get, even in the most haunted room in the house. I guess that’s the one great thing ab
out being a ghost hunter who doesn’t believe in ghosts.

  Chapter 6

  BANG! THUMP! MOOOOOOAAAAAN.

  BANG! THUMP! SIIIIIIIGGGGGGGGH.

  BANG! THUMP!

  “Oh, my God. I get it already!” I sit up in bed, my hands clapped over my ears. “Screeeeeech.”

  I say the word screech instead of actually make a screeching sound, but only because that’s what Xavier is doing. The banging and thumping are actual sound effects, but for reasons that aren’t clear to my muddled, wee-hours-of-the-morning brain, he prefers to say moan and sigh rather than perform those actions.

  The sounds stop as suddenly as they’d started, but a bright flash fills the room, temporarily blinding me and my poorly adjusted pupils. It’s the kind of brilliance I know from experience is caused by flash paper, and it’s the kind of brilliance I know, from similar tactics of my own, will keep my eyes from adjusting long enough for any kind of evidence to be swept away in the meantime.

  I close my eyes and leap out of bed, hands out as I grope around and try to land on the body responsible for the scare. Most people assume that when their victim is confronted with unearthly sounds and a blinding flash of light, they’ll hide under the covers—or, at the very least, run for help. Few expect a direct attack, which is why I’m so surprised when I hit nothing but freezing cold air.

  No fire. Dark castle. That’s why it’s cold.

  Large bedroom. Lots of hiding places. That’s why I can’t find anyone.

  I spin on my heel and lunge in the opposite direction, hoping to catch my intruder off guard. At first, I hit nothing but more cold air and the weightlessness of gravity taking over. I make an attempt to cover my head as I fall, but when I land, it’s into a wall of heat.

  A wall of heat with arms, it appears. Arms that wrap around my waist and hoist me to a vertical position with a surprising amount of strength.