“You can wear this, I don’t want it anymore,” she announced, and then went back into the hall.
Andie followed her, taking a quick look around before she went into the hall and then into Alice’s room. If May decided to try another hijacking, she was going to tangle with somebody who was ready for her this time. “Alice, honey, this is your shirt—”
“No it’s not,” Alice said, her head in her drawer, searching for one among many black T-shirts. “It was Aunt May’s. I took it after she died.” She straightened, holding up a plain black T-shirt. “I don’t want it anymore. You can wear it today.”
Andie was pretty sure that meant something that she was missing, but she was late so she said, “Thank you,” and pulled it over her head. The last thing she wanted was anything of May’s, but she wasn’t going to look a gift Alice in the mouth.
May had been thinner than Andie because the shirt was tight, the letters that spelled “Bad Witch” stretched out of shape across her bust, but Alice smiled and nodded, and Andie thought, The hell with it. Most of these people think I’m crazy, might as well add slutty to the mix. She helped Alice get her hair in her topknot, and Alice said, “Can we still do the Three O’Clock Bake this afternoon?” and she said, “Absolutely,” and thought, As long as we’re done before the séance, and took Alice downstairs for a late breakfast, keeping an eye out for May the entire time.
North had been up since seven, determined to get the mess he’d found at Archer House cleaned up and Andie and the kids back to Columbus by Sunday at the latest. Gabe McKenna must have gotten up at the crack of dawn, because he pounded on the doorknocker at eight. “I’m here,” he said when North opened the door, his sharp dark eyes taking in the place without comment. “What are we looking for?”
“Ghosts,” North said.
“All right then,” Gabe said and walked in.
They started on the first floor since nobody was up yet. Gabe was thorough, tapping walls, looking at the stone floors, turning furniture and paintings over, and North put anything they found that didn’t clearly have a purpose for where it was stored into a box. The front two rooms were empty, their walls solid stone behind the drywall, so they were done in minutes. The hallways were equally bare of furniture and decoration although the paintings that hung there took a few minutes to flip and examine. The kitchen showed the most signs of life—North saw bananas browning in a bowl on the counter and opened a cupboard and found chocolate chips and nuts, flour and sugar, and thought, Andie’s here—but the dark little pantry off the back of the kitchen was mostly empty aside from old spices and drying herbs, half a dozen half-empty bottles of quality booze that North recognized as Southie’s choices, and a jug of tea, the tea leaves sitting in a sludge at the bottom. The dining room and sitting room were pretty much storage for unused furniture. It wasn’t just that there wasn’t anything out of place in those rooms, it was that there wasn’t anything in place: no dishes in the sideboard in the dining room, no photos on the tables in the sitting room, nothing except the furniture and the paintings on the walls.
“This place is strange,” Gabe said when they headed for the library. “Nobody lives here.”
“They live here,” North said grimly, “but they shouldn’t.”
Then Gabe opened the door to the library and said, “Now we’re getting somewhere.”
North went in and really looked at the room for the first time. Last night, when it had been full of people and Alice screaming, he’d registered it as a library because it was lined with books, but now in the cold light of early morning, it was clear that this room was used. The window seat had books and papers tumbled in it, the big table in the middle of the room had workbooks and papers and textbooks spread out across it, and there were more books in front of the fireplace where somebody had obviously stretched out to read.
“I think this is where Andie teaches the kids,” North said, and then he heard Kelly O’Keefe say, “Well, hello,” from the bottom of the stone stairs. “We’ll look here later. Avoid that woman,” he said, and Gabe nodded, waved at Kelly, who said, “Aren’t you Gabe McKenna, the detective?”, and followed them to the basement door.
“Leave,” North said, “today,” and shut the basement door in her face.
By the time Andie and Alice got to the kitchen, Flo had made breakfast for everybody and cleaned up, so Andie got Alice her cereal and milk and took it to the library, where Carter was reading and ignoring Kelly’s efforts to talk to him.
“Get out,” Andie told Kelly when she found her there. “Out of the house, out of our lives.”
“Well, really,” Kelly said, but she left them alone.
Andie made sure the gas fireplace was on and went to find Isolde.
“We need another séance,” she told the medium when she found her standing in the middle of the Great Hall, frowning.
“Bad idea,” Isolde said. “Too many people here, too much tension.”
Andie looked around. Still no May. “Could we go into a room that has a fireplace?”
Isolde raised her eyebrows but followed her into the sitting room where Kelly was arguing with Bill and Southie in front of the fire.
“Not here,” Andie said, and took Isolde into the dining room where Dennis had papers spread out, making notes. He looked at them as if he wished they would leave and they ignored him, so he got up and went into the kitchen, either passive aggressive or hungry.
Andie turned the gas fire on, and then faced the medium. “May possessed me last night, took my body. We have to stop her, all of them, get rid of them.”
“Oh, fuck,” Isolde said. “She took you? Are you all right?”
“Not even a little bit,” Andie said. “If we ask them, will they go away?”
“No. They got a great setup here. Why should they go?”
“Can you read their minds or something? Find out how to get rid of them?”
“Two of them don’t have minds,” Isolde said. “The other one’s still new. She’s not dumb and she doesn’t want to go, and no, I can’t read her mind.”
“Isolde, work with me here.”
Isolde sat down at the dining room table. “Let me think.” She looked at the books and papers spread out on the table and said, “What is this?”
Andie picked up a book and looked at the marked page, which was about faked hauntings in English country houses. “It’s Dennis’s research.” She dropped the book back on the table. “Ideas, Isolde. You’re my expert here.”
Isolde ignored her to look at the papers, opening the other books to scan the pages Dennis had bookmarked. “He’s researching the house.”
“Well, that’s what he does, investigate hauntings.”
Isolde nodded. “He’s very methodical. This is good. He may find out something.”
“Yes,” Andie said patiently. “But he doesn’t believe in ghosts. So whatever he’s looking for, it’s not a way to get rid of them. He and North think it’s some kind of fraud, they’re looking for a live person who’s gaslighting me.”
“It happens,” Isolde said, frowning at the notes Dennis had made on a legal pad. “Not here, you’ve got ghosts, but people fake hauntings all the time.”
“We need to get the ghosts out,” Andie said. “Last night was bad, but what if they start possessing the kids?”
Isolde waved her hand. “I’m working on it. We’ll do the séance at four. That gives me some time to look through this stuff and talk to Dennis—”
“What are you doing?” Dennis said stiffly from the door to the kitchen.
“Reading your notes,” Isolde said without looking up from the legal pad. “Get in here, we need to talk.”
“I hardly think—”
“Well, it’s time you started,” Isolde snapped. “Sit down here and explain this to me. They brought the contents of the house over, too?”
“The furniture,” Dennis said, coming in to stand beside her. “The paintings. The accoutrements.”
“That cou
ld explain how the two old ghosts got here,” Isolde said to Andie. “If they’d left something behind they were tied to, and it got shoved in the back of a drawer or put behind a secret panel in a desk or something.”
“Secret panel,” Dennis said, barely concealing his scorn.
“Sit down and stop patronizing me, you jerk,” Isolde said. “Andie needs help.”
“I really do, Dennis,” Andie said. “Please.”
He sighed heavily and sat down beside Isolde. “What do you want to know?”
“Everything,” Isolde said, and Andie said, “Thank you,” and went to check on Alice and Carter in the library.
Where there was a fireplace.
On her way through the Great Hall, she ran into North and the detective he’d been friends with for years, resisting the urge to lean on North just because he was there. She really had to get over this needy phase she was going through. Once she and the kids were out of the house, she’d be independent again.
“How are you?” North said to her. “You—”
“I’m fine,” she said hastily. “Good as new. Gabe, it’s good to see you again. What are you doing here exactly?”
“Trying to find out who’s faking your haunting,” Gabe said, and Andie looked at North, thinking, It’s not a fake, damn it, but he was looking at her T-shirt.
“Nice shirt,” North said, and she looked down and saw the glowing, green “Bad Witch” stretched tight.
“Alice gave it to me,” she said. “And the haunting is not a fake.”
“You work on your theory, I’ll work on mine,” he told her. “I want you and these kids out of here, one way or another.”
Andie nodded. “But there really are ghosts, so don’t waste too much time.” She started to go on, but then she heard “No, no, no!” coming from the library and went to find out what latest injustice had struck Alice.
She spent the rest of the day feeding people, trying to get rid of Kelly and her cameraman—the storm hadn’t let up and the satellite truck wasn’t going anywhere—keeping Flo and Lydia from open warfare—their allegiance against Kelly could only do so much—and maintaining as much normality as she could for the kids, which involved telling Will to leave her alone several times while she worked with them in the library, and ducking North and Gabe while they searched every inch of the house looking for something that wasn’t there.
Because the house was haunted.
The only guests not giving her fits were Dennis and Isolde, who hunkered down in the dining room, forming an uneasy truce that grew less uneasy as the day passed and the level of the brandy in the decanter in front of them sank lower. Andie made sandwiches for lunch and told people to stay out of the dining room because people were working in there.
“On what?” Kelly said, smiling automatically even though by now she must have gotten the message that everyone loathed her.
“None of your damn business,” Andie said, and went back to the library to eat with the kids.
At three, she checked in with Dennis and Isolde again, who were now sitting with their heads together over his notes.
“There’s a remarkable consistency in the reports,” Dennis told her. “Somebody must have written the legends down and then made sure each generation told the same story. Usually there’s more randomness, more inconsistencies.”
“It’s the same ghosts,” Isolde said. “Of course the reports are the same.”
“There are no such things as ghosts,” Dennis said, and this time Isolde rolled her eyes, but they were clearly on speaking terms and getting somewhere, so Andie left them alone to set up the Great Hall.
“So I’m very excited about our next séance,” Kelly said, catching her as she came out of the dining room with a chair. “I’d like to interview you—”
“Go away,” Andie said. “Or I swear I will throw you out into the storm and you can sleep with your cameraman in the satellite truck.”
“It’s three o’clock,” Alice said from behind her.
“What happens at three o’clock?” Kelly said, beaming down at her.
“We bake,” Alice said, and turned her back on Kelly and went to the kitchen.
“Is it all right if I watch?” Kelly said.
“No,” Andie said, “go away, forever,” and went to make cookies with Alice.
By late afternoon, North and Gabe were staring defeated at the outside of the house. The rain had stopped, but the sun had given up for the day, and the house rose up over them in the gloom, crumbling and bleak. They’d left a box full of stuff they’d found in the pantry—pieces of odd-shaped metal; a length of goldish chain; a few battered, sepia-toned photographs; rusted screws and a bent screwdriver; a broken pocket watch; a woman’s hair clip; and several keys that fit nothing in the house and wouldn’t have helped if they had since nothing in the house was locked—but it was all junk, and North knew they were done. There wasn’t anything in the house, not just nothing suspicious, but nothing. Mrs. Crumb evidently lived in the kitchen and her bedroom and ignored the rest of the house. The kids had all of their belongings in their bedrooms. Nobody had ever spread out in all of that space, nobody had lived in the house for years.
“This place has a very bad vibe,” Gabe said, surveying it.
“Yes, but it’s not haunted,” North said, exasperated. “Somebody has Andie convinced that there are ghosts here, she’s doing another séance at four. I don’t know whether it’s Mrs. Crumb or the kids or somebody from the outside, but there’s fraud going on here.”
“Why?” Gabe said. “Who would want this place?”
“I don’t know. I just know it’s working.”
Gabe turned around to look at the grounds. “I thought somebody might be growing pot, but we’ve walked the whole property and there’s nothing but weeds. There’s no meth lab in the basement, the paintings aren’t anything special, there’s nothing in the walls.” He kicked a clump of purple asters and watched their petals scatter. “There’s something wrong here, anybody could feel that. But I’ll be damned if I can find it . . .”
His voice trailed off and he stared at the asters.
“What?” North said.
Gabe bent down and picked up a dried ugly weed someone had thrown down at the edge of the garden.
“What is that?” North said.
“I need to make a phone call,” Gabe said, and headed for the house with his plant.
“Here you are,” Lydia said when she found Andie and Alice in the kitchen. “I wanted to talk to you about coming to Columbus.”
Alice stiffened and Andie said, “Not until you say yes, Alice,” and dumped the chocolate chips into the dough, keeping an eye out for May. Damn kitchen had no fireplace.
“I was hoping for banana bread,” Lydia said, looking into the bowl. “I haven’t had decent banana bread since you left. I put bananas on the kitchen counter at home so you could bake when we all got back.”
“They have to be brown to make banana bread,” Alice said severely. “The yellow ones will not do.”
“That’s why I left them on the counter,” Lydia said. “So they’ll be brown when we get there.”
They’ll be rotted through by the time we get there, Andie thought, if we ever do, and kept mixing and watching for May.
Alice reached up and turned on the radio. “We dance while we bake,” she informed Lydia.
“How nice for you,” Lydia said, and watched Alice pick up the beat at the end of “I’m Too Sexy” and bop around the kitchen. “Perhaps you could find a classical station?” she said to Andie.
“It’s this or nothing,” Andie said. “The reception here is not good. We make do.” Where the hell is May?
“Hello,” Flo said, coming through the kitchen door as the music changed, beaming at them all. “Where is everybody?”
“Here!” Alice called to her. “We’re dancing. Come on!”
“Dancing!” Flo said, and joined Alice to bebop around the kitchen to “Achy Breaky Heart.”
r /> They looked like a demented conga line. In Texas.
“The sooner we get these children out of here, the better,” Lydia said to Andie.
The sooner we get me out of here, the better, too, Andie thought, and mixed faster.
Crumb caught North in the servants’ hall as he and Gabe came in.
“There’s a woman on the phone for you,” she said, her voice full of scorn. “Says it’s important.”
North went to the entrance hall and picked up the phone. “Hello?”
“It’s me,” Kristin said. “Simon called from England. He said to call him as soon as you could.”
“Did he find the graves?”
“He didn’t say, but he found something.”
“I’ll call right now.”
“And I found out about May Younger.”
“She’s buried around here?”
“She’s not buried at all. She was cremated and her ashes scattered at a dance club in Grandville called . . . here it is, it’s called ‘The Grandville Grill.’ Her friends hijacked the ashes when nobody picked them up and scattered them on the dance floor in her memory.”
“Touching,” North said, thinking, At least I won’t have to talk Andie out of burning her corpse.
“Evidently she spent a lot of time there. I got the impression she had a drinking problem. The night she died, her friends had to drive her home because she was too drunk to drive. The last they saw of her, she was on the tower, waving at them.”
“Good work,” North said. “Thank you.”
“When will you be back?” Kristin sounded a little frazzled. “People are becoming . . . demanding.”
“I’m hoping by Monday. If I’m not there Monday morning, Southie will be.”
“Whatever you say,” Kristin said, with a lot of this is not a good idea in her voice. “Don’t forget to call Simon.”
North hung up, thinking, May Younger got drunk and fell off the tower. Tragic, but not supernatural. So far, so good.
He dialed England, and Simon answered on the first ring.
“It’s North Archer,” he said. “Did you find the graves?”