by Angie Fox
“I’m handling things,” he said, and I could see in front of him one of the cubs was awake.
“Oh no,” I gasped.
“Look at this,” he said, making kissy noises to the little bear, who, unsteady on its four little paws, toddled toward the clearly insane ghost in front of it.
“Frankie!” I hissed. “We said don’t wake the bears. You’re waking a bear!”
“Just one,” he said, tilting his head back up at me. “A real cute little fellow. And look. He likes me!”
He was out of his mind. “I don’t care if a small animal likes you. It has a mother who will not.” Frankie might not get torn apart by a rampaging animal, but I could.
He leveled a finger at me. “Somebody has to take charge of this crazy train, and so far, it hasn’t been you.” The little bear startled, and Frankie dropped back down and began tut-tutting at it. “Now I have a plan. A good one. I lead the cubs out one by one; then mama follows to see where they went.”
Just the thought of it made me queasy. “Frankie, when a wild bear sees a threat—also known as me—it will not amble out the door the other way!”
“Like you’re an expert on bears,” Frankie said, as if he’d actually thought this through.
“The mama bear is right by the staircase that will lead straight up to a nice, juicy Verity snack.” I wasn’t sure what was left of it would hold her weight, but I didn’t want to test the theory, either.
“You said this job would be no problem,” he said, whipping off his hat and pointing it at me. “You said we’d be back in an hour.” He stood, startling the baby bear, who ran straight for its mother.
It slammed into her side, making her grunt and waking yet another baby bear. “Frankie!” The second little bear yawned and then attacked his brother. “Get them under control,” I ordered as the little bears began scuffling together, right next to the third baby, who wouldn’t be asleep for long at this rate.
“It was under control until you started yelling at me,” he shot back.
The baby bears frolicked directly under the heavy, dangling hook.
“That settles it,” I said with a wince. It killed me to think it. To imagine it. To dream it. But I knew there was still one place, a house up the road, where I could find help. “I have to go,” I said, turning toward the exit.
I’d just have to swallow my pride and show up at Montgomery Wydell’s Christmas party in my torn leggings and muddy shoes. I’d face down Virginia Wydell and a dozen more like her if I must in order to get those animals to safety. Ellis should be able to move the pulley. He had a longer reach than me, and if my stick didn’t pan out, he’d have his brothers to help.
“Hold tight,” I said to Frankie as I headed for the front doorway I’d broken on our way in. I was nearly to the wide-open exit when the ghostly mill door slammed shut in my face. What the—? I gaped at it for a moment.
“I’m sorry.” Phineas stood next to it, frowning. “I can’t allow you to leave.”
“I’m on my way to get help.” In case he hadn’t noticed.
Phineas stood his ground. “I didn’t plan for it to happen this way, but you’ve given me no choice.”
Holy Mary mother. “The last thing I need tonight is another opinionated Wydell telling me what I can and can’t do,” I said, reaching for the ghostly door.
The cold of it iced me to my bones, but I gripped the handle anyway and pulled.
It didn’t budge.
“I locked it,” Phineas said, with a cold smile I didn’t like one bit.
I drew my hand back. “What is this?”
“You are here for a reason. A bigger job than you know,” he said, looming over me. “If you go now, we will both be sorry.”
I was already sorry.
And he was wrong. I didn’t have to listen to this.
“Frankie,” I called. I was done playing. “Cut my power.” I no longer wanted to see Phineas or anything else to do with ghosts in the old mill. Once I was unhooked, I’d no longer be bound to the spirit realm, and I could walk out the door I no longer regretted breaking down.
“Just a second,” Frankie said, sounding strained.
“Do it,” I said, glaring at a smug-looking Phineas.
“I can’t,” Frankie’s slightly panicked voice sounded from the hole. “He’s blocking me. That’s a jerk move, Phineas!”
So much for a friendly dominant ghost.
“You’d better not be hurting him,” I said, my voice steely as I kept my eyes on Phineas.
“Your friend is fine,” he insisted. “You are fine.”
I’d be dandy once I was through with him and this mill. “You can’t keep me here,” I warned him.
“I don’t see you leaving,” Phineas said simply.
This was wrong. Out of line. “You are keeping me from doing my job,” I gritted out. “And now you’ve trapped me in here with a nest of bears.” Wild animals who would be crushed if I didn’t help them, but who could kill me if something went wrong and I couldn’t escape.
“I didn’t want it to be this way,” Phineas said, unmoved, “but you don’t understand what I tried to show you.”
“I get it.” He didn’t have to risk my life or the animals to shove it down my throat. “It’s about family. You love your family.”
“It’s more than that.” He ground his jaw tight. “There is another ghost here to see you. A stronger one than I.”
“What if I don’t want any part of this?” I asked, my attention focused past him and at my only exit. Locked. I hated to admit it, but Frankie had a point. Sometimes, this ghost-hunting business was just too much. “What if I just want to go home?”
“Oh, Miss Long,” he said, his voice cold, his gaze downright chilling, “it’s too late for that.”
10
“I’m not playing,” I said to Phineas as a second ghost began to form directly in front of me. Normally, I’d be glad to be the go-to girl for a ghost who needed to work through a few issues, but not right now and not when Phineas was being such a jerk about it. “I’m not talking to your new ghost.” Unless it could move a pulley. “I’m not moving from this spot until you open that door,” I said, seconds before the shimmering form of Vernon Hale appeared before me.
“Sweet baby Jesus,” I murmured.
Ellis’s uncle looked just like I’d last seen him, still in his police uniform, still strong and straight-backed for a man who’d been killed in the line of duty at sixty. I’d discovered him shot through the chest during my very first ghost-hunting case. He still had a little color—he hadn’t been dead that long—but he’d faded more to gray since the last time I’d seen him.
“If you want to go, I’ll get you out,” he promised, hooking a thumb under his belt, his roughened voice sounding exactly as I remembered.
Stars. I still couldn’t believe my eyes. “How are you, Vernon?” I hadn’t had much chance to talk with him since Ellis and I had solved his murder.
He tipped his chin down, seeming to enjoy my concern. “I’m doing all right, Verity,” he said with his slight Southern drawl. “Justice does that for a person.”
“I’ll tell Ellis I saw you,” I assured him, thinking of how close the two had been.
Hale snorted. “Tell him I enjoyed watching him catch that fugitive in the alley last week.” He grinned. “Aggie Foster should put his cell phone on silent before he commits robbery next time.”
“It just cracks me up that Ellis had his phone number,” I said.
“You know it’s in the book,” Hale answered.
As much as I enjoyed small-town small talk, I moved on to the task at hand. Hale was a problem solver, just like Ellis. “Look, I have to ask you a favor, and I’m hoping you can help.”
“I’ve been watching. You want me to move the pulley,” he said, hitching a thumb toward it. “We don’t have much time, do we?”
“We don’t,” I said, eyeing the bears, as well as an entirely too satisfied-looking Phineas.
“I think I have the energy,” Hale said. “But I won’t know for sure until after I show you something.” He exchanged a glance with Phineas. “A vision.”
“Not you, too,” I protested. “Can it wait?”
That way, Hale could rest up. Frankie could get to his date. And I could come back when it was light out, and when Ellis’s mom wasn’t right down the road.
“I’m sorry, honey,” Officer Hale stated plainly. “It has to be tonight.”
Of course it did.
“Right now, in fact,” Hale added, glancing at Phineas, who nodded.
“The well-being of the entire Wydell family is at stake,” the older ghost added.
“You realize I’m not a member of the Wydell family,” I said, feeling the truth of that sting my heart.
“That doesn’t mean you’re not the best person for the task,” Phineas said. “Please, Miss Long, all I ask is that you go with Vernon. See what he has to show you; then we’ll turn our attention to the bears.”
If I took too much time…if those babies died, it would be my fault.
The Wydells had been falling apart for years. How could anything I saw tonight help me fix that? But it was clear that I wasn’t going to get anything done without Hale’s help at least.
“Fine,” I said to Ellis’s uncle. “What do I need to see?”
Before I could blink, mist enveloped the space around us. I breathed shallowly, not trusting the air as the floor under my feet shifted and a new landscape took shape around Officer Hale and me.
We stood in a large comfortable sitting room with a fireplace crackling against one wall, the brass W from the mill sitting on the mantel above it, and a Christmas tree decorated with some familiar glass ornaments by the window.
“I recognize this place,” I said.
“My in-laws’ house,” Hale said.
Montgomery Wydell’s home to be exact. I scooted closer to Hale. “They can’t see us, can they?”
“They cannot,” Hale assured me.
There was Ellis in a very familiar suit, and there was Virginia with her scarlet sweater and the white pants she’d worn earlier—this was Montgomery’s home now, tonight!
But this Christmas party was nothing like the one I’d witnessed at the cider mill.
There was no happy chatting or laughter. That was the first thing I noticed—the big sitting room was quiet, the loudest thing in it the crackling fire.
It wasn’t that there weren’t people in attendance, although not nearly as many as had celebrated in the mill. It was more that they’d chosen to withdraw from the main table, which was laden with enough cut turkey, collard greens, candied yams, and oyster dressing to serve a much larger crowd. It smelled heavenly, and I found myself wishing I could grab a plate.
The gorgeous banquet sat mostly untouched as the family withdrew into little pockets against the walls. After a moment, I realized why no one was congregating there. Virginia had staked her claim on a high-backed chair right beside the table and was upbraiding Ellis in a quiet but vehement voice in front of everyone.
“You should have stepped in,” she said, her eyes narrow as she stared down her second son. “Instead you just allowed her to speak to me that way, your own mother! If I didn’t know better, I’d swear you wanted her to shout at me.”
“Mom, I don’t tell Verity what to do,” Ellis said with the weary air of a man who’d been repeating this ad nauseum. “Especially not when it comes to things between the two of you. But maybe I should have stepped in sooner,” he added, “when I realized that you’d insulted her taste by saddling her with a huge expensive gift for somebody else.”
“Taste?” Virginia sniffed scornfully. “What sense of taste do you think someone like Verity Long has? Is it tasteful to show up to a party with a platter of crudités that she probably picked up at a truck stop gas station? Is it tasteful to leap from one brother’s bed to another like she’s playing hopscotch? She was supposed to be your brother’s, not yours.”
“Mom—” Ellis warned.
“And now she’s not good enough for either one of you,” Virginia finished.
“I shouldn’t have come,” Ellis stated simply.
I’d wanted him to want to stay home with me tonight, but not because of this.
I felt utterly mortified hearing such venomous things come out of Virginia’s mouth, but I wasn’t alone. Montgomery’s brother Owen, his bushy brows waggling, had started to make his way over to the pair but quickly retreated after hearing Virginia’s tirade. In fact, several of the closest knots of other guests, most of them older, appeared deeply uncomfortable with what they were overhearing, shifting on their feet and murmuring to each other in hushed voices.
A white-haired man wearing a thick wool sweater sat leaning on his cane and leveled a snort in her general direction. “I worked the orchard for most of my life and was happy to do it,” he said to another gentleman and a lady. “Wasn’t ’til Monty’s generation that things started gettin’ fancy.” He glanced not at Montgomery, who was talking quietly to an old man in a wheelchair I was pretty sure was his father, Phineas Jr., but at the third brother—Leland, Virginia’s husband.
I’d only met Leland a few times before and had found him physically imposing but distant, even when he stood right in front of me. He’d always been too busy to participate in things like family dinners, holiday brunches, and birthday celebrations. I was kind of amazed that he’d deigned to attend the Christmas gathering, but even though he was there in body, he certainly wasn’t there in spirit. He had his phone out and was scrolling through his messages, a deep frown on his face.
“Damn fools,” he muttered before pressing a button and lifting the phone to his ear. “Marjorie, get me Kline. No, I don’t care that it’s Christmas Eve!” he shouted into the phone. “Have you seen the load of documents coming in on the McDevitt case? If their lawyers aren’t taking a break, then neither are ours.” He walked into another room, still snapping out orders.
Out of the corner of my eye, I saw Beau watch his father leave, then upend a glass of champagne into his mouth, grab another one off the drinks table, and head for an abandoned loveseat by the glowing Christmas tree. He slouched onto it, took another long swig, and stared blankly up at the ceiling.
I didn’t see Harrison at all. It seemed he and his wife hadn’t even bothered to put in an appearance at the party.
“Well.” The white-haired farmer slapped his leg and stumped over to Montgomery with the help of an aluminum cane. “Thank you for having us, but I think the missus and I will be going now,” he said loudly.
Montgomery, who looked a little to me like a brown-haired Santa in a three-piece suit, wrung his hands unhappily. “Uncle Jimmy, are you sure? Susan’s just about got together a round of hot toddies, and the Christmas cake is almost cool.”
“It sounds delicious, Monty, but you know how it is when you get old. Your tolerance for these things starts to go down.” I didn’t miss the way Uncle Jimmy spared a glance in Virginia’s direction. “Maybe we’ll get together next week sometime, just the four of us, eh?” He reached down and shook Phineas Jr.’s hand. “Good to see you, Phin.”
“You too, Jimmy. Bye now, Flora. Merry Christmas.”
Uncle Jimmy leaving seemed like the start of a mass exodus. Everyone began talking about how late it was, how they didn’t want to chance the roads getting icy, how they had things to do at home.
Montgomery sighed. “I’ll go get your coats.”
Montgomery’s wife, Susan, appearing understated but pretty in a simple blue dress with a holly berry print, stood next to Phineas Jr.’s chair, holding a tray of steaming cider-scented toddies in her hands. Tears stood out in her big brown eyes. “No,” she said to her husband. “I looked up a bunch of classic cider drink recipes. Hot apple cider buttered rum, apple pie sparklers, pumpkin-cider fizz. And I made them all. Not that anyone has to try them all, but surely it’s too soon for everyone to leave.”
Phineas Jr. reac
hed up and patted her arm. “I’m sorry about that, my dear,” he said, and I heard remnants of his father in his kind but firm tones. “But it’ll take more than cocktails to mellow this crowd. I think this might be the last Wydell family Christmas party. It seems like an awful lot of trouble to go to these days when so many people seem unable to enjoy it.”
“But…but…I have a surprise,” Susan announced, appearing flustered, as if she couldn’t quite believe she’d just said that. “Stay,” she urged Uncle Jimmy and his crowd. “It won’t take long, and it would mean the world to me.”
Jimmy hesitated for a moment before giving a quick nod. “Sure, Susan. I’m sorry. We’d be glad to stay a little longer if it would make you happy.”
She and Montgomery helped them find new seats by the fire. It was clear Susan had tried her best, but there was no telling how long she’d be able to keep everyone together.
And I certainly didn’t think drinking was the answer.
Ellis, who’d finally escaped from Virginia’s clutches, wandered over to sit next to Beau. He glanced at his brother like he wanted to say something to him, but after a few moments, he sighed and looked away instead.
Virginia strolled over to take a hot toddy off Susan’s tray. “Perhaps more people would be eager to stay,” she said cuttingly, “if the food was better. I told you to hire my caterer.”
Susan bit her lip, set the tray down on the nearest table, and walked quickly back into the kitchen.
Behind her, Aunt Flora stood staring with her coat half-on, as shocked as if someone had slapped her.
Uncle Jimmy slid the coat the rest of the way up her shoulders. “Yep. I definitely feel my arthritis coming on. Must be the chill in the air. Best get home.”
“Oh my God.” I pressed my hands to my hot cheeks, feeling a wave of secondhand embarrassment flood my whole body. “She’s out of control.”
Officer Hale nodded grimly. “My sister Virginia has never been the kindest soul, but she came here tonight raring to pick a fight.”
“Because I told her off earlier,” I said.
