by Tamara Berry
Otis accepts this greeting with a warm embrace, but his eyes—or eye, I should say—meets mine over Sid’s head. “So I apprehend.”
An embarrassed heat flushes my cheeks, but I’m not able to apologize or explain, since his gaze moves smoothly over the rest of the room. He pauses at Ashley to give a brief nod, but the sight of Birdie causes him to drop his arms from around Sid’s shoulders and blink.
“I see you went through with that psychic business, after all,” he says in a tone as dry as his overcoat is wet. “I warned you what would happen, but you two never listen. Now see what’s come of it. You’ll excuse my plain speaking, ma’am, but you look like you eat children straight out of the oven.”
For the second time in as many minutes, I’m betrayed by my inability to control myself. Instead of screaming, however, I outright laugh. Never has a woman been so accurately summarized in such a brief space of time.
Although Birdie doesn’t go so far as to join in my laughter, she takes no offense. “People are often scared of what they don’t understand,” she says in her magnanimous way. She lifts one of her ring-bedecked hands and holds it out to the newcomer, her palm down as if expecting a papal kiss. With an indifference I can’t help but admire, Otis draws forward, dragging the line of salt everywhere, and gives her hand a perfunctory shake.
I find less to admire in the way he turns his attention to me. In any other man, the dark clothes and eyepatch could easily be taken as an affectation, but I doubt that’s the case here. He seems almost born to them.
“That one’s purpose is clear, but I can’t quite make you out. You look like a magician’s assistant, but I don’t see any need to cut damsels in half out here in the middle of the ocean.” He taps his deeply cleft chin in consideration. “Let me see . . . Vaudeville comedienne? Burlesque dancer at a G-rated club?”
“Otis!” Sid cries in a voice that contains more laughter than chagrin. “I’m so sorry, Madame Eleanor. Don’t believe a word out of Otis’s mouth. He never means any of the things he says.”
“I doubt my lies are the ones you should apologize for,” he says in a show of shrewd understanding. “Well, Ashley? Aren’t you glad to see me amongst all this female sentimentality?”
“Hullo, Otis,” Ashley says. The words are almost wrung out of him, as is the hand he grudgingly holds out. “It’s good to see you again.”
“No, it’s not. You wish I’d shipwrecked on my way here. But you know I’ll take any excuse I can get to pull my boat out, and Uncle Glenn wouldn’t have wanted you searching for the family fortune without me.” He turns to me with a sardonically lifted brow. “Never count a pirate out of a treasure hunt. Have you checked the safe yet?”
This Otis person—a cousin to Sid and Ashley, by his own admission—is by no means an attractive man. His facial features are over-large and distinguished by a scar that escapes from both the top and bottom of his eyepatch in a gnarled twist. The curled locks of his hair are so tight they look recently permed, and the sneering way he’s treated everyone in this room except Sid indicates a cynical disposition.
I like him immensely.
“Of course we checked the safe,” Ashley says, crossing his arms with all the petulance of a boy half his age. “And the library. And Father’s study. And everywhere else that springs to the mind of anyone who’s not an idiot, so you can stop looking at me like that.”
“Well, now. That’s cast me down, hasn’t it?” Otis asks in a purely rhetorical spirit. “When you very well know this is the only way I can look.”
Another laugh is startled out of me. I’m about to apologize for my lack of decorum—really, it’s highly unprofessional to keep breaking out like this—but Birdie beats me to it.
“I’m sorry that you’ve found us in this state,” she says, gesturing to the glimmering darkness and broken line of salt over the doorway. “It’s not an ideal place to hold a session, but the spirits are displeased at our intrusion into this household. Gloriana is displeased.”
“Well, if it comes to that, I’m not too keen on it myself,” Otis says, unruffled.
He strips his gloves from his hands, handing them to Sid before continuing to unpeel the other layers from his personage. He’s not, as the bulk of his overcoat suggests, a very large man. Small and lithe, he looks more like a shadowy version of Ashley than a big, scary pirate. Even the clothes he has on under the coat, a gray turtleneck and well-cut slacks, are somewhat disappointing. Only the eyepatch and gnarled scar remain.
“I wish you would have called me before you let these charlatans into the house,” Otis says. With a nod at me, he adds, “No offense, of course.”
“Oh, none taken,” I reply, amused. He’s not the first man to call me a charlatan, and I doubt he’ll be last. Even Nicholas, in his more ironical moods, has been known to throw the term about.
Birdie, however, doesn’t take this remark as well as she did the aspersion on her appearance. I could almost swear the feather on her head ruffles up in protest. “I hardly think you’re a fit judge on matters of the afterlife,” she says with a sharp sniff. “We were in the middle of discussing the nature of your family’s troubles when you so rudely barged in.”
“By all means, don’t let me stop you,” he replies. He tosses his wet coat onto the foot of my bed, heedless of what it will mean when I slip between the sheets later. I don’t take that to heart, either. If he arrived via his own private boat, that means we have at least one exit route available to us. I’m prepared to overlook quite a bit for that.
After a quick glance around the room, Otis settles himself on the wide frame of the window. Once again unaware of how his feet scuff the line of salt as he crosses over it, he seats himself amidst the scattered crystals. “Perhaps I can help condense the story. Let’s see . . . The queen had gold. The queen had death. Our forebearer, with a profound lack of insight, ransacked the ship meant to free the sovereignty of its burden. Then we had gold and we had death. A rather neat transaction, don’t you think?”
“Otis, don’t,” Sid pleads.
He doesn’t heed her. With the sneer firmly in place again, he fixes his gaze on Birdie’s profile, which is being held in stiff disapproval. I can almost find it in my heart to pity her. She wouldn’t like being upstaged by anyone, but for a man like this to barrel in and wrest her from her perch must be too much.
“Dear old Great, Great, Great, Great, Great—honestly, I don’t know how great he was, nor do I care—Grandpa Stewart was a pirate, you understand. Don’t look so shocked; it was de rigueur for Hebrideans to plunder English ships in those days. How else do you think we came by all this wealth?”
I’d assumed it was through the systematic disenfranchisement of the masses, as per the usual custom, but that works, too. Enmity between the Scottish and the English has been the cause of many worse crimes than piracy.
“Alas,” he adds with a mock sigh. “I might look the part of a villainous rogue, but the acclaim goes to him.”
“At least he had manners,” Ashley mutters.
“A matter of pure conjecture. For all we know, he ate with the same knife he used to clean his toenails. Come to think of it, he probably did. Most of them did back then.”
This proves too much for Sid. “Otis!” she cries in a voice of real disapproval. “You can’t have heard what’s happened, or you wouldn’t talk like that.”
“Fiend seize it. What is it now? Banshees screeching in the night? Ghostly fingers tapping on the windows?” He hooks a thumb at Birdie. “That one looks like she could set up a good holler if she put her mind to it, and as for the fingers, you know as well as I do that it’s nothing more than the rain going sideways over the ocean.”
Sid casts a scared look at me, which I interpret to mean that she can’t bring herself to divulge the news of the most recent death in the family.
“It’s regarding Harvey Renault, your uncle’s solicitor,” I say as gently as I can. “He passed away while taking a train up here.”
&nbs
p; To do him credit, Otis looks genuinely shocked at this piece of news. The sneer dies on his lips, and he doesn’t move a single muscle, not even to wipe away a drop of water that’s trickled from his damp hair down the side of his nose.
“Harvey Renault died?” he echoes.
Sid nods, her expression grim. “We got a call from the train station late last night. No one has been able to give us much in the way of information, but from what they’re saying, it sounds as though he had a—”
“Heart attack,” Otis finishes for her.
Ashley whirls on his cousin. “You knew? You knew what happened, and you still came in here laughing at the curse and acting as though you don’t have a care in the world?”
“Of course I didn’t know he died. But Harvey was eighty, if he was a day, and he’s had two heart attacks already. It can hardly have come as a surprise.” Otis glances around the room, taking each face in its turn. His sneer returns. “Or, rather, it should hardly have come as a surprise. But I can see I was grossly mistaken in thinking I’d encounter wisdom in this house. You, the Burlesque Bambi one—”
“My name is Eleanor Wilde,” I interrupt. “Madame Eleanor Wilde.”
He ignores this. “You look like a woman of sense. Is it possible—just possible—that an older man with a weak heart might succumb to his ailment for no other reason than that’s how nature works? Not because of a centuries-old curse placed on a pile of gold that no one in this room has laid eyes on in decades?”
His question puts me in a difficult position. On the one hand, I absolutely agree with him. It is possible that Harvey died of natural causes, especially in light of this new information about his heart condition. On the other hand, I resent the implication that I look like a woman of sense.
I look mysterious. I look all-seeing. I look like someone who’s going to lay a curse to rest even if it means I have to pretend to believe in it first.
“The secrets of this world aren’t so easily explained,” I say in a tone that sounds alarmingly like Birdie’s. I nod toward the candelabra. “Already, the elements are wreaking havoc on our setting, drawing upon the wrath of nature to—”
“Oh, for the Lord’s sake.” Otis throws up his hands and jerks himself from the window seat. “I’m not going to sit here and listen to this. I have better things to do.”
“Where are you going?” Sid asks as Otis scoops up his overcoat and gloves. They leave a large, damp imprint behind. “You can’t go, Otis. Not now. We need you.”
Otis’s expression, which had been turning decidedly wrathful, softens as it lands on his cousin. His voice, however, remains resolute. “I’m going to fix the generator,” he says, and shoves his arms into the coat. Turning the collar up around his throat and tugging the gloves back on, he once again regains his piratical air. “As much fun as it is to tell ghost stories in the dark, there’s no way I’m living in this house for the next week without any power. Some of us would like to eat and bathe like normal human beings.”
This eminently sensible plan finds favor with me, but I don’t dare say so out loud.
“The next week?” Sid asks hopefully. “Does this mean you’ll be making a long stay?”
“No,” he says, and heads out the door. “It means that’s how much time I’m giving myself to get rid of your houseguests. Any longer than that, and I’m likely to start putting my own curses on this place.”
* * *
“Well,” Birdie says in a comprehensive manner. She watches as the door swings to a close, the latch clicking triumphantly behind Otis. “That man is going to have a very negative impact on the energy of this place.”
“Yes, but I believe he’s going to have a very positive impact on the electricity of this place,” I counter. “For that, I’m willing to forgive him. What boat was he talking about, by the way? I thought McGee was the only regular transportation.”
“Oh, Otis has his own vessel for work. He’s always coming and going.” Sid worries her lower lip between her teeth. “During the warm season, it’s mostly going, but he doesn’t take anyone out this time of year. He does boat tours. He’s sometimes hired to do private excursions and fishing expeditions, but it’s mostly families up on holiday during the summer.”
I can’t imagine that’s a particularly well-paying profession, especially considering how little he must have to do during the winter, but I don’t say anything out loud. To be honest, I find Otis’s presence here a decidedly helpful one. He’s too perceptive, brusque to the point of rudeness, and he left a huge wet patch on my bed, but if anyone is going to prevent Birdie from becoming overly confident, it’s a man willing to take the wind out of her sails by slicing them right down the center.
“Not everyone has the same sensitivity about these sorts of things,” I say. “Nicholas himself is a skeptic, but I find it doesn’t limit me in the least. There will continue to be magic and miracles regardless of whether or not men like them believe.”
Sid accepts this with a nod and seats herself on the bed once again, unconcerned with the damp that must be seeping into her skirt. “You’re right—of course you’re right. Otis doesn’t like to admit it, but Father’s death affected him quite severely. Near the end, he was closer to him than either of us. Well, he’d have to be, wouldn’t he?” She blinks up at me, a tear catching in one corner of her eye. “Ashley and I don’t live here, and we didn’t come out to visit as often as we should have.”
I’m quick to interpret her real meaning. “He was alone when he died.”
Sid nods, shaking the tear free. “It’s not always easy for us to make the trip, especially this time of year. But Otis has a beautiful little house on Barra. He stops by more than anyone.”
I nod and tuck this tidbit away, along with the information about his tour-boat business. Proximity and access to this island might mean nothing . . . or it might mean everything. Especially since it seems Otis can slip in and out with no one in the castle being any the wiser.
Not to be outdone, Birdie makes her own pronouncement. “He has a tragedy in his history, that man. A terrible accident, a tortured past.”
Well, obviously. That’s a fairly safe bet, considering the state of his scarred face, but I wasn’t going to say so. Not yet, at any rate.
“Oh, yes,” Sid agrees wanly. “Otis’s life hasn’t been an easy one.”
“He’s an orphan.”
This is a new one to me—but, again, completely within the realm of possibility. A close relationship with an uncle hints at a lack of direct parental influence, and a man with a personality as abrasive as that one is most likely hiding some mommy and daddy issues. Even the most inexperienced con artist—I’m sorry, medium—could tell that much.
“You can see all that?” Ashley asks. “After just one meeting?”
Birdie’s answer to this is to fall into a trance-like state that forces me to take my tongue between my teeth. She’s still in that stupid red chair, sitting like Queen Elizabeth herself holding an audience. It’s not that I begrudge her this opportunity to show off; it’s that she’s doing it before I’ve had a chance. I’m not 100 percent sure of her game just yet, but there’s no denying that she’s trying to outplay me. Outplay me, outperform me, and out-psychic me.
The worst part is, she’s succeeding at it. I could almost curse Nicholas—yes, curse him—for foisting this job on me with all of twelve hours’ advance warning. There’s no denying that Birdie has done her homework. She knows about the Stewart family, about this house, about Gloriana’s curse . . . and about me.
I, on the other hand, am like a puppy just beginning to snuffle her way about. An extra day of research would have gone a long way in helping me make a more convincing show of things.
“His pain runs deep,” Birdie says, her eyes closed and her fingers fluttering in front of her. I’m not sure what she’s supposed to be doing, but it’s effective. Her hands look as though they’re holding something sinister at bay. “It extends beyond this castle . . . and beyond th
is world. A wife lost. A future blighted. And worst of all, a child never born.”
Her eyes pop open again. They bear the dazed, unfixed look of someone awakening from a deep sleep. I assume she’s working too hard keeping them focused on nothing to see Sid and Ashley’s reaction, but it doesn’t matter. Her words have struck home.
“Madame Eleanor,” Sid says weakly, one arm extended in my direction. Her whole body shakes like a blancmange, her face devoid of color. Even when her hand finds mine and clutches it, she continues shaking. “She can’t know that. How can she know that? Otis doesn’t talk about that accident with anyone. The boat, the storm . . .”
I don’t know how Birdie has all this information about Otis any more than I know how she predicted Harvey’s death. The one thing I do know is that she’s seriously starting to tick me off.
“It was to be a baby girl,” Birdie adds in her deep, musical voice. “Colleen.”
Sid visibly blanches, her grip on my hand tightening to the point where I can no longer feel my fingers. “Please make her stop,” she says, her voice barely above a whisper. “I can’t bear to hear any more.”
This is a task I’m more than happy to perform. “Birdie,” I call sharply. When this doesn’t appear to affect her, I disentangle my hand from Sid’s. Snapping my fingers, I try again. “Birdie, you’re scaring Sid and Ashley. Stop this at once.”
I know she hears me, because a ghost of a smile flickers on her lips before it disappears again. “That was Gloriana’s doing, too,” she says. “Gloriana is particularly drawn to children.”
“Enough.” I stalk over to where Birdie is sitting and kick the leg of her chair. The wood is so solid that it doesn’t move her, but at least she gives a start of surprise. “If you can’t find anything productive to say, then kindly keep your thoughts to yourself. We’re not here to tell these people what they already know. We’re here to find a trove of gold coins, and that’s it. All you’re doing right now is making a scene.”
