by Tamara Berry
Nicholas gently clears his throat. He’s standing much nearer than he was a second ago, almost as though time and space have stopped making sense. “Perhaps you should sit down,” he suggests. “Your head . . .”
As if it’s capable of acting on suggestion, my head does start to throb. The ache is low and dull, but I barely heed it. “This has nothing to do with my injury. This is something else.”
“You do look awfully pale,” Sid says. She rises smoothly from her seat and makes a gesture for me to take her spot. “Nicholas, darling, bring her over here. I’ll make her comfortable, and Ashley will pour her something to drink. It’s been a trying day for us all.”
“I don’t want something to drink.” I only have eyes for Elspeth. “Elspeth, I’m serious. Do they have somewhere else to go? Can you call your husband to pick them up, or maybe Otis can—”
One glance at Otis tells me that he’s not going to be a likely source of assistance. The conciliatory mood that’s had him mellowed all evening is gone, replaced by the snarling ogre of a man who first made my acquaintance.
“You’re disgusting,” he says, his voice thick with loathing. The sound is raw and emotional, and I shiver just to hear it. “Using children like this. Threatening their safety to get a reaction. Is there no end to how low you people will go, nothing that’s sacred enough to be left alone?”
Although Birdie is presumably included in this tirade, Otis doesn’t look at her. All of his anger is reserved for me and me alone. Not even having Nicholas at my elbow, his stance rigid and tense, is enough to shield me from it.
“You can say whatever you want about me,” Otis continues bitterly. “You can accuse me of hoarding the gold on my boat and throw my dead wife and unborn baby at my head a thousand times over.”
I’m about to point out that it was Birdie and not me who did that, but he’s not finished. He looms closer, one finger outstretched.
“But you will not, cannot, dare not touch one hair on these boys’ heads, or I will see to it that the only way you’re carried off this island is in a body bag.”
Even if I could think of a reply to a threat like this one, I’m too paralyzed to utter it. Otis’s words are harsh and cruel, and the way he’s saying them leaves little room for doubt as to his feelings about me, but I don’t begrudge him a single syllable. It’s about time someone else realized what kind of danger we’re all in—not because of a stupid old curse, but because someone under this roof has already committed at least one murder.
If we’re not careful, we’ll all be carried off this island in body bags.
“I think you’ve said quite enough,” Nicholas says, his tone more clipped and British than I’ve ever heard it. He doesn’t just have a stiff upper lip; every part of him is rigid. However, that doesn’t stop him from putting a protective arm around me. “Your message has been received and will be taken under consideration.”
Somewhere in the back of my mind, I’m amused at how precise and formal Nicholas’s speech becomes as he rises up in his role of white knight, but I’m unable to appreciate it right now. The way Elspeth is angling her body in front of her grandsons; the light horror that has dropped Sid’s lower lip . . . Even Ashley, who doesn’t seem to be affected by much, is starting to look uneasy.
Only Birdie remains unmoved by the scene unfolding in front of her, but that doesn’t count for much, since she’s mostly watching Freddie as she pads across the room to be groomed by her mother.
“Madame Eleanor won’t hurt us,” Jaime says, but more as a question than a statement of fact.
“You’re not going to make us leave, Nanna, are you?” Ferguson asks. Although I wouldn’t go so far as to say he looks scared of me, there is a taut wariness around his mouth that wasn’t there before. “If we promise to be good and not get in any trouble?”
“You’re not going anywhere,” Otis growls. The boys shrink at the venom in his voice but stand their ground. “If anyone is leaving this island, it’s those two.”
The those two he refers to are, naturally, me and Birdie. I can’t help thinking that this might all be a ploy—that Otis knows how close I am to finding an answer and that his sole objective is to get me out of the way—but it’s a short-lived sentiment. If this is the case, he’s a phenomenal actor. No one has looked at me with that much disgust before.
“I don’t think anyone is going ashore in this weather,” Birdie points out. She nods toward the nearest window. Sure enough, the lashings of wind and rain make it doubtful that anyone will be heading out to sea in the next few hours. “Perhaps we should make the best of things and let dear Ella try to reach her spirit guide.”
This suggestion is, not unnaturally, met with violent opposition. Even Nicholas, who generally enjoys watching me work, is unable to support the idea of ghostly communion at this time.
“I think we ought to call it a night,” Sid suggests before pandemonium erupts. She holds her hand out in a vague gesture of supplication and keeps it there until Nicholas takes it. “Please, Nicholas, will you take me up to my room? I’m too scared to walk alone in the dark.”
“Of course,” Nicholas replies, but not before shooting me a look of apology.
I wave the pair of them off. Of all the things to fear inside this house, the dark seems like the least objectionable, but I’m not about to say so. Reminding everyone that they need to avoid being struck over the head or murdered in the bathtub isn’t likely to win me any favors.
Sid’s dismissal acts as a parting bell for the rest of the company. Otis stalks away without a backward glance, Elspeth bundles her grandsons off to bed, and Ashley lingers for only a few seconds before deciding that now might not be the best time to pester me about his book of poems.
In the end, only Birdie and I remain in the room. I’m afraid she’s going to ask me questions about my vision, but all she does is nod toward my cats. “You weren’t lying about your familiars, were you?” she asks. “I’ve never seen anything like it. You were gone for almost two minutes that time.”
Two minutes? From my perspective, that vision had lasted no more than two seconds. I must have fallen deeper into a trance than I realized.
“Was it you who texted Nicholas?” I ask.
Her response to that is a bland smile and a slight inclination of her head.
“Why?” I demand. “What are you hoping to get out of all this ?”
She answers my question with a few of her own. “What else are they capable of? Your cats, I mean. Will they be able to help you communicate with Glenn? Do you know something about the gold?”
“Aren’t you even a little bit curious about what I saw? Those boys, Birdie. I saw one of them dead.”
“Did you now?”
I stamp my foot, inadvertently startling Beast and Freddie in the process. They dash out the door, but I have no doubt they’ll make their way to my bedroom later. Either that, or Nicholas’s. Beast is much more likely to seek solace at his hands than mine.
“Don’t you remember what happened the last time I saw someone die?” I demand.
“Yes.” Her answer is simple, her indifference simpler.
“And that doesn’t worry you? I probably shouldn’t admit this, but that vision on the train was the first time anything like that has ever happened to me. I don’t intend to make it a regular thing. If there’s something I can do to prevent Jaime and Ferguson from dying, anything I can do to save them, I’m going to do it.”
“Good on you.”
It’s more than I can take—these lies and manipulations, her calm façade in the face of all this horror. “I’m done trying to be your friend, Birdie,” I say. They’re some of the truest words I’ve ever spoken, and I feel liberated just to have them off my chest. “I don’t know what you’re doing here, but I don’t think it’s anything good. If you won’t tell me how you knew that gold coin was in the wine cellar—”
“—Glenn showed me the way.”
“If you won’t tell me how you knew that go
ld coin was in the wine cellar,” I repeat with awful deliberation, “and you won’t tell me how you knew that Harvey Renault was going to die, then I can only assume that you were the one to steal the gold and to murder Harvey when he made an effort to come here and stop you.”
“Oh, dear,” she murmurs. “I’ve gone about this all wrong, haven’t I?”
“Did you kill Glenn Stewart, too?”
“Glenn Stewart drowned in the bathtub.”
I draw closer until our toes are touching. Even in this, she showcases her superiority to me. My leather T-straps have been damaged by all this salty sea air; her serviceable black trainers look incredibly comfortable and show no signs of disrepair from repeated wearings.
Something about those shoes gives me pause. They’re the same ones she’s had on since we met on the train, but this is the first time I’m really noticing them. The rest of her is so carefully crafted to look the role of a medium—the clothes and the hair and the mole that has once again moved to a higher point on her cheekbone than it was yesterday—that it doesn’t make sense for her footwear not to match. Shoes like that denote stealing through corridors without making a sound, slipping down to boat docks and hitting unsuspecting women over the head when everyone else’s back is turned.
“We know the location and cause of Glenn’s death, yes,” I agree, my voice cold. “But what we don’t know is if someone pushed his head under the water and made him drown. What we don’t know is if there were substances in his blood that might have made him susceptible to slipping under the surface. How can we? We’re trapped out here on a remote island castle with no access to Barra or the people who might be able to answer these questions.”
Birdie narrows her eyes. It’s not a look of suspicion or of guilt—it’s more like genuine thoughtfulness.
“This whole setup is designed for failure,” I add. “An isolated house party might make a good setting for conjuring the dead, but it’s not ideal when you want answers to real, important, life-or-death questions. As much as you might like to pretend we’re here for the former, I think we can both agree that the real results will come from the latter.”
I’ve said just about all I can on the subject without writing out a detailed confession of every fake ghost I’ve conjured in the name of quasi-science. I’ve also done all I can considering the current state of my head.
Still. There’s one more thing I need to get off my chest before I go to bed.
“Also, if you would stop trying to get my boyfriend to leave me for Sid Stewart, I’d really appreciate it,” I say. “He’s not as easily won by female fragility as you think.”
She tsks, undismayed, and shakes her head. “Poor Madame Eleanor. You might be able to see into the great beyond better than most, but you’re blind if you think that.”
Chapter 12
It takes Birdie less than twelve hours to cause another uproar.
I had the foresight to set my alarm early last night, as I was determined to wake up before the rest of the house to do some hands-on investigating. A visit to Otis’s boat was to be my first order of business. A more thorough sweep of the boys’ cavern was the second.
Which is why I’m so surprised when the distant cries that jolt me out of bed a good hour before my alarm goes off aren’t, as to be expected, that of Birdie in a trance. Nor are they the sounds of Gloriana, Glenn, Harvey, Montague, Otis’s wife, or any other of the half-dozen departed spirits she’s conjured up communicating through her.
They belong to Sid. It’s that circumstance and no other that has me jumping to my feet and wrapping myself in a sheet.
It doesn’t take me long to determine which direction to take to find her. The castle is still clouded in darkness, but I’m starting to adjust to all this gloom and doom. Like a bat born and raised in darkness, I don’t need to see. I have plenty of other senses to rely on.
Common sense, for example. Before I’m even fully aware of what I’m doing, I find myself turning in the direction of Glenn’s room.
“Hello?” I call as I approach the bedroom door, which has been flung open wide. “Is everything okay in here?”
As I expect, Sid is waiting for help to arrive. She’s sleep-rumpled but elegant; a pink satin robe flutters about her legs as I drag my sheet-wrapped body through the door. “Oh, Madame Eleanor. Thank goodness. You’ll know exactly what to do.”
Like my room, Glenn’s former quarters are designed in a grand, historical style. There’s not quite as much in the way of brocade and ornate carvings, but the four-poster bed, bookshelf-lined walls, and blue pinstripe wallpaper proclaim this a place of wealth and quiet dignity.
Or, rather, it would be a place of wealth and quiet dignity if not for the woman thrashing and moaning on the bed. From the look of her, all twitching limbs and fevered movements, you’d think she was in labor. A birth is one of the few life events I haven’t presided over in the course of my career, but there’s something about Birdie’s legs twisted up in the tasteful blue sheets, kicking and struggling to get free, that brings the image to mind.
“What’s happened?” I ask as I approach. It had been my intention to be polite but distant, refusing to give Birdie any more stage time than she’s already claimed, but she really does look ill. I lay my hand on her forehead to find that she’s clammy and cold despite the sweat that’s broken out on her upper lip. “Birdie, what’s wrong?”
Her eyes snap open. It takes a moment before she’s able to focus enough to see me hovering over her—and when she does, she darts a hand out and clasps me around the wrist with a strength that seems almost superhuman.
“The curse,” she manages before a spasm rocks her body and causes her to almost double over. “I warned you what would happen, told you how it would be if you didn’t start to make some headway. We’re running out of time.”
“This isn’t the work of a curse,” I say as I whip the sheets away from her body. “It’s probably food poisoning.”
I’m tempted to add that it could also be the work of a woman who clearly intends to maximize the amount of attention that’s put on her at all times, but I refrain.
“Where does it hurt?” I ask instead. “What’s the precise location of your pain?”
She doesn’t appear inclined to answer me, so I turn to Sid. “Can you tell me exactly what happened to put her in this state?”
Sid shakes her head, her hands worrying in front of her. From the amount of wringing and wrenching she does with those things, it’s a wonder she has any skin left. “She was like this when I came in. All that moaning woke me up, and I thought perhaps it was . . . well, Father.”
As if to confirm this, she glances over her shoulder to the connecting bathroom, where Glenn’s death occurred. Birdie has yet to stage a scene from there, but that’s not surprising. I’d be lying if I said we mediums didn’t try to avoid bathrooms as much as possible—bathrooms and kitchens both. There’s something about the ordinary functionality of those rooms that makes it difficult to set the right mood.
“She’s going to be all right, isn’t she?” Sid asks.
I don’t answer, taken up as I am in trying to get a sensible answer out of Birdie. So far, her only contribution is to mutter “Gloriana,” “the curse,” or some combination thereof.
“It’s working so much faster than before,” Sid says in a failing voice. Lifting a shaking hand to her brow, she adds, “That attack on you yesterday, and now this . . . it knows what we’re doing and is coming for us all.”
I have no one to blame for that bit of nonsense but myself. I should have known better than to blame the blow to my head on the curse.
“Tell me what you need.” A low, calm, capable voice sounds at my elbow, followed almost immediately by Nicholas’s telltale scent—a light bergamot mixed with mint, and one of my favorite smells in all the world. “Medicine, a blow horn, someone to sit on her chest for a few minutes . . .”
I fight to keep from laughing. Nothing about this situation is funny, bu
t Nicholas has an uncanny way of knowing exactly what I need to hear.
“See to Sid, please. I can handle Birdie.”
I cast a quick glance around the room, searching for something that will help me make good on my claim. There’s not much. Unless I want to strangle Birdie with the bellpull or smother her with a pillow—both of which sound more appealing by the minute—I’m going to have to improvise.
“But first, hand me that water, would you?” I ask.
He hands me a ceramic pitcher from the bedside table. “There aren’t any clean glasses.”
“I don’t intend to make her drink it,” I say, and immediately dash the entire contents over Birdie’s head.
Birdie is understandably displeased by my efforts at calming her. Her moaning turns to spluttering, and she even manages to open her eyes long enough to glare at me. However, the thrashing has stopped, and she’s started breathing in deep and regular—if damp—intervals.
“What did you do that for?” she demands. She makes an effort to sit up. “How dare you attack me like that? How could you be so cruel as to—?”
She cuts herself off and falls back to the bed, unable to finish her tirade. That pained silence is when I realize for certain that she isn’t faking. Any remaining color in her face has drained off, leaving a pale, shaking woman who suddenly looks twenty years older.
“That’s better,” I murmur. I use the sheets to wipe the water from her face. The mole on her cheekbone has all but disappeared by this time, a dark smudge on the sheets the only real indication it had been there at all. “Now, if you’ll just tell me where it hurts.”
“My stomach,” she gasps as she curls into a ball and clutches the offending body part. “I think I’m going to be sick . . .”
She is, in fact, sick. Violently so, and with that same shaking lethargy that leaves me more unsettled than all her hysterics. The emptied water pitcher proves itself invaluable in this instance—as does Nicholas, who loses no time in whisking Sid to one corner of the room to dip her head between her legs and breathe deep.
