“And if it’s about the ghost tours…well, I can’t do much about that, either,” she went on. “I’m not the one in charge. You’d do better to take this up with Tristam or your great-great-whatever niece. She’s living in Florida.”
Nothing. Not a twitch in that expressionless face to show that he could hear.
“Look, could you maybe just tell me what you want? Do you want to be left alone? Is that it?”
The mouth opened. The thin lips pulled back from pointy teeth, and when she saw their gleaming length, Karo wished that he had remained silent.
“No,” a thin voice whispered. She had the feeling that the ghost was exerting great effort in order to speak.
“Then, you want us to bring people here?”
It was too hot to feel relief, but Karo was glad that this high-temperature spook wasn’t upset with Tristam’s plan. She had little desire to tell her employer that their deal was off and she was heading for the west coast on the first red-eye. If she walked out on this job because of a haunting, her career on the east coast was truly over.
“Yesss.” The white head nodded, and the cobweblike strands floated upward like they were rising on a thermal updraft. His cloak was spread out like bat wings, blocking the doorway.
Did he know that she wanted to run? The thought was annoying. So was the heat. Her clothes were beginning to squish with sweat. Static was dancing over her body, making her hair rise, and she was feeling faint. The only thing that kept her still was the fact that Vellacourt stood between her and the egress.
She didn’t know if it was possible to outrun a ghost, but she was ready to give it a try. The moment he moved away from her escape route, she’d book. Somehow, she couldn’t find enough courage to run through him.
“Okay. That’s our plan. A few more weeks and they’ll start coming. There’ll be lots of tourists, God willing and the river don’t rise.”
The ghost said nothing.
“Look.” Karo wiped her forehead again and set about bargaining. She needed a job, but there were limits. Either the spook respected her boundaries or she was out of there by sundown. She’d just have to find some way to make Tristam come with her, because in spite of her words, she didn’t want Vellacourt plaguing him. “Look, in the meantime, I’d really appreciate it if you left me alone. I do not care to sweat, you see. It’s not ladylike. I thought ghosts were supposed to be cold anyway,” she grumbled. “What’s wrong with you? Is it hellfire that’s finally got you?”
The specter gave a laugh but the only sound that came out of that white face was a dry rustling like the beetles made while scrabbling over one another. It was unpleasant, but not terrifying. Karo’s calm returned by slow degrees. “I mean it…Hugh. May I call you Hugh?”
She watched the head nod again and forced herself to step away from the wall. Cowering was so undignified.
“Look, I can’t have you bothering me like this. Tristam is going to think I’m insane. The only reason he didn’t fire me the first time you showed up is because he thinks that I was hit by lightning and that I just don’t remember lighting that fire in the library.”
“You were hit,” the ghostly voice breathed. It was growing limber but still creaked like the wet moorings on a boat. “I arranged it so that we could talk.”
“Don’t say that!” she begged, thinking of that peculiar hole burned in her shoe and dreading that he was right. “My grip on reality is not real firm at the moment, and it wouldn’t take much to tip me right over the edge. And you wouldn’t want that to happen, would you? That might queer the tourist thing.”
“You are safe here—as safe as you want,” puffed the dry voice. He raised the whip in his hand—this was the first Karo had noticed it. “He wants you by his side. You want him, too. I can help you do everything you want. You can help me. We can all be free.”
His gaze was hungry. Men! From the dumbest to the most brilliant, the enlightened to the brutal—and even the dead—they still all wanted one thing. Okay, two things, counting research.
“No! Don’t help me with anything!” she said, looking at his riding crop and having a sudden premonition of his intent. “Don’t you even think about it! People don’t do that anymore. It objectifies women. It’s disrespectful.”
“Oui?” he asked. But the smile was knowing. “Sometimes objectivity is to be admired.”
She watched as he flicked the crop against his boots. “Objectivity and objectifying are not the same things.”
“But you want…”
The notion should have been repulsive. It was repulsive at an intellectual level, especially if participation wasn’t voluntary. But wouldn’t it be fun, just once, to be completely and utterly in control of one’s partner? Or, okay, maybe to sometimes be relieved of the burdens of self-determination and guilt and all that twenty-first century politically correct garbage women were supposed to be masters of, to become more submissive than usual? Would it be so bad to be forced into doing what your mother and some feminists always said was wrong—to be compelled to give in and have orgasms that someone else was forcing upon you? And if that was naughty…well, you had already been punished for it! A spanking instead of five Hail Marys. Either way, no lingering guilt.
Free will was great. It was everything—almost. And while political and economic equality were to be striven for, did the battle for feminine equality have to come into the bedroom? She wanted to be in control sometimes but not thought unfeminine. She wanted to be overpowered sexually and not thought weak. The chance to give up all that responsibility in the bedroom once in a while…
No. No, absolutely not. Especially not now. Not with a ghost. Not even with Tristam. Well, maybe—
No. No! This creature was confusing her, playing with her brain. This wasn’t free will. Was it?
“We shall see, ma belle. I must warn you that I know my own kind. Sometimes you must put yourself in bondage so that you may be free.” The shade laughed again as Karo’s mind raced, and then he folded in on himself in the blink of an eye. The heat went with him, sucked into some cosmic vacuum along with that ghostly laughter.
“Hugh? Wait a minute! Are you going to leave me alone?” Karo demanded of the dark place between the pots where he’d disappeared. “I really have to insist on this…Hugh? Hugh Vellacourt! I’m not kidding. I don’t want you around me. And no kinky stuff! I’m not that kind of girl.”
At least, she hadn’t been that kind of girl before. Tristam probably didn’t go for this stuff, either. In fact, though she was sure he wanted her, he seemed to be moving in on her with the ponderous slowness of an arthritic pachyderm. Which was totally okay with her.
Except, today he hadn’t been slow. Had that been Hugh? Had the ghost somehow warped Tristam? The thought was distasteful and frightening.
“Hugh?”
Nothing stirred.
“Miz Follett? Ma’am, are you in there?” A few loud crunches and then a khakis-clad shape filled the doorway, blocking out what little light there was.
“Yes. It’s me.” Karo peered at the dark corner where Hugh had vanished and kicked over a pot. Nothing moved. All that was left was twigs and ash and dead beetles. The ghost was truly gone.
She began to shiver. The room was suddenly quite cold, and her blouse was clinging to her like an icy rag.
“Were you talkin’ to someone, ma’am?” The voice was polite but puzzled.
“Uh…yes. Myself.” Karo forced a smile. Her lips felt stiff and bruised, and she wanted to get some moisturizer on her face. She felt like she’d spent the day roasting on the beach. “I think we have mosquitoes hatching and there are roaches or beetles in the fireplace. Could we do something about that today—a bug bomb or something? Mr. English would like to begin moving some of the kitchen stuff out here as soon as possible.”
The tan shape came into the room and began to look around. She saw it was one of the siblings who were working as gardeners: the Campion brothers. “Where’s the mosquitoes, ma’am? Got to get
to them buggers right away. They’ll be hatching quick in this heat.”
“Over there.” She pointed and then noticed that the puddle had been all but evaporated; there was only a brown crust on the floor to indicate where the larvae had lain. Her stomach rolled as she smelled the faint odor of swamp and boiled gumbo rising from the stone floor.
“Here, ma’am?” The worker was staring at the goo.
“Uh…yes. Somewhere over there. Maybe in one of the pots. Don’t you hear them?” Actually, the rustling in the fireplace had stopped, too. She looked at the right wall. The spiders were gone—driven off by the heat? “Well, never mind. If you could just spray in here, that would be great. Thanks. I’d better be getting back to the house.”
Karo didn’t allow herself to bolt for the door, but she was sorely tempted. Her footsteps cracked like thunder as she hurried across the drive. Her hair was still wild with static waiting to discharge.
Holy spit! What did she do now—tell Tristam about the ghost and have him calling up Dr. Monroe to see about the symptoms of delayed shock? Or worse yet, what if he feared for her sanity and fired her before she got to finish her cookbook, never letting her see that Limoges again? Karo glared at the inoffensive branches that had been nearby piled into an eight foot mound, preparatory to being hauled away. She went to take a vindictive swipe with her sneaker and then remembered about some poison ivy the gardeners were clearing. With bare branches, it was hard to know what you were kicking. Stymied, she turned away.
Back at the cookhouse, she saw one of the Brothers Campion going inside to hunt the now-boiled mosquitoes. That gave her pause. Weren’t ghosts supposed to be cold? And, why the vague smell of brimstone? Of course, how would she know brimstone? Lots of things had been cooking in that room. She’d have to watch her mystical thinking. There was no need to make the situation worse than it was.
Karo surveyed the grounds, turned toward what had once been a boxwood hedge maze. Its days of tidy, geometric trimming were long gone. The maze remained, but it was a far gloomier and probably more dangerous affair than its designers ever intended. In many places, the two sides had interlocked overhead, creating a living vault, and like the mausoleum in the cemetery it had no living visitors. There was birdsong, but that was coming from the far side of the maze. Birds had tried to pass through though, she thought, looking down at her feet. Their bones and feathers were all over the place, blown in amongst the twigs and leaves and other detritus of the storm.
Karo wanted to believe that the remains were ’Stein’s doing, but she couldn’t make herself swallow the idea. There were just too many dead birds, and many of the leaves looked blistered and scorched, as if exposed to fire. Though she didn’t want to think about it, the notion that Hugh had passed this way definitely suggested itself.
She exhaled slowly. She had never believed in ghosts, she reminded herself, though she had a close friend who did. As Annie explained it, sometimes when a life ended abruptly, when the soul was torn away before a person expected, a ragged edge was left behind. Sometimes this was the tender memory of a mourner. Sometimes it was a memory of the mourned. But whatever you called it—a haunting, a perseveration, a tear in the veil between worlds—it amounted to the same thing: the dead could rub up against the living. And sometimes they got trapped. It was something for which one should feel pity rather than fear.
Of course, Annie had been speaking of more passive perseverations. Hugh was both sentient and manipulative.
Karo picked up her pace again, turning back to the house and heading for the library. She knew what she had to do. She’d keep her mouth clamtight on the subject of ghosts until Tristam or someone else saw old boy Vellacourt himself. It was bound to happen sooner or later, she hoped; Hugh was the most blatant ghost she could ever imagine. After that, they could have a round robin about what to do and maybe get some professional help. She wondered if they had a local chapter of ghost busters in the area.
Well, her boss was right about one thing. If Vellacourt got into the habit of showing off for the visitors, they’d have the hottest tourist stop in Virginia. And the most terrifying.
And maybe the most sexually deviant.
Tristam looked up from the desk and smiled politely. “All set?”
“Not quite. The gardeners are going to spray for bugs; then we can haul some of the kitchen things out.” She stayed out of range of his pheromones, as her nose got more sensitive with each passing day. It also occurred to her that maybe her attraction to Tristam was making the ghost bolder. Maybe he even used sexual energy to appear. How depressing.
“Bugs?”
“Beetles and mosquitoes. You about ready for some lunch?” she asked.
Tristam glanced at his watch and then back at her face. “I could be. You look like you could use a bit of a break. In fact, you look like you’ve seen a ghost.”
“I do?” She felt herself pale. “Well, it was really hot out there. Look, why don’t you go ahead with…whatever you’re doing, and I’ll make us something to eat. We missed breakfast, you know.”
“As you like.” He didn’t say anything about her remark, about her continued implication that they should share kitchen chores, though she had a right to complain about his failure to remember breakfast.
“I’m really hungry! I think I’ll fix a large animal with a side of everything. You know, the basic four plus something extra from the high calorie, fat and sugar group.”
“Sounds perfect. I adore ‘large animal.’ Do you need any help? I could—”
“Nope, got it covered. I may be a while, though,” she warned. “I need to wash up.” Ghosts stank. She had never known that before.
“No problem,” he said, but he was tapping his stylus against his PDA and frowning slightly. The tapping and the frown reminded her of Hugh. “Karo…”
“Found any recipes yet?” she asked brightly, cutting him off and backing toward the door.
“Few. The mistresses of the house did very little cooking, and the slaves were illiterate. Still, every housewife had her specialties.”
“Good. Can’t wait to—Well, actually, I can wait. But I’ll see them first thing after lunch.” She continued to back toward the shortish doorway. Food and a shower were crucial, although not necessarily in that order. Maybe she’d head for the sunny, sane kitchen.
“By the way, I found a new painting. It’s of Florence,” Tristam said. He pointed toward the west wall. “Usually when one thinks of Florence one thinks of great artists like da Vinci, Michelangelo, Raphael—”
“Fra Angelico, Brunelleschi,” Karo agreed, still backing up.
“But I don’t think any of these masters had anything to do with that, did they?”
Karo made herself look. “Nope. I’ll examine it more thoroughly after lunch,” she promised then bolted.
“Well, hell,” she muttered, retreating down the gloomy hall. “Girl, get a grip! Think of this as…” A close encounter of the spiritual kind? A chance to go where no man—or very few—had gone before? Shouldn’t she be glad to have some proof that there was life after death instead of nothingness?
“Shut up,” she told the voice speaking in her head, hoping it was her subconscious and not Hugh’s thoughts. The words had sounded feminine, but who knew? Maybe he had found a way to haunt her from the inside out. What she didn’t need were any glimpses into Hugh Vellacourt’s brain.
“I don’t need this right now. I am being reoriented to accept this situation, but it is not going to happen without some help. Of course I can handle it—eventually. I’ve had worse problems. I think. Well, maybe not many. Geez! If we had to have a ghost in residence, why couldn’t it be someone nice like the one in Canterville? Why’d I get stuck with the king of S and M who seems to bring hellfire with him when he appears? Like I don’t sweat enough when Tristam is around, spraying me with his pheromones.”
Tristam. According to Vellacourt, her new boss wanted her. She knew that for a fact. But how did he want her? Was he like
Vellacourt? Could that be why the ghost had reappeared—because he had found two people here inclined toward…?
No. It was likely some kind of overshadowing of the will. Not possession exactly, but some kind of persuasion. But as much as she hated the idea of seeing into the ghost’s mind, she hated even worse the idea that he could see into hers. It was something that needed serious consideration. Hugh had a dirty mind. And whether what he said was true or not, he couldn’t have meant anything good by his insinuation that Tristam wanted her in a certain, non-missionary position kind of way, a way with which Hugh could conveniently help.
“It’s not like I’m ever going to be trysting with the dead!” she called out. “I do not—absolutely do not—have a thing for you, Hugh Vellacourt. Or anyone else who is dead.” Except perhaps Heath Ledger. But that was a holdover crush from when he was alive.
Suddenly Karo wondered: could ghosts lie? Could they lie about who and what they were? The Dev il could—everyone agreed about that. Well, everyone who believed in him. So, what if she was giving Hugh too much credit? What if he wasn’t a victim of unfinished spiritual business but instead had done something really bad to ensure an afterlife?
Chapter Six
So, so, break off this lamenting kiss,
Which sucks two souls, and vapours both away,
Turn, thou ghost, that way, and let me turn this,
And let ourselves benight our happiest day.
—John Donne
“Mom! I’m losing you!” That was a lie, but Karo’s butt was getting sore. The tree branch was only about six inches wide and, with the wind picking up, the swaying was really quite sickening.
The Ghost and Miss Demure Page 13
