Karen Mercury

by Manifested Destiny [How the West Was Done 4]

  Briskly, Tabitha took the glass to the sideboard. Foster was surprised when she selected the carafe with the Scotch whiskey. “How do we really know she tried to kill me? Did we find a can of Paris Green dye in her room?”

  “Chang described her to a T!”

  “Chang couldn’t tell the difference between a blonde like me and a redhead like Orianna. That could’ve been any farmer’s wife buying the Paris Green to kill rats or save their potato patch. Anyway, Caleb says Orianna can materialize things. But how did she make that gown, and those gloves and rattle, appear? No, that had nothing to do with Orianna. She’s not dead. She’s not a spirit. Live people aren’t as talented and versatile as the spirits.”

  “Unless they’ve been practicing some of the low arts!” Foster pointed out. Coming up behind Tabitha, he lifted her hair from her neck and dared to kiss her there. She didn’t resist, and gooseflesh rose beneath his lips. She even hunched her shoulders and snuggled her skull against his face.

  Yet her words were resistant. “I cannot continue to allow you to court me while you’re persuading Orianna to bring Abe to Laramie. I just can’t.” She gulped the whiskey, banged it onto the sideboard, and twirled to face him. “Foster, what if she convinces you the best thing to do is move to San Francisco?”

  “Come with me!”

  “And leave my entire family behind? And what about Worth? We can’t leave him behind either. Foster, do you see that this entire predicament is being dictated by a three-year-old boy? Or by his mother, I should say. It is beyond our control.”

  Well, Foster loathed when things were beyond his control. He needed to control every aspect of his life! So he kissed Tabitha. He wanted to feel her passion, feel her need for him. He could control that. He refused to lose her because his son needed him! There must be a way to keep all of his loves in harmony and not be faced with an impossible choice—to give one of them up.

  She clung to him and parted her lips, which caused a swell of love in his chest. He licked her plump, juicy lips and breathed in her lavender scent. Mortifyingly, his cock rose against her lap, and he had to fight to restrain himself. He had licked her to orgasm, yet he’d never had a chance to nuzzle her deliciously bouncy tits. And now certainly wasn’t the time!

  Bam. Something large and solid brained him in the back of the skull. This had the desired effect of taking his mind off his stubbornly randy cock. He said “ooph” against Tabitha’s mouth and straightened his spine to look around the room. The study door was shut. No one was standing there flinging books at his head.

  He looked back at Tabitha. She, too, swiveled her head to look about, frowning with curiosity. “What in the name of hell was that?”

  Foster released her. He looked behind the desk to ensure no one was squatting down there, braining him. It was Tabitha who discovered the inkwell on the floor under the window. It had smashed into the wall after glancing off Foster’s head with such velocity, a splash of black ink decorated the wall from sill to floor.

  “This must’ve been sitting on Father’s desk,” Tabitha mused, holding the dripping glass object between two fingers. She went to her father’s desk to replace the messy thing. “This desk is a good fifteen feet from where you were standing.”

  But there was no time to muse on this strange occurrence, because two small raps sounded at the study door then. Jeremiah stuck his head in.

  “Your inamorata is here, Mr. Richmond.”

  Foster sputtered. “She’s not my inamorata, Jeremiah!”

  Jeremiah sniffed. “Regardless, she’s here. Caleb is ready. Let the shenanigans begin.”

  Foster had no choice but to repair to the dining room where the séance was set up. He fully believed that somehow Orianna had sent a spirit to attack Caleb, as well as somehow materializing the dress and other items. Even three years ago, he had known her to dabble in questionable hobbies. He had seen her writing odd characters in a pile of sand she had thrown on the floor and had heard her chanting in strange languages. She had told him she was harmlessly playing at alchemy.

  But now, Foster was beginning to wonder.

  * * * *

  Everyone present joined hands around the dining table as before. Caleb requested candles, a pencil, and paper be placed there. But this time there were more participants, so no one had to lean across the table.

  Worth eyed Orianna with thorough suspicion. It was plain that Jeremiah, Ivy, and Harley were doing the same, and Worth had to commend Tabitha for keeping her face composed. Hatred and loathing must be in Tabitha’s bosom. This woman had appeared out of the blue, when it had been she who had abandoned Foster years ago and ripped his son from him. Now she returned and expected that nothing had changed?

  It seemed to Worth that Orianna was using the poor boy Abe as a weapon. His heart went out to Tabitha. She had barely come to terms with her husband’s death. She had gotten lucky running into this lawyerly scout who appeared to be a reincarnated love from another era. All blessed signs pointed to a happy future—for all three of them—and then this witch had appeared to wreak havoc.

  Worth hated her and sincerely wished she were dead. Now he was forced to hold her hand, and it felt as though she were tickling his palm. He cast a sideways glance at her, and he swore she gave him a playful, lewd look. Then tickled his palm again.

  How he wanted to yank his hand away! But now Orianna was proclaiming loudly, “I am very eager to see you perform, Caleb. I heard of you when I lived in Laramie before.”

  Jeremiah answered for the mystic. “Oh, what did you hear? That he slept with cats?”

  Orianna frowned. “What? No, that you were capable of making tables rise and that you had assisted in discovering a murderer.”

  “Several murderers,” Ivy said curtly.

  Orianna ignored her. “It is said you can levitate and that it was accomplished by projecting a magic lantern slide. It was said your voice was heard among the sitters by using ventriloquism.”

  Worth boiled inside. He couldn’t stop himself from saying, “It’s no magic lantern, miss. All of us witnessed Caleb levitate ourselves. You may as well say it’s impossible for a murdered dog to return as a ghost as to try to expose Caleb’s feats. They are impossible to expose because they are not tricks.”

  Worth was gratified to see Orianna’s face freeze solid when he mentioned a ghost dog. She said tightly, “But it is impossible for a dog to return as a ghost. People have spirits, but animals don’t. So in essence you’re saying that Caleb is a charlatan.”

  “Oh, is it impossible?” Foster, holding her other hand, smirked. He shared a comradely look with Worth as the fluffy and ghostly apparition of Phineas was currently sitting smack behind Tabitha on the other side of the table, and they alone could clearly see her relaxed, happy face, tongue lolling as usual. Tabitha even glanced over her shoulder and grinned at the giant dog.

  Caleb now intoned, “The conditions are becoming more favorable. The steel magnetism is arriving.”

  Everyone shut up as a whistling sound, not unlike the train, zipped up and down the room. Orianna appeared the most startled to hear this, and she gripped Worth’s hand with her claw. There was a rushing sound then, as though a great wind blew through the room, though the candle flame didn’t even flicker.

  Caleb said, “The veil that separates this world from the next is being raised.”

  Worth felt tenderness and sweetness emanating from the medium. He swore he then heard laughter, as though imps floating up by the ceiling were chortling down at them.

  “Oh, jumping Jiminy,” moaned Jeremiah. “Not those damned tiny jesters again. And I didn’t even take any whiskey-root cactus this time.”

  Now the table trembled and shuddered but did not rise. Caleb said, “Great power of deception may be used by spirits. Bad and lying spirits are able to communicate with us, and we must separate them from the truthful and righteous ones.”

  Orianna shrieked then, releasing her grip on the men’s hands. She clutched instead at Foster�
��s shoulder and seemed to be trying to bring her feet up on her chair. “What’s under there?” she squealed.

  As there was no tablecloth, Worth was easily able to see a mischievous Phineas. She was so bulky she could have been the force responsible for shaking the table, and she may have been snuffling Orianna’s skirts. Worth would not have blamed Phineas if she had tried to bite the woman for having poisoned her to death, but that wasn’t in Phineas’s nature.

  “Oh, God!” Orianna squealed. “There it goes again!”

  Jeremiah looked under the table and emerged with a grin so wide it threatened to split his face in two. “Oh, that Phineas! That dog is just jesting and japing all day long.”

  Jeremiah’s words had the desired effect on Orianna. She clutched Foster even closer and was nearly sitting on her own feet in her efforts to squirm away from the dog’s apparition.

  Enhancing the game, Tabitha too looked under the table and whistled. “Come, Phineas! Come! Leave the nice lady alone.”

  The dog did, bumping the table merrily along as she navigated back to Tabitha. “Good girl,” Tabitha said, scrunching the dog’s coiffure between her fingers.

  “What are you seeing?” Orianna demanded. “I see nothing!”

  Tabitha’s eyes flashed with distaste. “That’s unfortunate for you.”

  A lofty tone now pervaded Caleb’s voice. He had apparently ignored the entire Phineas gag, for he now uttered, “Deceptions are sometimes practiced by bad spirits. The entity that attacked Caleb in the alley was conjured from a nefarious realm and was meant to do terrible harm. Only Caleb’s shining, golden spirit held it at bay and prevented further damage or even death.”

  Worth asked bluntly, “Who sent that entity to attack Caleb?”

  It was clear it wasn’t Caleb himself speaking now. His gray eyes looked straight ahead vacantly, imbued with the light they had contained when he had channeled Ezra Kind, the miner killed by Indians. Maybe it was Ezra speaking now. “It was the woman sitting here at this table. The one with the blue glass necklace.”

  Still halfway sitting in Foster’s lap, Orianna’s hand flew to the jewels at her breast. “These are real sapphires!” she protested. She quickly corrected herself. “How could I possibly have anything to do with the smoky monster who attacked Caleb?”

  Jeremiah looked thoroughly exasperated. “Perhaps because you sent the demon to attack Caleb? You don’t need to be present if you are merely sending the demon to do your bidding. You can be across town eating a meal or even across the street manipulating another human to do your bidding.”

  And Orianna seemed to have previous knowledge of the attack. Worth frowned. She only just arrived here at Vancouver House a few minutes ago, but speaks as though she’s familiar with it.

  Orianna barged ahead. “Caleb, I would like to know more about my dearly departed brother in San Francisco.”

  Foster said, “I didn’t know you had a brother.”

  “Yes. I did. Caleb, can you tell me. Will my dead brother in San Francisco be happy to see me if I return?”

  Caleb didn’t answer right away. The rushing and whining of the motionless wind continued to race through the room.

  Jeremiah was the first to address the question that was probably in everyone’s minds. “How can your brother be eager to see you if he’s dead?”

  Orianna snapped at the puppeteer. “Spirits have emotions, you know!”

  Jeremiah shrugged. “In that case, I’d tell you to return to San Francisco lickety-split. You wouldn’t want to keep your dead brother waiting.”

  Tabitha and Ivy giggled, but now Caleb—Ezra—said, “If you are thinking of your brother Arthur, for that is who I see foremost in your mind, he is not concerned with you right now. He is busy with business matters.”

  Foster said, “Your brother has the same name as Arthur Firestone?”

  “Why not?” Orianna cried. She dared to slither her limbs so her feet touched the floor again, but she didn’t take Worth’s hand. “Caleb! My brother must be thinking about me, missing me. We spent two years together. Does he not miss me even a smidgen?”

  “I see him on a large ship. He is concerned about sailing to Honolulu to get pineapples. Oh, wait, he does have one message for you. But it’s not from beyond the veil, because he’s not dead. He’s about to send his ship to Honolulu.”

  Orianna’s face lit up with one of her rare smiles. “Yes, yes! What is the message?”

  Jeremiah said, “Why aren’t you more excited to hear that your brother isn’t dead?”

  Caleb remained impassive. “The message is that the footman for the east wing has taken ill and he can’t find the list of replacement footmen.”

  Orianna collapsed in her chair, clearly disappointed in the triviality of the message. “Is that all?” she asked Caleb.

  Caleb searched his vision for more information. “Something about the dinner menu. He doesn’t like the Fowl à la Mayonnaise.”

  Worth leaned far back in his chair to talk to Foster behind Orianna’s back. “This guy sure doesn’t sound like a brother. More like a shipbuilding fellow.”

  “Exactly my thoughts.” Louder, Foster addressed Caleb. “Caleb. Or Ezra. Are you Ezra Kind?”

  “That’s what they used to call me,” Ezra agreed.

  “All right, Ezra. Can you tell us, regarding Orianna’s brother, Arthur. What is his surname? Is it Firestone or Anderson?”

  Orianna slapped Foster on the arm. “That’s enough, now! I need to ask a more urgent question. Caleb, will Foster Richmond here have success in his new law career?”

  It was interesting that when Orianna became emotionally upset, the table rocked more energetically, not shaken by Phineas now. The whistling of the wind increased in volume as though a tornado were heading their way. Worth wondered how that worked. Up until now, it clearly had been Caleb or Ezra controlling the mood, sounds, and vibrations of the room. But Orianna, obviously riled at being caught asking questions about Arthur Firestone, seemed to have the capability of affecting the room as well.

  Jeremiah yelled, “We don’t care about Foster’s stupid law career! Why are you controlling this séance? We barely know you. We’d like to get our money’s worth from Ezra before he fades back beyond the veil.”

  “Yes,” Tabitha agreed, frowning. “We were here to ask Ezra questions about Paris Green dye.”

  At that, the very walls of the room commenced to shake. Roaring engulfed the entire room as though the train ran directly through it, making it very difficult to hear the question Tabitha shouted down the table to Ezra. The table shuddered horribly, but once again, the candles didn’t even wobble.

  “Ezra!” Tabitha shouted. “Who in this room has been poisoning people and animals with Paris Green dye?”

  Ezra had to shout louder, too. “The woman with the glass necklace does enjoy alchemy.”

  That was all he was able to say before a whopping explosion sounded in the middle of the table and several people had their chairs knocked back.

  Everyone shielded their eyes with their arms. The explosion didn’t make a bright light, but it was instinctive to protect one’s face from exploding shards. However, when Worth removed his arm from his eyes to see Jeremiah, Ivy, and Tabitha clambering back into their chairs, he saw it had only been a large rock that hit the center of the dining table. It had slammed with such force it had created a splintered crater, ruining the table.

  “Oh, that’s just beautiful!” Jeremiah shouted. “Ezra is about to expose you, and you respond by throwing this big rock into the middle of the table! What an excellent way to change the subject.”

  Orianna held her hand to her bosom. “I? How could I toss this big rock? And you were all looking at me the whole time.” She stood and leaned toward the rock, examining it. “But it does look like an interesting rock. Sort of a Philosopher’s Stone. Some significance to this inscription. ‘Came to these hills in 1833. Seven of us. All died but me Ezra Kind—”

  “That’s enough!” Wor
th snapped, holding Orianna back from examining the rock further. “That’s Foster’s rock and you know it.”

  Orianna raised an eyebrow imperiously at Worth. “Oh, yes? And is this gold Foster’s as well? When the rock fell, it was placed right before me.” She opened her palm to Worth to display three enormous gold nuggets of the sort only found in the Black Hills.

  “Yes, it must be Foster’s gold!” Worth yelled. “How’d you get your greedy paws on Foster’s gold, you harridan?”

  “I’ve sent her some gold overland, Worth. To help with Abe.” Foster stood behind Orianna. “What’s in your other hand, Orianna?”

  Orianna looked truly surprised to find that she clutched something in her left hand. “I have no idea.” She opened her hand to reveal a leaf. About four inches wide and not even wilted, the formerly bright green leaf looked on the verge of turning yellow and orange—it was that time of year.

  “A grape leaf,” said Orianna, who must have seen them in California. “I wonder what the significance of—”

  Jeremiah’s piercing howl finally silenced the shrieking of the invisible train and tornado that had never hit Vancouver House. All heads swiveled to view the showman halfway standing above his chair, pointing at something on the table before him. “It’s a hand!”

  Ivy said coolly, “Of course it’s a hand, Jeremiah. It’s your own hand. Now, why don’t we go and lie down. I’ve got some laudanum—”

  Tabitha interrupted. “No, Ivy. He’s right. It really is a hand. Look!”

  Worth walked down the table to lean between Ivy and Harley. Jiminy crickets! It’s a hand!

  The hand, which ended abruptly at the cuff, seemed nearly fleshy. Harley, as the boldest world traveler in the room, reached out a forefinger to touch it and declared, “It’s an apparition.”

  Some people looked about the room for the magic lantern that was projecting this image, but the hand was moving.

  “It’s writing!” Jeremiah shrieked in his wavering voice. “It’s writing, ‘Foster Richmond. Everything will be revealed if you just organize a rodeo.’” Upon reading this, Jeremiah’s eyes rolled backward in his skull, and he collapsed in a pile on the floor.