A Little More Dead

by Jordaina Sydney Robinson

“So?”

  “So I can envisage you. I know the feel of your essence,” Madame Zorina said and Sabrina spluttered into her coffee.

  I ignored her. “Okay, what do you need to summon Katie?”

  “An item of her clothing. Something that was important to her. Something she touched a lot. Anything that was hers, really.”

  Sabrina snapped her fingers and pointed to me. “Alex.”

  Madame Zorina shook her head. “No, it can’t be another person. Their essence will cloud my vision.”

  “Yeah, but when are we going to see him again?” I asked.

  “Didn’t you get a visitor’s pass?”

  “I told you. The ‘o’ word kept it.”

  “You could apply for another one,” Sabrina suggested.

  Madame Zorina raised her voice. “Didn’t you hear me? It can’t be another person.”

  I nodded at Sabrina. “Right, because I’m so desperate to get back into Mendall.”

  “It’ll be fine,” Sabrina said, waving my concerns away. “I’ll draw up a request and drop it on the top of the stack to be processed.”

  “It can’t be a person,” Madame Zorina repeated.

  I frowned at Sabrina. “I thought you said processing took ages.”

  Sabrina shook her head. “Not for something as simple as a visitor’s pass if you know your way around the system.”

  “It can’t be a person!” Madame Zorina screeched, throwing her hands up toward the ceiling.

  “We’re not deaf. We’re just rude,” I said. “We were working out how to get you an item of hers.” I turned my attention back to Sabrina. “Will the ‘o’ word be notified?”

  “Who’s the ‘o’ word?” Madame Zorina asked.

  “Our parole officer,” I said, gesturing to me and my housemates, who were sitting quietly eating their biscuits and drinking their coffee like good children.

  “Wouldn’t that be the ‘p o’ words?” Madame Zorina asked.

  “No, it—never mind,” I said, cutting myself off before we got lost in that topic. I turned back to Sabrina. “Would he find out?”

  She winced. “Maybe.”

  “Why aren’t you using your parole officer’s name, dear?” Edith asked.

  I jerked my thumb over my shoulder. “They don’t like to use it when we’re doing something hinky.”

  Edith’s eyebrows inched up. “Hinky.”

  I jerked my thumb over my shoulder again. “Their word, not mine.”

  “I have her diary. Would that help?” Petal asked. The whole room turned to stare at her.

  “You have Katie’s diary?” I asked and Petal nodded. “Okay, didn’t you think that might’ve been worth mentioning when she escaped?”

  Petal shook her head. “No. Why?”

  “She might have written places she liked to go or something that would’ve given us a clue how to find her.” Sabrina’s voice was calm but it had the forced calm tone to it. The kind she used when she didn’t want to terrify someone by how excited she was.

  Petal gasped. “You can’t read it! They’re her most sacred thoughts!”

  “Would that work?” I asked Madame Zorina.

  She nodded and used her best condescending tone. “I should be able to summon her with her most scared thoughts, yes.”

  I straightened up and held a warning finger in her direction. “We appreciate your help in this but don’t mock my housemate.”

  “Don’t mock—” Madame Zorina blinked in shock and turned to Sabrina. “What’s wrong with her?”

  “She’s trying to be a better person. It’s ridiculous and I’ve made fun of her all day for it, but I have to agree with her here. You should probably apologise.” Sabrina gestured to Petal, in case Madame Zorina didn’t know who she was apologising to.

  Madame Zorina’s attention jumped around the room and she backed up so she could see us all without turning her head. “Have you all lost your minds?”

  “Where’s the diary, Petal?” I asked.

  “In the bottom of my wardrobe underneath a stack of textbooks.”

  “Do I have your permission to go and get it?” I asked.

  “Promise you won’t read it?” she asked and I crossed my heart with my finger and held up my hand. She nodded. “Okay.”

  Two minutes later I was back in Madame Zorina’s office holding the diary. It was more like a fancy notebook than a diary. It was navy with diagonal turquoise stripes and a peacock embroidered on the front with a tail made of sequins. Admittedly, I knew very little about Katie but from what I did know she just did not strike me as a sequinned peacock diary type of girl.

  “Okay.” Madame Zorina perched on the front of her desk and waved us back out of the way. “Is everybody ready?”

  Everybody nodded.

  “I feel weirdly nervous,” Sabrina mumbled to me when Madame Zorina started chanting something under her breath.

  I nodded. “Me too.”

  “I feel like our murder mystery shouldn’t end like this.”

  I nodded again. “Me too.”

  Before Sabrina could say anything else a small, very thin cloud of mist began to appear in the centre of the room. It gradually got thicker and thicker.

  “Is this normal?” I asked and Edith shook her head. I had the impression that Edith knew what was happening but was reluctant to say. Or at least to interrupt.

  It was almost a whole five minutes before the mist solidified into a person. It was a girl in her mid-twenties with her pale blonde hair fashioned in a fancy fishtail braid that hung heavily over her shoulder. She was dressed in a grey lacy camisole and shorts set which I assumed was bed wear, yet she still had fake eyelashes, lashings of mascara and thick eyeliner on. Had no one ever told her you had to take that off before bed? Being dead was simply no excuse for having a poor skincare regime.

  This was not what I expected Katie to look like. The moment she was fully solid there was that familiar thump of a body hitting the floor, and Edith rushed to aid Madame Zorina, who I was pretty sure was out cold.

  “That’s not Katie,” Sabrina whispered to me.

  “How do you know?” I whispered back.

  “Everyone has detailed files, remember? Even if they’re on loan there’s still a file jacket with your picture on the front.”

  “So who is it then?” I asked.

  Sabrina turned to me and grinned. “It’s Lily.”

  Chapter Thirteen

  “What’s going on? Where am I?” Lily asked.

  Sabrina stepped forward. “Hi, Lily, my name’s Sabrina and we’re trying to solve your murder.”

  “Oh my god! I was murdered?” Lily asked. And then she screamed. Really loudly. And really shrill. And then she stopped. And then she laughed. “You should see your faces. Oooh, biscuits.”

  Lily walked over and snatched the biscuits from the coffee table and flopped in one of the visitors’ chairs.

  Pam, Petal and Lucy edged away from the possibly crazy two times dead woman.

  “So who killed you?” Sabrina continued with the same lack of tack as she moved to sit next to Lily in the other chair.

  Lily shrugged. “Don’t know. Can’t remember.”

  “Okay, what were you doing when you died?” Sabrina pressed.

  Lily shrugged. “Don’t know. Can’t remember.”

  “You can’t remember what you were doing when someone murdered you?” I asked.

  “Check the attitude on you,” she cooed at me.

  I strode forward and snatched the half eaten biscuit out of her hand and pointed the packet in her face. “Your friend tried to strangle my friend. That’s who we thought we were summoning so we could lock her back up in the mental institution where she belongs so she can’t hurt my friends, or anyone else’s friends, again. So, yes, I do have an attitude right now.”

  “I love mean Bridget,” Lucy whispered off to the side.

  Lily’s smarmy expression dropped from her face. “Do you mean Kate? Kate tried to kill someone?”


  “I thought her name was Katie,” I said with a glance at Sabrina and all her file knowledge. Sabrina shrugged.

  “She hated being called Katie but that was what was on her file so no one listened to her,” Lily said. “Is she okay? Who did she try and kill? Did she work out who killed me?” Lily’s attention was jumping around the room to anyone who could possibly give her answers. She was so in the wrong place for that.

  “She killed you.” Sabrina said. “Katie, or Kate, was admitted to a mental institution where she gouged ‘remember Lily’ into her walls. She escaped a couple of days ago. Now some other people are dead.”

  “You have to help her.” Lily leaned forward and grabbed my wrist. I don’t know why she was making that demand of me in particular. Despite trying to strangle my housemate, I was holding Katie partly responsible for the death of my shorts. She might not have trashed my room herself but if she hadn’t escaped I was pretty sure my shorts would’ve survived. I was in no mood to help Katie.

  “Absolutely, we will. We’ll bring her to justice for you,” Sabrina said and carefully removed Lily’s hand from my wrist after a quick glance at my expression. “But we need your help. We need you to tell us where she’s likely to be hiding so we can find her before she hurts anyone else and so your soul can be at peace.”

  Lily’s attention jumped around the room. “Kate didn’t kill me.”

  “I thought you didn’t know who killed you,” I pointed out.

  “I don’t remember exactly but I know it wouldn’t be Kate.”

  “Why?”

  “Because she was my friend.”

  “You are more likely to be murdered by someone close to you,” Sabrina offered.

  Lily shook her head. “Not Kate, though. She—”

  “Okay, Lily, I’ll be honest with you.” I crouched down in front of her so I could have her whole attention and she could see the honesty on my face. “I don’t care about Katie, or Kate or you for that matter. I just want to stop her before she hurts someone I do care about. Once that’s done and everyone is safe, if you give us something that will help us find her, I promise I will try and help her.”

  Lily stared at me for a long moment and then finally nodded. “I guess that’s fair.”

  “So give us something useful,” I prompted.

  “She didn’t have many friends other than me so I don’t know who she’d turn to for help. And she was from Birmingham so she didn’t know Scarborough all that well. She’d never been here until she died, so it’s not like she had favourite places around here. Maybe she’d go back to Birmingham to hide out, but I couldn’t point you to any place in particular.”

  “Assuming she didn’t kill you who do you think she’d blame for your death?” Sabrina asked, since Lily listing all the things she didn’t know wasn’t really a productive use of our time.

  “Whoever killed me?” Lily asked with a shrug.

  “So who do you think killed you?” Sabrina pressed.

  “I don’t know!” Lily snapped.

  “Okay.” Sabrina took Lily’s hand and squeezed it like I’d seen Eleanor do to people. The difference was Eleanor did it reassuringly whereas Sabrina looked as if she was using it Lily’s hand as a stress ball. “You were at your GA meeting. You stayed late to talk to Timothy, right? It’s a spring evening. It’s probably only just getting dark. There’s a chill in the air …” Sabrina let the sentence hang, since up until that point Lily had been nodding along. Suddenly, her focus turned inward. Lily was still for maybe ten seconds and then her eyes darted all over the room as if she were remembering something. She sat bolt upright. She looked me straight in the eyes. Icicles formed in my bones. Her eyes were full of betrayal, which quickly gave way to fear.

  “No …” She breathed and reached out a hand to me. “Kate.”

  And then she disappeared. Silence held around the room. My legs gave out and I dropped heavily onto my bottom.

  “Well, that was probably one of the most horrific things I’ve ever experienced,” I announced.

  “I think she remembered her last moments,” Sabrina said. I turned to look at her. There was no colour in her face. In another situation I’d have made the “white as a ghost” joke but right now it just didn’t seem all that funny.

  Edith shook her head. “I hope not, dear, because that won’t end well for her. Nothing good comes from remembering that type of trauma.”

  “What type of nothing good?” I asked. I was sure I didn’t want to know but it was better to be prepared, right?

  “Why do you think poltergeists become poltergeists?” Edith asked.

  “Because they have trouble adjusting,” I said, feeling very self-conscious all of a sudden.

  “And most people have trouble adjusting to their new lives because they were murdered in their previous life,” Edith explained in a come-on-now-join-the-dots tone.

  “Was I murdered?” I asked the room. Not that they would know. I remembered being hit by a bus. It had felt like an accidence.

  Edith shook her head. “No, you just have an attitude problem.”

  “Oh.” I wasn’t sure if I should be grateful or worried.

  “How come you didn’t think to mention this whole turning into a poltergeist earlier?” Sabrina asked.

  Edith gestured to my housemates. “Because we needed information and family comes first, dear.”

  I turned to see Petal sobbing into Pam’s shoulder. Lucy was staring at me. I thought she was judging me. Suddenly, their opinions of me mattered.

  “I’d have scrambled her brain like eggs if it meant getting something that could help us catch Crazy Katie and keep us all safe,” Lucy said with a pointed look in Petal’s direction.

  Pam nodded. “I’m sorry Lily was murdered and that she remembers who did it now, but life is hard for everyone.”

  “What happened?” Madame Zorina groaned, pushing herself up from the floor and holding her head.

  I’d completely forgotten she’d dropped like a stone after pulling Lily.

  “Are you okay?” I asked as Edith helped her into her desk chair.

  “No. I’m not. And that’s the last favour I do for you.”

  Edith half pulled a tracking device she’d stolen from a messenger during my funeral from her jacket pocket and checked the screen. It was like a police radio of sorts. GB tunnelling plans showed up on there so she was always one escape-step ahead of them. She shoved a mug of coffee and some biscuits in Madame Zorina’s hands. “GBs are en route. Time to go, ladies. Dears, it was lovely to have met you properly.” Edith inclined her head to my housemates, who responded en masse with similar platitudes. And then we all fled the scene of the crime.

  I grabbed hold of all three of my housemates and tunnelled them back home. We landed in the garden and Pam headed for the back door, her keys jangling while she tried to find the right one. Lucy and Petal followed, chatting happily out all the adventures they were going to have with Madame Zorina. I tuned it out. I very much did not want to hear them planning that kind of stuff. I took a step toward the house, then paused and threw a quick glance over my shoulder at the rest of the garden. I didn’t know why but I felt like we were being watched. Maybe it was because we’re were doing something hinky, or because Katie was on the loose, or maybe I heard one of the shrubs rustle, or perhaps it was just plain old paranoia.

  My attention fixed on one of the shadows the moonlight cast. It stretched across the garden, almost looking like an elongated person growing out of a tree trunk. I could make out a slightly distorted head, neck, shoulders and torso. I was about to dismiss it as a trick of the light and then the shadow jerked and melted into the tree trunk shadow. My stupid feet were scurrying across the grass toward the tree in question and taking the rest of my body with it before I could make any sort of argument as to why that would be foolish.

  With my pepper spray in hand I stepped around the tree ready to do I didn’t know what but there was no one there. I was about to give myself a mental
slap when I noticed the footprints in the soil around the back of the tree trunk. They were pretty scuffed but I placed my own foot by the clearest print. It was slightly smaller than mine. Crazy Katie? And why did it bother me her feet were smaller than mine?

  “Bridget?” Petal asked, sticking her head around the side of the tree, making me jump back, pepper spray held at face height. Petal stumbled back when she saw it. “Don’t shoot!”

  “I won’t. I’m sorry, Petal, you startled me.” I lowered my spray but kept it in my hand as I ushered her out of the shrubbery and back across the garden. “Come on, let’s go back inside.”

  Petal didn’t argue and I did some very subtle and ungainly pirouettes, with Petal trying to adjust my posture, as I tried to keep the whole garden in view as we headed to the back door. Thankfully, Lucy and Pam had been hovering by it so I was fairly sure that if no one was in the kitchen, because of our new locked door policy, they wouldn’t be anywhere else in the house. I ushered them all inside and locked the door behind us, peering out through the barred windows.

  And then a horrible thought occurred. What if Katie could pick locks? There was no reason to assume she could but equally there was no reason to assume she couldn’t.

  “Everyone get your stuff. We’re sleeping in the lounge again,” I said.

  My housemates exchanged a look and then Petal cheered. “Yay! Sleepover.”

  The next morning, which actually felt like ten minutes later, I walked into the kitchen to find my housemates chattering like overexcited birds. How could they be so chirpy at this time of the morning with so little sleep? It just wasn’t right.

  “Morning,” Oz said and I grunted in response.

  “I can’t live like this anymore,” I whispered as I passed him.

  He caught me by a belt loop of my jumpsuit and pulled me back. “I heard the sleepover was your idea,” he said, still smiling.

  “Yeah, because some small-footed person was spying on us from the garden and I didn’t want anyone to be bludgeoned to their second death in their sleep.”

  Oz paused in his cooking to gape at me. As soon as I saw his expression I realised what I’d said. I rolled my eyes at myself and felt my shoulders slump. There was no way out of this without landing myself right in it.