Aunt H.’s fingers quivered in mine. Liana let out a shaky breath.
Roma uttered a hoarse, strangled moan. I jumped—and so did she. Her body seemed to jerk upward. Her face contorted, her head fell back, and she began to mumble.
I couldn’t quite understand the words. It took me a second or two to identify them as non-English.
Oh, right. Because Roma’s spirit guide was a disgraced ancient Egyptian vizier named Rekhmire. Although, if that was 18th Dynasty Egyptian, I was Mortimer Brewster.
With a shuddering sigh, Roma’s body relaxed. Her head, eyes still firmly closed, rose to face the rest of us. She said in normal tones, “Are you there, Lord Rekhmire?”
In the pause that followed, Roma tilted her head and listened attentively.
“Do you have a message for any of those present?”
Another inquiring tilt of the head. Roma said dreamily, “Is there one here whose name begins with the letter A?”
My aunt’s hand jumped convulsively in mine. I gave her a squeeze.
“I’m here,” I said. I was slightly amused, slightly disgusted.
“There is someone with Lord Rekhmire. A young man. Hardly more than a boy. His hair is red. No, chestnut. He wears glasses. He says you must not blame yourself. There was nothing you could have done.”
I was no longer amused, and disgusted didn’t begin to cover it.
“I see, Spirit,” I said coldly. “And you are—were…?”
Aunt H. gulped. Roma communed with the spirits. She said in a talking-in-your-sleep kind of tone, “He says you know who he is. He says he’s Tony.”
Aunt Halcyone gasped, tightening her grip on my hand. I was too angry to speak.
“Tony!” Aunt Halcyone whispered.
By then my eyes had adjusted to the dark. I saw Liana open her eyes. She looked from me to Aunt H. “Tony? Was that the boy who…”
She didn’t finish it. No one answered her. There was a prolonged silence. Then Roma moaned. “He’s gone.”
Someone echoed that moan. Betty?
My heart was beating so loudly in my ears, I wasn’t sure if anyone spoke or not. I couldn’t remember the last time I’d been that furious.
I had to give Roma credit for doing her homework. Tony had killed himself over a decade ago. I didn’t even think Ogden, let alone Liana, had known about it. It had all happened before their time. But it was a small town and people gossiped.
Roma’s head dropped forward as though she was dozing. I thought about rising and turning on the lights. But no. I wanted to find out exactly how far the fake medium was willing to take this.
After a minute or two, Roma lifted her head and stared blindly before her. She said in a faint, husky voice, “Another spirit has joined Lord Rekhmire.”
Liana whimpered. Aunt H. sucked in a breath.
Roma intoned, “This presence is very strong. Male. He has spoken to us before.”
“Ogden!” That cry was from Liana.
“Yes,” Roma whispered. “Yes…Ogden.”
“Ogden,” Liana said. “Oh, Ogden, I’m so glad you’ve come! I knew you would. I knew tonight would be the night.”
Listening to her babble, I felt a weird mix of pity and revulsion. She really did believe this nonsense. Really believed in Roma Loveridge’s psychic abilities, believed Lord Rekhmire had found gainful employment in the afterlife as a spirit guide, believed Ogden Hyde had returned from the dead to chat with—
My thoughts broke off as a deep, masculine voice somewhere to my right suddenly spoke.
“Liana…my dearest sister…”
A cold wave washed over me. I knew that voice. That was not Roma speaking. That was not mimicry or ventriloquism. No. I didn’t want to believe it, told myself it couldn’t be true, but I recognized the familiar silky baritone, the precise enunciation that was characteristically his.
I knew Ogden Hyde’s voice when I heard it, and that was Ogden Hyde speaking.
Chapter Eight
I surfaced from my shocked thoughts to hear Ogden still speaking in that faraway voice. “Is Halcyone there? Are you there, my dearest?”
Aunt H. spoke so faintly, I’m not sure her words were audible to anyone but me. “I’m here.”
“I miss you, my dearest. I’m so lonely here without you.”
Liana chimed in. “I miss you too, Ogden. So much.” Her voice was filled with yearning. Embarrassing and unnerving.
“Dearest Liana. My two best girls…”
Whoa. Rein it in, Artemus. That had to be a recording. Right? Yes. Absolutely. That was the only reasonable explanation. So far “Ogden” hadn’t said anything that couldn’t have been preprogrammed.
But when would such a recording have taken place? Why would it have taken place?
Someone said, “What do you want?” in a hard, flat voice. I realized it was me.
It wasn’t that I expected an answer. I was just thinking out loud, but after a pause, Ogden’s disembodied voice spoke again.
“Who is there? Who is speaking? Is that you, Artemus?”
Jeez, couldn’t he see through the blackout either? I mean, come on. This was farcical. It was ludicrous. And offensive—although apparently, I was the only one who thought so.
Yet even as my rational mind rebelled against what we were witnessing, I knew part of my anger and outrage stemmed from fear. Because his response to me had not been—could not have been—prerecorded. And the voice was Ogden’s. I had a good ear, and as faint and faraway as that disembodied voice sounded, I still recognized it, like it or not. And I did not like it.
I could barely bring myself to respond but managed a terse, “Yep. It’s me.”
“Artie.” Aunt H. gulped. I could see the gleam of alarm in her eyes.
“What’s he doing?” Liana gasped from across the table. “What is he saying? Artemus, what are you doing? You mustn’t speak like that to…him.”
Everyone’s eyes were open now, and they were all looking my way with various degrees of dismay. All but Roma, still shrouded in her black lace, head bowed forward as though she had dozed off.
Ogden chuckled, and I felt my hair stand on end.
“Same old cynical Artie. You spoiled him, my dearest Halcyone.”
Aunt H. murmured protest, but Liana burst out, “Oh, Ogden, why? Why did it have to be you? Why did you go out that terrible, terrible day?”
Ogden soothed, “Dearest Liana. How could you guess? It wasn’t your fault. I know that now…”
If my hair wasn’t already standing on end, it would have prickled like porcupine quills at that. I didn’t think I misheard that faint inflection on “it wasn’t your fault.” Meaning it—he—thought the accident was someone else’s fault?
I studied the outline of Roma’s limp figure. Her head lifted a fraction from its forward position, but there was no movement of her throat, and her lips were still. Anyway, even if she was the greatest mimic ever, the voice wasn’t coming from Roma. In fact, it didn’t seem to be coming from any fixed direction. It seemed to float as if Ogden’s spirit was slowly circling the table.
Pretty creepy, in all honesty. My eyes ached with the effort of probing the gloom. My heart skipped. Was there a darker shape standing behind Liana’s chair?
My thoughts were disrupted by Aunt H.’s sudden, faltering, “It was an accident.” She repeated more steadily, “An accident.”
I said, “Of course it was an accident.”
“Halcyone, dearest…don’t. Our time together is too short…”
What the hell did that mean? Was this supposed spirit about to accuse Aunt H. of knocking off Ogden?
I wasn’t the only one thinking it either. There was a shocked quality to the profound silence that followed the drone of Ogden’s words. The room seemed to grow even darker, as though a black veil had settled over all of us.
I shivered at the chilly gust of exhalation against the back of my neck—it felt like someone standing behind me had moved away. But no one had been behind me
.
“Ogden!” Liana’s cry pierced the hushed silence. “Ogden! Are you here? Please, don’t go! Don’t leave me!”
“I will return…” Ogden’s voice sounded very faint.
Liana moaned, a sound that was echoed by Roma. I glanced at Roma but was distracted by Betty’s gasp. The sound was one of pure terror. I looked around in time to see a cloud of milky-white substance drifting behind Tarrant.
Tarrant stayed rigid and still in his chair, as though afraid to look over his shoulder. “What is it?” he whispered.
No one answered. We all stared as the nebulous form continued to swirl behind him, growing larger and denser. It took on a phosphorescent glow like the figure I had chased downstairs two nights earlier.
“What is that?” Betty gulped.
Liana breathed, “Oscar?”
Oscar?
That was almost funny. Were there supposed to be two ghosts in the house now?
My aunt said nothing. Her breathing sounded faint and shallow.
The roiling white mist gradually resolved itself into the indeterminate outline of a man. The arms, the shoulders, fuzzy as if seen under clouded glass, emerged…and at last, the head began to form.
Ogden Hyde.
Shock—which was three parts unadulterated irrationality and one part primordial fear—held me frozen. I did not believe in ghosts, and in particular, I did not believe in Ogden Hyde’s ghost, but there was no pretending that for a few vital seconds I was no longer Artemus Bancroft, sometimes cynical and occasionally witty theater critic and man about town, but a blue-painted primitive crouched in my cave, trembling at an approaching horror. The dark on the other side. Death.
The manifestation spoke, but the voice was no longer Ogden’s. It was hoarse and weirdly vicious, a stranger’s voice. “I will never rest until you have paid for what you did.”
“Ogden…” my aunt breathed.
I pulled free of her and Roma both, shoving my chair back and starting around the table toward the ghostly figure.
The misty outline was already beginning to fade.
Liana wailed, “Ogden, don’t leave me!”
Before I could reach it, the mist seemed to evaporate and vanish. I stumbled to a stop, then jumped at a strangled shriek—followed by the thud of a falling body.
My instant and instinctive fear was for Aunt H. “Get the lights,” I ordered Tarrant.
He must have already been in motion because he half rose, backing his chair into me. The wooden leg planted heavily, painfully on my foot.
I yelped, swore, pushed the chair and Tarrant away, and dived back around the table where everyone still sat babbling and turning this way and that.
Tarrant was also swearing. In Russian.
“Whatever’s happening? Whatever’s going on?” Betty cried.
Liana was still wailing for Ogden or Oscar or whoever—whatever—the hell that had been.
With relief, I heard Aunt H. call above the din, “It’s Roma, Artie. I think she’s fainted.”
“Are you all right?”
“Of course, dear,” she replied staunchly, betrayed by only the smallest wobble in her voice.
Tarrant finally bumbled his way to the light switch. The chandelier blazed on, and the gabble of voices cut off as though a switch had been flipped on them as well.
Liana breathed, “Oh no. No. Roma…”
Roma lay in a crumpled heap on the floor. Her eyelids were twitching, her face had an alarming greenish cast.
Aunt H. knelt beside her. “Water. Artie, quick. Get some water.” She began to chafe Roma’s long, pale hands.
Liana came to stand over Aunt H. and the fallen medium. “Is she…” She looked at me, and her gaze sharpened with accusation. “You did this. You broke the circle, Artie! You must have known it’s very dangerous!”
“None of that now, Liana,” Aunt H. said impatiently. “Roma? Roma, can you hear me?”
I turned to the sideboard, but Betty was there before me. With a shaking hand, she poured water from the carafe and passed me the brimming goblet, which I brought to my aunt. She was still kneeling beside Roma, rubbing her hands and speaking quietly to her.
Roma’s eyelids were half-open, the whites staring blindly up—pretty unnerving, frankly.
“Does she have a pulse?” I asked.
My aunt’s head jerked up, her eyes wide. “Of course she does!”
I could feel the others staring at me. I wasn’t sure why I’d said it. Why the idea had popped into my head that Roma must be dead.
Aunt H. raised Roma’s lolling head and put the glass to her bloodless lips.
After what seemed like forever, the color came back to Roma’s face. She stirred, choked down a sip of water. Her eyes fluttered open.
For a moment she stared up at us. No one said anything. Roma’s gaze traveled from face to face. She licked her lips, said faintly, “We made contact, then?”
“Yes.” Liana’s expression was…well, worrying. Her eyes were too bright, her face too red. She looked exultant. “You did it, Roma. You brought him back to us.”
“Did I?” Roma murmured. I thought there was a hint of speculation in her eyes.
Liana clasped her hands together. “Yes! Ogden was here. Not just his voice. Ogden. Ogden was here!”
Chapter Nine
“Liana’s gone to bed,” Aunt H. said when she joined me in the music room. “I tried to persuade Roma to stay the night, but she insisted she wanted to go home.”
I nodded absently. “I bet.”
It was about an hour after the séance had ended. I had retreated to the music room once it was clear Roma was not in any immediate danger. I needed to think, and I couldn’t do that while Liana was gleefully reliving the evening’s haunted highlights for the rest of the stricken attendees.
Aunt H. was clasping and unclasping her hands, an uncharacteristic and, I knew, unconscious sign of nervous tension. “The poor thing was so exhausted. I offered to have Tarrant drive her, but she declined.”
I said, “Speaking of exhaustion, you look beat, darling. You should call it a day.”
No lie. Aunt H. looked white-faced and haggard. There were dark shadows beneath her eyes and lines around her mouth. So much for my reassuring presence. She looked even worse than the night I’d first arrived.
“I will. I wanted to talk to you, Artie.” She took the matching rose-and-silver wingback chair across from my own, sinking onto it wearily. Her expression was a mix of anxiety and reproach. “You shouldn’t have done it, dear. It’s not like you to be so…so foolhardy. Suppose you had managed to grab hold of-of that thing. It might have… Who knows what might have happened!”
“Aunt H., you can’t really believe—”
She didn’t let me get any further. “I blame myself. I shouldn’t have sent for you. I wouldn’t have if I’d thought you’d take such an intolerant…sneering view of the situation.”
After a moment, I said, “Well, that hurts. And I don’t think it’s fair.”
It did hurt. And it did feel unfair.
“What you did tonight… There could have been terrible consequences.”
“All right, I admit that in the heat of the moment I forgot the rule about not breaking the circle. Which, considering how many times I’ve seen The Legend of Hell House—”
“You’re still joking about it!” Aunt H. cried. “It isn’t funny!”
“I’m joking because the fact that you seem to believe this…nonsense is scaring the hell out of me.” I reached for her hands. They were ice-cold and rested unmoving in my own. “Aunt H. Think about this rationally. Do you honest-to-God believe Ogden showed up in the dining room this evening?”
She didn’t answer. She just sat there staring at me with that troubled gaze.
“Roma Loveridge faked the whole thing. I don’t know how she did it—yet—but I know she did.”
“How can you say that?” Aunt H. protested. “It was Ogden’s voice. You know it was. We both know that wa
s Ogden. And it couldn’t have been a recording. He answered you. He responded to you. No one could have anticipated you would be there tonight, let alone what you would say.”
It was reassuring to know she had thought it through, even if she had come to a different conclusion than me.
I was trying to think of how to respond without further putting her back up, and into my hesitation, she said, “Artie, have you considered that perhaps your resistance is…perhaps you’re afraid to believe?”
I sighed. “No. It isn’t that. I’m willing to consider the possibility that ghosts exist. I’m even willing to consider the possibility that ghosts return to haunt the living. But what happened tonight? I don’t buy it. Starting with the guest appearance of Tony Clarke.”
Her expression altered. “Yes. That was…odd.”
And by odd, she clearly didn’t mean supernatural, spooky odd. She meant she’d also sensed something off.
“Did you ever mention to Liana what happened with Tony?” I asked.
“No.” Aunt H. was definite. “But I did tell Ogden about it. I thought one reason you settled for Greg was you were afraid to get involved with someone vulnerable again, as someone who truly loved you, truly cared about you would be vulnerable.”
I was too startled to know what to say, and eventually came up with a lame, “Greg loved me.”
“Maybe. In his own way. Not enough to actually divorce his wife.”
No. Not enough to divorce her. And what a good thing, since it had simplified matters when he’d decided to return to her. Well, a bird in hand is no doubt worth more than waiting maybe decades for your boyfriend to inherit.
I said shortly, “I don’t want to have this conversation. The point is, Roma somehow found out about Tony and used that knowledge tonight to try and buoy the idea that Lord Reckmore or whatever his name is—was—and his cast of thousands was legit.”
“Lord Rekhmire.”
“Like I said, I’m not buying it.”
Aunt H. shook her head as though I’d disappointed her once again. “You’ll never convince me that Roma was faking. She truly believes in what she’s doing.”
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