“I hear nothing from the spirits tonight,” Delphia finally said in desperation, seeming ready to dismiss the group.
Darci held on to my hand tightly. “Perhaps Narcissa could try,” she said.
“Me?” Narcissa said, and I could swear she was suppressing laughter. She had to know about the projectors and the wires and know that they were failing Delphia. “I know nothing about the spirit world.”
“But sometimes weak spirits…I mean, I’ve read that sometimes weak spirits just need a body to use. Sometimes spirits don’t have the strength on their own to manifest themselves. Maybe if there were some spirits in this room they could use your body and talk through it.”
Everyone at the table was looking at Darci as though she’d lost her mind. Glassy-eyed, drugged-up, happy, the six women stared at Darci, not understanding her. Delphia was frowning in disapproval—but then she seemed to disapprove of everything. Plump little Narcissa looked like she wanted to run away at the very idea of spirits using her body.
“They could try,” Darci said loudly, her eyes on the empty space just over Narcissa’s left shoulder. Nobody had to tell me that Darci was talking to four pretty slave girls.
The next second, Narcissa changed. Years seemed to fall away from her as she leaned toward me and leered.
I couldn’t help my involuntary reaction of repulsion. Darci tightened her grip on my hand and sent me a mental message to behave myself.
“I want him,” Narcissa said in a sultry, sexy voice. “I been waitin’ a long time.”
If the room were dark and I couldn’t see Narcissa, I would have been interested in a woman with a voice like that.
“What do you want?” Darci asked.
“Him.” This was another voice, a little higher but just as sexy. “He’s fine. I want him.” I leaned a little bit toward Narcissa.
“No!” Darci said sharply. “Not you, but them. What do the people by the graveyard want?”
“They want to find their kin. That’s been sold.” I swear it was a third voice so I knew that all four beautiful slave women were inside Narcissa’s old body. I couldn’t help it but I looked at Miss Burns. She was the youngest of the six guests, about twenty-six. She was skinny, flat-chested, flat-assed, had stringy blonde hair and lips the width of a piece of string. I’d dismissed her when I’d first seen her but, maybe, if the four girls could be put into her body instead of Narcissa’s…
Miss Burns saw me looking at her and gave a shy smirk. She had rich people teeth: perfect, white but not so white that they were vulgar. I smiled back, picked up my full glass of liqueur, and saluted her with it.
Thank heaven Darci jerked on my arm before I drank any of it.
“How do I do that?” Darci asked Narcissa. “Where do I find their relatives?”
“Are they like him now?” Narcissa purred, looking at me with hot eyes.
“No,” Darci said. “They aren’t all like him. When do I find—?”
I don’t know what happened next. Narcissa was leering at me, Miss Burns was doing her best to flirt with her skinny eyes, Delphia looked like she wanted to take an ax to the lot of us, and the other women were watching it all with eyes that were so glazed I knew they were feeling no pain. Darci was quizzing the four slave women she’d invited to inhabit Narcissa’s body. The next thing I knew Darci was standing up and staring into the darkness on the far side of the room. Her face drained of what little color she had. She whispered “Adam,” then she fainted.
I caught her before she hit the floor, picked her up, and carried her out of the room. Once we were in the hall, I thought, Now what the hell do I do? If I’d had access to a car, I would have put her in it and driven away, but I had no car and I didn’t think Delphia would lend me one.
When I heard voices from the library behind me, I turned and headed toward the door outside. I knew that if I took Darci to her room, soon all of them would be banging on the door. But where could I take her so that she and I could be alone?
“If there really are any ghosts floating around me, I need help,” I said aloud. “Show me where to take her where we’ll be safe from them.”
I didn’t want to believe in any of them but it was like about a hundred soft hands started pulling me. Part of me wanted to drop Darci’s limp body and run, but a part of me liked it. It felt so safe, like being in my mother’s arms—not that I knew what that felt like.
I was so busy enjoying the sensation, and looking at Darci to see any signs of life, and hiding from people’s voices as they searched for us, that I didn’t realize where I was being led until I was inside. There was a closed door, I pushed it open, then I was inside. There was just enough moonlight for me to make out a rusty flashlight. Still holding Darci, I picked up the flashlight and saw a big white table and a bunch of candles and a box of matches. I put her down on the table, lit half a dozen candles, then looked around.
I was in a crypt. I’d seen it earlier but had had no desire to explore it. It was not too far from the slave cemetery and I’d assumed some of the Barrister sisters’ ancestors were buried in it. Inside, there were four marble sarcophagi with the lids pushed aside, one lid broken. It looked as though someone had been looting graves, been interrupted, and the flashlight, candles and matches had been left behind.
A groan from Darci made me turn to her. She was a tiny thing and she looked even smaller lying on that hard, cold marble lid. I put my hand on her forehead and smoothed back her hair, then I removed my dinner jacket and put it over her. “How do you feel?”
“Awful,” she said, looking up at me. When she started looking at the empty space around my head I said, “How many of them are in here?”
“All of them. Fifty or so, and they’re almost all women. Interesting.”
“I see,” I said and swallowed. I wasn’t going to let her see that I wanted to run away and hide. “Any of them tell you what they want?” I noted that, in death, there seemed to be equality as the slave-ghosts could enter their masters’ mausoleum.
With her hand to her head, Darci started to sit up. I helped her turn around so her legs were hanging down the front of the sarcophagus. There was a name and a date carved in the marble and I could have read it, but I didn’t. Also, the lid was askew so I could have peeked inside, but I didn’t.
Darci looked up at me. “They want me to be a travel director.”
“Yeah?” I said as I took a seat beside her. Obviously, she wasn’t yet ready to tell me what had upset her so much that she’d fainted. “What does that mean?”
“They’re letting me know that there are records in the basement of the house that tell about their loved ones. They want me to get the papers and tell them where to go to find them.”
“We’re talking about slavery, right? One hundred fifty to two hundred years ago? Do they think their friends and relatives will be waiting there for them?”
“I think so. Maybe their graves will be there and the spirits will be attached to the graves.”
I thought about all this for a moment. “I have two questions. One is, Why don’t they all go to the Good Place and meet up with their loved ones there like they’re supposed to?” I said this last loudly to make sure they heard me. “Second, if they want papers that are in the basement why don’t they just—you know.” I made a sliding gesture with my hands, palms slipping past each other. “Why don’t they go through the walls and get the papers themselves?”
“They’re afraid,” Darci said quietly.
That sobered me. “What could ghosts be afraid of? That someone’s going to kill them? Tear their arms off? No, wait a minute,” I said, snapping my fingers. “They don’t have arms and they’re already dead.”
“They’re afraid of Devlin,” Darci said as she jumped down from the sarcophagus.
“And who is he?”
When Darci put her hands over her face and burst into tears, it was natural for me to pull her into my arms. When we heard voices outside, I pulled her tighter and looked at the li
t candles in panic. Suddenly, they were all extinguished and I said,“Thanks” without thinking.
As we heard people walking around outside, I held Darci even tighter. I was in a tomb with a skinny little white girl with supernatural powers and I was surrounded by about fifty ghosts. Maybe I should run outside and throw myself at the feet of Delphia and the others who were searching for us, I thought.
“Nobody in their right mind would go in there,” I heard a male voice say just outside the door. “Come on, let’s get back. This place gives me the creeps in the daytime. Old Delphie wants that guy in her bed she can get him herself.”
“I heard he was gay.”
The response to that was laughter of such derision that I decided I needed to work on my disguise a bit.
“Did you send them away?” I asked.
Silently, Darci nodded against my chest.
“You know, you’re handy to have around sometimes.” I could feel her relax in my arms. “Of course, we wouldn’t be hiding inside a tomb at midnight if it weren’t for you.”
“Me?” she said, pulling away. “You’re the one who wanted to find his son so you came to me. I didn’t—”
She broke off because I was grinning at her and my teeth, whitened at enormous expense, shone like white lights. “Thanks,” she said, pulling the rest of the way away from me. “I’m pretty tired so I think I should go to bed now.”
Fumbling along the top of the tomb I found the box of matches, lit one, then nearly screamed because I was looking down into the sarcophagus at a dead man’s face. I jumped back and when the match went out so I couldn’t see, I said “Thanks” again.
I struck a second match and lit a candle, all while staying far away from the open part of the big marble coffin. “Darci, you fainted in there and I think you should tell me why.”
“It was nothing, just a trick, that’s all.”
“A trick that made you faint? Look, Darci, I don’t know you very well but I’ve seen that you talk to ghosts like they’re everyday people. You also walked into a mess where people have been killed, but you didn’t give it a second thought. So, tell me, what could make you faint?”
She took a deep breath and seemed to relax but her hands were in fists. “That spirit, that man named Devlin, is very powerful, so powerful that I can’t tell anything about him. I don’t know if he thought it was a joke or what, but he—”
“He did what?”
Her voice lowered. “He made himself look like Adam. Like my husband. Like—”
She broke off, turned away, and I could see that she’d started crying again.
I picked her up under her arms like she was a kid and set her on the edge of the tomb. When she was too close to the dead face inside, I moved her down and put my jacket around her shoulders. Marble and ghosts tended to make a cold room.
“Okay, now tell me everything.”
“About Adam?”
“No,” I said nicely. I had a feeling that if she started that we’d be here for the next six days. “Tell me about this guy Devlin.”
“I don’t know anything about him except that he’s very powerful. He can manifest himself.”
“To you, or just to people like you, or could I see him, too?”
“People like me? What does that mean?”
“Stop stalling and answer my question.”
“I’m not sure, but I think that if he wanted to he could make you see him.”
“If you see him again, ask him not to make the effort. Is he here because you are or does he live here?”
“I don’t know.”
“What about them, do they know?” I waved my hand around the dark tomb.
“They’re no longer here. Just the mention of Devlin and they skedaddle.”
I sat down by her, on the opposite side of the dead face in the box. “If you want to leave this place, we can. I don’t think my son is here. Maybe he was but he’s gone now. I think this place is just a scam being run by those two women so they can get money from bored, rich women. I think we should leave here now. Tonight. We’ll start walking until we find a motel, then we’ll—”
Darci hopped off the tomb and headed for the door. “I’m staying here until I find out what’s going on. I think this Devlin knows something about my husband. Maybe he came here to meet me so I’m going to introduce myself. Bring the flashlight.”
With that, she left the big, cold, marble mausoleum and went out into the night air. I knew I wasn’t a coward but I looked around at the vandalized coffins, grabbed my jacket and the flashlight, and followed Darci out. “You guys blow out the candle,” I said over my shoulder, then crossed myself when the light went out.
I could barely see Darci in the darkness but she was running quickly toward the house. When I reached her, she was kneeling down by a basement window. She didn’t look up but she knew I was there.
“There’s no alarm on this window,” she whispered, “but it’s locked. If you muffled the sound with your jacket do you think you could break that pane of glass, reach in, and unlock it?”
“What if I did? What good will it do? Holy sh—” I began, before I remembered Darci’s moratorium on cursing. She was undressing.
“I can slip through that window but not in this suit. It’s too bulky.”
She had on a pink suit trimmed in black, very old-fashioned and very expensive. Underneath it she was wearing a one piece black teddy that was nothing but lace and a few panels of black satin.
“Are you trying to kill me or what?” I asked, looking at her in the moonlight. Her legs were covered with black hose. She was short and tiny but she was perfectly proportioned.
“Can you or not?” she asked impatiently.
“Anything,” I said. “I can do anything.” But I didn’t move. I just sat there.
“Linc, so help me, if you don’t get that window open I’ll send all four girls into your bedroom.”
I hesitated.
“How about if I put the four girls into Narcissa’s body, then send them to you?”
That scared me into action. I wrapped my jacket around my fist, broke the little pane of glass, reached in, unlocked the window, and pushed the broken frame up—but I didn’t take my eyes off Darci. When she lay down on her stomach in front of me I thought I might be the one to faint.
“Concentrate, Linc!” she said. “Take my hands and lower me down. I don’t know how far down the floor is.”
I did as she said, but I wanted to weep when she wiggled her curvy little fanny down through the window. When she was all the way inside I had to move to my stomach to put my arms through the window. When I was as far as I could go, she still hadn’t touched the floor. “Drop me,” she whispered, but I didn’t. I stuck my head inside the utterly dark basement. I had an idea that she had no intention of letting me inside the basement with her. “If you don’t open the door so I can get in I’ll find Delphia and tell her you’re down here.”
“I’ll—” she began, probably meaning to threaten me, but she seemed to change her mind. “Okay,” she said.
“Watch out for the broken glass,” I said, but I knew it had fallen to her right. I let go of her hands. She couldn’t have had too far to drop but I heard a muffled “Oomph” as she hit.
“Wouldn’t want to bruise that little rear end, now would we?” I muttered, chuckling to myself as I went in search of a door into the basement. The next moment I gave a little yelp as I felt a bite on my earlobe. Not a bug bite but more like teeth had clamped down on my ear.
I was standing there rubbing my ear when I heard a creak. I didn’t dare turn on the flashlight so I waited and finally saw what looked to be something large rising out of the ground. I really did hope it was a door and not some strange-looking ghost.
“Linc?” I heard Darci whisper.
I was there in a flash and down the steps in seconds, closing the door over my head. “I think one of the girls bit me,” I said.
“Jealous,” Darci answered. “I think they?
??re getting more powerful. All of them are. Their shapes are becoming clearer by the minute.”
She turned on the flashlight and looked around. We were in a narrow hallway that had several doors along it. I opened a door and we looked inside. Junk. Old newspapers, a rotting wicker baby carriage, a cardboard box that had been chewed on by rodents. Old lace spilled out of the hole in the box. “An antiques dealer’s dream,” Darci said.
“And a fire marshal’s nightmare,” I said. Darci started walking down the hall toward whatever lay at the end. I guess there was nothing of interest to her behind the other doors.
Holding the flashlight, I followed her.
Darci
Chapter Nine
I DIDN’T WANT LINC TO KNOW HOW AFRAID I REALLY was. Years ago I’d walked into some tunnels with the man I loved and I’d been full of confidence. After all, all I’d ever known was Putnam, Kentucky, and the shenanigans people got up to there. I’d seen and talked to a few ghosts and only a few of them had been truly malevolent. Mostly, they’d been searching for something or someone and I’d done what I could to help them out.
In the tunnels with Adam, I hadn’t felt anything bad so I’d been full of myself. It was only later that I realized the witch’s power had been so great that she’d taken away anything that would cause me to be alarmed. She’d set a trap and I’d fallen into it.
Was this house and the fake séances a trap, too? I suspected, to the point of being sure, that all this had been done to get me into that house. Either my mother knew more than she let me know or she was being used by someone very powerful. She’d been the one to start this, the one to get me here.
Who was this strong spirit Devlin and did he have anything to do with Linc’s child who was missing? I wondered.
I turned a corner and there, sitting at an old table, was a gray-haired man wearing a worn and dirty robe. He was using a big wooden-handled knife to cut cheese to put on a chunk of bread. Around his left ankle was an iron cuff attached to a chain that was bolted to a brick wall. He didn’t look up when Linc and I walked into the room.