Page 34 of Giving Up The Ghost
“We’re not the ones locking him in a damned cellar,” Ezra added, fingers curling around his butter knife. I don’t think he’d actuallydoit but, at that very moment, I wasn’t going to put anything past him.
“How dareyou,” she barked. “In my house, speak to me like this!”
“It’s not.” The words were out before I realized they were on my tongue. Silence fell hard and fast, three pairs of startled eyes turning towards me. Charlotte drew in a sharp. Pained breath, but I continued. “You’re my cousin, of a sort, but the house? It’s mine. Deeded to me by my grandparents. Well, technically, to some ancient ancestor by a very dead king, but it’s been in the family since then, and even if I wanted to give it away, I couldn’t.”
“What are you saying? I am not welcome in the family home? You’re turning your back on me?”
“Oh, for Christ’s sake,” Ezra muttered.
I ignored him. “I think maybe a day away from this is necessary. The past three days have been… confusing, to say the least. You’ve been evasive with me and rude to them. I appreciate what you’re trying to do—I think—but this? It has tostop, Charlotte. And I think a day apart will be a good thing. Give us both a chance to come back with fresh eyes, so to speak.”
She pushed away from the table and rose stiffly. “I see. Rather, I don’t see. I thought, perhaps, you were being genuine when we spoke, when you said you wanted to know more about your past, aboutourhistory. That you wanted to help me uncover truths, yes? But that was a lie, hm?” Throwing her napkin down, she turned on her heel and strode from the kitchen.
Ezra uttered a low whistle at her departure, the slamming of the cellar door punctuating her dramatic flounce. “The pub still has rooms,” he said after a moment.
“No. As I said, it is my house. She’s a guest, of sorts, but I won’t have this bullshit under my roof.” I frowned, touching my fingers to my lips. “Sorry, I seem to have been channeling my grandfather all of a sudden.” I smirked, showing them I was kidding, and Julian snorted softly.
“You joke but given how last year went, we can’t be too sure.” He glanced at Ezra and made a littlewellsort of nod at him.
Ezra tilted his head, pursing his lips.
“Oh, for the love of… What’s going on with you two? Were you really planning a trip to London? Talk to me, damn it!”
Julian made a small,calm downgesture with one hand, reaching for me with the other and lacing our fingers together. “We, um, decided to check into some of these mediums in your grandmother’s circle who’ve died recently.”
“Heinrich.” I sighed. “You spoke to Heinrich.”
“And we went to that funeral,” he reminded me. “Almost a dozen mediums in less than two years? All connected to one another? I…” he hesitated before rushing on, “I’ve been looking into them, the murders. It was raising too many alarms, all of these accidental deaths.”
He offered me a tentative, small smile. A pang of guilt and anxiety shot through me, an electric jolt straight to my heart. Had I been so difficult to be around that Julian was afraid to tell me things? I glanced at Ezra with his jaw set mutinously and felt something inside me buckle.
I had.
I’d been pushing them away with my desperation, with my determination.
And after last night in the cellar, maybe it was time for me to step back, to bring them in to what was happening. But… I closed my eyes for a moment and took a deep, slow breath, letting it out on a sigh. Not yet. I needed to think first. To… to untangle what had happened.
Liar.
I opened my eyes to find them both staring at me, near identical looks of concern on their faces. “Why London?”
“That’s where five of them lived most of the year,” Ezra said after the briefest hesitation. “Not including Violet and Heinrich.”
“They all have ties to Avesdale, though,” Julian interjected.
“But London means more chances to find their clients and do some snooping without raising too many eyebrows.”
I nodded. “Right. Yes. Yes. Okay. Let’s do this.”
“Are you sure you don’t want to stay here today?” Ezra asked, a shade of snark in his tone. “I know you’re bound and determined to find some elusive answer to your ephemeral questions in all those boxes.”
“Ow. I mean, okay, fair, but ow?”
“Last night,” Julian began, but I shook my head.
“Not yet. Soon. I’ll… I’ll tell you soon. But I need to sit with it for a little bit. To untangle it some more.”
“That bad?” Ezra asked in a low voice. “Are you certain you want to stay?”
