Page 36 of Giving Up The Ghost
Julian shivered as we bumped into Miss Margot, the governess of one of my great-great uncles who died of pneumonia one long winter nearly one hundred years ago. “It’s a bit drafty,” he murmured.
Miss Margot huffed quietly, rolling her eyes as she resumed her spot at the foot of the stairs. It had been her post in life, waiting there for her charges to make their way to the school room, and she kept it long after death. I smiled at her, and she gave me a small wink back.
I hadn’t realized how much I was missing the place—missinghomeuntil that very moment. Julian’s hand in mine felt like an anchor in the best and worst of ways.Where is home now?
Ezra gave Miss Margot a wide berth—he remembered her too, even if he had never seen her like I had—and sat on the bottom step, looking up at the Regency-era papered ceiling. “Been a while,” he murmured. And I knew he missed it, too.
We collected ourselves around the low coffee table in Grandmere’s favorite sitting room, Ezra pulling up his notes and Julian his from his own research back at the house. “I feel out of the loop,” I admitted. “I hate that.”
Ezra pursed his lips—I recognized that expression as the one that meant he was about to say something tart and possibly devastating, but he wilted after a moment and nodded. “Sucks, doesn’t it?”
Oh. “Ezra?—”
“The thing is, this could all be confirmation bias, just like I suggested the other night,” Julian announced, emerging from his comparison of his notes to Ezra’s with a frown, having been oblivious to us for the past few moments. “There’s too much wiggle room. Is it weird they were all connected by their status as mediums, by Violet, by Avesford, and by the fact they all had seemingly accidental deaths that involved slips and falls? Yeah. But is itplausible? Also, yeah. They weren’t exactly spring chickens, and the risk of slip and fall accidents rises with age due to physical changes.”
“Quack quack,” Ezra said, arching one brow at Julian.
“Yeah.” He sighed. “Quack quack.”
I really hated being out of the loop. “Why are we ducks now?”
“Because the chances are, theseweremurders and Heinrich wasn’t just being dramatic,” Julian said, frowning at his phone. “And that also means you are likely in the demographic the killer is working with.”
“Oh. Well.” I sank back to sit on the floor, a seasick lurch starting in my stomach and working upwards. “You know, it’s one thing to hear about it academically but entirely another to be almost certain someone might want you dead.”
Julian’s hand came to rest on the back of my head, fingers tangling in my hair. After a moment, Ezra’s joined him. We sat in our cramped tangle, their hands on me and mine on each of theirs, for such a long time, my feet fell asleep. Finally, Julian broke the silence.
“So, what are we going to do with this information? If we tried to take it to the cops, they’d laugh us out of the building.”
I shook my head, slowly disentangling myself to get to my feet. “I don’t know. What can we do? Other than try to figure out who it is ourselves.”
“Because that’s worked well, historically,” Ezra muttered, rising. “When people try to suss out a murderer on their own with no special training or protection. We won’t end up on the evening news at all.”
“That’s why you should always wear clean pants,” I teased, trying to break some of the uncomfortable tension. “In case you’re on the news.”
“Jokes on them,” Ezra smirked. “I’m not wearing pants, period. Come on, enough navel-gazing. I’m starving.”
We trailed into the foyer. Being back at the townhouse was disorienting, at once coming home but also entering a stranger’s house. Standing empty for as long as it had, the place was strange to me. But at the same time, every spot I looked at was somewhere with a memory attached, a familiar sight that was blurred only by the lack of the living in the house itself.
“I was thinking maybe we could stay here, when I’m done at the Avesford house,” I said as we stood in the empty foyer, staring up at the chandelier. The cleaning service had been out recently—the entire place smelled of orange wax and lavender—but it was very empty and quiet, giving off an impression of disuse. The ghosts were a bit annoyed we were there—the ones upstairs were a bit stompy and an old butler was muttering about us dirtying his floors—but mostly because that meant they couldn’t get away with their usual shenanigans. When someone—Billy Byrnes, thank you very much, a young footman who’d died in an accident just out front nearly two centuries ago, when a carriage overturned and pinned him beneath—set the chandelier to swinging and made the metal umbrella stand by the door clatter in a circle, I held up a hand and promised, “We’ll make sure to call ‘round first before coming to stay.”
“We could come stay here now,” Ezra suggested, watching the umbrella stand complete one final rotation. “It’s not that far of a drive…”
Julian was rapidly typing on his phone, glancing up at the chandelier repeatedly. “I need to get online, check the national seismographic data. How close are we to any major truck routes?” He glanced up at us and raised his brows. “What?”
I snorted softly and motioned to the door. “I need to finish this,” I murmured to Ezra. “And besides, the commute’s a bitch.”
Ezra looked like he wanted to say something else—I could well guess what it was—but Billy gave the chandelier another hard shake, setting the crystals to rattling. “Alright, alright! See you later, you brat.”
Julian reluctantly followed us out the door and down the steps to where we’d managed to find a parking spot. “If this is an actual haunting, this is going to skew the shit out of my data tables.”
I held the car door open for him to scoot in with his cane in tow. “You’re adorable when you come over all skeptical.”
* * *
We chosea café not far from the townhouse, somewhere small and quiet and devoid of touristy charm, which meant we had the place mostly to ourselves save for an older couple near the back and a young woman with her earbuds in and a serious look on her face as she tapped away at her laptop.
“Grandfather used to bring me here,” I said once the server had taken our orders. “Every Tuesday for lunch. Until Grandmere found out.” The memory was one I didn’t disturb too often. It was like a sore tooth of sorts, fine until I prodded at it, then it would ache for hours after. “He said it was a favorite of my dad’s. Dad used to work near here. Not sure where though.” I trailed off, frowning. “But he’d bring me here and we’d have sandwiches and I’d have a Coke or lemonade, and he’d have coffee. I think… I think he just liked the idea of being close to where Dad had been.”
