Page 40 of Giving Up The Ghost
“You might have a concussion,” I urged. “It’s not a bad idea. How hard did she hit you?”
“Hard enough. And I’m not getting scanned. What if they… they find something?” His voice had become smaller, softer. “I don’t want them looking at my brain.”
Oscar rocked back onto his heels. “Ezra,” he tried, tone reasonable, “I’ve had my head scanned and they never saw anything. Wait!” He closed his eyes, held up his hand in the face of Ezra’s small smirk. “They didn’t find anythingunusual! You can’t play with neurological injuries, Ezzy. I can’t… Fuck. It’s selfish but I can’t lose you, okay? If you’ve got some sort of bleed or, or?—"
Ezra sliced the air with his hand, grimacing in pain. “Justno, okay?” He started to struggle to his feet and moaned. “Fuck. I think I’m heading for one of my spells.”
“Shit.” I limped over and we got him to his feet. Charlotte, holding a plastic bag of ice, appeared in the kitchen doorway, watching us with owl eyes, her expression strangely blank with no trace of her incipient panic of minutes before.
It made the skin on the back of my neck crawl, being under that wide, empty stare.
“Come on,” I muttered, urging Oscar to move. Between the two of us—mostly Oscar again—we got him up to his room and on his bed before the seizure began.
This one lasted just over a minute and was not as aggressive as others I’d witnessed him have but still not easy on him or something to be taken lightly. After, I stepped out so Oscar could help him clean up in private, stripping the sheets and retrieving a fresh set from the linen cupboard while Ezra slumped in the chair. Finally, Oscar opened the door and stuck his head out, looking as shaken as a person can without bursting into tears. “I’m going to hang out with him for a bit,” he murmured. “He says he’s fine, but you know how Ezra is.”
“Yeah, I get it. Should we call 999 anyway or…”
Oscar shook his head. “He said no, so no. But I’ll change my mind and override that if he gets worse or… Or.”
I nodded again. “How bad is his head?”
“I feel like a joke goes here but I’ll be damned if I can make it work,” he chuckled mirthlessly. “It’s a goose egg.” He held his fingers an inch or so apart. “Right on the back, here.” He touched my head where my parietal bone merged with my occipital bone.
“Christ. She could’ve killed him.”
He nodded, troubled. “If she comes around tonight, stay clear of her. I’ve been making excuses for days now, and it got Ezra hurt.”
Oscar eased back into the room and shut the door firmly between us.
* * *
For the better part oftwo hours, I went through our notes about the mediums’ deaths. The only links I could find were the fact they were mediums, they’d all received requests for private consultations in the week or so before their deaths, and they were all in that circle with Violet. Out of the ten we were sure had connections to Violet, four had died from seemingly natural causes, and the rest had passed from at-home accidents. Mostly falls, I noted, which struck me as very coincidental, but no one on any investigation team seemed concerned, especially as they were all of an age where falls were not unusual.
But correlation is not causation—those facts alone wouldn’t damn a suspect. Hell, I couldn’t evenfinda suspect. Hesitantly, I wrote down Heinrich’s name, but quickly marked it out. Not only had he been stateside for the past few deaths, he’d fled England because he was afraid.
Allegedly,the true-crime podcast in my head muttered.It’s always the ones you least suspect.
In that case, I should just write down Oscar and Ezra,I protested back. My head was a very busy place, apparently.
I reorganized what we knew: The murders had occurred over the past two years, they involved a circle of known mediums who were all of a certain age and alleged level of ability, they occurred between London and Avesford, and they all appeared to be accidents or poorly timed natural causes.
Slips and falls are the most common cause of death in the home, right before accidental poisoning.
But that many of them? In the same group?
If we could find out who had made the calls for the private consults, we’d have at least one suspect.
Maybe that Mick guy was right. We should talk to Violet. Or… not Violet. Maybe one of the other mediums.
Christ. Did I just suggest holding a séance to solve a mystery? That’s it. I’m cutting myself off of PBS Mystery for the next six months.
Throwing the tablet aside, I took myself down to the study. The house was quiet, not even the ticking of the carriage clock penetrating the silence as I shuffled behind the desk. Several of the binders Ezra had not been able to take down to the cellar were still on the desk, as I’d hoped. The idea of going into the dark cellar with the sketchy steps and my cane was on my list ofthings I wanted to doright afterfeed alligators while wearing a meat suitandwrite a grant proposal.It took me just a few moments to get settled, pulling up the information I’d saved on my phone from the other binders—the lists of people buried in the special plot outside the cemetery. I wished I’d brought my laptop down, but this would have to do, I decided.
The stack of binders proved more useful than I’d thought, and I idly wondered if Ezra had some sort of precognitive ability, knowing which ones to leave behind. Most of them were long family lineages, more wandering vines than trees. All going back to a set of twins in the seventeenth century. They each had several children, and each had at least one child accused of fraud, witchery, or something similar who was either hanged or transported. And so did that group of children, and then their children. After an hour of poring over the first book, I opened up a fresh document on my phone and started making notes.
A soft chime told me when it hit midnight. No one had come in to stop me, no screaming spade-wielding banshee trying to kill me, so I kept digging.
My eyes were gritty and hot when I looked up again, two binders in to the list. Oscar’s line was descended from the brother, who had six sons. And the one son who’d survived to adulthood without being transported, killed, or stricken by disease had three daughters and one son. And that son… Well, and so on and so on. Several sections of each binder were dedicated to burial records, and I sent up a silent thank you to whichever of Oscar’s ancestors was an entity after my own heart. “You really are making this job easy for me. Where were you when I needed a graduate assistant?”
