Page 8 of Giving Up The Ghost
Ezra sighed, rolling his eyes. “I promised Harrison a call before it gets too late. He’s got some fundraiser thing tonight. And CeCe sent some tech specs for the new season so…”
An unexpected wash of relief moved over me. I felt guilty, beneath it, but at the same time, I reasoned, Ezra was making the offer himself. I wasn’t forcing him to go. “I’ll pop in before dinner.”
He nodded again. “Well. Right then.”
His cool dismissal stung. “Hey,” I called, but he just waved over his shoulder, not looking back.
Well.
Shit.
Charlotte was practically dancing by the time he reached the top of the stairs. “Come with me a moment, Oscar,” she said, dimpling with excitement. “I was going to wait until tomorrow for this but, well… Come see!”
I glanced up to see Ezra watching from the top of the steps, his brow quirked. It was hisI told you solook, but I just shook my head slightly, giving him mywhat are you on about-face. My guilt pangs dissolved—if Ezra was lingering to give me one of his silenttold you sos, we were alright.
We had an entire language of facial expressions between us. It saved a lot of time and effort when we were trying to talk about someone behind their backs. He slid his gaze to Charlotte, who was waiting for me in the doorway to the sitting room and rolled his eyes. Turning away from me pointedly, he disappeared into the corridor at the top of the steps.
“Oh, your friend is exhausting,” Charlotte grumbled after watching our silent exchange, oblivious to my startled expression at her words and waving me into the room. “Come, come. If we wait any longer, we’ll be at this come midnight!”
“Ezra’s my best friend,” I reminded her. “He’s, perhaps, a bit bold for some people’s tastes but?—”
“Like espresso,” she chortled, ushering me to the settee and heading for a stack of banker boxes on the desk. “Or one of those dark beers.”
“Er, yes?” He’d get a kick out of that, I thought. I’d have to tell him he was a stout later. “But really, Ezra’s not a bad sort at all. I’d trust him with my life. I have, in fact. He’s more than a friend to me. He’s…”Brotherdidn’t seem enough, but it was as close as I could come.
“He doesn’t seem to like me much,” she noted, glancing up from under her roan and silver fringe. “Do you think it was something I said?”
“Ah. He’s just… protective,” I said carefully. “We’ve been basically side by side since we were boys and?—”
“Hm. Well. No matter,” she interrupted, sounding bored. “He’s not our problem, eh? Look!”
“Ezra’s not a problem,” I began but staggered back to fall arse-first onto the settee’s hard cushions, my arms suddenly full of heavy leather-bound binders. “What the hell is this?”
“Open, open!” she called, rummaging another armload of binders out for me. “This is just the start! Take a look!”
Reluctantly, I set my armful down and selected the topmost binder. It was slightly dusty in the way things in storage became, no matter how well-sealed the boxes were. The binders were the old photo album sort I’d seen on the shelves at Grandmere’s place in London and in a few clients’ homes over the years, not very expensive and usually mass-marketed for department stores, fake gilding flaking along the borders of the cover. Flipping open the cover to the first one, it took me a moment to figure out what I was looking at. “Holy shit,” I breathed. “Are these original clippings?”
She hummed agreeably. “Most are. There’s a few that are printings from the originals, things that were too far degraded to take out of storage or that were not in our possession but at a library or someone’s private home, you know? Most would allow us to arrange for copies in those cases, but they are few and far between.” She dusted her hands off after setting down her armload, offering me a wide, brilliant grin. “The Fellowes, we’ve always been aware of our importance.” She laughed. “And we seem unable to throw anything out.”
I nodded, staring at the page in front of me. Carefully held between paper corners on the page was a newspaper article cut out from some edition in the late eighteen hundreds. “So-called spiritualist medium arrested on charges of fraud and—” I paused mid-sentence. “Oh, my.Fraud and lewd conduct. Olivia Fellowes of Southwark—oh dear, we’d had a bit of a step down in the world, hadn’t we, in that branch of the family—notorious spiritualist, was taken into custody on Thursday, the second of January, upon complaint from Mr. Geo. H. Hollings Esq—Oh, Olivia darling, never get involved with a lawyer. They’re nothing but trouble.” I glanced up, ready to exchange a grin with Ezra, maybe a few epithets, my smile falling when I remembered he was upstairs, and Charlotte was the one smiling back at me. “Well,” I said, clearing my throat. “It looks like a relative of ours got herself arrested for trying to pull a fast one and, apparently, pull on one while she was at it.”
Charlotte tsked at me, tapping the page with her bitten nail. “Turn the page. There’s more.”
She wasn’t wrong—the next page had a half dozen little snippets from different publications over a span of two years. Olivia had apparently claimed the spirit of Mr. Hollings’ wife had come to her, demanding justice for her cruel murder. Olivia was tried, found guilty, then transported to Van Diemen’s Land. “That’s Tasmania,” Charlotte murmured, seeing me frown a bit and try to puzzle out where on earth they’d sent her. “There’s more records downstairs. She lived there for about five years before she took her own life.” She made a vague gesture at her throat, letting me know the method our relative had chosen. “But look on!”
No matter where I looked in the collection, it was something tragic, something that made my stomach curdle and my heart ache. Transportation, hangings, excommunication, suicide… And the ones who survived were ostracized from polite society, some losing everything. “They were all like me. Like us,” I murmured, sitting back on my heels after several minutes. Every bit of paper in the binders pointed to the fact the Fellowes have always been mediums, and that both unsettled me and brought a strange, heavy calm.
“And I have dozens more boxes in the cellar,” she promised, grin nearly splitting her face. “Now, I must begin cooking! Enjoy this—it’s only the tip of the iceberg!”
I sat, only slightly dumbfounded, staring at the stacks of binders she’d wrangled up the steps for me. “Olivia Fellowes,” I murmured, fingers skimming over the news about her being transported. “And Demetria. Hello… I’m Oscar. Seems the family does love our odd names, hm?”
Softly, a muffled sob rippled through the otherwise quiet room.
Shit. Is Ezra upsetting Charlotte?I shoved to my feet, still clutching the binder, the sob coming again but barely more than a whisper now.
Oh.
Oh… “Sorry,” I muttered. “I’m a bit distracted. I’m listening now.”
