Page 10 of The Mare Rider of Cornwall Cove
With a flick of a lighter, I had the smudge parcel lit. Then I slowly made my way through the house, ensuring each room on the first and then the second floor got a good dose of smoke. I likened it to smoking bees. When beekeepers are going to fiddle with their hives, they smoke the bees to calm them. This was much like that, only with spirits and not honeybees. At the bottom of the narrow stairs that led to the attic, I paused, drew in a deep breath, and began to climb. There was no knocking on the walls as I neared the antique door, no crashing in the attic, no wails to scare me as there normally was. A shiver ran down my spine as I turned the knob with one hand, then stepped into the attic, using the smudge parcel as a torch of sorts. Which was silly because there were lights up here. I flipped on the light and gave the area a quick scan. Boxes, totes, bundles of magazines, old toys, the usual stuff people crammed into an attic. Green and red totes filled with holiday decorations, some big cutout pumpkins that the Connors set out for Halloween. A fake tree, an old rocking chair, and a trombone sitting atop a mouse-chewed chaise lounge.
“Hello, girls,” I called, waving the smoky bundle as I padded about, the floorboards creaking as the dogs barked at each other in the back. Nothing. Very odd. The last time I had come over to give the house a cleansing, they lobbed wooden blocks at my head and tried to push me through the window that looked over the alley to my room. Sure, they later claimed to Reg that it had been an accident, and they had merely meant to hug me and not shove me, but I wasn’t buying it. “Miss Angelica? Miss Polly?” I called and got no reply. “Reggie is worried about you. If you’re all right, please show yourselves so I can tell him you’re fine.”
A cold wind blew over the back of my neck. The rocking chair began to creak behind me. I turned to find the twins sitting in the chair, side-by-side, their charred dresses clinging to badly burned ghostly flesh. Tufts of gold hair stuck out of their heads, their skulls and faces covered with black ash where flesh should have been. Seeing them was always upsetting. They sat together, eyes round and dark as a sinkhole, watching me.
“Good afternoon, girls,” I said, keeping the smudge between them and myself. Most ghosts hated the aroma and shied away, which was why I kept my herbs in a metal box in the closet, so as not to offend Reggie, Eloise, or Caleb. “How are you feeling?”
They stared at me, lips pressed tight, cheekbones peeking through their seared flesh. “We don’t like you,” they said in unison.
“That’s fair. I’m not all that wild about you two either, but Reggie seems to feel you’re quite the little pranksters, and that probably reminds him of himself at your age. Also, you tell him he looks like Tom Hiddleston.”
They smiled at the same time, a crooked sort of smile that lifted one side of their mouths as if their top lips were hooked to a puppeteer’s controllers. It was beyond creepy how they did everything in sync, not going to lie.
“Tell the marquis we’re being punished,” two raspy young feminine voices said.
“Punished?” That seemed unlikely. Who could discipline two ghosts? Their parents had survived the fire that had killed them, so there were no adult phantoms in the house to reprimand them for misbehaving. “Who can punish you two?”
“Not you, blooded kin of Kee Houng.”
I folded my arms over my chest, the smoke from the purifying pack floating up to tickle my nose. “There’s no need to get attitude. Who’s punishing you and why?”
“We whispered to the boy to shave the other boy’s fat head. We wanted his pretty hair.” They both pointed to the sprigs of blond hair on their charred skulls. “There was no harm done. Just some hair lost. Mambo Kiwi got angry when she saw it and warned us to behave until the new year arrived.”
I stared at them in confusion. “Who is Mambo Kiwi? Is that the demon you summoned for a tea party?”
They both giggled in tandem. Then, as quickly as the titters had started, they ended. “The blooded heir of the ghost hunter doesn’t know as much as he claims. What a disgrace he is to his lineage.”
That one hit the mark. I was over being told I was a disappointment to my ancestors. I looked at the smudge bundle in my hand and then at the twins. They saw that glance. Within a second, the sniggers fell off as their scorched brows drew down into a sharp V.
“When you’re done being smart asses, I’d like an answer. I suspect you’d not like smoke in your eyes again.” Ugh. I instantly felt shitty for being such a dick to two little girls. Yes, they were troublesome and bordering on evil, but they were still kids. But damn it, Iwas nota disgrace to my lineage!
They drew back slightly, the rocker creaking as the bowed rockers levered back so far it would dump a mortal seated init. I heard a mouse skittering around behind me and wanted to run to the other side of the attic, but that would look bad. I was trying to be intimidating. To two little girls. Man, I was a real jerk. This day was awful.
“Ask the negress,” they snarled in unison before flashing out of view. The rocker flew forward with such speed, it tipped over. The mouse sounds stalled. I drew in a breath, let it out, and then jogged to the window to get some distance between myself and that mouse. Resting by the small octagonal jalousie, I looked out and saw my room, or at least the window to it, across the alleyway.
Mambo Kiwi. Who the hell was that, and how would she/he/it/they/whatever pronoun a demon preferred be able to sit on those two troublemakers so effectively? The negress. Yuck, what an offensive term to use. I tended to forget at times that the specters I interacted with so often came from terribly bigoted times. Even Eloise had been offended at first with Phil and me being a couple, and she had died in the 1970s. We’d come far but still had a long, long way to go. The Black woman. Did they mean Monique? A part-time helper at the library. No, surely not. There was no way Monique could curtail those two. She didn’t even have the seeing eye or the gift to speak to the dead. No, they must have meant someone else. But who?
Blowing out a breath, I gave up on trying to figure out the Mambo Kiwi mystery right now and finished going through the house, waving my smoky package, until I was back in the kitchen. The dogs were ready to come in by then. They dove into their food as I stepped out into the cold to drop the smoldering herbs in the snow and then stamped on them until they were out. Then I gathered the soggy mess and tossed it into an empty metal trash can beside the back door. I glanced skyward. Snow flurries drifted down from ashen clouds to dampen my cheeks and speckle my glasses.
Mind filled with more questions than answers, I locked up and went home. Slipping into the bookstore, I found Reggie by the register chatting it up with Caleb the Milkman and Eloise as I shook off the snowflakes that coated my shoulders.
“I left your cream and butter outside,” Caleb Nichols, the cheerful milkman, announced as soon as he saw me. I liked Caleb a great deal. And I suspected Reg did as well, but he was too sour of a pickle to give in to the attraction for some reason. Even though one side of his head was shoved in from a death blow from Winifred, his horse that had pulled his milk wagon up and down the streets of Liverswell, he was still quite handsome. Sparkling eyes and a pleasant demeanor. And always polite. “Thank you again for the box. It’s quite spiffy!”
I smiled as Caleb adjusted his red bowtie. “Glad you like it. What’s up?” I hung my coat on the rack by the door and wiped my feet on an old throw rug.
“We’re planning a soiree for tomorrow night to ring in the new year,” Reg announced with glee. What a party animal. “Miss Eloise has been very gracious about recommending songs to play as has Mr. Nichols.”
“You can call me Caleb, Mr. Marquis,” Caleb quickly interjected. Reg gave the burly man in white a practiced eyeroll.
“My name is not Mr. Marquis. Egad, you Americans. You may address me as—”
“Call him Reg,” I hurried to say to snip the long title that Reggie liked to flaunt whenever possible. Stepping around Eloise, who was smiling at me, I looked down at the elegant handwriting on a sheaf of printer paper. “Wow, these are some good songs. Van Halen, Peter Frampton, Foghat. Classic rock. Excellent. Phil would love these even if they are a decade earlier than his ’80s love, shame he’ll miss it.”
“Oh?” Reggie asked, placing his pen on the paper as his gaze met mine. “Where are you two going to be? I was hoping you’dbe here to run the games and lead the dancing. I’ve been trying to explain whist to these two, but they don’t seem to catch the intricacy of card games, so perhaps we’ll have to stick to hide-and-seek or tag. Perhaps marbles or checkers. Pity it’s so cold, we could have a battledores tourney if it were summer.”
“Phil and I are doing a livestream tomorrow night.” I gave Eloise a thumbs up for her song picks and got one in return.
“Why was I not told of this? Am I not a member of this household?! I find that exclusion to be most hurtful and will now require a lie down to recover from the slight.”
