The Séance

“Right. And Halloween is around the corner. I’ll get to play some pretty scary stuff,” Dan said.

“The three-year-olds are trembling in their boots,” Ana teased, then suggested, “Why don’t we ask the Ouija board when you’ll get your big break?”

Mike groaned. “I’m getting another beer.” He started down the hall, almost crashing into Jed, who was still standing in the doorway. “Beer?” he suggested.

“Yeah, sure, one more,” Jed said, heading to the kitchen with him.

A few seconds later, they heard a loud and startled clamor from the parlor.

They frowned at each other and rushed back to the other room. Jed was in the lead, and when he reached the arched doorway, he was almost hit in the head with the planchette.

“Hey, who threw that?” he demanded. Ducking had saved him from a good shot right in the face.

“She did,” Ana said, pointing to Christina.

“I did not!” Christina protested.

Ana met his eyes, looking more than a little scared. “It…it was like it got mad and flew cross the room,” she said.

“Ana, get a life,” Jed snapped.

“What’s going on?” Mike demanded from just behind Jed.

“We asked it if Dan was going to get the part he wants,” Christina said.

“And it spelled out ‘help’ again,” Ilona said, eyes wide.

“They’re pulling your leg, Ilona,” Mike told her.

Ana let out a long, aggrieved sigh.

“Whatever. Let’s put the stupid thing away,” Christina said. Without waiting for anyone to agree, she reached for the box.

“Throw the stupid thing away,” Dan suggested.

“Christina, throw an old treasure away?” Tony teased. “Never.”

“It’s a good thing I don’t throw anything away. You might recall a box I packed up when a few people forgot about it after one Christmas dinner,” Christina said, looking from Mike to Dan and smiling complacently.

“Yes, and we appreciate it,” Dan said, then explained to the others. “We got bonds for Christmas one year when we were kids. We forgot all about them, but Christina stuck them in a box and held on to it. Our bonds matured and ended up being worth a bundle.”

“And we thank her for it,” Mike said, then turned to Christina. “Want me to help you pack anything up?” he asked as he turned up the dimmer switch.

“No, but thank you for the appreciation.” She rose from the floor as gracefully as ever.

Dan yawned, then apologized. “Sorry, but I’ve got to go. I’m on first shift tomorrow. Costuming at seven in the morning for the eight o’clock breakfast. This was fun. Thanks, Ana. Christina.”

“I should take off, too,” Jed said, anxious to get away. He still couldn’t get the autopsy off his mind, and the last thing he needed was to spend the evening at a party where the conversation kept turning to Beau Kidd.

“Christina, Ana, thanks for dinner, and, Christie, welcome to the neighborhood.”

“Thanks for coming,” she said, and walked over to him for a brief hug. There was still something reserved between them.

His fault, she decided as he waved to the others and started toward the door.

“This is your home, too, just like always,” he heard Christina tell her cousins as they followed a few steps behind.

“Thanks, kid,” Dan told her. “But one day you might have a sex life, and you wouldn’t want us walking in on you.”

“Let’s go,” Mike said. “I don’t want to hear about my little cousin’s sex life, okay?”

“Would you rather walk in on it?” Dan asked.

“Outta here,” Mike said firmly.

Jed was almost at the door, but he still overheard the last remarks from the group in the parlor.

“What the hell was with Jed tonight?” Tony asked.

“The Beau Kidd thing,” Ana said. “When he wrote his book, he was sure Kidd was guilty, but now he doesn’t know.”

Jed headed out the door to his Jeep and gunned the engine.

Ana was right.

Ana left a few minutes later with Tony and Ilona. Dan and Mike had offered to drive her home, but Tony had assured them that he and Ilona would see her safely inside. Ana had bought her parents’ house when they had retired down to their place in the Keys, so she’d never moved once in her life. And at the price of real estate, she was lucky—as Christina was herself.

Christina locked the front door as the stragglers left. One thing she didn’t have was an alarm system. Something she should probably consider in the future, she decided.

There wasn’t much to do as far as cleaning up; paper plates for food that had arrived in cardboard cartons didn’t create much of a mess. She was done in five minutes.

When the water stopped running, the house seemed almost painfully silent.

She walked back into the parlor and immediately noticed the Ouija board. “You suck,” she muttered. Her eyes moved over the many boxes littering the room.

For some reason, all those boxes made her feel uneasy. The fact that the house didn’t have an alarm—which had never bothered her before—now made her even more uneasy. The silence weighed on her.

And she wished to God they had never played with the stupid Ouija board.

She found herself walking around, turning on every light in the house. She even turned on the plasma television in the living room, thinking the noise would be good.

The news came on instantly.

“As is common in such cases,” an attractive young anchorwoman was saying, “there was evidence that the police didn’t share with the public when the Interstate Killer was at work twelve years ago. The police have not yet commented on whether or not the murder of Sherri Mason shares any of those confidential similarities or not. As you may be aware, the Interstate Killer’s spree ended with the death of the man who had become the prime suspect, Detective Beau Kidd. Kidd was familiar with two of the victims, who—”

Christina was tempted to throw the remote control across the room; she hit the power-off switch instead.

Groaning, she rechecked the front door, turned off the lights and started up the stairs.