The Secrets Of Ghosts

‘I wasn’t looking closely at him, no.’ Katie felt cross. She hadn’t known she was going to be quizzed on Oliver Cole’s accessories. Culpeper’s Herbal had never warned her about that.

‘May I?’ Max held out his hand.

‘I’m not letting you take Mr Cole’s watch,’ Katie said, gripping the box tightly. ‘I don’t care if you won it.’

He shook his head. ‘I doubt we’re after the same thing, that’s all. The watch I won was a woman’s one. Diamonds around the outside. Flashy in a mobster’s moll kind of way.’

‘So he was gambling with his wife’s watch?’ Maybe that explained why he wanted Katie to find it. Maybe his spirit felt bad about losing his wife’s property.

‘You didn’t tell me why you need to find it. You don’t even know what it looks like?’

‘No.’ She raked through the box, holding up the Swatch then dropping it back in. ‘I’m an idiot. I’ll just ask his wife. I’ll say he mentioned it was missing — I don’t need to tell her when he told me. Then I’m not lying. Perfect.’

‘Perfect if you trust his wife not to pick the Breitling watch and sell it for a tidy profit.’

‘Just because that’s what you’d do.’

‘In a past life, perhaps,’ Max said. ‘I’m turning over a new leaf.’

‘Is that a fact?’ Katie had the box held against her hip. ‘You done, here?’

‘Yeah,’ Max said and they walked back upstairs, into the light.

Chapter 5 (#ulink_7ed73185-2101-5b65-973d-055645160da4)

Cam was working late at the office and Gwen had taken the opportunity to go through all of Iris’s journals. Back when she’d first inherited the house and had been reading the journals for the first time, it had often felt as if they fell open at exactly the place she needed. These days, she practically knew them by heart, but had to go through them in the normal way. Since there wasn’t any kind of index system, that meant the slow way. After hours, in which the heat of the day made her want to put her head on the table and sleep, she wasn’t at all sure the effort had been worth it.

When Katie arrived, Gwen delayed talking by making smoothies in the blender. As the fruit and ice whizzed noisily and Katie fetched tall glasses and straws, Gwen tried to think of a gentle way of explaining what she’d just read. Katie reached across and switched off the KitchenAid. ‘What?’

‘It’s not good.’

‘Tell me,’ Katie said. ‘I’d rather know.’

‘Okay.’ Gwen poured out the smoothies. She added a shot of vodka to her own and offered the bottle to Katie who, as always, shook her head. Outside in the garden, Cat was stalking something in the undergrowth and the scent of lavender hung thickly in the air. The evening sun still had plenty of warmth, but it was gentler than earlier in the day. Gwen sat on her wooden bench, passing one of the cushions to Katie and rearranging another behind her own back.

Katie was gripping her glass and ignoring her smoothie. Gwen wanted to take away her tension, wanted to comfort her, but when she put her hand on Katie’s arm, she shrugged it off. ‘Please tell me you found something?’

‘There was some information on haunting. Apparently, spirits do get trapped sometimes. They’re either attached to a place, or an object, or a person.’

Katie sat back. ‘Okay. So, Mr Cole is attached to me. I mean, he spoke to me through the magpie, so he’s not stuck at the hotel.’

‘That’s what I thought,’ Gwen said.

‘So, how do I get rid of him? Not get rid, I mean, help him.’

‘There isn’t really anything about that. Iris is very cagey about speaking to the dead. She refers to it twice and both times she says it’s a really bad idea.’

‘What do you mean?’

‘Apparently her grandmother could speak to the dead. Sort of.’

‘What does “sort of” mean?’

‘She touched corpses and knew how they’d died.’

‘Like in CSI?’

Gwen nodded.

‘Gruesome power,’ Katie said, but she didn’t look especially shocked. More intrigued. Gwen kept forgetting how strong she was, how motivated. She had to stop thinking of her as a frightened fourteen-year-old. ‘So. What do I do about Mr Cole? Is there any way I can try to talk to him? Instigate contact, kind of thing. I mean, he’s obviously trying to talk to me and if I want the nightmares to stop, maybe I should try harder to listen.’

That made perfect sense. Gwen felt uneasy about it, but she couldn’t think of any way out of it. Katie was asking for her help. And since she was probably the one who had cursed her with this, she had to get rid of it. Cure Katie. ‘There’s a spell we can try. Like a sort of summoning.’

‘Like a séance?’

‘I suppose. Iris has put down the bare details but with so little description, it’s clear she didn’t approve.’

‘Good thing she’s not here, then,’ Katie said. ‘Can we get on with it?’ She drained her smoothie, making sucking sounds with the straw.

‘I thought you’d say that.’ Gwen went back into the house and picked up the first candle to hand. It was a bergamot pillar candle she used in the kitchen to get rid of the smell after cooking curry. Back outside, she put it on the floor in front of the bench and sat cross-legged on the grass. Katie abandoned the bench and sat opposite.

Gwen lit the candle and reached for Katie’s hands. They were cold and she squeezed them gently.

Katie looked excited, as if they were having an adventure. ‘What should I be doing?’

‘I think we just listen,’ Gwen said. She stared at the candle flame and willed herself to relax.

‘Focused or meditative?’ Katie said, after a moment. That girl really had been reading her books.

‘Meditative. We need to open a space for Oliver Cole to enter.’

‘He’s not entering me, thank you very much,’ Katie said, but then she closed her eyes and went quiet.

Gwen did the same and, after a while, she felt herself slip into the dream space between waking and sleeping. Instead of a man who might be Katie’s Mr Cole, she saw Katie lying in the hospital bed, aged fourteen and close to death. Gwen opened her eyes. Katie was in front of her. Twenty-one years old. Healthy. Alive.

Gwen was covered in goose bumps and she squeezed Katie’s hands. ‘Sorry. I can’t.’

Katie opened her eyes. ‘It’s okay,’ she said, evidently seeing something alarming in Gwen’s expression. ‘I’ll find his watch. I don’t need his help.’ She smiled. ‘I actually met someone else who is looking for it. He seems like the kind of person who gets what he wants. If I stick with him, I bet he’ll lead me to it.’

‘He?’ Gwen said. She’d seen the kind of smile Katie was wearing before and knew exactly what it meant. ‘Would this be an attractive kind of “he”, by any chance?’

‘Maybe,’ Katie said. ‘But don’t worry, I’m being very sensible.’

‘That’s not what worries me.’ Katie was always so cautious. She didn’t trust people easily and was careful of every possible danger. While part of Gwen had welcomed that, knowing that Katie was never going to drink too much or take drugs or get into a car with a drunk driver, another part of her worried that she was never going to live either. That her safe world was going to get smaller and smaller until it comprised her own flat, End House, and that mausoleum of a hotel on the hill. Maybe not even the last one if Mr Cole continued to harass her from beyond the grave.

Katie drank some smoothie and laid her head on the back of the bench. She stretched into an enormous yawn, one that could rival Cat, and wiped her face. ‘Sorry. Not sleeping well.’

‘Take a nap, here,’ Gwen said, taking Katie’s glass and putting it on the ground. She might not be able to solve the restless spirit or possible black magic, but she could feed Katie blitzed fruit and give her a safe place to rest. Sometimes that was all you could do and, sometimes, that was enough.