I had never whitewashed the way Jimbo behaved toward me when we first met, but I’d let it go, learning to value the diamond-in-the-rough biker who’d been thrust into my life. And now that he and my best friend were in love and struggling to make their way in a world that didn’t want to accept their union, I wasn’t going to nitpick over actions that no longer held any meaning for me. Joe had made a valiant effort to become friends with Jimbo and it had worked. They found more in common than they expected to find.
Less than ten minutes after I’d called, Jimbo was standing on my doorstep, all six-foot-three, two-hundred-twenty pounds of him. He winked. “I’m all set, O’Brien. Let’s get this show on the road.”
The lights were nowhere to be seen as we passed by the hedgerow but the moment we approached the basement stairs, they flickered into view again. Joe warily glanced around. “What the hell is going on? I can’t see anything, but I can feel something here.”
“There are faeries out here,” I said. “Dangerous ones. Just follow my instructions, even if you can’t see them, because I can.”
“Do what she says,” Joe told Jimbo. “Those things bite. I know.”
Jimbo’s granny was a hoodoo woman, and that’s how he viewed me. God only knows what he called Mur. The nimbus of his aura glittered with protective energy. Oh yeah, Jimbo had his guard up, even though he didn’t realize it.
“Shit.” He glanced nervously at his shoulder. I could see an orb dancing around him. “There’s something there, right?”
“You have good instincts.”
“Well, how do I make them leave me alone?” He batted at the air, like he might try to ward off a bee. “You said these things are out of some sort of fairy tale? Like Snow White?”
“Not out of a fairy tale. We think they’re a type of faerie,” I said. “Will o’ the Wisps, also known as corpse candles.”
“I don’t like that name,” Jimbo grumbled.
“Neither do I, but it’s fitting because they’re supposed to be connected with the dead. Dangerous critters if you don’t take care. Just ignore them and I’ll tell you if you need to do something or move out of the way.” I pointed toward the basement. “The door’s down there.” I held up the light and pointed the beam toward the bottom of the stairs. I could tell Jimbo was spooked; his energy flared as I took the front, leading the way down into the darkened maw. Jimbo followed and Joe flanked the end.
I sucked in my breath. Put me in front of a thug or a mugger and I’d run away faster than you could say “scram.” Drop an eight-legged beastie on me, and my screams would bust your eardrums. But spirits and their ilk? While I preferred to avoid tangling with them, at least I usually had some idea of how to cope with such situations.
We slogged through the mulch to the sounds of our breathing, the foliage shifting beneath our feet as the faint buzz of the Will o’ the Wisps danced through the basement. As we came to the door, I stepped aside to give Jimbo room to work, holding the flashlight on the lock.
He glanced at me, one eyebrow raised. “Old lock,” was all he said as he pulled out a small tool kit and flipped open the lid. Asking Joe to hold the pouch, he selected a thin tool that looked something like a dentist’s pick and knelt down to gain better access. I kept an eye on the lights, which were hovering in a semi-circle around us, having ceased their continual movement. Did they mind us intruding? Were they here to warn us off, or encourage us onward?
Shivering, I pulled my jacket tighter around my shoulders.
“O’Brien, hold it steady, would you?”
I straightened the light so that it was shining on the door again. Jimbo played with the lock a few more moments, then jiggled the door handle and, with a low creak, it slowly swung inward. A gentle breeze rushed past, as if the room inside had awakened, taking its first breath in almost fifty years. I glanced at the men; both silently awaited my cue. This was my territory and neither one seemed eager to interfere.
Taking a deep breath, I stepped into the darkness. As I entered the room, a soft whisper echoed past, and thin fingers of a breeze raced through my hair, lifting it gently before rushing by. The wind, I told myself. Only the wind. I took another step, swinging my light from side to side as I tried to illuminate as much of the room as possible.
To my right, I could make out a bed—a small cot against the wall, with a nightstand beside it. To the left, there appeared to be a writing desk and a chest of drawers. I took another step forward, my breath coming in shallow gulps. The energy here was thick, dank, and dark, in hiding from the world for half a century’s cold slumber. Cold as frost on the window, cold as bones in the earth.
Jimbo stepped back, letting Joe slip in ahead of him. With the addition of Joe’s light, we were better able to see what we were dealing with. This had once been a bedroom, that much was obvious, though it looked sparse and utilitarian for such an influential and well-placed family. The bed frame was rusted, iron-wrought, and simple. The clothes and mattress had decayed enough to be disgusting, but not enough to hide a simple floral pattern. I exhaled as I reached out and touched the cloth.
When my fingers grazed the material, it was as if I was touching a shroud. The feeling of death and decay and of long nights waiting in the cold. I shuddered and Joe rested his hand on my shoulder, steadying me. I blinked, turned, and found myself staring into Joe’s eyes.
“Em? Em? Are you all right?”
I nodded, “I picked up something from the cloth—psychometry. Nothing specific, just a feeling of loss and death.”
Jimbo wrangled a flashlight out of his jacket and entered the room, starting the hunt for Samantha. “O’Brien, sometimes you scare the piss out of me. Let’s find your cat and get out of here. I think it’s time to blow the joint.”
Despite my nervousness, I laughed. “Babe, you are a breath of fresh air. But save the dynamite. I had quite enough of your lovely explosions, and I’m not helping you blow up any more of my china. Don’t worry, we’ll make it home in one piece, Will o’ the Wisps or not.”
We began searching for Sammy, calling for her. I thought I heard a cry under the bed but when Jimbo got down on his knees to look, there was no one there. I was poking around near the nightstand when I noticed a framed picture on the wooden table. A lovely young woman stared at me, frozen on film in a single moment of time. She was willowy, with long red curls, and she held a tortoiseshell who looked a lot like our Sammy. A dreamy, lost look filled the woman’s eyes, and as I stared at the photo, I recognized her. I’d seen her the night before—outside Randa’s room.
Goose bumps rose along my skin. Whoever she was, she’d been visiting in my house. I tucked the picture in my pocket.
“Look at this!” Joe held up a faded journal. The pages were damp, but most of the writing was still readable. He held the flashlight steady while I examined the diary. The front flap identified the owner as “Brigit.” As I gingerly accepted it, the same flow of energy tingled through my fingers that I’d felt from the picture and the cloth.
Brigit.
My red-haired ghost had been a woman named Brigit who had been staying with the Brunswick family. Whether she was a relative or a friend, I couldn’t tell. I slid the journal in my pocket next to the photograph.
Jimbo hauled a suitcase out from the closet, along with a few dilapidated dresses. Functional but not pretty. “Tag on the luggage says that this belonged to Brigit O’Reilly. Looks like she came from a place called Glengarriff, Ireland.”
I decided to wait before telling them that Brigit was my ghost from last night. After all, she hadn’t been antagonistic, and I wanted to get a better feel for what we’d discovered before I threw another iron in the fire.
“I don’t see Samantha anywhere,” I said as we made a last sweep around the room. “Do you?”
Both Jimbo and Joe shook their heads. As we took one last look around the perimeter of the room, Joe flashed his light over the back wall. I gasped. It was covered with murals; the paintings had faded but were still in relatively good condition. Though they were difficult to make out in the dim light, I could see a castle, white and rising into the sky, and a parade of knights on horseback headed toward the fortress. We closed in, concentrating our flashlight beams to better take in the panorama of murals.
“Camelot,” Joe whispered.
“Camel what?” Jimbo said.
“Not camel. Camelot, King Arthur’s court. This has to be Camelot,” Joe said. “Look, a castle made of gleaming white, and knights in shining armor?”
A splash of color caught my eye and I stepped closer to examine the vista sweeping across the wall. A woman dressed in green with long copper hair watched the procession of knights out of a window. She stood in a tower set off from the castle and by her side rested a loom, loaded with a half-finished tapestry. A tear trickled down one cheek.
I took yet a closer look at the woman in the painting.
Brigit.
The woman was Brigit. One of the knights, the only one looking up toward her tower, had to be Lancelot. Fragments of a poem, long ago learned and beloved, began to dance through my head. “And sometimes through the mirror blue, the knights come riding two and two. She hath no loyal Knight and true, the Lady of Shalott.”
Joe stood behind me, his hands on my shoulders and whispered, “ ‘There she weaves by night and day, a magic web with colours gay. She has heard a whisper say, a curse is on her if she stay to look down to Camelot.’ ”
I withdrew the photograph from my pocket. There was no mistaking it—the painting on the wall matched Brigit, the red-haired dreamer who had left behind a suitcase, a few dresses, and a journal of handwritten poetry. “Could she be one of the Brunswicks’ cousins?”
Joe shook his head. “I have no idea—” He stopped and glanced over his shoulder, paling as he did so. “Em, turn around. Slowly. We have company.”
I slowly edged my way around. The doorway to the open basement was swarming with the corpse candles. “Oh shit. We need to get out of here. Now. Sammy isn’t here. Let’s go. Shut the door on the way out.”
“What is it?” Jimbo said.
“How do we get through them?” Jimbo asked. “To me, it’s just a bunch of pretty lights, but I know you’re seeing something else.”
I bit my lip, trying to decide if it was safe to just walk through the swarm. “We’re going to have to just brave it. Don’t listen to anything you might hear and whatever you do, don’t stop once we’re on the move. I’ll try to distract them so you two can get out without being bombarded.”
I took a hesitant step forward, then a stronger one and headed for the door. The lights were buzzing louder; the damned things were agitated. With a deep breath, I plunged into their midst. A swirl of desire hit me, beckoning me to drop everything and give chase under the darkening moon. I forced myself to shake it off. I had to distract them away from Joe and Jimbo. As I pushed out the door, the majority of lights followed me. I kept my eyes focused on the sky, on a glimpse of a tree limb.
“We’re out! Get your butt over here, O’Brien!” Jimbo’s call echoed in my ears and the lights went zipping every which way. I shook my head and fastened my gaze on the men, slogging as fast as I could in their direction, scattering mist and mulch and debris as I went. As I neared the steps where Joe anxiously waited for me, Jimbo had reached topside and turned around, poised to return if I should need him.
Just then, a scream pierced the air and I covered my ears.
Joe grabbed my arm. “Come on, Em—move!”
“Did you hear her? Did you hear the scream?” I stumbled up the stairs, Joe dragging me along by the arm.
“I didn’t hear anything and I’m not going back down to check.”
I glanced over my shoulder at the basement, which was now filled with a buzzing nest of Will o’ the Wisps, darting through the mist that had risen thick over the mulch. “Holy hell, we sure stirred them up. Come on, let’s get out of here before they come after us!”
As we raced back to my house, my mind was ablaze with questions. Where was Samantha? And what about the mysterious Brigit? Why was her spirit visiting me, and what about her cat, who had long ago been a mirror reflection of my own Samantha? And why had she fled, all those years ago, leaving behind her belongings in a room guarded by knights and tall towers and poetry?
Six
From Brigit’s Journal:
“He holds my hand, a gentle touch,
Our love we cannot show,
But still it lingers in our hearts,
Though part we must, I know.”
THE MINUTE WE trooped into the house, the kids surrounded us, clamoring for information about Samantha. I hated having to tell them that we hadn’t found her yet, but there was nothing else I could do. Obviously shaken, Randa disappeared into the living room. Kip let out a big sigh. As he passed the pantry, Nigel came out and rubbed against his leg, meowing loudly. Kip swung around, eyes blazing.
“Nigel wants his mom! He’s upset, and so are Noël and Nebula. An’ so am I! What are we gonna do?” He sounded so desolate I wanted to cry, but what was I supposed to tell him? There was nothing I could say to remedy the situation.
Nebula was prowling the kitchen along with her brother. I scooped her up and scratched her behind the ears. “Today’s Sunday. Tomorrow I’ll go to the animal shelter and see if Sammy’s there. If she isn’t, we can make fliers after you get home from school and hand them out all around the neighborhood. We can offer a reward.”
His lip trembled. “Do you think she was hit by a car?”
I sighed and plopped Nebula into Joe’s arms. “Come on. I’ll see what I can find out.” Though I was hesitant to do it—God knows what I might find out—I headed into the living room, followed by Kip, Joe, and Jimbo. Randa was curled up in the rocking chair with a notebook. She glanced up from the page as I dug through my rolltop desk until I found an ornate gold key on a black ribbon.