Kindred Spirits (2 page)

“It seems like a long time ago, doesn't it?” I pointed to his shirt. My aunt Charlotte lives on an avocado farm, and we used to go to the festival every year. She was always trying for a blue-ribbon avocado. The best she ever got was third, which I guess is okay when it comes to pitted fruit.

Dad glanced down. “It does. In a good way, right?”

I nodded. “Definitely. Stellamar feels like home now.”

“I like hearing you say that.” Dad shook the spices into his meatball mixture. “I wasn't so sure when we first moved.”

“Me either,” I admitted. “I'm not big on change.” I turned to the stove and shook the linguine out of the box and into the boiling water in the big red pot. Lady Azura's pot, I realized. We shared everything now. Even though Dad and I lived upstairs on the second and third floors, we always ate together down here with Lady Azura. I stirred the pasta with a spoon we'd brought from California. Our worlds had combined. Pretty weird, since I'd only found out at Christmas time that Lady Azura is actually my great-grandmother. I never knew she existed before then.

Dad heated a pan for his meatballs, and I shifted to the side, as if we'd practiced our moves. We'd been cooking dinner together since I was old enough to tear the lettuce for a salad. Me and Dad. Sara and Mike Collins. It had always been the two of us. Now it seemed odd that Lady Azura wasn't here. Two had become three.

“Where is she?” I asked. I heard a faint creaking from across the house.

“Resting in her room. I said we'd call her when the feast was ready. Her last client left half an hour ago.” He dropped the meatballs into the sizzling pan. “They're keeping her busy!”

“Too busy. She's always tired.”

“Sara, she's very old. Old people get tired.”

“She's not an
old
person,” I protested. “At least, she never used to act like one. She stayed up all night. She never used to rest.”

“She's making a lot of money,” Dad pointed out.

“You always say that money isn't everything,” I countered. “I liked it better when she had barely any clients. We haven't had our lessons in weeks.”

“Is something wrong? Do you need to talk to her about . . . uh . . . about stuff?” Dad's forehead wrinkled with concern.

It had taken him years to grasp that I could see the dead. When he finally did, he'd moved us across the country. He knew Lady Azura could do it too. It's a family thing on my mom's side. Lady Azura had been giving me lessons, teaching me how to control the ghosts and how to develop new powers.

“If you want, I could try to help,” he offered. He
worked hard to hide it, but I knew paranormal stuff made him uncomfortable. Or nervous. Or both.

“Everything's fine,” I assured him. “Nothing too spooky going on.” I smiled at him, and he smiled back.

Floorboards groaned overhead. Footsteps paced. I ignored them. Just the usual spirits moving about our house. Mr. Broadhurst with the thick mustache on the second floor was the pacer. Back and forth all the time. The sad woman who sat in the rocking chair in the pink bedroom was always rocking. She still cried about the loss of her son, Angus, who'd died when he was a baby. I talked to her sometimes. It had taken a while, but I think she'd learned to trust me. I liked her. There were six spirits in total who hung about the house. They had been here when I arrived, and I suspected they would be here forever.

“It's summertime. Lots of the clients are tourists. They'll be gone when the weather cools, and life will go back to normal for you and Lady Azura,” Dad said. “Until then, you have me.”

“We could look for shells tomorrow,” I suggested. “I need more for the wind chimes I'm making.”

“I'm here for other things too, Sara.” He stopped
flipping the meatballs and stared meaningfully at me. “Not just the fun stuff like going to the beach. Though we can definitely do that tomorrow. . . .”

A drawer slammed somewhere. Then another. Drawers only I could hear.

He was trying. He wanted to understand, to help. I knew he probably couldn't, but the fact that he
wanted
to so badly meant the world to me.

“Thanks, but do you know how to block hostile spirits who won't stop asking for help?” I asked.

Dad's blue eyes widened. “Is that happening now?'

I smiled. “No. Just an example.”

He exhaled loudly. “Point taken. I'm here if you need me, though. Okay, kiddo?”

“Got it, Daddy-o,” I replied, using my childhood nickname for him. “Pasta's ready.”

Dad dumped the linguine into the colander in the sink as I listened to a door slam. Another drawer closed. Then the squeaking of door hinges. All the noises came from down the hall, but no spirits that I knew of lived on the first floor.

Dad poured sauce over the steaming pasta. He didn't react to the sounds.

Bam! Crash!

My skin prickled. Something odd was going on.

“I'm going to get Lady Azura for dinner,” I offered.

The narrow hallway from the kitchen at the back of the house led toward Lady Azura's rooms and the sitting room at the front. I took a few steps, then stopped.

Boom!
Something heavy hit the floor.

I gulped. This was definitely not the usual activity in the house. I needed to tell Lady Azura.

My flip-flops slapped against the wooden floor as I hurried toward the thick purple velvet curtain that marked the entrance to her fortune-telling room. Through that room was her bedroom.

A crinkling, then the rapid flip of paper made me stop outside the opened French doors leading into the sitting room. Was someone in here?

I peered around the door, and my breath caught in my throat.

A man!

A man sat on the sofa, flipping through a large coffee-table book. Other books were strewn on the floor. A vase lay shattered. Drawers were open, their contents hanging out.

Who is he? Who is he?
I stood frozen in the doorway. There was a stranger in our house!

I knew I should run away. Stranger danger and all that, yet all I could do was stand and stare.

“Get out,” I ordered, my voice no louder than a whisper. “Get out!”

The man ignored me. Instead he leaned back on the pale teal sofa cushion and propped his scuffed brown leather shoes, one by one, on the polished wood table.

Lady Azura would go crazy if she saw his feet on her furniture. Absolutely crazy. A scream pushed up through my body, stopping at the base of my throat.

“This is not your house!” I cried in a voice much quieter than I intended. I had wanted to scream. “Get out!”

The man turned toward me. He was old, probably in his seventies. His white shirt had a yellow stain by the collar, and he was mostly bald. His eyes held a milky, faraway gaze. “I am a guest. An invited guest.”

A guest?
What was he talking about?

I turned and finally ran. Racing through the darkened fortune-telling room, I pushed open the second curtain leading into Lady Azura's bedroom.

All the shades were drawn. I could make out Lady Azura sleeping on her large bed. A thin blanket covered her small body, and a black silk mask shielded her eyes. The citrusy scent of her face cream filled the air. I took a deep breath, calming myself, wondering how to wake her. Old people startle easily.

Then I heard rustling against the back wall.

The clacking of hangers.

The crinkling of tissue paper.

In the dimness, I saw the faint silhouette of a stocky woman standing in front of Lady Azura's opened closet. She bent over and tried on a pair of high heels. Lady Azura's high heels!

I gaped in surprise. The woman tossed the shoes aside and pawed through the hanging dresses.

I finally found my voice. “Lady Azura, get up.”

Lady Azura gave a slight groan but kept sleeping.

The woman pulled down a hatbox.

“Stay out of there,” I called. I shook Lady Azura's knobby shoulder. Her body felt so frail. “There's a woman going through your closet! She's touching your clothes!”

She woke immediately. Pushing the eye mask up
onto her head, she blinked several times, bringing me into focus.

“Look!” I pointed to her wrecked closet.

Lady Azura turned and registered the woman hunched over several shoe boxes. She brought her hands up to rub her temples but didn't speak.

“Your clothes!” I tried again. Lady Azura loved her clothes. She was one of the most fashionable women I'd seen outside a magazine. “And there's a strange man in the sitting room. He's touching everything, and he has his shoes on the furniture!”

“I see,” she said calmly. She didn't jump out of bed. She didn't scream. She just sat there, watching.

“
Wait.
You're
good
with this?” I sounded hysterical. I thought that was the appropriate response when you discovered strangers going through your stuff. My head started to pound.

“No, I am not good with this.” She swung her legs around and stood. She stepped toward her closet. “Eleanor? Eleanor, can you hear me?”

The woman turned, caught with two leather handbags in her arms. She looked familiar.

“Eleanor,” Lady Azura continued calmly in her
low, raspy voice. “We've talked about respecting possessions.”

“You
know
her?”

Lady Azura nodded. “This is Eleanor. The man in the sitting room is her husband, Dwight. They will be staying with us for a while.”

“Staying with us? Who
are
they?”

“Sara, I expect you to have better manners and say hello first.”

My gaze flicked between Lady Azura and the old woman still holding the handbags. She had a softness about her—round cheeks, plump body, a marshmallow cloud of white hair. She grew almost fuzzy in her softness as I stared. Suddenly I remembered her. She'd been waiting out front earlier. She and her husband. The man with the limp. They had entered the house behind the long-haired woman.

They were ghosts.

As I took a closer look, I realized that I couldn't see all of Eleanor's body. Sections shimmered, then faded in and out. Her legs were almost translucent.

As long as I have been seeing ghosts, they still sometimes catch me by surprise. Like now.

I looked to Lady Azura. She nodded in Eleanor's direction.

“Hello,” I managed, even though this didn't seem the time for manners. “Why are they here?” I asked Lady Azura.

“Mrs. Merberg, my last client today, was having a rough time. She has become a magnet for the spirits of her extended family. They have all descended upon her. She can't see them, but she can feel them. The poor woman hasn't slept in days.”

“What does she want you to do?” I asked. Eleanor gave me a hopeful smile. I gave her a feeble smile in return, so as not to be rude, but I definitely wasn't in the mood to act like the welcome wagon.

“She wants them gone,” Lady Azura explained. “The trick is to figure out what is needed to send each one on his way. Eleanor and Dwight were Mrs. Merberg's aunt and uncle. They've been the most exhausting to her, so I offered to have them stay here until I can sort through all the issues.”

“But they're
touching
everything.” Eleanor was now running her hands over a pile of sweaters.

“Yes, they seem to be very nosy. Mrs. Merberg had
the same problem with them poking into everything in her house. She was not able to deal with them, but I can.” Lady Azura moved alongside Eleanor. “Eleanor, you must stop. Otherwise, I cannot allow you to stay. Understand?”

Eleanor began to shake. Being scolded by Lady Azura was like being sent to the principal's office. I could feel her regret flowing out of her unstable body and into mine. “I am sorry.” Her voice was muffled, as if she were speaking underwater.

I gazed at shoes spilling out of shoe boxes, silk scarves piled on the white carpet, and gauzy tops slipping off the crooked hangers. “I don't get it. You won't let me even go in your closet. You won't let
anyone
touch your personal things. How can you let them?”

“Eleanor and Dwight have been on a search since their deaths last year.”

Another crash echoed from the sitting room. Dwight again.

“What are they looking for?”

“I have no idea,” Lady Azura admitted, “and neither do they. I suspect that once they find it, they will be able to rest in peace. It is a mystery that must be
unraveled.” She gazed in dismay at the mess. “The sooner the better.”

“Have you ever done this?” I asked. “Invite ghosts into your home?”

“Never under circumstances like this, but Mrs. Merberg drove up from South Carolina, because she read about me and feels only I can help her. I could not say no. I am needed.”

Lady Azura couldn't hide the pride in her voice.

“I think turning our house into a hotel for ghosts is a bad idea,” I said. “A very bad idea.”

“Sara, you worry too much,” Lady Azura chided me. “They will be good guests. Won't you, Eleanor?” Eleanor shimmered in and out focus. A sweet smile was plastered on her face, but her eyes roamed about the room.

Planning where to go next.

Lady Azura has it wrong,
I thought. These ghosts were going to be trouble.

“Whoa, Sara! What happened?” Lily cried as she and Buddy burst through the back door the next afternoon.

I pushed my tangled hair out of my face and surveyed the kitchen. It was worse than I'd realized.

“Come on, spill it. Wait, you already did!” Lily slapped her leg and laughed. “Get it? Spill it? Oh, Sara, you just smeared chocolate in your hair!”

“Huh?” I looked down at the melted chocolate on my hand, then felt my sticky hair. “Yikes!”

“So I repeat, what
happened
?”