Maybe This Time

Eleven

It was so swift that Andie didn’t have time to close her eyes first. North was just sitting there, very close, and then he was kissing her, and it hit her the way it always had, the heat slamming into her as her mind shorted out, and when he whispered, “Give me another shot, Andie,” she almost said, God, yes, and stopped herself just in time.

“Nothing’s changed,” she said, but she felt the heat of his body through that crisp, white shirt, his breath on her cheek, his hand on her waist-

“Everything’s changed,” he said and kissed her again.

She kissed him back because it felt so good, and more than that, it felt right, but her libido had gotten her into this mess before, so she put a lid on it when he moved his hand to her breast.

“Hold it,” she said against his mouth.

“My bedroom’s next door,” he whispered against hers.

“You should go there.” She pulled away from him, from all that warmth and satisfaction. “I’m drunk, and I didn’t get any sleep last night, and I’m stressed out of my mind because this place has ghosts, which you don’t believe in, and I can’t do this.”

He was still for a moment, and then he kissed her cheek and said, “You’re right, this is lousy timing. I apologize.”

“You don’t need to,” Andie said. “I like the kissing. I like having you close like this. I just need sleep.”

“Fair enough.” North stood up and then held out his hand for her. “Big day tomorrow. I’ve got a private investigator coming down to go through the house to see what’s going on here. We’ll fix whatever it is and then take the kids back to Columbus with us.”

Andie took his hand and let him pull her to her feet, and the alcohol and exhaustion hit her at the same time. “Do you even have a place for the kids to stay in Columbus?”

“We’ve got two of the bedrooms on the second floor ready for them. Mother’s moving in next door with Southie-”

“Oh, poor Southie,” Andie said, and then realized for the first time why Merrill had left Southie his house next door.

“It’s his turn,” North said, without sympathy.

“So it’s going to be you and the kids in the main house? You’re going to feed Alice breakfast?”

“The bedroom Mother’s vacating is also on the second floor. It’s yours if you want it.”

“Me take over Lydia’s bedroom? Living with ghosts would make me less nervous.”

“She likes you.”

“She called me an idiot.”

“That was ten years ago.”

“That was ten minutes ago.”

“Oh. Sorry.”

North capped the bottle of Scotch and put it in his bag, and Andie thought about that bedroom on the second floor. North was thinking she wouldn’t be in that bedroom for long. And he was right.

“I can’t move in,” she told him. “You know what would happen and we’d end up in the same damn mess. I don’t care how much you’ve changed, you’re never going to stop working long enough to have a real relationship-”

“Oh, come on,” North said. “That was ten years ago.”

“-and I need somebody who believes in me-”

“I believe in you.”

“-not somebody who thinks I’m crazy because I want my husband with me or because I see ghosts.”

“I believed in you enough to hire you for these kids.”

“You did that to slow down my marriage to Will,” Andie said. Which was probably a good thing. “It was like the alimony checks. I’d get one every month and think, ‘There you are again,’ and remember the good times, and then I’d remember the bad times, and then I’d have a drink. Moving in with you would be the alimony checks in 3-D.”

“That makes no sense,” North said.

“Well, I’m a little drunk. The smart thing to do is to stay friends. That way we don’t bring our horrible screwed-up relationship into these kids’ lives, we keep things calm and safe for them. Which means our only relationship is a business one.”

“That,” North said, “is the dumbest thing I’ve ever heard.”

“See?” Andie said. “No respect.”

“I give up.” He leaned over and picked up his overnight bag and kissed her on the cheek as he straightened. “You have a good night. We’ll fight this out in the morning.”

“Nothing to fight about,” Andie said, turning toward the other twin bed.

“I’m in here if you need me,” North said, opening the door to May’s bedroom.

“Yeah, yeah, yeah.” Andie crawled into the twin bed, fully clothed. She just needed to lie down for a minute and then she’d get ready for bed, she was so tired…

That man can really kiss, she thought and fell asleep remembering the other things he could do.

Then she fell deeper into sleep, and dreamed that there were people in the room, not ghosts, people, somebody drifting dressed in orange flowers, and she shivered from the cold. Cold, that was a bad sign. She shivered. Had the fire gone out? No, this was a dream, but even in her exhaustion, she couldn’t sleep, something was too wrong. She tossed and turned, and the room grew cold, and she shivered, and thought, This is really wrong.

And then she realized that the cold was inside her, that May was seeping through her veins, invading her muscles. She went numb, not just from the cold, although the cold was everywhere in her, needles of it easing through her, but also because May was sapping her nerves, dulling her mind, and then a wave of nausea hit her.

Nightmare, she thought. May, stop it.

May grew stronger inside her. Just let go, just let go, it’ll be fine-

No! Andie thought, and woke up, and it was all real, May freezing her while she screamed, No, no, NO, but even then May had her, and she was rising from her bed and moving across the nursery, her world in flickering black and white as she staggered past a sleeping Alice like some monster of Frankenstein’s, ice in her veins as May dragged her toward North.

NO! Andie thought and jerked away, felt warmth for a moment as May followed behind a second too late, felt her brain turn inside out as May took her back, the world flicker between color and black and white, and then May opened the door to her bedroom.

North had taken off his shirt and was holding it, staring at the sign over the bed. “This sign is not like you.”

“What are you doing, honey?” May said, trying to keep her voice light as Andie battled to regain control.

“This plaque over the bed,” North said, looking back at the wall. “ ‘Always Kiss Me Goodnight.’ It’s kind of needy, isn’t it?”

“I think it’s romantic,” May said, a little breathless from gritting Andie’s teeth as she fought back.

“You think it’s romantic?” He frowned at her, half naked, gorgeous, and Andie felt May grow warmer, distracted by her need for him, so she gathered her strength and made her move, blanketing May as she reclaimed her body, staggering as she took it back.

North said, “What’s wrong?” and then he was there beside her, putting his arms around her as she gasped for breath, gagging from the displacement, jerking in North’s arms as she fought May for control.

Then her stomach turned over from the vertigo, the whole world distorted in front of her, and May said, Oh, for heaven’s sake, and let go of her, and she threw up on North’s feet.

Andie threw up twice more in the bathroom, and then she sat on the cold tiled floor and shivered, crying hysterically while North held her. She’d been invaded, frozen out of her own body; May had betrayed her, taken away her will, used her, and the thought of it made her gag again, that cold knifing through her veins, that feeling that she was just a body to be used, that the fact of her meant nothing. She shivered again, couldn’t stop shivering, and North finally turned the shower on and dragged her under the hot water so that the water drenched them both, his arms wrapped around her from behind, holding her up because her knees were still like rubber, letting the water course over her until she was warm again.

Then she turned in his arms and held on to him, on to the fact of him being with her again, and he kissed the top of her head and held her tight until she stopped crying.

Then he turned off the water and said, “Are you all right?” and she said, “No, but I’m getting there,” and lifted her face to smile at him, to show him that everything was fine.

He was looking down at her with so much concern, so clearly seeing her and nothing else, that she burst into tears again, and he pulled her out of the shower and wrapped a towel around her, trying to keep her warm. “I’m going to call a doctor,” he said, and she shook her head.

“I’m okay, I’m okay,” she said, trying to stop the tears. “I just need to get these wet clothes off-”

“Are your clothes in the nursery or the bedroom?” he said, ignoring the fact that his suit pants were soaked.

“I’ve got a robe here,” Andie said. “You go change and… I’ll try to explain.”

She stripped off her wet things, put on her robe, and combed her wet hair, and looked at herself in the mirror, trying to see May in her eyes, wanting to know that it was her, just her, nobody else in there.

Then she went to find North.

He was waiting outside in the hall, dry now in a faded T-shirt and worn sweatpants, and she began to say, “I’m sorry,” but he put his arms around her before she got past “I’m-” and she leaned against him, grateful all over again for the fact of him between her and the rest of her insane life.

“Come here.” He pulled her into her bedroom-May’s bedroom-and sat her down on the edge of the bed, put his arm around her, and looked in her eyes. “What the hell happened?”

“I was possessed.” Even saying it made her feel sick again.

His face went blank. “Possessed.”

“Just listen to me,” she said, exhausted and violated and hopeless. “You don’t have to believe me, but just listen.” He nodded and she went on. “There are ghosts in this house. The nanny was right. The others who left were driven away by them even if they didn’t know the ghosts were here. There are three of them. Two of them came with the house, they’re very old, and they’re just living on… need. One of them wants the house and one of them wants Alice.”

“Have you seen these ghosts?” North asked, his voice carefully neutral.

“Yes. But they’re not the ones who possessed me. That was May, the kids’ aunt, their mother’s sister. I think you met her when you came down here after their dad died.”

“Really young,” North said. “Very friendly. Lots of dark curly hair. Looked a little bit like you.”

“More beautiful than I’ll ever be,” Andie said, feeling sick again. “But that’s her. The ghosts killed her.”

North nodded again, his face a mask. “And now she walks?”

“Dances, mostly,” Andie said. “She’s young and she’s bitter about dying and she wants her life back, she wants a do-over.”

“Understandable,” North said.

“And she has a crush on you. So she… hijacked me. I was tired and drunk and I fell asleep, and she just… moved in, took over, and went to you. That was May you were talking to, not me.”

“I thought it was the Scotch.”

“North, there are ghosts here and they’re real and they’re dangerous. I know you’re never going to believe me, but it’s true. I can’t prove it to you, I can’t show you anything you could take to court, but this house is haunted, and we’re all in danger, and I have to do something about it, which is why we’re having another séance tomorrow.”

He nodded, calm as ever. “How about we all just leave? Pack up everybody right now and get the hell out of Dodge.”

“Alice won’t go, and if Alice won’t go, Carter won’t go, and if Alice and Carter won’t go, I won’t go. I know you told Alice she’d have to leave if she was in danger, but we can’t force them, you saw what happened when Will tried. Even if we managed to get her stable after she went crazy, she’d never trust either one of us again. I’m staying until Alice says it’s all right to go.” North shook his head, and Andie said, “I think she’s got a better grip on what’s going on here than anybody else. She and Carter know things I don’t. Until they trust me enough to tell me, we’re not going anywhere.”

“Here’s my concern,” North said, his voice very kind. “You believe in ghosts.”

Andie closed her eyes, overwhelmed by the hopelessness of it all. He was never going to understand, he was never going to believe her. If she hadn’t seen the ghosts, she wouldn’t believe her. “I know. But they’re real, and they’re dangerous, and that’s my big problem now. I understand if you can’t help me, but that’s what I’ve got to fix.”

“I’ll help you. I’ll always help you. I’m just not sure how to do it.” He hesitated. “There’s a psychologist I work with a lot-”

“No,” Andie said. “I’m not crazy and there’s no room for anybody else in this house.”

“Well, Lydia is evicting Kelly and her cameraman as we speak.”

“She can’t. It’s storming like crazy outside. They’ll never get that satellite truck up that drive and out onto the road without wrecking it, and they can’t leave it, it’s worth a fortune. They’re here until the storm stops and the road dries out.”

“Okay.” North rubbed his forehead with his free hand, while his arm tightened around her. “Have the kids been threatened by these ghosts?”

“No.”

“So whoever’s doing this is focusing on you?”

“Nobody’s ‘doing this,’ ” Andie said tiredly. “There are ghosts.” She pushed herself up off the bed, not willing to fight a useless battle. “I know you don’t believe. You know I believe. We’ll just have to leave it there.”

He looked like he was going to say something, and when he didn’t, she said, “I’m really sorry about throwing up on you. That was rude.”

“It really was,” he said, straight-faced.

“Well, it won’t happen again. Thank you for the shower and… for being so kind.”

“Are you trying to be funny?” North said. “Because that isn’t.”

“I think if your ex-wife comes to your room in the middle of the night, throws up on your feet, and tells you she’s been possessed, the absolute minimum she has to say when she leaves is, ‘Thank you for being so kind.’ ”

“I think it’s what two people who care about each other should just expect.”

“So if you throw up on my feet, you’re not going to apologize?”

“Nope,” North said, smiling at her, his shoulders broad in that ratty old T-shirt, and she wanted to say, “Let me sleep with you tonight, make this go away,” but instead she said, “Well, I owe you one now anyway, so that would be fair.”

“Stop keeping score, Andie.” He stood up, and she tried not to look at him. “We’re not married anymore but that doesn’t mean we’re not us.”

Andie swallowed. “That’s… good. I mean, I agree.” She began to back toward the door. “I have to go now. I’m really tired and… Thank you.” Her back hit the door and she escaped into the nursery, taking one last look at him standing tall in the lamplight, expressionless as he watched her go.

She closed the door and looked around to see if May was nearby, waiting to pounce.

The thing was at the foot of Alice’s bed, and Andie sucked in her breath and then realized that the room was dark, too dark.

The fire was off. Somebody had turned the fire off.

She ran over and fell on her knees, feeling biting ice at her back as she turned the tap, and then the fire whooshed to life, and her back was warm again, and when she turned, there was nothing at the foot of Alice’s bed, nothing in the room.

But somebody had turned the fire off.

She got up and pushed furniture against the doors to the little hall and the gallery. She hesitated before the door to May’s bedroom because North was in there and she trusted him, but she didn’t trust anybody else, so she shoved the worktable up against that door.

Then, barricaded in the nursery now warm from the fire, she tried to think of what to do but her mind was so addled from exhaustion…

She checked on Alice, who’d slept through it all, her cheek on Rose Bunny’s furry head, and then she sat down on the other bed, leaned back against the wall, and thought, I have to think, I have to think, I have to…

… and slept.

When Andie woke, Alice was sitting on the edge of her bed, watching her.

“Good morning, baby,” Andie said, yawning as she sat up.

“I can’t get out,” Alice said, clutching Rose Bunny to her, and Andie remembered that she’d blocked the doors to make sure nobody turned off the fire.

She got up to shove the bureau away from the door to the little hall so Alice could get to the bathroom, yawning again as she shoved. “Sorry,” she said around her yawn, and then she looked at the time. It was past ten. “Oh, no,” she said, waking up completely. “We overslept.”

“I didn’t,” Alice pointed out, and then put Rose Bunny on the bed and went to get ready for the day.

Andie turned off the fire and shoved the table away from the door to May’s bedroom and went in to get her clothes. North was long gone, the bed made, and she put on clean underwear and grabbed a pair of jeans and a T-shirt and then went back to the nursery to check on Alice. She was zipping up her jeans when Alice came in from the hall, dressed in leggings and her flounced skirt, and handed her the Bad Witch T-shirt she slept in.

“You can wear this, I don’t want it anymore,” she announced, and then went back into the hall.

Andie followed her, taking a quick look around before she went into the hall and then into Alice’s room. If May decided to try another hijacking, she was going to tangle with somebody who was ready for her this time. “Alice, honey, this is your shirt-”

“No it’s not,” Alice said, her head in her drawer, searching for one among many black T-shirts. “It was Aunt May’s. I took it after she died.” She straightened, holding up a plain black T-shirt. “I don’t want it anymore. You can wear it today.”

Andie was pretty sure that meant something that she was missing, but she was late so she said, “Thank you,” and pulled it over her head. The last thing she wanted was anything of May’s, but she wasn’t going to look a gift Alice in the mouth.

May had been thinner than Andie because the shirt was tight, the letters that spelled “Bad Witch” stretched out of shape across her bust, but Alice smiled and nodded, and Andie thought, The hell with it. Most of these people think I’m crazy, might as well add slutty to the mix. She helped Alice get her hair in her topknot, and Alice said, “Can we still do the Three O’Clock Bake this afternoon?” and she said, “Absolutely,” and thought, As long as we’re done before the séance, and took Alice downstairs for a late breakfast, keeping an eye out for May the entire time.

North had been up since seven, determined to get the mess he’d found at Archer House cleaned up and Andie and the kids back to Columbus by Sunday at the latest. Gabe McKenna must have gotten up at the crack of dawn, because he pounded on the doorknocker at eight. “I’m here,” he said when North opened the door, his sharp dark eyes taking in the place without comment. “What are we looking for?”

“Ghosts,” North said.

“All right then,” Gabe said and walked in.

They started on the first floor since nobody was up yet. Gabe was thorough, tapping walls, looking at the stone floors, turning furniture and paintings over, and North put anything they found that didn’t clearly have a purpose for where it was stored into a box. The front two rooms were empty, their walls solid stone behind the drywall, so they were done in minutes. The hallways were equally bare of furniture and decoration although the paintings that hung there took a few minutes to flip and examine. The kitchen showed the most signs of life-North saw bananas browning in a bowl on the counter and opened a cupboard and found chocolate chips and nuts, flour and sugar, and thought, Andie’s here-but the dark little pantry off the back of the kitchen was mostly empty aside from old spices and drying herbs, half a dozen half-empty bottles of quality booze that North recognized as Southie’s choices, and a jug of tea, the tea leaves sitting in a sludge at the bottom. The dining room and sitting room were pretty much storage for unused furniture. It wasn’t just that there wasn’t anything out of place in those rooms, it was that there wasn’t anything in place: no dishes in the sideboard in the dining room, no photos on the tables in the sitting room, nothing except the furniture and the paintings on the walls.

“This place is strange,” Gabe said when they headed for the library. “Nobody lives here.”

“They live here,” North said grimly, “but they shouldn’t.”

Then Gabe opened the door to the library and said, “Now we’re getting somewhere.”

North went in and really looked at the room for the first time. Last night, when it had been full of people and Alice screaming, he’d registered it as a library because it was lined with books, but now in the cold light of early morning, it was clear that this room was used. The window seat had books and papers tumbled in it, the big table in the middle of the room had workbooks and papers and textbooks spread out across it, and there were more books in front of the fireplace where somebody had obviously stretched out to read.

“I think this is where Andie teaches the kids,” North said, and then he heard Kelly O’Keefe say, “Well, hello,” from the bottom of the stone stairs. “We’ll look here later. Avoid that woman,” he said, and Gabe nodded, waved at Kelly, who said, “Aren’t you Gabe McKenna, the detective?”, and followed them to the basement door.

“Leave,” North said, “today,” and shut the basement door in her face.

By the time Andie and Alice got to the kitchen, Flo had made breakfast for everybody and cleaned up, so Andie got Alice her cereal and milk and took it to the library, where Carter was reading and ignoring Kelly’s efforts to talk to him.

“Get out,” Andie told Kelly when she found her there. “Out of the house, out of our lives.”

“Well, really,” Kelly said, but she left them alone.

Andie made sure the gas fireplace was on and went to find Isolde.

“We need another séance,” she told the medium when she found her standing in the middle of the Great Hall, frowning.

“Bad idea,” Isolde said. “Too many people here, too much tension.”

Andie looked around. Still no May. “Could we go into a room that has a fireplace?”

Isolde raised her eyebrows but followed her into the sitting room where Kelly was arguing with Bill and Southie in front of the fire.

“Not here,” Andie said, and took Isolde into the dining room where Dennis had papers spread out, making notes. He looked at them as if he wished they would leave and they ignored him, so he got up and went into the kitchen, either passive aggressive or hungry.

Andie turned the gas fire on, and then faced the medium. “May possessed me last night, took my body. We have to stop her, all of them, get rid of them.”

“Oh, fuck,” Isolde said. “She took you? Are you all right?”

“Not even a little bit,” Andie said. “If we ask them, will they go away?”

“No. They got a great setup here. Why should they go?”

“Can you read their minds or something? Find out how to get rid of them?”

“Two of them don’t have minds,” Isolde said. “The other one’s still new. She’s not dumb and she doesn’t want to go, and no, I can’t read her mind.”

“Isolde, work with me here.”

Isolde sat down at the dining room table. “Let me think.” She looked at the books and papers spread out on the table and said, “What is this?”

Andie picked up a book and looked at the marked page, which was about faked hauntings in English country houses. “It’s Dennis’s research.” She dropped the book back on the table. “Ideas, Isolde. You’re my expert here.”

Isolde ignored her to look at the papers, opening the other books to scan the pages Dennis had bookmarked. “He’s researching the house.”

“Well, that’s what he does, investigate hauntings.”

Isolde nodded. “He’s very methodical. This is good. He may find out something.”

“Yes,” Andie said patiently. “But he doesn’t believe in ghosts. So whatever he’s looking for, it’s not a way to get rid of them. He and North think it’s some kind of fraud, they’re looking for a live person who’s gaslighting me.”

“It happens,” Isolde said, frowning at the notes Dennis had made on a legal pad. “Not here, you’ve got ghosts, but people fake hauntings all the time.”

“We need to get the ghosts out,” Andie said. “Last night was bad, but what if they start possessing the kids?”

Isolde waved her hand. “I’m working on it. We’ll do the séance at four. That gives me some time to look through this stuff and talk to Dennis-”

“What are you doing?” Dennis said stiffly from the door to the kitchen.

“Reading your notes,” Isolde said without looking up from the legal pad. “Get in here, we need to talk.”

“I hardly think-”

“Well, it’s time you started,” Isolde snapped. “Sit down here and explain this to me. They brought the contents of the house over, too?”

“The furniture,” Dennis said, coming in to stand beside her. “The paintings. The accoutrements.”

“That could explain how the two old ghosts got here,” Isolde said to Andie. “If they’d left something behind they were tied to, and it got shoved in the back of a drawer or put behind a secret panel in a desk or something.”

“Secret panel,” Dennis said, barely concealing his scorn.

“Sit down and stop patronizing me, you jerk,” Isolde said. “Andie needs help.”

“I really do, Dennis,” Andie said. “Please.”

He sighed heavily and sat down beside Isolde. “What do you want to know?”

“Everything,” Isolde said, and Andie said, “Thank you,” and went to check on Alice and Carter in the library.

Where there was a fireplace.

On her way through the Great Hall, she ran into North and the detective he’d been friends with for years, resisting the urge to lean on North just because he was there. She really had to get over this needy phase she was going through. Once she and the kids were out of the house, she’d be independent again.

“How are you?” North said to her. “You-”

“I’m fine,” she said hastily. “Good as new. Gabe, it’s good to see you again. What are you doing here exactly?”

“Trying to find out who’s faking your haunting,” Gabe said, and Andie looked at North, thinking, It’s not a fake, damn it, but he was looking at her T-shirt.

“Nice shirt,” North said, and she looked down and saw the glowing, green “Bad Witch” stretched tight.

“Alice gave it to me,” she said. “And the haunting is not a fake.”

“You work on your theory, I’ll work on mine,” he told her. “I want you and these kids out of here, one way or another.”

Andie nodded. “But there really are ghosts, so don’t waste too much time.” She started to go on, but then she heard “No, no, no!” coming from the library and went to find out what latest injustice had struck Alice.

She spent the rest of the day feeding people, trying to get rid of Kelly and her cameraman-the storm hadn’t let up and the satellite truck wasn’t going anywhere-keeping Flo and Lydia from open warfare-their allegiance against Kelly could only do so much-and maintaining as much normality as she could for the kids, which involved telling Will to leave her alone several times while she worked with them in the library, and ducking North and Gabe while they searched every inch of the house looking for something that wasn’t there.

Because the house was haunted.

The only guests not giving her fits were Dennis and Isolde, who hunkered down in the dining room, forming an uneasy truce that grew less uneasy as the day passed and the level of the brandy in the decanter in front of them sank lower. Andie made sandwiches for lunch and told people to stay out of the dining room because people were working in there.

“On what?” Kelly said, smiling automatically even though by now she must have gotten the message that everyone loathed her.

“None of your damn business,” Andie said, and went back to the library to eat with the kids.

At three, she checked in with Dennis and Isolde again, who were now sitting with their heads together over his notes.

“There’s a remarkable consistency in the reports,” Dennis told her. “Somebody must have written the legends down and then made sure each generation told the same story. Usually there’s more randomness, more inconsistencies.”

“It’s the same ghosts,” Isolde said. “Of course the reports are the same.”

“There are no such things as ghosts,” Dennis said, and this time Isolde rolled her eyes, but they were clearly on speaking terms and getting somewhere, so Andie left them alone to set up the Great Hall.

“So I’m very excited about our next séance,” Kelly said, catching her as she came out of the dining room with a chair. “I’d like to interview you-”

“Go away,” Andie said. “Or I swear I will throw you out into the storm and you can sleep with your cameraman in the satellite truck.”

“It’s three o’clock,” Alice said from behind her.

“What happens at three o’clock?” Kelly said, beaming down at her.

“We bake,” Alice said, and turned her back on Kelly and went to the kitchen.

“Is it all right if I watch?” Kelly said.

“No,” Andie said, “go away, forever,” and went to make cookies with Alice.

By late afternoon, North and Gabe were staring defeated at the outside of the house. The rain had stopped, but the sun had given up for the day, and the house rose up over them in the gloom, crumbling and bleak. They’d left a box full of stuff they’d found in the pantry-pieces of odd-shaped metal; a length of goldish chain; a few battered, sepia-toned photographs; rusted screws and a bent screwdriver; a broken pocket watch; a woman’s hair clip; and several keys that fit nothing in the house and wouldn’t have helped if they had since nothing in the house was locked-but it was all junk, and North knew they were done. There wasn’t anything in the house, not just nothing suspicious, but nothing. Mrs. Crumb evidently lived in the kitchen and her bedroom and ignored the rest of the house. The kids had all of their belongings in their bedrooms. Nobody had ever spread out in all of that space, nobody had lived in the house for years.

“This place has a very bad vibe,” Gabe said, surveying it.

“Yes, but it’s not haunted,” North said, exasperated. “Somebody has Andie convinced that there are ghosts here, she’s doing another séance at four. I don’t know whether it’s Mrs. Crumb or the kids or somebody from the outside, but there’s fraud going on here.”

“Why?” Gabe said. “Who would want this place?”

“I don’t know. I just know it’s working.”

Gabe turned around to look at the grounds. “I thought somebody might be growing pot, but we’ve walked the whole property and there’s nothing but weeds. There’s no meth lab in the basement, the paintings aren’t anything special, there’s nothing in the walls.” He kicked a clump of purple asters and watched their petals scatter. “There’s something wrong here, anybody could feel that. But I’ll be damned if I can find it…”

His voice trailed off and he stared at the asters.

“What?” North said.

Gabe bent down and picked up a dried ugly weed someone had thrown down at the edge of the garden.

“What is that?” North said.

“I need to make a phone call,” Gabe said, and headed for the house with his plant.

“Here you are,” Lydia said when she found Andie and Alice in the kitchen. “I wanted to talk to you about coming to Columbus.”

Alice stiffened and Andie said, “Not until you say yes, Alice,” and dumped the chocolate chips into the dough, keeping an eye out for May. Damn kitchen had no fireplace.

“I was hoping for banana bread,” Lydia said, looking into the bowl. “I haven’t had decent banana bread since you left. I put bananas on the kitchen counter at home so you could bake when we all got back.”

“They have to be brown to make banana bread,” Alice said severely. “The yellow ones will not do.”

“That’s why I left them on the counter,” Lydia said. “So they’ll be brown when we get there.”

They’ll be rotted through by the time we get there, Andie thought, if we ever do, and kept mixing and watching for May.

Alice reached up and turned on the radio. “We dance while we bake,” she informed Lydia.

“How nice for you,” Lydia said, and watched Alice pick up the beat at the end of “I’m Too Sexy” and bop around the kitchen. “Perhaps you could find a classical station?” she said to Andie.

“It’s this or nothing,” Andie said. “The reception here is not good. We make do.” Where the hell is May?

“Hello,” Flo said, coming through the kitchen door as the music changed, beaming at them all. “Where is everybody?”

“Here!” Alice called to her. “We’re dancing. Come on!”

“Dancing!” Flo said, and joined Alice to bebop around the kitchen to “Achy Breaky Heart.”

They looked like a demented conga line. In Texas.

“The sooner we get these children out of here, the better,” Lydia said to Andie.

The sooner we get me out of here, the better, too, Andie thought, and mixed faster.

Crumb caught North in the servants’ hall as he and Gabe came in.

“There’s a woman on the phone for you,” she said, her voice full of scorn. “Says it’s important.”

North went to the entrance hall and picked up the phone. “Hello?”

“It’s me,” Kristin said. “Simon called from England. He said to call him as soon as you could.”

“Did he find the graves?”

“He didn’t say, but he found something.”

“I’ll call right now.”

“And I found out about May Younger.”

“She’s buried around here?”

“She’s not buried at all. She was cremated and her ashes scattered at a dance club in Grandville called… here it is, it’s called ‘The Grandville Grill.’ Her friends hijacked the ashes when nobody picked them up and scattered them on the dance floor in her memory.”

“Touching,” North said, thinking, At least I won’t have to talk Andie out of burning her corpse.

“Evidently she spent a lot of time there. I got the impression she had a drinking problem. The night she died, her friends had to drive her home because she was too drunk to drive. The last they saw of her, she was on the tower, waving at them.”

“Good work,” North said. “Thank you.”

“When will you be back?” Kristin sounded a little frazzled. “People are becoming… demanding.”

“I’m hoping by Monday. If I’m not there Monday morning, Southie will be.”

“Whatever you say,” Kristin said, with a lot of this is not a good idea in her voice. “Don’t forget to call Simon.”

North hung up, thinking, May Younger got drunk and fell off the tower. Tragic, but not supernatural. So far, so good.

He dialed England, and Simon answered on the first ring.

“It’s North Archer,” he said. “Did you find the graves?”

“This is a long story,” Simon said, but North could tell from the sound of his voice that he was enjoying it.

“Make it shorter,” North said.

“The people you were asking about were a governess and a valet who died in 1847. The governess, Mary Jessel, gave birth to a stillborn baby and drowned two days later. Peter Quint the valet died from a fall after he’d been drinking and then headed home down an icy hill.”

“Where are the bodies?” North asked.

“Someone dug them up and burned them in 1898. The vicar was walking through the graveyard and found the graves opened, full of bone and ash. Scandal. They closed the graves and put the headstones back.”

“Burned,” North said. “Anybody know why?”

“There’s a legend that if you burn a corpse, the spirit will not walk.”

“Had they been walking?”

“Not that anybody remembers, although that was ninety-four years ago.”

“Fine. This takes care of most of my problem anyway. Thank-”

“Not so fast. Forty years later, 1938, the next vicar walks through the graveyard and sees the graves covered in salt. He told the current vicar it looked like a snowfall.”

“Salt?”

“There’s a legend that ghosts can’t cross salt.”

“So the people in the town think the graveyard is haunted?”

“No, that’s what’s odd. There’s no legend here of haunting, nothing about these graves except that they’ve been disturbed three times.”

“Three?”

“Two years ago. 1990. The current vicar caught two men digging up the graves and turned them over to the police. They’d been hired by an American named Theodore Archer.”

“My second cousin,” North said, thinking, Two years ago? “What did they charge Theodore with?”

“Nothing. He died before they could contact him. In fact, he died whilst the men were digging up the graves.”

Coincidence, North thought, but he didn’t believe in coincidences. Somebody who was here two years ago is faking a haunting here now. And Theodore had investigated, and they’d killed him.

No, that was insane. Theodore had been alone in the car when he’d had a heart attack. A heart attack at forty-eight was not out of the range of the ordinary. People had seen him in the car before it went off the road and he’d been alone. He’d just died, nobody killed him.

“North?”

“Sorry, trying to think this through. Thank you. I owe you.”

“Nonsense,” Simon said. “You kept me out of an Ohio jail. My gratitude is limitless.”

North hung up and looked at the situation from all sides.

People had been trying to put those bodies to rest for decades. Possibly even before that. So faking the haunting wasn’t a new idea.

Maybe back in the beginning, in England, the haunting had been useful to keep the house private. Smuggling maybe. And somebody had believed the fake enough to dig the bodies up and burn them.

And then every ensuing generation that wanted privacy kept the tradition going, so the rumors followed the house to America. Given the kind of personality that would transport a haunted house stone by stone across an ocean, the original Archer had probably spread the legend just to make himself more interesting. “Brought myself a haunted house over from England, yes, I did.” And then somebody in America believed the rumors enough to hire somebody back in England to spread salt on the grave? That was less plausible.

And then Cousin Theodore hired grave robbers and died the same night.

The clock on the kitchen wall chimed and North realized it was almost four. The séance would be starting. He headed for the Great Hall to stop it and Southie met him by the servant stairs.

“We need to stop the séance,” he told Southie.

“No,” Southie said, handing him a set of keys. “We need to keep the séance going as long as possible so you and Gabe can get any videotape out of the satellite truck.”

North looked at the keys. “These are the keys to the truck?”

“I told Bill I’d dropped my wallet in there. He’s so mad at Kelly, he’d probably just have given them to me. Don’t hurt the equipment, just get the tapes. I’ll keep the séance going as long as possible.”

Gabe came up behind them, and said, “I know what’s going on. Come with me to the pantry and I’ll show you.”

“We have to rob a satellite truck first,” North said.

“Okay,” Gabe said.