Deadly Curiosities (2 page)

We’re having some problems with several antique décor pieces we recently acquired. Maggie told me that you’re good with this kind of thing and I was hoping you could please stop by. She says you have a knack for dealing with haunted items. I’ll be happy to comp your stay for a night or two if you would come. I don’t know who else to ask, and I can’t put up with things the way they are.

I sat back and stared at the screen. At first, I thought maybe she had purchased some items to decorate her bed and breakfast and changed her mind about them. It happens. Several local interior decorators shop at our store on a regular basis (of course, we only show them the mundanes or the tame sparklers).

But it didn’t sound like the problem had to do with a decorator’s style. Maggie didn’t know the full story about what we do at Trifles and Folly, but she did know I had a gift for recognizing haunted things.

She was discreet enough to only mention that if the client raised the issue first. Rebecca’s last line sounded desperate, and scared. I frowned. If Rebecca was correct, how on earth had she gotten her hands on a sparkler without my knowing about it?

I thought for a moment, then hit reply.
I’ll be glad to help
, I wrote,
but can you please tell me more about the problem?
I hit send and went back to my email, deleting a few spammy messages. I figured Rebecca probably wouldn’t get back to me until tomorrow, but just as I was getting ready to step away from the computer, a new message popped into my inbox.

You really need to see for yourself
, Rebecca had written.
Please, please come – soon
.

Well, that was interesting. The desperation was unmistakable. Although it was Friday, I wasn’t quite spontaneous enough to consider packing up and heading out to her B&B.

But come to think of it, I was due to have some work done on my house next week. I live in the house my parents inherited from my great-uncle Evanston, the same one who left me Trifles and Folly. It’s what folks in Charleston call a ‘single house’, a two-story brick house from the 1880s that’s only one room wide, with a porch (called a piazza) that runs along one side. It’s a lovely house, but its age means there’s a lot of upkeep. My parents happily sold the house to me for a token payment when they moved to Charlotte, leaving me the proud owner of a home I absolutely loved and couldn’t possibly afford otherwise.

I was getting the hardwood floors refinished, and between the mess and the smell, that meant that that Baxter, my little Maltese, and I were going to have to find another place to stay for a few days. I’d already booked Baxter into the local puppy spa, and I’d made reservations for myself at a chain hotel, but Rebecca’s invitation could turn necessity into a mini-vacation – depending on just how much of a problem Rebecca was having, and how easy it was to fix.

How about next Tuesday and Wednesday
? I emailed back.

THANK YOU!!!
Rebecca replied, and I figured from the all caps and the extra punctuation that she was very happy.

* * *

Teag wasn’t back yet, so I plugged Gardenia Landing into Google and did a little online sleuthing. A tasteful web page popped up, with images of an idyllic old home that looked both restful and expensive.

The bed and breakfast looked charming.

I read through the home’s history. The house dated from the 1850s, practically qualifying it as new construction in a city as old as Charleston. That meant it had seen a lot of history, and stood a good chance of having a few resident ghosts, like many of the older homes in Charleston.

Heck, if you believed the guides on the nightly ghost tour carriage rides, every house, garage, and alleyway was haunted. Some of that made for good fun for the tourists, but there was an uncomfortable undercurrent of truth. Charleston was a beautiful city, but it had been built on the blood, toil, and misery of African slaves. Pirates had been tried and hanged here, duels were once common, and the plagues, earthquakes, and hurricanes that claimed thousands of lives over the years left restless spirits aplenty. In nearly four hundred years, Charleston also had more than a few sensational murders. Stories of the taverns and brothels of long ago – and the inevitable fights they spawned – still made good gossip. Charleston might prefer its nickname of ‘the Holy City’ for its many churches, but it was one of the most haunted places in the country, for good reason.

So Gardenia Landing might have a few resident ghosts, I mused. I’d have to do some digging into its history. Beneath many a charming façade lay tawdry tales of mayhem and murder. Some places played up their checkered history, while others tried all the harder for respectability. Gardenia Landing wasn’t hawking ghost tours, so I guessed that its owner wasn’t viewing supernatural activity as being good for business.

“Got them!” Teag sang out as he burst into the shop, sending the strip of sleigh bells on the front door jangling. “Two tickets, Grand Tier. So we’re in the first balcony, but up against the railing with a good view of the stage.” He was grinning ear to ear.

“Technically, the show is sold out, but the theater manager is a friend of mine, and I wheedled a favor out of him, for old times’ sake,” Teag added with a conspiratorial wink.

“What’s it going to cost us?” I asked with a smile. Teag could work social connections – real or online – better than anyone I know, but there was usually some
quid pro quo
involved.

Teag shrugged. “I might have said we would consider loaning a few pieces for one of their upcoming plays – with proper credit in the program book, of course, so it’s almost like free advertising.”

I chuckled. In my opinion, Teag had been wasting his talent on a Ph.D. in history. He had the instincts of an impresario coupled with the social finesse of a master fundraiser. Turns out it wasn’t just his magnetic personality: some of it was magic. Fairly recently, Teag discovered he had a supernatural gift as a ‘Weaver’, someone who could work spells into woven goods – and into the ‘web’ of the Internet.

Teag had an uncanny talent for following information strands, either offline or online, to find and piece together bits of data and weave it into valuable intel. Now we knew it wasn’t all luck.

“We’ll need the insurance paperwork and receipts, but that’s easily done,” I said. “I’m excited about the play.”

“You need to get out more, Cassidy,” Teag said, sounding like a big brother.

I shrugged, afraid to answer because it was true, and switched subjects. “Have you ever heard of Gardenia Landing?” Teag frowned, thinking. “Bed and breakfast?”

I nodded. “I just got a rather desperate email from the owner begging me to come stay – for free – and help her with a problem with an item she got here.”

Teag scratched his head. “I don’t remember selling anything to a B&B owner.”

“She may have gone through a decorator.”

“Okay. I can go through our list of regulars and see which designers have made purchases lately.”

“Please. I’d like to have a clue about what I’m walking into before I go out there.”

Teag raised an eyebrow. “You’re going? Just like that?”

“Baxter and I need to get out of the house for a couple of days while the hardwoods get done over – remember?”

“What about the owner’s ‘problem’?”

I shrugged. “If she bought something here, it couldn’t be more than a sparkler. Maybe the B&B has its own ghosts, and they amped up the new piece so it’s acting out. At best, I find it and figure out how to neutralize it. At worst, I offer her store credit and a replacement and bring it back for Sorren to deal with.”

Teag fixed me with the kind of stare my grandmother used to use if she caught me in a fib. “You know, and I know, that ‘at worst’ can be a whole lot worse than that. Be careful, Cassidy. Sorren’s not going to like you going out there by yourself when we don’t know what you’re up against.”

I grimaced. “I’ll figure something out,” I muttered.

What Teag said was true. Sorren was the mastermind behind Trifles and Folly, from its beginning nearly four hundred years ago. He had been the silent partner with the shop’s owner – always a relative of mine – down through the centuries. Sorren was also one of the early members of the Alliance, the group that got rid of dangerous magical items. “Maybe you should let Sorren know about this before you go,” Teag said, raising an eyebrow.

“It’s probably nothing,” I said. “I don’t want to bother Sorren until we know for certain.” When I inherited the store from my great-Uncle Evan, I inherited the ‘real’ family business: protecting Charleston against supernatural danger. Sorren was part of that package. The Alliance was the other piece.

Sorren’s maker had brought him into the Alliance in the 1500s when Sorren was a century old. The Alliance has been busy since then. When we make a mistake, lots of people die. Plagues, floods, earthquakes – fewer of them are natural than people think. Often, there are supernatural or magical fingerprints all over them, because someone very powerful made them happen. I didn’t want that on my conscience. On the other hand, the Alliance included some very powerful magic users and immortals.

They didn’t get involved in routine hauntings.

“Speaking of Sorren,” Teag said, “This came for you.” He held out an overnight mail sleeve and I ripped it open to find a letter in Sorren’s distinctive handwriting. “Hasn’t he heard of email?”

I chuckled. Sorren used email just fine, and we both knew it. But with my gift, a letter carried far more information than what it actually said, information that couldn’t fall into the wrong hands if it were intercepted.

“Let’s see what he has to say,” I said, and sat down before I touched the envelope. But as soon as my fingers touched the crisp paper, I knew we were in for trouble.

“He’s worried about something,” I said. In a nod to the old ways, Sorren still used a drop of sealing wax embossed with the imprint of his signet ring to seal the envelope. It wasn’t an artistic flourish: there was magic in the wax that kept the letter eyes-only for the recipient.

I broke the seal and pulled out the short note. “
On my way
,” I read aloud. “
Be careful. Something’s up – not sure what. Big players involved. Details soon – Sorren.”

But the paper told me much more. Death and danger had gotten the Alliance’s attention, and Sorren was worried. His warning was clear. Something very bad was heading our way.

Sorren took his commitment to my family – and to me – very seriously. And if I thought Teag was overprotective, he couldn’t compete with a six hundred year-old vampire.

I
FELT RUSHED
and flustered as I bustled to answer the front door. It was Saturday evening, and I’d spent the day rushing around. Baxter scampered back and forth underfoot, and barked up a storm when he knew we had a visitor.

“Ready to go?” Teag asked, stepping inside. He looked good in a sport coat and slacks. His dark eyes held a hint of mischief, and he was wearing his trendy glasses instead of contacts, which added to the dashing young professor look. For once, his hair was tamed enough to stay out of his eyes. Since Teag tended to favor jeans and t-shirts, I suspected Anthony might have had a hand in selecting his wardrobe for the evening. He was more dressed up than I’d ever seen him, and I grinned. He bent down to scoop Baxter into his arms and tousled Bax’s ears.

“Anthony’s going to wish he’d joined us,” I said. “You clean up well.”

Teag laughed. “So do you.”

I was wearing a sundress and heels, a tribute to the spring weather. A light wrap was slung across my shoulders, in case the theater was cold. Given Charleston’s hot and humid weather, odds were good that the difference between the outside air and the A/C on the inside would be enough to fog my sunglasses.

“Here’s hoping that the opera glasses don’t pack much of a psychic wallop, so we can both enjoy the show,” Teag said.

The small binoculars were tucked in my purse. I had handled them several times, and even tried using them to view a television show, thinking that might activate whatever our client had seen. Nothing happened. That meant that either the opera glasses only did their thing for live theater, or perhaps our client had an overly active imagination.

Although technically our outing was work-related, I was excited. Maybe that said something about my social life, but the truth was, when I wasn’t working late at the store, I socialized with a small group of friends, or savored a quiet evening with a good book, a cup of tea or a glass of wine, and my little Maltese. Charleston offered one soiree after another, many for charitable causes, but the constant social swirl seemed more obligation than recreation. So I had to admit my excitement included looking forward to the play itself, not just figuring out what was going on with the opera glasses.

“Did you know this play was originally produced in 1939?” Teag asked as we headed to the theater. He became a theater-geek fountain of information, keeping me entertained until we reached our destination.

“I’ve got to admit, I’m as interested in the theater itself as the play,” I said, pausing on the other side of the street to take in the grand marquis that jutted out, retro-style, over the sidewalk and rose like a tower along the front of the building. We had to walk a few blocks since parking tonight was at a premium. “The theater’s a drama queen in its own way.”

Teag chuckled. “The Academy has been a Southern belle, a movie star, a spurned lover, a bag lady, and a dowager queen. This was the biggest vaudeville theater in the South back in the day. Even after movies came out and many of the old theaters were converted to show motion pictures, the Academy remained the place to see a live performance in Charleston.”

I felt a rush of excitement as we walked into the Academy. The theater lobby had been painstakingly refurbished to its glory days. From the big, retro lit-up marquis outside to the old-style concession stand, plush red carpets, and velvet-upholstered seats, the Academy Theater was quite a showplace. It had taken a major effort from the community and the city’s theater lovers to pull off the fundraising and renovation, but the results were stunning. Everything screamed Victorian abundance, from the lush burgundy velvet curtains and the plush carpet to the crystal chandeliers, gilded decorations, and huge mirrors.