Hellsinger 01 - Fish and Ghosts (P) (MM) (23 page)

“You’re going to shake him down for information.” Wolf’s answering smirk did little to ease Tristan’s nerves, but the soft, lingering kiss the man left on his lips did its job. He relaxed into the kiss, leaning his head back against the rise of the loveseat when Wolf pressed his fingers on the curve of Tristan’s jaw. “Don’t worry. She likes you. She won’t bite. Hell, this might even be a month she isn’t eating meat.”

“Bach assures me that bacon is considered a vegetable in some cultures.” Meegan drew her bare feet up onto the loveseat and tucked them under her. “I also discovered a fondness for rare ahi, but no, I haven’t quite moved yet to cannibalism, Mr. Wolf.”

“Bachman will tell you anything you want if it lets you eat the all sacred crisped pork strips,” Wolf teased.

“You named your son Bachman?” Tristan eyed the woman. “Like Bachman-Turner Overdrive?”

“No, his name is Bach. Bach Mystery Moon Ocean-Kincaid. Wolfgang just likes to call him that to irritate me.” Meegan looked anything but annoyed, scooting around until she faced Tristan, yet Wolf grimaced at her as he left. “Go get me some food, spawn of my loins, and let me talk to your boyfriend.”

He took a moment to drink in the rainbow of a woman sitting next to him, searching her face for any sign of the familiar mockery he’d seen in others… in his own parents’ faces, but there was nothing there. Just a simmering, cinnamon-warm sweet look of acceptance and a fierce fire in her too-much-like-Wolf eyes.

“Tell me about your home, Tristan,” Meegan prodded gently. “And tell me about your gift. Wolf tells me you see spirits. Tell me about that.”

“My
gift
?” Tristan trumped Meegan’s earlier derision of Wolf’s tech with a sarcasm-laden grunt. “It’s not a… people think… my family thinks I’m crazy. I didn’t
want
to see ghosts. I didn’t
want
to talk them. I’d just rather have been… normal.”

“There is no such thing as normal, Tristan.” The woman reached for his hands, pulling them into her lap in a tight, warm clasp. “What you have in you is an ability. It’s no different than Wolf’s skill with beeping gadgety things or Bach’s ability to know what flavors go with one another. There are things in all of us that are innate. And some of those things are so rare… so spectacular… that others who aren’t as fortunate can’t comprehend those gifts. People, at the very base of their being, aren’t as evolved as we would like.”

“Wolf said something like that.” He inched closer, scooting across the loveseat until his crossed knees touched hers. “Fight or flight.”

“And sometimes fight includes attacking things or people we don’t understand,” Meegan whispered conspiratorially. “But I’m here now. And so is Wolf. We’ll stand with you. No matter what. Now, talk to me about what you see, and maybe I can give you some answers to questions lurking somewhere inside of that sweet poet heart of yours.”

Sitting amid the flood of color, Tristan found himself opening to the woman holding his hands. He started slow, his eyes drifting off to stare at the ballroom’s wallpaper, searching for the dappled dog shape he’d discovered in its pattern when he was a young boy. He told her of his Uncle Mortimer, a man who’d been more mad scientist than mentor but provided him with welcome sanctuary when his world closed in on him too tightly. There were moments he’d forgotten, but there in Meegan’s warmth, he found them again, pouring out his sorrow about his parents’ death and how he’d never felt a part of their close-knit family of two.

Only then did he speak of the ghosts.

“They come in, usually in the morning for some reason.” Another dog shape, the third he’d found in the silk paper panels, hung upside down, a curious aberration he’d not noticed before. “Most of the time, it’s a single person, but sometimes a couple comes. Once when I was fourteen, there was an entire family. Parents and three children soaked down to the bone, but they were laughing as if death didn’t matter. I think that was the first time I realized I didn’t have my parents’ love. Not like… those children did. The mother kept straightening their jackets and telling me about their schoolwork. Even in death, she was proud of them. I don’t think my mother ever said something like that about me. I remember wishing for so much then.”

“Some parents don’t know how to show their love, Tristan,” Meegan murmured. “It doesn’t mean they didn’t love you. It just means that they didn’t know how to show it. Perhaps even they were confused about what you needed. You did nothing wrong. You were a child, a much deeper soul than they were prepared to have. Sometimes people are just at a loss as to what to do with a child like that, but that doesn’t mean you weren’t loved.”

As he looked back at his parents, their shadowy presence in the vibrant flow of specters and phantoms around him, Tristan struggled to see their affection in the perplexed looks they’d given him.

“I don’t know,” he admitted slowly. “Maybe. They were… gone before I was ready. I feel like if I’d just had more time… if we’d had more time, I could have made them understand. Everything was just so confusing, you know? I couldn’t tell the difference between the living and the dead when I was young. My mom thought I’d eaten bad mushrooms from the garden once because I kept seeing men riding horses through the street.”

“And your Uncle Mortimer was like you?” Wolf’s mother reached for their mugs and pressed his into his hand before sipping at her tea. “Did he see the Grange’s spirits?”

“Yeah, sorta. He didn’t… they weren’t as solid for him. Or at least that’s what he told me.” Tristan snorted with a sip of coffee on his tongue. “Sometimes I think he said that just so it would make me feel like I was… better than him at seeing ghosts. To give me confidence. I’m not sure. I know they spoke to me and that they came here for one last taste of being human before going away.”

“Tell me about that. Is that what they tell you?”

“Sometimes. If they feel like talking. Most of them are just… too happy to be here. It’s like they know they’re heading someplace wonderful and this is their going away party.” He nodded, grateful for her hand on his leg. Meegan helped anchor him, taking his mind off of the wandering memories flitting through his mind. “I can remember the first time I saw a guest come through the door. He was an older man, older than my father. Very distinguished and dressed in a very long coat. He took off his top hat and smiled at me. I think I was maybe… ten? Eleven.

“He told me he was there to check into the hotel. To have one last fling at life before he moved on to the next world.” Tristan laughed softly. “I didn’t know if he was a really a ghost. He was so solid. I’d seen Uncle Morty fill out the register before, but usually it was afterward… or so he told me. I hadn’t believed him, but then here was this man in a superfine suit and gloves, asking me if the best room in the house was available. So I checked him in and told him his room number. He tossed me a coin, but it disappeared before it hit my hand. The ghost’s items don’t always, you know, disappear. Sometimes things appear here in the Grange, like tips they leave behind for us. If it’s something expensive, I try to find a family member and return it. But sometimes the ghosts are too… dated. From a time I can’t track down easily enough. It’s not always possible.”

“So they’re from different times?” Meegan cocked her head, her long wine-hued hair spilling over her shoulder. “Not everyone is from our time? Some are from other centuries?”

“Yeah, it’s always a mix. Some are older. Some don’t even speak English. Once there was a very old man wearing only a fur around his hips. He was covered with thick hair, and his teeth were ground down to his gums. He wandered around the Grange, but he never really saw me. He was gone on the third day, just like the rest.”

“And they only stay three days?”

“Yeah, fish and ghosts. Both stink after three days.” He laughed, hearing his uncle’s age-crumbled voice in his head. “I never see them again after that. I’ll find their names or marks crossed out of the register, and the beds are usually unmade. That’s when we find trinkets left behind, in the rooms. And sometimes the towels are gone too. That’s the worst of it. No matter what, living or dead, some of the guests will steal an inn’s towels. Pisses me off but I’m used to it.”

“And this woman… the one we think is Matty’s great-grandmother… she’s been here longer than three days? Troublesome. That break in the pattern.” Tristan nodded, and Meegan sat back, shifting her foot when her rings chimed against the silver band on Tristan’s toe. “Look, we have the same ring. Ah, I knew you had good taste, and not just because you love my son.”

The word
love
hovered in the front of Tristan’s mind, and a part of him ran screaming to hide behind a nest of cobwebs he’d stored bad ideas behind. Swallowing hard, he was about to deny… something… anything when Wolf came up behind him with a plate of sandwiches.

“Mom, don’t scare him. We haven’t gotten to the picking-out-a-china-pattern stage.” The man sat down in the chair nearest Tristan and called Gidget and Matt over for food. Passing Tristan a paper plate with a roast beef sandwich on it, Wolf whispered. “We can…
talk
later, okay?”

“Okay,” Tristan murmured back. He picked a piece of meat out of his sandwich and held it out for Boris, patting the dog when he slurped up the treat with a thump of his long tail. “Oh, wait… some ghosts stay. Like Heather, our cook. She comes every Tuesday to be hired, except this past week. I think Matt’s grandmother kept her away.”

“Her name’s Winifred,” Matt piped up around a mouthful of bread and meat. “Winifred Culpepper. Well, that was the last surname she had. She had a lot of them.”

“How much do you know about her?” Meegan asked. “Give me some idea about why she’s come here.”

“She really liked killing her husbands,” Matt replied, pursing his lips as he thought. “Maybe a few other people who pissed her off too. We don’t know for sure.”

“She’s here because Gidget tossed her ring into the pond out in the garden.” Tristan tried not to narrow his eyes at the couple, but he couldn’t help himself. Catching their ashamed faces, he exhaled slowly. “The folly’s pond is where I’ve seen some of the ghosts… I don’t know… leave? They turn… um… I’ve seen a few brighten like light is filling them and then disappear when they cross over the water. It happens a couple of places here on the Grange grounds, but the lily pond’s where I’ve seen it happen the most.”

“And the ring you threw in the water was one of her wedding rings?” Meegan sighed heavily when the couple nodded. “Ah, so you were fighting and then threw out a symbol of her murderous love. That definitely would summon a foul spirit.”

“I sort of cursed at him too,” Gidget offered hesitantly.

“Not at… you just plain cursed me,” Matt retorted. “You said something like you hope my dick rots off so I could see how much I hurt you.”

“As curses go, that’s pretty weak,” Wolf slid in. “But hey, apparently it was enough for Winifred the Serial Killer to come over.”

Tristan ate as Matt delved into his great-grandmother’s history, including the supposition she’d murdered more people than she’d been given credit for. Tucked in between Meegan and Wolf, he listened with half an ear to the now familiar tale, caught up more in the sensation of Wolf’s fingers making tiny circles on the inside of his wrist than anything else.

He touched Wolf’s fingers, tracing the edges of his nails and exploring the lines on his palm. At some point in the man’s life, he’d earned himself a Y-shaped scar on his thumb’s webbing, and Tristan rubbed at the spot, wondering what he’d done to himself.

“Bach stabbed me with a knife,” Wolf whispered into Tristan’s ear, then licked at his earlobe. “My younger brother’s a vicious little bitch.”

“You probably deserved it,” he murmured back, scratching Boris’s side with his foot.

“It was a crab fork, and it was an accident.” Meegan shot her son a look. “Now stop telling lies about your brother, and let’s talk about what we need to do. Tristan, was your Uncle Mortimer the only one in your family to see the Grange’s spirits, or was there someone before him?”

“I think he was the first.” Tristan shrugged. “I don’t know. The Pryces actually lived here before Uncle Mortimer inherited the house, but everyone moved to the city afterward. It was too far out for most of the family back then.”

“Something draws them here.” Meegan tapped her chin in thought. “I just wish I knew more about your uncle. He might have actually been the one to open the Grange to the spirits.”

“There might be something in his library.” He shifted on the seat. “I don’t know. He never really talked about it… hosting the ghosts. It was just a thing he did, and then… it became what
I
did.”

“So something in your rooms might help us out?” Wolf cocked his head.

“Um, no, not my rooms. His. The door right off the third landing? In front of the lift? That goes to his suite. That’s where Uncle Mortimer’s library is.” Tristan bit his lip, recalling the day he’d last closed his uncle’s door behind him. “But I haven’t been in there since I found him. Not since the day he died.”

H
IS
HAND
was shaking when Tristan closed his fingers over the crystal doorknob to his uncle’s rooms. It rattled a bit against his palm as it always did, a faint, familiar brassy scent coming from the latch as he turned the faceted ball and opened the door.

And let go of the shuddering, frozen breath he’d been holding in his lungs.

The room was as he’d left it. Stagnant and trapped in a slice of time he’d rather have never looked at again. Yet as he stood in the doorway, Tristan couldn’t help but smile, thinking of the man who’d raised him and the nights they’d spent watching the moon rise over the mountains, sipping coffee and talking of nonsense only they could see.

Like all the family suites, the main room was a long rectangle, its outer wall lined with arched windows covered with heavy tapestry drapes. Wolf threw back one of the curtains, letting the remains of the sun into the room. The fading light caught at the dust motes swirling around in the air, glittery streams fed by benign neglect.