Hellsinger 01 - Fish and Ghosts (P) (MM) (3 page)

Tristan wasn’t too fond of Walter’s arrival either. He had only ten more minutes before he had to be at the reception desk, and from the man’s squeaky pacing, it didn’t sound like Walter Pryce was going to leave until Tristan gave him some kind of concession.

“And if they find out I’m not crazy?” he offered up in exchange. “Suppose they hand you a report that I’m sane and the Grange is what Uncle Mortimer and I say it is? Will you leave me be then?”

The look of confusion on his uncle’s face told Tristan the man had not considered that possibility. A few lip flaps and another squeaka-squeaka pass later, Walter Pryce grumbled, “If he comes back and says that there’s something here, then yes, I’ll acknowledge that there
might
be something to your claims. But the agency has to verify that there is some sort of activity here. If not, then I’m going to insist you stop this nonsense and come home.”

“I am home, Uncle Walter,” Tristan said softly. “I’ve lived here at the Grange for most of my adult life and spent nearly all of my summers here. If this isn’t home, then where is that?”

“Then we’ll come to you.” The man’s hand on his shoulder was meant to be reassuring, but Tristan felt it held a greater weight than his uncle’s skin, bones, and flesh. “We’ll come here to you at the Grange. It
is
the family home, after all.”

He was able to hustle his uncle out with a few murmured assurances and then exhaled a sigh of relief when the door closed behind him. A few seconds later, the sedan’s quiet engine rumbled away and Tristan was left with the silence of the Grange around him.

The snick-snick of a dog’s nails on the foyer’s parquet floors echoed up into the high ceiling, and Tristan grinned at the shaggy gray head poking out from around the side of the sweeping mahogany counter Mortimer Pryce had built to be the Grange’s reception desk.

“Come on out, Boris.” He whistled to the Irish wolfhound. “He’s gone.”

“That dog knows evil when he smells it.” Mara appeared at Tristan’s elbow, moving as silently as one of the hall’s guests.

“He knows Uncle Walter doesn’t like him.” Bending over, Tristan scratched at the enormous dog’s floppy ears, sending Boris into a wiggling dance of ecstasy. “The man’s not evil, he’s just… closed-minded.”

“Well, ghosts or no, he’s a menace.” The woman’s harrumph was less pronounced than Walter’s, but it was still impressive. “Your ghosties are your business. This is your house. If you want to hold balls for faeries, it’s your right, and damn anyone else who says something against it.”

A dusting rag hung from her elbow crook, and a faint hint of the green-tea soap Tristan gave her for Christmas perfumed her soft white skin, its delicate scent fighting a losing battle against lemon polish and the arthritic salve Mara used for her aching knees. A softly curved woman, she came up to Tristan’s shoulder and often was in and out of a room, leaving behind only plates of sandwiches and cookies as evidence she’d been there. Something clung to the frosted candy floss of Mara’s silvery hair, and Tristan reached over to pluck it off.

It was a single diamond stud, and he handed it to her. “Did you find the other one?”

“No.” She shook her head, closing his fingers over the stone. “You keep that one. Maybe even change that silly hoop you have in your ear. You look like a little boy playing pirate.”

“Maybe.” He’d never told Mara the hoop belonged to his mother, a sliver of gold some faceless official handed him over her remains. She would scold him about being morbid, not understanding the hoop made him feel close to the woman who’d given birth to him but never really understood the changeling she’d been saddled with. “Or maybe even a second hole?”

“All you need is a parrot instead of that dumb Sasquatch you’ve brought into this house.” A deep belling roll began to sound off from the library, and Mara sniffed at the chilling air. “Well, that’s time, then. I’ll be off. You deal with…
that
. Don’t get to talking too much. I’ll be bringing you lunch at noon, and don’t forget, the gardeners will be here this afternoon, so get that beast to his walk before then.”

“Yes, Mara.”

He was talking to her back by the time the final chime from the library’s grandfather clock struck. Settling himself on the stool behind the old-fashioned reception desk, Tristan immediately regretted leaving his coffee behind. There was no telling how late his morning arrival would be, and he’d only had half a cup. He’d have to scare up another pot before he headed to his study on the third floor.

“If I’d really been thinking, I would have brought a sketchbook too,” he informed Boris. The dog lolled his long pink tongue at him and began a leisurely scratch at a spot near his jowls. “Really, Uncle Walter showing up just screwed the whole morning.”

He didn’t have to wait long. A few minutes after he’d sat down, the Grange’s front doors rattled and swung open. A brisk wind cut through the open portal, carrying in the scent of rain on its breath. As suddenly as it opened, the wide doors closed, whispering on their well-oiled hinges. From behind the desk, Boris whimpered, tucking himself into a huddle, and Tristan patted the dog’s broad head.

A wet footprint appeared on the wooden floor about two feet into the foyer, then another, a sopping trail of steps marking someone’s progress toward the reception area. Elongated shadows played beneath a large round table set in the middle of the circular area, and something brushed against a stray pink rose that drooped from the enormous flower display sitting in a mint-green urn on the table’s top.

She came into view a step or two after she passed the table, a bedraggled woman dressed in a neatly patched plain dress. Clutching her case in front of her in a white-knuckled grip, she nodded carefully at Tristan, then plastered a tentative smile on her pleasant face, clearing her throat before she spoke.

“I’ve come about the cook’s position, sir.” Her melodic voice was stamped with the distinct grit of a Northern Londoner, and if Tristan looked carefully, he knew he would see the black grime of the Lower Hells stuck under her fingernails. The rest of her was neat and trim despite the wear on her clothes and the fatigue on her still young face. “I’ve got no references, as the Lady turned me out for what the Lord was doing, but….”

“I don’t need your references. You’ll do fine,” Tristan reassured her. “Wages are forty pounds, and you’ll be given tea, beer, and sugar, as well.”

“That’s too generous, sir.” She blushed, a pink lightening up her pallor. “I’m not skilled for that—”

“We’ve only one cook position,” he cut her off gently. “Kitchens are through that door and down the hall. Can you start now? I’ve nearly a full inn and need a dinner set up for the guests. Your rooms will be behind the kitchen.”

“Yes, sir. I can start immediately.” She dropped into a short curtsey, nearly losing her satchel. “My name’s Heather. Heather Cook, sir. Thank you so much. I won’t be letting you down.”

“I know, Heather. I know,” Tristan said, pointing to the door. “Welcome to Hoxne Grange. We’re glad to have you here.”

As soon as the words left his mouth, she whispered away, dropping out of sight in flecks of light until nothing remained of her but the wet footprints on the foyer’s wooden floor. He was about to fetch a mop when Mara came out of the door he’d directed Heather to.

“So she’s gone, then?” Mara asked, wheeling out a metal mop bucket in front of her.

“Yeah, she is.” Tristan smiled, saddened by the young dead woman he’d spoken to.

“Well, then, it’s done until next Tuesday,” his housekeeper pronounced in a firm voice. “I’ll clean this up, and you go on upstairs. There’s coffee waiting for you and some brekkie. Maybe later on, you’ll get a nap. I know how Tuesdays wear you down.”

“Thank you, Mara.” He kissed the froth of silvery-white curls at her temple. “I don’t know what I’d do without you.”

“You’d be mopping your own damned floors every Tuesday after you hire your dead cook again.” She slapped at his arm. “Go on with you, and take that cowardly beast with you.”

Chapter 2

“H
OLY
FUCKING
shit, that’s a mansion!”

Matt wasn’t far off in his description of Hoxne Grange. The edifice—no other word really suited the place—rose up over a roll of hills, its solid, tall chimneys jutting above the redwood stands surrounding the landscaped portion of the estate. Made of gray brick, the structure dominated the greens around it, its solid three-storied W shape thrusting into the overcast sky and demanding their attention as Wolf’s SUV cleared its wrought iron gates. Arched windows cut through the stern brick, their form echoed in the covered walkways connecting the building’s wings. The ground ran to evergreen bushes in the front, sculpted into oval shapes to mimic the softening lines of the home’s solid Gilded Age architecture.

It was a place where people were born not only with a silver spoon in their mouths but rather the entire silverware set and a teapot or two thrown in just for shits and giggles.

Wolf loved it on sight, even if he had an overwhelming urge to drive around to the back and knock on the servants’ entrance to be let in.

“
That
, Matt, is considered a cottage,” Wolf informed his tech. “Only thirty rooms or so. Depends on how you counted them. Some of these places run to over seventy.”

“Who the hell can clean that shit?” Gidget whistled and counted off the chimneys. “Christ, they’ve got like, ten fireplaces.”

“Might be more. The chimneys sometimes support two fireplaces on stacked floors,” he replied. “Wouldn’t want the family to get cold.”

The long driveway circled to the front door, wrapping around a fountain embellished with an enormous trio of fish taken right off a pirate’s treasure map. Blackened with age, the piscine sculptures spouted out delicate sprays of water into the marble bowl below. A side road led off the main driveway to the back of the house where Wolf assumed there was a garage, but glancing back at the equipment they’d piled into the car, he wasn’t quite sure where they’d need to unload.

“Okay, kiddies.” Pulling up to the main entrance, he put the SUV into park and unsnapped his seat belt. “Let’s go find us some ghosts.”

Up close, the Grange was even more intimidating. Twenty-four rooms or not, Wolf figured the architect probably had a different idea of bedroom space than he did. When he opened the front door to let Gidget and Matt in first, they both dropped their voices to an awed whisper, and his suspicions about spatial relativity were confirmed once he stepped over the threshold.

He was pretty certain the Grange’s front hall could have swallowed up his apartment building and still left enough space to house a Chinese restaurant and possibly a few branches of Starbucks besides.

“Holy fucking shit.” Matt turned to whisper at Wolf. “And
this
is a cottage?”

“So they say.” He hated that he lowered his voice and cleared his throat, nodding to the pigeonhole and grand swerve piece someone had the good luck to scavenge from one of San Francisco’s grand hotels. Certainly not something that came with the house, the nearly eight-foot counter and back piece held its own in the Grange’s cavernous foyer.

As did the blond man talking to himself behind it.

An explosion of flowers coming out of something porcelain and expensive blocked the young man, but Wolf was able to catch a peek through the artfully arranged rainbow of spiked flowers and pink-hued roses. Messy was a word Wolf would have used if fucking gorgeous hadn’t first come to mind. Even the messy was merely a casual disregard to the polish one would expect in a multi-million-dollar mansion rich people called a cottage.

The blond hair was a dirty mix of mica flecks, gold, and mink, running to darker hues underneath. Tousled around an aristocratic face, it framed high cheekbones Gidget would be sighing over if given the chance and an aquiline nose obviously unmarred by any sibling’s stray fist. He looked up from what he was doing, and Wolf would have sworn his eyes went black with displeasure. His lightweight sweater nearly matched the foyer’s seafoam-colored vase, but his face was a bit colder than the chill that seemed to sweep over Wolf as he stood waiting. From across the room, the man’s eyes appeared to be a brown as rich as the desk he stood behind, but as they drew closer, Wolf caught a bit of amber and green in their depths.

He’d been right about the anger, though. The man Wolf assumed was Tristan Pryce tightened his mouth as they drew near, and his changeable sage-brown eyes narrowed slightly. The talking to himself continued, a rolling, plush rasp hammered with those damned silver spoons and something darker Wolf couldn’t identify.

Behind him, Matt and Gidget wandered about the foyer, enraptured with its art and furniture, but Wolf only had eyes for the man in front of him.

“It’s all right if you can’t sign your name,” the man purred at a spot to the left of him, nodding politely at nothing. “Many people spend their lives doing more important things than learning to write. Let me register you and get you a room.”

It seemed like Auntie Mrs. Walter Pryce The Third definitely had a leg to stand on. Hell, she had enough legs to give a horny centipede a hard-on.