The Skeleton Key (13 page)

Keep your head down.

‘Maybe we can get together again sometime?' I heard the newly minted
Pandora
editor say, and a little part of my stomach twisted.

Stop listening. Stop. It's none of your business anymore. None.

Though it was time for me to think about packing up, I found some more emails of Skye's to sort and then I felt a hand on my shoulder and I knew it was Jay. I knew it before I even looked.

I took a breath and turned my head.

‘Hi, Pandora,' he said, and smiled down at me.

He remembers my name
, I thought, and pushed my chair back from my desk. ‘Hi, Jay.'

Jay Rockwell had something camel-coloured folded under one arm and now he lifted it up and let it unfold.

My coat. The coat Celia had given me. I'd been so flustered I'd raced off without retrieving it.

‘Kingsley told me that this was left behind by a very beautiful young woman in a black and white dress.'

Kingsley. The butler.

‘Oh, I . . . um. Yes. Thank you. I forgot it,' I said, trying not to let his flattery get to me. My cheeks felt a touch warm and I worried I was blushing.

‘I'm glad you came to our little party,' he said, with what must have been false modesty. The soiree had been anything but minor. ‘It was good to see you again. Did the photos come up well?'

‘Yup. No problems there,' I said. Pepper hadn't made any complaints.

I stayed seated, as if Pepper would somehow fail to notice that Jay and I were talking if I stayed in my chair. She did seem a little possessive of Jay, for whatever reason, and I really didn't want to get on her bad side, especially now that she was my boss.

Jay sat down on the edge of my desk, his proximity making me nervous. ‘The party seemed like a great success,' I said, filling the silence with talk, though I did not care to mention that I hadn't realised it was his party, or his dad's, when I'd made those stupid comments. He must have thought I was a real card, coming to Rockwell Mansion and asking if Jay Rockwell came there often.

Idiot.

‘What time do you get off?' he asked, taking me by surprise.

I swallowed.

Automatically, I glanced at the wall clock. It was past five already. ‘Well, technically I'm off now,' I responded, with a fair bit of steadiness in my voice. ‘But I have a real busy evening. Things are a bit complicated at the moment.'

An understatement. I just didn't feel like I could go on a date at the moment, if that's what Jay was asking. Not with everything else going on.

Though the idea
was
tempting.

‘Maybe another time?' I offered.

Jay seemed to take my refusal well. ‘No problem. I understand. If you want to catch up, give me a call,' he said smoothly. He pulled out a business card and wrote his mobile number on it using the pen on my desk. I hoped to hell that Pepper wasn't seeing this, though she probably was. ‘I'd like to take you out sometime. No pressure though.'

Jay had asked me out before. Before taking me out for dinner in Little Italy. Before we got attacked by Elizabeth Bathory's henchwomen and I saved his life just a little bit.

‘Thanks. That's really kind,' I said, and pocketed his card as quickly as I could.

Jay cocked his head to one side. ‘We have met before, haven't we?' he said, squinting, some recollection seeming to come to him. ‘I mean, before the Empire State Building. Funny, I just can't quite place it.'

I opened my mouth and closed it again. I didn't know where to begin with that.

‘Well, I hope you'll take me up on my offer,' he said quietly. He stood up and walked away, leaving me with Celia's coat and his phone number.

A
fter work I rode the subway up to Spanish Harlem and took my usual route through Central Park. As I walked I admired the green gardens, passing alongside trees budding with tiny, bright flowers, and I found that I felt rather buoyed. I even thought I knew why.

Yes, my life was complicated, but I had not been fired from my job (yay!) and, further more, I might even have a chance of a bit of normality.

I had a chance at being someone of actual interest to a
normal, living
human being – wanted by someone human, instead of being constantly put down and underestimated. And the best parts of my life didn't have to unfold strictly after dark, didn't always have to involve amulets and dead men and the constant creeping pressure of frightening prophecies and this title of ‘the Seventh'. I could have something normal, too. A date in a crowded restaurant. A picnic in the sunshine. The things normal girls did all the time. Yes, I was grateful for my great-aunt and my strange gifts, too, but a little bit of normal once in a while would be very nice.

Perhaps Jay and I could even pick up where we'd left off? Or rather, where we would have left off had we not run into all that supernatural trouble. And Lieutenant Luke? Well, I didn't know what to do about my ghost friend or my conflicted feelings about him. The situation troubled me, but what could I do? I couldn't just sit around feeling sorry for myself. And he had suggested I see living men, before he became . . . possessed.

Is it cheating to have one living boyfriend and one possessed dead one? And was I the only girl in the world who grappled with these sorts of ethical conundrums?

Addams Avenue was quiet as I passed Harold's Grocer, swinging my satchel and humming to myself, determined to be positive. Mist clung to the lit streetlamps and a few of the windows of the old brownstones glowed like rectangles in the thick darkness. As I approached Number One Addams Avenue I looked up at the tall building that I now called home, with its grand turrets and carved gargoyles, and I thought,
My life isn't so bad. Actually, it's pretty great.

I could handle this strange world I'd been thrust into. I could handle it.

Grinning at the thought of Jay Rockwell, I put my key in the door and whispered, ‘Please let me in.' The old door welcomed me by swinging open effortlessly. The lights in the lobby were off, and I absent-mindedly flicked on the light switch for the chandelier. It flickered on, the fixture askew. Its angle no longer surprised me. What had happened there was sad, I thought, but it was part of the Barrett family history, and history was important. Some people left an impact on the world. When they departed their spirits left a residue, or a physical presence of some kind. They leave behind something of themselves. And in my current state of mind that felt like a good thing.

I pulled my gaze from the cobwebbed chandelier and started across the lobby tiles towards the lift.

And stopped.

I was not alone. The woman in black was right in front of me, looking at me.

Or at least her black, featureless head was pointed in my direction. The black crepe widow's veil covered her head so completely that I could not see her expression at all, let alone whether or not she had a face. (I'd made that mistake before, communicating with other departed folks. It was best not to assume anything.) She was carrying the strange candle again and she turned and began walking away from me, her delicate laced boots moving silently over the tiles. She wanted me to follow.

‘Uh, is that you, Mrs Barrett?' I asked to her back. ‘Where are you leading me?'

The figure did not turn back or respond. She simply walked on.

Without even deciding what to do, I followed her instinctively. And then she walked through the hidden door beneath the mezzanine stairs. The one I had opened with the skeleton key.

I stopped just beyond the door and stared at the space where she'd been. Of course, I'd seen Luke walk through solid walls and closed doors, though he was usually very mindful not to walk through things when he was around me. (It can be a bit unnerving, as this incident quickly reminded me.) I realised it probably took a lot of concentration not to just pass through objects, if that was the natural, ghostly way.

When I opened the door she was waiting for me on the other side, her candle illuminating the way.

‘The house seems not to want me here,' I said aloud, and though her featureless face did not move and she made no sound, I thought I could hear a voice in my head.

It is not the house
, she said.

It is someone else. Something else.

Despite my fear, I followed her through the dank, twisting corridor.
Yes.
It led to the other side of the house – the secret side. I was sure of it now. Time passed strangely again. Did we walk for a minute or ten? And then I saw a faint sliver of light ahead. There was a closed door, light glowing in a thin line beneath the bottom edge seeping into the darkness. The woman in black turned, looking at me with that featureless face, and she walked through the door. Someone or something was on the other side of that door, lighting up that room, and I wanted to know who it was.
She
wanted me to know who it was.

Hmmm.

I put my ear to the door and listened. I could hear faint voices, talking so low I couldn't even tell if it was English. ‘Celia?' I said loudly to the door. ‘Is that you in there?'

No, it was a man's voice I could hear murmuring softly.

Deus?

I bit my lip. Perhaps I should just head to the penthouse? Mention what I saw to Celia? Being down here alone without a sword or even a torch seemed unwise. But that light was glowing under the door and I felt an almost irresistible urge to open it. I fished Celia's skeleton key out of my satchel and looked at it. Would it fit this door? I gave it a try and it slid into the lock with some effort. I turned the key, jiggling it around a bit where it was sticky. At first I didn't think it would work, but then I felt the old bolt slide back and the door creaked open on its hinge. Another secret room opened to me.

‘Hello?'

This was a room I had not ventured into before. It was a study of some kind, with dusty books lining the walls from floor to ceiling. The light came from a tall candle that flickered from the centre of a wooden table stacked with journals and tomes.

The woman in black could not be seen. But a man stood in front of me.

Or most of a man.

‘I see you made the acquaintance of my wife. You must forgive her. She is quite shy,' he said.

At once I knew who it was. My great-aunt had told me all about this man – the infamous psychical researcher and scientist who'd designed the mansion in the 1880s and lived and experimented here. This was Dr Edmund Barrett, who'd died in a mysterious fire supposedly caused by spontaneous combustion – a fire that consumed his body, or most of it, leaving only ashes and his feet. Yet here he was before me, with a pleasant look on his face, looking quite well, if a tad eccentric. Barrett was about five foot ten, and he wore a three-piece suit with a wing-tip white shirt and a slim, dark cravat, tied at the neck. A gold timepiece hung elegantly from his waistcoat. His hair was white as parchment, and it was clean but rather unkempt, as if he'd combed it back before stepping out into a windstorm. The effect was magnified by the presence of a pair of leather goggles with big brass frames, of the kind a motorcyclist might have worn – if he'd been riding a 1885 Daimler Reitwagen. The goggles sat on his forehead, just above light grey eyebrows, the leather straps flattening a thin strip of his wild hair on either temple.

And Barrett had no feet.

His form hovered steadily above the floor.

‘Pandora English,' he said in a voice that was quieter than I'd expect. ‘Please allow me to introduce myself. I am Dr Edmund Barrett.'

My eyes jerked upwards again. I'd been staring at the air that kept his legs up.

He knows my name
, I thought.

He took a step forward. Yes, a step, as if he had feet where there were none.

‘Don't come any closer!' I said suddenly, feeling the strange chill I often felt in the presence of supernatural energy, and death. There was something I didn't like about Barrett. Something terrible that put me on edge.

Barrett lifted a finger to his lips. ‘Shhhh, you'll wake him,' he said quietly.

‘I'll wake . . .?'

Barrett looked sideways, seemingly to his shoulder, and it was then that I realised something was not right. Or rather, more was not right than I had first noticed. Barrett had no feet, but he appeared to have an extra nose.

At the back of his head.

Barrett flicked his eyes to his shoulder again, and I responded by taking very slow steps, walking around him to see what he was gesturing at. For his part, Barrett stood straight and stock still, urging me to investigate. ‘It seems I may have picked up a passenger,' he said quietly as I reached his side, keeping as much distance as I could. I was backed up against a dusty bookcase.

Oh. My. Goodness.

Barrett did indeed have a ‘passenger'. He – or it – was presently asleep and not exactly separate. Like Janus, the two-faced Roman god of transitions, doorways and time, Dr Edmund Barrett had a second face. At the moment that second face – actually it seemed like a whole separate head, or most of one – was sleeping. The head hung forward, eyes closed. What I could see of the terrible face was deeply wrinkled and withered, like a crone of a thousand years. Wild, dirty white hair hung over the features. I could not tell if it was male or female. I doubted it was even human. But it was certainly something powerfully sinister. I felt it immediately.

I tiptoed backwards and looked at Barrett with wide eyes. What could I say?

‘Is he quite unsightly?' he asked.

‘You've never met him?' I whispered.

‘No, nor seen him.'

‘Not even in a mirror?'

‘We do not appear in mirrors, Pandora English.'

And Sanguine did. Go figure. ‘When did – how did —' I stuttered.

‘I have travelled far, dear lady, to places you could not even imagine. Places beyond the borders of the reality I once knew. And somewhere in my travels, this one,' he said, and flicked his eyes again, ‘joined me. I don't think you will like him when he is awake.'

‘What happens then?' I ventured.

He shook his head gently.

The chill in the room was getting worse. My every supernatural sense was on high alert. Each instinct I possessed told me to leave that room, get as far away as I could, but this was Dr Edmund Barrett. It was his house. Who knew the secrets of the old mansion better than he? Had Barrett returned to claim his home? If he was still alive after all these years, was I merely a guest here, with Celia?

Or maybe he was not alive, if his body had been ashes and he was hovering like this in front of me and could not be seen in mirrors. What
was
he, exactly?

‘Have you been here the whole time?' I asked, backing towards the door I had come through.

‘Oh, no, no. I have not been to Spektor for one hundred years.'

My eyebrows shot up.

‘Pandora English, I have come back with a warning.'

I braced myself. There had been a lot of warnings lately and I really didn't like where this was headed – or
two-headed.

Ha ha, Pandora.
That was not even remotely funny. I was so darned nervous. Part of me wanted desperately to run out of that room and get back to the safety of the penthouse, but Barrett? With a warning? I had to hear him out. He seemed nice enough, though that thing on his back filled me with dread.

‘You have my skeleton key, I see. And you must by now know the significance of Spektor? Of this house?' Barrett said simply, clearly expecting me to understand what he meant.

It was
his
key. Of course. Barrett had made a special key for himself, so he could use all the hidden corridors in the house.

‘The significance of the house?'

I knew that this mansion at Number One Addams Avenue was the epicentre, of sorts, of a Manhattan suburb that did not appear on maps and happened to be inhabited by an unusual assortment of residents. A suburb that did not welcome strangers. A suburb that was invisible to most people. Celia had informed me that as ‘the Seventh' I was powerful and would therefore attract powerful forces. And I'd certainly done that. But the significance of Spektor? Of the house? I wasn't quite sure what he meant.

‘You know the reason I built this mansion here?' he pressed, waiting for me to make some kind of confirmation that I understood.

My great-aunt Celia had told me something about it being built in a way that helped focus supernatural energy, or at least that had been Barrett's theory in the design, supposedly. That's how she'd described it, though I knew nothing of the details.

‘You wanted a house to live in,' I said. ‘And a place to build your psychical laboratory. To do your experiments.'