Climate Change: A Nina Bannister Mystery (The Nina Bannister Mysteries Book 7) (14 page)

“Down with Philadelphia!”

Then, the small reed-like voice of white-haired Rebeccah Thornwhipple, who had seated herself at the front table:

“I was in Philadelphia once. I didn’t like it.”

Harriet Crossman smiled down at her:

“Of course, you didn’t.”

“I just wanted to come home.”

The same smile from Harriet.

Other supporting smiles from around the room.

“And you did come home, didn’t you?”

“Yes, I did.”

“And there, living in that small town, you created your heroine. Sally Maplewhite, who has solved eleven murders in the past two years, despite being ninety-three years old and confined twenty-four hours a day to an iron lung.”

“Hoorray!”

“Way to go, Rebeccah!”

“Way to go, Sally!”

Thunderous applause.

Finally, Harriet:

“And yes, we admit, Rebeccah, that even among ourselves we have some disagreement. Several of your manuscripts we did have to reject as candidates for AGCW’s Novel of the Year Award because of the intense nature of their erotic content.”

The reed-like voice again:

“Ninety year olds can be horny too. And if the iron lung is big enough––”

A shake of Harriet Crossman’s head stopped the argument.

“But enough of this for now. In our major morning session, as well as in our breakout session, we shall allow all voices to be heard. But now it’s getting late. We’ve had a wonderful meal––and I think we should all give a huge round of applause to our hostess, the proprietor of The Candles—Ms. Margot Gavin!”

There was, in fact, a thunderous round of applause, and Margot could almost be seen to blush as she took her place at the podium and signaled for quiet.

Nina had no idea what Margot was going to say, but she was not at all surprised at the aplomb and confidence which her friend showed with even her first words. This was Margot Gavin at the microphone—tall, striking, highly articulate, and experienced in public speaking.

She said all the right things.

Then she went farther, and delved a bit into the history of Candles.

Then she went farther still.

She signaled for the lights to be lowered in the dining room, and when they were, she told the story of Sarah Morgan.

“You are all spending the next few days in a haunted plantation house!” she began, and she followed up with what Nina thought was a dramatic, detailed, and immensely moving account of burning-haired Sarah, who had perished in flames, and who still continued to haunt The Candles, refusing ever to leave, and appearing each time the plantation changed hands.

The room was silent after Margot finished.

She gestured for the lights in the room to be turned up again.

All of the cozy writers had their heads on the tables and were sound asleep.

All except Rebeccah Thornwhipple, who stood up, walked to the podium, and said, neck craning to look up at Margot:

“It was a good story, my dear. But it was a ghost story. It wasn’t a cozy.”

With that, the writers began to wake up.

In ten minutes the room was empty.

Margot’s staff was as good at cleaning as they were at cooking, and there was very little left for Nina to do in the latter part of her evening except retire to her room, read (she read a Raymond Chandler novel, perhaps out of a strange sense of cozy defiance) and began, shortly after ten o’clock, to think about dozing off.

She was prevented from doing this by a knock at the door.

She got out of bed, crossed the room, opened her door, and stared somewhat groggily at two women who stood before her.

“Yes?”

“You’re Ms. Bannister?”

“I am.”

“And you’re a friend of Ms. Gavin?”

“Yes.”

“Then we need to talk to you. It’s terribly important.”

“All right; come in.”

“No.”

“What?”

“We can’t. We can’t come in.”

The pair before her were an odd coupling. One was precisely twice as tall as the other, who came up barely to her belt. They were dressed in fringed leather vests, brightly-colored patchwork maxi-skirts, beads, bandanas, and other late Sixties regalia, making them appear to have stepped out of time and been shooped back half a century or so.

Though they were obviously a couple, they did not finish each other’s sentences as the Hersheys had done. Rather, they spoke in short, distinct phrases, one at a time. After each phrase had been uttered, they looked around, three hundred and sixty degrees, up, down, in, out—as though worried that something invisible, hanging in the air, was about to spring into visibility and attack both of them.

“My name is Ruby Smathers.”

Look around, look up, look down––

“And my name is Lacy Smathers.”

Look over there! Look up there!

Nothing?

Well, not obviously.

Which is, after all, the most that any of us can ever say.

“Our cats are Mephisto,” said Ruby the Tall, “and Lestat. You will get to meet them tomorrow.”

“I look forward to it.”

Lacy took two steps up the hall and stared at the doorway leading to the stairs.

Apparently nothing was there.

She retraced the two steps, then looked Nina up and down and said, quietly:

“If you survive the night.”

Nina thought about that for a time, decided perhaps that
she
should look around her for a bit, and then responded:

“I beg your pardon?”

Both women looked at each other, then looked over each other’s shoulder.

Some unseen force prompted Lacy the Short to break from their phrase-by-phrase formula and speak at length.

“We’re cozy writers. We write the Hazeltine Winters mysteries. Hazeltine is a retired psychic who lives in a small cute coastal town in Massachusetts.”

“I see.”

“There was some trouble with the Guild, since our original town, Emerald Bay, had more than four thousand people. Harriet and several others said that we were treading dangerously near suburbia, so we had to change it. But that isn’t the worst.”

This was as much as either of the two sisters ever spoke without a thorough examination of the ether. This was done, along with a bit of smelling, and Ruby the Tall continued the tale:

“The worst is that we have a secret life, which we’re trying to hide from the Guild.”

“A secret life?”

“Both nodded, and both spoke simultaneously.

“WE WRITE PARANORMAL ROMANCES!”

This was said with approximately the same degree of guilt that might have accompanied the phrase:
 
“We molest small children.”

And it was followed by the original ‘phrase by phrase be careful what creature is listening and what crevice it might leap from’ format.

“We write them for a different publisher.”

Look here, look there!

“But if Harriet would find out, she would still be upset. She wants the Guild’s authors to maintain a kind of genre purity.”

Is there something over there?

What about behind Nina, back in the middle of the room?

No?

Well, not
now
anyway.

But that window––

“At any rate, our heroine—or Trope as we say in the business—is a vampire.”

“And our Alpha is a Werewolf.”

I must be dreaming this,
thought Nina.

But no, the two women were there.

And nothing else was.

Despite the constant squints, stares, and investigations.

“We were the first to write about inter-creature sexual intercourse.”

“But we can write these stories because we––well, we’re different.”

Oh really
, Nina found herself thinking.

But don’t be sarcastic.

That would accomplish nothing.

“We are ourselves psychic.”

“We sense the presence of––well, of creatures unseen by everyone else.”

“That’s why we were so interested in your friend’s story tonight.”

“You mean,” said Nina, “the tale of Sarah Morgan?”

“Yes! The other writers all went to sleep.”

“Margot and I noticed that.”

“Yes, that’s because it’s not really a cozy, you know.”

“I know.”

“To be a cozy it has to––”

“I’m becoming aware,” said Nina, “of what makes a cozy.”

“But we, being aware of the spiritual world as we are, were
very
interested, because––”

Lacy stood on her tiptoes before she continued; Ruby, listening hard and still looking around for hidden presences, scrunched down as though to be better grounded.

“Well, from the moment we entered The Candles we sensed the presence of the Beyond Earthly!”

“You mean a ghost?” asked Nina.

“Yes. Yes, definitely. But it’s more complicated than that, much more!”

“How?”

Ruby took over the narrative, unscrunching a bit as she did so, thus allowing Lacy to come down from tiptoes, so as to maintain the two-woman height ratio that previously had been established.

“Sarah Morgan is here. Perhaps in the very room where you are sleeping. That’s why we can’t go in there—she would sense our awareness of her presence, and be resentful. The spirits don’t appreciate mortals who show awareness of their presence.”

“But Ms. Bannister,” Lacy continued, “Sarah Morgan is not your chief worry.”

“No?”

“No, Sarah is a benevolent presence. She wishes only to remain in her beloved home. No, there are other presences in Candles. We feel them constantly about us.”

Ruby:

“And these presences are quite a different thing entirely.”

“How? In what way?”

“They are demonic presences. Monstrous incarnations. They are evil, Ms. Bannister. And terribly dangerous!”