Ghost of a Chance (21 page)

She gave a little startled yelp when I
yanked the door open. “
Deus!
You made me apport!”

“Out,” I said, jerking my thumb toward the
stairs.

She scooped up the couple of shiny black
stones and tucked them away before picking up the flashlight she’d
been using to light her journal. “I’m busy. Go away.”

“And I’m exhausted, my husband has been
killed, and I think I’m getting crampy, so if I were you, I’d get
moving.
Now
.”

“Move where?” she snapped, getting to her
feet. “Where am I supposed to go? All the rooms are taken.”

“You’re going upstairs with me. Adam has
given us an attic room.”

I gave her a little shove in the direction
of the narrow flight of stairs at the landing. Adam looked up as we
passed.

“Found her, I see.”

“Yes. Thank you for your help. Morbidia will
apologize for causing so much trouble in the morning.”

“
Deus!
It’s
Misericordia!
Is
it so much to ask that people remember what my
name
is? And
what do you mean we’re going to share a room? Do you expect me to
sleep
with you? Are you some sort of psycho-lesbian? I’m
not
sleeping with you! I refuse to sleep at all! I just want
to be left alone so I can write my
poems
!”

She stomped up the small stairs with a
mutinous look on her face. I summoned a feeble smile for Adam.

“Get some rest,” he said.

“I will. Sleep sounds heavenly right now.” I
walked slowly up the stairs, pausing midway to look down on him. He
stood half in shadow, his pale eyes oddly illuminated, as if lit
from within. “Things will look better in the morning, right?”

He grimaced, flipping off the light, and his
bodiless voice emerged from the inky darkness. “I’ve always found
they look worse.”

The yelling didn’t wake me up a few hours
later, but Pixie kindly remedied that.

“Karma, wake
up
! Meredith is
yelling
! He says he’s
dying
!
Deus
, why won’t
you wake up?”

I opened one very sleepy eye to squint at
her kneeling on the bed, shaking my shoulder in an attempt to rouse
me. “I thought you said you’d sooner have hot pokers shoved under
your fingernails than be on the same bed as me.”

She whumped me on the arm. “This is an
emergency! Someone tried to kill Meredith.”

“Too bad they didn’t succeed.” I snuggled
into the pillow and tried to go back to sleep, but I knew in my
heart of hearts that it wasn’t going to happen.

“You have to get out there!” She gave me one
last shove, then jumped off the bed and ran out of the room. I
rolled over and sat up to peer with blurry eyes at my watch. It was
early morning now, the sun up, but just barely. I’d gotten all of
three hours’ sleep.

“Karma!”

“All right, all right, I’m coming.” I
grumbled to myself as I got out of bed and staggered to the stairs.
“Although I don’t see why I have to get up. If Meredith is yelling,
he’s not actually dead, so where’s the hurry?”

“Morticia, did you—Oh, there you are,
honey.” My father smiled when he caught sight of me.

“Misericordia!”

“You better come down. There’s been some
trouble with that murdering bastard Meredith.”

“My name is Misericordia! It’s not Morticia
or Morbidia or Mephistopheles! It’s Misericordia! Cheese on toast,
people! Why can’t you remember that?”

I clutched the banisters to keep from
plunging headlong down the narrow staircase. Dad slid me a quick
look. “You look like hell. Didn’t you get any rest?”

“Why does
everyone
feel the need to
tell me just how awful I look?” I asked, straightening my
shoulders.

“We care,” Dad said, giving me a little pat
before hurrying down the hallway to where several people were
gathered around the bathroom door.

“Aha! I knew it! You didn’t think I’d find
this, did you?” Meredith’s voice bellowed from the bathroom,
quickly followed by the man himself. He shoved a small bottle under
Adam’s nose. “Tell me I’m imagining it now!”

“What’s going on?” I asked, peering over
Adam’s shoulder. He was holding the small green bottle up to the
light. The label on it read SYRUP OF IPECAC.

“Someone tried to poison me, as if you don’t
know,” Meredith snapped. I frowned at him. He was always snapping
at someone, usually me.

“You have some serious anger issues,” I
said. “I’m thinking therapy is in order.”

“Or a hammer upside the head,” my father
offered.

Meredith glared at both of us. He did
that
a lot, too. “Why don’t you just admit you tried to
poison me?”

“Me?” I hoped I looked as surprised by the
accusation as I felt. “I was sleeping. What’s been happening?”

“Someone tried to poison me! That stuff was
in the bottle of whiskey I brought up to bed with me. I damned near
barfed my guts up. I could have been killed!”

“It’s an emetic. I think all it can do is
make you vomit,” Adam said with such calmness I couldn’t help
giving him a little smile. He acknowledged it with a brief nod.

“You take enough of anything, and it’ll kill
you,” Meredith said darkly, his face flushed. “Someone here tried
to kill me, dammit! I demand you do something!”

“What would you suggest?” Adam asked,
pocketing the ipecac.

“You’re the police! Do your job! Figure out
who tried to kill me, and turn ’em over to the real cops!”

“I don’t deny that someone somewhere may
want to poison you, but why would you imagine one of us would want
to do so now?” I asked, waving my hands around at everyone gathered
in the hallway. Savannah, strangely silent, stood with her arms
wrapped tightly around herself. Antony stood next to her, wearing a
minuscule pair of fishnet briefs, while Jules was clad in scarlet
silk pajamas that made my mouth water. Amanita peeped out every now
and again from her slightly opened door. “We’re trapped here for
another four hours or so. It doesn’t make sense that anyone would
be so stupid as to attack you now.”

Meredith’s mouth opened and shut a couple of
times while he tried to work up an answer. Finally, he sputtered,
“I know what I know, and I know that someone tried to poison
me!”

Some peacekeeping urge drove me to try to
point out the ill reasoning of that statement. “You were fine when
you went upstairs, right?”

Grudgingly, he admitted that was so.

“Have you been drinking the last few hours,
or did you go to sleep?”

“Not that it’s any of your damned business,
but I dozed on and off a bit. I woke up a few minutes ago, puking
all over myself.”

“Ew!” Pixie said softly.

“Which means that the whiskey couldn’t have
been poisoned while it was downstairs,” I said, yawning. “I think
you’ll find everyone was asleep for the last couple of hours. I was
upstairs, in a room with Pixie all night.”

“I slept on the chair! We weren’t in bed
together!” she said quickly, brows pulled tight in her perpetual
scowl.

“My father roomed with Jules and Tony,
right?”

The three of them nodded. Dad, who had the
most innocent expression on his face, trailed apports.

“Oh yes, he was with us,” Tony said. “He
slept on the divan in our room. We wanted him to take our bed, but
he wouldn’t hear of it.”

“No reason to put anyone out,” Dad said
quickly with a weak smile. I turned a look on him that had the
smile melting away to nothing.

“I was alone,” Savannah said slowly. “But I
was sleeping. All this has been so trying…” Her hands fluttered for
a moment, then dropped.

“After you puke your guts up because someone
has attempted to poison you, then we’ll talk about what
so
trying
is,” her husband replied before narrowing his eyes at
Adam. “And just where were you?”

“Sleeping.” Adam’s face gave nothing
away.

“Sleeping where? Isn’t that your room she
came out of?” Meredith asked, pointing at Savannah.

“Yes.”

Meredith swaggered over to Adam, or
swaggered as best someone who’d just spent a session praying to the
porcelain god could. “So just where were you?”

A click had us all turning to look at
Amanita’s door. Speculation was rife in everyone’s eyes as we
looked back at Adam.

His color was high, as if he was blushing.
“My whereabouts aren’t a concern, since I didn’t put ipecac in your
drink. In fact, I’m inclined to believe no one did… No one but you,
that is.”

“Jesus, Mary, and Joseph! If I wanted to
kill myself, I’d sure as hell have a nicer way of doing it than
poisoning!”

“I agree. Which makes it clear to me that
this so-called poisoning was really an attempt at gaining pity. No
doubt you thought to avert suspicion on yourself by making it seem
like the murderer was attacking you.”

“And I say you all did this together! You’ve
set me up as a scapegoat, and now you’re trying to get rid of me
before the police prove just how trumped up and ridiculous the
evidence is against me! Well, no more! I’m not going to eat or
drink anything else in this madhouse until the police come to
rescue me!” Meredith shoved Adam aside, stomped through the
bathroom to the door adjoining his room, and slammed it without a
backward glance at us.

I pinned my father back with a look. “I’d
like to have a word with you, Dad.”

“No time now,” he said, whisking past me
toward the main stairs. “I promised Jules I’d make my world-famous
bacon omelet. Must get started.”

I grabbed his arm before he could get out of
reach, spinning him around and pushing him toward the smaller
flight of stairs, leading upward. “I would
like
a
word
.”

“Karma! I am your father! There is no need
for you to manhandle me in this fashion!”

“Oh, I think there’s every need,” I said,
pushing him into my room. To my surprise, Pixie, Adam, and Savannah
followed us.

“Oooh, pretty,” Savannah said, picking up
something from the floor. She held out her hand. A couple of my
dad’s apports lay on it next to two shiny black stones. “Is it
hematite?”

“No. Those are from Pixie. Er…
Misericordia
.
” I raised both eyebrows at my father. I knew
the signs, knew he wouldn’t be able to stand my unwavering stare
for long.

My room was small to begin with, and now,
filled with people, the space in which he could move was
nonexistent. He tried to pace, tried to avoid my persistent stare,
but it was no good, and he knew it. With a small cry, he finally
collapsed onto the bed, his hands covering his eyes. “All right!
You win! Now let me get out of here before I go crazy!”

“Not until you answer a couple of
questions.” I glanced at Adam. He looked confused for a moment;
then his eyes widened with comprehension. “Why did you try to
poison Meredith?”

“What makes you think I’m the one who…” Dad
took one look at me and slumped into a miserable blob of polter. “I
wasn’t trying to poison him. I just wanted to make him a little
sick. You can’t kill someone with ipecac. If I had wanted to kill
him, I certainly would have used something else.”

There was that. The way Meredith had been
slugging back the whiskey, it would have been laughably easy for
Dad to slip something a little less benign into his glass while he
was napping.

“He has a point, damn him,” Adam said to
me.

I nodded. “All right, I’m willing to absolve
you from attempted murder, but that doesn’t excuse you for
poisoning Meredith’s drink with ipecac.”

“He deserved it,” Dad answered with a sullen
look on his face.

“He deserves a lot more, but that’s not the
issue.” I remembered too late that Savannah was in the room and,
while apparently on the outs with her husband, probably didn’t
appreciate the plain speaking going on. “I’m sorry to have to say
that in front of you, Savannah.”

She shrugged. “I see now that it’s true. The
scales have fallen from my eyes with regards to Meredith. He’s not
the man I married. He’s… changed. And I don’t like it.”

“That seems to happen a lot to people,” I
said, thinking of the way Spider had changed the last few years.
“Still, it was wrong of me to say that so abruptly, and wrong for
my father to get his jollies at your husband’s expense.”

“Oh, don’t give me any crap about not being
judge and jury,” Dad suddenly said, getting quickly to his feet. “I
won’t buy it, not from you. You know full well if I didn’t do it,
you would have.”

I opened my mouth to protest, but Adam
stepped in. “I think we’ve said everything that needs to be said.
Matthew, I will have to charge you with malicious mischief for the
attack against Meredith.”

With lightning quickness customary to
full-blooded polters, Dad’s countenance changed from accusatory to
mischievous. “It was worth it,” he said, grinning and rubbing his
hands together. “Did you hear him puking up his guts? Music to my
ears.”

“You are in trouble with me, too, buster,” I
said, pointing a finger at him.

“Shakin’ in my boots, honey. Shakin’ in my
boots.”

“I suppose it’s too late to try to get any
more rest,” Adam said, consulting his watch. “The boys are probably
starting breakfast. Shall we go downstairs?”

“She talks to you just like she does to me,”
Pixie said to my father as the two went out the door. “Is she
always this bossy?”

“Always. Has been ever since she was a
little girl. She gets that from her mother’s side, you know…”

Their voices faded as they tromped
downstairs. Savannah murmured a desire to wash up before breakfast,
quickly heading for the bathroom.

Adam and I were left alone in the room.

“I’m sorry about my father,” I said after a
moment of silence. “I don’t blame him for what he did, but I don’t
condone it, and I certainly didn’t encourage him to do it. It does,
however, bring up an interesting point.”