Possession (7 page)

"I might
not be mad, but I am different."

His gaze met
mine. "Yes," he murmured. "You are."

A fist slammed
into my stomach, or so it felt. He didn't have to agree with me. Didn't he know
how much I hated being different? He should if he knew me at all.

I trotted after
him, his long strides making it difficult to catch up. When I was alongside
him, he didn't look at me but straight ahead. We turned off the main
thoroughfare and down a smaller residential street. It was quieter and I could
speak to him freely without worry of being overheard. "Why are you
avoiding me?" I asked.

"I'm not. I'm
here. You're here. That's not avoidance."

"You won't
look at me."

He looked at me.
Briefly.

"Look at me
properly."

"I need to
see where I'm going."

I sighed. "Does
this have something to do with what we just learned about me from George's
book?"

He frowned. "No.
Why would it?"

I shrugged. Perhaps
his behavior had nothing to do with my ancestry. After all, he'd been acting
distant ever since his return the day before. It was likely he was simply
avoiding me because he wanted to end any feelings between us, so we could both
move on.

I preferred that
explanation to the alternative—that his infatuation was drawing to an end.
That
possibility was too horrible to think about.

"Emily, did
you see anyone with the little girl when my sister became possessed?"

The change of
topic threw me and I took a moment to gather my thoughts. "No, but I saw
her earlier with a man. He was tying her shoelace and I didn't see his face. I
assume they are the ones who've been following me lately."

"But why
follow
you
? And why possess Adelaide?" Jacob huffed in frustration.
"I suppose we'll learn soon enough when we locate Arbuthnot."

"How will
you find him?"

He shrugged. "I'll
try some pubs, but London is huge and without knowing who the spirit is, it's
impossible to know where he might choose to go."

I drew in a deep
breath and let it out slowly. Our task ahead was daunting, but I had something
else on my mind. "Wallace Arbuthnot almost told us about Frederick before
he became possessed. He said he was indeed dead, which is a start, but now
we'll have to find someone else to help us. Your mother could write a letter to
Oxford, but I don't think she wants to do that just yet."

"No,"
he said quietly. He dug his hands in his trouser pockets. "Let's find
Arbuthnot first and worry about Frederick later."

I didn't answer
him. Part of me wanted Jacob to crossover, and I felt that solving the mystery
of his murder would be the key to his moving on. But a very large part wanted
him to stay here, with me. Perhaps it was selfish but it was the truth.

He paused at the
intersection with Druids Way, almost at the same spot where the girl had
summoned the spirit. "Emily?" I glanced up at him. He was looking down
at me, his blue eyes bright but soft, warm. When he looked at me like that I
felt like I was the most beautiful girl in the world. I could achieve anything,
endure anything. "Emily, are you all right? That book...what you learned...it's
a lot to consider."

I nodded and
tried to smile. "I'm fine. It feels so far removed from me, like it's not
about me at all." It was difficult to explain and in the end I simply
shrugged. "The book answered some questions I had but threw up many more."

"I
understand."

"Do you
think a single tribal family had the ability to see the dead?"

He leaned
against the iron fence of the corner house. A strong breeze ruffled his hair
and flattened my skirt against my legs. The air smelled fresher in Druids Way
thanks to the constant wind flushing out the soot. "It's plausible,"
he said.

The chapter had stated
that only the females of the family could be mediums, but they did not pass the
ability onto their children. It was the males who were responsible for perpetuating
the talent down the family lineage. Their daughters inherited it and became
mediums themselves, but their
sons
passed it along to
their
daughters and so on.

The tribe's
unusual power became known to Europeans once exploration expanded in the fifteenth
and sixteenth centuries, but even then it remained little more than a myth. During
the later centuries, it seemed the tribe was almost wiped out from disease and
slavery, although it was rumored many escaped due to their women's ability to
cleverly summon ghosts to scare the slave traders away. For a while the tribe was
thought to be lost, the family having died out.

But I knew
differently. I was one of them. Very, very distantly if the lightness of my
skin was an indication, but still one of them.

"That
girl..." I said. "She might be...my sister."

"It's likely."

The ground
shifted and I clutched the fence rail next to Jacob for balance. He touched my
hand with his cool fingers. The simple gesture was more comforting than
anything he could have said.

"We must
find her," I said.

He squeezed my
hand. "We will. Don't worry."

***

I did not
question Celia until after supper. I tried plying her with an extra glass of
wine but, frugal as ever, she refused. On to plan B, the direct approach. With
the addition of compliments.

"Your
performance today was wonderful," I said. We sat in the small parlor that
we used when it was just the two of us. The fire burned low, its warmth enough
to reach even the furthest corners of the room. Lucy had not yet joined us after
finishing her chores, but she soon might and I did not want to have this
conversation with her present. She was flighty enough as it was.

"Thank you,
Em," Celia said, taking up her embroidery. She leaned closer to the lamp
burning on the table beside where she sat in a well-worn armchair. I sat in the
matching chair on the other side of the table, an open book on my lap. "It
was a pleasant séance today, if a little sad. Mrs. Krump seemed to be much
loved by her family."

"Indeed. And
you made them all feel joyful about their elderly mother moving on. It was most
ably and compassionately done. I have so much to learn from you."

She lowered her
work and narrowed her eyes at me. "Would you like to ask me what is on
your mind now, or do you have more compliments to pay me? Because I'm quite
open to them, you know."

I gave her a
withering glare and she smiled ruefully. "Very well, let me get to the
point. I learned some things today at George Culvert's library."

She picked up
her embroidery. "Oh?"

"I learned
that I am descended from an African tribe."

She dropped her
cloth, needle and all, and stared open-mouthed at me. She said nothing, but as
I told her all that I'd read in
Beyond The Grave
, her face became paler
until it was so white and pinched I thought she might faint. I knelt before her
and took her hand. It was cold.

"Celia? Are
you all right?"

"I...I...what
you say...is it true?"

"I hoped
you could tell me."

"I
can't," she whispered. "I can't tell you anything."

I sighed. "I
think you can. You know who my father was."

"
Our
father was a good man. He loved Mama—"

"Stop
it!" I pushed her hand away and stood. "Stop it, Celia. Your father
and mine are not the same person. I am seventeen and I am no fool, so stop
treating me like a child!"

She blinked up
at me. Her eyes were dry but dazed and distant. "You have grown up,
haven't you?" She sounded surprised. "It's happened so slowly. I
hadn't noticed until now."

"Then it's
high time you told me all you know about my father. I deserve honesty."

"I suppose
you do." She indicated I should sit back down then took up her embroidery
again. Her hands shook. "He was indeed darker than most, a shade or two
more than you, but I did not know of his African origins."

"Did
Mama?"

She lifted one
shoulder. "She may have."

"Go on."

Again the
shoulder-shrug. "There's not much more to tell. Shortly after my Papa
died, Louis, that was his name, came to work at his father's High Street grocery
shop."

"Which
one?"

"Mr. Graves
now runs it."

I knew the shop
and nodded at her to go on.

"There was
so little money after Papa died that we had to let our maid go and do all the shopping
on our own. Louis saw us struggling with our packages and offered to carry them
home for us one day. Mama had been working so hard and I immediately accepted his
offer even though she refused. He took it upon himself to listen to me and not
her and carried our things. He refused our attempts to pay him.

"He was
there the following week too and did the same, then the week after and the week
after. We began to expect him to be present whenever we shopped and looked
forward to his smiling face and friendly manner. He put us at ease with his
chatter and charm and..." Her voice trailed off but her fingers sped up,
pulling the thread so hard I thought it would break. "He was quite
handsome too."

"So you
became friends. Is that why Mama fell in love with him?"

She did not look
up at me but kept stabbing the needle into the cloth with such fervor I began
to worry she might stick her finger instead and bleed all over her lovely work.
"I suppose so."

So my father was
kind and generous. That at least was good news. Although it did seem strange
that my mother would fall in love with another man, no matter how charming,
mere months after losing her beloved husband. Perhaps she'd been lonely. "So
who was Louis? What was his full name and where did his family come from?"

She drew in a
deep breath and it seemed to steady her hand. "I know little of his
family. I don't even know his last name. As I said, his father ran a grocery at
the time. I hadn't seen Louis there before although I'd shopped there often
with the maid. Louis simply appeared one day at a time when we needed him most.
He was a bright spot in our otherwise saddened lives."

I sat back and
regarded my sister. She seemed to think her tale finished, but I had more
questions. "So what happened to Louis? Where did he go and why did he
leave after Mama became pregnant with his child?"

Even with her
head bent I could tell she winced. I knew how babies were made, but Celia had
never liked that I knew, preferring to think of me as an innocent on that
matter. "He left before the pregnancy became known."

"So why
didn't Mama contact him? Did he not leave an address so she could write to him
and tell him?"

"He went to
the colony of New South Wales."

I gasped. "But
that's on the other side of the world!"

"It is. But
there was no life for Louis here. London doesn't like people who are...different."

I could vouch
for that. "Why New South Wales?"

"There were
opportunities there. Our government had a scheme whereby they paid the
traveling costs of able-bodied people who wanted to move to the colonies. He
applied and was accepted. He promised to send for us when he was settled, but
we never heard from him again."

He could even be
dead. An unexpected lump lodged in my throat and I couldn't swallow past it.

"We visited
his father at the shop some time after you were born," Celia went on. She
was rigid, her back as straight as a plank of wood, her eyes focused on her
embroidery that she continued to work with alarming intensity. "We wanted
to know if he'd heard from Louis. The old man said he'd received a letter in
which Louis stated he no longer wished to have anything to do with his past
life in London. He had made a new beginning in New South Wales and wanted
nothing to...to ruin it." She held her embroidery at arm's length and
studied it, her eyes bright in the lamplight. "There. Very pretty, don't
you think?"

"Louis...my
father...he never wrote to Mama? He never came back?"

She packed her needle
and thread away in the basket. "Why would he? It sounds like he was quite
content with New South Wales. He didn't need the things he'd left behind."

Tears stung the
backs of my eyes. My poor mother. "You did tell the old man about me,
didn't you? I was his granddaughter after all."

"No. He...unnerved
us. Mama and I never liked him. He had a strange way of looking at us, like he
never trusted us. Perhaps he was so used to the prejudice that he could not
identify kindness and friendship when it was genuine." She looked up as
Lucy entered with a tray of tea things. "Ah," Celia said, cheerful,
"perfect timing. A good cup of tea is just what I need."

I watched as
Lucy poured the tea for each of us, including herself. My sister sipped then
began a conversation with Lucy about the following day's meals. I hardly heard
them. I was disappointed at first to have our conversation cut off prematurely,
but I quickly changed my mind.