The Medium (Emily Chambers Spirit Medium Trilogy #1) (10 page)

"I am?"
He grinned. Dazzled by his beautiful smile, my irritation disappeared and I
grinned back.

We walked side
by side to the Culvert house once more. Jacob took the steps up to the main
door then vanished. I suppose he'd reappeared on the other side where he could
keep a closer watch. I descended the other stairs that led down to the basement
entrance used by the servants, not the Culverts themselves. I knocked on the
door and a maid answered.

"Hello, I
went to the North London School for Domestic Service with Maree Finch. Is she
here? I need to speak to her."

It was a bold
lie and the maid, a middle-aged matronly woman in white cap and apron, looked
suspicious. "You friends wiv her?" she asked. I nodded. "Didn’t
fink the likes o’ her had friends."

"Yes, well,
can I see her? I’ll be brief," I added when she began to shake her head. "It’s
about…the passing of a favorite teacher."

The maid heaved
a sigh and asked me, grudgingly, to wait while she fetched her.

Jacob came in
behind me as Maree emerged from one of the rooms off the narrow hallway, her
hands buried in her apron again. She took one look at me and burst into tears.

"Leave me
be! I dunno nothin'!" she cried. She backed away as I stepped forward.

"It's all
right, Maree. I'm not going to hurt you. Please, just tell the truth and
everything will be all right. Tell me who made you steal the book."

She shook her
head. "No. No." Tears streamed down her face and her nose oozed a
thick green sludge. "Leave me be. Go away!"

"Maree—."

"I said go
away!" She ran at me, teeth bared, cap falling to once side. A knife in
her grasp.

She hadn't been
ringing her hands in her apron, she'd been polishing the blade.

I gasped and put
my arms up to cover my face.

"Emily!"
Jacob's shout sounded strange in my ears, not like him at all. High, strained.

Scared.

CHAPTER 5

Maree's knife
was inches from my face. I screamed, or maybe she did, and then I was shoved
aside by one of Jacob's big hands. I hit the wall and slid to the floor,
landing with a thud on my rear. My hat slid down over my eyes. Jacob removed it
and drew me into his arms. He supported my head with one hand and my back with
the other and held me against his solid chest. It felt good, safe
and...perfect. I closed my eyes and breathed deeply, telling myself I wasn't
unnerved by the lack of a pulse or warmth in his body.

I was completely
unhurt, of course, apart from a sore shoulder where I'd hit the wall, but Jacob
cradled me as if I were an injured kitten.

"Emily? Did
she cut you?" He brushed my hair off my forehead. All that violent
thrusting about had dislodged not only my hat but my hair from its pins. "Emily,
answer me!" His lips were so close I would have been able to feel his
breath on my cheek if he could breathe.

Or I could have
kissed him.

I wanted to kiss
him. Wanted to feel the softness of his lips even though I knew they would be
cool, tasteless, and it was a most improper thing for a young lady to do. I
didn't care. Blood pounded in my veins, rushed into my head, and I could think
of nothing but him. It was madness.

I was mad.

He massaged the
back of my neck and the cool strength of his fingers shocked me out of my daze.
I looked into his eyes but his gaze darted over my face, assessing, and he
didn't notice my scrutiny.

"Emily?"
My whispered name seemed to hover on his lips for an eternity.

I remembered I
hadn't yet answered him. "I'm well," I whispered.

His Adam's apple
bobbed furiously and a muscle high in his cheek throbbed. He nodded once, a
small movement that I would have missed if I hadn't been watching him so
closely. "Good," he said thickly. "Good, good." His eyes
suddenly shuttered. Where before they'd been wide and urgent, now they were
distant, cold. "Good," he said again, stronger this time.

He let me go,
quite unceremoniously, so that I almost fell to the floor a second time. "Jacob,
what's wrong?"

The maid who'd
let me in the door suddenly appeared. She put her hands to her cheeks and
gasped. "Oh lordy, lordy, lordy. Is you all right, miss?" She helped
me to my feet. "It was that girl's fault, weren't it? I knew she was
trouble, I did. Told Mrs. Crouch the 'ousekeeper to watch out for her. Gone has
she?"

"Uh, yes. Thank
you." I watched Jacob climb the stairs up to the street outside. "Please
don't tell your master about this," I said to the maid. "Just tell
him Maree decided to leave his employment."

"What's all
the fuss about down there?" came a woman's voice from the back of the
service area. "Who's making all that noise?"

"Mrs.
Crouch," the maid said to me.

I hurriedly
thanked her again, picked up my hat, and left before the housekeeper arrived. Outside,
Jacob was waiting at the top of the stairs.

"Are you
all right?" I asked him quietly so as not to alarm anyone within earshot.

He stared off
into the distance. "I think that's my line." When I didn't answer
him, he turned to me. "Well?
Are
you all right?"

"Is that a
genuine question?" I started walking, wanting to put distance between
myself and the Culvert house. "It's difficult to tell considering the way
you dropped me in there."

We rounded the
corner and a policeman in uniform stepped out of the recessed doorway of a
coffee house and into my path, startling me. "Everything all right, miss?"
He looked over my head, saw no one, and raised his eyebrows. "Who you speaking
to then, eh?"

"Is there a
law against talking to myself, constable?" I didn't want to deal with him.
I was still mad at Jacob although it struck me how selfish my own feelings were
on the matter. He'd rescued me and I should be grateful. I
was
grateful.

The policeman's
eyebrows rose further, almost disappearing into his tall helmet. "Er, not
that I know of. Good afternoon, miss."

I walked off, Jacob
at my side. "I'll take that as meaning you're perfectly well," he
said, picking up our conversation.

"A little
shaken," I said quietly in case anyone else was lurking in doorways. "But
otherwise unscathed. Thanks to you. I owe you my life, Jacob."

His pause
weighed heavily between us. I tried to look at him out of the corner of my eye
but only saw his profile, staring ahead. "Don't," he finally said.

"Don't
what?"

"Don't talk
about it. Anyone would have done the same thing."

That may be so,
but why did he sound so upset? Not angry, just... I sighed. I couldn't even
pinpoint the emotions simmering off him let alone determine their reason. Nor
did I think I'd get an answer out of him. His face was closed up tight.

So I started a
new thread of conversation, a safer one. "Did you see where Maree went?"

He shook his
head. "She was gone by the time I reached the street."

If he'd run
after her immediately, he might have seen the direction she took, but he'd
stayed with me to see if I was all right. No matter how hard I tried, I
couldn't be sorry about that.

"Who do you
think she stole the book for?" I asked.

He shrugged. "Who
knows? Her brother, a friend, or just because she liked the look of it and
thought it would fetch a good price. Whoever it was, there's a good chance they
were the ones who cursed the amulet, or will know who did. We have to find
them."

I nodded. "I'm
not sure if our research can help us there though. George and I learned that
the demon was well known to gypsies across Europe. They used to summon it then direct
it to destroy their enemies, or the horses of their enemies."

"So we can
strike gypsies off our list of suspects."

"Why?"

"Gypsies
pass down their customs through the generations by word of mouth. They won't
need a book to tell them how to summon a shape-shifting demon."

The street grew
busier as we drew closer to the Kings Road precinct so we strolled in silence although
my mind was in turmoil. I was still a little shaken by the incident with Maree,
and even more shaken by the knowledge that someone was directing a demon based
on whatever knowledge they could gain from one book.

But there was
something even more troubling. No, not troubling as such, but it occupied my
thoughts almost to the exclusion of all else. "George told me about your
family," I said to Jacob eventually. We were only a block away from my
house and I didn't know when we'd have a chance to speak so openly to one
another again. I'd expected Jacob to disappear and let me walk home alone but
he'd remained by my side the entire time. Was he still worried about the
incident with Maree? Did he expect me to faint out of fright at any moment?

He said nothing,
so I went on. "Not that George knew much, but he did tell me they're
very...distressed about your death because your body was never found, you see,
so they can't have peace." I was rambling, the words tumbling out of my
mouth without me thinking them through first. I was afraid that if I did think
about them, I wouldn't say anything, and I desperately wanted to broach the
topic with Jacob. It seemed vital somehow, but to whom, I wasn't sure. Him? Or
me? Or his family?

"That isn't
your concern, Emily," he said, striding ahead. I had to walk fast to keep
up with him. His legs were very long.

"Nevertheless,
I am concerned. I'd like your permission to speak to them—."

"No!"

"But I can
help them move on. They need to know you're dead, Jacob, or they'll be forever
wondering."

"Leave it,
Emily. You're not..." He heaved a deep sigh. "This is not your
concern."

"But—"

"No!" He
stopped and rounded on me so that I almost bumped into him.

I ducked into a
nearby alley where we could talk without the stares. I was about to argue but
then I saw anxiety behind the fierceness in his eyes.

Why? What about
his family worried him so? Or perhaps the real question was, what was it about
me
meeting them had him so concerned?

What would I
learn?

"Very well.
I understand." I couldn't meet his eyes as I spoke. I fully intended to visit
them, but not today. Today I had a séance to conduct.

I started
walking again and he fell into step beside me. "There's one other question
I want to ask you."

He groaned. "I
had a feeling there would be."

"Did your
death come about due to an accident?"

"Not an
accident, no."

My stomach
knotted. Even though it was the answer I expected it sickened me to hear him
confirm my suspicions. "So someone must have...killed you." The word
stuck in my throat. It was simply too horrible. "Who?"

"I don't
know."

I stopped. He
stopped too and shrugged. "I don't," he said.

I believed him. "How
did it happen?"

"I'm not
entirely sure."

I waited but he
didn't say anything else. "Would you like to elaborate?"

"Not right
now."

Good lord it was
like pulling out a rotten tooth—painful. "I see. So your body is located...?"

"I don't
know."

"Right. So
you don't know who killed you, or how, or where or even why. Do you think any
of those things is the reason why you can go wherever you please and why you
look decidedly real?"

His gaze fixed
on something over my shoulder and I thought he wouldn't answer me, but then he
said, "I think they have something to do with the way in which I died,
yes."

"So...do
you want to tell me more?"

He looked at me with
those blue, blue eyes and darkly forbidding expression that thrilled me yet
unnerved me at the same time. "Perhaps another day," he said.

If he thought a
few simmering glances would deter me, he had a lot to learn. "Why not now?"

He started
walking again. "Because I think you'll take it upon yourself to find out
more if I do. Give a dog a bone and it'll look for a second when that's gone."

I squinted at
him. "Are you comparing me to a dog?"

"When your
hair tumbles over your eyes like that, you do look a little like an Old English
sheepdog."

I swept my hair
off my forehead and tried to shove it under my hat but without the pins to keep
it in place, it simply fell out again. He laughed.

"This isn't
funny, Jacob. We're discussing your death."

"Which we
haven't got time for at the moment, not with a demon on the loose."

I couldn't argue
with him since he was right. Despite the lack of time, however, I would still
try, even without his help. He might not want to discover who his murderer was,
but he or she had to be punished. Jacob's death could not be swept aside as if
it didn't matter. It mattered.