The Medium (Emily Chambers Spirit Medium Trilogy #1) (11 page)

More than I
wanted to admit.

"I hope
you're not mad about the dog comment," Jacob said as we turned into Druids
Way. As usual the wind whipped down the street, making an even bigger mess of
my hair. "If it makes you feel any better," he said, "the Old
English sheepdog is one of my favorite breeds."

"I hate
you," I said and he laughed harder.

We reached home and
he disappeared as soon as Celia met me at the door. I stared at the spot where
he'd been standing until she pulled me inside.

"Goodness
me, Em, look at you!" She clicked her tongue as she removed my hat and
groaned when the curls spilled over my face. "We have to be at Mrs.
Postlethwaite's house in fifteen minutes." She teased and tugged my hair
into shape, rearranged my hat on my head, turned me around and pushed me out
the door.

Exactly fifteen
minutes later, we arrived at Mrs. Postlethwaite's house. The séance went well. We
didn't release any demons and the ghost we summoned—Mrs. Postlethwaite's dead
husband—was eager to return to the Waiting Area after his widow had finished
asking him if he'd had a clandestine relationship with the next door neighbor. He
hadn't, or so he said, and Mrs. Postlethwaite was content with his answer
although her spinster sister sitting beside her thought it a lie. She also
thought I was a fraud and tried to prove it by inspecting the objects the ghost
held up as part of our routine to see if we used hidden wires or magnets. She
found none of course, which only soured her temper further.

I managed to
avoid her afterwards while tea was being served. Indeed, I managed to avoid all
of the guests—an easy thing to do since they left me alone. To be fair, they probably
didn't know what to say to me. Some might be scared, others just cautious and I
didn't make it easy for them, preferring my own company. Celia was the chatty
one, handing out cards to the guests and telling them stories, some true, about
the ghosts we'd summoned at other séances. It was all good business, she once told
me, and she enjoyed the theatre of it immensely. My sister had missed her
calling—she would have been a natural on a Covent Garden stage.

My separation
from the group allowed me to think as I sipped my tea. After wondering why
there was a rush of widows summoning their late husbands at our séances, I
couldn't stop thinking about Mr. Postlethwaite's extra-marital relationship. He'd
been quite an attractive man for his age, which I put to be at mid-forties, and
he certainly kept an eye on the prettier ladies in the room, my sister included
and his wife, unfortunately, not.

I wasn't naïve. I
knew married men and women had affairs on occasion, and the idea of my existence
coming about because of one wasn't new to me. In fact it was the most obvious
explanation. For some time I'd thought Mama must have met someone after her
husband's death then nine months later I'd been born. But seeing Mr.
Postlethwaite sowed a seed of doubt. Just a small one. He had been precisely
the sort of person to have a liaison outside of his marriage—handsome in a
preening, peacock-ish way, a roaming eye, and a charming manner.

Mama had been
none of those things. She was pretty, I suppose, although it seemed to me she'd
always been middle-aged, even when I was little. But she wasn't handsome like
some women, or gregarious, and she had certainly never looked at men the way
Mr. Postlethwaite looked at ladies.

Could Mama
possibly have fallen deeply in love with one man so soon after her beloved husband's
death? A man who'd not loved her enough in return when he got her with child?

If not,
then...what?

I didn't have
any answers by the time we left Widow Postlethwaite's house, nor was there any
likelihood of getting any. Mama was possibly the only person who knew my real
father's name and I'd not been able to summon her ghost at all since her death.
She must have crossed over immediately.

I pushed the
problem aside, telling myself it didn't matter, that I was loved by my sister
and had been by my mother and that's all that mattered. Anyway, now I had other
things to occupy my mind. I had the demon. And I had Jacob.

I was eager to
return home and speak to him again. Not for any reason, just because I wanted
to. Perhaps I could find out more about his death, but if not it didn't matter.
I'd enjoy his company regardless of what we talked about.

"How did
your information gathering go this morning?" Celia asked on the way home.

"Well
enough." I told her everything we'd learned, including the interview with
Maree the maid, mentioning the school but leaving out the part where she tried
to stab me. My sister's constitution is incredibly strong but still it wouldn't
do to alarm her. She might never let me go out alone again.

"I wonder
if Lucy knows her," Celia said.

"Who's
Lucy?"

"Our new
maid. I collected her this morning from that North London School for Domestic
Service. We'll ask her when we get home. Now, enough of that." We turned
into our street and I glanced up at our house. No Jacob standing on the
doorstep. I sighed. "Tell me about this George Culvert fellow," Celia
said. "What was he like? Is he handsome? Was the house very large and does
he have older brothers?"

"Older
brothers? Why, are you interested in meeting them for yourself, Sis?" I
looked at her sideways and had to hold onto my hat as the breeze tried to lift
it off my head.

"Of course
not," she scoffed. "I simply want to know if an older brother will
inherit the house, that's all, or if it all goes to this George."

"This
George," I said sharply, "is a nice enough gentleman but he doesn't
interest me in the way you're implying." I stalked off ahead and ran up the
front steps.

"But—."

"Celia,
stop trying to marry me off to every eligible gentleman we meet. I'm seventeen.
I want to enjoy my freedom before I settle down with a husband."

"Being
married does not necessarily mean you'll lose your freedom."

"Then why
haven't you settled down with any of the men who've shown interest in you?"
Three gentlemen had courted Celia over the years but despite a great deal of
speculation on my part, she'd not married any of them.

She fished in
her reticule for the door key. "That's none of your concern," she
said, snippy. "Now, come inside and meet Lucy. She seems very sweet."

Lucy did indeed
seem sweet. She was a little younger than me, plumper, shorter and fairer. She
had an English rose complexion, the sort that's permanently pink and blushes
easily. I'd often wished to have just such a complexion but with my tendency to
feel embarrassed a lot of the time, it's probably just as well that I don't.

"I hope
you'll like it here, Lucy," I said to her.

"Th...thank
you, m...miss." She bobbed a careful but wobbly curtsy and stared at me as
if I had two heads. If her eyes widened any further they'd pop out of her head.

I turned an
accusing eye on Celia, one hand on my hip.

"I thought
it best we tell her up front," Celia said, setting down her carpet bag. "Get
it out in the open, so to speak, to avoid any nasty surprises later on. Particularly
since that ghost of yours seems to be coming and going with ill-mannered
frequency."

"I don't
think your sister likes me," Jacob said, popping up behind me. Was he
watching me and trying to arrive at inopportune moments on purpose?

The thought of him
keeping an eye on me sent a shiver down my spine, and not entirely in a bad
way.

I ignored him
and concentrated on Lucy but the poor thing whimpered beneath my gaze. I
certainly wouldn't alert her to Jacob's presence. She might faint and then
where would we be? Instead, I gave my sister a glare then turned a smile on the
maid.

"He's a
nice ghost," I assured her.

"Thank you,"
he said, "although nice is a rather bland word."

"He won't
harm you," I went on, doing my best to ignore him. "And he probably
won't be here much longer, only until we sort out..." I bit my lip. Finishing
the sentence with "our demon issue" probably wasn't a good way to
settle her nerves. "Until we sort out a few things."

The thought of Jacob
leaving once we'd returned the demon to the Otherworld filled me with a
hollowness I didn't want to explore. I'd only known him a day but he'd somehow
managed to fill up my life in a way nothing else had.

It was all I
could do not to look around and see if the thought had struck him too.

The girl nodded
quickly, her eyes still huge and her cheeks paler. I wasn't sure Celia's tactic
to tell Lucy about me being a medium was such a good idea. Having someone stare
at me like I was a lunatic in my own house wasn't my idea of comfort. Besides,
would knowing mean she'd stay around longer, or just leave earlier? At least
she was still here—it was a promising start.

"How is
dinner coming along?" Celia asked as Lucy accepted her bonnet and hung it
up on the stand. "Good, miss. It'll be ready at six like you said. I set
the water boiling for the potatoes and the fish is all ready to go on the gridiron,
but I couldn't find it—the gridiron, not the fish—so I'll just use one of the
pans instead. Mrs. White our teacher told us to make do with what pots and
things are already 'vailable and not worry our mistress 'bout that stuff. She's
a smart lady, Mrs. White, but she didn't take no fuss from no one."

It was my turn
to stare wide-eyed at her. It seemed our maid was quite the chatterer when she
wasn't frightened.

I smiled at
Celia. Celia smiled at Lucy. "Can you serve tea in the drawing room,
please," she said, "I'm parched after that walk."

Lucy curtseyed
again, without wobbling. "As you wish, miss. I'm very good at making tea. Mrs.
White always said so. Said I was the best tea-maker in the whole school." She
turned to go, stopped, turned back to us, curtseyed again, and only then did
she make her way down the hallway to the stairs leading to the kitchen basement.

"Aren't you
going to ask her about the Culvert maid?" Celia asked me as we entered the
drawing room.

"Exactly
what I was going to say," Jacob said, following me.

The room was
cool so I stoked the smoldering fire with the irons.

"I'll do
that," Jacob offered.

I shook my head.
I didn't want to alert Celia to his presence—she already thought him
ungentlemanly for his ghostly comings and goings—and I definitely didn't want
Lucy to see floating fire irons when she entered with the tea.

"I think Lucy
needs a few moments to get used to me before I press her about Maree," I
said, poking the coals. "Oh and thank you, Sis, for mentioning the whole spirit
medium thing to her. I'm sure she'll be inclined to stay
much
longer
than the other maids now that she knows"

"Sarcasm
will make your face sag," she said.

"I'm simply
saying I don't think it was a good idea." I returned the iron poker to the
stand and sat beside her on the sofa.

"I
disagree," Jacob said from his usual place by the mantelpiece.

"We had to
try something," Celia said, taking up her embroidery.

I picked up the
book I'd begun the day before and left on the round occasional table. "Why
does 'something' always have to involve me being on the receiving end of odd or
frightened looks?"

"It's
better than being on the end of pitying ones."

I lowered my
book to see her better. Was she referring to herself and her spinster state? But
she kept embroidering as if she hadn't a care in the world and it had merely
been an off-hand comment.

"Both are better
than not being noticed at all," Jacob muttered.

My lips parted
in a silent "Oh" and I closed my eyes so I didn’t have to look at
him. What a horrible, selfish fool I was. Jacob's lot was so much worse than
anything Celia or I experienced. That would teach me to be so ungrateful.

"I'm sorry,"
I said. "You're right."

"Your book
is upside down," he said.

I shut it and returned
it to the table. He was smiling at me and there wasn't a hint of self-pity in
his expression. It shouldn't have surprised me. Jacob didn't strike me as the
sort to wallow in his disadvantages, even though being dead was a major one.

I was about to
relent and tell Celia that Jacob was in the drawing room with us when Lucy
entered carrying the tea tray as if it were made of gold and precious jewels. Her
slow, careful shuffle didn't stop the cups from clinking against each other. Her
tongue darted out as she eyed her destination—the central table in front of the
sofa—and lodged in the corner of her mouth like a bookmark. When she finally
set the tray down I let out a long breath and heard Celia do the same.

"Could you
pour, please," Celia asked.

I wanted to
throttle her. The poor girl was nervous enough and now she had to manage the
pouring. Despite her shaking hands, Lucy poured the tea and spilled only a
little onto the saucers. I reached for my own cup, as did Celia, and thanked
her.