Unhappy Medium (2 page)

Great. A cute boy knocking on my door, and I’ve got six feet of dead Victorian drama queen looming over my shoulder. Very
appealing to guys, I’m sure.

I shot a glance back at Madame Serena, who was standing up so straight and breathing in so deeply it looked like she was about
to launch into an ear-splitting, operatic solo.

I yanked the door open and stood in the doorway, blocking the bellboy’s view of the room. My stance seemed to perplex him.

“Where would you like this?” he asked, after a moment.

“Yes,” I said.

He went from looking confused to looking a little alarmed.

“I mean, anywhere inside is fine,” I corrected.

He hesitated again.

“Excuse me, but … um …” he said, his voice hesitant, as he tried to look around me and into the room.

Oh no. He’d seen her. She was almost a foot taller than me and half again as wide. Now what?

“Excuse me, I can’t get by with you standing there,” he said.

Oh.

I stepped aside and he pulled my bag into the room, as if the Victorian woman wasn’t there. Which I suppose technically was
true. She, on the other hand, was giving him an outraged glare.

I nodded, then gulped as the bellboy walked straight through the back of the lady and out the other side. He deposited my
bag at the foot of the bed, and extended one gloved hand, palm up, toward me as he glanced at the floor.

Did he want me to high-five him?

It wasn’t until I saw the Victorian lady fumbling in her purse that I realized the bellboy was waiting for a tip. Apparently
some traditions are timeless. I reached in my jeans pocket, pulled out a mushed and slightly damp dollar bill, and put it
in his hand.

“Thank you!” he said smartly, then quickly strode out of the room, closing the door behind him.

He wouldn’t be so thankful when he opened his palm and saw there was only one measly, yucky dollar there that would probably
leave a little stain on his glove. But what could I do? I hadn’t been prepared.

With the bellboy gone, my gaze returned to the Victorian lady, and I remembered again that she was waiting for me to do her
will.

Fat chance.

“I think you may be a little confused,” I said, keeping my tone as polite as possible.

She drew herself up to her full height. The sight was intimidating. Seriously, for all the frills and lace and feminine little
bows on her outfit, the woman resembled a linebacker.

“I have been more than patient,” the woman said, her voice wavering dramatically. “I have endured the waves of skepticism
— I have listened to them brand me a fraud and a charlatan. The fox would have destroyed us all. But now, after so long, you
have come. We have much work to do, spirit!”

Spirit? Fox? Did this have something to do with the bride and her veil?

I had to proceed carefully. Clearly, this was one of those ghosts who was operating under a misconception. Put simply, she
didn’t realize she was dead. This was complicated by the fact that she apparently believed I was the one who’d died.

I’m going to go out on a limb and guess that you’ve never had the experience of having to inform someone that they’re dead.
And I hope you never do. It’s a tricky business. I know this more from hearing about my mother’s experiences than having had
my own. I’m still pretty new at this.

The way Mom tells it, learning they’re no longer among the living doesn’t exactly strike many folks as good news. Ghosts do
a wide variety of things when they’re mad. According to my mom, their reactions can range from hurling furniture to turning
the room into a virtual freezer. They could wreak havoc through the electrical systems, or drive you nuts by hiding your stuff.
They could make sudden loud noises and turn you into a nervous wreck. They could appear out of thin air and hover in front
of you. They could invade your dreams. Maybe worse.

I wasn’t too keen on any of this stuff happening, though if forced to choose, I might go with the turning the room into a
freezer. The cold had never bothered me much, and I had packed a well-worn and comfortable sweatshirt.

“I can try to help you,” I told the woman again. “But you have to want to be helped. Did you say your name was Madame Serena?”

She placed one hand to her chest, half closed her eyes, and nodded. Like just admitting she was Madame Serena was a major
emotional event. This lady was Very. Highly. Dramatic. I decided maybe I should postpone the little news flash about her being
dead, in the hopes that I could find out something about who she was and why she was connected to Whispering Pines. I mean
really, how many Madame Serenas could there be?

I took a deep breath

“Okay, Madame Serena. I am Kat.”

“A cat!” the woman whispered. “The spirit world has sent me an animal guide — excellent! Are you a leopard? A cougar? Tell
me, spirit — are you a jaguar?”

I suspected that in the mid-nineteenth century someone had filled Madame Serena’s head with a load of hooey.

“I’m not a jaguar,” I said, hearing how ridiculous it sounded to my own ears. “It’s a name, okay? That’s all. It’s simple.
Kaaaaaat,” I said, drawing the name out like she was a very young, hard-of-hearing child who spoke only Portuguese.

“But of course!” she whispered. “I have been told of Indian guides remaining in the astral realms to assist the incarnate.
I am honored to meet you, Simple Cat.”

“I’m not … my name isn’t … there are a few things you are not understanding correctly. I’m … I come from …”

“The Gates of Horn!” Madame Serena cried, clapping her hands together.

“Upstate New York, actually,” I corrected. “What I’m trying to say is that I come from another …”

“Dimension! Valhalla, the Great Unknown, the Realm of Golden Suchness!”

“… from another time,” I finished.

Madame Serena closed her eyes and tilted her head back.

“The Time of No Time, which is its own beginning, and its own end,” she whispered reverently.

I sighed. This was the slowest dead person I’d encountered in my very brief career as a medium. I needed to unpack, and I
had to use the bathroom. I should just blurt out the truth and get it over with. If Madame Serena turned out to be a furniture
hurler, maybe I could ask for a different room.

“Madame Serena —,” I began, but I was interrupted by another knock on the door.

“Now that you have come, there is much we must accomplish. We meet here tonight,” Madame Serena said excitedly. “We will form
the circle for all who request help, and I will call for you. Come to me in the circle, Simple Cat, and we will begin our
work.”

The knock sounded again.

“Kat?” I heard Jac’s muffled voice through the thick door. “Come on, open up!”

“I don’t think this is going to work the way you think it will,” I said. “You’re not understanding. And I’ve got to open the
door.”

Madame Serena clasped her hands together and beamed.

“Yes, Simple Cat. You must open the door between the worlds. You are the Guardian of the Sacred Portal of Transmigration.”

I shook my head in frustration, crossed to the door, and opened it to reveal Jac’s beaming face. She stood on her tippy toes
to look over my shoulder.

“I heard that!” she said excitedly, pushing past me and walking into my room as I shut the door behind her.

“You were talking to someone,” Jac said triumphantly. “Your room is haunted, isn’t it?”

Great. Jac has just inadvertently tipped off Madame Serena to the possibility that she was a ghost. But a quick glance showed
that Madame Serena was gone. Apparently she’d said what she wanted to say. For such a large lady, she’d sure made a quick
exit.

“Well, Maestra, as a matter of fact it is,” I told Jac, and she gave a little whoop of excitement.

“I knew it! Tell me everything! Who is it? Were you scared? Was it a woman in white wringing her hands and wailing? That show
Real Afterlife
had an episode about a hotel haunted by a woman in white wringing her hands and wailing. Did you see something right away?
Did the room get cold? Was there a murder? Or was it someone who died for love?”

The rolling shade on the window suddenly snapped up with a clatter. Jac shrieked, and jumped about a foot.

“Jac, it’s just a shade. I think you need to cut back on the
Real Afterlife
marathons.”

“No way, it’s the best show ever!” Jac exclaimed. “Way more fun than
Celebrity Shoplifters.
So who’s doing the haunting? What’s their deal?”

“A woman. An older woman. Victorian era, I think, from the dress,” I said. “She’s very confused. Doesn’t know she’s dead.
I haven’t really figured out how to deal with her yet. I don’t think she’s dangerous.”

“You don’t
think
?” Jac repeated. She grabbed my arm.

“I want to hear everything that happened,” she said, “but not …” she dropped her voice to a whisper, “in here. Let’s go
to the lake.”

I let her lead me from the room. I’d had enough of Madame Serena for the time being, and I certainly didn’t want to confuse
her more by discussing the possible means of her death where she might overhear it. I thought there was a bathroom in the
lobby, anyway.

I stole a last look into the room as I pulled the door closed. It was as still and quiet as a tomb.

The lake really was spectacular. It was still fairly cool outside for late June, and the sun on my face felt glorious. Jac
was practically bursting with excitement about the spirit in my room, and I have to say it made me feel great. Though she
couldn’t share in the actual experience of seeing dead people or trying to sort them out, Jac gobbled up everything I told
her with an appetite she usually reserved for items in the cake family. And she gave good advice.

It had been Jac’s idea to find out the name of the family who had once lived in the empty haunted house next door to mine
over spring break. From there, we were able to use the computer to research what had happened to the family. It was like a
detective game to her, and frankly, I was incredibly grateful for the company. It was easier taking on the spirit world when
I knew that Jac always had my back.

“So spit it out, Voodoo Mama,” Jac said.

I pointed to a little wooden bench perched in a sunny spot overlooking the lake.

“Let’s go sit there,” I said.

The bench was deliciously warm from the sunlight. A little frog perched half out of the water on a stone. A hawk was circling
the rock face on the other side of the lake, and the breeze ruffled my hair. I could have sat there in perfect bliss forever.

“So?” Jac prompted, sitting next to me with her legs curled under her body.

“Okay, so I go into the room, and the second I turn around, she’s there. Blam.”

“Blam,” Jac repeated.

“And she’s dressed like Queen Victoria, so I’m figuring she goes pretty far back.”

Jac nodded eagerly.

“I explain that I can see her, only when she starts talking, I realize she thinks that
she’s
the one seeing a ghost. She called me ‘spirit.’”

“She thought you were dead? That’s kind of creepy,” Jac said. Her grin indicated that in Jac’s book, creepy was good.

“And she was talking about how we had a lot of work to do, because she’d been waiting a long time for me to show up. There
was a fox, or something, that put her in danger. And we’re supposed to do something in a circle. In the room.”

“Witchcraft,” Jac murmured hopefully. “The fox was her animal familiar. Like in
The Golden Compass.
”

“I don’t think so,” I replied. “Anyway, it didn’t seem like the right thing to do to just blurt out that she was dead. I’m
not even sure she’d have believed me. She seemed to misunderstand everything I did try to tell her. I figured maybe I could
do some poking around, and someone around here might help me find out who she was.

“I didn’t tell her I was a medium. I just told her my name. Oh, I almost forgot — this is the most ridiculous part. She somehow
decided I was some kind of Indian spirit guide, and she misunderstood me when I told her my name was Kat. So she thinks I’m
this Native American astral entity called Simple Cat.”

Jac threw her head back and howled with amusement. I felt a tiny bit irritated. I mean, yeah — it was funny. But maybe not
that
funny.

“Simple Cat,” Jac said through her guffaws. “Oh, that’s priceless, Voodoo Mama.”

“Yeah, okay,” I said. “Don’t rupture your spleen or anything. But seriously. There must be a way to find out something about
Madame Serena. Any ideas where I could start?”

Jac narrowed her eyes in thought. Then she sat up very straight. At first, I thought she’d gotten an idea. But she was staring
very intently at the lake path behind me.

“No way,” Jac whispered. “That looks like …”

She fell silent and I heard footsteps approaching. I was tactful enough not to turn around and gawk.

The footsteps slowed as they were right behind me.

“Hey! Jac, right? Cello genius, wassup!”

Jac’s face was sheer pink.
Now
I turned around to gawk, and had to catch my breath.

The boy behind me had the face of a movie star, with jet black hair and eyes so blue they were practically hypnotic. My eyes
were soon drawn to his hands, which were weirdly beautiful, like the hands of a gifted surgeon.

“Oh. Yeah, I mean, it’s me,” Jac stammered. “Hi, Colin. Wow. I mean, not wow, I just didn’t realize … you know, yeah.
That you were coming to this … thing. Right. And this is my friend Kat. Kat, this is Colin — soon to be the world’s next
reigning violin virtuoso.”

The movie star laughed, and brushed a lock of hair out of his eyes. He wore jeans and a faded purple T-shirt. He was slightly
built — slim and quite short. God, he didn’t need to be tall with a face like that. I made some kind of noise that resembled
“Hi.”

“You missed the Junior Strings and Woodwinds thing in May,” Colin said, coming around to stand in front of us. The sun lit
him from behind and made him look like something Michelangelo should have painted. “And you haven’t posted on the Classics
Forum for a while. Revert to lurking?”