The Guests on South Battery (Tradd Street #5)(28)

“Jack,” I said, “now’s not a good time to discuss this. I’m showing Jayne around right now. I scheduled the talk about the Pinckney house for tomorrow morning at eight fifty-five. I’m sure I put it on your calendar.”

Both Jack and Jayne stared at me unblinkingly before Jack turned back to Jayne. “Yes, well, we can certainly wait until eight fifty-five tomorrow. I just wanted to make sure Jayne had all the information before she made her decision. And to let her know that she can be our live-in nanny for as long as she needs, or at least until her house is fully renovated and she can see it in all its glory. Maybe she’ll decide she loves it when it doesn’t appear to be so old.”

Jayne’s lips turned up in a half smile. “This is an old house, too, but the feeling here—with the exception of the backyard—gives off a really friendly vibe. Like it’s a true family home with a lot of warmth.”

“That’s because we’ve already exorcised all its ghosts.”

Jack said this with a hearty laugh, but Jayne shot him a sharp look. “Ghosts?”

“Don’t worry,” I said, guiding her toward the stairs. “All the worst ones are gone. The ones left behind are friendly.” I’d said this as an inside joke for Jack, but Jayne continued to frown.

We were halfway up the stairs when we heard a shriek from Nola’s room. Despite holding a small child in his arms, Jack sprinted up the stairs and threw open Nola’s bedroom door. “Is everything all right?”

Jayne and I moved up behind him, peering into the room. The three girls sat on top of Nola’s tall four-poster bed, a Ouija board between them. They turned toward us, each face paler than the next. “It moved by itself,” Veronica said.

A new presence hovered around the periphery of the room, something dark and disturbing, like the soft ripples on the water’s surface signaling the approach of something big. And invisible. Just as before, I couldn’t see it, couldn’t speak to it or touch it. It was as if that same curtain had fallen between me and the spirit world, blocking my entrance. For someone who’d spent a lifetime resenting the fact that I could interact with spirits, I now found myself resentful that I couldn’t. Something was jamming my brain waves, and I think that scared me more than anything else.

Jayne bent down to pick up the triangle-shaped board piece, then dropped it immediately as if it had burned her. “You shouldn’t be playing with that,” she said, her voice low and in a tone I’d not heard yet. “It’s not a toy.”

We all turned to look at her in surprise. Feeling all gazes on her, she attempted to smile but failed. “A mother of a family I worked for told me that. She said it wasn’t a children’s game.” Her gaze traveled to a corner of the room. “She said that sometimes it can attract unwanted . . . visitors, and you have no control over whether they’re good or bad.”

“They’re not real,” Alston said. “All that ghost stuff isn’t real. I think Nola pushed it off the board to scare us.” She looked at Nola hopefully.

“Guilty,” Nola said with a sidelong glance at me to let me know she was lying. A frisson of fear shot down my neck. Our house was filled with spirits. Most old houses were. They were there in every creak of the floor and tick of the antique clocks. But we’d learned to live in harmony with them, knowing that when they were ready to move on they’d let me know. But even without seeing this new presence, I knew it didn’t want to go anywhere.

“Close it up, please, Nola. Jayne’s right—it’s not a game.” I caught a whiff then, of moist earth and dead leaves, and I immediately knew where it had come from. Turning to Jack, I said, “Please make the introductions. I need to step outside for a moment.”

He gave me a quizzical look, but I didn’t pause as I quickly walked out the door, then ran down the stairs and through the house to the back door. I threw it open and stifled a scream as I nearly ran into Meghan as she clawed desperately to open the back door.

She brushed past me, then closed the door, leaning her back against it. Her skin was unusually pale and her eyes were so wide that I could have sworn I saw the whites all around her irises.

“Are you all right?” I asked as I led her to the kitchen table and pulled out a chair.

She began to nod, then shook her head. When she eventually found her voice, she said, “It was the weirdest thing. . . .”

“What was?” I asked, although I was sure I knew what she was going to say.

“I was digging and I thought I’d found something, so I was really focusing on a small area, and then all of a sudden . . .” She wrinkled her nose and gave an involuntary shudder. “This smell. Like rotting . . . dead stuff. We once had a squirrel die in our chimney and that’s how we found it—from the smell. It was like that. And I swear the temperature dropped about thirty degrees, because I could actually see my breath.”

“Can I make you some tea? You seem a little shaken up.”

She shook her head. “I really just want to get home. Do you mind if I leave my stuff out? I don’t really want to go back right now. And I’ll leave by the front door if that’s all right with you.”

“Of course,” I said, nodding sympathetically. “Maybe you’re coming down with something. It is flu season, after all.”