“Dad would kill me,” I said.
Laura shook her head. “No, he’d be upset, but then he’d probably tell you it was okay. That you could win the piano back, or that instead of playing it, you could spend your time on something more productive. School maybe?”
I tried to laugh, but it felt like I was choking. “Yeah. I guess.”
“Daniel,” Harriet shouted again. She was in the middle of studying for some online degree, convinced she could finish what she’d started before she was forced to move back to St. Hilaire to take care of me and Laura, and hated to be disturbed.
I really had no choice anyhow but to go downstairs and “pay the piper” as Dad would have said. Each stair led me closer to my punishment. From their homes on the wall, photo after photo of Hamptons seemed to sneer at me for losing a treasured family heirloom.
I opened the door.
“You can come play it whenever you want,” David Sheridan said instead of hello. “I know it was, is, important to you.”
I couldn’t answer. Instead, I backed up against the wall and watched as the front door opened farther. Alex Mackenzie and his dog stormed into the house, followed by Colin and three burly guys from the Buchanan auto shop who carried piles of blankets and a couple of bundles of ratchet straps. They began wrapping up the piano like a burrito.
I fought to catch my breath. It felt like I’d been punched in the stomach, and I could only begin to breathe again when Russ came in. I hadn’t called him. But just like Russ always knew whether it would rain, whether our calc test would be canceled, or whether the customer walking in the door actually wanted to contact their dead aunt or was trying to make fun of the whole thing, he knew when I needed him. Most importantly, he always knew that.
Russ had been the first to arrive at the hospital after the accident. The first to show up on my doorstep with a burger after a séance that left me shaken and starving. Russ was more than a best friend; he was a brother. And that made me feel guilty because I wasn’t sure I’d given enough back over the past two years. I don’t know if I have anything left that anyone would want.
Two wooden dollies were wheeled through the large front doors of Hampton House. Alex’s dog growled and snapped at the dolly’s tires. My tongue felt thick and useless.
“Hey, Mackenzie,” Russ called out. “You might want to put that dog outside before he eats someone.”
Alex Mackenzie marched over. His black boots left dusty footprints on the wood floor, which in this room was patterned with interlocking puzzle pieces. Harriet would be in a snit about that later.
“He’s a therapy dog,” Alex shot back, but I knew better.
“Remind me.” Russ’s voice was a deliberate study in disinterest. “What is it again that you’re in therapy for?”
Alex broke out a creepy grin. “Frustration since Hampton’s sister won’t put out.”
Russ grabbed my arm before I could think of throwing a punch. “Not worth it. Those goons will flatten you.”
Mackenzie laughed and went back to the piano, the dog settling against the wall with a loud thump.
“The dog was Ian’s, you know,” Russ said under his breath.
The dog looked sideways at us as if he knew he was being talked about. “That explains a lot, I guess,” I said, only I wasn’t sure what it explained aside from the fact that Alex seemed to take it everywhere.
The team finished wrapping the piano. “On the count of three,” Colin said. The dog whined. Russ put his hand on my shoulder. I closed my eyes. I couldn’t watch. “One. Two. Three.”
I waited for the sound of the dolly’s wheels across the floor, but there was nothing except the frustrated grunts of four guys finding it impossible to move a piano.
“What the hell, Hampton?” Alex exclaimed. “You better not be screwing with us.”
I opened my eyes to see all of the guys red-faced and sweating. I knew the piano was moveable because I’d had to do it on my own when I was ten and dropped the moon card from Mom’s favorite tarot deck underneath it. Looking back, I wasn’t sure I should have been able to move it; after all, it was a large piano and I’d been a small boy.
“I haven’t done anything,” I said.
“Well, get your ass over here and help us, then,” Alex said. “And bring goth-boy too,” he added, pointing to Russ.
A strange sort of lightness filled me. There was no way I was going to help them. “Bite me.”
Alex’s dark eyes scanned me like an X-ray. “Maybe next time, dickhead.”
The crew examined the piano from every angle and readjusted the blankets and straps and the dolly, going so far as to rotate the wheels to make sure they weren’t locked or stuck. Nothing worked.
The crew packed their stuff, shaking their heads.
“I know you just want an excuse to ask me back,” Alex said as he stalked off.
Only Colin hung back. “I assume you’ve read the new regulations, right? I mean, a non-movable instrument seems to fall under the Guild’s ‘unexplained occurrences’ category. That means they’re going to have jurisdiction here.”
“But it’s just a piano,” I stammered.
“Rules are rules. They were fine with me overseeing the initial collection of the piano. But now that there are complications, I’d prepare for an official visit if I were you,” he said, and as he turned to go, I caught the silver flash of a Guild pin on his collar and tried to draw Russ’s attention to it, but he’d missed it.
I locked the door behind them, relieved when Russ and I were the only ones in the large room. “Well, that was…” I started and then stopped when I couldn’t find a word to finish the sentence.
Russ nodded. “I know. Keep your head down. I’m going to make some inquiries, see if I can find out what Alex’s plan for the piano is,” he said. I didn’t ask if he intended to inquire of the living or the dead and didn’t really want to know.
“Hey, while you’re at it, see what you can find out about Colin,” I said instead. “He was working the guard booth with Willow Rogers yesterday. And did you catch a glimpse of his collar?”
“I saw the badge. I wonder when that happened. Also, why would Willow be working the gate? And why with him?”
I shook my head. Willow was St. Hilaire royalty. She’d been abandoned at the town gate by her grandparents when she was five. Pinned to her shirt was a note explaining that she could talk to the dead and that her family had no interest in raising her. No one had ever been able to find her relatives, so the Guild members worked together to bring her up in an apartment in Eaton Hall. She was powerful, intense, and creepy, and it didn’t make sense she’d waste her time with Colin.