Bridget took a great breath and turned to her, cupping her cheek in the lamplight. “I was a fool, Sophie girl.” Her thumb, rough from laundry and sewing and the thousand tasks a day she did because Sophie had been forbidden from working for so long, scraped under Sophie’s cheek, and Sophie shuddered. “’E’ll come because ’e owns us, that one. I didn’t believe it, aye? And then….”
Sophie nodded, biting her lip, and both of their eyes fell upon a letter on the richly varnished desk. Sophie liked the desk—maple wood, the comforting red of it like Bridget’s hair—and it complemented the wallpaper, which was a confluence of giant fluffy chrysanthemums in blazing autumn colors. The bed was soft and the quilts warm upon it—autumn colors again, because whoever had decorated the place had possessed something of a gift. This room had been their haven, their sanctuary, their place to hide, and their home for the past three months, and Sophie dreamed of a home of her own where she could build such a room for her and Bridget.
The letter from Sophie’s brother sat unopened, like a grim granite reminder of reality in the middle of their happy golden dream.
“But maybe James will want us,” she said. “Don’t you think he’ll want us? He’s always loved me.”
Bridget’s pity was hard to stand. Sophie had so little to offer this relationship.
“He does love me!” Sophie declared. Breaking away from Bridget, she strode to the desk and opened the letter, ripping the paper in spite of the unused letter opener right next to the ungainly paperweight.
Her breath came more quickly as she read, her lungs straining against the stays of her skirt.
“Oh Bridget—Bridget, you’ll never believe—”
There was a sudden clatter, and a voice from downstairs called out, “Mrs. Conklin? Mrs. Conklin? You have a guest!”
Sophie let out a little moan, and her palms started to sweat. Oh no. She was going to—
“You will not be sick, Sophie girl!” Bridget snarled. “You let me handle this. I’m the dumb servant, and that’s all they know, you hear?”
At that moment there was a pounding up the stairs, and Sophie took a deep breath against her corset.
Her vision went black, and she fell limply to the clean wood floor.
TUCKER PULLED in a great gasp of air, his lungs burning as though he’d held his breath for hours. And again. And once more as he sagged against the doorframe, eyes gazing sightlessly into the darkness of the yard beyond.
“Tucker?” Angel sounded worried, as though he’d said the name more than once. “Tucker? Are you okay?”
Tucker took a few more breaths, the vision imparted by the two ghosts keeping him in a stranglehold until he could focus on at least one clear detail. “Chrysanthemums,” Tucker muttered weakly. “On the wallpaper. Where are they?”
“Up the west wing stairs, third door to the left.”
Tucker looked at him, eyebrows raised.
“I’ve been here a while. I know lots of things about the house.” Angel gathered his dignity about him, and Tucker blew out a breath as the last of the spots cleared from his eyes.
“It couldn’t have been the door next to mine,” he muttered, hauling through the kitchen and leaving his plate on the table and the pan in the sink. The vision was so fresh it didn’t matter that the women had probably been dead for nearly a century. He felt compelled to solve their mystery now. “It’s never ‘Oh Tucker, it’s on the ground floor, just past the stairs so it’s close to the kitchen,’ because that’s too fucking easy, isn’t it? It’s got to be a thousand light-years the fuck away!”
“Tucker, I wasn’t going to start with them. I don’t know much, but I know their story isn’t easy….”
He came out of the kitchen and turned right toward the entryway. There were two sets of stairs—the stairs from the east wing immediately to the right of the entryway and the stairs to the west wing, slightly behind the entrance to the kitchen. All Tucker really had to do was venture out the kitchen door and pull a U-turn before the dining room. Later it would occur to him that this could possibly be the least convenient layout for a kitchen and a dining room, but right now, he just had one goal in mind.
He wanted to see the Chrysanthemum Room.
“Top of the stairs, three doors down to the left,” he panted, while Angel whined behind him.
“No! No, you can’t! You don’t know what you’re doing yet. Let me research their objects first. C’mon, Tucker, I’ve only scratched the surface of the mysteries here, and there are some objects that are dangerous!”
But Tucker had seen it, had seen them, and they’d been vibrant and young and real. He’d felt Sophie’s fear and the roughness of Bridget’s hands on her cheeks and the crispness of starched linen against her skin. And the damned corset, of course, but all of it had made those women so desperately real to him. He wanted in their world, to know who they were to each other, to know what happened to them.
What had the letter contained? Who was the “he” they’d been so interested in? Who was their mysterious guest, and why would Sophie be so frightened that she’d actually swoon—with a little help from a skirt bound up to her ribs.
Tucker felt the same drive, the same pull he usually felt when he needed to go downtown and find someone to seduce into changing their life. The curiosity—Who will I meet now? What will they look like? What will they need from me?—and the thrill of discovery were some of the pleasures he allowed himself, some of the balms to soothe the ache of having no family, no friends, no job. The people he was destined to help made him less resentful of being karma’s bitch.
This thrill—and the promise of helping the long-deceased residents of this house—was even greater.
He had time to notice the threadbare carpet, the hardwood splintering under his feet, the peeling veneer of the doors and tarnished gold plating of the doorknobs before he spotted the door with a small plaque showing a painted chrysanthemum on the front.
He remembered to slow down and use his shirt to turn the doorknob, and then he stepped on in.
Soul Voyeur
ANGEL HADN’T mentioned it. When he’d told Ruth, it had sort of freaked the poor old girl out.
He’d known her several years by then—she’d started to ask him how he knew when the spirits had passed on, how he knew their stories before she even told him, and he’d figured that since they’d worked as a team successfully for so long, she deserved to know.
She didn’t speak to him for a year.
He never talked about it again, and he tried to minimize the times it crept into their interactions from that moment on.
But he wasn’t sure if he’d be able to hide it from Tucker for very long at all.
For one thing, Tucker didn’t do what was asked of him—or even expected. Angel couldn’t coach him through his first ghost encounter; it had already happened.
Angel had seen it unfold clearly in his mind, like humans saw a movie projected against a wall.
Much like he’d seen the image he’d based his form on. Not too close—just close enough to inspire trust. Angel needed to inspire trust. He needed Tucker to talk to him. Not so much in order to accomplish the mission but to… to satisfy that thing, that thing inside him that had gotten him into this position in the first place.