“It’ll pick up in the spring, maybe,” Jenkins said. “Who comes to north Wales in the middle of winter?”
The three men stared gloomily into their beers.
“How is Spooky Lil, anyway?” I asked.
Mr. Cadogan frowned. “Don’t talk to me about our Lil. Had it up to here with her.” He held his hand a good half a foot above his head to show how fed up he was. “Weren’t enough for her to scare the tourists upstairs. No, she had to start carryin’ on in the pub, too. It’s all very well when she bangs around a bedstead and moans a bit, but she soured two kegs of beer!” He said it with so much righteous anger you’d think Lil had been gobbling up the village children. “An’ she throwed the missus’s pots and pans around the kitchen. Broke a rack of new pint glasses.”
Mr. Cadogan had been busy making up new stories to entertain those anticipated throngs of tourists.
“It all got to be too much,” he said, leaning forward. “So I had the cellar dug up and found her bones. Gave her a proper churchyard burial—cost me a fortune, it did. And how d’you think she thanked me for it?”
His eyes bugged as he waited for my reply.
“How?”
“She up and brought her old bones right back here! The very day after I buried her proper, I flipped on a light switch upstairs and blew a bloody fuse. So I went down to the cellar to change it, an’ I tripped over her bones in the dark, right where we’d dug ’em up. Nearly broke me poor old neck.”
He glanced at Jenkins and, without changing his indignant expression, snapped a quick wink. Jenkins smiled into his pint.
“So what does our Vicky think of all that, then, eh?”
“I think the tourists will be spellbound by your stories, Mr. Cadogan.”
He guffawed and slapped the bar. “She don’t believe me! Every word is true. I swear it on me dear old mum’s grave.”
“Your dear old mum doesn’t have a grave,” the farmer objected. “She’s living in a retirement home in Llangollen.”
“She does, too. She’s paying for a burial plot on the installment plan.”
“It’s bad luck for both of you if you swear on it,” the farmer insisted.
“Now, Tom, you know I’m just—”
Now would be a good time to make my calls. Pulling my phone card from my back pocket, I left them arguing and went over to the payphone, which hung on the wall by the rear door. As I lifted the handset from its cradle, Mr. Cadogan called out to me.
“That reminds me, Vicky. Anna—you haven’t met our Anna yet, she’s the new cleaner. She took a coupla messages for you. I found ’em mixed in with a stack of bills. Just came across ’em this afternoon, else I’d have sent ’em out your aunt’s way with the postman. Now,” he muttered, wiping his hands on his apron and scratching his bald head, “where’d I put those?”
He dug around behind the bar. Then, with a triumphant yelp, he held up two crumpled, beer-stained pieces of paper and waved them at me.
“Thanks,” I said, taking them. I looked around for a table where I could sit and read the messages. The pub wasn’t busy, but the layout of the old building made it impossible to find a seat where I could keep an eye on all the room’s entrances. I chose a bench along the rear wall under one of the windows. Cold air poured in through the skewed frame, but from here I had a good view of the room—unless something decided to crash through the window behind me. I sipped my perry and decided not to think about that.
I spread the crumpled message slips flat on the table. There was no date on either. The first one read For Vicky. Call Cain ASAP. An eight-digit number followed. Eight. Too long for a regular phone number but too short for the number plus an area code. And it didn’t bear any resemblance to either number I had for Kane—his cell phone or the D.C. law firm.
I put the message aside to read the other, which was from Daniel. Anna wrote, Vicky. Everything’s OK. Daniel. I took that to mean no more zombies had died. I hoped it also meant that all was well at Daniel’s job, that Hampson hadn’t found out he’d leaked information to Lynne Hong.
I wondered what else Kane and Daniel might have said. “Our Anna” wasn’t exactly proficient at taking messages.
I checked my watch. Ten past ten, ten past five Eastern time. Daniel was probably on his way home from work; I’d try Kane first. I looked at the slip again, wondering when Kane had called. I wished Anna had bothered to write down the date. ASAP. I hoped there wasn’t a problem. Knowing Kane, if it was anything truly urgent, he’d have called back a couple more times—or six or seven. Unless Anna had filed those messages under a pile of dirty bar towels.
As soon as I stood to make the call, I felt it. Something was wrong.
The room was quiet, but it wasn’t a normal silence. It was heavy, stifling, like someone had stuffed the room with cotton balls. Colors bled away. And I was alone. The publican, Jenkins, the farmer at the bar, the couple by the fireplace—they’d all vanished.
“Mr. Cadogan? Jenkins?” I could barely hear my own voice. It was like trying to call out underwater.
I slid Mab’s bronze-bladed knife from its sheath.
A spark shot from the fireplace and landed on the wood floor. Smoke snaked upward.
Gripping the knife, I went over to stamp out the still-glowing spark. Whatever was going on, there was no point in burning down the pub.
I crossed the room slowly, alert for any movement. There was too much smoke pouring out of that one little ember. It massed into a vertical cloud about five feet tall. Then the ember quit glowing, and the cloud began to form itself into a shape.
I stopped—watching, ready—my fingers tense on the knife’s grip.
The shape was human. It wore a dress with skirts that swept the floor. A woman. She was semi-transparent and looked way too much like an eighteenth-century barmaid. Dark, bruiselike spots marked her throat.
I stared at Spooky Lil herself, in the flesh. Or whatever it is ghosts are made of.
24
SPOOKY LIL’S EYES LOCKED ONTO ME. SHE LOOKED SAD, abandoned, lonely. It can’t be easy to wait hundreds of years in a cold grave for a lover who’s not coming. I tried to remember something—anything—about ghosts and how to deal with them. But I never believed in them, so I hadn’t paid much attention.
Ghosts don’t know they’re dead. That was true, wasn’t it? It was their whole problem, the reason they hang around long after their bodies have decayed. I thought of Mr. Cadogan’s story about bones in the cellar. If I showed Lil her bones, maybe she’d understand she was dead and pass peacefully into the next realm.
It was the only plan I had, so I decided to go for it. I set the knife down on a table and raised my hand in a calming gesture. “Lil, I mean you no harm. I want to help you move on to where you’re meant to be.” Mr. Cadogan would kill me for exorcising his moneymaking ghost.
She tilted her head and regarded me with milky eyes. She moved a step toward me—except it wasn’t a step, the way she floated over the floor—then stopped and drew back. She looked scared. I smiled, hoping to encourage her.
Lil glided a few inches closer. She raised her hand in a gesture that mirrored mine. The corners of her mouth lifted in a timid smile.
Good, we’re making progress.
The smile widened. Lil’s lips peeled back to reveal two rows of razor-sharp teeth.
A shock of energy blasted the room and knocked me on my ass. Claws sprouted from the fingers of Lil’s outstretched hand. She shrieked—the sound was muffled by the room’s strange atmosphere, but it was clear this ghost meant business. She rose into the air and dived at me.