Spirit Guide, page 10
Twyla looked over her notes. “A week ago.”
“So at least a month after the poor girl killed herself. Come, let’s sit.” We took adjoining seats on the sofa. “Have you ever tried any psychometry?”
“I’m not very good at it.”
“Well, that’s why I’m here. To teach you. Now, hold it in your hands. No, take off your gloves. Your flesh needs to touch it. We begin like any meditation— clear your mind first.”
“I can’t do it! I think too much.”
“We’ll try a different path, then. Keep your eyes open and look at the locket. Examine it very closely and tell me everything you see. Stay focused on it and nothing else.”
“The chain is long, but of poor quality. It doesn’t match the color of the locket. It looks to be a gray metal, something cheap.”
“Yes, it’s a machine-made cable chain, probably of some composite like nickel and zinc.”
Encouraged by my words, Twyla continued examining it. “At one point, the chain was repaired. No, it was fixed at two points. The links are bent, as if someone used pliers and pinched too hard. And the chain’s clasp doesn’t match the metal. It looks newer.”
“What does that tell us?”
“It wasn’t original to the locket. Bought later? Fixed because she didn’t have money to even replace a cheap chain?”
I nodded. “Go on. Think like a jeweler.”
“The locket is gold colored, but not gold. From the nicks, it shows a gray metal underneath, so I’m guessing it’s brass-plated. The RE on the back is well done, though. A bit fancy on the engraving for such a common piece, I would have thought, but the initials are worn like the rest of the locket, so it was probably done at the same time the locket was made.”
She opened it, revealing nothing inside. I handed her my jeweler’s loupe for her to examine it closer. “There’s something stuck in the latch. A bit of dark brown or black hair, and in the recess, a tiny bit of paper.”
“Ordinary paper, or that of a daguerreotype?”
“Oh! Let me see! I’m not sure?” She looked to me for an answer.
I felt the slick paper between my fingers and then sniffed it. It had a chemical smell to me. “A daguerreotype would be my guess. Unfortunately it is gone. We should ask her mother if she knew what it was. Or if she removed it herself.”
“Why would she do that and not tell us?”
I smiled, shaking my head. “It could have been a photo she wanted to keep out of sentimentality— for example, an image of her daughter’s father. Or Madame Chapelle didn’t want us to see because it reflected poorly upon her daughter— like a lover. Now fold the locket into your hands, like this.” I placed my own over hers. “Close your eyes.” She did so, and I leaned forward, putting my forehead against hers. “Let me guide you.”
It took a moment to focus on it, but soon the secrets of the locket started unfolding. Surely, something so long cherished would have a story to tell?
A dark-haired girl with green eyes gave the cold metal a kiss and pulled it over her head. Laying it on her bosom, she opened it, revealing a photo of an older man wearing mutton-chop whiskers and a full beard. A style popular with mature men, so my guess would be a father, coinciding with the story her mother had given of the locket being a gift from him. The locket glowed with love and care. Impressions faded away. I pulled my hands back; what information it could give us was done.
“That’s psychometry? I’ve never felt that before.” Twyla’s eyes shone. “But how does that fit in with the lonely hearts advertisement?”
“That is something for you to figure out as your first case.”
“Really?!”
Her obvious excitement made me feel guilty for being upset with her before. Truly, the girl just needed direction and patience, even if she could at times be annoying. “Yes. The locket didn’t show us anything about her dying, so I suspect she wasn’t wearing it when she passed. The classified seems strangely specific to me. Like they are looking for the locket, or maybe someone who owns the locket. Now, listen carefully, Twyla. I forbid you to answer that ad alone. You will work with Inspector Barbier on this, or I will end your apprenticeship.”
She bobbed her head. “I will. I promise. But can’t we do the same thing with the earring we found on Mys Wahl’s body?”
“Yes, we can, and I certainly plan on doing so.” I pulled it out of the felt storage bag where I had kept the locket. Twyla tapped her toes in gleeful excitement. “But before we do so, tell me if you discovered anything else.”
“Two girls seem likely candidates: Lorraine Kaplan and Renee Bassett. There were multiple listings pleading for information and when I went by to visit with the families, they didn’t seem likely to be runaway types. Both come from merchant families. Lorraine was actually engaged to be married to a man she loved. Renee was supposed to leave for a visit to country relatives and was looking forward to the trip.”
“Did the two know each other?”
“Not as far as I could figure out. But they did both belong to the same circulating library. A small social club attached to a certain sweets and coffee shop. They could have met each other there.”
“Very good work, Twyla. This sounds like a place we should visit.”
“Right now?”
My hand on hers stopped the girl from impulsively leaping to her feet. “No, let’s take a look at Ebbe’s earring first.”
“Oh, right.”
I pulled back the folds of my lacy handkerchief and revealed again the large pearl with its diamond bow. It was a very pretty object; seeing it again made me think that Mys Wahl would only have worn such an object if she were meeting a man. Why wear anything so valuable during the day just to meet an ordinary friend? Maybe she would have done so to show it off. It was a shame that we really didn’t know much about her personally, so could only guess at her motivations.
Again, I had Twyla hold it in her palms. “Keep them open this time.” I laid my own open palms on top, sandwiching the earring between us. “Let us see if it can tell us anything important.”
Using psychometry would yield different information than Ghost Talking a body. Objects weren’t as reliable, as they retained fleeting impressions, and what those would be was unpredictable. For instance, the Chapelle locket had only shown us what I would expect: how it had been worn, its owner, and what emotional impressions had soaked into it over a lengthy period of time.
On the other hand, my father’s watch had revealed the violence of his death. Why, I wasn’t sure. Perhaps because he had been wearing it at the time, and the murderer had taken it with him? Would Ebbe’s earring give us such important information?
Once the pearl and diamonds opened to us, images were revealed quickly. First of Ebbe, the original owner. It was odd to see her in motion. The serious, athletic girl from the daguerreotype was now smiling and moving. Elaborate dinner parties with the baron and a brown-haired woman matching him in age whom I assumed to be her mother.
But underneath these images was an unpleasant, disturbed hum. It was a vibration that I knew from experience had a connection to violent death. Not from accidents, but from murder.
Twyla tried to pull her hands away.
“No, not yet. Stay with me.”
“But—”
“Stay with me,” I commanded, wanting the information the earring could give us.
“But Elinor! He’s back!”
The fright in her voice made me open my eyes. “Who’s back?”
But she didn’t have to answer, for I saw who she meant: the ghost Twyla had accidentally summoned in Madame Chapelle’s parlor was here. Mysir Vonn, whose killing spree in the Hells had made him a legend. He was standing in front of us. If he had been a ghost, I could have handled him easily enough. But he was flesh, as solid as Twyla and myself.
“What an unpleasant surprise,” I said, forcing myself to appear calm. Vonn’s uncanny appearance was just more evidence that supernatural norms were being overturned.
He held up his hand, showing that he held a sharp-pointed knife, a match to the one Charlotte had drawn for us. The metal of the blade had a luster to it that drew the eye. “Our last time together was far too brief.”
Twyla and I retreated, putting the couch between us and the madman. That wouldn’t buy us much time. If I was to die, I wanted answers first. “You killed Hannah Wahl, didn’t you?”
“The black-haired wench had it coming. Meeting lovers in back alleys. My alley. She came to my favorite place as if waiting for me. A gift I couldn’t say no to.”
Questions flooded my brain, while fear kept me paralyzed. A ghost might cause injury or an accident, such as knocking out someone with a saucepan, but there was no documented case of them actually killing anyone. Yet. I didn’t want to go down in history as the first. Oh, how I wished I had my man-stopper with me! But it was stowed in my wardrobe closet in my bedroom.
“Where did you come from? Why are you here?”
“The earring drew me. I have the match.” Digging in his pocket, he brought out Ebbe’s missing earring.
I told Twyla urgently, “You need to run to the kitchen. There’s a fire ladder outside the window.”
“No. I’m not leaving you here,” she muttered, defiant.
“He’s not shifting,” I warned her. Since his appearance, I had been attempting to send him back to the Beyond. For some reason, all my efforts were failing.
At that moment the door to the suite opened and Anne-Marie entered, her arms full of clean towels she had probably collected from the Crown’s laundress. Before she could react, Vonn lunged at her.
Grabbing a vase off the table, I threw it, screaming at him.
But it was Twyla who did the smartest thing. She grabbed my hand and transported us into the Beyond.
Chapter Fourteen
The world tilted as we shifted into the Beyond, a place meant only for the dead.
Instead of finding myself in the duke’s conservatory, where I had battled the ghost-dragon, I was standing in a filthy narrow alley, the walls of the tenements towering so high that I couldn’t see the sky.
While I was still disoriented, trying to make sense of what had just happened, Twyla pulled at my wrist, shouting, “Run!”
It was then that I saw Vonn, a few yards from where we stood. The spree killer was shaking his head, as confused as I was. Not waiting, Twyla and I started running.
“Did you bring us here? Or was it Vonn?”
“I brought us! But I think we’re in Vonn’s mind— where he resides in the Beyond.” Twyla was speaking over her shoulder in panting breaths as we ran full tilt, our skirts hitched up. We dodged around trash barrels and jumped over brick rubble.
Twyla’s guess seemed to be accurate, for we were running for our lives through a tenement alley typical of what was found in the Hells. There had been no time for me to shape reality, and I doubted that Twyla would have picked this type of scenery, so that left only our murderer.
The oddness of the Beyond always presented itself in little things, such as the lack of smell; there was no stench of sewage or garbage. No rats scurried away from our hurried approach. While we ran, our footsteps made no sound on the pavement below us. It was a shadow of reality, like dreams were.
I passed a window with shutters half askew on their hinges for the third time, and realized we were running through the same alley again and again. The area seemed to last about twenty feet before it repeated itself with the same garbage can, the same pile of broken bottles, and the broken shutters. The creation of the place was limited by the ghost’s imagination, and Vonn only remembered his favorite alley enough to reproduce it, and even then, imperfectly.
I did not look back, but could hear Vonn’s shouted expletives behind us.
“Return us to the Crown!” I shouted to Twyla.
“I can’t without taking him! He’s linked to us somehow.”
While our surroundings might not behave like a real place, my body did, and it was tiring. The alley kept stretching onward, endless. No, I was wrong! There was a light ahead of us, like the dawn on the horizon. It made a bright void with no perceivable bottom. Thinking of how the ghost dragon had fallen into nothingness, I automatically slowed down, but a male shout behind me acted as a spur.
Grabbing Twyla by the arm, I ran into that brightness. A few moments later, an explosion happened behind us that sent us flying back to land on the ground. My ears ringing, I gazed around, befuddled. I did not feel the killer’s spirit and realized that Vonn had not been able to follow us. Why, I did not know, but I was thankful for the reprieve.
Twyla asked with wonder, her voice echoing, “What is this? A palace?”
I could see why she thought so, for the place was extravagant in size. We stood in a large hall, museum-like, with an arched ceiling supported by pencil-thin columns in blood-red marble. The walls were plaster, a gray putty in color, and hanging on them were paintings all in gold ornamental frames. Strangely, when I tried to focus on the art to see what it was, it was like looking at something through a fogged window. Just blobs of color.
“Do you notice that when you look at the paintings, they go out of focus?”
“Yes!” Twyla went over to a wall in an attempt to see one of them close up, but as she approached, the wall moved away so she never reached her goal. She gave me a quizzical look.
“Don’t ask me. I’ve never seen anything like it. Let’s go through here.” I pointed at one of the passageways between the columns.
We entered yet another room that mimicked the hall we had just left, with its arched roof and thin supporting columns. Here there were no paintings, but art of a different type. As we walked through it we discovered that between the columns were white marble statues of women, five in total. Each woman was mounted on a rectangular block plinth to raise her higher than normal human height, and one block was empty.
“That one is Renee Bassett!” cried Twyla, rushing over to one of the statues. Unlike the paintings, nothing moved, and she actually reached it. Hm. That meant, for some reason, the statues were more real than the paintings.
I came up behind her and looked up at the one she’d indicated. “How can you tell?”
“Her parents showed me a daguerreotype of her.”
Renee must have been young, for she still had that baby roundness to her face, though her figure had blossomed into a woman’s. Indeed, all the women were carved to appear as if dressed in thin drapery which hugged their body. If a man had been present, I would probably have blushed. Renee’s lips were small and pouty; her blank marble eyes were set wide on either side of a short, snub nose. The girl’s hair was dressed in an elaborate coil of curls on top of her head, similar in style to all the other statues.
“Is Lorraine Kaplan here?”
“I didn’t see a picture of her, so I don’t know.”
While we could not confirm it yet, I suspected she was here among us. I reached out a hand and lightly touched the robe of Renee Bassett.
As I made contact, a burning shock raced up my fingers to elbow, then shoulder. I snapped my hand back quickly. For a moment, it felt like the sightless eyes looked down at me. Whatever was behind that gaze was no longer human. I took a step back.
“I didn’t know we had visitors,” said a feminine voice.
The woman emerged from around a corner, and I gasped. It was Ebbe Losendahl! She was dressed in the same style as the statues: a clinging, winding sheet, her feet in sandals, and her curled hair piled high. As I had guessed from her photo, she was tall, making the woman next to her appear even shorter. Her companion was dressed in the same style, but had blond hair and child-like brown eyes.
“Hello. I am Madame Elinor Chalamet and this is my apprentice, Mys Twyla Andricksson. We’ve just been admiring your artwork.”
“I am Lady Ebbe Losendahl, and my friend is Mys Labrenda Elstad. Are you guests of the Creator?”
“Yes,” I said quickly, before Twyla could say something to contradict me. “Is the Creator here now?”
“No. Maybe later. It doesn’t matter really, does it, as long as we are all happy?” She shared a confiding smile with Labrenda and squeezed the dead girl’s hand. The other did not speak, and I did not think she was human. She moved more like a doll than a living being, and her face had a lax passivity to its features.
At least Ebbe seemed to be alive. For the moment.
“Is Twyla your companion, Elinor?”
“No. Not in the way you mean. She is my student. I noticed there’s an empty spot on one of your pedestals.”
“Yes, that one is for me. Soon, my mortal self will take its place alongside the others, fulfilling the Creator’s plan.”
“Yes, the plan. The Creator’s plan. Could you give me more details on that? I’ve forgotten some of it.”
She gave a regal bow of her head, smiling. “Of course. Right now, I can only visit the Creator’s kingdom when my body in the earthly realm is sleeping, but soon I will be here forever. Like the other Chosen Ones. Immortal. Never dying. Living forever.” Her voice was dreamy and disconnected from emotion; somehow I didn’t feel it was true to the person I had been told Ebbe was. How much of what she spoke of came from the drugs that were keeping her physical body enslaved?
“Where exactly will the ceremony be held? I don’t want to miss it.”
She didn’t answer me but turned to go, her hand in Labrenda’s as she glided away, much like a boat on a tide after it loses its mooring.
I called after her, “We are here because of your father, Baron Losendahl. He’s very worried about you.”
I was about to go after the two of them when Twyla, who had been remarkably silent during this exchange, tugged faintly at my sleeve. She said faintly, “Life is pulling me back. I can’t hold us here any longer.”
“What about Vonn?”
“After we came in here, I didn’t feel him any longer.” Her words were fading, and I had to strain to hear them. Her color was pale, her lips tinged with blue.
I put my arm around her waist, holding her up as her head rolled against my shoulder. “Take us home, Twyla.”
