Deception (23 page)

He sampled a few measures of something else, mournful and slow, then we sat in silence for a time.

“Why did you lie to the police?” I asked. “You told them you found the body.”

“To protect you, Emma.”

“Oh,” I said in a little voice. He wanted to protect me. “Thank you.” I plunked a few piano keys. “Except … what exactly do I need protecting from?”

He made an unhappy noise. “You’re not going to like it.”

“Martha’s dead. The worst thing that could happen already did.”

“You know that image next to
—
” His jaw clenched. “Next to Martha, on the floor?”

“Yeah.” I swallowed. I still hadn’t told him about the version of it I wore around my neck.

He glanced at me. “Did she tell you what it is?”

“Some ghostkeepers need a talisman to hone their power. She said the owner didn’t practice anymore.”

“Yeah, but did she tell you whose it was?”

“No.”

He stood and ran his fingers through his hair. “Your mother’s.”

Yeah, I’d pretty much figured that out. “Bennett, just because someone’s using my mom’s amulet, doesn’t mean
—
that’s not evidence she’s involved in the murders.”

“It’s not proof,” he said, “but it
is
evidence. She’s involved somehow.”

“She’s
—
someone else is using it.”

“Emma, no one else could use it. Each focus is unique and individual.”

“What about me?” I stood and walked across the parquet floor toward him. “Why did you bring me here, Bennett? Do you think I had anything to do with this?”

He hesitated a fraction of a second too long. “Emma, you’re the most powerful ghostkeeper I’ve ever seen, and now wraiths are appearing. And that thing today
—
what was that?”

“Neos.”

“You know his name?” He ran a hand over his brow. “You haven’t learned to control your abilities yet. Isn’t it possible that you’re summoning these things without meaning to?”

“No,” I said in a small voice. But I thought of what Neos had told me. He’d tasted my blood and we were connected. I didn’t tell Bennett about the ring. I wasn’t sure what he’d do if he knew I could turn into a ghost. “I don’t think my powers are out of control. I just think … I don’t know what they all are yet.”

He looked at me. “I want to believe you.”

His lack of confidence stunned me. And made me furious. “Do you really think I’m capable of hurting
—
of
murdering
—
Martha?”

“Of course not, but you keep demanding the truth, while you’re keeping your own secrets.” He grabbed my arms. “I’m not stupid, Emma.”

I wrenched myself away and went to the windows to stare at the moonlight. I wasn’t ready to explain about the ring or the talisman. How could I share anything more with Bennett when he didn’t trust me? I didn’t even know who I was talking to: Bennett or the Knell.

“Emma,” he said from behind me, “tell me about Neos.”

I shook my head. I’d told Martha about Neos, and gotten her killed.

“Ghostkeepers are dying. The killing’s not gonna stop now.”

I pressed a hand to my chest, feeling the jade through my sweater. I pictured my mother in her uniform of black T-shirt and pants and chunky jewelry, not a hair out of place in her blond bob. She couldn’t be involved. She just couldn’t.

As if sensing my thoughts, Bennett asked, gently, “Have you heard from Max?”

“No,” I answered. “Not from any of them.”

And I felt guilty. Because the truth was, I already missed Martha more than I missed them. I was left with nothing. “What am I going to do? What am I going to do without Martha?”

Bennett cleared his throat. “I’m leaving tonight. And you can’t stay here.”

“Don’t leave.”

“I have to. The Kne
—
”

“Don’t say it!” I snapped.

“You can stay with the family who’s hosting Natalie.”

I made a strangled noise. “With Natalie.” I turned back to the darkness in the window.

“Emma,” he said. “Please.”

“Fine. Whatever,” I said. “I’ll get my stuff.”

Nicholas and Celeste were waiting for me when I got upstairs.

I’m leaving,
I said.

No, you mustn’t go,
Celeste said.
You belong here, with us.

I glanced at Nicholas who was cleaning the grate. He gave me his best starving-waif look and it was all just too much. Maybe Abby was right to hate ghosts. Had they ever done anything but cause me problems? I was ready to forget them all. Go back to San Francisco and live my boring, asocial, but normal, life.

I’m sorry,
I mumbled and compelled them away.

I dug my suitcase from the floor of the wardrobe and shoved my meager clothing and necessities into it. The room was clean and the bed still made. I zipped my case and paused at the door, my hand on the polished nickel knob. It looked like I’d never been here.

I met Bennett, waiting in his jacket, at the bottom of the stairs. He grabbed for the suitcase.

“I’ve got it,” I said, stepping toward the door. I didn’t bother looking back.

At the Finches’ house, I found Natalie in the front doorway, her hair pulled into a sloppy ponytail, which only served to highlight the shadows under her eyes from weeping.

The little flat over the three-car garage included a small living room and kitchen, two minuscule bedrooms, and a bathroom, where the tub was filled with steaming hot water that smelled of grapefruit.

“That’s for you,” Natalie said. “I thought you’d need a soak.”

I stripped and sank into the tub, liking the scalding water on my skin. The aftershock of Martha’s death was setting in and I was beginning to go numb.

After an hour, Natalie knocked on the door. The water had long gone cold.

“Emma,” she called. “Are you all right?”

“Yeah,” I croaked.

I unstopped the drain with my foot and rose from the tub, wrapped myself in the fluffy lavender towels and opened the door. In my bedroom, my suitcase was a mess. I already missed Celeste. Amazing how easily you could get used to a maid, even one of the ghostly persuasion. I finally settled for an old T-shirt and leggings and found Natalie bawling in the kitchenette.

“I’m sorry,” she wailed. “She w-was a better m-mother than my mother was.”

So I hugged her and started sobbing as well. We stood, wailing into each other’s arms. Then the absurdity of it hit us at the same time and we both started to giggle.

Natalie wiped tears from her eyes. “God, what if they could see you at Thatcher? You’d no longer be the most popular girl in school.”

“What?” I said. “I’m not that popular.”

“Your best friends are Harry and Sara, and
Coby
is taking you to Homecoming.”

“Oh.” Back in San Francisco, I always fantasized that if I moved away, I’d become popular. Well, it had happened. “You’d think I’d enjoy it more.”

Natalie shook her head and made another pot of tea while I poked into cabinets until I found some almond cookies. Then we sat at the little table and maybe this wasn’t the right moment, but I said it anyway, because I couldn’t get it off my mind. “Natalie, I need to know about the Knell.”

“We’re not supposed to talk about it.” She sipped her tea. “What do you want to know?”

“Well, does the government know about it?”

“Not officially. There are ghostkeepers everywhere: CIA, FBI, all the military branches. When they come across something ghost-related, they let us know.”

“Is there an office somewhere?”

“Yeah, a few
—
it’s more of a home office sort of thing. I don’t actually know the details.”

“Does Bennett?”

She shrugged. “I don’t know if you’ve noticed, but he’s not, like, chatty.” She bit her lip. “He likes you, you know.”

“No he doesn’t.”

“He doesn’t want to,” she said, “but he does.”

Why didn’t he want to like me? Because he thought my mother was a murderer, that’s why. “He’s not even
nice
to me.”

“Exactly,”
she said, as if that only confirmed her opinion.

“It doesn’t matter,” I said. “Nothing matters anymore but finding Martha’s killer.”

25

I threw myself into school. It was either that or obsess about Martha and Neos. I didn’t summon ghosts and if one approached, I compelled it away. I didn’t even give Edmund, the man in the brown suit, a chance; he flashed me his most offended look before fading away.

I absolutely banned Bennett from my thoughts
—
well, more or less
—
and immersed myself in normal life. I texted Sara catty comments about other girls (mostly Britta), perfected my secret smile and flirted with Coby
—
and Harry, of course, because he didn’t know how to have any other interaction with a girl.

I even went Homecoming-dress shopping with Sara and watched her plunk down a cool nine hundred dollars on a bloodred velvet gown by a designer I’d never heard of at her beloved Neiman’s. I couldn’t find a dress, but used my dad’s credit card to buy a pair of black satin peep-toe pumps on sale. Even Sara approved, despite the sticker shock
—
she was bowled over by how cheap they were.

And I really enjoyed being normal. Well, I enjoyed pretending to be normal. Pretending that I wasn’t worried about wraiths looming from the darkness and that I didn’t mourn Martha every time I woke. And pretending that I didn’t wonder what Bennett had wanted to tell me for so long.

Then came Martha’s funeral. Instead of going with Natalie as planned, I’d hung back until the last mourner, a dapper middle-aged man I didn’t recognize, climbed into his car and left.

The cemetery was located in the oldest part of the village, next to a Congregational church built when Massachusetts was a colony. It was too small for a backhoe to fill the grave, so an old gravedigger had begun to shovel in the final dirt when I asked him to give me a minute. He wandered off to have a smoke as I stood at the edge, staring down at the oak coffin.

For a moment I hesitated
—
I’d gone through a Stephen King phase, and couldn’t help thinking about
Pet Sematary
. Would Martha’s ghost be just like she was, or wrong, like in
Pet Sematary
?

Then I shook my head. It didn’t matter. I wanted her back.

I closed my eyes and summoned her. And nothing happened. There was no familiar tingling, no sense that she’d been waiting for me to summon her. I tried again and again to no avail.

She wasn’t coming back.

I only wanted … I wiped tears from my eyes. I only wanted to see her one more time. Okay, more than once. I thought she could live in the museum with Anatole and the rest. But once would’ve been enough. To tell her I was sorry and that I was going to find who did this to her. And dispel them for good.

The gravedigger was done with his smoke. He came back to Martha’s grave and I walked away, trying to tune out the sound of the dirt hitting the casket.

When I got home, Natalie met me at the door. “You tried to summon her, didn’t you?”

I nodded. “Didn’t work.”

“Ghostkeepers don’t come back, Emma.”

“Never?” I asked.

“Never,” she said. “When we’re dead, we’re dead.”

A few days later, Natalie and I were watching some MTV reality show rerun, when she said, “So are you going to dump Coby after Homecoming?”

“What?” I said. “We’re hardly even going out.” We had lunch together every day and hung out after school a few times, but he hadn’t tried to kiss me again.

“Everyone else thinks you are.” She shot me a look. “Including Coby.”

“Am I going to find you kissing Coby behind the stadium at Homecoming? This has Jared written all over it.”

“What is your problem?” Natalie asked.

“What’s my problem?” Martha was dead, my family was missing, the guy I liked didn’t want to like me, and the guy who liked me I only liked as a friend. Plus some nightmare demon wanted to kill me, and my family might be responsible for the deaths of several ghostkeepers. “Where do I start?”

But before I could, there was a knock on the door.

“Oh, he’s here.” Natalie eyed me. “Are you going like that?”

“Like what? Who’s here?” I was wearing a stained T-shirt and an old pair of ripped Sevens. My hair had finally started to grow out and consequently was driving me crazy, so I’d braided what I could with little rubber bands I’d found in a kitchen drawer. I was not prepared to see anyone.

“Didn’t you get my e-mail about Bennett taking us to dinner?” Natalie asked.

Yeah, but I’d deleted it unread
—
she sent a dozen e-mails a day. Of course, I’d noticed she was wearing matchstick jeans, a flirty burgundy top, and leopard-print flats, but the possible reason hadn’t registered.

She went downstairs to open the street door for him, while I stood frozen like a deer. I fingered my braids trying to decide which looked worse: leaving them in or the inevitable crimping from taking them out. There was a little mirror by the apartment front door, and catching sight of myself, I realized frizz was preferable.

I’d only gotten one braid unraveled when Bennett walked in. He looked gorgeous in a gray canvas motorcycle jacket over a black T-shirt and jeans. He smiled, and for a moment I thought he was happy to see me, then noticed myself in the mirror again and realized he must be laughing at my hair.

“Emma’s not ready,” Natalie said.

“No?” Bennett said. “Looks ready to me.”

I yanked the rest of the rubber bands from my head. “I’m not going.”

“What? Why not?” Bennett asked. He looked at Natalie. “Did you forget to tell her?”

“No, I did not.”

“I just can’t.” I grabbed my peacoat and shoved a black newsboy cap over my hateful hair. “Any news about Martha’s killer?”

“That’s one thing I wanted to talk about.”

I slipped into my boots at the door. “Is that a yes?”

He shook his head. “It’s a no. I’m sorry.”

“Then I’ve gotta go.”

“Emma,” Natalie said, “don’t be like that. We’re going to the harbor for oysters. Come with us.”

Bennett watched me intently, but said nothing.

“See you,” I said, and shut the door behind me.

Tears welled in my eyes as I stumbled downstairs. When I got outside, I realized I had nowhere to go. So I walked, wandering around the village, past the harbor to Redd’s Pond with its hateful dunking-chair contraption where they’d tortured witches.
What kind of town made that a tourist attraction?
I wondered, thinking about the original Emma. Then I went out to the Neck and back again, until I stopped because my feet hurt.

And I found myself outside the gates of the Stern House Museum.

I saw the outline of the house through the trees, the windows dark but the white columns of the grand facade still visible. I wondered how Anatole and Celeste and the Rake were doing. I’d promised Nicholas I’d find him another Game Boy cartridge, but had never delivered.

Why had I come this way? It only reminded me of Martha.

Maybe that’s why I’d come. I needed to be reminded of Martha. I couldn’t ignore what had happened.

I needed to stop pretending I was someone I wasn’t.

While I stood on the sidewalk, lost in thought, the sky suddenly opened and rain poured down; lightning blazed and thunder roared. We never had this kind of storm in California. I shoved open the gates and ran down the drive to take shelter in the front portico of the museum.

I stood a moment, cold and wet. Inside, I could get Anatole to bring me hot tea, Celeste to run me a bath, and Nicholas had mad skills with a fireplace. But that would break my current no-ghost policy.

So I stood there, shivering. Then I laughed. “This is ridiculous!”

I closed my eyes and felt the familiar warm tingling that summoned a ghost.
Anatole, I need you. Please open the door. Celeste, I’m freezing! I could use some dry clothes. And a fire, Nicholas.

I didn’t bother compelling them
—
they were happier when asked.

A moment later Anatole opened the door and I punched in the code to the alarm that Bennett had taught me.

Ma chère.
He smiled and twirled his mustache.
I am so pleased to see you.

Anatole,
I said.
If I could hug you, I would.

Emma!
Celeste ran down the stairs.
I mean, Miss Vaile! You are too wet. I’ve already started ze bath. Come upstairs. Nicholas is in ze den lighting ze fire.

Are you hungry?
Anatole asked.

Starved,
I said.
What isn’t a bother to make?

Well, I suppose I could make something from ze spa cookbook?

I giggled.
Never! I don’t know what I was thinking when I gave that to you.

Well, then,
he said, pleased.
There is a good cheese and some eggs. Yes, I think I perhaps will whip up an omelet.

That would be divine,
I said and let Celeste whisk me upstairs.

I climbed into the half-drawn bath, warmed my icicle feet under the faucet, and gingerly lay back against the still cool porcelain of the claw-foot tub. I closed my eyes. It was good to be home.