The Medium (Emily Chambers Spirit Medium Trilogy #1) (2 page)

"I
wonder..." she said.

"Wonder
what? Celia—?"

Celia's soft
chanting interrupted me. With both hands touching the amulet, she repeated some
words over and over in a strange, lyrical language I didn't recognize. Considering
I only knew English and possessed a basic knowledge of French, that wasn't
saying a great deal.

She finished her
chant and let the amulet go. As she did so a blast of wind swept through the drawing
room, rustling hair and skirts, dousing candles and flapping the journal's
pages. A shadow coalesced above the table, a shapeless blob that pulsed and
throbbed. It was like the mud that oozed on the riverbank at low tide, sucking
and slurping, threatening to swallow small creatures and boots. But the
shadow—I could think of no other word to describe the dark, floating
mass—altered of its own volition.

No longer
shapeless, it became a hand reaching out. Two or three of the guests screamed
and scuttled to the far side of the drawing room. Beside me, my sister tensed
and circled her arm around my shoulders, pulling me back. She said something
under her breath but the loud thud of my heart deafened me to her words, but
not to her fear. I could feel it all around me as I stared at the shadow, which
was quickly changing shape again.

It became a foot
then the head of a rat then a dog with snapping jaws and hungry eyes. A hound
from hell, snarling and slavering and vicious. It stretched its neck toward me
and before I could react, Celia jerked me back.

Too late.

The shadow
creature's sharp teeth closed around my shoulder. I squeezed my eyes shut and
braced myself. Nothing happened. Oh there was screaming coming from everyone
else, including Celia, but I heard no tearing of flesh or clothing. I felt no
pain, just a cool dampness against my cheek. I opened my eyes. The creature had
turned back into a shapeless cloud. For a brief moment it hovered near the door
and then with a whoosh it was gone.

A breathless
moment passed. Two. Three.

"What was
that?" I whispered in the ensuing hush.

Celia looked
around at the white faces staring wide-eyed back at us, hoping we could give
them answers. We couldn't.

She indicated
the armchair. "Is he still here?" Her voice shook and she still
gripped my shoulders.

"Still
here," both Mr. Wiggam and I said together.

"Did you
see that?" he said, staring at the door. He didn't look nearly as
frightened as the others, but then what did a dead man have to fear? He went to
the door and peered out into the hall. "I wonder what it was."

"It's gone
now," I said. My words seemed to reassure the ladies who stood huddled in
the corner of the room.

"The air in
this city," Mrs. Wiggam said with a click of her tongue and a dismissive
wave of her hand. "It gets worse and worse every year." She ushered
the ladies to seats, plumped cushions and pooh-poohed any suggestions of a
menacing spirit ruining her social event. "It was a trick of the light,
that's all," she said. "The tense atmosphere in here has got to you
all, stirred your imaginations."

"Stupid
woman," Mr. Wiggam muttered. "She can't possibly believe that cloud
was natural."

I didn't care
what Mrs. Wiggam thought, as long as her guests accepted her explanation. Clearly
some of them did, or perhaps they simply
wanted
to believe it and so
willingly forgot what they'd seen only moments before. One or two seemed
unconvinced and I hoped they would not gossip about it later. If word got out
that we'd released something sinister during one of our séances, our business
could flounder. Celia and I could ill afford such a disaster becoming public
knowledge.

"Well,"
Celia said, peering down at the amulet hanging from its leather strip. "I
thought it a harmless piece."

"Then why
use it?" I hissed.

She gathered up
the tambourine and Ouija board, packed them into her carpet bag and snapped the
clasp shut. "The peddler who gave it to me said I was to say those words
three times if I needed to solve something."

A maid entered
carrying a large tray with teapot and cups. Two other maids followed her with
more trays laden with cakes and sandwiches. Celia's face relaxed at the sight
of the refreshments.

"What were
the words?" I pressed her.

She waved a hand
as she accepted a teacup with the other. Her hands shook so much the cup
clattered in the saucer. "Oh, some gibberish. She didn't tell me what they
meant, just that I should repeat them if I needed to fix something. Well I did
need to fix something." She leaned closer to me and lowered her voice. "The
spirit of Mr. Wiggam wouldn't leave."

I wasn't
entirely convinced that the ongoing presence of Mr. Wiggam was what the woman
had meant. Nor was I convinced that the words were gibberish. I looked at the
door then at Mr. Wiggam. He stood with his back to the fireplace as if warming
himself against the low flames—although he couldn't feel the cold—and stared at
the door, a puzzled expression causing his wild brows to collide.

"The peddler
was a mad old thing," Celia muttered around the rim of her teacup. "Completely
mad." She sipped.

"At least
it's gone, whatever it was, and no one seems affected by it."

No. No one at
all.

***

"Tell me
about the peddler woman," I asked Celia when we were almost home. We'd
decided to walk from Mrs. Wiggam's Kensington house instead of taking the
omnibus. It wasn't far and we would save on the fare as well as gain some
exercise. Celia is all for exercising in the fresh air, although London's air
couldn't be considered fresh by anyone's standards as Mrs. Wiggam had
reassuringly pointed out to her guests. It stank of smoke and horse dung, made
eyes sting and left skin feeling gritty. It was cool, however, and certainly
invigorating as the chilly spring breeze nipped at our noses and ruffled the
ribbons on our hats.

Celia sighed as
if the task of recollection was a burden. "She looked like any other old
crone. As wrinkled as unpressed linen, I do recall that. Gray hair, which she
wore long and uncovered." She sniffed to indicate what she thought of that.
"Oh and she had an East End accent. I'd never seen her before, she wasn't the
usual Thursday peddler. I don't know her name, and I don't know anything else
about her except that she was dressed all in black. Now stop fretting, Emily. We'll
let Mr. and Mrs. Wiggam sort out their differences then return him to the
Waiting Area tomorrow. There's nothing more we can do."

"How can
they sort out their differences when she can't see him or speak to him?" A
strong breeze whipped up the street, flattening our skirts and petticoats to
our legs. We both slapped a hand to our hats to keep them from blowing away. We
lived on Druids Way in Chelsea and it's always windier than everywhere else in
London. It must have something to do with the length and orientation of the
street as well as the height of the houses lining both sides of it. None of
them were less than two levels and all showed signs of neglect. Much of Chelsea
was still occupied by the reasonably prosperous, but our street seemed to have slipped
into obscurity some years ago. Paint flaked off front doors and the brick facades
were no longer their original red-brown but had turned almost black thanks to
the soot permanently shrouding our city. All one had to do was turn the corner
and see streets swept clean and houses tenderly kept but Druids Way was like a
spinster past her marrying days—avoided by the fashionable set.

I hazarded a
sideways glance at Celia and felt a pang of guilt for my unkind comparison. At
thirty-three she was unlikely to find a husband. She seemed to have given up on
the idea some years ago, preferring to dress in gowns that flattered neither
her slim figure nor her lovely complexion. I'd tried many times to have her
dress more appropriately for an unwed woman but she refused, saying she'd prefer
to see
me
in the pretty gowns.

"We'll pay
a call on Mrs. Wiggam tomorrow," Celia said, bowing her head into the
wind. "Perhaps Mr. Wiggam will have tired of his wife and be willing to
cross over by then. Will that satisfy you?"

"I suppose
so." What else could we do? I couldn't simply let the matter drop. Not
only had we failed to return Mr. Wiggam to the Waiting Area, we'd left him with
a person who despised him. There was no handbook for spirit mediums when it
came to summoning the dead, but I knew deep down that this situation wasn't
acceptable. Celia and I had no right to rip souls out of the Waiting Area and
reignite emotional wounds in this world. It had never been a problem in the
past, so I'd never given it much thought. Besides which, the ghosts we summoned
at our drawing room séances had always willingly returned to the Waiting Area afterwards,
and they'd done so feeling content that their loved ones could move on too.

Or so I liked to
think. The Wiggams' situation had shaken me. Celia and I were fools to think we
could control the deceased, or the living for that matter.

I also had the
awful feeling we'd released something else in Mrs. Wiggam's drawing room by
using that strange incantation. Something sinister. I only wish I knew what.

"Now, what shall
we have for supper?" Celia asked.

I stopped with
one foot on the stairs leading up to our front door and suppressed a small
squeak of surprise. A man stood on the landing, leaning against the door, his
arms crossed over his chest. He looked older than me but not by much, tall,
with short dark hair and a face that was a little too square of jaw and sharp
of cheek to be fashionable. It wasn't a beautiful face in the classical statue
sense but it was certainly handsome.

The odd thing
about him wasn't that we'd not noticed him earlier—we'd had our heads bent
against the wind after all—but the way he was dressed. He wore black trousers,
boots and a white shirt but nothing else. No hat, no necktie, jacket or vest
and, scandalously, the top buttons of his shirt were undone so that his bare
chest was partially visible.

I couldn't take
my eyes off the skin there. It looked smooth and inexplicably warm considering
the cool air, and—.

"There you
are," he said. I dragged my gaze up to his face and was greeted by a pair
of blue eyes that had an endlessness to their depths. As if that wasn't
unsettling enough, his curious gaze slowly took in every inch of me, twice. To
my utter horror, my face heated. He smiled at that, or I should say he
half-smiled, which didn't help soothe my complexion in the least. "Your
mouth is open," he said.

I shut it. Swallowed.
"Uh, Celia?"

"Yes?"
Celia dug through her reticule, searching for the front door key.

"You can't
see him, can you?"

She glanced up,
her hand still buried in her reticule, the carpet bag at her feet. "See
who?"

"That gentleman
standing there." I waggled my fingers at him in a wave. He waved back.

She shook her
head. "No-o. Are you trying to tell me Mr. Wiggam is here?"

"Not Mr. Wiggam,
no."

"But..."
She frowned. "Who?"

"Jacob Beaufort,"
the spirit said without moving from his position. "Pleased to make your
acquaintance. I'd shake your sister's hand," he said to me, "but
given she can't see me she won't be able to touch me either."
I
could see him, and therefore touch him, but he didn't offer to shake my hand.

Unlike ordinary
people, I could touch the ghosts. Celia and the other guests at our séances
simply walked through them as if they were mist but I couldn't, which made
sense to me. After all, they could haunt a place by tossing objects about, or
upturn tables and knock on wood, why wouldn't they have physical form? At least
for the person who could see them.

I wondered what
he would feel like. He looked remarkably solid. Indeed, he looked very much
alive, more so than any ghost I'd ever seen. Usually they faded in and out and
had edges like a smudged charcoal sketch, but Jacob Beaufort was as well
defined as Celia.

"Er,
pleased to meet you too," I said. "I'm Emily Chambers and this is my
sister Miss Celia Chambers."

Celia bobbed a
curtsy although she wasn't quite facing Mr. Beaufort, then picked up her bag
and approached him. Or rather, approached the door. She walked straight through
him and inserted the key into the lock.

"I say!"
he said and stepped aside.

"She didn't
mean any offense," I said quickly.

"Did I do
something wrong?" Celia asked as the door swung open.

"You walked
through him."

"Oh dear, I
am terribly sorry, Mr..."

"Beaufort,"
I filled in for her.

"As my
sister said, I meant no offense, Mr. Beaufort." She spoke to the door. I
cleared my throat and pointed at the ghost now standing to one side on the landing.
She turned a little and smiled at him. "Why are you haunting our front
porch?"

I winced and
gave Mr. Beaufort an apologetic shrug. My sister may be all politeness with the
living but she'd yet to grasp the art of tactful communication with the
deceased.