Your Magic Touch (9 page)

Frannie grabbed him by the arm. “Come and see.”

Frannie wasn’t surprised Sin Boy
didn’t believe them about the disembodied laughter, but one look at the library and he’d have to believe their every word.

Earlier she’d thought it was remotely possible he’d been the one pulling their legs. This latest activity made it clear he wasn’t the practical joker. He couldn’t have been in two places at once.

 “You won’t believe the furniture.” As they approached the library, she signaled for him to enter first. He took a few steps into the room, and she cowered behind him with the ghost hunters taking up the rear.

He stopped in his tracks, giving her a chance to take in the scene. The furniture had righted itself.

How was that possible? It had been only minutes since they’d left the library and the doorway had always been in sight. “I swear, Sinclair, it was all topsy turvy.”

He didn’t say anything and instead pointed toward the ceiling at the center of the room.

Her gaze shifted to take in what he indicated.

There, dangling from the chandelier, was her best pair of stilettos and—what appeared to be male boxer shorts. How did her shoes get here? The last time she’d seen them, they’d been safely buried in her carry-on.

Thomas stepped forward and snapped photos with his digital camera. “This is incredible.”

Sin Boy didn’t look too happy. He stalked to the chandelier, pulled up a side chair and snatched down the underwear and her shoes. Turning to face her, he said, “I suppose you think this is funny.”

“No. I’m going to be pissed if my shoes have been messed up.” She snatched them from his hands. She sure couldn’t afford to replace them, not with her charitable contributions. After examining the shoes, she determined they didn’t appear to be damaged.

“So you admit it.” He sounded super annoyed.

“Admit what?” She raised her eyes and met his gaze. Why was he mad at her?

Did he think she’d played this prank on him? Judging by his intent expression and the way he’d balled the boxer shorts in his fist, the underwear belonged to him.

She thought about teasing him about it, but decided against it. Better to concentrate on making sure he knew she was innocent. “I didn’t have anything to do with hanging your laundry out to dry. I don’t think the ghost hunters did, either. We’ve been together the whole time.”

“You’re saying you didn’t snoop through my personal things?”

“Cross my heart,” she replied, making the gesture with her spare hand.

“I should believe you because?”

“For all I know, you were the one who snooped through my things to get my shoes,” she challenged right back.

Willie Jo put his hand on Sinclair’s arm. “We didn’t do this.”

Sinclair’s expression softened to confusion.

Even puzzled, the man was heart-stoppingly attractive.

“Then who did?”

“Mrs. Drundyl looks like she might have a wicked sense of humor,” suggested Frannie.

Sinclair snorted. “There’s only one person I know with the sort of sense of humor required for a stunt like this.” He looked toward the entrance to the room. “My cousin, Harrison. Harrison, where are you?”

At that moment, the maniacal laughter broke out again.

“The ghost,” said Maury, his voice all quivery.

“Nonsense,” replied Sinclair, striding toward the far end of the library. “That’s Harrison. I’d know that voice anywhere.”

He reached up to a shelf of books and pulled down three by their spines. An entire column of the floor-to-ceiling shelves beside him slid open, revealing a secret passageway.

How cool was that?

Frannie had never seen a secret passage before and there was no way she’d have found it on her own. She grabbed her camera and took a quick photo for her article. Even if they didn’t find anything spooktaculous at Haliday Hall, secret passages would interest the readers.

“Harrison,” called Sinclair as he poked his head into the passageway. “If you don’t show yourself immediately, you will regret it.”

Within seconds, a tall dark-haired man who resembled Sinclair made his appearance and joined them in the library. He flashed everyone a mischievous grin that seemed to say,
I’m a boy, and of course I’m up to all sorts of mischief, and you’ll have to forgive me no matter what.

So it was all a hoax.

Not only had the ghost hunters been wasting their time, but she had, too, all because some annoying Haliday family member wanted a little fun at their expense.

She was tired of people who felt entitled to do whatever they wanted simply because they could get away with it or thought it was owed to them.

She wasn’t the only one feeling this way, because Thomas began berating Harrison about how much time they had frittered away because of him.

“But you didn’t find any ghosts,” Harrison said, as if that excused his actions.

“Of course there are ghosts. We often don’t find the proof until after we examine the evidence we have collected. Evidence that’s now useless,” said Willie Jo.

“Now we’ll have to start over altogether.” Thomas crossed his arms and glared at Sinclair’s cousin. “None of our tapes, none of our data can be used. You should be ashamed of yourself, young man.”

Harrison pulled a notebook from his pocket, along with a gold-plated pen. “I’ll see to it that my father writes you a check to compensate you. How much would you say is required?”

Frannie watched Willie Jo nudge Maury and wordlessly point at Harrison’s pen.

Her brow creased. That pen looked a lot like her missing one. She took a step closer to examine it more carefully. Those were her initials engraved on it. “Hey, where’d you find my pen?”

Harrison again grinned like an imbecile. “This is yours?” He shot Sinclair a curious look and offered Frannie the pen.

Frannie took it and slid it into her pocket. How the pen had gone from being stolen by a bird into Harrison’s possession was a subject she’d have to delve into. It would have to be later. The ghost hunters had him first. They fell on him as though he was a bite of food offered to a starving horde.

Thomas had him by one arm and Maury by another.

At first she thought they were as angry as she was. She braced herself for the coming carnage, but then she realized the three men were all grins and smiles.

Willie Jo went so far as to slap Harrison on the back as though they were old pals.

It didn’t make sense, unless the ghost hunters were in financial difficulties, and Harrison’s offer of compensation made them happy. Whatever it was, their attitude toward him had undergone a one-eighty.

At least Sin Boy wasn’t done with his cousin. He blocked the group’s progress from the library. “No more practical jokes, cuz.”

“You got it. But you have to admit, there was no way I could resist when they were all so serious.” He addressed the three scientists. “Sorry about messing up your tests.”

“It was in good fun,” said Thomas. “You had us all going.”

“I’m going to go finish my tea,” said Sinclair. “Meet me in the dining room when you’re done fooling around, Harrison. You have some explaining to do about why you’ve come home.”

With that, he turned and left the room.

Harrison said, “Just goes to show, some people can’t take a joke.”

Once Harrison left to face
the music with
Sinclair, the ghost hunters had decided it would be best for them to split up in order to cover the most territory.

Because the previously gathered evidence had to be thrown out, they had a lot of investigation to make up. Splitting up would allow them to cover more area.

While Maury and Willie Jo would take the west wing, Frannie teamed up with Thomas to investigate the basement.

She descended the stairs into a dark crypt obviously used for storage.

In the shadows along the far wall, she noted discarded tables with missing legs, several boxes and numerous paintings turned to face away from view. Years of neglect and dusk covered all the visible surfaces.

At the sound of an animal—but it was just a mouse, she assured herself, even if it was a very large, extra-jumbo-sized mouse—skittering behind the piles, Frannie jumped.

“Should we set up here or keep going?” she asked, trying to fight off the creeps.

“Keep going,” Thomas said.

Although relieved she didn’t have to remain there to duel with the
mouse
, she didn’t want to go any farther, either. The mice might get even bigger the deeper they went into the cellar.

As her eyes fully adjusted to the dim lighting, she noted a dark passage at the rear of the chamber that led off—somewhere. And in front of them was another passage, this one lit by a single light bulb dangling from overhead.

“Walk into the light,” Frannie suggested with only the slightest snicker at her play on words. It was hard to work up to a good joke when her skin prickled and her pulse raced.

Thomas didn’t seem to get her joke. He immediately walked toward the lighted hallway with the K-II meter he held pointing the way.

He probably hadn’t seen the movies or TV shows about spirits crossing over into the light. It was unlikely any of the ghost hunters had.

Frannie couldn’t quite understand them. Despite all of their modern equipment, for all intents and purposes they might as well have been locked up in some scary mad-scientist lab for the last thirty years, considering how little they knew about current events.

The dim overhead lighting helped only a little. She could just make out doorways and some areas behind open alcoves off to the sides of the hallway that appeared to contain little more than hundreds of years of spider webs. She shivered.

She half expected Thomas to suggest they investigate in those areas, and when he didn’t, she gave silent thanks.

The hallway twisted and wound around like a maze, several times intersecting with other hallways leading off in other directions. Sometimes Thomas would turn to the right and sometimes to the left, following whatever electromagnetic trail he tracked on the K-II meter.

Frannie held her digital recorder out in front of her as if it were a pistol. Her senses were on edge, and she kept expecting Dracula to jump out at them.

Not that they’d seen or heard anything other than a couple of sleeping bats. But walking around in a dark and creepy basement made her breathing uncharacteristically shallow.

After they’d skulked about for almost an hour, Frannie had enough of the damp and gloomy catacombs. She was ready to head back upstairs where there weren’t any spiders to speak of, and the only bats flying around were ones in the ghost hunters’ belfries.

Oddly, she longed to curl up in that massive bed in the Princess Room. Even more oddly, she kept wondering what Sinclair was doing and whether he’d already gone to bed for the night. “Are you getting anything on your meter?”

Thomas turned to face her, and the overhead light bulb lit up the planes of his face in a strange manner, making him look more like a zombie than the sweet older man she knew him to be. “The spirit energy seems to have died down.”