Possibly. Delia didn’t want to think that Aaron’s grandmother might be the vengeful kind of spirit who played tricks on anyone who had the presumption to take up residence in her beloved home, but that sort of behavior was all too common among ghosts.
From what Pru had told her, though, it didn’t even sound as if Alba Sanchez had spent most of her life here. She and her husband had lived in the house for a while, but they’d moved out in the eighties, and she’d only returned after she was widowed some five years ago.
“You don’t want Aaron to sell the house?”
Dead silence.
For a second, anyway. From down the hall came a crash that made Delia jump…and then she realized that was probably the sound of the two bookcases getting knocked over.
Yes, it definitely seemed as if Alba wanted to keep the house in the family.
More than ever, Delia had to fight the urge to hurry down the stairs and get out of there, and let Aaron’s family deal with the problem. But she’d told them she’d do what she could, and that didn’t include running away at the first sign of trouble.
Also, while the spirit…who might or might not have been Alba…had expressed its displeasure in various ways, it hadn’t done anything to threaten her personally. That made her think the ghost was more frustrated than anything else.
Well, that made two of them.
“Why can’t he sell the house?” she pressed. “I know it’s been in the family for eighty years, but is there some reason beyond that for wanting to make sure strangers don’t buy it?”
Guard…. came a whisper from the spirit.
Something about the atmosphere in the room felt almost thundery, although Delia told herself that could have simply been the damp air from the swamp cooler.
Or was it that she might be getting to the heart of the problem?
“Guard against what?” she asked.
Guard.
Well, that cleared everything up.
She tightened her grip on the strap of her purse, even as she reminded herself that she had plenty of holy water inside and there was nothing to be worried about.
Yeah, right.
And then….
Delia wasn’t sure if she could have ever described what happened next, except that it felt as if someone had grabbed her by the arms and forced her eyes wider than they’d ever been, almost as if she’d been trapped in that awful scene from A Clockwork Orange where Alex’s eyes were kept open by those horrible metal gadgets.
In front of her was the symbol she’d seen scratched into the kitchen cabinet downstairs and written on the wall inside the closet, only instead of being an inch or so high, it appeared to be almost her same height, hanging in the air and surrounded by a golden glow that seemed to pulse like a heartbeat.
Guard…protect.
The symbol was some sort of sigil of protection?
But what had Alba been trying to protect against?
“Someone in the family needs to protect this place?” she asked.
The glowing symbol abruptly disappeared, and the curtains rustled again.
Protect…or else.
The thundery sensation in the room abruptly disappeared, and Delia pulled in a shocked breath. A glance around told her she was alone…and the heightened senses she still wasn’t entirely used to only reinforced that impression.
Whoever or whatever had taken hold of her, it seemed to be gone now.
A symbol of protection. A sigil to ensure the safety of those inside this place.
