A voice descended from the kitchens: “It’s near on seven! Quit your star-gazing and get your arses up here! Master Tremblay’s guests will be arriving at any minute!”
Vic and I exchanged another set of glances and then reluctantly trudged up the steps.
Chapter 6
Bizarre high heels and what felt like an ostrich’s ass feathers strapped around my midriff made me self-conscious enough to follow Vic up the stairs. I know I said it was to avoid him looking at my butt, but I couldn’t help but stare at the way the fabric on his pants clung to him.
The kitchen was a whirlwind of activity. The blonde girl from before smiled at us, flour on her apron, and moved to stir something in a pot. A fat man with a patchy mustache in one corner was slicing carrots and other vegetables, a huge beef flank sitting at his work station. A team of young men were going through dishes and working at different stations.
“You!” Mother Cantwell snapped, descending out of nowhere like a bedazzled peacock. “Come come. The guests are arriving. You are to go to the Dining Hall, and serve appetizers as we work on the main meal.”
“Ooh, let them have one or two,” the blonde girl said, by the soup. “They’re bound to be asked what the flavors are. Tell us how they came out, would you?”
“One a-piece,” Mother Cantwell snapped.
“This is… what, shrimp?” I asked.
“Frog,” the blonde woman said.
I tried not to spit it up but swallowed. It was an awful fishy taste…
“Delicious,” I panted.
* * *
Ascending steps wearing high heels with a serving plate in one hand did not make for the most gracious serving girl. Vic and I carefully went into the swelling crowd of the dining room. At one corner of the room, there was a string quartet playing. People in fancy dress and men smoking cigars stood in very nearly every corner.
“Look at all this,” I whispered to Vic.
“I know,” he said. “I don’t like this. This thing has too much power to reanimate all these spirits. It’s worrisome.”
“That’s your worry?” I asked.
“I’ve heard of Echoes before,” Vic said. “What Tremblay talked about earlier, it resonates with my experience on it. If we veer too far from their memories and don’t keep a low enough profile, then we wind up risking our own death.”
“Right. So if I don’t serve these and fit in…”
“We’re likely to be stuck in the Echo,” Vic said.
“But we’re here to check things out, aren’t we?”
“Yes,” he said. “We go in, do what we can in our servant positions. We listen real close, get a bead on the witnesses, and when we can, we hob-knob with the other servants.”
“And then what?”
“We find evidence of whatever killed Tremblay.”
“How?”
“You see how the house itself looks different?”
I nodded.
“These physical objects were recreated from the Echo,” he said. “As impartial outsiders, we don’t have emotional stakes in the events, so odds are good any physical representations we see are accurate memories from witnesses that evening. The odds are likely that any evidence we find is a representation of what actually happened that night.”
“That’s convenient,” I said.
“It is. Now simper and act stupid. None of that independent woman nonsense.”
