“That’s whattheyare.” Cordelia felt a release deep inside, like bubbles rising from an open soda bottle. “It isn’t a family motto; it’s a family trait. It’sinherited.This is what’s at the center of their witchcraft. It has to be.”
“Then why haven’t I ever seen them?” Eustace swallowed. “I smoke, like, alotof weed, Cordy. If anyone should be seeing things, it’s me.”
“Maybe that’s just part of who we are. Maybe we have different roles within the bloodline. I just know this place is changing me. It’s changingus.Look at you. You couldn’t even heat a frozen corn dog right half the time. A few days here and you’ve got a… a…” Cordelia waved a hand at the oven.
“A pumpkin sweet bread,” Eustace supplied.
“Right. Thank you. A pumpkin sweet bread in the oven. Don’t you think that’s weird?”
Eustace poured hot water over a tea bag. “Of course I think it’s weird. Everything about the last few days has been weird.”
Cordelia moved to the window, staring into the gloomy solarium. “I’ve never stopped seeing them, you know. It was better for a while with John. But coming here… There’s something about this place. They’re everywhere.”
Eustace slowly stopped stirring her tea and set the spoon down gently, fear igniting behind her eyes. “Who?”
Cordelia rubbed her hands over her face, a sick kind of sense beginning to form. “The women who died here.”
CHAPTER FIFTEENTHESEANCE
“FOR THE RECORD,”Cordelia took the opportunity to say as she watched her sister light the last of the candles she’d gathered on the parlor table, “I think this is a terrible idea.”
“Noted,” Eustace replied, barely glancing at her as she turned off the antique pendant chandelier. “Relax. We’re doing exactly what the doctor ordered—we’re asking the dead. We need answers, Cordy. And everyone who has them is deceased. If we find even one thing out tonight, it could blow the lid off this predicament we’re in. You said yourself this place is full of ghosts. And not just any ghosts, but our family. They have to be showing themselves to you for a reason. Maybe they can help.”
Cordelia was skeptical about that. In her experience, the dead had only caused problems, not solved them. And even if she didn’t understand them, she believed her mother gave her the rules for a reason: to keep her safe. This seance her sister had talked her into flew in the face of that. But they were growing more desperate by the day. And it was no longer her life alone hanging in the balance. She recalled with a pang of guilt her sister’s twisting scar and sweet Mrs. Robichaud being stalked by the mob.
If she’d learned anything over the last few days it was that the peculiarities they were facing might look distinct on the surfacebut were intricately interwoven beneath it like fine lace. The trust required they live in residence at the estate, and so did their health. The headaches were connected to their mother’s death, and so were the runes. And all of it was linked to this place and the spirits that walked it.
“Do you even know how to do this?” Cordelia pressed, certain they were about to make a dreadful mistake.
“Of course,” Eustace said, brushing off her concerns. “I googled it.”
Cordelia rolled her eyes from her seat at the game table, a fussy burr-walnut. “Well, by all means then, let’s proceed with summoning our unstable, occultist ancestors from the grave.”
Eustace frowned, the flickering candlelight causing the shadows on her face to dance. “Don’t be such a wet blanket. This is our calling. It’s in our veins. What happened to the woman who dug our aunt’s corpse out of a wall a few nights ago?” She sat the photo of the floating woman on top of the book from the basement room beside the candles.
“What are those doing here?” Cordelia said, feeling instantly more nervous. “We can’t even read that thing yet.”
“Something personal to help us connect,” Eustace replied.
Cordelia shook her head from the spoon-back chair. “No. I don’t think that’s wise. We don’t know what that book says. Who knows what it might conjure up.”
Eustace narrowed her eyes. “A moment ago, you were worried this wouldn’t work. Now you’re worried it will work too well? I can’t have your waffling, ambiguous energy stinking up my seance.”
Cordelia’s brows lifted.
“Hold on! We need one more thing.” Eustace ran from the room.
Sitting in the dark parlor by candlelight—they’d waited until after sundown to start, at Eustace’s insistence—was not exactlyCordelia’s idea of a chill evening. The house had enough activity without them trying to wake the dead. But she knew as well as Eustace that they needed answers. She just couldn’t help wrestling between her desire to know more and her fear of what it would cost.
A telltale pang sprung to life inside her skull. She moaned and dropped her head into her hand.
Eustace returned, breathless from climbing the stairs. She stopped just inside the parlor door, something behind her back. “Don’t freak out.”
Cordelia lifted her head. “That is only going to make me freak out more.”
Her sister had a long history of inconvenient surprises, like the time Cordelia found a rotten bird’s egg in the toe of her patent Mary Janes. The smell had eventually overtaken the whole room, tipping her off. She had become cynical about phrases likeDon’t freak outandIt’s not what it looks likewhere her sister was concerned.
Eustace sat a tall, rectangular box polished brown and black on the table near the candles.
