Page 43 of The Sisters of Crimson House

Charley frowned. “You asked which one made me safe.”

She is eight. Her father runs to his car, whooping with laughter as the blue jay from the front oak tree dive bombs him in a mess of blue and gray feathers. She and her mother watch from the doorway, overcome with giggles.

“There’s no guessing with a blue jay,” said Charley, softly. “Blue jays always let you know where they are and when they’re coming.”

Sadie watched her for a long moment, smiling for the first time since the funeral. “Better to be with the devil you know instead of the devil you don’t. You surprise me, sweet Charlotte.”

Charley was glad she could surprise her grandmother. She didn’t want to be a psychopomp. In this story, she wished she could be a blue jay and fly to hell, destroying the thing that murdered her parents on her way down.

Twenty-Four

October 13, 2008

“Are you sure that’s all of it?” asked Miranda, frowning at the container of Morton salt Zavier held out to her.

“What did you expect?” he said, looking genuinely hurt. “We’re running a haunted-history operation not a commercial kitchen.”

“But don’t you keep salt on hand for rituals and cleansing spells and—oh, never mind,” she said with a huff. Miranda took the canister from him and set it down by the window. “If we’re going to contact the dead, it’s ideal to have something to absorb the nastier elements besides that mildewed tarp.”

“If your grandmother comes through, maybe she can explain to you her part in that drama. Respectfully,” he added.

Charley watched from the doorframe, reluctant to step inside Sadie’s bedroom. She hadn’t been in here in the week since she died, eternally grateful to Astrid and Zavier, who had performed the most loving of acts—personally erasing any evidence of Sadie’s violent last stand. Multicolored throw rugs from Bed Bath & Beyond were dotted across the room like a threadbare quilt to help soften the water damage, but they couldn’t disguise the fact that the original hardwood floors couldn’t be saved. They had buckled and warped from the bathtub flooding and were added as item number one million on Charley’s ever-expanding, impossible to-do list. But the yellow armchair Sadie had practically lived in still faced the window, conspicuously empty.

Charley felt grief pierce her heart anew, mixed with the shame she always felt that her grandmother could not be convinced to exit the attic and live her life downstairs. With her. Like normal families.

“You okay?” asked Astrid quietly.

“No,” answered Charley.

“Can’t imagine you would be. I don’t sense any spirits in here,” Astrid added with a quick squeeze of Charley’s hand. “Not Sadie or…anything else.”

Charley startled as a young man in a Union uniform and blue cap quietly drifted past her.

“Except him?” Charley said in a panic.

“Oh, I forgot about Blue,” Astrid said with an embarrassed smile.

Forgot you could see them, too, she worried. You won’t need me anymore.

“Never,” Charley responded, until realizing that Astrid hadn’t actually spoken those words aloud. She felt the lines prickle on her palm.

“I think he was just curious with Sadie no longer…” Astrid trailed off, not wanting to finish the sentence. “It’s just us in here. You’re safe.”

Charley gave Astrid a tight smile. How safe is anyone if I have the ability to read people’s thoughts? she wondered as she slowly eased into the bedroom. Her body felt electric from cortisol and stress and the proximity of a ghost she had just seen mere feet away.

“Astrid, can you light the candles?” Miranda asked from her perch by the window.

“On it,” said Astrid. She moved around the room, lighting the five white candles that they’d picked up on their Bed Bath & Beyond run.

Miranda stared at the chair. “That wretched thing. Zavier, gimme a hand?” Miranda grabbed one side of Sadie’s yellow wingback chair, Zavier hurrying to take the other side before hoisting it and setting it against the wall.

As if summoned, Charley walked to the empty space that had once occupied Sadie’s entire universe. How could her fierce Sadie no longer be here, forever standing sentry? Was she in fact still with them, a spirit desperate to connect if only she knew how to read the signs? Charley looked at her hand, willing a message to come to her. For Sadie to speak to her and tell her what happened next. She flexed her fingers, immediately feeling ridiculous. But she tried it again. Like she was an X-Man. A witch on TV.

Nothing.

She lowered her hand, feeling stupid, when her eye caught on the symbol at her feet. Charley crouched, gently running her finger over the markings. It was a rudimentary eye carved into the floor, staring back at her. Charley slowly stood, giving herself a bird’s-eye view. She looked back at her hand just to be sure. If the lines on her hand were the copy of a map, she was staring at the original. The Seeker’s Star expanded before her at her feet, carved into the floorboards, taking up nearly a third of the attic space.

“Whoa,” said Miranda quietly, over her shoulder.