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The first stop on the tour is the library.

It’s a massive room with floor-to-ceiling bookshelves, dark wood paneling, and a fireplace that’s crackling away. The smell of old books and wood smoke fills the air, and there’s a reading chair positioned near the fire that looks like it hasn’t been sat in for about a hundred years.

Miss Kitty positions herself in the center of the room and launches into a story about a librarian who died in 1823 and still haunts the stacks.

“She’s very particular about organization,” Miss Kitty says in a stage whisper. “And if you misshelve a book, she lets you know about it.”

On cue, a book flies off the top shelf and falls to the floor with a heavy splat.

Georgie screams and grabs Mom’s arm.

“It’s just special effects,” Mom says, but her voice wavers.

Another book flies off the shelf and narrowly misses my mother’s head.

“Very GOOD special effects,” Mom amends.

“More like dangerous,” I mutter.

A woman near the front of the group clutches her friend’s arm and whispers, “That was REAL. I saw it. It has to be real. There aren’t any wires or string!”

Her friend is filming the whole thing on her phone as flashes all around us go off every two seconds. Then predictably more books go flying off the shelves, until at least a dozen have launched themselves at us like literary missiles.

There are definitely wires here somewhere, Fish says as she tries to stand on her hind legs to get a better view.

Are they, though? Duchess asks as her ears swivel toward the bookshelves. I don’t see any mechanisms. But I do sense a presence, and it’s making my whiskers twitch!

That’s just Sherlock, Fish assures her. And he has gas.

That part is true.

I scan the ceiling, the shelves, the corners of the room. I’m looking for fishing line, for hidden pulleys, for anything that explains the flying books. But I can’t spot anything obvious. Either it’s extremely well-hidden or there’s something genuinely supernatural happening here, and I’m not sure which option I prefer.

Miss Kitty is eating up the crowd’s reaction, bouncing on her pink boots and explaining that the librarian ghost loves a good mystery novel but absolutely doesn’t care for romance.

Mom nods my way. “Methinks they were burned romantically. I get it.”

“Let me at him,” Georgie says. “I’ll teach him all about love, romance, and the need to howl at the moon at exactly the right time.”

“Say no more,” Mom tells her. “I mean it, Georgie. That was a threat.”

Kitty laughs. “You ladies are a hoot!” She gazes off at the rumbling bookshelves. If there was a romance that went bad between the librarian and someone, that would explain the haunting, she muses to herself. Clawdia always said the best hauntings have a love story. But she’s not here to critique this anymore, is she?

I file that away. There seems to be some resentment there. More evidence that whatever relationship they had, it wasn’t good.

We move to the dining hall next.

There’s a long table set for a ghostly dinner party, complete with plates, silverware, crystal glasses, and candelabras with lots of dark maroon brocade and gold accents. A few casserole dishes sit in the center of the table and each one looks to have something that vaguely looks like funeral potatoes with slime on them, and there are even deviled eggs that look a touch too glossy for my taste.

Miss Kitty explains that the candles light themselves at midnight every night, and right on cue, the candles flicker to life.

The crowd gasps.

Sherlock lunges toward the table with his nose twitching.

There’s nothing there, Fish tells him. You’re frightening the hoomans.

But it SMELLS like roast beef! Sherlock whines, straining against the leash.