“This tea tastes like the inside of an earthworm.”
I pop my head around the corner of my kitchen, taking in the sight of my brother sitting at the table and sipping tea like a proper Englishman. Liam has only been visiting me for two days, but he’s already settling into the bucolic lifestyle afforded by my Sussex cottage. He dips toast soldiers in his tea, refuses to go outside without a tweed hat on top of his dark hair, and peppers his speech with things like boot and loo and bobby, which are the only British words he knows.
“Where did you get it?” I ask.
He waves a hand in the general vicinity of the pantry. “I don’t know. In one of those canisters.” He takes another sip and grimaces. “How you people can drink this stuff morning, noon, and night is beyond me. Especially in this heat.”
Although I will defend the local custom to drink tea at all times of the day to my dying breath, he’s not wrong about how hot it is. My little patch of England is currently experiencing a heat wave. For weeks, the temperatures have been soaring well above the annual average. It’s great for my herbal garden out back, but not so great for my comfort level. Ancient thatch cottages aren’t designed for summers like these. Even the smallest air conditioner overloads the electrical system.
“Hot tea makes you sweat more, which in turn evaporates and cools you off. It’s science.” I take the floral teacup from his hand. I don’t need to bring it all the way to my nostrils to smell what it is. “Uh, Liam? Did you grab this from one of the normal canisters or one of my special ones?”
He blanches, his already pale skin growing paler. As two parts of a set of triplets, he and I share the same pasty complexion. “Define special.”
I laugh and set the cup down. “You’d better finish it. This is the good stuff. I sell it for ten quid a pop.”
This news doesn’t appear to comfort him. He pushes back in his chair and narrows his eyes. Like the ghostly pallor and dark hair, his eyes are also the same as mine. In the right light, they look almost black, the pupil and iris blending into one.
“What did I just drink?”
“Nothing toxic, so you can quit looking at me like that. It’s mostly senna and marshmallow root.”
“Ellie.” He says my name as a warning. “What’s going to happen to me?”
“You mean, other than turning into a frog by the light of the quarter moon?” I shrug. “A slight disruption of the bowels. I wouldn’t go too far from home tonight.”
“Ellie!”
I hold up my hands to ward my brother off as he leaps to his feet and pounces toward me. Liam might not know anything about herbal remedies, but he’s an elementary school gym teacher. He’s in phenomenal shape.
“I warned you about the pantry!” I cry as I dash behind a chair. “I have limited storage space. That’s why I have everything carefully organized. I wouldn’t want to accidentally serve my brother a laxative at teatime.”
Liam lets his emotions loose in a torrent of threats from our childhood. Unfortunately for him, traumas like locking me in the bathroom overnight or sitting on me until I’m sorry don’t have power over me anymore. A long soak in a cold tub sounds lovely, and I know for a fact that Liam would grow bored of pinning me to the ground long before I did. I’ve always had more patience than he does.
“If you want, I can give you some fennel tea to try and counteract the effects,” I offer, still laughing. “But I think you’re better off riding this one out.”
“You have serious problems, you know that?” Liam gives up trying to wreak his vengeance and falls to the kitchen chair with a plop. He pushes the teacup as far from his person as it can get. “Ordinary people don’t stock their cupboards with weird, mystical concoctions.”
“My weird, mystical concoctions bought your plane ticket out here.” Before I can say more, the younger of my two cats, a black animal with white-tipped ears named Freddie, slinks into the kitchen and plants herself at my feet. I pick her up and point her at my brother. “See? Even Winnie knows what a momentous occasion this is. We haven’t all been gathered in the same place for years.”
Liam’s look of doubt speaks for him. He might be willing to accept that the herbal elixirs, tonics, and remedies I sell to the local populace make for a thriving and well-paying career, but that’s where his belief in my witchlike abilities ends. I know without a doubt that my cat acts as a conduit between this world and the next, tying me to our sister Winnie in ways that defy reason and logic. Liam, however, has a hard time with it.
I try not to blame him too much. When Winnie died, almost two years ago, I also thought that would be the end of my connection with her. Thanks to my cats and what can only be described as my own sixth sense, however, she’s still very much a presence in my life.
What am I, chopped sardines? asks another voice.
That’s the other part of this whole bargain. Apparently, it’s not just Winnie’s spirit I can hear from beyond the grave. Ever since last fall, I’ve also been able to communicate with a woman named Birdie White. She was once a fake medium, like me, and has turned out to be a real pain in my neck.
“Is Winnie talking to you now?” Liam asks with a hint of suspicion.
I smile and shake my head. I haven’t yet mustered up the courage to admit to him that I hear multiple voices now instead of just Winnie’s. Liam is a good brother, but he’s only willing to be pushed so far.
“No, but I can feel her presence. She’s probably giving you a few days to settle in before she starts predicting your future. Is there anything specific you want to know? A hot guy you’ve got your eye on?”
At this, Liam visibly perks. “She can do love spells?”
“Not to my knowledge, no. But there’s no saying what can happen if we put our minds to it.”
He slumps in his chair like a deflating balloon. “You’re cruel, you know that? Don’t promise the power of romance unless you can deliver.”
“Oh, I can deliver. If you’d grabbed the canister with the pink sticker on it, you’d have had the entire village lining up outside your window to serenade you instead of tummy troubles.” I sling an arm around his neck and drop a kiss on his cheek to show him I intend no harm. I mean, there’s a good chance he’s going to seriously regret that tea in a few hours, but I did warn him about the cupboard. “Don’t worry. I know just the thing to cool you off in the meantime.”
“Are you having air-conditioning installed?”
“Better,” I promise. “I’m taking you to a drafty castle. Between the ghosts and the ancient stonework and the welcome we’re likely to receive, that place is colder than a tomb.”
“It’s hotter than Hades’s lair in here!”
I’m already sticky with perspiration when I step into Castle Hartford. The walk over was a hot, humid affair, made all the hotter and more humid because we had to turn back at the halfway point when Liam decided he needed a sun hat. My black dress, though gauzy and made of linen, is soaked through with my sweat and the heat of the afternoon. Even my hair, which is pinned up in intricate coils off my neck, seems to have directly absorbed the sun’s rays.
“What devilry is this?” I demand as I take another step into the castle. If possible, the heat increases the farther I draw into those stony walls. “Vivian, did you install a nuclear reactor or something?”
Vivian Hartford appears at the top of the grand staircase that leads up from the black-and-white-checked marble foyer. She’s wearing nothing but a yellow skirted swimsuit and a pair of rain galoshes. One might think that a woman her age would look ridiculous in such a getup, but she makes it work. Her white-threaded hair is even pulled into two youthful braids to add a final touch.
“I’m disowning that man the moment he returns,” she announces. The reason for her clothes—and for her mood—is explained by the tinkle of ice in the tumbler she holds aloft. In summer, that woman lives off gin, but it doesn’t always give her sound judgment. “I’m writing him out of my will and casting him to the wolves.”
I don’t blame her for this plan. Nicholas Hartford III, Vivian’s son and my longstanding beau, is away, as he so often is, traversing the world to keep his fortune intact. I’d hoped to finally introduce him to my brother during this visit, but, alas. Millions of dollars aren’t just going to make themselves.
Believe me—I’ve tried. Transmutation isn’t the spell it’s cracked up to be.
“Vivian, I don’t believe you’ve met my brother, Liam,” I say. “Liam, this is—”
“Do you know how to make a gimlet?” she interrupts. She begins a slow descent down the staircase, one leg crossing over the other like an aging Hollywood actress making her final appearance. Before she reaches the bottom, she’s already holding out her arm, though whether she wants Liam’s support or for him to take her glass, I can’t say.
“Gin, lime juice, simple syrup,” Liam recites. In a gallant gesture that does him credit, he accepts both Vivian’s arm and the empty drink. “Who are we disowning, and what can I do to help? These conditions are inhumane.”
None of us disagree.
“My son has decided to fix the heating in the castle,” Vivian says. “There’s a new furnace below stairs, and every chimney in the place is being cleaned and tested. I’ve lost eight pounds in sweat since yesterday.”
I’m the first to react. “Oh, that will be so lovely in winter!” I cry. Vivian might not appreciate Nicholas’s attention to things like household repairs, but the man has been trying to update the castle’s infrastructure for years. The only real surprise is that he’s finally succeeded. Vivian is not an easy woman to move. None of the Hartfords are. “Think of how cozy it’ll be during the holidays.”
“Don’t speak to me of the holidays,” she retorts. “If anyone in the village gets wind of this, they’ll be after me to start hosting our annual Christmas ball again. I was hoping that tradition would die with my mother. The cart’s right there, love, and I prefer it shaken.”
The second half of this commentary is for my brother, who gets right to work mixing Vivian a cocktail.
“I’ll admit that it’s uncomfortable now, but surely you can open some windows or something?” I say. “Nicholas can’t have intended for you to live like this while he’s gone.”
Vivian blinks at me. “That son of mine is the most unfeeling, heartless, ruthless—” She breaks off to accept her glass from Liam. She takes a tentative sip and sighs her pleasure. “I do love a man who knows his way around a shaker. Now, where was I?”
“Your ruthless son,” Liam supplies.
She flashes her smile at him again. “Ah, yes. So I was.” The smile drops as she points an accusatory finger at me. “He had the audacity—the nerve—to send me away while all this work is being done. Like I’m a piece of rubbish three days gone.”
I know better than to believe a word out of her mouth. Nicholas might be annoyingly dedicated to his work, but he’s unfailing when it comes to caring for the people in his life. If he made a plan to send his mother away while the castle is undergoing repairs, I can only imagine it’s somewhere decadent, appealing, and expensive.
“Vivian, are you telling me that he booked you a vacation? And you’re refusing to go?”
She knows this for the attack it is. Her gaze shifts to a spot a few inches above my head.
“I’m not saying any such thing,” she says. Then, because however curmudgeonly Vivian is, she’s always honest, she adds, “Brighton isn’t a vacation. It’s where tourists go to multiply.”
Liam squeaks. I can’t tell if it’s a squeak of excitement or dismay, but it doesn’t matter. Any response other than one of complete sympathy holds no weight with Vivian.
“What’s an old woman like me supposed to do in a place like that? Play carnival games? Visit the Pavilion?” She scoffs. “I’m not sure which is more likely to give me a heart attack.”
“Vivian, when were you supposed to check in?”
She ignores me. “I have a perfectly good home right here.”
“And how long is your stay booked for?”
She holds her cold glass against the back of her neck and sighs. “At least, it used to be good until Nicholas got his claws into it.”
“I would love to go to the seaside right now,” my brother says. Without waiting for a response, he begins mixing a drink for himself. “Just think of all those ocean breezes, the tropical drinks, the cabana boys. . . .”
“It’s coastal England, Liam, not the Bahamas. Besides, I thought you came to see the village where I live.”
Liam rolls his eyes at me. “I did see it. The pub and the church and the un-air-conditioned thatch cottage you call home. What’s next? The butcher? The baker? The candlestick maker?”
Vivian doesn’t bother to hide her snort of laughter.
“It’s not that bad,” I protest. Small, yes, but that’s its charm. Living here is like stepping back through time. “You’re standing in a real-life castle, for crying out loud. I haven’t even shown you the secret murder passage yet.”
My brother manages to contain his excitement. He pours his drink into a glass and takes a long sip, his attention fixed on Vivian’s face. “I think we should all go,” he says. “Especially if the hotel is already booked. How long will it take to get there?”
I assume he’s talking to me, so I don’t hesitate over my answer. “It’s not far, but the trains can fill up this time of year, so—”
“The car service Nicholas hired will have us there in an hour.” Vivian nods once. “Eleanor will pack my things.”
“I will?”
“There’s a trunk somewhere in one of the guest rooms with everything I’ll need. Sun dresses and hats and the like. Bring at least three of my good gowns. And my rubies.”
“Your rubies? Vivian, I’m all for you getting away from this castle, but I hardly think you’re going to want—”
“You’re right. Rubies are more of a winter jewel. My diamonds, then, and perhaps the sapphires.”
I look to my brother for help, but I should have known not to bother. Now that the offer of a vacation at a beachside resort has taken hold, nothing I say or do—short of another herbal remedy—will stop him.
“Did you bring a tuxedo with you to England?” Vivian asks Liam. She makes a tsking sound with her tongue. “No matter. We’ll buy you one when we get there. I expect Eleanor will need an overhaul of her wardrobe, too. I’ve seen what she passes for elegance. We’ll put it on Nicholas’s account.”
“Now wait just a minute.” This is where I put my foot down. “I’ll go on this trip with you, Vivian, and I’ll even do your packing and hunt down your diamonds, but you will not buy me or my brother anything with Nicholas’s money, got it?”
“But, Ellie,” my brother begins, a plea underscoring his voice, “I’ve never owned a tuxedo before.”
I whirl on him. “And you aren’t going to start now. I’ll rent you one if I have to, but it’s not Nicholas’s job to foot the bill for your extravagancies.” I cross my arms and glare at the pair of them. Vivian might be a matriarch marching through her eighth decade in a yellow bathing suit, and Liam a grown adult with a decent-paying job and good long-term career stability, but I might as well be facing a pair of toddlers. “We’ll stay in our own hotel room at our own expense, and we’ll split all the meals, got it? Even ones that require tuxedos and diamonds.”
Both of them nod meekly. Another woman might take this as capitulation, but they follow it up with a side-eyed look of delight that neither one of them bothers to hide. I’ve solved enough mysteries in my lifetime to recognize what I’m seeing.
“You did that on purpose!” I accuse, but without any real heat. I know when I’m facing the inevitability of fate. “You only said all that to trick me into agreeing to go.”
Vivian gives a lofty toss of her head and takes my brother by the arm. I have no idea where she plans on taking him, but I assume it will involve more gin, zero packing, and plenty of plans to spend Nicholas’s millions.
“Don’t forget to call and have them stop the mail delivery, dear,” Vivian says as she and my brother trail away in the direction of the first-floor salon. “For two weeks at the very least. If I’m letting you drag me all that way, I intend to make it count.”
“Are you absolutely sure we don’t want to take that other suite?” Liam stands at the threshold to our hotel room, a suitcase in each hand. “Vivian did say she’d prefer to have us next door.”
“You’re more than welcome to take her up on the offer.” I brush past him and survey our surroundings. After a quick glance, I decide on the bed closest to the window. “But I’m warning you right now that it won’t be worth it. She’ll have you running her errands and making her drinks at every hour of the day and night. She’s exhausting.”
I set my own bag on the bed. It contains the haphazard mix of clothes and toiletries I managed to pack up in the five minutes that Vivian insisted was all I needed. “Everything you own looks the same anyway,” she’d said. “Black and depressing.”
She’s not wrong. Most of my clothes do fall on the darker end of the rainbow, since I like to project an aura of gloom and doom whenever I’m on the job. But a girl can’t always be working. This far away from the village and from the persona that makes up my livelihood, I’m determined to enjoy myself. I even packed a sundress to prove it.
“I like her,” Liam says.
“Me too,” I admit. “But in order to maintain that sentiment, I need my own space.”
The space, in this instance, is the smallest room the hotel has to offer. The Brighton Luxe is everything the name promises—regal and imposing and far more glamorous a resort than I’d have chosen on my own. Vivian is installed in one of the suites upstairs, a huge, elegant apartment that could easily fit four or five of these rooms inside it. It also contains a safe, where I insisted she keep her jewelry. I’d had no idea, when she mentioned the family jewels, that there would be quite so many carats dazzling up at me, but the Hartfords don’t do anything by halves. Their castle is a rotting heap of decay and gloom, but their family fortunes are so impressive that they could buy and sell several of these hotels should they have an urge to enter the hospitality trade. It’s all or nothing with them.
As if thinking along the same lines, Liam tosses his bags on the crocheted white coverlet and casts a sidelong look at me. “You’re not really doing this whole dating-a-millionaire-thing right, are you?”
I don’t have to ask him to clarify. One of the good things about being a triplet—and being a medium—is that I can see to the heart of almost every question. “If by ‘not doing it right’ you mean I insist on paying my own way and asserting my independence as a woman of means and intelligence, then, no. I’m not.”
When he doesn’t say anything right away, I drop my façade. It’s not a condition that suits me, but serious times call for serious measures.
“Liam, you wouldn’t really want the man I’m dating to pay for your luxury vacation.”
He shifts uncomfortably. “Well, no.”
“And you wouldn’t be happy if I was letting him buy me expensive gifts and pay my bills.”
“I mean, the occasional expensive gift wouldn’t kill you.”
I laugh and wrap my arms around my brother’s neck. He smells like the cotton-scented cologne he’s always favored, and I bask in it for a moment before smacking a kiss on his cheek. “I’m happy, Liam. I have a home and a steady income and a man who seems to love me exactly the way I am. I like his family enough to willingly spend time with them, and I’m in a beautiful beachside resort with my favorite brother in the world. What more could I want?”
The answer to that is a loud knock at the door. It’s my common sense rather than my sixth one that tells me who’s on the other side.
“And now that my babies are here, the real party can begin.”
Liam shakes his head. “You are so weird, Ellie. I don’t know any rational adult woman who brings her cats to the beach with her.”
Yes, well. That’s because he wasn’t present the last time I tried to travel without them. Nicholas had to drag them several hundred miles to help me solve a double murder. I’m not taking any chances this go-around. The driver of the town car that brought us here promised to carry them to our room as soon as he managed to sneak them past the front desk. This isn’t exactly a pet-friendly hotel.
“Come in!” I call. Whether because the driver can’t hear me or—more realistically—because he’s holding the basket containing my fur babies, he makes no move to open the door. When the knock sounds again, Liam goes to open it.
“Have they scratched your eyes out already?” he asks as he pulls the handle. He pokes his head into the hallway. “Hello? Where did you go?”
“He left? Drat. I wanted to make sure I gave him a good tip.” I join my brother at the door, repeating his motions when I realize that not only is there no driver standing there, but there isn’t the basket containing my cats either. We see nothing but empty hallway extending in either direction. “Where are Beast and Freddie?”
“With any luck, they’ve found a rat’s nest in the basement and have decided to stay there,” Liam says as he shuts the door. “I guess we imagined it.”
I don’t believe that for a second. One person can imagine a knock on the door, especially in a place where pipes and ancient woodwork are constantly in motion, but the likelihood of two people hearing the same sound at the same time is low. However, I’m far too rational to feel alarmed. For all we know, there are kids staying across the hall eager to get into mischief. This is the cheap floor.
“What should we do first?” Liam asks as he throws himself onto his bed. “The beach? The bars? The boardwalk?”
“I’m unpacking and then taking a nap,” I say. It’s not the most exciting way to enjoy our first afternoon on holiday, but I’ve spent the past few nights on the couch. My cottage is too small for a guest bedroom, and Liam gets cranky if he doesn’t have four posters and a full-size mattress to sleep on. “If you want to go exploring, I won’t stop you, but—”
The knock sounds again. This time, there’s no mistaking its existence or the fact that it’s not caused by a pipe in the wall. That’s good, old-fashioned knuckles on wood if I’ve ever heard them.
“That’s probably my cats,” I say. “Which is another reason why I don’t want to go out right away. The poor things will need a few hours to calm down and get used to the room. They don’t like to travel.”
Liam heaves a sigh of disapproval, but he’s too lazy to get up from his prone position on the bed. I pause a moment to toss the television remote at him before opening the door, which is what I blame for the sight that greets me on the other side.
And by sight, I mean nothing. There’s no driver, no basket of cats, no sign of anyone bringing fresh towels to the wrong room. In fact, the stillness of the hallway is so profound, it’s almost supernatural. The plush gray carpeting appears untouched by feet or time, the scrollwork on the walls as stalwart as if it’s stood there for centuries.
Which, technically, it has. This is a very old hotel.
I narrow my eyes and ste. . .
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