Page 53 of The House on Prytania
Sam shook her head. “No Sarah. But there’s definitely... something. I’m not usually attuned to that sort of vibe, which means whatever it is must be pretty strong.”
“Me, neither,” I said. “But I feel it, too.” I remembered sensing something up in the attic of a house on Queen Street where Melanie, Jayne, and Beau were battling it out with a spirit desperate to hold on to her secrets. I couldn’t see or hear anything, but the sudden drop in air pressure inside the room had been like that of a hurricane preparing to hit. The atmosphere in the upper hallway now was heavy, and when I looked at Sam, I could tell that she was thinking the same thing.
“We need to find her,” I said. “Now.”
“This way,” Sam said, leading me to a slightly ajar door at the end of the hallway. She pulled it fully open, allowing me to see a flight of uncarpeted stairs leading upward. “This is where Beau and I record our podcast episodes. He keeps relics—”
Not waiting for her to say more, I brushed past her to race up the stairs. I stopped at the top, waiting for my eyes to acclimate to the dim light shed by a small desk lamp. This was the round cupola roomat the top of the house, the walls made of windows. Now, on an October night, the outside darkness penetrated through the glass, with only the sharp wedge of light from the desk lamp softening the utter blackness.
An oval table jutted out from one of the walls, a chair at each of the longer sides and at one end. Three headsets sat atop a pile of cords nestled between two laptops and desktop microphone stands. Each stand held a microphone facing an empty seat, the atmosphere in the room like that of an interrupted conversation.
A hand touched my arm, and I screamed, jumping back so that the edge of the table dug into my hip, wobbling the microphones. I slapped my hand over my mouth to stop the sound as soon as I realized that it was Sam. She was attempting to draw my attention to the other side of the room, where Sarah stood in shadow, holding a familiar jewelry box.
I let out a relieved breath as I moved to stand beside my sister. “That was Sunny’s when she was a little girl.” I felt Sam join me. “It plays ‘The Blue Danube.’ ”
“I know,” Sarah said, her voice almost normal. “She told me.”
“Sunny told you?” I asked.
Sarah shook her head. “No. The woman in the water.”
“Adele,” I said.
“Adele? Beau’s mother?” Sam asked.
Sarah nodded. “I think she drowned. It’s why she sounds like she’s talking underwater.”
Sam blinked a few times before turning to me. “Does that mean...?”
“She’s like Melanie,” I said. “And Beau. Except she’s not in denial about it. Just trying to find a way to live with it.”
“Wow. I didn’t know. That could be very... helpful,” Sam said. “What else did she say?”
Sarah smoothed her hand over the closed top of the box. “I can’t understand her very well when she talks to me, but she wanted to show me this, so I followed her up here.”
“Is she still here?” Sam asked. I could hear the hopefulness in her voice.
“No. She left. As soon as I picked up the box. Like she’d already said what she needed to say.”
I took the box, unlatching the top before twisting the small knob on the bottom. The little ballerina with her net skirt twirled as the creaking old music wheel spun inside, nearly obliterating the soft strains of Johann Strauss’s famous waltz.
“She didn’t show you anything else?” Sam asked.
“No. Just this. And then she... went away.”
I looked around the room at the assortment of objects resting on the deep windowsills, and I suppressed a shudder at the cluster of Frozen Charlotte dolls. It was almost as if Beau had placed them there for the sole purpose of tormenting me.
The music stopped and I gave the box a gentle shake, and it appeared to be as solid as it had been the last time I’d held it. I put it back on a windowsill, noticing a scattering of hairbrushes and children’s toys in the space next to it. Turning to Sam, I asked, “Why are these here? I thought Mimi’s collection had all been sent to the shop on Royal Street.”
“It was. But sometimes Beau brings so-called psychics here for interviews, and he uses various objects to test them.”
“I see,” I said, although I didn’t. It seemed to me that Beau wasted more time denying his abilities than using them for good. But that was an easy thing for me to say. The spirits that haunted me weren’t the dead kind.
“We should get back,” Sam said. “Before Beau notices we’re gone and finds us up here. He considers this his inner sanctum and doesn’t allow just anybody in here.” She began herding us toward the stairs before I could point out that Sarah and I were hardly “just anybody.”
Sarah walked in front of us. Sam stopped me at the landing and waited until my sister had disappeared into the parlor before speaking to me. “Let me know if you need help convincing her to spend her last day of fall break with the Sabatiers.”
“Why?”
