Jane Austen Made Me Do It (9 page)

“What secrets lurk within the chests and cabinets of Northanger?” Cate demanded of the empty air, and flinched a bit at the sound of her own voice, too loud and too American in the waiting silence of the empty room.

It really was a gloomy old place—and about as haunted as a New Jersey shopping mall, Cate reminded herself resolutely. The only hauntings they ever encountered on
Ghost Trekkers
were those they produced themselves, via low lighting, suggestive music, and the collaborative imagination of the credulous.

She really had to find another job.

A sharp cracking noise made her jump. The wind, only the wind again, which had ripped the ancient casement from its frame and banged it back again. Hurrying to the window, Cate leaned out over the edge and wrestled it shut, jamming the catch closed as, outside, the leafless branches gibbered and shook at her, venting their helpless fury.

Bedtime. Cate yanked her shirt over her head—and froze, in every sense of the word, as a voice demanded, “What are you doing in my room?”

Dorothy might have mentioned that there were other guests in the house. Hell, Cate wouldn't put it past her to have put two people in the same room, just to make trouble. The woman needed a hobby.

Clutching her shirt to her chest, Cate turned, apologies on her tongue. “I'm so sorry, Dorothy told me they'd put me—Oh.”

“Dorothy?” said the other woman. She was roughly Cate's
height, and dressed in a long gown made of a pale material, with short puffed sleeves woefully unsuited to the November weather.

She did not, however, appear to be suffering from the cold.

“The housekeeper,” said Cate numbly.

Goose pimples broke out across Cate's chest, over the incongruously bright pink band of her eco-friendly Fruit of the Loom bra.

Her visitor was transparent. Cate could see the gold and black of the ebony cabinet quite clearly through the other woman's white dress.

Oh no. Oh no no. She was not falling for this.

“Very funny, Fred,” Cate said loudly. She didn't know how he'd gotten upstairs to set it up, but this was so his sort of prank. She'd bet Erin was in on it, too. “Fred?”

The apparition wrinkled its brow. She looked young, younger than Cate, her skin smooth and unlined. Unlined and see-through. “Fred?”

Discarding the shirt, Cate dropped to her knees and began fumbling around along the carpet. “All right. Where are they?”

“Miss—Miss—are you quite all right?” The projection followed her progress, drifting along after her as Cate crawled across the room.

“The wires,” said Cate distractedly. “The wires. There must be wires. Unless … is it a battery-operated projector?”

“Battery?” repeated the apparition delicately. “A battery of cannon? In a bedchamber? My dear Miss—er, do let me ring for the maid. You are not well.”

Cate hadn't thought she could feel any colder, but suddenly she did. She settled back on her haunches, moving joint by joint, her body as sluggish as her brain. “You repeated what I said back to me. You responded.”

“I could hardly be so rude as to do otherwise,” said the apparition.
She was carrying a candle, which she set down on the heavily carved chest. “Even if you have invaded my chamber in a very strange mode of dress.”

The flickering light of the phantom candle made Cate's head hurt. Fred might be reasonably technically competent, but he couldn't—at least, she didn't think he could—create a program designed to respond coherently to outside stimulus. She wasn't willing to rule out the possibility that such things existed, but if they did, they were out of
Ghost Trekkers
' purview. Even Lenny couldn't pull that off.

But if this wasn't a prank … No. That didn't even bear considering.

An unidentified female ghost who haunts one of the bedrooms
, Erin had said.
Associated with a roll of paper that reappears and disappears in a lacquered chest
.

“Who are you?” asked Cate hoarsely.

“This is all highly irregular,” the apparition said critically.

“I couldn't agree more.” Speaking with people who weren't there definitely came under Cate's definition of irregular. “Are you …?”

She couldn't make herself say the word “dead.”

“A guest,” supplied the apparition.

Guest … ghost … It was just a twist of the tongue away. Cate swallowed a spurt of hysterical laughter.

This wasn't happening. This couldn't be happening. She worked on
Ghost Trekkers
, for the love of God. She, of all people, knew that such things were purely the product of smoke and lenses.

She hadn't even eaten the herrings. She had known better than that. Herrings were worse than bits of underdone potato when it came to conjuring specters.

“And you?” The ghost was looking at her keenly. “Are you a guest of General Tilney?”

“In a manner of speaking,” hedged Cate.

If this was a dream, why conjure up an inquisitive female? Why not a strapping male in knee breeches? Or a Roman centurion in one of those cute little leather kilts? Her imagination clearly needed help.

“Who are those uncouth people in the hall?” asked the apparition, settling in for a good gossip. Her see-through skirts lapped around her ankles.

“Um, they're … I work with them. We're on a—”
TV show
really didn't seem like something her transparent visitor would understand. Cate hastily cobbled together the closest possible translation. “We're a sort of acting troupe.”

“Theatricals.” The apparition's face lit with interest. “Shall you perform for us?”

“Er,” said Cate. “I think it's more that they'd hoped you'd perform for us.”

Not that Fred would know what to do with a real ghost if he tripped over one.

Wait. When had she decided this was a real ghost? “Just ignore them,” she said hastily. “If they come after you, pretend they're not there. Even if they make beeping noises.”

“Beeping noises?”

“It's the most ramshackle operation,” Cate said. “I mean, I don't know what I'm still doing here. I really only meant to stay for a few months, just for the experience—and, oh, hell, so I had sort of a crush on Hal, but the man is never going to do anything, about me or anything else. He's under his brother's thumb like you wouldn't believe. He'd probably have to ask Fred's permission before getting up the nerve to make a move.”

“Like that, is it?” said the ghost sympathetically. “Is this Hal the younger brother?”

“Yes. Fred's older. He's the one who owns the whole kit and caboodle.”

The ghost nodded sagely. Cate's slang might have been lost on her, but the general concept was one she understood.

“Nothing's going to change while Fred's in charge,” Cate said glumly. There was something oddly soothing about speaking with someone who wasn't there. “Hal will never have the guts to do anything about it. It's a complete dead end.” She looked at the ghost—or, rather, through the ghost—and clapped a hand over her mouth. “Oh, crap! I'm sorry. I mean, it's not going anywhere. Just forget I said ‘dead,' okay?”

“Then why do you stay?” asked the apparition.

Cate found herself getting defensive. “I have a salary, I have benefits—”

“Benefits?”

“Never mind that.” What would a nineteenth-century ghost understand? “The point is, thanks to this, I have enough to live comfortably on my own.”

“An independence,” mused the apparition. “Not something at which one would sneer. Even so …” She seated herself on a chair that wasn't there and looked thoughtfully at a fire that wasn't lit. “Poverty is a great evil, but to a woman of education and feeling, it ought not, it cannot be, the greatest.”

“What do you mean?” Cate asked.

“We have all a better guide in ourselves, if we would attend to it, than any other person can be. If your mind mislikes this current employment, trust it.” She looked earnestly at Cate. “There will be little rubs and disappointments everywhere, and we are all apt to expect too much; but then, if one scheme of happiness fails,
human nature turns to another; if the first calculation is wrong, we make a second better.”

“Um, what?” said Cate.

“There will be better,” translated the ghost. “Do not resign yourself too soon.”

Maybe there was some truth to that. Sure, she whined a lot, but when was the last time she had made any attempt to take an actual hand in her own destiny?

“I won't,” said Cate decidedly. “I'll talk to Fred. Either he gives me something of real substance to do, or I'm out.”

The apparition looked as though she only understood about half of that, but she gamely nodded her encouragement. “And what of your—forgive me, I've forgot the gentleman's name.”

“Hal,” said Cate absently. “Hal.”

Did she still want Hal? She had, she realized, gotten into the habit of having a crush on him, like having her hair parted on the left side or carrying her bag on her right shoulder.

“You find him not what you believed him to be,” the apparition deduced sagely.

This was all getting a little too close to home. And from a ghost. For a moment, Cate had almost forgotten she was a ghost.

“I'm sorry,” Cate said apologetically, “I've been talking and talking at you and I don't even know who you are.”

The ghost smiled pleasantly. “No matter. Close quarters make for quick friends. I am Miss Austen. And you are?”

“Miss … did you say ‘Austen'?”

“Yes,” said the specter. “Miss Jane Austen.”

What was it Mr. Morland Tilney-Tilney had said? Something about a lady novelist coming to Northanger and spreading lies. Something beginning with a vowel …

Cate remembered the one picture she had seen of Jane Austen,
on a Barnes & Noble bag. It had been strangely out of proportion, awkwardly drawn. The authoress's eyes had seemed to squint—although that might have been a fold in the bag—her lips had been pressed tightly together, and there had been a frilly cap covering her dark hair. She had looked, in Cate's opinion, more disgruntled than anything else, as though miffed at finding herself rendered in green and beige and used to convey other people's books.

This woman, on the other hand, was young and vibrant, with shiny hair and a sparkle in her eye. Or maybe that was just the gold from the cabinet showing through her transparent face.

“And you are?” asked the ghost who claimed to be Jane Austen.

Why? Why her? Cate was sure there were plenty of people who would be delighted to be visited by the ghost of Jane Austen. Cate had been a poli sci major. She had read Rawls and Nozick, not … what else had Austen written? Five hundred pounds and a room of one's own; no, that was that depressing woman who'd drowned herself. Cate wished she had paid more attention in Intro to English Lit.

Did watching that miniseries with Colin Firth in it count?

“I'm Cate,” she blundered. “I mean Catherine. You can call me Catherine.”

The apparition gave her a look, but dipped a tiny curtsy anyway. Oh, crap, they didn't use first names back then, did they? Damn, damn, damn. She was so not prepared for this.

Cate curtsied clumsily back, her jeans protesting against the movement. Her midriff felt very bare. She ought to have been freezing, but adrenaline pumped heat through her veins. Was this how deepwater divers felt or those crazy people who jumped off bridges on a bungee cord? Warm, with a desperate heat like a fever burning one up from the inside out? Or perhaps it was just because in real life, the real Cate was under the covers, burrowed in warmth, dreaming of an authoress she ought to have read.

“Forgive me,” said Cate. “I know I should know this … But do you write ghost stories?”

“I write stories, yes,” said the ghost firmly, “but not what you call a
ghost story
. I leave those to Mrs. Radcliffe and the heirs of
Otranto
.”

“Oh?” Cate didn't like to ask who Mrs. Radcliffe was.

“I have no patience with such trumpery horrors—except in satire. I have,” she added blandly, “written just such a story about Northanger. You can find it here, in this chest. I've left it as a gift for my host in exchange for the fine entertainment he afforded me during my visit.”

There was a lively gleam in the authoress's dead eye that made Cate wonder just what sort of gift it was intended to be. And what sort of entertainment she had been afforded.

Hell hath no fury like an authoress bored?

“I think I may have heard of it.” Cate conjured up Mr. Tilney-Tilney's ravings about aged housekeepers, secret passageways, and murdered wives. “What is it about? Your Northanger story, I mean.”

The apparition gave the lacquer chest a fond pat. “My heroine, a great reader of Mrs. Radcliffe, visits Northanger. Overcome at staying under the roof of a genuine abbey—and one of such antiquity!—she imagines herself surrounded by every sort of ghost and ghoul. Naturally, she finds it to be nothing of the sort.”

“Why naturally?” asked Cate.

“Silly Catherine,” said the ghost of Jane Austen indulgently. “There are no such things as ghosts.”