Possession (5 page)

I didn't want to
tell the ladies he was here and alarm them—their nerves seemed frayed enough—so
I simply lifted my brows at him and mouthed "What happened?" while
they weren't looking.

"Possession."
He watched his sister, sitting opposite. He might be a ghost, but his body
still seethed with anger and frustration and God knew what other emotions. "A
spirit took control of Adelaide's body then transferred itself to Wallace Arbuthnot.
I don't know why or how, but all their movements were controlled by a spirit
and not a very nice one if his manners were any indication. He's gone now. I
couldn't find him."

It wasn't until the
coach deposited Lady Preston and Adelaide back at their Belgravia house that I
got to be alone with him. Lady Preston had ordered her driver to take me to Druids
Way, despite my insistence that I could walk home.

"Are you
all right, Em?" Jacob asked me as soon as the coach rolled forward.

"I would be
if you'd only talk to me more, visit me." I turned to face him fully. "Jacob—"

"Don't!"
He closed his eyes, sighed heavily. "Keep the conversation to the
possession. Please."

I swallowed the
barrel-sized lump in my throat. I wouldn't cry. I wouldn't. He was right to
want to keep our conversation on a proper footing. Right but cruel. "Very
well." I tried to remember all the questions I'd been bursting to ask
before. "Oh yes. Why your sister? Why Wallace Arbuthnot?"

He opened his
eyes. "I think the spirit preferred a man's guise to a woman's. As to why
it chose him when it could have had any number of footmen or other men, I don't
know. And as to why it chose my sister in the first place..." He shrugged.
"I can't answer that either."

"It has
something to do with my house. There was a girl there." I pressed my
fingers to my mouth. What I wanted to say was too fantastical, too absurd to
contemplate. Yet I had to put it into words to understand it. "I think she
summoned the spirit into Adelaide's body deliberately."

Jacob whipped
around to face me. "What girl? Who was she?"

I shook my head.
"I don't know, but I think she's the one who's been following me. There
was a man with her too."

He dragged a
hand through his hair, ruffling it. I got the feeling he was holding back from
saying some very ungentlemanly words. "To what purpose?"

"I don't
know," I said, weakly. Oh God, why didn't I take more notice of her? Why
hadn't I confronted her and discovered her intent? "Nor do I know where to
find her now. I'm so sorry, Jacob, I wish I was more useful."

He touched my
hand and warmth instantly infused me, despite the coolness of his skin. "It's
all right, Em. It's not your fault. We'll find out what's going on soon
enough."

But not before Wallace
Arbuthnot and the spirit inside him had done something terrible. Why else would
a ghost of questionable morals possess someone in this realm if not to do harm?

CHAPTER 3

The coach turned
into Druids Way and rocked to a rhythm set by the cobbles and the wind. It made
for an uncomfortable ride. "I think I should pay George Culvert a
visit," I said.

"Why?"
Jacob asked.

"To learn
more about possession."

"George is
a demonologist, not a spiritologist."

"I'm quite
certain that's not a word."

His gaze slid to
mine. "I can tell you all you need to know."

George was an
acquaintance of Jacob's—or had been when Jacob was alive—and a supernatural
enthusiast specializing in demons. He had a vast library filled with ancient and
somewhat strange books collected by his late father. Surely there'd be a tome or
two on possession. It would be a good avenue to start our investigation, considering
locating the girl and Wallace would be like finding two needles in two
haystacks in a field full of haystacks.

I decided to
call Jacob's bluff. "Very well. How does one get a spirit into a live
person's body? And how does one then go about getting it out again?"

He crossed his
arms. "I'll have to speak to the Administrators in the Waiting Area."

"Good. You
do that while I visit George."

His lips thinned.
"Why do you want to see him?"

"Why do you
not
want me to see him?"

The coach stopped
and rocked as the footman hopped down. He opened the door for me, but I said, "There's
been a change of plan. Please take me to Wilton Crescent, number
fifty-two." The coachman would know it since it was not far from Lord and
Lady Preston's house. The footman bowed and closed the door again.

"It seems
you are determined on this." Jacob spoke to the door rather than me, his
rigid jaw giving him an imperial aloofness that invited no friendship.

I reached out to
touch him, but he flinched and I dropped my hand. "I am, but I fail to see
why that is a problem."

The coach rolled
off again, jerking us both. Jacob made a small sound in the back of his throat,
half-groan, half-sigh. He tipped his head back, resting it against the cabin's
wall. "You're right. Of course you are." He turned a sad but gentle
smile on me. I should have smiled back, but there was something very, very
wrong with the way he looked at me. "Go see George and ask for his help. He's
a good man."

"Yes. Yes
he is, but—"

"I have to
go." He blinked off.

Now what could
he have meant by that little exchange? First he acted jealous and then he
praised George? It didn't make sense. Unless...

Oh. Oh no. He
wouldn't dare try to pair me with George. Not after all we'd been through, all
we'd said to each other.

Would he?

***

George carried a
black and burgundy leather-bound book as long as my forearm and as thick as the
drawer in the desk at which I sat. It made a solid
whump
as it hit the
leather inlay on the desk's surface. There was no title on the plain cover so I
opened it. The earthy smell of disuse and age wafted from the yellowing pages. It
was pleasant, comforting, homely.

"
The
Rapture of the Spirit and of the Mind: A Treatise on Dispossessed Spiritual
Influences
," I read.

"First
published in the seventeenth century." George stood behind me and leaned
over my shoulder. "Just like old times."

"The
book?"

His face, so
near mine that I could feel his breath on my cheek, colored. "No, I mean
you and me. Here in my library. Doing this."

"Oh."

He pushed his spectacles
up his nose and smiled. It was what Jacob had wanted—me to get close to George,
to have him look at me as if I was a potential sweetheart.

It wasn't what I
wanted. "Hardly 'old times,'" I said. "It was only last
week."

He cleared his
throat and straightened. "Yes. Only a week ago. You're right. Silly of me.
Silly expression." He returned to the bookshelves and browsed the volumes,
his hands behind his back, his head tilted to read the spines.

Oh dear. I'd
hurt his feelings or offended him or perhaps both. Poor George. But he needed
to know that I was not interested in him in that way. Encouraging him would be
cruel—I had no intention of taking our relationship beyond friendship.

I carefully
turned the brittle pages of the book. I was surprised to see it was done by
hand considering it was written after the invention of the printing press. The
lettering was beautiful. A loving and clever hand had painstakingly formed the
curling script and drawn the accompanying illustrations. The artist's mind,
however, was another matter. Image followed image of women with breasts
exposed, grasping their hair or skirts as if they would tear them off, a look
of either rapture or pain on their fair faces—it was difficult to tell which.

I glanced up at
George, still standing at the shelves. Had he even read the book?

I turned the
pages and the images became more obscene. He couldn't have read it. Naked
couples performed lewd acts in positions a contortionist would have trouble
achieving, and not all of the couples consisted of both a man
and
a
woman.

George sat at
the larger desk in the center of the library, away from me. Thank goodness. I
couldn't possibly read the book without turning a bright shade of puce and
drawing attention to myself.

Not all the
illustrations were of vulgar acts, however. Some appeared to have the people committing
murder or harm to others. It was horrid.

I concentrated
on the text. The old form of the English language was difficult to understand,
but after a while I became used to it. Most of the work was clearly inaccurate.
For example, it suggested that possession by spirits came from eating part of
the deceased's body!

A more useful fact
it noted was that possession was never performed by good spirits as they were
eager to crossover to the Otherworld and not disturb the living. It was only
the evil, those without conscience when they were alive, who wanted to possess
someone and make them perform terrible acts.

I read on until
the bells of a nearby church struck half past twelve. The longcase clock from
the entrance hall joined in. "Any luck?" George asked.

"Not
really. You?"

He sighed and
shut the book he'd been reading. "No. Most of these texts know less than
us. It's all speculation. Perhaps Beaufort will come up with something."

I wasn't sure Jacob
would disturb us if he did. Not if he wanted George and I to become
closer...friends.

George rubbed
his hand lovingly over the dark green leather cover of his book. "Emily."
It sounded ominous.

"Yes?"

"I've been
researching your kind."

"My
what?"

"Your kind.
Mediums. Conduits to the dead."

"Conduits
to the dead?" The macabre phrase sent a chill through my bones.

"That's how
one of these books put it." He waved a hand to encompass the shelves on
the western wall of the library, densely packed with books from the ceiling,
two levels above us, to the floor.

"And what
did you discover about...my kind?"

"That you
are a very rare breed indeed."

I am not a
dog,
I wanted to say but bit my tongue. George
hadn't meant to offend. "Go on."

"There are a
few known cases of legitimate mediums before the sixteenth century, but not
many. The most famous one is actually referenced in the Bible, the First book
of Samuel, chapter twenty-eight to be precise. Interestingly, that medium was a
woman too. However, the fact we don't have more than a handful of cases does
not mean more mediums have not existed, just that they weren't evident in our
society."

"George,
you're speaking in convoluted sentences. Please, tell me plainly." My
heart rose into my throat where it lodged. I'd wanted answers to my parentage
for so long, ever since I could remember, but now that some light was about to
be shed, I wasn't sure I was ready to hear it.

He stood and
climbed one of the ladders to the second top rung. He held onto one of the cast
iron lamps attached to the shelf and reached up to remove a black book. "Here,"
he said, climbing down. "This is where I found the information."

He gave me the
book and sat on one of the heavy armchairs nearby. I read the spine. "
Beyond
The Grave: A Scientific and Historical Study of Death and the Spirit.
"

"The book
is only fifty years old," George said, leaning forward and turning the
pages quickly. "It gathers information from many sources over many years. Unfortunately
my father's collection doesn't have any of the original books so I cannot
verify them. We have only this one to draw upon." He stabbed his finger at
a page with the chapter heading "Conduits to the Dead."

I began to read.
He settled back in his chair and crossed his legs. I could feel his gaze on me,
but I soon forgot about him. The text was riveting. By the time I'd finished,
my head was awhirl. I sat back and stared at the book. Where before my heart
was in my throat, now it seemed to have stopped beating altogether.

George leaned
forward and touched my arm. "Emily? Are you all right?"

I nodded and blinked
slowly. "Do you think it's true? That there are women from an African
tribe who can see the dead?"

"I have no
reason to doubt it. But it's important to remember that these things may have
been distorted over time and what we're reading here is just one author's
opinion of sources we cannot read ourselves. But it seems...logical."

It did indeed. Being
descended from one of the tribal women explained not only my ability, but my appearance
too. It did not explain why there was a little girl running around who looked
very much like me and was summoning ghosts into the bodies of live people.

"Miss
Chambers, what a...surprise," came a throaty female voice from the
doorway. Mrs. Culvert, George's mother, smiled a tight smile at us. I didn't
believe it was sincere for a moment. "Greggs told me you were in here with
George. Reading." Her icy gaze slid between us as if trying to determine
if we'd been doing more than just reading.