What a Ghoul Wants (13 page)

“No!”
he shouted. “You know what happens to me when I’m not wearing this!”

Now, I love Gilley. He is my best friend, my brother, and more my family than my own
family, but at that moment I desperately wanted to throttle him. I let go of his collar
and reached down for the hem of the sweatshirt, giving several hard pulls up on it.
“Give. . . it. . . to. . . me!”

“No!” Gil shouted, swatting at my hands. “Let go! Quit it, M. J.! I need it!”

Gil and I struggled for several seconds before John intervened. “Guys, guys!” he yelled,
pulling us apart. “This isn’t helping!”

I glared hard at Gil while I focused my argument on the sound tech. “You saw what
we were up against today! If I’m gonna go look for Gopher and the others, I’ll need
some body armor—enough magnets to keep any spook at bay.”

“But what about me?” Gil protested, still hugging himself lest John be swayed to help
me rip the garment off him. “M. J., if I give this sweatshirt to you, then
I’ll
be a sitting duck! You know how the ghoulies like to torture me!”

I crossed my own arms. “Fine, Gil, then
you
head to the south wing and bring back the crew!”

Gilley paled. “Maybe they’ll come back on their own,” he said weakly. Out of the corner
of my eye I could see Michel watching us intently. I’m pretty sure he thought we were
nuts.

Focusing again on Gilley, I rolled my eyes to show him how much of a drama queen I
thought he was, but then I had an idea. For the most part, spooks are territorial,
and if Gil wasn’t here, then he couldn’t be a target, now, could he? I pulled out
my stash of twenty-pound notes and dangled two in front of him. “Here,” I said. “There’s
a bus stop over the drawbridge and down at the end of the drive. If you hurry, you’ll
make the last bus headed to town. Take it and find yourself a nice unhaunted pub to
hang out in until later. Then hail a cab back here. In the meantime, let me borrow
your sweatshirt. I promise to return it to you just as soon as I find Gopher and the
others.”

“Oh, please,” he scowled, waving his hand at the cash. “How cheap do you think I am?”

I cocked an eyebrow.

He stuck his tongue out at me but made to grab the pound notes, and I pulled them
away. “Ah, ah, ah. . . ,” I said. “Not until you hand over the sweatshirt.”

Gil’s scowl deepened. “Michel?”

“Yes?”

“Can I buy you a drink?”

I was sure Michel would say no—especially after this display—but to my surprise the
good-looking photographer stepped forward with an amused look on his face. “Are you
sure there’s nothing I can do to help?” he asked me.

I smiled gratefully at him. He seemed like a nice guy. “Accompanying Gilley into town
so that I can use his sweatshirt is all the help I need, Michel.”

The raven-haired man nodded and moved toward the door. Gil shimmied out of his sweatshirt
and tossed it in my direction without looking, his eyes intent on Michel’s rear. The
sweatshirt hit me in the face, and the magnets hurt. I made a move to whump Gil on
the back of his head as he passed (snatching the pound notes out of my hand as he
went), but John caught my arm. “Let’s just focus on the job in front of us, okay?”
he whispered.

With a (gigantic) sigh I pulled the heavy sweatshirt on over my head and looked for
Arthur. He was over by the telephone, depressing the switch hook again and again.
“What’s the matter?” I asked, almost wearily because this was really turning out to
be the most miserable twenty-four hours ever.

“The phone is dead,” he said.

I walked to him, holding out my hand, and he placed the receiver in it. After I put
it to my ear and depressed the switch hook a few times myself, it was obvious he was
right. “Great,” I said. “Were you trying to reach my producer?”

“No, Miss Holliday, I was actually attempting to alert the police.”

“I’m not sure how much help they’ll be,” I muttered, but turned to John and added,
“Can you lend him your cell?”

John shook his head. “It got smashed today when I fell into that passageway. Even
Gil says it’s toast. That’s why I was so late hearing that Gopher had gone ahead with
the shoot. I had to wait to hear it straight from Gilley.”

“Will nothing go our way?” I snapped, thoroughly irritated with the constant obstacles
we were being thrown. “Well, my phone is still back in the south wing. Arthur? Do
you have a cell phone we can use?”

“No, Miss Holliday, I’m afraid I’ve no use for a mobile phone. That’s a contraption
for your generation.”

Putting my hands on my hips in frustration, I looked to the door and shouted for Gilley,
but he didn’t reply. “Wait here,” I told them. “I’ll see if I can catch him. He’s
bound to have his cell on him.”

I dashed from the hall and out into the cool air. Making my way across the cobblestones,
I kept my eyes peeled for Gilley, and that’s when I saw something very odd.

It was dark out, but the courtyard was well lit, and I could see all the way across
it to the arch of the drawbridge, which appeared unusually dark, and what’s more,
I couldn’t see the light from the lamppost that marked the bus stop. I ran faster
until I was just under the archway, where I found Gilley and Michel standing in front
of the massive wooden door of the bridge, which was closed. Gil must’ve heard me come
up behind him, because he jumped and gave a little shriek, but when he saw that it
was me, he put a hand over his heart and said, “Oh, M. J., thank God! We can’t get
out and I’ll need my sweatshirt back.”

I made no move to shrug out of the sweatshirt. Possession was nine-tenths of the law
as far as I was concerned; plus, I’d paid him for it, so in my mind, the sweatshirt
was rightfully mine. “What do you mean, you can’t get out?” I asked (to distract him
from the sweatshirt).

Gilley pointed to the massive door and looked at me like I was slow. “The drawbridge
is up.”

I let it go because I was much more concerned with the exit being blocked. “But. . .
how
could it be up?” I asked. I’d walked over it not ten minutes earlier.

Michel pointed to something that looked a little like a fuse box to the right of the
bridge. “I’ve already inspected the lever,” he said. “It’s mechanized and it looks
like someone pushed the button to pull up the bridge, then sabotaged the system by
cutting all the wires so that it can’t be lowered until we send for an electrician.”

A cold shudder ran along my spine. The phones were dead. The drawbridge was up and
the mechanism had been tampered with. I didn’t know the castle that well, but I had
a feeling that the only escape route we had at our disposal was through the same door
that led to the tunnel-covered bridge where Heath had been hauled over the side by
the Grim Widow. And now, even if we were able to get the police here, they couldn’t
come inside to help us look for our crew, because the bridge was up. Still, I knew
I needed to alert them and get an electrician out here stat.

“We should go back inside,” I said softly. I looked all around and up along the turrets.
I had the most unsettling feeling that we were being watched. “And, Gilley, give me
your cell phone.”

“Where’s yours?”

“In the south wing with the rest of my stuff.”

Gil felt his pockets. “I don’t have mine on me either,” he said.

“Well, where is it?”

“I loaned it to Franco.”

“Who’s Franco?”

“One of the models.”

I blinked. Gilley had loaned his cell phone to a relative stranger? Pigs must be flying.
Or Franco must have been
very
cute. “What room is Franco in?” I pressed impatiently. I didn’t have time for all
this. Gopher and the girls were quite possibly in serious danger and I had to brave
the south wing either alone or with the police. I preferred it be with the police.

“He’s not in his room,” Michel said.

“Then where is he?”

“He was the one that Gopher talked into going on the ghost hunt.”

I shook my head. “Of course he was. Fine. Michel, can we borrow your cell phone, please?
The landline inside is dead and we’ll need to call the police and an electrician for
emergency service to the drawbridge.”

“I don’t own a mobile,” Michel replied.

Gil and I both stared at him as if he’d just spoken Martian. “Say what, now?”

“I find them distracting.”

I was so tired and fed up with being stymied at every turn that I lost my temper.
“You know what else is distracting? Needing to make an emergency call when your landline
is dead!”

“M. J.,” Gil said, “ease up, okay?”

I took a steadying breath and apologized to Michel. “It’s fine,” he assured me. “Usually
I’m in the company of people who have their mobiles with them at all times, so it’s
not been an issue until tonight.”

“Okay,” I said, trying to think this through. “Is there someone we can wake up in
the castle to borrow their cell phone? Like one of the other models, maybe?”

Gil and Michel shook their heads at the same time. “Everyone went into town for dinner
and drinks,” Gil said. “There’s no one here besides us fools. Or maybe one of the
other guests.”

I knew of only two other guests at the castle: that horrible man and his frightened
mousy wife in the room next to mine. I hated to think of waking them up, because I
was positive the jerk would only take the disturbance out on his wife. “So we’re stuck,”
I said miserably.

“It would seem so,” Michel replied. “Unless Mr. Crunn knows of another way out of
the castle, and there’s sure to be one. Places like this always have a hidden door
leading to the outside.”

I pointed across the courtyard. “There’s one right there,” I said. “But I wouldn’t
go through it for all the tea in China.”

Gil eyed me oddly. “What are you, a hundred?”

“It’s a common expression!”

“Yes. For people born during the Roosevelt years. . . the first Roosevelt.”

I glowered at Gilley. “Bite me.”

“Now,
that’s
more contemporary.”

I muttered something else a bit more contemporary and not so much to Gilley’s liking
before turning on my heel and marching away to head back inside to ask Arthur if there
was another way out of the castle, but then I realized that being out of the castle
wasn’t likely to do anyone any good. The town was several miles away and I didn’t
particularly want to venture off across the moors in the dark. No, we’d be stuck here,
so I should probably quit stalling and get busy trying to find Gopher and the others.

Gil caught up to me and tugged on my sweatshirt. (Like how I’ve already claimed it
as mine?) “Hold on, M. J. Give this back.”

“Nope,” I said, tugging free of his grip and picking up my pace to a trot.

Gil wasn’t about to give up that easily; he picked his pace up too. “You promised
to give it to me when we got back.”

“But you didn’t go anywhere. When you go somewhere and come back, I’ll hand it over.”

He tugged on my sleeve again. “Be serious!”

“I am being serious, Gil. I need this sweatshirt to go after Gopher and the others
in the south wing. Now stop pulling on it, would you?”

“M. J.!”
Gil screeched. “I can’t be here without my sweatshirt!”

“Of course you can. Between John and me, we’ve got at least eight spikes. That should
be more than enough to keep you safe while I go look for the crew.”

“If it’s enough to keep me safe, then it’s enough to keep
you
safe.”

I didn’t answer him because the fact of the matter was that even ten spikes hadn’t
been enough the last time. Of course, we hadn’t had all of them exposed at the time
the Widow and that big black shadow had come chasing after us, but still, I knew I’d
have a much better chance of surviving another visit to the south wing only if I wore
the sweatshirt. At the very least I had a decent shot at making it to my phone to
call for help.

Gil continued to tug on my arm the whole rest of the way back into the castle. John
and Arthur were still standing where I’d left them, and by the looks on their faces
I could tell they’d been discussing something grave. “Did he call the police?” John
asked me when we entered.

I shook my head. “Gil loaned his cell out to the model who went along on the ghost
hunt, and Michel doesn’t own a cell.”

“What are they doing back here, then?” John asked.

“The drawbridge is up.”

Arthur’s jaw fell open. “What? But that’s not right! It should be down!”

“Well, someone put it up and messed with the wires on the mechanism that raises and
lowers it. We’re stuck here unless you know of another way out of the castle so that
one of us can go for help.”

Arthur stared at me blankly as if he was having trouble taking in my words. At last
he said, “Well, there is the door to the side of the keep that hides the tunnel that
goes across the moat.”

I shook my head vigorously. “No way. That’s where the Widow ambushed us this morning.”

Arthur’s lips pressed together. “There is another exit,” he said. “But it’s on the
far side of the castle. In the south wing.”

My shoulders sagged. “Of course it is.”

“How far is the police station from here?” John asked.

“Several kilometers,” Arthur said. “At least two hours’ walk.”

“In the dark and across the moors, right?”

Arthur nodded. “I’m afraid so.”

“Is there anyone who lives close by who might be of help?”

Arthur wrung his hands together. “The dowager owns most of the surrounding land. I’m
afraid there’s no one nearby for at least three kilometers or so, and even they would
be difficult to locate in the dark.”

I sighed. “Okay, then that does it. We stay put until the modeling troupe comes back
and hopefully someone in their party will be bright enough to alert the authorities
once they realize they can’t get inside.”

“André or Jaqui will certainly attempt to call,” Michel said.

My mind was going in a thousand directions and for a moment I blanked on the names.
“Who?”