Yuletide 2012 fanfiction exchange for Salifiable.

Blossom

As I thrust my shovel into the graveyard dirt and heard that first, ominous thunk of metal on wood, followed immediately by a shout of relief from above, I experienced a moment of insight—a realization of how my history had led me to this bedraggled and somewhat muddy point, and what I might do to change that life's direction.

But I have been reliably informed by those who make their living writing stories for public consumption that it is best to lay the groundwork for your revelations. I do not count myself as one of their members, but I will not excuse myself from what seems decent behavior. So I will explain how I happened to find myself at that time, in that place, and in that company. I would say that it began, as many of my experiences of this nature often have, with a sleepless night and an encounter with the Unknown.

As for me, I am Blossom Culp, and I am certain that I need no further introduction. Despite my comparative youth, I am justly acclaimed at home and abroad for my Astonishing Spiritual Gifts and Prophetic Powers, and you have no doubt read of my accomplishments or perhaps seen my likeness in the tableau at Madame Tussauds or more recently in—But there I am running ahead of myself again, as I have promised not to do.

This is a story that started long before the present.

In the fine state of Illinois where I resided, in the fall of 1917, the halls of Bluff City High School were once again alive with shuffling feet and clattering bells and squeaking chalk. After a long summer apart, the students were restless with thoughts of war abroad and insipid romance at home. Young men sauntered and nervously tugged at their collars, and young ladies smoothed their skirts and eyed potential beaus with speculation.

As for me, I was not party to all this mooning about. I may once have entertained some notions in that direction, but I'd long since chucked them aside for the foolishness they are and focused anew on my schoolwork, and found myself much improved thereby. As the poetess has said,

And this bequest of wings
What but a book. What liberty
A loosened spirit brings!

Yet while the senior girls around me were plotting their marital futures in the margins of their notebooks, I found myself preoccupied with a Grim Spectral Visitation from that morning that was weighing heavily on my mind. But I am sorry to say that not even that could blind me to Miss Letty Shambaugh's callous misuse of our valuable World Geography class time.

Letty, the eldest daughter of the Select Dry Goods Shaumbaughs, was prone to neglecting her studies in this fashion and inciting others to do likewise. So it was in the best interests of all that I intercepted every one of those elaborately folded missives passed from hand to hand before they could further disrupt anyone else's attention—including that of their intended recipient, the youthful scholar occupying the seat before me. For his part, he spent most of the class elaborating on sketches of Sopwith Camels.

"Alexander Armsworth," Letty hissed at him in the hall after class, as she latched onto his arm and drew him aside. "Why don't you ever reply to my notes?"

"What notes?" replied the young man in question. "Anyway, I'm here right now. Why can't you just tell me what you want after class? Is it about the War Relief Social?"

"All that is entirely beside the point," she said, dropping into low tones that nevertheless carried admirably. "I believe that Blossom has been keeping them from you."

"Blossom?" he said, sounding confused. "What would Blossom want with your notes?"

"Oh, she no doubt has her creepy designs, I don't wonder," Letty said darkly, even as she turned her gimlet eye upon me as I passed by them and into the hall. When I smiled graciously at her in reply, she shivered and pressed close to his arm, cooing, "Oh, Alexander."

He simply patted her arm and looked even more confused, which is his natural state. Alexander, though he refuses to give his own Gifts their due, also has been known to have an excellent eye for Denizens of the Other World. That said, he tends to overlook events occurring right under his nose in this world. That's why I have taken it upon myself at times to assume the role of sheepdog to his wandering lamb, and I have nobly borne his resentment even while guiding him back to firmer turf.

As I was musing on that injustice, Letty's attention had moved elsewhere. "Alexander," she exclaimed, "whatever do you have there, in your pocket? Have you been collecting my notes after all?"

"What?" Alexander said, looking startled.

"Oh, let me see," she said, claws darting out, whereupon Alexander performed a complex dance of evasion that drew every eye in the hall in his direction before he came to rest several feet away.

"Now, Letty," he said sternly, drawing himself up and collecting the tattered remnants of his dignity, "we'll be late for class if we don't move along." With that, he sailed past her toward the staircase and left her behind in her befuddlement.

I felt, for perhaps the first time in my life, a positive glow of gratitude for Letty, because she had just uncovered for me a possible means of averting my latest crisis: to whit, my entanglement with One of the Restless Departed before I'd come to school that day.

Alexander

In 1917, at the beginning of my senior year at Bluff City High School, I guess I was as indifferent a student as I'd ever been, and my teachers continued to glumly suggest trades at which I might somehow acquire a talent. My dad simply put it to me that enthusiasm didn't necessarily compensate for lack of skill, and that following him into the construction business might not be in my own best interests. I have always been enthusiastic about engines and heavy equipment of all kinds, but after a few untoward incidents, I had to agree that those who are easily distracted are better off admiring them from a distance.

The month before school had started, I'd squired my mother's cousin, Mrs. Elvera Schumate, on a trip, our destination the City of Philadelphia. According to Cousin Elvira, the idea was that I should come to better appreciate the Foundations of this Great Nation of Ours in Such Times as These. My dad's primary contribution to the enterprise had been a warning that if I got so overcome with patriotic zeal that I ran off to enlist, he'd track me down personally and drag me back by my nose hairs. My mother's had been a marked increase in the number of comments about the desirability of having quality Select Dry Goods in a community such as ours.

In those respects, my situation seemed gloomy, but I had a year to figure out what I wanted to do after I graduated. There was talk of the government lowering the lottery age, so it was always possible I might wind up on another boat to Europe, this time on a much less elegant level than the stateroom suites. But otherwise, my heart was as light as I would have wanted for my final year, or at least it had started out that way.

But there had been another troubling aspect of the summer that I have yet to mention: I had not seen hide nor hair of Blossom Culp the whole time. You might say she is our neighbor, in the sense that she and her scary mama live in a weirdly painted shanty behind our barn on the other side of the interurban line's tracks. Blossom is a skinny, spidery-legged, frizzy-haired, spooky girl who I first met while we were at the Horace Mann School, where she impressed me with both her lies and her lips, the latter after she'd dragged me down the building's fire chute. Since then, she has inveigled me into many situations of a bizarre and eerie nature. That is why I consider her the bane of my existence, and while I was not disappointed to have a summer free of her antics, it worried me that she might just be saving it up for the fall. So I entered my senior year well rested and braced to endure her return to the desk behind me.

Or that is what I thought. That she was ignoring me on purpose had been my first idea. She would send a few grunts of greeting in my direction, but then she'd look right through me like not only had her thoughts moved elsewhere, but they'd already paid the rent and rearranged the furniture. So my next idea was that this was a nefarious plan to draw me in . . . and by the second week, I was set to surrender.

When I twisted around at my desk, fixing to demand to know what she was plotting back there, I found her half asleep, chin in hand, watching the birds in the tree outside the window. I didn't have the heart to start an argument when it was clear I'd been the farthest thing from her mind.

So my last idea was that she'd finally found another boy to pester. This was naturally a huge relief to me, but all the same, I figured it paid to be wary; after that, I'd been keeping a regular eye out to find out who it was. Letty told me that I was giving this too much of my attention, but she was not half as familiar as I with Blossom's sneaky ways.

Which brings me to my other problem: this meant that I couldn't in good conscience ask Blossom for any advice about a suspicious situation that had come up very recently.

Back when Inez Dumaine was haunting our barn, the first evidence was a faint, pinkish glow I'd seen at night, though I didn't know then what I was really looking at. I had a sense that what I was seeing now was the same, but it was also completely different: a blood red smear that had taken to lurking at the corner of my eye. It had yet to settle down anywhere in particular. Sometimes I'd glimpse it hanging over the town like a thin mist. Other times it'd ring the sunset in a fiery flare before fading away with the light.

That color made me uneasy. One thing I was sure of. Whatever was behind it was not something I wanted to meet.

That was my general situation on the morning when everything took the final wrong turn. We were waiting for breakfast, my mother was fussing at our hired girl Gladys like normal, Gladys was ignoring my mother like normal, and my dad was tucked up behind his paper and ignoring them both like normal. As for me, I'd taken the opportunity to peer out the window at another smear of red, hanging in the sky above our barn.

That's what I was doing when I spotted Blossom hotfooting it across our back lawn. She was dressed in her school clothes with a lumpy feed sack hitched over her shoulder, and she was making a beeline for the bushes by our barn. Once she got there, she crouched down behind them, and I figured she was waiting out of sight of the tracks, as the early morning trolley was due to come clattering down the line at any moment.

"Alexander," my mother said, "what are you doing there, at the window?"

"Uh." I unplastered my nose from the glass. "There's a squirrel. Out in the bushes. I'm just watching it bury a nut." I added for good measure, "Besides, it's not like there's anything to eat yet." My mother's attention immediately swerved back to annoying Gladys in the kitchen. Dad just eyed me over his paper, and shook his head.

There was no telling what Blossom was up to out there. But the last thing I wanted today was her nose stuck in my business, so I decided that I would not tempt disaster by asking her. Today was going to be the greatest achievement of my school year, because I had finally acquired the means of ensuring my pledge classes' legacy with Iota Nu Beta, our secret fraternity at school.

After enduring hard trials of our character and bravery as sophomores—in which I'd even had to kiss Blossom in front of my whole class—every INB pledge took an oath to expand the Circulating Collection. From our predecessors, we'd inherited a handful of racy tobacco cards and a few yellowed, tattered pamphlets with illustrated stories, and it was understood that we would do better or be shamed forever. So far, Bud Timmons had lifted some old calendars from the back room at Apex Automotive, but otherwise none of us had managed to scare up anything of much worth. We were preparing to initiate the new lowly pledges soon, so the time to suitably impress them was running out.

Then I'd had a stroke of luck: my mother had decided that I was to sort out my Great Uncle Miles's old trunks, which had gotten stored in the back of our barn along with his tools after he passed a number of years back. Though Dad hadn't been pleased with the idea, even he admitted that the job had been put off too long and had seemed pretty relieved that I'd be taking care of it.

Uncle Miles, who'd been my dad's uncle, was a carpenter of repute, a tippler of fabled stamina, and a traveler of renown, who'd rode the interurban lines all the way to West Virginia and back. He was also a Man of the World, with plenty of advice that I'd been too young to appreciate at the time. He'd been responsible for that trip to New Orleans that freed me of a ghost, the first time I'd ever traveled outside of Bluff City.

Now I had a whole new reason to be grateful to Uncle Miles. Last night, in the back of one of his trunks, I'd uncovered his stash of fancy French postcards—of the sort that only come from specialized establishments. Once I'd gotten over my mortification, I immediately saw their worth. Not only was the photography first class, but the subjects were anatomically educational and pretty darn easy on the eyes.

I was certain Uncle Miles wouldn't mind contributing to the betterment of a new generation. I was planned to contribute fifteen of the seventeen cards to the Circulating Collection after school that very evening. But that was not all. To top it off, I needed—

"Alexander," my mother said, "what's that in your pocket?"

"What?" I said, spinning around. "What pocket?"

"There," she pointed. "On your right."

"Oh, this. This is a, a pamphlet. That I'm going to return. To the library at school. Today."

She frowned at me. "Well, don't keep it stuffed in there all day. It's ruining the line of your suit."

My dad, who taken to eyeing me again over the top of his paper, said blandly, "And I imagine there are other fellows who're anxious to check that out."

I blinked at him, but before I could say anything, Gladys came storming through the swinging door with a yodel of "Breakfast is served!"

"Gladys," my mother sighed, my pocket forgotten, "we've spoken about this."

Glad as I was to have these cards, they were perilous as well, and I couldn't have them out of my pocket too soon. And, as I was saying, there was only one more thing I needed to top off an evening of cowing the sophomores.

Blossom

That morning, I'd risen early and dressed for school several hours before sunrise; the rumble of a storm in the distance, which had seemingly bypassed us and never broken, had nevertheless disturbed my slumbers. Below, I could see that the lamp was already lit, and when I dropped my head down from the loft, I saw Mama was already awake as well. For a wonder, she was dressed in her best purple velvet skirt with the silver stars and her largest gold cross earrings. She even had her cards spread on the table.

"Mama?" I inquired cautiously. She'd been in a surly mood for several weeks now, muttering and eyeing the sky in a gloomy way, though she'd refused to tell me what had her agitated. Now there was this, which shouted "client," even though Mama never scheduled a sitting before noon. My Mama has another job with very late hours, which mainly consists of helping herself to whatever the local populace has thoughtfully not locked up nor nailed down (although my Mama is quite handy with a crowbar as well).

"Yore up early," she said, eyeing me with satisfaction as I shimmied down the ladder, "thas' good though." She had even, I noted glumly, put her teeth in, so there was no pretending I didn't understand. "Got plenty of time for the Jordans."

When the Bluff City Pantagraph had extended its condolences to the Jordan family upon the passing of their family member in Urbana, it was as good as an engraved invitation to my mama to make free with their back garden while they were out of town at the funeral.

"Mama," I pointed out sensibly, "I've just gotten up, and I'm dressed for school."

"Huh," she grunted, ignoring my point. Although Mama was pleased that school did her the favor of removing me from the premises during the day, her respect for the institution stopped there. "Take the poke," she said, nudging a feed sack out from under the table with her toe.

"Mama," I said, "surely you've gotten everything worthwhile by now."

"Nah," she said, "plenty to grab yet, ain't had time. Frost coming soon."

I sighed and gathered up the sack, as I wondered how my school clothes would fare if it decided to rain after all. As I was shrugging into my coat and turning to the door, my eye was caught by a new splash of color on the wall.

The primary decoration of our one-room home is the postcards sent by my Paw from points everywhere in Our Great Nation. For my Paw may have a footloose nature, but he has ever been faithful about keeping us apprised of his whereabouts. When I was very young, I took to tacking these cards to the wall alongside the door, and they now compose a colorful if eccentric mural. The postcard that drew my especial attention featured a carefully tinted row of pink stucco buildings, with a trolley car and thin palm trees on the narrow boulevard before it, although the picture was already marred by one of Mama's ink doodles.

"Mama? When did this one come?" I asked, unpinning it. I tilted it to the light to read the tiny legend at the bottom: "Prospect Pictures, Hollywood Calif." I didn't bother with the reverse; my Paw is unlettered, so there was never anything to see but a stamp.

"Yesterday," she said with a dismissive wave. I had long ago ceased to marvel at my parents' relationship. My Paw has an easy-going nature, and Mama is always pleased to see him when he ventures to stop in with us. But she is just as pleased to beat him off to the railyard with the back of her shovel when he's overstayed his welcome.

"Paw is in California?" I said. "But wasn't he there last month and the month before?"

"That shiftless wonder," she said, with the usual fondness mingled with annoyance that she reserved solely for him. "Maybe he got too pickled to move."

Given the vast amounts of drink my Paw could consume, I doubted that was the case. But I did wonder at him settling down in one place for months on end. I examined the card more closely as I let myself out the door. As I crossed the threshold, an enormous boom of thunder overhead stunned me, and I immediately crouched, blinking stupidly at the sudden onslaught of heat and sun.

"Bankers Balking!" bawled a loud, nasal voice in my ear. "President Roosevelt Puts the Screws to Wall Street!"

"What?" I said, blinking. "Who?" To my left, a boy who couldn't be much younger than I was brandishing a newspaper overhead, his foot propped on a tidy pile of others. Beside him was a squat wooden shack, its front covered with carefully hung glossy magazines. Everything sported a date far in my future, though not as far in time as I'd traveled before. I gaped at it all, and clutched my Paw's postcard.

"Here, boy, I'll have the Times," said a deep voice behind me, and I hastily ducked aside as a man wearing suit and a sharp-brimmed hat loomed over me. I stared about me at the busy sidewalk, the many automobiles, the tall buildings—the thin palm trees swaying under the hot sky.

Those pink stucco buildings farther along the street strongly resembled the ones featured on the postcard in my hand.

I do not know how I am Translated in Time. Like tornados, it is simply something that occasionally occurs. But why here, and why now? My sack had been dropped behind me on our porch in the past, and I knew Mama would skin me alive if she were to learn I'd been off dawdling on some street in the future and not plucking fall tomatoes back home.

"So you buying, sister?" the boy said to me, grinning. "Ain't a liberry, right?"

"Er, well," I said, stepping forward to survey the offerings and feeling in my coat pocket for any coins I might have forgotten, though I was fairly certain I had none.

"Kinda warm for that get-up," he said, eyeing me speculatively. "Saaay, you're off the lot, right? I don't see too many of you stopping out here. I'll make you a deal. Pick your poison, and it's on the house—all you gotta do is just stand there and read it."

"On the house?" I said, startled.

"Yeah, like I said. Free."

"But why would you—"

"C'mon, it's a good deal," he said, dropping his voice. He reddened, pushing back his odd, squashed hat. "Just . . . right over there, turn a bit to the left. Where people coming down the street will get a good look."

"Oh." He meant that I should pose. Bemused at the idea, I dutifully shuffled to the left.

"Thank you very much, miss," he said, nodding appreciatively. Then he went back to shouting and waving his paper.

"Off the lot," I murmured to myself, fingering my skirt. The heat, the trolley rumbling down the street behind me—the postcard still clutched in my hand. "Oh. This is Hollywood," I blurted.

"I know, I know," he said, chuckling. "Pretty dames, dime a dozen around here. But how often do they hang around my newsstand? So we got Variety and the Reporter, if that's what you're after."

The titles before me promised thrilling and amazing mysteries, detectives, adventures, and housekeeping tips, and others sported smooth, painted portraits of screen stars, none of whom I recognized from the Bijoux. But then my eye fell upon a head of casually disarrayed, fair hair, dark-blue eyes, and an oddly familiar, lopsided smirk. I reached for it.

"Shoulda guessed," the boy said, and sighed gustily. "It's always the hayseed."

"The hayseed?" I echoed. The text below the picture read: "Alex Armsworth, in Shadow Over Midnight."

"Iowa, Indiana." he said. "One of those country places."

"Illinois," I corrected automatically, flipping it open and paging for the article with shaking hands.

"Yeah, I don't get it. Chickens and corn, where's the appeal, ladies?" he said, sounding forlorn. Then he shrugged and shouted, "The Bankers'll Get What's Coming to Them! Read it in the Times!" and then without even drawing a breath he added in a normal tone, "So what's your name, gorgeous?"

Startled, I looked up. "Me?" He waggled his eyebrows. He did, apparently, mean me. I felt my face heating like the pavement below my feet. "I'm Blossom." At which he blinked—then burst into laughter. I bristled. "What's wrong with my name?"

"Not a thing, far as I'm concerned!" He broke off, chuckling again. "Except—listen, I know how it is. If it wasn't for my old man putting his foot down, I'd be living down 'Rudolph.' But you gotta know they got no use for two."

"Two what?"

Before he could answer, someone farther down the street shouted, and we both craned our necks to look. In front of that row of stucco buildings with its bedraggled palm trees man faced us waving his arms overhead.

"Blossom!" he called, and I unthinkingly took a step forward—right off the side of our porch, landing face first in the weedy grass. My copy of Silver Screen went tumbling into the darkness beyond me. As I groped for it, the door creaked open behind me, casting a narrow gleam into the yard.

"Gonna be light afore too long," Mama said, sticking her head out the door. "Quit with the dilly dallying."

"I'm going, Mama," I groaned, pushing myself up, just as the feed sack floated down to land on my head, for such is the glamorous life that I lead.

Much later, when I had a better opportunity to examine Paw's postcard more closely, I saw that the doodle on the front was a stick figure with raised arms—in about the same place I'd seen that man waving on the street. As for the magazine, after it left my hands, I never saw it again.

By the time I'd loaded up Mama's sack with every vegetable I could grab and headed back, dawn had passed, and I now had weightier matters on my mind than that magazine. For when I rounded the Armsworth barn, I saw, stopped in front of our house, a horse and buggy with elderly Mr. Barnett sitting in it napping.

And seated on the edge of our front porch, plain as day, was a Spirit.

Alexander

"Alexander," my mother said. "Have you had enough to eat?"

"Yes," I said, nodding. I balanced my spoon over the back of my fingers. "I'm fine, thanks."

She frowned. On a usual morning, I'd be up and excusing myself before I'd finished chewing my toast, but this morning I was lingering, and I could see that it was worrying her. But I had a mission, so I manfully stuck to my guns. I carefully added my fork over the spoon.

"Are you sure you wouldn't like more milk?" she said.

"No, thank you," I said.

"You're not going to be late, are you?"

"Plenty of time."

The trouble was, when my mother had time to consider me, it didn't take long for her thoughts to trend in certain directions. Here I was, making myself a captive audience. I could feel another lecture on the value of Select Dry Goods coming together like a thunderhead gathering over the fields. She sat up straighter, and I braced myself—and my dad folded his paper with a no-nonsense crackle.

"Well now, time for my morning cigar," he announced, hand moving to his breast pocket where he keeps his Antonio y Cleopatra. He is not allowed to smoke them in the house, and I perked right up and prepared to follow him out to the piazza, which is what my mother calls our porch.

"What," my mother said to me, suspicious, "now you're leaving?"

"Luella," my dad said dryly, "I believe Alexander is wanting a word with me."

"Indeed?" She examined me narrowly, and I managed a shrug.

"Or at least, that's my assumption about why you're still gracing us with your presence." I nodded eagerly at him. "All right then," he said. "I'll see you off to school. You are going to be late at this rate."

"May I be excused?" I blurted out to my mother, and I caught up the strap on my schoolbooks and was scrambling away from the table after him before she could even reply.

"The answer is no," he told me on the porch, before I could say a word, "you can't take the Mercer to school."

I stared at him, open mouthed because it is uncanny at times how my dad reads me like I was the newspaper. My dad's Mercer, a bright yellow model C, was an astonishing automotive achievement, one he'd personally purchased and driven down from the factory in Wisconsin a few years back. It held pride of place in our barn, and though he'd taught me how to drive it, he was wary of my sitting behind the wheel unsupervised.

He thought as highly of his Mercer as he did his family, but I hoped I ranked a little higher, considering what I was about to ask.

"I did want to drive it," I admitted, "but not to school. I wanted it for after school."

"You mean you'll want to drive it after dark," he said. He had a speculative gleam in his eye that I wasn't certain would turn to my benefit.

"That's what I was thinking," I said. "The, uh, Vocational Society from school is interested in taking a ride and getting a better look at it."

"The Vocational Society," he repeated.

"Well, it's the only automobile like it in town," I said gamely in the face of what was starting to look like a sceptical expression forming. I was the only INB senior who didn't have regular use of an automobile, and if I wanted to truly make an entrance tonight, arriving in the Mercer would be key.

"So this has nothing to do with, say, driving out a girl."

"What?" I said, genuinely puzzled. " A girl? What girl?"

"It's a two-seater, Alexander. So the thought comes to mind."

"Who would I—?"

"I don't know, Alexander," he said, sighing. "How about the Culp girl?"

That rocked me back on my heels right there. I knew my mother was stuck on the idea that I'm sweet on Letty Shambaugh, but I hadn't realized that my dad had the crazier idea that I was trailing after Blossom. He was so far off in left field I couldn't even see his taillights. "Blossom has nothing to do with this," I sputtered. "You know what? She's been looking right through me since school started. Which I don't mind at all. I want nothing to do with her."

"I see," he said, studying me. Then he said, "All right. I think you understand that this is a special responsibility, and I expect you to treat it with the care it deserves. Yes, you can borrow the Mercer after school, for the purpose of not courting any girls and especially not that one, with the usual caveat that if I find a scratch anywhere on the finish afterward—"

"I'll be hung from the rafters by my toenails until dead," I finished.

"That's right," he said. "And after I've you cut down, you'll work off the cost of the repairs."

I sagged in relief because I hadn't expected it to go that well, but my dad wasn't done.

"One more thing, Alexander," he said. "If you two need money for the Bijoux, I'll leave some on the tray by the door." While I was still working on my protest over that baseless notion, he was back through the door and gone.

Blossom

In my experience, Unseen Forces linger in our world when they have a Grievance, and they also tend to be implacably single-minded about it. They do not take kindly to interference, and for that reason they are not something to get mixed up with. In fact, that would be my advice to others who find themselves in such a situation: turn tail and head for the hills.

That was, unfortunately, not an option for me because the Spectral Visitor in question was staring straight at me. I had her undivided attention. What's more, though I didn't know her, I knew who she was.

Even without the buggy, I would have recognized her, as I had seen her twice in town from a distance and had overheard a fair amount of gossip in school besides. Her name was Judith Hansen, and I had brilliantly deduced that she was haunting the owner of the buggy, Mrs. Kessler, her former employer and obviously my mama's newest client.

The Kessler household had been, for about six months this past year, a subject of great speculation. Mr. Irving Kessler had purchased the vacant Ellison house three miles to the west of Bluff City under the auspices of moving here to build a furniture factory by our rail line. Though his wife remained unseen, she had been rumored to be not only a foreigner hailing from parts undetermined-but-un-American, but she came complete with a real live Lady's Maid. For no one could have mistaken Miss Judith Hansen for a mere house servant. Though she couldn't have been more than ten years older than me, she had the posture you see in old paintings by the Great Masters, and that rarified air of dignity one expects from nobility. That she was also brown as a nut set her apart from our pale population, and that had had everyone aflutter as how they should approach the situation.

Unlike Mrs. Kessler, Miss Hansen did venture into the shops in town, and from what I'd heard, she would deal with anyone who balked at serving her with the same unwavering stare that was settled on me now, which I can now attest as being pretty persuasive. The sensation of walking toward one's front door under such close supervision from the Departed is not a pleasant one, and I do not recommend it.

According to the Pantagraph, she'd been a passenger in the Mr. Kessler's much admired Cadillac when he'd departed the road into town at high speed and had wrapped it around a tree. I have heard tell that the result had been only for the strongest stomachs. But now she sat perfectly composed, clad in a plain, beige summer-weight dress with a wide-brimmed straw hat pinned firmly in place and a shawl folded neatly in her lap.

"Miss Hansen, I believe?" I said. "Good morning." The situation seemed unusual enough to warrant it, so I bobbed a quick courtesy like the ladies in London had drilled into me at court.

That made her blink. Finally, she inclined her head. "Good morning," she said in a toneless voice. "Miss Culp, is it?"

"Er, yes. How'd do," I murmured, taken aback. That hadn't been the sort of "foreign" accent I'd been expecting; I guess everyone had cowered from her like she was the Queen of England because she sounded a little like her. "May I?" I gestured to the edge of the porch beside her.

She simply said, "It is your veranda, I believe."

Under her flat, steady stare, I dropped my sack next to the steps and gingerly scooted up on the edge as well, careful to keep my distance. I cleared my throat and tried for a conversational air: "So we seem to be having fine weather, but I admit it's pretty unusual to see a ghost taking the air in the morning."

"Is it?" she replied. "As I am not a ghost, that would hardly apply." Before I could turn that statement over in my head, she added in that same indifferent voice, "I am Judith Hansen's namn, and I was Called."

I didn't know what that was, but it was strong enough to sit around on a porch in broad daylight, so it likely didn't bode well. "Is a namn anything like a ka? I ventured. I really hoped it wasn't, because Princess Sat-Hathor's had been a right handful, but I was afraid that it probably was.

"I hardly know," she said.

"So, uh, you said you were Called." I pointed at the door. "You don't mean by my mama? Are you here to speak with her?"

Her eyes flared up instantly, and her expression stiffened in fury. As I quailed, she snapped. "Naturally not. Why would I speak with a charlatan?"

But that made me angry too. I've never been quite sure what my mama's Powers are, though she assures me that mine are puny by compare, but she comes by them honestly. I have personally seen her predict all manner of things. "My Mama is not a faker," I shot back. "Maybe the reason you're parked out here is because you're scared she'll run you off."

On occasion, I have been known to say foolish things when I'm riled, and this was no exception. My mama doesn't care one way or the other about the random opinions of strangers, and it is never, ever a good idea to stir up Restless Spirits. Or Restless Namns, if it comes to that, because I could already see a difference: she was already a lot livelier than when I'd walked up.

My mama has warned me before that Unseen can feed off our Gifts, and high feelings only makes it worse, but I'd let her work me into a lather. Now, not only was her attention was focused on me, but I'd hauled in Mama into it as well. Worse, her eyes were taking on an odd, reddish glow. I was off that porch and a yard away as quick as I could scramble.

"I cannot be 'run off,' as you put it," she said softly. "I was Called with my own govis. I think it might be wise to reflect on that."

With that, she raised her finger to the peeling porch post beside her and began to draw with it. I saw a streak of red, then another, and another. It was blood, and it was a symbol, and even as she traced it, it sank into the wood and vanished. I didn't have a chance to make out its shape, but I didn't need to—there's no mistaking a curse.

"I'll know this place again," she murmured, "and those who are tied to it." And I heard that for the threat it was.

So I was taking her advice and reflecting pretty hard at that point. "We ain't done nothing to you."

"Your mother is defrauding Clara, even as we speak," she said. "That is harm enough." She smiled at me now, and that smile was as frosty as I felt at that moment. "I was called but given no purpose, so I am at my leisure to find my own."

"Picking on me and my mama seems pretty paltry as purposes go," I pointed out, thinking hard and trying to put what little I knew together. Clara was Mrs. Kessler, and I was pretty certain that sagging buggy had been the Barnetts' before the Kesslers had set foot near Bluff City. And "defrauding"—she seem irate about Mama taking Mrs. Kessler's money. "You know, in the usual way, we haven't got two cents to rub together, so you'll have to work pretty hard to top that with the vengeance," I fished.

She frowned lightly. People came to Mama for readings for lots of reasons, but they all wanted a glimpse of the future, and that was usually because the present wasn't satisfying. My money in this case was on . . .

"So what happened to Mrs. Kessler's money?"

I'd been ready to move, and I figure it was a good thing because even another yard back I felt a bit singed by that wave of pure, malevolent rage. But just as quickly as it'd washed over me, it was gone. There she sat, prim and proper and collected as before—and now studying me with a speculative gleam that made me even more nervous.

"You will do me a service," she said, and she lightly touched the porch post, "and I will remove this."

I groaned inwardly, because this was like Princess Sat-Hathor all over again. But, I thought hopefully, it probably wouldn't involve any tombs, so it was worth a shot. "I'll need to know what's going on first," I told her.

"Of course," she said, and she gestured gracefully to the porch beside her. "Please." Just like that, she'd gone from calling down a doom upon me to tea party manners. It was making my head spin, but I cautiously stepped forward and slid back onto the porch. "I will explain what what you need to know. Then you will note down the supplies I will require, and I believe we can dispense with this matter in short order."

My life, I thought dourly to myself, is very strange. I dug a pencil stub and the essay I'd gotten back in English yesterday from my coat pocket, as she proceed to relate what sounded suspiciously to me like the plot of one of them old-fashioned gothic thrillers.

Miss Hansen was, she told me, the daughter of a woman who'd been hired by the father of young Mrs.-Kessler-to-be as her nurse. "Clara was gravely ill, but she survived because my mother was very talented," she said. "She recovered, but she continued to be quite frail, so my mother remained in the household. I was raised alongside Clara, and I was eventually engaged as her personal maid."

"Where was this?" I asked.

"Somewhere very far from here," she said, pursing her lips. "When her father died a number of years later, Clara came into his fortune. We lived quietly a number of years before she was introduced by a family friend to Kessler, a wealthy American on holiday."

"So there's a fortune," I said, returning to what seemed to me the important point.

"Clara had a fortune, yes," she said, which hadn't been exactly what I'd meant. "I wanted her to be happy, but we were both deceived in Mr. Kessler's character."

"Oh," I said, getting the picture in spite of the evasion. It sounded like they were deceived in his bank account, too.

She had paused, considering. "Shall we say, his untimely demise has improved everyone's lives immeasurably?" For the first time since she'd laid something nasty on our porch post, she was smiling again, and I shrank a bit from it. "Accidents do happen, though I had not planned to be joining in his."

I was pretty sure I'd just heard what amounted to a confession of murder. The police might not be interested in hearing about it, but my instinct for personal preservation had popped up and was scenting the air like a gopher. "So," I said, "what's this 'service'?"

"All the money Clara had on hand and a great deal her property went to settle Kessler's debts," she said. "She is approaching destitution. Soon she will not be able to pay the Barnetts either."

"Well," I said practically, "it's tough to be poor, but we poor people manage."

"She has money," she said intensely. "You will locate it."

"I will?"

"You will," she said. "Write down what I tell you." With that she recited the ingredients of the strangest recipe I'd ever encountered, and gave me directions for where to take it.

"And you will also need a spade," she finished.

"What's that for?" I asked, scribbling down 'shovel.'

She looked at me askance. "For digging," she said in a tone of strained patience.

"No, I mean—"

I never got to finish the thought because just then the door behind her opened, and we both turned to look as a woman, someone I'd never seen before, stepped out. To my surprise, she seemed to be near the same age as Miss Hansen but moved like a septuagenarian. She was pale and blotchy and skinny as a rail, with dark red hair pulled back severely into a knot. She wore a plain black dress, and a black hat, and had a large, round wooden locket hanging around her neck that had been polished to a dull gleam.

"Oh," she said, in that same lilting, almost-British accent like Miss Hansen's, "I'm sorry, I didn't realize anyone was—"

"Mrs. Kessler," I said, sliding to the ground and sketching another curtsey. "Morning!"

"Good morning," she agreed. "You're . . . Miss Culp?" But then my mama stuck her head out the door behind her and said, "Yore back? Why you still hanging around? Blossom, git off to school."

"I was headed that direction," I said. "Just dropping off the—uh—." At my Mama's presence on the porch, Miss Hansen had made a low, unearthly sound like a growl. "The sack with our agreement in it," I reminded her. My mama and Mrs. Kessler both gave me an odd look. My mama hadn't noticed Miss Hansen sitting there at all, and I knew then that any faint hope I'd been nursing that Mama could banish her before I had to find out what the shovel was for were futile. After that noise she'd made, I was just glad that all I could see was Miss Hansen's back right then.

Mrs. Kessler picked her way down our couple of porch steps, and that evidently merited Miss Hansen's attention refocusing on her. She slid smoothly off the porch, then paced alongside her like a panther all the way to the buggy. Once Mr. Barnett had been roused and had helped Mrs. Kessler up to the seat, Miss Hansen leapt up beside her lightly as a cat and settled down beside her, smoothing out her skirt and unnoticed by anyone.

Mama, now leaning on the porch post, watched the buggy bump down the rutted street that ran along the tracks.

"So you've got a new client?" I said. "That's good, isn't it?"

"Maybe," Mama said, looking unhappy. "Reading din't go like I like." That was a rare sort of admission for Mama, and I looked at her warily, but she just shrugged and squinted at the sky. Her frown deepened. "Something hereabouts ain't right lately," she said. "You best watch yerself, girl."

"I will, Mama," I said. But I didn't figure I needed to—someone else was going to taking care of that for me. And to that end: "Mama, it was hard to tell in the dark, but I thought they might have potatoes. Where's our shovel?"

Alexander

That afternoon, at lunch, while we crouched around the lee side of the building where no one else could see us, I shared with Bub Timmons and Champ Ferguson my find of the century. They were both properly appreciative. Or maybe stunned would be a better way to put it.

"Armsworth," Champ said. "These are . . . I have never seen anything like them."

Bub just shuffled through them silently and grunted agreement.

"Never seen anything like them," Champ repeated, swaying a little.

Bub scooped them into a pile and pushed them into my chest. "Armsworth," he said. "Bring 'em tonight."

"Not as though I'm planning on skipping," I said, carefully stuffing the cards back into my pocket. "It's our first meet with the lowly pledges, isn't it? I got my dad's Mercer for tonight."

"The Mercer." That brought Champ out of his stupor. Then he said, "Initiations, right. We still gotta plan those." He sighed, and looked longingly at my jacket pocket.

"Oh, I got lots of ideas," Bub said, grinning evilly, and I felt as sorry for the sophomores as I'd felt for myself when I'd been in their position. "But I should tell you, Dawson was pretty upset that he'd have to miss out on your preview. You're not there tonight, you know he'll come looking."

Les Dawson was currently warming the bench in the principal's office, having dangled a freshman out a first floor window for the mortal offence of stepping on his shoe in the hall. The wrath of Les Dawson might be a fearful sort of thing, but I had no plans to be calling it down on me. I'd be there with wheels on.

Blossom

After curiosity had at last prompted Daisy-Rae to investigate the mysterious bells in the hall, the teachers had cottoned immediately to the ringer in the back of their classrooms. She'd taken being forced into official enrollment philosophically enough, but falling under the stern, monocled eye of Miss Augusta Fairweather had had its consequences: there was no mistaking that Daisy-Rae was a Student in the Big City like the rest of us.

Although these days Daisy-Rae never missed a mathematics or science or bookkeeping lecture, and curiously enough was even the vice-president of the Chess Appreciation Meeting, she was no respecter of the literary canon, so it had come as no surprise to see her seat remain vacant after class had begun.

Sorry as I was to miss the debacle of Poetry Recitation, I was soon sliding silently into the girls' restroom in the cellar. As expected, the door to the farthest convenience was shut, and the juicy sounds of teeth crunching an apple echoed off the gleaming tiles.

"Daisy-Rae?" I called, and was rewarded by the feet just visible beneath the door shuffling in surprise.

"Blossom, you weasel," was the sharp reply, "I ain't going."

I snorted. "I'm sure everyone wanted to hear how you wandered lonely as a cloud, but that's not why I'm here."

The latch on the door clacked aside, and her pinched face appeared in the opening. "Well, if it's a privy yore wanting, there's plenty free."

"No, I came looking for you," I said. "I wished to speak with you privately."

"Well, then," she said, and pushed the door aside. She emerged, stretching her arms overhead, clad as I was in the finest the Foursquare Tabernacle Annual Rummage and various unguarded clotheslines about town had to offer. "Let's hear it. Happens I been wanting to ask you something as well, but I was waitin' til after school." On saying that, she swung her arm, and the apple core arced gracefully through the air, dropping precisely in the bin by the door; that same talent that had made her newly freshman brother Roderick an object of great desire by the basketball club.

"Go ahead," I told her. "You first."

"Well, all right," she said, tugging at one of her pigtails. "Truth is, I'm needing a beanie. I figure yore the one to know about that nonsense, seeing as you had one."

"A beanie?" I said. "But why would—oh, Roderick."

She nodded. "I never seen no point to the damn fool things, but I want he should have one like the others." Daisy-Rae had single-handedly moved herself and her younger brother to Bluff City several years before so that he—who, as she put it, was 'medium simple'—could have the benefit of the educational methods of a city. True to its avowed mission, the Horace Mann School across the road was unmercifully progressive and let no child escape unlettered. Roderick had proved no exception.

For Roderick's sake, if freshman sported beanies, then Daisy-Rae would obtain one by hook or by crook.

"He could always have mine." As far as I knew, it still lay in the corner of my loft where I'd kicked it at the end of freshman year; not even my momma's fiendish inventiveness could find another purpose for that thing.

"Number's wrong," she pointed out.

"It's only embroidery." I don't generally turn my hand to fancywork, but I have done more than my fair share of altering and darning. "I could easily pick out the 18 and put on a 21. In fact, I could do it tonight—" I halted, recalling the reason behind this talk. "No, I'm afraid it will have to be tomorrow night."

She let out a gusty sigh. "That'd be better than I'd hoped for. I got no money to spare, and I been settin' down here rackin' my brains over it."

"Then it's yours," I said, a little relieved myself. Daisy-Rae had come to be my staunchest ally in school, and taking advantage of her good nature always plucked on my conscience somewhat.

"So now, what're you wanting to talk to me about?" she said. "I'm up for it, whatever it is."

"Nothing you wouldn't want to do anyway," I promised, and knew it to be true. Daisy-Rae loved Science class, in which she had approached dissection and the mixing of volatile chemicals with a gusto that left both teacher and classmates wary. "The boys generally take off their jackets during Science," I said. "If I were to create a distraction, could you lay hands on whatever's in Alexander Armsworth's pocket and bring it to me?"

The thought of larceny brought forth a delighted smile. "Got any notion what it is I'm after?"

"It looks to be a small notebook," I said. "I'm not sure, to be honest."

"Well, if it fits in his pocket, it'll fit in my skirt," she said. Those of us who live by our wits require commodious pockets, and I'd helped add hers to her school skirts myself. As I further explained my plans, the end of class bell sounded shrilly above our heads.

"Ain't no problem to manage," she assured me, rubbing her hands. "This is going to be worth it."

Alexander

Blossom hadn't demanded that I be her partner in Science that year, which had been a load off my mind, because the last thing I wanted was her knobby knees poking me all through class. But she sat in the front of the room with Collis Ledbetter, which meant I could keep an eye on her nevertheless. That also meant they were in full view of everyone while the flames from their beaker were licking the ceiling, and I saw them hustled out into the hall with everyone else while the teacher put it out.

Whatever Unholy Powers she's scared up for herself these days, not even she can turn invisible. But when my pocket came up empty, I knew she'd done it. I didn't know how or why or when, but none of that mattered. I just knew.

So when I spotted her leaving the building along with everyone else at the end of the day, justice demanded that I snag her bony arm and haul her out of the herd, dragging her around the side of the building to somewhere we could hash it out.

"Blossom," I said. "I need those back. Hand 'em over."

She raised an eyebrow at me and looked unimpressed, which only made me madder. "And what might those be?" she asked loftily.

"You know," I said.

"Do I? Why don't you search my pockets if you're so sure?" she said, lifting her arms, and I was already reaching for her when I realized that they likely weren't in her coat pockets. I knew what that would look like if I tried to find them anywhere else.

Stymied, I said, "C'mon, Blossom, it's man stuff. It's got nothing to do with girls."

That only got her dander up. "Nothing to do with girls," she said. "Why, I am surprised to hear that, considering it's nothing but 'girls' on them cards."

"Ah ha!" I said. "I knew it!"

"In cold, hard fact, Alexander," she continued as though I hadn't said a word, "I can think a number of 'girls' who also might be surprised to hear that. Maybe I should put this to them?"

"I can't even believe you even looked yourself," I tried. "Aren't you ashamed?"

"Why would I be ashamed?" she retorted. "Nothing there I ain't seen when I take a bath."

And that, right there, was a thought that smacked me upside of the head, as I'd never really considered it. Not in that light. Not exactly that way. I'd lifted my hand to my other pocket before I realized it, and Blossom's eyes narrowed.

She had me coming and going, and I was well and truly cornered. There was only one thing left to do: "All right. Just tell me what you want," I groaned.

"I need some help with something," she said. "Tonight."

"I can't," I said. "I got places to be."

"And those places to be is fooling around with Iota Nu Beta," she said, flicking at the pin on my jacket lapel. Blossom has never been a respecter of the "secret" part of secret society, and she hadn't been sympathetic at all when I'd lost my first pin in that tomb in Egypt. Maybe I should give this one to Letty—at least she'd take care of it.

"It's important to me," I said firmly, crossing my arms. Sometimes with Blossom you just have to put your foot down and make a firm stand on principle.

She opened her mouth to argue with me, then—shut it, and dropped back against the building, closing her eyes. That wasn't what I'd been expecting at all. She didn't say anything else, and the longer the silence drew out, the more uneasy I got. I was just about to say something myself, when she flicked aside her coat and plunged her hand into her skirt pocket, shaking out the set of postcards.

"Take 'em," she said, shoving them into my chest. As I scrabbled to catch them, she walked away, and didn't look back. I started after her, as bowled over by this turn of events as anyone would be.

"Blossom!" I shouted. "Hold on, where are you going?"

"I knew asking you for anything was a mistake," she said, stomping onward and not slowing up a whit. "Go meet up with your pals, Alexander. I'll manage."

That was all I'd wanted, but as I watched her walk away, I felt . . . not guilty, but peculiar all the same. Blossom had been ignoring me for months, and only now when she wanted something was she speaking to me. Not that I'd wanted to speak with her anyway, as I have already pointed out. That was one way to look at it.

The other way was that Blossom needed help, and she'd come to me.

I sighed. I had a choice, and I had to choose Blossom or Iota Nu Beta. Maybe for some reason Blossom had thought I might want to choose her, so she'd made it easy for me by resorting to blackmail. That's a pretty twisty way to go about anything, but Blossom thinks in twisty ways. The problem was, now that she'd given me back my cards, I'd have to make a real choice.

On the one hand, I had a comfortable evening of cars, cigars, whiskey, and off-color humor with like-minded fellows. On the other, I had an evening of . . . I hardly knew, but it would be hair-raising, I'd regret it, and I might even wind up in jail. So it wasn't really a choice after all.

"Blossom!" I shouted. "Wait for me, dag-rat it!"

And that is why, an hour later, I found myself pushing the Mercer out of the barn, hoping my mother wouldn't notice until I started it up. Blossom was due any moment, depending how soon it took to give her mama the slip. I was going to meet another ghost.

Blossom

Mama hadn't been home when I first arrived, which was a stroke of luck I hadn't deserved. I had plenty of time to raid her potion supplies, the dried plants and herbs and stranger things that she stores in bushel baskets and crates and hangs from the walls and rafters in our place.

Fortunately for me, Mama is very particular about her ingredients, and she twists carefully inked labels into the twine tying the bundles and pastes them on the bottles and jars as well, though her spelling would never win a medal. I didn't know what these items on the list were for, but I stuffed them into my bundle and hoped the outcome wouldn't be too horrifying.

I'd finally turned up a small canning jar with a wide mouth, and was just fixing to head out to grab our shovel when my luck ran out, and Mama appeared at last with trotters wrapped in newspaper under her arm. She took one long look at me, and demanded, "Whass got you all het up?"

"Nothing, Mama," I said. "I was just getting ready to take a walk."

"How 'bout you stay in. You can help out around here, for once," she said flatly, "'stead of stepping out all the time with that boy."

The injustice of that accusation stung, as I do a great deal around our house, but I set it aside. "I have no idea what 'boy' you're talking about," I told her.

"Sez you," she said, lip curling. "Her highness's brat from up at the big house. Wassisname."

It took me several moments to piece through what she'd said and connect it to actual persons and locations, so I believe my surprise at the answer made my disbelief seem genuine enough: "What, you mean Alexander?" Although, in sober fact, I was angling to meet with him, it not for whatever illicit purposes she seemed to have in mind.

"No?" She rolled her eyes and sniffed. "Then what're you up to?"

"I'm headed over to see Daisy-Rae," I told her, twisting my poke in my fists.

"Daisy-Rae," my mother said skeptically, eyes narrowing.

"My best friend at school," I pointed out, and even as I said it, I knew it was true. At one time, I might have said that was Alexander; but I'd come to realize that despite all the experiences we'd shared, I'd never really considered him my friend. I spent far too much time daydreaming of beating his head in with a rock. He occupied a separate, infuriating category all to himself.

At her mystified look, I said, "I've told you about them, Mama. She and her brother are living in the kitchen at the Old Leverette Place." After Old Man Leverette had stumbled over the squatters in his chicken coop during one of his periodic vigils to nab youthful vandals, he found that even he couldn't toss two homeless children into the snow. Before long, he'd installed them in the farmhouse itself and had taken to occupying his copious retirement time with teaching Roderick about farming.

I'd related all of this to Mama over time, but she is a firm believer that other people should mind their own business, and she practices what she preaches. Given her general ignorance of my affairs, I had no idea how she'd somehow concocted this notion that I was 'stepping out' with Alexander Armsworth.

Daisy-Rae had provided me with easy misdirection at need, and I am ever prepared for contingencies. "I'm taking over a few things," I said, and I groped in my bundle and pulled out my old freshman beanie. "For Roderick. Daisy wants my old beanie for him, and I thought I'd go over and get started putting on his class year tonight."

Mama pursed her lips. "I tole you this morning' that somethin' was up. If'n dark falls, you stay there til tomorry. Don't be wandering around tonight," she said at last, then she turned to unwrapping her trotters, muttering under her breath.

I shuffled uneasily. For Mama, that had been a deluge of smothering parental concern. For a moment, I was seized with remorse about having lied to her. It passed quickly enough. I counted myself fortunate that she wasn't in a position to see me stealing the shovel I ran for the Armsworths' barn.

Alexander

I was wrapping up my hand in my handkerchief when Blossom skidded around the corner of the barn, clutching a ratty, bulging pillowcase and a shovel.

"I'm here," she said, and in the next breath, "What'd you do to your hand?"

"I was getting your 'piece of a dog'," I told her. "The Simpson's terrier objected to my chopping off a hank of his fur."

She eyed it sympathetically for a moment, then said, "But you got it, right?"

"I got it," I said. "Put your shovel up with mine on the back, but be careful. It is forbidden to mar the finish, or I will take it out of your hide after mine's grown back. Never forget that."

"I won't, I won't," she said, pushing aside the old blanket and adding her own shovel to mine. Space was going to be at a premium, and for the first time, I'd found myself heretically wishing the Mercer were a touring car with a backseat instead of a roadster with no trunk, but with straps and blanket padding, we'd make do. I was already in the driver's seat and ready to go when she finished.

"Well?" I said. "What're you waiting for? Get in."

Blossom eyed the Mercer warily, and slowly, gingerly pulled herself up and dropped into the seat beside me. She was gripping the sides of it white knuckled, and I stared at her. "What are you doing?" I asked.

"It's a little like riding on a buckboard, isn't it?" she said breathlessly.

"Bite your tongue," I snapped, glaring at her. She was comparing the Mercer to a farm cart. For this, I'd given up Iota Beta Nu?

She bounced on the seat a few times, then her hand darted forward—and I grabbed her wrist before she could put her grubby fingers on that first, polished dash knob. "Blossom. I will show you what everything does some other time. For now, don't touch anything!"

She stuck out her lower lip and settled back, disgruntled. "So what should I do now? Just sit here?"

"That is exactly what you should do," I said. "Behave yourself. You're acting like you never been in an automobile before."

She lifted her chin and crossed her arms, and I knew I'd seen that mulish expression before, and I knew what it meant. She really hadn't. I was about to take Blossom on her first drive in an automobile. At that moment, I felt the heavy weight of the responsibility. And not only that, while I could wind through the back streets, the fastest way out to Ogdin Pike was right through the center of town—in an open roadster, with Blossom as my only passenger.

Everyone was going to see us. That was bound to raise a few eyebrows. My mother might expire from social humiliation. I'd be joining her on the Other Side after Les Dawson heard of what I'd been doing instead of INB and had thoroughly kicked my can.

Blossom was bouncing in the seat again, her hair was escaping from the bun she'd pinned it back in, and she looked pink with excitement. It was a pleasure to see, and her high spirits were contagious. "So let's go," she said. I grinned and started the engine.

"Even if nothing else tonight goes our way, I think you'll find this worthwhile," I promised her in a shout over the beauteous roar of a fifty-eight horsepower engine.

"I think so too!" she yelled back.

"So where on Odgin Pike are we headed?"

"It's about two miles out!" She unfolded her paper and read off at the top of her lungs, "900 North! I guess the crossroads?"

Something about that location prodded my memory, but it probably wasn't anything important.

Blossom

Despite what Alexander says, riding in his paw's auto is a great deal like riding on a buckboard, only far noisier and far bumpier and a great deal breezier—my hairpins finally surrendered to nature, and I resorted to stealing some of the twine from my bundle to tie my hair back.

But I will never, as long as I live, forget being driven by Alexander through the center of Bluff City. It wasn't as fast as the trolley after it hits the tracks outside of town, but it was speedy enough. I could barely repress the urge to wave haughtily to the sad peasants relegated to the sidewalks.

Alexander was clearly pleased as punch to be driving himself out in his paw's car, and that was entertaining as well, though he'd forbidden my handling any of the intriguing knobs on the 'dashboard'.

But once we hit the outskirts of town, my conscience began to prickle me. I'd told Alexander the general situation of that morning, enough to set his jaw and start him muttering again about my tendency of inviting danger with open arms. But I hadn't elaborated on my suspicions, and if I was going to to treat him as a full partner in this endeavor, I should.

"Alexander," I shouted. "I need to tell you something!"

He slowed the car and leaned over, his lips brushing my ear. "What? Should I pull over?"

I gulped and nodded, and he steered the car to the side of the road, and turned off the engine. My ears roared at the sudden silence, and I said, "DO YOU REMEMBER . . . Sorry, er, do you remember much about that visit to New Orleans?"

"Be more specific about what I am supposed to be remembering."

I took a breath. "My mama is just from Missouri, but the rest of her family gets around." Mama has always told me we have gypsy blood; her relatives seem determined to live up to that reputation and drift anywhere they can find a place to land. "They've seen some strange things, and Mama's told me some stories about peculiar practices down in the south, though she doesn't hold with them herself."

"Go on," he said.

"Alexander, I've been looking over this list, and . . . When that ghost, Miss Hensen, told me her mama was hired by Mrs. Kessler's family when she was sick, I think it was because she was a Doctor."

"That makes sense, but I never heard of any lady doctors."

"There are plenty of them," I snapped, "but I mean she was a Doctor, not a doctor."

"I believe that sentence only made sense to you," he huffed.

"Do you remember visiting the visiting the tomb of Marie Laveau?"

"The Voodoo Queen?" He frowned. "It was the one covered with the Xs. How come you're bringing that up now?"

"She was a Doctor," I said. "Some call 'em obeah women, some call 'em conjure wives, there're lots of names."

"I am not liking where this is going, Blossom," Alexander said. "Can you jump along to the point?"

"All right. I'm thinking Miss Hensen probably knows whatever her mama knew. I think we need to step careful here."

"You're saying she's a witch on top of a ghost," he said flatly.

"I'm saying something like that, yes. She is not behaving like your run-of-the-mill spirit."

He sucked in a breath. "Blossom," he said, "what are you getting us into?"

"It's not a question of getting," I said grimly. "I have done been got. Now I need to get out."

"Well, we handled the Princess, and she wanted to turn us into pets. How much worse can this be?" Alexander said. I glared at him, and he hastily he knocked on the auto's maple trim. "Sorry."

We sat for a few minutes in the quiet, mustering our courage to drive the rest of the way. It was about an hour before sunset, and we'd only seen one other auto the entire time we'd been on the pike, as most sensible people had long before settled down to their dinners. "I guess we'll find out soon enough," I said. "We are nearly there. That's 900 North right ahead of us. The Kesslers' house should be a mile on past that."

Alexander was looking at me oddly. "That's what I've been trying to remember," he said. "That's the crossroads where that wreck was." He pointed. "That's the tree over yonder." We both sat looking at the unprepossessing oak alongside the road.

"So it is," agreed that now-familiar accent right behind us. "And you've come in a motor car," she added. "An interesting choice."

Alexander stiffened and turned. Just as I was preparing to inform her that whatever an auto's faults, it certainly beat shanks' mare, he let out an unearthly shriek and scrambled right out of his seat, into my lap, and out of the Mercer, dragging me with him.

That was when I recalled a curious fact about Alexander: he can be far more Receptive to spirits than I am. He'd not only begun to see them at an earlier age than me, but he often witnessed aspects of them that I did not. We'd both encountered Minerva's ghost in Miss Dabney's kitchen, but only Alexander had seen her hanging from the beam with a broken neck. My guess now was that he viewing the walking remains of what had been described in the paper as a "grisly" accident.

I patted his arm soothingly, but he was now at the point of gibbering, and he was still trying to drag me into the plowed over field on our side of the auto. Miss Hansen rolled her eyes. "You can't be serious," she muttered. Then she shook out the wide shawl over her arm and draped it over her head. "Is that better?" she asked in a sarcastic manner.

The cloth had settled over the hat on her head, and in the shadowed gap underneath the brim little could be seen but an unsettling reddish gleam to her eyes, which I hadn't noticed in the daylight. So in my opinion it was the opposite of an improvement, but Alexander swallowed and whimpered, "What the dammit to hell is that?"

"That's who we're meeting," I told him. "Buck up, Alexander. How much worse can it be?" I reminded him.

"If you've brought what I asked, we can get started," she said briskly, walking around the car to our side as Alexander scooted backward again. "This is as good a spot as any."

"What are we doing?" I asked.

"We're going to create a tool," she said, "for locating a specific object."

"Like . . . a gris-gris?" I asked, then wished I hadn't when those red eyes settled on me. "Oh ho," she murmured, and I spread my hands. "No no, I don't know nothing about it," I said hastily. "I've just heard tell."

"Then you're about to become less ignorant," she said.

Alexander

When people are walking around with half a face, no right arm, and brains and blood smeared all over their dresses, I find that somewhat distracting. I do not know what is wrong with Blossom Culp that she treats this sort of thing like Saturday afternoon tea in the parlor.

I distinctly remember her being alarmed by strange sights in the past, but these days nothing appears to faze her. She emptied out her pillowcase of delights on the ground by the car, and follow the ghost's directions to the letter.

"It is a matter of the proper parts, in the proper order, instructed in the proper way," it told Blossom, who was setting out a small canning jar. "You will add the parts, and I will tell them what they are and what they are to do."

Then, with pauses to point different things out to Blossom, it started to sing.

Earth has hid it,
Leaves conceal it,
Grass grows o'er it,
Water wets it,
Hound will find it.
Light will see it.

It had a nice, musical voice for a corpse with half a mouth. But then the words took a nastier turn, and Blossom looked worried but kept dropping bits of leaves and stone and wax and feathers and pouring dubious liquids from little bottles into that jar.

If you hinder, here is poison,
Here is wounding,
Here is sickness,
Here is death.
I send them to you on these wings.

Finally it trailed off the last note of what appeared to be the curse portion of our evening, and said, "All that is left to tell it what we are seeking, add part of Kessler, and I'll show you how to bind the lot."

I'd been keeping my distance, but that got my attention right quick. My hand still smarted from getting Blossom 'part of a dog.' I said, "If that means those shovels are for digging him up, I am pulling the plug on this right here." It sounded a bit shaky when I said it, but the general principle was sound.

But that turned its attention to me, which was not something I'd wanted at all. "I think it is time for your contribution," she said. "We require money."

"Money?" I repeated.

"Alexander, I don't have any on me. If you have a few coins, hand 'em over," Blossom pleaded.

What I had was the money my dad had left on the tray in the hall, which I'd collected when I'd gone home for the Mercer. I'd still had a faint hope at that point that maybe we could put it to use, but this hadn't been what I'd been thinking. I sighed, stuck my hand in my pants pocket, then held it to Blossom.

"Armsworth money," the ghost said, suddenly intense and leaning forward. "Some of Clara's went to paying construction debt—"

"No," Blossom cut it off. "None of this involves him, other than getting roped into helping out. Lay off." They locked eyes, and I bit my lip, wondering what that spirit had started to say. Then Blossom plucked a dime from my hand and dropped it into her jar. "Let's finish up," she said firmly.

"Very well," it said, and I sagged in relief. Whatever just happened, it wasn't going any further than that. "Bind it," the ghost said. "I will show you the knots, you will make them. Leave the lid off so it can breathe." Blossom knotted twine around the jar, and eventually ended up with something like a sling, which she tied around her wrist so that it dangled.

"So is that it?" Blossom said, holding out her arm.

"No, you said there was one more thing," I ventured. "The Kessler thing."

"His blood will do," the ghost said, and I started to protest this whole body snatching idea again when the ghost's hand shot out and grabbed the hanging jar. When it pulled away, there was a bloody handprint smeared on the glass and twine.

"But . . . I thought you said his blood," Blossom said.

"But that is his," the ghost replied, and chuckled, and I never want to hear that sound again.

"So what happens now?" I asked. Sunset had finally come, and it wouldn't be too much longer until we were in full dark, though we were a few nights off from a full moon. I just didn't want us to be out here on an empty road with nothing but an irate spirit for company. Then I noticed that the jar hanging from Blossom's wrist was gently swaying in a circle.

"Blossom, what are you doing with that?" I asked her.

"Nothing," she hissed at me. "I'm not doing anything. It's moving on its own."

We watched, fascinated, as it swing in ever broadening circles, and then it slowed—and jerked to the left, toward the road. Blossom took a tentative step that direction, and it jerked again. Another step, and another jerk, and then each one came faster as Blossom stepped out of the grass and began to walk down the road, the bottle tugging her along.

"It's like water witching," I said, wonderingly. "It's leading you to something."

"And it's leading me harder," she said, sound a little pained. "I think it's going to take off my hand if I don't pick up the pace here." With that, she broke out into a trot.

"Blossom!" I called to her. "I'm bringing the car." I started up the engine, and eased it back onto the road. The spirit, who'd been standing stock still watching Blossom shuffle down the road, suddenly leapt into action as well, chasing after her. I hit the accelerator to catch up with the both.

"Move over," I shouted at Blossom as I tried to nudge the Mercer around her without running her over. She managed to battle the jar long enough to free up most of the road, and I pulled alongside and set it to crawl at the same speed as her.

"Get in," I called over the engine.

"Alexander, that is not even. A possibility. At this time," she huffed, stumbling along. But if I couldn't get her into the passenger seat, that wasn't the only option. "Jump on the running board!" I called.

Blossom gave me a look of deep irritation. "Easier said. Than done," she said, but she leaned back then threw herself over, coming down on one knee on the board, with her free hand gripping the edge of the fender. She pulled herself up. "Go go go," she chanted, her arm jerking forward again.

I steered the Mercer down the road, trying to keep an eye on it and Blossom and her jar at the same time, and trying to ignore the black figure lurking at the corner of my eye that was pacing the Mercer.

"Whoa, whoa!" Blossom shouted suddenly, lurching to the side. I grabbed the handbrake and slowed us, just as she tumbled off the running board yowling about skinned knees then barreling headfirst into the woods by the road.

"Blossom, wait!" I yelled. "I'm coming with the lantern!"

I pulled the Mercer off the road, set the brake again, and reached for the lantern from the barn that I'd tucked up under the seat. I was just shaking out the match when a low voice said in my ear, "Bring the spades."

"YOW!" I hollered, banging my head on the fender. I had like to jump straight out of my clothes, and a public indecency charge was the last thing we needed. "Don't do that!" But I did as commanded; I unstrapped both my shovel and Blossom's, shoving them under my arm as I bounded into the trees after Blossom. I wasn't sure, at first, how I was going to find her, but then I heard a monotone babble I identified as Blossom swearing a mile a minute.

I found her standing stock still in an opening in the trees. "Alexander, that you?" she said without turning around. "There's a fence."

She'd fetched up against a waist-high iron fence surrounding a small clearing filled with grass, some of which was chest high. She was half-leaning over the fence with her arm stretched on the other side.

"Can you see a gate?" I asked.

"Not from here, but it doesn't matter," she said. "This thing only wants to go this way. But it's not easing up enough for me to hitch myself over these darn spikes. I'm stuck."

"No, wait, hold on," I said, setting down the lantern and shovels. I could get her over this, if she'd let me. And she could murder me later, I decided. "Blossom, I'm gonna have to grab you. But if you lift your legs—"

"Do it, do it," she said, panting. "But I'm only going to go over it face-first if you don't—"

"Just clam up and let me try this," I said, kneeling down and wrapping my arms around her hips. I hoisted her up, and grunted, "Legs, lift 'em now!" She did, and I dropped her on the other side, freeing her skirts from the spikes with one hand and sliding the other up to her chest and yanking her back against the fence long enough for her to find her footing.

Then she was off and stumbling forward again. "You'll need to watch your feet," I said, tossing the shovels over the fence. "Because this is the—"

"Ow, ow, darn you," she said, but I knew she didn't mean me. "Big rocks!"

"—Ellison family plot," I finished as I scrambled over the fence myself. "You're walking right into the headstones."

"I have figured that out, Alexander, thank you!" she griped back, hopping madly and attempting to avoid more collisions. Then she came to a dead stop, panting.

"Are we done now?" she said shaking her arm. "Hey, you. Jar."

"Try taking a step to the side," I advised, catching up and holding up the lantern. When she did, I saw it tug her back to where she'd been.

She was dangling the jar over a small, flat, rectangular stone with a crude lamb and the word "INFANT" carved onto its surface. "Oh no," I said. "We are not digging up no bodies. Blossom, I already said that I'm not—"

"I don't think there's a body," she said. "Look at the ground here. The grass around this stone is a lot shorter than the rest. It looks like someone was digging here this year, but the Ellisons moved to Kansas two years ago. This has to be it."

With that, she picked her wrist free of the twine and lobbed the jar away, and looked deeply satisfied when that won her the sound of shattering glass. "Good riddance," she said, rubbing her wrist, which was now livid with rope burns.

Blossom was right about the grass. I held aloft the lantern and shuffled along the edge of the shorter grass; I found it was a small, defined area with the headstone in the center. We'd have to move that, but then we could dig. "So now that we're here," I asked the ghost, "why don't you tell us what we're supposed to dig up?"

When there was no immediate reply, I exchanged a look with Blossom, and we both slowly turned, examining the graveyard cautiously.

"There," Blossom said softly. I could just make out the ghost on the other side of the fence, a few yards away but beyond the circle of our lantern light. It was pacing up silently up and down, up and down the fence line—but not entering.

"Might be the iron fencing," Blossom said in that same low voice. "It doesn't look like she can get past it."

I sagged in relief. "We're safe from it then."

"We're still stuck in here," she pointed out. "If we want to leave, we'll have to get past her. In the ordinary way, we could wait for daylight, but you saw how it doesn't faze her at all."

"There's that," I said gloomily. "So might as well find out what all this is about. Hand me my shovel, and let's get this stone up."

Blossom

It was my turn digging in the hole, and I was up to my hips when my shovel hit the box. Alexander gave a shout and dropped to his knees beside our hole. Beyond the fence, I could just make out Miss Hansen become still like a cat at a mousehole.

We uncovered it in short order, and found a flat chest with a lock.

"I can probably knock that apart with the shovel," Alexander said.

"I do have hairpins, Alexander," I pointed out. When he looked at me owlishly, I proceeded to demonstrate one of their myriad uses in addition to the one advertised.

And within the box we found . . . a fortune. "There's bills, there's jewelry, there's . . . what is this?" Alexander said, awed. "Do we have pirates in Illinois now?"

"It's all Mrs. Kessler's," I said. I scooped up a necklace and walked over to the fence, dangling it. "Miss Hansen?" I called.

I received no reply. No one—or nothing—was there.

"Well, that's a turn up for the books," Alexander muttered. "We do all the work, the ghost waltzes off without a fare-thee-well, much less a thank you."

"Oh, I see. You want her to come back so that you can hash that out with her?"

"NO," he said. "I just meant—"

"I know. It's anticlimactic." I pushed my hair back with a dirty hand, and came back to the lantern. "Unless we really do want her back again, we'll have to get this box to Clara Kessler."

"Well, the access road goes to the gate over there," Alexander said, pointing to the fence not far from us now, but nearly opposite where we'd come over the fence ourselves. "It's pretty overgrown, but I could get the Mercer down that track. I think the paint can withstand some tall grass."

"Do you think we could lift this onto the back?"

"It'll be a trial, but I expect we can manage between the two of us," he said. He picked up his jacket, dusted it off, and shrugged it on. "But I think Mrs. Kessler ought to take a look at where we found this, in case any questions come up."

"I don't disagree," I said, sighing. "Why don't you bring her back with you when you return with the Mercer? It's not terribly late, so she should still be awake. And even if she's a devotee of early-to-bed, a special occasion ought to be worth an exception."

Alexander didn't answer immediately, and when I looked at him, he seemed to be restraining a powerful emotion of some sort. "Blossom," he said at last. "What do you take me for?"

"What?"

"I'm asking," he said, "because you seem to expect that I'll just stroll off and leave you sitting alone in a cemetery in the middle of the woods, in the middle of the night!"

There was only one answer to that, as far as I was concerned. "Because that is what you'll do!" I said. "I hope you do not expect me to drive that machine. And I will not contemplate for one second leaving this box unattended. We're not that far from town, Alexander, and surely you're aware by now that some individuals consider Bluff City a prime pillaging opportunity the moment the sun goes down." Such as my own mama, who would be beside herself on stumbling over a find like this. I was not willing to chance it.

"Besides," I added for good measure, because I can be ruthless when the situation demands such measures, "I'm inside the fence. You are the one who'll be walking through that gate."

He hadn't considered that, and I could see him shudder. "That spirit's cleared out now," he said, but I heard the uncertainty.

"As far as we know," I whispered. Then I pitched my voice to be heard by anyone or anything in the vicinity. "If you go straight to Clara Kessler, it shouldn't be a problem. If you don't come back by morning, well, I guess I'll be helping myself to the contents of this fine box."

"You are a cruel woman, Blossom Culp," Alexander said, and I might have mistaken the tone for admiration if it were anyone but Alexander. Then he slid off the jacket he'd just donned and dropped it over the stone that we'd moved. "There's more than enough moonlight for me, so you keep the lantern. I'll be back soon enough," he said.

"I'll hold you to that," I said, because with sober honesty I was not looking forward to this wait.

Then Alexander did, in fact, stroll over to the gate. Slowly. Where he then stood. And stood a little longer. Finally he reached out, lifted the latch, and pulled the gate inward—and dashed through the opening like the devil himself was applying a pitchfork to his heels.

I was amused that after all that fuss, Alexander had left me his contentious jacket, postcards in the pocket and all. I knelt down to spread it out over "INFANT" and lamb, preparing to settle in my wait, then I heard the rustle of skirts behind me. My heart leapt in my throat—Alexander had opened that gate.

When I turned, there she was, seated on the edge of the hole, her feet swinging above the open box.

"As you see," she said, "he was not a good man. He took everything she had—which now belonged to him, as her husband." She slipped the shawl off her head, and folded her hands neatly in her lap. That fury that before had lit her eyes and vibrated the very air around her had faded, and now she simply seemed tired, and perhaps a little sad.

"There's some that are working real hard to change that," I told her. "Ladies already have votes on some matters in this state."

"I wish them best of luck, but our situation was rather more urgent. We were friendless in an unfamiliar country, and my dearest Clara had several inexplicable accidents after he'd brought us here. They led me to a grim conclusion." With that, the gothic overtones returned to the proceedings with a vengeance, as if sitting in a graveyard chatting with a spirit hadn't been enough. "Before he could act again, I sought assistance."

I figured I knew what that meant. "That's never a good idea," I said, shaking my head. "The Forces that provide Otherworldly Invention have contrary ideas about what it takes to fix a problem." And I wasn't pointing any fingers, but I was speaking with a case in point. She huffed in amusement, my message received, and said, "True."

It was strange to me. Now that she'd finished up her self-appointed task, it was like I was meeting a different person—ghost, nmam, whatever she was—entirely, and I felt an unexpected twinge of sympathy. "Should I have mama tell Mrs. Kessler to ditch that locket?" I asked, and at that she glanced up from her folded hands, startled.

"No need," she said. "Clara had no idea she'd Called upon me when she began wearing my govis. So I had to set myself a purpose. Now that it's accomplished, I am leaving."

She sounded certain enough of that and not terribly upset about it, so I was relieved to hear it, but a bit unsettled as well. I fiddled with the lantern, and brought up the topic of most interest to me. "That thing you laid on our house—"

"It will go with me," she said. I was hardly going to thank her for taking off a curse she'd laid herself, so I bit back the impulse. "I expect she just took to wearing it because she missed you," I said, but that got no reply.

When I looked up, no one was there.

The wind rustled the leaves and the grass, and I felt truly alone for the first time since that morning. So that was that. I sighed, stretched my legs, and leaned back on my hands, and my left palm slid underneath me on Alexander's jacket like there was something other than tweed beneath my hand.

So I lifted up the lapel, and sure enough, he had something tucked into the pocket inside. That's when I remembered his odd gesture when we'd been arguing at the school. I tugged out two more racy postcards. "How many of these blamed things do you have, Alexander?" I grumbled, tilting them to the light for a better look.

The girl with the sunny grin on the top card was striking a pose that might have been charming and winsome had she been wearing more than a petticoat and stockings. She'd lifted the skirt so high up her thigh that it was clear she'd forgotten her bloomers that day as well, and her fingers were tangled in the straps that ended with her stocking clips. A message was scrawled in ink over her feet, and a heart with an arrow besides:

Something to keep you warm, Miles!

I knew her hair would be a flaming red that would put these trees to shame, for this was unmistakably a younger version of Mrs. Sophie Pomarade of New Orleans. When she'd told my thirteen-year-old self to come see her again later should I be inclined to "learn the business," I now figured she hadn't meant the boarding house.

I sighed to myself. "Alexander, you weren't planning to hand this over to those bounders, were you?" But the other cards were still in that pocket, and this one had been separate, so I rather thought he hadn't. That made me think a little more kindly on him—or as well as I could under the circumstances.

I shuffled it aside to the see the card underneath, and it was a different lady entirely. She was older and heavyset, with a thick fall of dark hair and big hoop earrings. She reclined on a low divan wearing nothing but a bored expression and a coyly draped scarf with a paisley print and long fringes. Her legs were posed so that one foot pointed in the air, and the other rested on a large glass ball. One of her hands was tucked behind her head, but the other languidly trailed down to bare floorboards. A deck of tarot cards, like they use on the circuit for fortune-telling, were scattered below her hand, but one was carefully poised between her fingers facing the camera. "LE DIABLE" it said.

I could understand why Alexander would set aside a card with Mrs. Sophie, addressed to his Uncle Miles Armsworth to boot, but this woman didn't appear to be anyone I'd ever met. However, I had no time to ponder the question any further, for just then I heard the Mercer returning; I could see its lights bouncing down the weedy track.

I was not surprised to hear it so soon, because I had not expected Alexander would have any trouble luring Mrs. Kessler out to meet us, no matter what tale he'd spun. He is earnest as a young pup when it suits his own ends, and though I am resistant to his wiles, not everyone is as well equipped. I stuffed the cards back into his jacket pocket, I and picked up the lantern to walk down to the gate to meet them.

Alexander

It was fortunate for me that there were lights to be seen in a few back windows at the Kessler place, and the Mercer loudly announced its quality in advance to the extent that Mrs. Kessler and Mrs. Barnett, who'd evidently yet to depart for home, were already at the door by the time I'd pulled up and started my walk to the porch.

Mrs. Barnett I already knew, and she'd been among the women hired to help out with my sister Lucille's legendary coming-out party, where both punch and pride had flown. But Mrs. Kessler, whom I'd never seen before, was a waifish sort who looked like a strong breeze would bowl her over.

At any rate, they were already waiting at the door when I got there. "Mrs. Kessler, I'm sorry to disturb you at this hour. My name is Alexander Armsworth, and I—"

"I have met your father, he—ah, for business," she told me, and I felt a chill at her accent, which sounded so much like the spirit trailing Blossom. I also remembered that spirit eyeing my pocket change, and figured a speedy change of topic away from debts was in order, but before I could accomplish that, she came to her own conclusion about my muddy state, and said, "Are you having auto trouble? I'm afraid there's no telephone—"

"No, it's not that," I said, a little offended on the Mercer's behalf but manfully not showing it. "I need to speak with you about—" Blossom might say I have all the sense of discretion of a block of wood, but I was very aware right then that one too many listeners might not be a benefit in this conversation. I spared a pleasant nod for Mrs. Barnett who was leaning over the porch rail and nearly vibrating in curiosity, and said, "if I might have a few words in private, I'd appreciate it a lot."

"Oh." Mrs. Barnett looked disappointed, but Mrs. Kessler gamely stepped out onto the porch. "Yes, of course," she said. "Just a moment, Mrs. Barnett. I'll be right back."

After she picked her way carefully down the steps to the yard, I said in an undertone, "It's about what we've dug up in the woods."

"The woods?" She suddenly seemed not so much confused as weirdly intense. "You've found . . . something? Who is we?"

"Well, myself and Blossom—"

"Blossom Culp?" she interrupted. "Madame Culp's daughter?"

"The same," I agreed, sensing an advantage.

"Did she send Blossom? Has she found it?"

"Uh," I said stupidly, feeling this conversation had taken the bit in its teeth was galloping away without me. "I wouldn't know anything about that, but there's this box—" and at that I had to stop to grab her shoulder to steady her, because she'd swayed and gone pale enough I could see it even by the light from the door. "Ma'am?"

"I can hardly believe it," she murmured. "Do, do you have it here with you?"

"No, but I would be pleased to take you to it, if—I'm a very good driver," I assured her, figuring that might be an issue under the circumstance, "it's just that we decided that it'd be for the best if you know where it came from. In fact, I would like to show you right now."

"That would be . . . yes," she said. "I prefer not to wait."

I was relieved that it was this easy. "Do you know the old Ellison cemetery's on your property here?" When she nodded, I said, "Well, right now, Blossom is out there, and—"

"You left her out in that cemetery alone?" I quailed at her look of outrage. "It was not my idea," I protested weakly.

"Wait here," she commanded me, and turned on her heel to start back to the house. And I stood there while she went in and collected herself, feeling a bit misunderstood. Everyone these days seemed to be assuming a lot about me based on Blossom.

But, in the end, it was as easy as that. She'd made her excuses to Mrs. Barnett, and had her coat on, and was situated in the seat beside me in no time at all. Mrs. Barnett was, I was sure, fit to be tied, and I had a feeling the whole town would probably be passing gossip of my nighttime exploits by tomorrow. My mother was going to be livid.

My gratitude to the Mercer was immense, because she couldn't expand on my faults over the regal sound of its engine.

Blossom

"So," I said looking up at Alexander from where I stood, waist deep in a hole with my feet straddling the box, "I think we can lift it out and lift onto the back of the Mercer." But he was watching Mrs. Kessler worriedly. Beyond greeting me, she'd said nothing as we'd waded through the dry grass to our excavation. Now she was standing beside the hole staring down into it in a daze, and she did look suspiciously pale by the lantern light.

"We were figuring," I pressed on hurriedly, "we got to this in time. These bills have gotten wet, but they aren't completely ruined. The First Citizen's should accept them, and if you deposit it soon in your own name—" She still wasn't reacting at all, so I ventured, "Mrs. Kessler, is everything all right?"

She came out of her fugue, and said, "Yes." After a moment, she added, "I owe your mother a great deal. I will go visit her tomorrow, as soon as I can."

"Mama?" I said. "What'd she do?"

Mrs. Kessler blinked at me, then gestured at the hole. "Isn't she the one who sent you here? I consulted with her about locating the missing money, and she told me—"

"Oh!" I said, the final piece of that puzzle sorting itself into place. I might have felt a faint pang of betrayal for my mama, but my sense of self-preservation was a great deal stronger. "Mrs. Kessler," I said, picking my way as carefully as I could over the stones in this exchange, "this had nothing to do with my mama. As happens, Miss Judith Hansen has been very concerned for your welfare, and she, uh, arranged for this to be found."

Alexander blurted out, because he knows better than I do to head off the question that inevitably comes next, "But she moved on, and no, she ain't here."

"Judith," she said faintly. With that, she crumpled on the spot. Alexander grabbed her immediately, and he flailed under her dead weight at the side of the pit, trying to preserve them both from a tumble into the hole with me.

I propped my elbows in the dirt and sighed. "Well," I told him, "it's not a gothic thriller unless someone swoons."

Alexander

In the end, it took both me and Blossom both to get Mrs. Kessler into the passenger seat. I could carry her there, but Blossom needed to do the sorting out of skirts and hats after that. She did help me drag the box out of the hole, but she refused to help me heft it up behind the spare wheel and strap it down. She informed me snootily, "Why, it's a job for a man, Alexander. I'm sure you'll enjoy it, seeing as you're a man."

I maturely let that go without comment, mainly because I knew she'd have to cling to the running board like a monkey for the whole jolting ride back to the main road.

Both the Barnetts were on hand when we made it back to the Kessler place, and a lot more fuss and bother ensued.

Mrs. Kessler, who'd been fortified now with a nighttime serving of coffee, had taken to studying the contents of her box again, and said quietly to Blossom, "It's understood that finders are rewarded with a fee. I had been prepared to give one to your mother, should she have helped me recover this." From what I knew of Blossom's mother, Mrs. Kessler was nothing but lucky that she hadn't found it first, as I'm nearly certain she'd have just taken the loot in lieu of the reward.

As for Blossom, she'd seemed ready to wash her hands of the whole deal before, but now that the ghost was gone she was clearly feeling a lot more brazen. "Aw, pshaw," she said in a fakey way. "I don't know . . ."

"How about this?" Mrs. Kessler said, handing Blossom a bound stack from the pile of them in the box. "Do you think this be enough?" Blossom froze, staring speechless at the money she was extending to her. I couldn't see precisely how much it was, but Blossom's family is not among the rich, so it wouldn't take many dollars to impress her. "Well, let me know once you've thought about it," Mrs. Kessler said, pressing the money into Blossom's hand. Blossom, still looking dazed, wandered over to drop onto the settee.

Then Mrs. Kessler beckoned me over. "Alexander," she said, if you see anything here that interests you . . ."

"I really don't need anything, ma'am," I insisted, glancing into the box. Just then, a glint caught my eye, and I leaned forward a bit to see what it was. On top of the piled jewelry was a small gold ring with a green stone and two reddish stones on either side.

"What?" Mrs. Kessler said, leaning forward alongside me. "Is it this?" She pushed aside the others and lifted the ring, and I found myself tracking the movement. She gave me a sly look and said sotto voice, "I think it's a bit small for your finger."

"No," I protested, "I don't want—" but she was already slipping it into my hand, and saying, "I believe it may have belonged to a great aunt. I no longer remember. I wish you the best of luck with it."

I think my face may have been red enough to stop traffic on main street by then, and it seemed that I was stuck with a ring I had no use for. I shoved it into my pocket quickly before Blossom could spot it and start nagging me about why I'd want such a thing.

Blossom

When I crept home that night, making it back before Mama had returned from her rounds, I pondered the events of the day, the variety of issues that confronted me as a result, and the resources available to me in Bluff City. I concluded that that the most efficacious plan of attack would be to consult an acquaintance I'd made a number of years before.

After I'd mailed the letter, the very next day I advised my instructors of an upcoming family crisis. They were more than willing to let me double my workload to ensure that I would have the free time when it was needed.

That meant, of course, that I had to concentrate on my schoolwork, so I did not have a great deal of thought to spare for the consequences of our evening's adventure.

The Barnetts naturally wished to share the glad tidings of their employer's good fortune, so to speak, with everyone they knew. As lifelong residents of the area, their acquaintance was wide. It was only by dint of Alexander's brother-in-law Lowell Seaforth's position as the lead reporter on the Bluff City Pantagraph that uncomfortable questions were not raised as to why the bills of relatively recent vintage were found buried in a Kessler field.

As it was, credit had to be given to someone. By agreement, Mrs. Kessler, Alexander, and I settled it upon my Mama, who I felt deserved some redress for enduring a curse on Mrs. Kessler's account, not that either of them knew of it.

Mama was pleased with both the reward and the attention, and she decided not to delve into the matter any further. As they say in business, Publicity Is Its Own Reward, and she began to see the immediate results in the form of a substantial bump in clientele. She even invested in a new deck of cards to mark the occasion.

As for Alexander, his willingness cede to Les Dawson the honor of Keeper of Postcards allowed him to live to see another day, and his role in finding the treasure only increased his luster in Letty Shambaugh's eyes.

I am not certain how aware he was of the latter, as he immediately resumed trailing me through the halls of Bluff City High School while pretending not to, much as he had been doing since the beginning of the school year. Only now there was a curious air of uncertainty to him, as though he was trying to decide whether to flee in the other direction or to lock me in a closet for which only he possessed the key.

I might have found it more unsettling if I had had the attention to spare. As it was, when I received a reply to my letter not long after, I quietly purchased my train ticket and departed.

Alexander no doubt interpreted that with his usual suspicion, but I would deal with that matter when I returned.

Alexander

I was sitting in my room, when I spotted the burning candle in the window of the barn loft, and I had a moment of dread, recalling the last time I'd seen a candle there. But that was how I knew who I'd find in the loft. I'd done a lot of interviews, but only Blossom knew all the details of what I'd gone through with the ghost of Inez Dumaine.

I was tearing across the yard, into the barn, and up those back stairs to the loft like a hound on the heels of a rabbit, and when I came out at the top, the first thing I saw was Blossom Culp sitting on one of the old chairs, reading a book by candlelight. She looked up, blinking.

"Alexander," she said. "There you are. Finally!"

"What do you mean, finally? You're the one who disappeared for a week! Where have you been!"

"Why, Alexander," she said sweetly, "did you miss me?"

"What?" I glared at her. "NO."

She nodded. "That's what I thought. And I've been in New Orleans."

"New—what in blazes were you doing down there?"

"Well, I recently came into some money," she said. "So I thought it was high time I had a vacation from this weary daily grind."

"Oh yeah? So why'd you need money?" I sneered. "The baggage car was full?"

She pursed her lips. "No, I rode in the passenger compartment like an adult this time. I'm not a child any more, Alexander. How about you?" While I sputtered at her, she continued, "I wrote to Mrs. Sophie Pomarade to thank her after our first visit, and she told me that there would always be a room for me at the Colonnade Guest House. When I wrote her again last month, she assured me that was still the case."

"You wrote to Sophie Pomarade?" I said, feeling myself flush. "Blossom, perhaps you're not aware . . . I mean, Mrs. Pomarade, she's . . ."

Blossom raised a single expressive eyebrow. "She's what, Alexander?"

"A very nice lady," I finished weakly.

"She is, isn't she?" Blossom agreed warmly. "So I stayed at the Colonnade again, and Sophie introduced me to a number of her acquaintances. I found the visit immensely educational."

"You . . . did?" I trailed off because Blossom had slid off the chair to her feet, and for the first time since I'd entered the loft I took in what she was wearing. She had her hair pulled to the side and tamed back in a bun, and had reddish drop earrings, but it was the dress that occupied most of my attention: it was a dark, dull sleeveless green with a square neck and a panel down the front. A design of reddish poppies ringed the bottom and climbed up on side of the front panel, and the whole thing ended at her knees.

It was far too short and far too modern for Bluff City. I stared.

"There were things I needed to know that I couldn't learn around here, so yes," she said, "it was. But, I did think of you while I was there, Alexander. I brought you back a souvenir."

"What, what souvenir?" I said as she approached me.

"I got you a postcard," she said. "But no point in mailing it if I was going to see you soon. Here you go."

She held out a rectangle of cardboard with a stamp on it, and I felt a prickle of foreboding as I seized it with nerveless fingers. I flipped it over. There was a low divan, and there was a glass ball. And there was Blossom, in the same pose as that other lady, though Blossom's shawl covered far more pasture. Some similar fortune-telling cards littered the floor, but the card held up by Blossom was another postcard, some street scene with a trolley.

"Blossom . . ." I started to say, but I had no clue where I was taking that thought, and it wasn't ready to grab the reins for me.

"Alexander," she said easily, and gave me a light shove. My knees gave way to the chair behind me, and only realized then that she'd been maneuvering me across the room the whole time. "I have had some time to think," she said, "and one thing that dawned on me, just out of the blue one day, is how many insults over years you've come up with for my legs. I found that right interesting."

With that, she lifted her skirt, raised her leg, planted her booted foot right on the edge of the chair seat between my legs. As that is a somewhat delicate proximity for a foot to assume, I froze. She plucked the postcard from my still fingers and placed it on the table. "Alexander," she said, "I began to wonder if you'd like a better look at those legs."

I stared at the leg in question, open mouthed. I had no inkling where this was going, and I didn't move.

"I'll help you out," she said. "Alexander." When I looked up, she was dangling a buttonhook before my eyes. "You're going to need this."

I licked my lips and considered my options, but only one appealed. I took the buttonhook and set to work on her spats. They were new, like her dress, and were made of a soft, beige leather with a number of round mother-of-pearl buttons. It is not easy to unhook someone else's buttons, but I managed a fair rate of speed, and she obligingly lifted up her left foot for the same treatment after I'd freed the right. Fortunately, the boots were the lace-up variety, and much easier to get off.

At that point, I was at a loss, but Blossom took the reins again. "The stockings have two ties each," she pointed out in a sensible tone. "You'll have undo both." Like the footwear, the stockings were new as well. I'd never seen Blossom wear anything but those bulky black woollen ones, so they were something of a revelation: white and silky with an embroidered design of a vine worked at the top where no one would see it unless she'd lifted her skirt far enough, which she'd done for me. When I tugged loose the last bows, the stockings slid down her legs of their own accord with a whispery sound.

Blossom simply lifted each leg to the side, and left both stockings in a crumpled pile. "Now," she said, standing knee to knee with me and lifting the bottom of the dress, "you may investigate the matter as thoroughly as you wish."

Outside of them postcards, I'd never seen a girl's legs completely bare like this, from feet to the base of the bloomers, and Blossom was wearing a sort I was not familiar with, short enough to leave everything on display. I'd told her once that she had legs like a knobby day-old foal, but I had been mistaken. She hoofs it everywhere, and is one of the fastest runners in our class, and her legs seemed more like those of a thoroughbred racehorse and just as illegal. She finally reached down and grasped my hand and placed it on her calf.

"Go ahead," she told me.

It was smooth and firm under my fingers, and the hair tickled my palms as I ran them up and down the length of her. She sighed and moved to give me better access, and I gave in to a sudden impulse to lean in and run my lips and tongue over her skin, where I tasted a faint tang of Blossom and Ivory soap.

"Oh," she said. When she didn't say anything else, I congratulated myself for managing to surprise Blossom for a change.

She let me go for a while, but then she said, "I think the rest of me is being neglected." With that, she spread her legs and dropped straight onto my lap.

"Guh," I responded, and she rewarded me for my wit by brushing her lips lightly over mine.

"Alexander," she said, "after some deliberation, I came to a decision. We are a good team, and I believe I'm willing to make that arrangement permanent." Before I could assemble my scrambled thoughts into any kind of reply, she took my hand and placed it back on her bare leg. "If you feel the same way, Alexander, then in the future these will be at your disposal."

"Dad-rat you, Blossom," I gritted out, "I can't even think," and I was still smoothing my hands over her legs like a compulsion.

She nodded and examined me closely with those big, round, black eyes. "Well, you should take your time," she said. "Would you like me to move, Alexander? Or are you comfortable enough?"

I nodded mutely, though the opposite was true. It would be better if she was off my lap, but I wasn't willing to let go of her legs long enough to let that happen.

"Good. While I'm waiting, if you don't mind, I may as well make myself comfortable, too." She reached behind her head, and started to pull out her hairpins. I swallowed, watching each fizzy hank of hair drift down as it was freed. Blossom has very long, very black hair. As more of it fell free, a scent of Ivory and mint wafted free as well. Her earrings swayed and glinted in the candlelight.

Then she paused to peer at me. "Alexander?" she said. "Just so you're aware, if you wanted to touch my hair, I wouldn't mind."

Blossom Culp was pushing me beyond what a man can reasonably be expected to endure. I shot out a hand, grabbed a fistful of her hair, and yanked her forward.

This was not, in point of plain fact, the first time I'd kissed Blossom Culp or even the second. I'd also kissed Letty Shambaugh, in the interests of strictly scientific comparison. This was nothing like any of those. Blossom did a few things with her tongue that I'd never heard of nor encountered before, and as a result, having her straddling my lap became a pure menace to my future and my peace of mind.

Blossom finally pulled back, and I felt satisfied to see that she was the one looking discomfited for a change, and was breathing just as hard. That seemed reason enough to screw up my courage and shove my hand in my pocket. My fingers closed around that ring from Clara Kessler that had been burning a hole there for a few weeks now. "Blossom," I said, pulling it out, and finding my voice. "Blossom, I'm going to ask. Would you give me your hand?"

"What do you want my hand for?" she said holding it out.

I hadn't said it properly, and that wasn't what I meant at all, but I took the opportunity for what it was; I tried to smoothly slip that ring on her finger. "I meant," I said, maybe a little exasperated, "would you marry me?"

Her eyes went wide and shocked, and she stared first at me, then at her hand. Then her expression went hard, and the next thing I knew that hand had shot out and cuffed me upside the head. While my ear was still ringing, she said, "Alexander Armsworth, I cannot believe you would ask me that!"

"Huh?" I said, which was about as intelligent a commentary as I could manage right then.

"After everything we've been through, and everything I've said, this is what you're offering me?" she raged. She latched onto my shoulders and shook me, and I think my brains may have rattled free in the onslaught. "Why would I want to marry you or anyone else? All the advantage there is yours, and none of it's mine."

"Blossom, I ain't after your money," I protested. "As far as I know, you haven't got anything worth burying in the backyard even if I was so inclined."

"That's hardly the point!" She bounced a few times to get my attention, and she got it from parts she would not have appreciated hearing from right then. I groaned and grabbed for her hips to hold her still.

"I gave you that postcard. I was proposing a partnership, Alexander," she snapped, black eyes glinting with ire. "You and me. Where's marrying enter into that?"

"Well, that's how most people work it!"

"Since when are we 'most people'?"

And when she put it like that . . . I had to admit, it seemed like a strong argument. "But we can't just—"

"Alexander," she cut me off. And she inhaled long and hard, then let it go slow. In a more reasonable tone, she said, "Bluff City ain't for us. Where we go from here is up to us, but what your mama's society friends think on the matter will not matter a whit." Her mouth quirked. "I will make you a deal. Let's say . . . in five years, you can ask me again, and I'll hear what you have to say. How about that?"

I sighed. I should have known that Blossom wouldn't want anything the normal way. "All right," I said. "So give me back my ring."

"Out of the question," she sniffed. She held up her hand aloft, out of my reach, and studied the ring with her black, calculating eyes. "You gave it to me, so it's mine. Besides," she added, moving her hand to her thigh, "look. It matches my dress."

It did match the colors of her dress pretty closely, which I took as an uncomfortable and possibly eerie coincidence, though I did not take my life lightly enough to mention that.

"In the meantime, keep in mind that it is a Federal Offense to tamper with the United States Postal Mail," she said. "That card better not go astray."

"It never got mailed, Blossom," I argued, just to rile her again.

"It has a stamp on it," she shot back. "So I consider it en route to its final destination."

"And where's that?"

She shrugged. "You'll find out in due time," she said mysteriously, as she is wont to do. "Which is why, I am sorry to say, your aimless days are at an end, Alex Armsworth."

I frowned at her shortening my name. "They are?" I said, and "Say, what do you mean, 'aimless'?"

"If we're throwing in together, you'll have to follow my lead," she commanded. I heaved a sigh because somehow I'd always figured it was coming to this. I'd been preparing half my life for the next devious thing Blossom would be pushing me into, and I'd brought the gavel down on my own life sentence. But what she told me was: "You're joining the drama club."

"I'm . . . what?" Out of all the outlandish things I'd expected, that had never entered the picture.

"The drama club," she repeated slowly. "Sign ups are this week for their first play of the year. You're easier on the eyes than anyone else in that theater set, so auditions should be a cakewalk. I'll be joining it, too," she added. "I got plans, Alexander."

A thrill of horror stirred me. "Blossom, I can't act!" I yelled, standing up and spilling her off my lap. "I can't get on a stage. It'll be a disaster. Sodom and Gomorrah!"

"Oh, I expect you'll be terrible," she agreed ruthlessly. She poked at my chest with her finger. "But once you're up there, no one's going to care. And I have reason to believe you'll get better."

"And do you care to share that reason with me?"

"Nope," she said firmly. Then she caught my eye and stared me down. "Alexander," she said, "it comes down to this. You can give me all the rings you want. But do you trust me?"

Not in the slightest, I thought helplessly.

"Yes," I told her.

Blossom

As anyone who follows such matters already knows, Shadow Over Midnight was Alex Armsworth's final project with Prospect Pictures, before he and several others moved on to Allied Artists. His character is a wholesome young architect who falls immediately for a mysterious woman he meets while they are both sketching in the park. Despite her vocal misgivings—for she is convinced she is descended some tribe of Eastern European demons and will bust out in deviltry should she ever consummate a relationship—he woos her and eventually weds her. Martial difficulties understandably ensue, and the picture ends with sad widower Alex having no recourse but to live happily ever after with his plucky office assistant—who not only had been sympathetic with his marital woes but had conveniently carried holy water in her purse.

No, it was not a cinematic masterpiece, but it was noteworthy as the only picture in which Alex Armsworth co-starred with Blossom Romaine—although, unlike him, she obviously didn't make it out alive. Blossom's terrible on-screen fate came as no surprise to anyone familiar with her career: she had built a modest reputation in those noir days as an Exotic Temptress Who Leads Good Men To Ruin. And it would offend the production board if that sort of behavior ended well for the lady.

As many came to discover, mentioning Blossom's roles within Alex's hearing would incite an immediate rant about how it wasn't typecasting if people had the good sense to listen to their instincts.

Naturally I would take the high road in those situations, which meant not pointing out that "ruin" in Alexander's case was a lucrative career. And that whatever his fate before the final credits, I took him home after every picture wrapped.

Alexander

On our last day at Prospect, Blossom was supposed to meet me at the gate, but naturally when the time came she was nowhere to be found. I believe she lives to irritate me, that woman, and I have a fair amount of evidence to present to anyone who'd doubt it.

That's when I spotted her, down the street flipping through some magazine at the newsstand, and posing her skinny legs like a stork.

"Blossom!" I yelled, and waved my arms. She craned over to look, spotted me, then handed the magazine back to the kid tending the stand. As she sauntered my direction, she drew in every eye on the street along with her, but none of them had a chance. That ring glittering on her finger under the California sun belonged to me.

Richard Peck's Blossom Culp series comprises the following books: The Ghost Belonged to Me (1975), Ghosts I Have Been (1977), The Dreadful Future of Blossom Culp (1983), and Blossom Culp and the Sleep of Death (1986). / The first half of this fic was betaed by Kastaka, who was so patient with the length and the mistakes. Later, Greenlily tackled the entire thing(!) for a canon read and fixing more mistakes. I'm wildly grateful to both, and I'll try to fix any remaining errors later, as I find them. (And, yes, a Lewton/Tourneur fan here. :)