Page 2 of The Sisters of Crimson House

Charley couldn’t help but join in the applause. She’d never been to an opera, but even she knew that name. No wonder her sister had been squeezed like a wet rag onstage. She’d just channeled one of the most famous opera singers in history with lungs as tender as a baby deer.

Miranda curtsied, and then she exhaled powerfully, shaking her head as if she were trying to clear her head from a swim.

Sadie studied her carefully. “You need rest, sugar?”

Miranda managed a nod as she rubbed at her throat.

“My granddaughter Miranda Bryde, ladies and gentlemen,” Sadie announced with a proud smile. “Welcome back.”

It was a delicate exercise, offering up the prized Bryde medium as a megaphone for the dead. Charley’s mother had explained once that it was like setting out a fishing line, but instead of a trout you were hoping to hook, you hoped a dead celebrity took the bait. One that delighted and ideally didn’t offend the sensibilities of their audience (Actress or singer? Yes. Boring politician or serial killer? Serious party faux pas.) and ideally one who would play nice and not kill its host. Exquisite as she’d sounded, it was doubtful La Divina would ever get a return invitation.

The applause was rapturous. Then a voice cut through the noise:

“What is this nonsense?”

Everyone turned to see a man fussily dressed as the Sun King, complete with powdered wig and face rise from his seat. One of the Marie Antoinette clones (there had yet to be a Spectacular without one) hissed and pulled at his sleeve. “Sit down, Robert!”

Powdered, bewigged Robert shrugged out of her grasp and stared up at Sadie. “God only knows what we all paid for the privilege of being in this room tonight,” he snarled, “and for what? A teenager to pretend to be a dead opera singer? You expect us to believe this nonsense when we came—we paid—for answers?”

Charley felt a thrill as she scanned the room. Her father met her gaze, his eyes wide with delight under that mask. Regardless of how carefully the guest list had been scrutinized, no matter how many times a Bryde family member stood before the audience and humbly implored them to open their hearts and minds to the universe for what they were about to witness, there was always that guy who had to try and ruin it for the rest of them. That guy had no idea what was coming.

Sadie studied her guest, giving him an inscrutable smile. “I don’t expect you to believe anything, sir.” She gently pulled her arm from around Miranda, relinquishing her to Nicole, who, with lightning speed, had made it up to the stage to collect her exhausted daughter. “You need only ask yourself what you are capable of believing.”

“What the hell is that supposed to mean?”

Sadie regally descended from the stage, audience members helpfully forming a wide path through which she strolled toward the Sun King. Wordlessly, she took his hand. He allowed her, mute with concern as he watched her study the lines on his palm. Sadie chuckled.

“Just like you to try and steal all the attention.” She snaked her fingers up the man’s arm as if caressing it. “When you were seven, you flung yourself from the spruce tree in the backyard and broke your arm, ruining your little brother’s birthday. You never could handle not being the center of the universe.” Sadie glanced at the Sun King’s ornate upturned collar, underscoring her point. He was not meeting her eyes, and she still had hold of his arm. “If not your brother, then you’re competing with your dead daddy.” She looked up at him, her hazel eyes seeking his own. “He hears you, you know. In the sock drawer where you keep his ashes tucked away like a dirty secret, not scattered in the ocean like you promised his wife and the attorneys.”

Charley heard Marie Antoinette squeak in response to this.

“Oh, you rented the boat, made a big to-do. But you just couldn’t part with him because you feel he still owes you. He hears you when you blame him for everything that’s gone wrong in your life. Still fighting with your dead father when you haven’t learned how to properly live without him. My advice, sir? It’s time to let that go. Before your wife lets go of you.”

Sadie gave him a not-unkind smile and unceremoniously dropped his hand. The Sun King, wig askew, slowly sank into his seat.

Sadie the Great, the Seer of the mid-South, smiled and scanned the room. It was said that when she came into contact with an item of clothing, a valuable, or a person, she was granted a window into where it had been or where it was going. Now it was anybody’s guess how the rest of poor Robert’s evening would be going.

“Anybody else?”

Two

The chorus of champagne bottles exploding open in tandem announced the end of the thirty-second annual Bryde Family Halloween Spectacular. The manouche jazz ensemble squeezed into the musician’s alcove let loose with an upbeat allegro. Ditching the dragonfly wings, Charley went straight for the dining room in search of snacks, powering up before her next shift of the evening. She maneuvered around guests making their way toward the grand staircase, Sadie mid-sentence about the antique newel posts carved by German master craftsmen, the wide-plank oak floors sourced from a forest grove that now existed only in memory. At the top of the grand staircase, Cupid forever embraced Psyche in a pastiche of reds and pinks, one of a series of stained-glass motifs stationed around the house.

Charley knew she was supposed to be impressed that the house had been featured in massive coffee table books on Victorian architecture. People from overseas traveled there to fuss over the Queen Anne design and flourishes, but there were only so many times she could hear words like ceiling medallions and flocked wallpaper before suspecting that Queen Anne was the fussiest monarch to ever reign over England.

She dodged white-gloved staff circulating throughout the parlor, their trays stacked with previews of the Halloween treats that awaited guests on the massive walnut dining table, which had been with the house since her great-great-grandmother Beatrix. Charley was thrilled to find the dining room lightly attended, and she took her time studying the bounty of playful Halloween-themed treats: “deviled” eggs served in the beak of black-eyed raven; yolks dyed an evil-looking red and pierced with gold-plated mini-tridents; a red-and-black coral snake made entirely of candied corn placed atop decadent chocolate chess pie; a tempting cherry-red caramel apple in a basket spun from caramelized sugar.

She picked up the apple, staring at her warped reflection on its shiny surface. Reddish-blond curls, blue eyes, freckles. Her father’s face winking back at her. How would she ever be a mysterious Bryde family psychic if she looked like she belonged on the front of a Little Debbie box?

“There’s a reason that’s the last apple, dear,” Charley’s ancient great-grandmother Leonore announced solemnly from across the buffet. “Trust me.”

Charley quickly returned the apple to the basket, giving Leonore a shy smile. “Thanks, Great Leo.” As the Bryde family member with the highest success rate of matchmaking and successful lotto numbers, Leonore Bryde’s free advice was never to be ignored.

“You think maybe she just wanted it for herself?” asked her aunt Celeste, slipping ghostlike into the buffet line next to Charley. She was Nicole’s fraternal twin, but a hollowed-out version, with large haunted-doll eyes. She was dressed in a formfitting black dress, a Breakfast at Tiffany’s tribute, she claimed, but Charley thought it made Celeste look like a ghoul. Right now the ghoul was staring at her like she was a particularly vexing puzzle to solve. “You have to trust your instincts. I see that being a problem for you.”

“Don’t do that, Celeste,” Charley muttered, irritated. It was tradition for the Bryde clan to get properly soused after another lucrative Spectacular and try to crack the code that was Charley. Even Sadie had declared her officially unreadable, but that didn’t stop every drunk relative from trying.

As if on cue, Nicole swanned up to the table with another bottle of champagne, topping off her sister’s cup.