She paused, glancing at Emmaline to gauge her reaction, but the older woman gave up nothing; she sipped her drink, put her glass down and stared stolidly back.
“I was hoping you could tell me some of the secrets about this house,” Jenn sallied, pushing forward again. “I mean, there’s a door from my bedroom that leads to a cemetery.”
Emmaline gave a rueful smile. “I know,” she said. “We used to play down there as kids. We had to go through my parents’ bedroom whenever we wanted to go downstairs.”
“So, you know about the graveyard and the crypt?”
Emmaline nodded. “Of course. My grandparents—or maybe great-grandparents—had the tunnel built so that no matter what the season was, no matter if it was hot and stifling or cold and snowing, they could get to the vault of their ancestors to give prayers. The Perenais family was very close.”
The woman shifted on the couch and leaned down to pick up her glass from the coffee table. As she did, her blouse shifted until the freckled and creamy skin of her bosom pressed against the outer rim of her shirt. Jenn had the distinct impression that the woman was intentionally positioning herself to get Nick to look at her boobs. And, when she looked over at her boyfriend, damn him if he wasn’t. Louse!
“Why did people in town distrust your family?” Jenn asked.
Emmaline laughed. “Distrust? They hated us. I mean”—she leaned in conspiratorially—“how could they not? We have given and taken away life a hundred times in the last fifty years. Nobody’s appreciative of the good things that others do, they only remember the bad.”
Jenn blanched. “What do you mean?” Had the woman really just said that she’d taken life?
“I mean that your aunt married into a family of power,” Emmaline explained. “And she appreciated and understood that. She embraced it. She wasn’t the kind of woman I would have selected for my brother, but he loved her. That’s all that matters, I suppose.” She sipped her Bloody Mary.
“I want to do right by my aunt,” Jenn said, “but with all the things we’ve found in this house, well . . . I’m worried that she might have done some horrible things.”
“You and me both,” the woman said. “Meredith always had a fascination with the darker paths. I don’t know if it was because George locked her up here until she was bored enough to invoke demons or if that’s just the way she was. I didn’t ever get to know her that well—though, from what I saw she was interested in some horrible things. Tell me, what have you found, exactly?”
Jenn started to answer, but Nick cut her off. “There’s a stairway to a crypt at the foot of her bed,” he said.
Emmaline shrugged. “As I said, we used to play down there. Coffins won’t hurt you.”
“No,” Nick said. “But a Pumpkin Man will.”
Emmaline’s face was unreadable. “Perhaps.”
The conversation paused. Jenn looked sideways at Nick, who still appeared to be eyeing the dark line of the older woman’s cleavage. When his eyes flicked her way, he smiled—a little falsely, she thought.
“Some people in town obviously thought the Pumpkin Man killer was my uncle,” Jenn said. “Your brother. Do you think that’s true?”
Emmaline shrugged. “If his body did the killing, George wasn’t in it at the time,” she said.
“What? What do you mean?” Nick asked.
“George was shy and quiet. He would never have hurt a fly. He hardly seemed to belong in the family, actually. The rest of us . . . well, let’s just say the Perenais line is strong-willed and outspoken.” She smiled and sipped her drink again. “George? He was the quiet one. Artistic. That’s how he got into pumpkin carving. When he was a boy, he was always painting and sculpting something.”
The woman paused and looked around the room, pointed to a clay figurine on the fireplace mantel: a man and woman merged at the groin but bending backward away from each other with their hands and heads. “That’s one of his pieces there,” she said. “He would never have killed anyone. Now if Meredith got him possessed, I suppose it’s possible.”
“Possessed?” Jenn repeated.
“Your aunt was very interested in talking to spirits,” Emmaline explained. “She used a witchboard quite often and tried to seek the counsel of spirits. But, talking to the dead is dangerous business. I warned her of that many times.”
“How did she get into that stuff?” Jenn asked. “I remember meeting her when I was little. She seemed normal to me then.”
“How? Look around you,” Emmaline said. “This house is filled with books on magic. My family has always been a center for the mystical; the house has always been a lodestone for people with such interests. Townies always knew you could come to the Perenaises and pay for simple charms and spells, they knew it long before your aunt. As woman of the house, Meredith took on that responsibility. She wanted it.”
“But how did she learn? Who taught her?”
“I did,” Emmaline admitted. “Some. Other things she learned from books or came to on her own. It’s not exact, magic. Much of what people call sorcery is simply learning to invoke your will on the unseen. There’s no recipe for that. And some people simply don’t have the knack. But . . . your aunt was a natural.”
“Would you be able to teach me?” Jenn asked.
Nick glanced up. “Are you crazy?”
“No,” Jenn said. “It seems like a prerequisite to living here.”
He rolled his eyes and shook his head. Emmaline looked surprised herself.
“If you have any of your aunt’s affinity, then yes, I’m sure I could. But I wouldn’t recommend it. Magic isn’t something to be trifled with. It’s a lifelong study. Your aunt came to it late, already an adult, and I’m afraid it ultimately ruined her. And if George truly was the Pumpkin Man killer . . . well, then, she ruined him as well. Stay away from this stuff. For your own good and for the good of everyone you love.”
As Emmaline looked pointedly at Nick, a timer went off in the kitchen. Jenn jumped up and said, “I think dinner’s about ready.” She darted into the kitchen to check.
Nick found himself alone with Emmaline.
“Have you found the witchboard?” the woman asked. She was staring hard at him.
Nick hesitated, not knowing if he should admit to it. Finally, he nodded.
“Has she used it?” Emmaline’s eyes were piercing. She eyed him over the lip of her bloodred glass as she waited for his response. Again, he nodded.
“That’s what I feared,” Emmaline said. “Did someone answer?”
“Yes,” Nick said.
“Was it Meredith?”
“That’s what it claimed,” he said. “But it threatened that we were all going to die.”
“Using the board only brings you to the attention of things that want to climb back into this world,” Emmaline said. “By using it, one puts oneself in the spotlight. It’s like painting yourself pink and walking through the streets: everyone looks at you. They can’t help it. And the things that look . . . well, great danger awaits.”
“Great,” Nick said. “I’ve always wanted to be pink.”
Emmaline didn’t smile.
From the kitchen, Jenn announced, “Dinner’s ready!”
Nick leaped up, eager for the interruption, but Emmaline didn’t rise. She gave him one final look and said, “Make her go home if you care about her. Make her leave this house—tomorrow, before it’s too late.”
CHAPTER
FORTY-TWO
“That was delicious,” Emmaline said after sopping up the last bit of gravy with a crust of Italian bread.
She was a font of local history, it seemed. The trio had spent a half hour talking about mashed potatoes, the early sunsets and most of all the history of the River’s End library, which oddly enough had been born out of a shipwreck just up the coast in Delilah that left behind two crates of wet but otherwise usable books. One of River’s End’s founders had brought those books back and started a loaning library out of his home. When he died, he left
