Phoebe shook her head. “I don’t think I know of her.”
“I guess people called her Mae West. She used to live in one of the apartments around the market. The place seems to be pretty lively where the ghosts are concerned.”
Phoebe snorted. “There’s all sorts of stories about that place. You talked to Mercedes yet?”
“Who is she? Another ghost?”
“No! She runs the ghost tour. She wrote about some of the spirits that haunt the market.”
“I haven’t met her yet,” I conceded. I wasn’t quite sure if Phoebe was making fun of me or offering real information. We’d never quite resolved the question of whether I saw ghosts for real or was just dangerously crazy, even though she’d apparently spoken well of me to Lily Goss. I supposed this dinner was Phoebe’s way of offering me a chance to finally put that question to bed for her, one way or another. She wanted to believe me— there was plenty of evidence in my favor—but it’s a hard thing to swallow.
Quinton and Poppy just watched us chatter. Quinton ate quickly, seeming anxious to get back to whatever nefarious schemes he was executing to cause his father grief. Poppy just drank his tepid water and nodded as if nothing came as a surprise to him—and I was pretty sure it didn’t.
“I think I have a copy of Mercedes’s book at the store. I’ll get it for you,” Phoebe offered. “If you’re talking to ghosts down that way, you should know who they are. Some people get upset when they aren’t treated with respect.” She gave me a significant look I couldn’t miss even through the Grey, raising her eyebrows.
I put down my fork and turned toward her so I could see her better—that is to say without her being half silver mist and tangled light. “Phoebe, I’m sorry. I know I said it before, but I mean it now and I meant it then. I seem to attract bad things and I shouldn’t have put you in the middle of any of them. You’re my friend. I . . . I don’t want any harm to come to you or your family or your friends. Or even the cats. The five million cats.”
It wasn’t really five million cats, but it was at least half a dozen—like Simba—who lived in or around the bookshop, wandering overhead on their own feline expressways and dropping down onto the shelves to file themselves under N for “nuisance” or F for “foot.” Old Possum’s was famous for them.
“Why don’t you like my cats? They like you just fine and I never said a bad thing about that stinky stretch-rat of yours.”
I laughed at her description. Chaos does have a distinctive odor, I admit. But so do six cats. “I prefer to think of her as the carpet shark.”
“She’s a little bundle of trouble. All slinky and sneaky like that. No wonder you see ghosts: She probably knows them all by first name!”
“She might. If only she spoke English, my life would be so much easier. I’d just carry her around everywhere and ask her to tell me who these incorporeal pains in the ass are.”
Phoebe snorted again. “You better take her with you if you go to Kells. That place is so haunted even I get the creeps in there.”
“I don’t think it’s so bad . . .” I said, but I hadn’t been in the Irish pub off Post Alley since I’d started seeing ghosts and monsters.
She shook her head as if I were particularly dim. “It used to be Butterworth’s mortuary. Downstairs was the place they fixed up the bodies—or burned ’em into ashes. Now, don’t you tell me that’s no place to find a few ghosts.” She shivered. “Can’t imagine how many dead people be hanging around wondering where their body got off to.”
Butterworth was the oldest and largest funeral home in Seattle. The building the business had moved out of in the late 1990s was now a law office in the front and a bar in the back, so I guess there was some attraction to serving spirits where there might be other spirits lingering. Oddly, I’d always thought that there was no good reason for a ghost to attach itself to a church or a funeral home since they’re rarely places the dead visited in life or died in. Still, I suppose they might be attracted by the presence of friends and family at the funeral. . . .
“That’s the place Dr. Hazzard sent her victims to be cremated, you know—right down there in the saloon,” Phoebe said.
“She had them cremated in a saloon?”
Phoebe smacked the back of my hand lightly—a soft-pedaled version of her mother’s corrective towel snapping. “It wasn’t a saloon then! You know what I mean.”
“All right, all right. Who was this Dr. Hazzard?” I asked. I knew she was dying to tell me.
“Linda Hazzard. She was a starvation doctor. You know how crazy rich Americans were about getting healthy back before the First World War? That’s how Kellogg and Post got so famous—not because of the cereal but because of the health resorts they had where they made people
“Well, that’s a lovely thought,” Quinton said, pushing his plate aside.
I made a face at him. “You never think it’s gross when I talk about dead people.”
“No, but I’m used to it from you. Phoebe’s usually got much nicer things to talk about.”
“You see,” Phoebe interjected. “I am a much better conversationalist than you, Miss Skinny Butt.”
“Not tonight,” Poppy said. “I swear you two gone and spoiled my dinner. And I ate it hours ago. You two talk about something nicer, now. Or I’m gonna tell Momma on you and you won’t get no dessert.”
Not that I had room for dessert, but the idea of being banned from the Mason dinner table was daunting. I turned to look at Phoebe and she looked back at me like a naughty schoolgirl caught in the act with her co- conspirator. For a moment we stared at each other, smiles starting to tug our mouths upward until we spluttered into laughter.
“All right, Poppy. We’ll talk about something nice. Like the weather,” Phoebe said, grinning at me. “It’s been mighty fine weather, lately, don’t you think, Miss Harper Blaine?”
“I agree, Miss Mason. It’s been wonderful. Except for that rainstorm yesterday.”
“Wasn’t that the strangest thing?” Phoebe said, continuing her teasing and giving her father a sly look from the corner of her eye.
Poppy gave us an agreeable nod. “There, now, you two get on just fine. That sure was the strangest thing. Raining in July.”
“Like that’s unusual,” Quinton remarked.
Phoebe leaned over to me and grabbed my hand while the men were nodding to themselves. “I’ll get those books for you—I got a whole bunch at the shop about the history of Seattle and if you’re working down around the market, you’ll want to know.”
“Phoebe,” Poppy scolded. “Now what I just told you?”
Phoebe sat up and gave her father an apologetic smile. “Yes, Poppy. I’ll talk about something nice. Or I don’t get to talk at all.” Then she looked back to me. “Hugh’s wife had twins!”
I flushed with embarrassment: It had been such a long time since I’d last seen the family that I’d lost track of Sonja’s pregnancy. “Ack!” I sputtered, imagining the horror of chasing after two little terrors with her sister-in- law’s brains and her brother’s magic touch for mischief. “The world won’t be safe.”
“Ain’t that the truth!” Phoebe agreed. “Barely crawling around and they already made the house a wreck. But they got the cutest little expressions! Just like those kitty pictures on the Internet—I swear they’ll be saying ‘I can has cheezburger’ before they say ‘momma.’”
“More likely ‘I can has Auntie Phoebe wrapped around my little finger,’” said Poppy. “You such a soft touch, girl, and even the babies know it. We all going to be their slaves before long.” He gave me a sideways look. “Even you, Harper. Even a old spinster like you.”
“I am not a spinster, Poppy. I have Quinton.”
Poppy looked at the man beside him. “When you going to make a honest woman of this girl, boy? Don’t you know she’s one of the special ones? You let her get away, you going to regret it.”
“I’m afraid I’m not capable of making Harper into an ‘honest woman’—she’s honestly all the woman I can take already.” He winked at Poppy and the old man guffawed, elbowing him in the ribs as he rocked back and forth in his mirth.
I found myself blushing as the whole table full of Masons laughed. It was goodhearted laughter, not unkind.
