“What a wonderful illusion! Tell me, how did you make it look so real?”
I glanced up from where I was filling champagne flutes as quickly as possible and blew an errant strand of strawberry-blonde hair out of my eyes. “I’m sorry. What did you say?”
The woman in front of me was totally channeling the look of a perfect Hitchcock heroine: beautiful in an icy sort of way. Her not-a-hair-out-of-place chignon set off diamond earrings that each probably cost as much as my car, and her understated but obviously designer cocktail dress suggested old money. A donor, then. “The ghost of the sea captain on the stairs. You must tell me who does your special effects. I didn’t know the Archive had those kind of connections!”
“I’ll have to look that up,” I said, trying not to look as freaked out as I felt. I glanced up at the massive, cantilevered staircase that was a key architectural feature of the restored historic home, but saw no one. “Um, what did you see?” I asked and then realized she probably expected me to know the inside scoop. “I mean, there are several different vignettes—which one did you see?”
Ice queen took one of the flutes and patted her perfect updo. “Oh,” she gushed, “you mean the show changes throughout the evening? How utterly marvelous!” She leaned over to whisper to me. “I hope the tech work was donated and didn’t come out of gala proceeds.”
That, I could answer truthfully. “I can promise you that no Archive money was spent on those effects.”
Museums and historic homes could prevent a lot of nasty hauntings if they’d skip the original furnishings and family heirlooms and settle for classy reproductions.
I scanned the room for Teag Logan, my best friend and partner in crime. For tonight, he put aside his usual scruffy grad student look and traded up to an elegant tux as one of the event docents taking tours through the newly restored historic home. Teag’s wiry and slender, just over six feet tall, with dark hair in a skater-boy cut. He usually looks like a geeky graduate student, which is exactly what he used to be before he took a job at Trifles and Folly and discovered his own brand of magic.
At his elbow was Anthony Benton, Teag’s long-time partner and a prominent lawyer from an established South of Broad family. Teag and Anthony couldn’t have looked more different. Anthony was just a bit shorter, and his blond rich-boy-next-door good looks might have been right out of a soap opera. I always enjoyed the contrast in their styles when I saw them together, but no one could ever question how much they cared for each other.
I caught Teag’s eye and gave a jerk of my head toward the stairs. He frowned and shrugged, letting me know he had no idea what I meant.
I finished filling the crystal glasses with bubbly and slipped from behind the table, glancing over my shoulder to make sure Mrs. Morrissey wouldn’t notice. She was chatting up a couple I recognized as a state senator and his wife, both big givers to cultural and historical causes, so I figured she’d be a while. I whispered to one of the servers to take my place, then headed up the stairs to see if I could figure out what the hell was going on.
I knew for a fact the Archive hadn’t sponsored any special effects.
That meant the ghost was real.
Halfway up the stairs, I felt a chill descend on me as if I’d entered a walk-in freezer. I had made sure not to put my hand on the burnished wooden balustrade since my touch magic lets me read the history—and sometimes magic—of objects through contact. That meant my own magic wasn’t conjuring up the image of a stiff-backed older gentleman with mutton-chop sideburns who materialized two steps up from me and looked out over the party in the foyer and parlor with an expression of utter desolation.
I thought about saying something to find out why he looked so sad, but he started down the steps and went right through me as if I weren’t there. I gasped at the intrusion as his freezing-cold spirit sliced through my living body and continued on his way. It felt as if I’d swallowed dry ice and Pop Rocks with a Coke chaser, and the sensation overwhelmed me, making me lose my balance.
I started to fall and grabbed for the railing, holding on tight enough to catch myself but wrenching my arm painfully. I cried out and hung on, even as the psychometric magic assailed me with hundreds of images, like a rapid-fire slideshow, taking in the life and times of the two-hundred-year-old house as the vision assaulted my brain and strained my control.
“Cassidy!” Teag and Anthony both sprinted for the stairs, guests be damned. The ghost continued his nonchalant descent, only to vanish once he reached the last step.
My arm and shoulder and my elbow might never be the same again, but at least I hadn’t fallen to my death down the stairs. Teag helped me to my feet, and Anthony got under my shoulder on the other side, and together they helped me up the steps to one of the second-floor rooms where I could lie down and collect myself.
Below us, the gala patrons burst into enthusiastic clapping and cheers at our “performance.” I was in too much pain and too unsettled to pay much attention, but I did catch the very concerned look on Mrs. Morrissey’s face as she watched us go up the steps. She knew what we’d already figured out. We had a big problem.
The Kettinger House glowed with light from the fundraising reception in full swing that had a guest list of all the movers and shakers in Charleston society. Well, with a few exceptions, like Teag and me. Yes, we’re on the Gala Committee, and we’re here to help out Mrs. Benjamin Morrissey, Charleston doyenne and fearless leader of the Historical Archive, but we’re more than that. Most people know me as the owner of Trifles and Folly, an antiques and curio store in historic, haunted Charleston, South Carolina that has been in my family since the city was founded, about three hundred and fifty years. Teag is my assistant store manager.
But the real truth—which is a pretty big secret—is that Trifles and Folly is a cover for a coalition of mortals and immortals who work together to save Charleston—and the world—from supernatural threats. We get haunted and cursed objects off the market and out of the wrong hands and wage a never-ending war against dangerous magical entities. My psychometry lets me read the dirty secrets of where objects have been. Teag’s got Weaver magic, which enables him to weave spells into cloth and data into information, making him a hell of a supernaturally-enhanced hacker. We work with Sorren, a nearly six-hundred-year-old vampire, who’s my business partner, to keep people safe from things that go bump in the night.
When we do our job right, no one notices. When we screw up, the damage and death toll is epic enough to be blamed on a natural disaster.
Right now, all I wanted was the chance to sit down before I passed out and an ice bag for my shoulder and elbow. Teag and Anthony half-carried, half-dragged me into the first bedroom and helped me lie down on the historic four-poster bed, ignoring the red satin cord and the signs that warned visitors not to sit on the furniture.
“What happened down there?” Anthony asked, taking a protective stance next to the bed as Teag went into the bathroom and wet down a hand towel to put across my forehead.
“It looks like the former owner never left,” I said, biting back a cry of pain as I shifted and my shoulder protested.
“Let me get some ice,” Teag said, rabbiting from the room before I could protest. Anthony bent over me.
“May I?” he asked, reaching for my shoulder. I nodded and bit my lip as he very gently probed the joint. I stifled a curse and a sob. My elbow proved to be just as tender.
“It’s not dislocated, but not for lack of trying,” he said, and I wondered when he added a medical degree to his Juris Doctorate.
Anthony gave a self-conscious shrug. “I have two older brothers. We used to roughhouse and tore each other up something awful just horsing around. Can’t tell you how many times I’ve had to go into the ER to get a dislocated shoulder popped back in or had to do PT for a hyper-extended elbow.”
“So I’ll live?”
Anthony chuckled and smoothed the hair out of my eyes. “You’ll live, but your arm is going to hurt like blazes for a while.”
I sighed and shut my eyes. “I’ll get Teag to drive me over to the urgent care tomorrow morning. I’ve got some ice packs at home and some pills left over from the last time I strained my knee, so I think I can make it through the night.” I tried to sit up, but Anthony pressed gently on my good shoulder.
“Nuh-uh,” he said, shaking his head. “Lie down before you fall down and add a concussion to the list. Teag’ll be back in a minute with ice.”
Teag returned not only with two bags of ice but a very worried Mrs. Morrissey.
“Cassidy, dear—are you all right?” Mrs. Morrissey inherited a fortune and a platinum-plated social circle when her husband passed away. She’s leveraged that into becoming the go-to matriarch for Charleston’s historic and cultural society, making her a force to be reckoned with when it comes to historic preservation. She’s also a good friend and one of the relatively few who know the truth about what Teag and I really do. Mrs. Morrissey was a confidant of my Uncle Evan, who willed Trifles and Folly to me, and I wonder sometimes just how far their “friendship” went.
“Stupid ghost nearly knocked me down the steps,” I muttered and sighed in relief as Teag positioned the ice bags over my shoulder and elbow, after first carefully tucking towels beneath both so as not to damage the reproduction bedspread fabrics.
“Since when does Kettinger House have a ghost?” Teag demanded. “We did the walk-through with you months ago to make sure this kind of thing didn’t happen.”
Mrs. Morrissey could be a true force of nature when she was in high dudgeon. Now, she looked perplexed and nervous, unconsciously twisting the expensive, diamond-inlaid watch on her wrist. “I don’t know. That’s why I have you and Cassidy come and tour early, so we can prevent this kind of thing. I’m so sorry you’re hurt.”
I waved my good hand in dismissal. “I’ll mend. But I don’t want anyone else to get hurt, and we know squat about the ghost, except that if I had to pick someone to look like a pre-Civil War sea captain, he’d be right out of central casting.”
Teag frowned and looked back at Mrs. Morrissey. “Did you get in any furnishings or heirlooms that we haven’t vetted?”
Antiques, heirlooms, and old stuff carry psychic residue. Most of the time, it’s nothing serious, just enough good juju to make you feel happy when you handle a nostalgic piece or have a sense of something being wrong when the mojo is negative. Some items; however, are seriously effed up, poisoned with bad memories, depressing resonance, or plain old malice. Trifles and Folly tries to intercept those items and either neutralize the danger or find a way to destroy or store them so they won’t cause further harm.
Mrs. Morrissey nodded. “Yes. I’m sorry I didn’t think to mention it earlier. We got in two boxes of items from people I have scouting for family heirlooms or period-appropriate pieces. Just came in yesterday, and we only had time to put a few items out on display. The rest are in crates locked in one of the upstairs bedrooms.”
Teag and I exchanged a glance. “Well, that solves one mystery,” I said, closing my eyes and willing the ice to take away the throbbing pain in my arm. “Something must have come in with those crates that juiced up the old man and gave him enough power to be seen. The lady I talked to when I was pouring the champagne had already seen him once and thought we had amazing special effects,” I added.
Teag rubbed his eyes, staving off a headache. “All right. So at least some of the guests can see the ghost, but they think it’s part of the show. As long as he doesn’t attack anyone, and we keep people off the steps, maybe we can get through the reception without a problem.”
I swallowed a couple of ibuprofen and insisted on getting back up. “I’m not going to be much use pouring,” I said ruefully, grimacing as I moved my strained arm, “but I want to be able to observe—and maybe head off Moby Dick if he shows up again.”
“Ishmael,” Teag said.
“Gesundheit,” I replied.
He shook his head. “No, Ishmael was the name of the sea captain. Moby Dick was the whale.”
I rolled my eyes. “Figures you’d know that,” I sighed. Teag let me use his arm to steady myself as I got to my feet, and Anthony had just turned to open the door when we heard a yelp of surprise and a crash.
“Crap,” Mrs. Morrissey murmured, and the mild oath seemed so out of character I had to chuckle. I’d had several words run through my mind, none of them “mild.”
“Go on down,” she said. “I’ll join you in a minute. I want to go check on the boxes.”
“Do you want me to come with you?” I offered.
She shook her head. “No. Go see what’s happened. I promise I won’t be long.”
When we reached the foyer, we found a server hurrying to clean up a dropped tray of goblets and the attendees abuzz about Captain Kettinger’s latest appearance. The wife of one of the Archive’s big donors was blushing and grinning as she recounted her surprise at having the Captain appear at her side.
Mrs. Morrissey found us a few minutes later. “It looked like someone opened one of the boxes,” she murmured. “According to the packing list, we’re missing a lady’s fan. That doesn’t make any sense. It was one of the least valuable items in the shipment.”
I didn’t have time to think much about it because right then, Kettinger showed up beside the front window, doing his best Captain Morgan pose, and I realized that at the time the house was built, that window would have looked out onto the water. Charleston’s harbor filled in quite a bit since the early days—largely from old ships leaving behind their stone ballast—and there are now two more streets between us and the ocean. I suspected the ghost’s view remained as it had been, since he showed no indication of anything being amiss.
The crowd gasped, then clapped, and some people pulled out their phones and began taking pictures. I doubted they’d have anything to show for it except some glowing orbs, but no one was freaking out, and they all were unreasonably happy about the “entertainment,” so Teag took my place pouring drinks while I filled in as docent for him.
“I really wish you could tell me you hired a special effects crew,” Anthony murmured, stepping up beside me but never taking his eyes off the Captain’s ghost until it wavered and vanished—to thunderous applause.
“Nope. Sorry. He’s the real deal.”
“Do you think he’s dangerous?” Anthony asked.
I was just about to offer tentative reassurance when I heard an odd sound from outside. Anthony looked like he’d picked up on the noise as well, and he followed me to the front windows.
“What the hell?” he muttered under his breath.
A calm fall evening had suddenly turned into a stormy night, which hadn’t been on any weather predictions. Outside, high winds whipped the trees along the street and in the neighbor’s garden as if a hurricane had rolled into town. Anthony glanced at his phone for a storm warning text but shook his head.
Papers and debris hurtled down the narrow street, past the cars parked on either side. The wind picked up enough to whistle through the chimney and bang the shutters, catching the attention of the guests.
“Just the wind,” I said, plastering on my best reassuring smile, even though everything about the freak squall felt wrong. “Everything’s fine.”
Right on cue, the string quartet began to play in the main parlor, and Mrs. Morrissey lured guests out of the foyer and into the next room with the whispered promise of hot hors d’oeuvres. Teag poured the last of the bottle in his hands and came over to join us.
“Holy hell,” he muttered, standing beside me. “First a ghost, now weird weather?”
“It’s not normal,” I said, knowing the truth of that in my bones. Teag’s eyes widened as he touched his magic, and he nodded. The air felt tainted, and the power I could feel stank of malice, a low, ominous rumble of discordant magic from which nothing good could come. And it was getting stronger.
I only had a glimpse of something dark and solid coming straight for the windows before Anthony shouted a warning and pushed me down, yanking Teag with us into a pile on the floor. The large glass window shattered, and the howling icy wind now swept through the foyer, cold and sharp, strong enough to knock glasses to the floor and bang paintings against the walls.
Screams from the other room only barely rose above the wind, and then I heard the squeal of wrenched metal and the sound of impact after impact in the street just outside. I was buried beneath Teag and Anthony’s bodies, so I couldn’t see anything, but the crash of metal and breaking glass sounded like a ten-car pile-up. A car alarm blared, and then another.
As quickly as it started, everything fell silent. After a moment or two without any new threat, Anthony and Teag sat up, shaking broken glass from their hair and tux coats, and I drew a deep breath, trying to collect my wits.
The foyer around us was trashed. Goblets and carafes lay smashed on the floor. Napkins draped where they had fallen after being caught in the wind. A spiderweb of cracks marred the glass over two of the large paintings on the walls, and the lovely printed guide sheets we had handed out to all the guests about the home’s history had all been blown up against the far wall like so much garbage.
Teag helped me to my feet, and I glanced at both men, assuring myself they had escaped injury. Teag was bleeding from a cut along his temple, and Anthony’s blond hair was matted in the back with blood where a piece of glass had stuck, but other than having been slightly squished beneath them, I was fine.
“Oh my God!”
I don’t know who said it, but the comment echoed through the sobered crowd as they filed out of the parlor and looked at the devastated foyer. Several were taking pictures, while others were on the phone, perhaps to the police or their lawyers. Mrs. Morrissey caught my eye, and I nodded, indicating that we were all right, so she shifted into damage control mode, moving from one frightened guest to another.
We dared to step closer to the broken window and looked out into the street. The wind had tossed four cars out of their parking places, tumbling them down the cobblestones like toys and piling them all atop an unfortunate silver Porsche two-seater, crushing it flat.
“My car!” A woman stared out at the wreckage and balled her fist at the sight of the ruined cars. “Shit,” she added quietly. Dark hair in a chin-length bob flattered high cheekbones and arched brows, and her slim, burgundy silk skirted suit still looked pristine, despite the storm. She strode for the door on her red-soled designer stiletto heels, with nary a wobble despite the broken glass.
The rest of the guests crowded toward the window, and three men quickly followed the woman in the red suit. Their voices carried, as did the curses that threatened to turn the storm-heavy air blue. In the distance, sirens blared.
“I think she owned the Porsche,” Anthony murmured. “I can’t tell you how glad I am that we walked.”
We couldn’t clean up before the police arrived, and possibly not until the insurance adjuster had a chance to document the damage. Teag, Anthony, and I headed back to help Mrs. Morrissey soothe upset guests. Someone had brought out the rest of the champagne, and while Teag and Anthony helped pour bubbly into the surviving crystal flutes, I alternated between consoling stressed-out donors and making my own assessment of the ruined foyer.
For the first time since the fundraiser began, I took a good look at the guests. I’d seen the guest list ahead of time and remembered Mrs. Morrissey remarking on who hadn’t been able to come. I’d want to look at that short list again. Most of the invitees showed up—Mrs. M. was hard to say no to, and Charleston’s elite liked to see and be seen.
I recognized the majority of the guests from other soirées around the city. Trifles and Folly’s true purpose might be getting rid of dangerous supernatural objects, but as far as the rest of the world knows, we’re a damn fine place to buy antique silverware or to sell off great-granny’s vintage jewelry. Teag and I often got called in to do appraisals, and it was good business to mingle with the upper crust at as many of these events as possible. That meant bumping into the same folks at multiple galas, so I could put names to faces even if we didn’t actually know one another.
All except for five. The woman in the red suit whose car got pancaked was not someone I’d seen before, although her clothing, jewelry, and manner suggested she fit right in with this crowd. The Hitchcock blonde who commented on the “special effects” wasn‘t a regular. One of the other men who had dashed outside and now stood talking with a cop was also unfamiliar, and I did my best in the dim light to memorize his features. Another stranger button-holed Anthony, and they were talking as if they knew each other, so I figured I’d get the scoop on him later.
That left the fourth man. He stood about Teag’s height, but with broader shoulders and a more solid build, with auburn hair and a close trimmed beard artfully manscaped into civilized scruff. I’d heard him talking with other guests, and his accent definitely wasn’t Charleston or from anywhere south of the Mason-Dixon. New York, maybe, or New England. That alone wasn’t too surprising: Mrs. Morrissey’s invitations cast a wide net, and plenty of out-of-towners had business that brought them to Charleston. He could be someone with a historic preservation group or even the plus-one of another invitee.
Just then, the stranger turned as if he sensed he was being watched. He caught me looking at him and met my gaze. I saw a flash of something in his eyes before they narrowed, but it wasn’t fear. A hint of a challenge, maybe? A dare to find out who he was and why he had crashed the party? Then I felt it, a flicker there and gone against my skin, and I saw triumph and wariness in his eyes.
Whoever he was, he had magic, and somehow he had just discovered that so did I.
The cops let the exhausted guests go home around eleven. The unlucky car owners gave their statements early, then left with the flatbed tow trucks that came to haul away what remained of their mangled luxury vehicles. Teag, Anthony, and I stuck around to help clean up. A couple of the catering staff quit on the spot and left as soon as the cops gave the okay, so having us pitch in squared things away before the wee hours.
Mrs. Morrissey made several calls in between giving her statement to the police and repeating herself to the insurance man. A workman pounded nails into place, securing sheets of plywood over the ruined front window. I’d made a thorough check of my own; nothing else had been damaged except the front foyer and of course, the squashed cars.
Through it all, Mrs. Morrissey never lost her cool. She had to be in her mid-seventies, but her slim St. John suit and coiffed hair looked as perfect as when she arrived. I knew her well enough to see the exhausted squint around her eyes and the worried set of her mouth, but whenever any of the donors approached her, she stood ramrod straight, shoulders back and chin high, assuring everyone this was a minor setback and all would be sorted quickly, posing no threat to the scheduled grand opening.
Except the part about the ghost.
We walked Mrs. Morrissey out to her car, parked on the street behind the Kettinger House. “I don’t know what I would have done without you,” she said, clasping my hand. “I imagine my morning will be hell dealing with the aftermath, but call me in the afternoon. We have to do something about the Captain’s ghost, and I need your help to find out which of the new items in those boxes caused the haunting.”
“Will do,” I promised, although right then, all I wanted was a stiff drink, some ice for my shoulder, and a soft mattress. Teag and Anthony walked me back to the shop, where I had left my RAV4 parked, and I offered to give them a ride to their place, which they accepted. We said little on the walk, too tired and overwhelmed to tackle the topic right then, but when I pulled up in front of the house they shared, Teag turned to me and put a hand on my arm.
“Don’t go back there without me, Cassidy,” he said. “We don’t know what the ghost can do or whether it threw those cars around, but something powerful made that happen. It’s a miracle no one got badly hurt.” He glanced at my sore arm. “It could have been a lot worse.”
I shuddered, trying not to think about tumbling down that long staircase headfirst, and nodded. “I promise. Get some sleep. I’ll see you at the shop in the morning.”
By the time Mrs. Morrissey finally had time to meet with us, five o’clock had come and gone. All day, the customers who came into Trifles and Folly talked about the “happenings” at the Kettinger House, and the tales grew with the telling.
“I practically expected to hear about how a Yeti went bowling with the cars in the alley.” I rolled my eyes and took a sip of coffee. I clutched the cup like it was the difference between life and death, and right then, it felt like that.
“Somehow, a Yeti is still better than terrorists, Chinese gangs, or Russian mobsters,” Teag replied. “I heard all of those at least once, and one woman even wondered whether or not it might be UFOs.”
I covered my face with my hand and shook my head. “How is it that a plain old haunting and some dark magic starts to look boring compared to all of that?”
“Hey, at least they still think the ghost is just high-tech sleight-of-hand,” Teag reminded me as we locked up and went to meet Mrs. Morrissey.
“I know, be thankful for small favors,” I said, happy to let Teag drive since my caffeine-to-blood ratio was still out of kilter.
We had managed to identify everyone at the event except for the lady in the red suit, the blond guy who had gone to deal with his squashed car, the Hitchcock blonde, and the guy with the scruff who had triggered my magic. He seemed the most likely to be involved somehow, but none of us had ever seen him before.
“Kell called last night,” I said, leaning back against the seat and closing my eyes. “He saw it on the news and knew we’d be there. Wanted to make sure we were okay.”
Kell and I had been seeing each other for about a year. He doesn’t know the full scoop about my magic or about Trifles and Folly’s true purpose, but since he heads up a local paranormal investigations group, SPOOK, he’s pretty cool about the not-exactly-normal things he’s seen first-hand with me.
Teag grinned. “If you’d have asked, I bet he would have come over with ice and hot pads for some physical therapy,” he joked, managing to make it sound utterly lascivious.
“He offered,” I said. “But by that point, I definitely wasn’t good company. I took some pills, put a cold pack on my shoulder, and slept like a rock.”
“Anthony took it all pretty much in stride,” Teag said, keeping his eyes on traffic. Charleston doesn’t have the kind of rush hour you’ll find in Atlanta or L.A., but we get enough tourists who don’t know where they’re going that driving here requires careful attention—and patience.
“He’s seen worse,” I remarked. “And he knows we all got off lucky.” Teag hadn’t intended to tell his partner about the kind of magic and supernatural threats we deal with, to protect him and let him keep his illusions about the “normal” world. Anthony pieced a lot together on his own, combined with some first-hand experiences with things we couldn’t explain away. Last year, when a particularly rough battle saved the world but almost cost Teag his life, Anthony swore he’d keep our secrets if we would just give him the whole, ugly, implausible truth.
“Did you hear from Sorren?” Teag asked.
“I left a message with the key points. Asked him to look into Kettinger’s background and told him about the guy with the Northeastern accent.” Yes, my business partner, the six-hundred-year-old vampire, has a cell phone and email. He says that immortals who can’t adapt with the times don’t last long. Sorren doesn’t look much older than Teag and I—mid- to late twenties at most—but he was turned before Columbus sailed for the New World, and at one time, was the best jewel thief in Antwerp.
“Think he can get anything from the Boston shop?”
I shrugged. “After the bombing last year, I don’t know if they’re fully up and running again. He’s still touchy about it.”
“It wasn’t his fault.”
“I know. And so does he, but Sorren feels responsible for all of us. We break easily.” An old enemy of Sorren’s had pursued a vendetta against him last year, striking at the other shops like Trifles and Folly that Sorren had established throughout the world. Some of us were lucky and escaped being badly damaged. Boston’s shop went up in flames.
“Do you think the Captain flipped those cars?” Teag asked, and I was pretty sure he kept the conversation going to keep me from falling asleep.
“We both felt the magic behind the storm, but I don’t think the Captain had anything to do with it,” I said, resigning myself to staying awake and shifting my position in the car to look at Teag. “Remember, the ghost went right through me. I’m not sure he was more than a repeater, a stone tape loop. He didn’t shove me down the stairs; he caught me by surprise. And he didn’t try to hurt any of the guests. He just blinked in and out, going about his business. We were the interlopers in his house.”
“Still, he’s got to go if they’re opening it to the public,” Teag said. “Knocking people down the steps attracts more lawsuits than donations.”
We stopped to pick up tea for Teag and lattes for me and Mrs. Morrissey at Honeysuckle Café on our way and found her waiting at the door to the grand old restored mansion the Historical Archive uses as its offices.
“You brought me a latte, you amazing, wonderful people!” Mrs. Morrissey swooned, taking the cup and cradling it in her hands. “Come into my office, and we can add a dollop of scotch. It’s been that kind of day.”
She motioned us to the armchairs and high-backed formal sofa on one side of her office, where she usually meets with donors. I sank into the velvet cushion and tried not to get so comfortable that I’d doze off. We had a ghost to bust.
We let her drink her latte while Teag and I filled in what we had learned about the guest list. We’d been busy enough in the shop that Teag hadn’t had a chance to research Kettinger himself, but I had the feeling the Captain wasn’t at the heart of the incident.
“The woman in the red suit is Mona Ridenhaus,” Mrs. Morrissey said when we finished. “She hasn’t been to many of our galas, but she’s a small donor with the potential to do more, hence the invitation. I see her more often on the garden club circuit. Her family’s been around these parts for a long time, and she’s got the resume to prove it: Swiss boarding school, Ivy League women’s college, and a die-hard sorority member.”
“How about the ice queen blonde?” I asked.
Mrs. Morrissey shook her head. “I saw her, but she must have been someone’s ‘plus one.’”
“How about the other guy?” Teag asked. “The one with the beard?”
“I don’t know him,” Mrs. Morrissey replied. “Spotted him right before everything went to hell, and then confronting a possible gate crasher no longer seemed like a priority. Media, perhaps? Except I didn’t really see him chatting anyone up. When I noticed him, he was either just watching from the sidelines or examining the furnishings like there was going to be a quiz afterward.”
“We’ll have to see if he’s in any of the pictures,” Teag said. “The photographer was busy.”
She chuckled. “Yes, but I’ve already heard back that none of his photos of the Captain turned out. Just blobs of light or a patch of mist.”
“Par for the course. Ask Kell how much trouble SPOOK has trying to get pictures of any hauntings.” The latte’s warmth calmed me down, even as the coffee hit my bloodstream and woke me up.
“How about Kettinger?” Teag asked. “Any reason why he’d be a restless spirit, even if it was something in those boxes that gave him the mojo to manifest?”
Mrs. Morrissey sat back in her seat, holding the cup close, and shook her head. “Cornelius Kettinger owned a merchant ship called the Lady of Storms back in the mid-1800s, before the War. He was originally from Massachusetts, but he came down here to expand his Caribbean trade, and he had the bad timing to do it right as tempers started to flare between the North and the South. That meant both sides considered him suspect, and neither was willing to completely trust him. Even so, he did a good business until an accident at sea hurt his back so badly he had to give up his ship. He came home to his house here in Charleston, and everything I could find says he died of natural causes, still pining for the sea.”
“Not exactly the kind of guy who starts tossing cars down an alley,” Teag said. “So maybe the ghost and the storm aren’t related.” He finished his tea and set it aside. “How about you? Find out anything new?”
“This is the first I’ve come up for air all day,” Mrs. Morrissey said, “as you can imagine. But I did have two of my staff go back to the house and catalog the items in those new boxes.”
“Any sightings of the Captain?” I asked.
She shook her head. “I picked the two least imaginative people on my payroll. Maybe they didn’t see him because they don’t believe in ghosts, or maybe he was too tuckered out from last night’s performance to make an appearance. But they did get through the boxes.”
“And?” Teag asked.
Mrs. Morrissey pulled out a folded paper from a pocket of her jacket and smoothed it out on the coffee table in front of us. The color picture of an antique woman’s fan probably didn’t do the real thing justice, but it still took my breath away. The delicate ribs of the fan were an ivory color, with remarkable etching and carved symbols that were the work of a master.
“I didn’t think it was legal to own ivory,” Teag mused.
“It depends, and museums get some wiggle room, but that’s not ivory,” the Archive’s director replied. “That’s bone.”
I felt a chill down my spine. “What kind of bone?” I asked, straining for a better look at the inscriptions. My spidey sense tingled a warning.
“No one’s had it tested,” she answered. “That’s museum-speak for ‘we don’t want to know.’”
“Well, someone thought it was special,” I said, glancing up at Teag. “Take a look at those etchings on the ribs. There’s a lot of embellishment, but those are magical symbols. Witchcraft. If we can figure out who stole the fan, I bet we’ll get a lead on who called the storm.”