Haunted (Otherworld 5)

"She is fine," the

man said. "We're all fine, and if you go charging us for this visit--"

"Now, Andrew, you know I'd never--"

"You'd better not," Andrew said, and slammed the door.

The doctor shook his head, hefted his bag, turned, and walked through me again. There was a movement in one of the main-floor front windows, a young woman washing the glass. Her face was bright red from exertion and the heat. From her simple outfit and the size of the house, I assumed she was a maid.

"Crack open a window," I said. "You got rights, girl. No one should be working in this heat."

The young woman's eyes went round. She dropped the rag and bolted.

"Shit!" I said. "Am I not supposed to do that?"

An exterior door slammed. Kristof gestured toward it and we both took off, following the sound around the house, past the side stoop. There we found the maid puking into the back garden.

"Oh, geez, they really are sick," I said. "They're making her work when she feels like this? Isn't there a labor board in this town?"

"Not in real Colonial America," Kristof murmured.

"Which is where I suspect we are."

"In the past?"

Before he could answer, the maid retched and hurled. I patted the poor kid's back, but I knew she couldn't feel it.

"You sick again, Bridget?" a voice asked.

Another young woman, also simply dressed, leaned over the side fence. She shook her head. "That's what you get, having to dump those slop buckets every morning. Bound to make anyone sick. Cheap old bugger. He can afford a water closet. Just too bloody cheap."

Bridget moaned and wiped her sleeve over her mouth. "It's not the slop buckets. It was supper last night. I told him that mutton stew wasn't no good no more. Not after three days sitting out in this heat. But he said--"

"Bridget?" A plain dumpling of a middle-aged woman appeared on the side stoop. "Bridget! What are you doing out there, chitchatting the day away? I want these windows cleaned."

"Yes, ma'am."

Bridget accepted a sympathetic nod from her colleague, and trudged back inside. Kristof and I followed, through the kitchen and into a room with a sofa, several chairs, and a fireplace. The man of the house--Andrew--adjusted his jacket and headed toward what I assumed was the front foyer. With a curt nod to his wife, and another to a round-faced, dark-haired woman on the sofa, he strode out the door, evidently unaffected by the bad stew.

I followed Bridget into a more formal version of the room we'd just left. The parlor. Until I'd moved into my Savannah house, I'd thought parlors were places that sold ice cream. Wiser spirit that I was, I now recognized a real parlor when I saw one.

Bridget picked up her discarded rag and resumed cleaning the front windows.

"What the heck am I supposed to be doing here?" I asked Kristof. "These people can't hear me, can't talk to me. What am I supposed to see, and why?"

I walked back into the other sitting area, where the two women were. The younger woman--the daughter?--continued to do needlepoint on the sofa, while the older woman, Abby, shook out a tablecloth from the side table.

The younger woman was definitely old enough to be married, especially in this time period, but I couldn't see a ring on her finger. As she worked, she kept her head bowed, and her shoulders pulled in--the natural posture of a woman who's accustomed to hiding from the world. Her light-blue dress had been washed too often, and she looked bleached out against the dark sofa. Yet, despite this outward timidity, she poked the needle through the fabric with quick, confident jabs.

Abby had moved on to dusting the mantel clock. Both women worked without an exchanged word or glance, as if each was in the room alone. After a few minutes, Abby walked into the front foyer. Her shoes clacked up a flight of steps. The younger woman lifted her head, tilting it to follow the sound of Abby's shoes across the upstairs floor. As she tracked Abby's path, her eyes flicked past mine and I blinked. In that gaze I saw something as coolly confident as her strokes with the needle. She waited until Abby's footsteps stopped, then resumed her work.

"Okay, this is going nowhere," I said. "Maybe I was supposed to follow Andrew."

The young woman's eyes flicked up, gaze meeting mine for a split second. Then it dropped back to her needlework.

"Hey," I said. "Did you see--"

Bridget tore through the sitting room so fast I felt the breeze. She raced for the kitchen. The side door banged shut. A moment later, the retching began. The woman on the sofa shook her head and poked her needle through the fabric again; then, after the first stroke, she stopped. Her gaze lifted to the ceiling, where we could hear Abby bustling about. Then she tilted her head toward the back of the house. The sounds of Bridget's vomiting continued.