The Medium

Chapter 5, Part 2

I ignored him and concentrated on Lucy but the poor thing whimpered beneath my gaze. I certainly wouldn't alert her to Jacob's presence. She might faint and then where would we be? Instead, I gave my sister a glare then turned a smile on the maid.

"He's a nice ghost," I assured her.

"Thank you," he said, "although nice is a rather bland word."

"He won't harm you," I went on, doing my best to ignore him. "And he probably won't be here much longer, only until we sort out..." I bit my lip. Finishing the sentence with "our demon issue" probably wasn't a good way to settle her nerves. "Until we sort out a few things."

The thought of Jacob leaving once we'd returned the demon to the Otherworld filled me with a hollowness I didn't want to explore. I'd only known him a day but he'd somehow managed to fill up my life in a way nothing else had.

It was all I could do not to look around and see if the thought had struck him too.

The girl nodded quickly, her eyes still huge and her cheeks paler. I wasn't sure Celia's tactic to tell Lucy about me being a medium was such a good idea. Having someone stare at me like I was a lunatic in my own house wasn't my idea of comfort. Besides, would knowing mean she'd stay around longer, or just leave earlier? At least she was still here—it was a promising start.

"How is dinner coming along?" Celia asked as Lucy accepted her bonnet and hung it up on the stand. "Good, miss. It'll be ready at six like you said. I set the water boiling for the potatoes and the fish is all ready to go on the gridiron, but I couldn't find it—the gridiron, not the fish—so I'll just use one of the pans instead. Mrs. White our teacher told us to make do with what pots and things are already 'vailable and not worry our mistress 'bout that stuff. She's a smart lady, Mrs. White, but she didn't take no fuss from no one."

It was my turn to stare wide-eyed at her. It seemed our maid was quite the chatterer when she wasn't frightened.

I smiled at Celia. Celia smiled at Lucy. "Can you serve tea in the drawing room, please," she said, "I'm parched after that walk."

Lucy curtseyed again, without wobbling. "As you wish, miss. I'm very good at making tea. Mrs. White always said so. Said I was the best tea-maker in the whole school." She turned to go, stopped, turned back to us, curtseyed again, and only then did she make her way down the hallway to the stairs leading to the kitchen basement.

"Aren't you going to ask her about the Culvert maid?" Celia asked me as we entered the drawing room.

"Exactly what I was going to say," Jacob said, following me.

The room was cool so I stoked the smoldering fire with the irons.

"I'll do that," Jacob offered.

I shook my head. I didn't want to alert Celia to his presence—she already thought him ungentlemanly for his ghostly comings and goings—and I definitely didn't want Lucy to see floating fire irons when she entered with the tea.

"I think Lucy needs a few moments to get used to me before I press her about Maree," I said, poking the coals. "Oh and thank you, Sis, for mentioning the whole spirit medium thing to her. I'm sure she'll be inclined to stay much longer than the other maids now that she knows"

"Sarcasm will make your face sag," she said.

"I'm simply saying I don't think it was a good idea." I returned the iron poker to the stand and sat beside her on the sofa.

"I disagree," Jacob said from his usual place by the mantelpiece.

"We had to try something," Celia said, taking up her embroidery.