Curse of the Nandi (Society for Paranormals Book 5) (10 page)

Mr. Elkhart raised his hands in a placating manner. “We must wait until evening, for we can’t very well drag his crate around town in broad daylight.”

“Why ever not?” Cilla asked with a touch of gentle outrage.

“Yes, what’s wrong with traveling about with a large crate?” I added, as much to encourage Cilla as to prompt a fuller explanation for the bizarre travel arrangements being made.

Lilly tittered and Mr. Elkhart chuckled before lighting a cigarette, drawing deeply upon it and then saying, “Because my father will be in the crate, and it would be a tad bumpy for him.”

Confusion gave way to understanding and we all nodded our heads, for of course who would want to be in a crate while it was manhandled on and off wagons and across bumpy dirt roads?

“Your father’s a vampire then?” Drew asked, speaking for the first time.

“Indeed,” came the answer and a circle of smoke. “I made arrangements with the stationmaster, that nervous bloke who stutters.”

“Mr. Evans,” I supplied the name.

“Yes, that’s him,” Mr. Elkhart said. “Mr. Evans kindly agreed to keep my shipment in the cargo section of the station, where it’s covered and quiet. We’ll pop by there around sunset. I’d be most grateful for assistance, if for nothing else than to distract Mr. Evans while we assist my father out of the crate.”

It was readily agreed, for we were all eager to meet the father of our dear friend, even if the father happened to be a vampire who was currently locked inside a crate. My delight however was tempered by disquiet, for it had only recently been revealed to me that my mother had placed her affections on Mr. Elkhart Senior before settling on my father. Even after her wedding, she’d maintained a steady correspondence with the vampire over a number of years.

Fortunately, I was distracted from such concerns by the levity of my friends, and we passed a pleasant afternoon chatting amongst ourselves about nothing of consequence. We shared a light meal, after which Drew retired to his room in the barn and Cilla begged off with an excuse of a headache. Our party now down to four, we set off in the Hardinge wagon, which was a far grander and more comfortable affair than our rickety two-wheeler.

We arrived at the train station with a few moments to spare. The Nairobi Railway Station had little to praise and was altogether an unimpressive affair. One would only know one had arrived because the name board on the platform declared it so. Slightly removed from the burgeoning town, it huddled amongst some trees, its sides open to the elements while a sloped, metal roof protected travelers and products from the sun, although not from the dust.

Jutting out from the top of the roof was a four sided structure akin to a chimney, and each side had embedded on it a clock. The stationmaster ensured with nearly religious fervor that all clocks were perfectly in sync. I marveled at the British sense of time, and our perverse determination to inflict that obsession on other peoples. Perhaps fortunately, neither the local Africans nor the imported Indians overly cared for the dictatorial hands that inched their way around the faces of the four clocks, for seldom was anything on time apart from tea breaks and the end of the work day.

From experience, I knew that the open space in front of the station was normally filled with a jostling hodgepodge of hand-pulled rickshaws, horse-pulled traps, ox-carriages and mule-carts. These would congregate twice weekly in anticipation of the passenger service from Mombasa that would deliver big-game hunters and potential settlers. Immediately upon exiting the covered platform, the visitors were spoiled for choice in their transport options. The rickshaw owners, the recent proliferation of which had created a cheerfully competitive atmosphere, were particularly noisy as they shouted and waved at the disembarking passengers, expounding on the merits of their two-wheeled, two-seater contraptions.

But at this time, we had the place to ourselves, which didn’t thrill me overly, for it was not a locale worth lingering more than absolutely necessary. The street was already emptying of pedestrians and wagons as Nairobi residents scurried home. In their place, a solitary lavender cart, pulled by a stout African, inched along the street. The man collected the soil buckets wherever he found them; it was the only sanitation service the town could provide but a distasteful job.

“Ladies, as you are the more pleasantly distracting of our group, could I impose on you to converse with Mr. Evans?” Mr. Elkhart requested, his natural charm warming the cool evening and providing me a happy diversion.

With a naughty twinkle in her sky blue eyes, Lilly snatched at my elbow and sauntered into the open-walled station. The high metal roof blocked out whatever natural light lingered in the sky, and we entered a darker, colder dimension in which our whispers echoed.

“It reminds me of Mrs. Cricket’s world,” Lilly whispered, and I shivered at the reminder of that dark pit of despair in which we had both been trapped previously.

“Have you been back since?” I dared to ask.

She shrugged and hurried me toward the light that glowed out of a small, dingy window: the stationmaster’s office.

“Lilly,” I chided her.

“Not now, Bee,” she said, her cherubic mouth pouting at my insistence she answer me. Before I could pressure her for a proper response, she swerved into the office and said, “Mr. Evans, good evening!”

Mr. Evans had a nervous disposition and sprang up at the noisy intrusion. “Mrs. Elkha-ha-hart. Mrs. Ti-ti-timmons. How do you do?”

“Well enough, Mr. Evans,” I said, attempting to utilize a soothing tone. “How are things, now that they moved the post office to Victoria Street?”

Mr. Evans’ slim shoulders sagged. “I am m-m-most grateful they did, and that we have a new postmaster. It really was too-too-too much, looking after the post and the station.”

I nodded and clucked with sympathy while Lilly positioned herself in front of the window that faced the cargo area. How would the delicate Mr. Evans respond if he observed a man being assisted out of a crate?

“Yes, I can well imagine,” I said. “Really that was too much to expect of you. Particularly as the post office is our de facto bank, what with people’s salaries being delivered by that means and remittances to India being sent thus. It must have been quite a challenge, handling all those tasks.”

Mr. Evans nodded his pale head eagerly, his thin neck seeming to struggle to remain straight. “Yes, you are so correct, madam. It was a very great weight on me.”

As I was about to respond, Lilly plucked at my elbow. “So good to see you, Mr. Evans, and delighted that you are well. I believe my husband has found his cargo. We must be off now. Ta!”

With that abrupt ending to our engagement, we hurried outside of the station where Mr. Timmons and Mr. Elkhart were conversing with a man whose face I couldn’t see at first.

Mr. Elkhart looked up and gestured for us to approach. The third man turned slowly and there was no doubt as to whom we were meeting, for the family resemblance was striking. Although shorter and paler than his son, Mr. Elkhart Senior had the same graceful bearing, slim yet well-proportioned frame, a clean-shaven and open face with elegant features. A classic vampire of Mediterranean persuasion, he appeared middle aged, and his skin was a few tones lighter than our own Mr. Elkhart. The only aspect that was clearly different were the eyes, for the older man’s eyes were light brown, like watered-down tea. I was determined not to hold that against him.

“My dears,” he gently enthused, his voice deeper than I had anticipated, his accent that of a person who learned English later in life. “It is my pleasure, my delight, to finally make your acquaintances.” He leaned over Lilly’s hand first, and she blushed and curtsied.

Then he turned his warm gaze on me and took up my non-metal hand, his smile catching as he studied my features with a peculiar intensity. “My dear,” he whispered. “So like your mother. So very much like her.”

He closed his eyes and a slight and fleeting grimace marred his features, as if pain racked his body. The moment passed into the lengthening shadows and he squeezed my hand. “I’m so sorry for what you’ve suffered, and for all these years that I wasn’t able to protect you.” He kissed my hand.

I was at a loss for words and could only nod and curtsey. What could I say to my mother’s suitor and would-be rescuer? How different would my life have been if my mother had married an Elkhart rather than an Anderson? Or if she had submitted to his exhortations to escape her fate by fleeing with her children to the refuge he offered? He, and only he, would have defended her from the Society’s murderous intent.

“We have much to discuss, much to catch up on,” he said, now addressing everyone, his soft voice resonating within me much like a large African drum would when played nearby, my heart pounding to the beat of his words. “But this is not the most ideal venue, I think.”

“The crate’s packed, so we can depart,” Mr. Timmons said as he thumped the wooden box resting in the back of the wagon.

Mr. Timmons had offered to drive, so he and I sat on the driver’s bench up front. The Elkhart family were free to sit together and pour out their exuberance at their reunion, with little interference from us. Yet their joy was contagious, so it was a jubilant party that drew up to the front entrance and tumbled out of the carriage later that evening.

A servant appeared, as if he had been waiting for us all this time in the shadows, and led the horses away. The clip-clop of their hooves was matched by the buzz and whir of insects and a distant cough of a lion.

I inhaled deeply, my highly sensitive olfactory senses overwhelmed by the cloyingly sweet scent of the white flowers of a nearby Angel Trumpet, mingled with dry grass, elephant dung, roast beef and potatoes. Lingering within those homecoming smells was a coppery tinge, as if blood had been exposed to air recently.

I glanced about, the lights from the house spilling a pale glow over us but not extending far enough into the darkness to allow me to see much more than the silhouette of the barn and a clump of trees. Closer by, a thorny hedge that reached nearly to my chin ran parallel to the house and separated it from the wild lands that stretched out beyond. A purple-flowered bougainvillea grew over part of the hedge; I reached out to tug off one of the flowers and rubbed the three dry, paper-thin petals between my fingers.

“Lord and Lady Hardinge have arranged supper,” Lilly said, addressing her father-in-law. “I do hope you’ll join us, sir.”

I leaned in close to her. “Do they know?” I inquired in a hushed voice as I gestured to the Elkhart men. I’d often assumed they must, given their ward’s shape-shifting abilities, but I’d never voiced the question nor had the Hardinge family provided me any clear indication as to their awareness.

“Of course,” Lilly said with a toss of her dark curls. “The Hardinge family is audaciously liberal in such matters, you know. Refreshingly so.”

“That would be most delightful,” Mr. Elkhart Senior said. “It has been long since I’ve conversed with my son’s beloved guardians.”

“Yes, supper sounds super,” a silky voice spoke up from behind the hedge.

“Better than the snack we just had,” a sultry voice added, and from behind the hedge appeared Yao and Yawa.

Chapter 14

“Oh bother, whom have you eaten and do I know him?” I demanded.

Yao graced me with a stunningly petulant frown while Yawa smirked in a most unbecoming way, her teeth stained red.

“It was just a sip,” Yawa said.

“You are so quick to judge,” Yao cried as he and his sister slunk through a narrow gap in the hedge. I noted that far too much of their skin was visible for polite society.

That thought somehow reminded me of Prof Runal’s admonition to me the first time I met him: he’d instructed me never to reveal to polite society my awareness of the paranormal. At the time, I was left wondering if I was in impolite society. Since then, that question had been more than adequately answered, for no one in our party so much as flinched at the vastness of skin exposed and the scanty nature of clothes utilized by the Adze siblings.

We were most certainly members of an indecorous society.

Yawa shifted her attention to our guest and hissed. Mr. Elkhart Senior smiled serenely, unperturbed by the lack of a positive reception.

I didn’t bother with introductions, for I was peeved at their disturbance of a merry reunion. “What are you doing here?” I hissed back.