Your Magic Touch (4 page)

Incredible. Overhead, the second story of the mansion stood open, with carved marble banisters and decorative cornices and gargoyles supported on pillars shaped from a darker marble matching the fireplace surround.

Frannie gulped, totally disconcerted. This dump was nothing like the “mansions” she’d grown up in. She couldn’t imagine living in this kind of showplace, furnished with antiques and objets d’art more fitting to a museum than a home.

The ghost hunters appeared to be as lost and constrained as she felt. Time to get over those feelings, Frannie decided. Time to take charge again. “So, boys, where shall we set up shop?”

“I can suggest a hotel in town,” Sinclair said sarcastically.

She wasn’t sure what had annoyed him so much. Why not ask? “My understanding was we were to stay here. Is there some problem?”

“None whatsoever.” His voice was cold and his jaw clenched. “I might make it clear to all of you, though, that the staff and I will be watching your movements closely. If your investigation doesn’t require you to touch something—”

He nodded toward Thomas, who held a crystal statuette he’d removed from a pedestal to examine more closely.

“—I ask that you not. You will be held liable for any damages.”

Thomas shrugged and returned the statuette to its place. It bobbled a little but, thank goodness, didn’t fall.

Anger climbed Frannie’s neck and cheeks. “We’re here to do a job. I was under the impression all of the details were ironed out with your aunt and uncle. Perhaps you should contact them so you’ll better understand the situation.”

“I understand the
situation
, as you term it, all too well. I advised my aunt and uncle not to give in to blackmail demands.”

“Blackmail? What the hell are you talking about?” But even as the words escaped her, Frannie smelled the stench of one of Harold’s setups.

She’d made sure her contract at the tabloid allowed her to do her job without threatening her own ethics, but no such constraints held Harold back. She had wondered how her boss managed to get an exclusive on Haliday Hall when no other reporter, no
serious
journalist, had gained access for the last seventy-five years.

Now she knew—and she was pissed. “Look, I’m just on assignment. I don’t know anything about blackmail, and I don’t want to know. Come on, guys,” she called to the ghost hunters, “let’s go home.”

Sinclair shut the entry door with a boom, blocking her grand exit. “And have my cousin’s foibles spread over every tabloid in the country? I don’t think so.”

If Sinclair had been angry
before, it was nothing compared with the fury struggling to spill out of him now. Frannie Fielding didn’t look anything like the tabloid reporter he’d expected. The clear blue of her eyes, the angelic strawberry blond hair and the sweet expression on her face almost left him questioning the obvious. But blackmail was blackmail. With Frannie Fielding’s threat to leave, he no longer doubted what kind of person lurked beneath her alluring façade.

It had been exactly like his aunt and uncle to scurry away, leaving him to deal with cousin Harrison’s latest fiasco. And this shenanigan topped them all.

As had happened untold times in the past, when Harrison’s cock-eyed sense of amusement led to behavior that couldn’t be laid at Sinclair’s door, finding the solution was still placed firmly in Sinclair’s lap. He’d already compensated the “injured parties” for their losses, including a hefty “pain and suffering bonus.” But he hadn’t been able to buy off the
Spy
with money. He’d get all copies of the film only if he let the paper’s people in to search for ghosts.

It was utter bull, of course. While there had been stories and fables about ghosts walking the halls of Haliday, Sinclair had never seen any evidence to justify the tales.

The
Spy
simply wanted to get in the house in order to pursue what they were most famous for: snooping. Sinclair would do whatever it took to protect his aunt and uncle and the household against the intrusion.

Sinclair would see that the
Spy
’s representatives got exactly what they’d demanded—a chance to look for ghosts—but not one iota more.

He’d told Mrs. Drundyl, Haliday Hall’s new housekeeper, to stay out of sight until he called for her. Normally, she’d have opened the door to guests, but he’d wanted to put the
Spy
’s people on notice before he allowed them free range in the mansion.

Sinclair exchanged introductions with the ghost hunters and raised his voice just a little. “Mrs. Drundyl.”

She appeared, soundlessly, almost eerily, at his side. Quite honestly, she gave him the creeps. Although she seemed more than adequate at her job and a biddable employee, she looked
scary
. With her lazy eye, hair pulled back into a severe bun, Transylvanian accent and thin lips that never smiled or so much as twitched in amusement, she was almost a caricature of a movie villainess.

“Oh.” Frannie leaped back in surprise.

Sinclair sort of enjoyed the Fielding woman’s instant cringe. Perhaps she’d be unnerved enough to minimize her snooping.

“We’ll take you to your rooms and then we can discuss the best location for setting up your equipment,” he said to Frannie and the ghost hunters. Turning to the housekeeper, he added, “If you’ll be good enough to escort Ms. Fielding to her room, I’ll show these gentlemen to their suite.”

“Thanks, tons,” Frannie said with a glare as she followed Mrs. Drundyl.

He couldn’t help but watch the angry sway of Frannie’s hips as she marched off. Not bad. He turned back to the ghost hunters. “Come this way.”

“What about our bags?”

“They’ll be brought to your rooms. Shall we?” Sinclair pointed to a portico with stairs leading up.

By the time the group reached the suite, Maury was panting. Sinclair took a moment’s satisfaction from that. Whatever he could do to make things more difficult for this group was a win for the home team.

The suite opened up to a central living area branching off into three small bedrooms with a shared bathroom. Perhaps the large common area would encourage them to keep most of their equipment out of the rest of the house. He pointed to a buzzer on the wall. “I think you’ll find everything you need, but if not, push the buzzer to summon a member of the staff.”

“My only question is, how are we going to find our way back out of here?” asked Willie Jo, who was obviously the ringleader of this odd troop.

Hadn’t Sinclair just told them to ring the buzzer? Maybe that was too complicated for them. “Mrs. Drundyl or one of the maids will come show you to the parlor in, say, half an hour.”

“Sounds good. We’d like a tour of the house so we can get some readings. That’ll help us decide where to set up.”

“We’re going to need our equipment,” piped up Maury, with an urgent note to his voice, while Thomas wandered over to the curio cabinet behind the sofa.

“Your bags will be here shortly,” Sinclair said as the other ghost hunters joined Thomas.

Sinclair turned to leave. Out of the corner of his eye, he glimpsed Thomas’s hand reach toward the cabinet knob. Sinclair made an about-face. “Those are seventeenth-century figurines inside that cabinet. I’d appreciate it if you don’t touch.”

Maury seemed to melt behind Willie Jo, and they nodded in unison. Sighing, Sinclair left the room.

Maury relaxed instantly.
Sinclair Haliday
made him nervous. “My bad feeling is getting worse. First we were confronted by one of Hell’s Minions, who was obviously sent to deter us from our mission.”

“I’m not convinced that boy was one of Hell’s Minions.”

“I am certain of it. And now Sinclair—”

Willie Jo rolled his eyes.

“I think he’s suspicious.” Maury began deep breathing.

“That we are wizards rather than ghost hunters?” Willie Jo pulled his magic wand from his pocket and swung it in the air. “Not hardly, especially with all of the ghost-hunting equipment we brought with us.”

“What are we supposed to do now?” asked Thomas, ducking to avoid the path of Willie Jo’s wand.

“Throw Frannie and Sinclair together; what do you think?” replied Willie Jo.

All Maury wanted was to get out of this place as quickly as wizardly possible. His senses twitched with awareness that Haliday Hall hosted numerous specters. “Let’s do this fast. I don’t care to meet up with any ghosts, thank-you-very-much.”

Ghosts were terrifying even when they weren’t intent on scaring the life out of people—or any other creatures that crossed their paths.

“There was an interesting animosity between Frannie and Sinclair,” mused Willie Jo.

“You noticed it, too?” asked Thomas. “It’s a good sign. Maybe we won’t need our magic.”

“Don’t count on it,” said Maury. “I have a bad feeling about this assignment. We were doing fine on our own. We weren’t bothering anyone. So why’d the Grand Vizier threaten us that way?”

They’d kept to themselves, watching the Monster Truck Channel and dining on delivery pizza and Chinese. While they hadn’t been making any love matches, they hadn’t interfered with any, either.

Time was, innocent matchmaking wizards were left to their own devices, but the Grand Vizier had taken an elven consultant under his metaphysical wing and now everything was about results. To Maury, love matches were about the finer emotions, not calculations, statistics and numbers.

“Put down that wand, Willie Jo, and let me think,” said Thomas. “I, for one, have no intention of being sent to the Olde Majiks Home. The rumors about that place are terrifying.”

The blood rushed from Maury’s face. “I heard they make you exercise.”

Willie Jo pocketed his wand and straightened to his full height. “We must get these two together, rusty magic or not.”

All Maury wanted was to return to their little apartment. When the Grand Vizier had accused them of hiding, Maury hadn’t seen anything wrong with that. Hiding was good. Hiding was safe.

But if they wanted to stay out of the Olde Majiks Home, the only safe thing they could do was make the three love matches the Queen of the Elves had demanded. Then they could go back into seclusion for another thirty or forty years.

But how? How could they make love matches when their magic was, at best, creaky from lack of use? It had been so long since they’d needed their magic that Maury wasn’t sure he could levitate even a cushion, much less the bed they’d each had to lift in order to enter elementary Wizard training.

He wiggled his fingers and the cushion on the chair in front of the fireplace shifted slightly, but that was it. On the other side of the room, the vase of fresh flowers tipped over, spilling water on the fancy ingrained table they’d been set on.

He ran to the bathroom, grabbed a towel and returned to blot up the spill. “See? We can’t do this. We might as well accept our fate. Exercise, bland diet and waiting on ogres. I can see it all now.”

“Don’t panic,” Willie Jo said. “With a little practice, our magic will be as good as new. Besides, we probably won’t need it at all with Frannie and Sinclair. They’re as good as in love already.”

“How do you know the Love Dove’s magic isn’t rusty, too?” asked Thomas. “Maybe Sinclair
isn’t
Frannie’s love-mate. Maybe we weren’t supposed to match Frannie up with
anyone
. The Love Dove could have screwed us.”

“Doves don’t lose their magic. They don’t need to practice,” Willie Jo said in a quiet voice.