Chapter Five #2
He looks at me oddly for a second, as if I suggested something kinky.
I cast my mind back to when we were together, but there was none of that kind of stuff; I’m pretty sure I’d remember.
The closest he came to tying me up was when the sleeves of my coat got caught in the car door when we were making out on the backseat; he didn’t notice that I was stuck and I didn’t want to mention it while he had his tongue in my ear because it seemed like the height of bad manners.
If I’m honest, the edge of danger because he might break my arms was a bit of a turn-on.
Barty leads us from the tiny chapel and down some steps into the vast quarry-tiled kitchen, still very much the working heart of the castle.
He introduces us first to Marilyn, the castle cook and housekeeper, and then to her young assistant, Belinda, or Hells Bells as he refers to her for reasons that go unexplained.
They’re making pastry to top what looks like a huge meat pie on the scrubbed table, and I’m struck by how this scene must have played out here countless times over the centuries.
For now the kitchen is a ghost-free zone, so we turn to troop back up the steps.
As we file past the table where the cooks are at work, I notice Belinda push a plate of chocolate-coated biscuits toward Artie with a shy smile.
He turns as red as Marina’s lipstick, glances over his shoulder to check if she might have meant the smile for someone else, then takes one of the offered biscuits with a whisper of thanks.
Behind him, I look hopefully at Belinda, but she drags the plate of sugar goodness back slowly toward her and glowers at me from under her thick copper fringe. Hells bloody Bells indeed.
Barty takes us up the sweeping, portrait-lined grand central staircase and proceeds to show us so many cavernous bedrooms that I lose count.
The Shilling family must have had a bob or two; the interior design is quite lavish and in keeping with the age of the place.
It’s packed to the rafters with heavy, dark pieces of furniture and huge, ornately framed oil paintings.
There’re more rugs here than in Afghanistan and enough chandeliers to illuminate one of the smaller Greek islands.
So far, so quiet.
“Did you come across any other human ghosts this morning?” I ask Leo.
“I glimpsed a woman, but she disappeared in a blink,” he says. “And the ringmaster, obviously. You?”
I shouldn’t have asked him, because now I have to show my cards or tell an outright lie, which I’m not great at. I sort of shrug and mumble, “Same,” but I feel a bit crappy, so I add, “and another guy, fleetingly.”
We’re back at the top of the staircase and Leo looks down and says, “This one, by any chance?”
The furious strongman ghost from yesterday stalks toward us and squares up to Barty, just as he did yesterday.
“Go now! Why don’t you people ever listen to me?” He prods at Barty’s gut. Barty doesn’t know, yet still he brushes an absent hand over his belly as if soothing an itch. The ghost throws his arms in the air and yells in anguish. “You wouldn’t have dared ignore Dino the Dynamo when he was alive!”
He’s giving off Gordon Ramsay in a particularly bad temper vibes; I’m very glad this man isn’t armed with a kitchen knife.
As it is, he uses all of his might to shove a large gilt-framed painting on the wall to make his presence felt and to give him his dues, he’s remarkably successful.
Moving inanimate objects is a skill that takes some mastering for ghosts, and one that shows that this guy can be quite powerful when he needs to be.
Barty is lucky that ghosts can’t transfer the same skills to humans, because I’m certain Dino would have shoved him down the stairs by now.
Barty, Marina, and Artie all jump back in surprise and then swing around to look at Leo and me for an explanation as to why the painting is all skewed.
“Ghost,” I say quietly, and Dino the Dynamo pauses, obviously shocked. “Yes, I can see you,” I say, addressing him directly for the first time.
Leo butts in. “So can I,” he says, keen not to let me get ahead.
Dino stares at us. “And these?” He flicks his hand toward the others and I shake my head.
“Just us.”
“But you’re living people, yes?” He steps forward and tries to touch my arm, but his hand passes straight through. He snatches it back again with an angry sigh and I try not to shudder, because I’m not fond of the barely there chill his touch left behind in my bones.
“Bit of an odd way to phrase it, but yes, we’re alive,” Leo says.
Dino narrows his dark eyes at Leo. “Are you mocking Dino the Dynamo?”
Great. Leo’s managed to alienate the first ghost we talk to within three sentences. I shake my head and speak in a low, soothing voice.
“Of course not. We’d love to talk to you though, if you wouldn’t mind?”
Dino points viciously at Barty. “Tell this florid-faced bastardo to leave this house before nightfall or I push him down the stairs!” His eyes blaze with challenge and I almost feel sorry for him, because we both know it’s an empty threat.
He might be able to muster up enough power to move inanimate objects, but he’s no threat to Barty.
All the same, I look at the others and smile diplomatically.
“Do you think we could have a moment here, please? We’ll join you back downstairs in a few minutes.”
Marina and Artie don’t question me. Barty, on the other hand, frowns sharply. “I’ll stick around. It’s my ghost.”
It’s enough to make Dino throw his head back, howl, and go on another picture-whacking rampage. “The Dynamo belongs to no one!”
“It really would be better if you waited downstairs with the others,” Leo says. Barty clearly takes instruction more easily from a man, because he huffs and stomps off after Marina and Artie.
“Why will you not tell him?” Dino barks.
I counter his question with one of my own. “Why are you so angry with him?”
Dino spits on the floor. “He is a hog. They come here and now they want to bring all kinds of odd people into our home and turn it into the movies? Britannia, she speak of nothing else since they arrive!”
“Britannia is your…?” I ask.
He slams his hand over his heart and is about to answer when the lady herself appears beside him, ravishingly pretty as she lays a hand on his arm.
“Don’t, Dino,” she says, and it is as if neither Leo nor I exist for the dynamic one. He has eyes only for Britannia.
“I’m his trapeze partner.” She directs her words toward us. Her answer surprises me. She’s clearly much more than just a colleague, for him at least.
“And she’s my wife,” someone else says, and I brace myself because the ringmaster is strutting up the staircase, and once again, he isn’t alone.
“It isn’t real,” I whisper to myself and to reassure Leo, because he’s just stiffened beside me at the sight of the lion and we both need to keep our shit together this time. “It can’t hurt us.”
It looks damn real though, and it takes everything in me not to bolt.
“Don’t you bloody dare pass out again, Leo Dark; you’ll fall down the stairs and die,” I mutter when he plasters himself against the wall as the lion advances toward us.
I’m breathless, literally without any breath in my body, because it’s level with me now and I’m not kidding when I say it’s paused and is staring right at me.
Oh dear God, dear God, oh shit. Its velvet fur nose is twitching, and I can’t be sure, but I think it’s growling at me.
Leo repeats my words, low and steady, and then he feels between us for my hand and grips it tight. “It isn’t real. It can’t hurt us.”
“Do you think you could possibly call your lion off please, sir?” I squeak, sounding like a terrified four-year-old girl.
I close my eyes, because the lion has inched nearer and is baring its incredibly sharp, as big as my head, yellow teeth at me.
I have a death grip on Leo’s hand; please don’t let any wee come out in my Batman pants.
Superheroes don’t take kindly to that kind of behavior.
At last, when Goliath’s face is no more than a hand span from mine, the ringmaster lays his hand flat on the lion’s broad head and leans down to whisper something I can’t quite catch into the animal’s thick mane.
It seems to have the desired effect, because Goliath slowly closes his mouth and stops growling.
I can still see his eyes though, and what I see there is regret that he doesn’t get to have me for afternoon tea.
That’s the problem with animal ghosts: They mostly don’t realize they’re ghosts or that they can’t hurt people.
More benign animals don’t realize they can’t feel a hand fuss them or a scratch behind the ears.
It strikes me that I’d quite like to give Lestat’s furry belly a tickle in that way that sends him gaga right now, and it’s enough to make me give myself a good shake and pull myself together.
Sentimental thoughts and Lestat are two things that cannot go together in my head.
“Thank you,” I mutter as the huge cat appears to lose interest in us and lies down on the landing to wash his paws. I pass my hand over my forehead and find it clammy. “I’m Melody Bittersweet and this is Leo Dark.”
“Bohemia Lovell.” The ringmaster inclines his head formally as he introduces himself.
He’s tall and elegantly put together, with fine, sandy hair and serious gray eyes.
He holds himself with the air of an aristocrat, which is a stark contrast to Dino’s Latin heat and fire.
There is a bomb-like quality to The Dynamo; he simmers and seethes and seems always on the edge of a lethal outburst.