26. Killer Queen
twenty-six
Killer Queen
Jazz glances around the honeymoon suite as though something might attack her at any moment. One hand rests on her radio and the other flits between fight or flight, clenching and splaying by her side.
On the floor in the centre of the now blood-free rug, Helga sets up a Ouija board.
“Camille, I have a joke for you,” Stove says, and everybody groans. “Knock knock.”
Camille braces themselves. “Who’s there?”
“Ouija.”
“Ouija who?”
“Ouija mean, you don’t love me any more?” Stove laughs. Some of us muster a bemused smile. “Wow, tough crowd,” he says, making himself laugh even more.
“Why is she here?” Peter asks, his eyes flicking over to the living people. It’s uncertain exactly who he’s talking about, but I’d hazard a guess at his wife.
“Need two fleshies to operate the board,” Trystan says, slapping him on the back.
Peter’s expression remains impassive.
Eventually, after a bit of kerfuffling, triple?checking the locks on the suite’s doors, and settling catlike onto the plush, antique, but now bloodless rug, the two women laugh.
“This is so weird,” Jazz says. “Like, okay, not that I don’t want to be as thorough in this investigation as I can, but I honestly never imagined it would involve a seance as part of my enquiries.”
“It’s a very strange time,” Helga agrees. She’s been wearing a subtle smile since she arrived in the room. “I knew Gary would get to the bottom of this.”
Jazz opens her mouth to speak, but her words are drowned out by Trystan clapping his hands together and announcing his departure.
“Right. Coming, Josh? Don’t want to be here when anything gets figured out. Don’t want to accidentally . . .”
I shoot him a wink.
“Ah, don’t tell me you’re buying into this unfinished business horseshit as well?” Camille says, but Pixie gives the boys a thumbs?up as they leave.
Everyone else finds a spot around the rug to sit cross-legged. Okay, haven’t done that since I was a kid, but it’s worth a try. Now that I’m an expert in sitting and all.
Yeah, cross-legged is stupidly hard.
“So . . . I simply talk to Gary?” Jazz says to Helga. They’re kneeling opposite each other, the Ouija board between their knees.
“I guess so. I chat to my husband a lot. I don’t know if he ever hears me, though,” Helga says.
“Maybe we’ll find out today,” Jazz says.
She clears her throat and lifts her head so that she’s directing her focus to the top half of the room, even though we’re all on the carpet at her eye level.
Or lower, in Stove’s case, since he’s decided to lie out on his tummy, rest his face on his hands, and kick his feet up in the air behind him.
“Hi, Gary,” Jazz says after a monumental pause.
“Wow, this is weird. Okay, here goes. My name is Jazmin Zhou and I work for Cornwall Police based in the Helzephron station. I . . .” She shakes her head.
“I’ve been listening to your podcasts, and I have to say, I really didn’t think ghosts could produce anything like that. ”
It’s very clear from the way she keeps glancing over at Helga, the frequent pauses she takes, and the slight smirk she wears on one corner of her mouth, that Jazz doesn’t believe in any of this ghost shit.
It’s hard to work out whether she thinks Helga is pranking her, or someone else. I get it, I’d be sceptical too. That she even turned up with a Ouija board is a damn sight better than I would’ve done.
“Nevertheless,” she says anyway. “It’s been very entertaining and enlightening.
In your email, you mentioned quite a few other deaths.
We have made a note of the names, and we’re very interested to find out what happened with those too, but for now I’m mostly concerned with .
. . your death, Gary, and Jean Johnson’s. ”
She looks at Helga, who nods encouragingly. They place a finger each on the planchette.
“Gary, are you here?” Helga says much more confidently than Jazz was speaking a moment ago.
“Ope, I’m up!” Pixie scoots closer to the board and slides her fingertips between the women’s. She grunts as she pushes the planchette to the “yes” tile.
“Bro!” Jazz says, pulling her hands away, panicking, and placing them back. “That’s . . .”
They reset it to the centre.
“Are there others with you?” Helga asks.
Pixie moves it to “yes” again.
Jazz gasps. “You’re moving that?” Her eyes dart about the space.
Helga shakes her head. “Not me,” she whispers, then raises her voice. “How many others are with you?”
“Does she mean right now, or in total? Because if she means in total . . . well, I actually don’t know how many ghosts there are in this hotel. There’s a lot. One can never really be sure,” Jeanie says.
“Just tell them five,” Peter says, and Pixie moves it to the number five. “There are five others besides Gary in this room. If she meant total number of ghosts, she should have said so. In a yes-no game, you need to be more deliberate with your words.”
Trystan’s not here, so I have no one to share a secret “let’s talk about this twerp later” look with. Instead, my eyes meet Camille’s, which is a bad decision since Camille had been staring at the magician as though he’d just guffed, eyebrows knotted, lip curled, teeth slightly bared.
I snort with laughter. All eyes flick to me.
“Is Peter Roskelly with you?” Helga asks, oblivious to what’s occurring with the ghosts.
Pixie looks at Pete. “Want me to tell her? I could move it to the ‘maybe’ bit. Not done ‘maybe’ before.”
Peter shakes his head. “Be honest with the poor woman.” He’s irritable now, and that’s all my fault. “She knows I’m here anyway. Otherwise, she wouldn’t . . .”
He doesn’t finish his sentence, but something about his words, or the way he says them, ring uncomfortably inside my chest, almost controlling. I tuck that notion away for later dissection.
When Pixie moves the planchette to “yes,” Helga doesn’t react. She doesn’t smile, doesn’t frown. Doesn’t show any sign she’s acknowledged our answer.
“Gary,” Jazz says softly. “Do you know who killed Jean?”
I shake my head, and Pixie slides the planchette over to “no.”
Both Jazz and Helga sigh quietly.
“Spell out soon,” I tell Pixie, and the women read out the letters as they appear.
“S?O?O?N. Soon.”
“Was your death an accident, Gary?” Jazz says.
“Oh, for fuck’s sake.” Pixie moves over to “no” without my confirmation.
“Was it suicide?”
“No.”
“Kelsey Cobbledick and Jean Johnson were in a romantic relationship before she died. They were childhood best friends,” Jazz says. “Did he kill her?”
Everyone looks at Jeanie, who rushes over to the window and pretends she’s found something on the horizon that requires her full attention.
“Cat’s out of the bag now, eh?” Stove says, flippering his feet like an ’80s teenager gossiping on the phone.
“Move it to ‘no,’” I say to Pixie, and then I get her to spell out the word alibi. Thankfully, it’s short.
“He didn’t,” Jazz repeats. She huffs and glances up at the ceiling rose. “Is there anything you would like us to know? Do you have any questions for us?”
“Yes,” I say, jumping up and dashing over to the board to assist Pixie.
“What do you want to know?” Jazz says.
Damn, how are we going to communicate this?
Pixie’s exhausted from pushing that tiny thing about and I’m not sure I’ll be much help.
Magnus could probably talk with the women if I figured out how to summon him, though he told me he couldn’t mess about in other people’s lives because of his curse, and he’d also be disturbingly free-swinging.
“Stove! You can make your voice heard by fleshies?” I ask, but Stove’s already shaking his head.
“Not enough for a full conversation,” he says, and disappointment sinks deep within me. “I can do this, though. Watch . . .” He sits up, then cups his hands around his mouth, and shout whispers, “Jaaaazzzz.”
Jazz’s head whips towards Stove’s location.
“Cool, huh?” he says. “Jaaaazzz.”
“Gary, is that you?” she asks.
“Nooooooo,” Stove whispers back. He looks at us. “Can’t do anything more than that, really.”
It’s clear from the women’s lack of response that they didn’t hear his last words.
“Oh, I have an idea!” I get Pixie to spell out “mirror,” and we all run into the bathroom.
It becomes apparent after a few seconds that Helga and Jazz have assumed we meant the ornate gilt mirror in the bedroom area.
“Turn the shower on, Pixie,” I say.
She closes her eyes, musters her rage, then opens her eyes again. “It’s not enough. I’m not angry enough. Stove, kiss me. Not on the lips.”
“Sure,” he says, then he grabs her face, and kisses her cheek wetly.
“Urgh! Still not enough!” she yells.
“Pixie! Think of someone you love.” I glance over at Jeanie, who stops her frantic pacing to look at me. “Someone once told me that love is a more powerful force than anger. It’s worth a try.”
Pixie nods, closes her eyes, and positions her hand above the shower lever.
Her eyes remain closed for ten, fifteen, twenty seconds, and I’m worried Helga and Jazz will have given up the ghost, as it were, and called the end to the session.
But then she opens them and slams her fist onto the lever so hard that the stream now firing out of the shower head is aggressive enough to pressure wash the tiled floor.
Within moments the room fills with hot and intensely moist air, and Jazz and Helga rush in.
“Who did you think of?” Stove asks Pixie.
I fully expect Pixie to say someone she knew from her band or someone from being alive, but she nudges him with her elbow. “You, actually. And Jeanie, and Trystan, and Camille.” She glances at me. “You too, Gary. All of you.”
Stove smiles, wipes away a fake tear. Or it could be real. Never quite sure with him. “Not Petey, though, huh?” he says in a whisper.
Condensation now completely covers the bathroom mirror. I press my fingertip against the glass and concentrate.
I can feel it. I can feel it. My finger won’t sail through the mirror. I can feel the glass. I repeat it in my head.
And . . .