Chapter 3: Rory - Entities to Lovers

I was six years old when I realized I could speak to ghosts.

My mom brought me to the Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum and spotted me speaking to one of the paintings. At least, that was what it looked like to her. I saw a shimmer of light in front of me. It moved fluidly, but spoke clearly. The spirit told me my shoes were pretty and I reminded her of someone she once knew. I didn’t know it was a ghost at first, but once my mother told me there was no one there, I knew I had a gift.

I was thirteen when I realized not all spirits had good intentions. It started as a desperate communication session with…anything, to try and gain some clarity on my first crush. A simple conversation turned into a lifelong antagonist with a whoosh of cold, like fingernails trailing up my spine, snaking around my throat, a hot breath beside my ear as I made contact with a spirit—Mara.

She wasn’t just a spirit. She was an attachment.

Mara was unlike any other entity I’d spoken to by then—and is unlike anything else I’ve encountered to date. It was strong, a full-body channel that made me feel powerful and unstoppable at first. I spilled my heart and feelings, too, only for her to find every weak spot in my brain and dig her claws in, uttering words I have never forgotten.

Oh, little lonely girl. You’ll never be enough for anyone.

She trailed me like a black cloud in my peripheral vision, a ringing in my ears I couldn’t get rid of. She followed me to school, became the one bully I couldn’t escape even at home, and didn’t let me rest. Every quiet moment was filled with mockeries and manipulation that whittled my confidence down to nothing.

My mom found a more experienced medium to sever the connection, but she has a way of finding me whenever things seem to be going too well.

She was an uninvited date to prom, convincing me my crush only asked me to go as a joke. She tormented me after every good date and reminded me it could never end well. She comes to me when I debate taking a leap of faith. It instilled a core schema that something about me was so imperfect, unlovable, and incapable. She made me believe if I was too happy, she’d remind me why I didn’t deserve to be.

It’s the only time I’ve ever felt an omen quite like that…

Until now.

I’ll show you.

The words are a ghostly murmur in my ear, and I don’t have to ask to know it’s the voice of Temperance Talbot. If we’ve come in and destroyed something, we’re making a mess of more than the parlor. Talbot House’s energy is suffocating and heavy, and during tours it creeps up my spine, like it’s turning my neck where I’m supposed to look.

But it has never spoken to me.

Temperance Talbot plays hard to get, but in this moment, as Ezra and I sprawl on the parlor floor, both staring in horror at a broken bottle and toppled altar, her message is clear.

I’ll show you.

“Rory…” Ezra’s voice is cloudy and distant in my ears. “Rory! Kitty! Either of you!”

I shake out of my panic-trance when he flagrantly disregards my personal bubble by snapping his fingers in front of my face. Ezra climbs to his knees and props the table up without me, then sighs in relief when I shake back to reality.

“Glad you’ve decided to join us. Come on. We have to clean this up.”

He’s right, as much as I hate to admit it. The tour group is waiting for us outside and we need to make it look like we were never here—and like we didn’t commit property destruction. Or worse…disrupt an angry spirit.

“You…” I seethe. “You did that on purpose. You were trying to trip me.”

“I absolutely did not,” he insists. “It’s not my fault your dress is way too long.”

“It is of the era. You should know, Professor.”

Ezra scrubs a hand over his face and shakes his head. “There is no earthly reason to be speaking in your accent right now.”

I suppose I hadn’t even noticed it, but theatrics are beside the point. Inside, I’m spiraling. I avoid mistakes at all costs. I keep to myself and stick to what I know. I follow the wisdom of tarot cards and astrology, not my head or intuition. And this is why I can’t be trusted to not fuck up.

I’m frozen. Ezra and I linger in silence. He looks to me like I’m supposed to figure this out, and I suppose I am. It’s my mom’s store and company, after all. But I’ve already made enough of a mess tonight.

Ezra quits waiting for me. “Shut the parlor doors.”

I take his direction.

“Do you remember how all of this was arranged?” he asks.

“No?” I reply. I should know this. “Do you?”

“No. I mean, yes. Just start putting it back and we’ll figure it out. We don’t have time to waste.”

As I scoop up the scrying bowl and tarot cards, one pops out of the deck and flutters to the ground.

Judgment.

The first thing I learned when I started reading cards was if a card jumps at you, it wants to be seen. I wish the cards were silent right about now. I already feel judged. The one thing working in our favor is that Talbot House doesn’t have cameras, due to a lack of working outlets and shoddy electrical wiring.

“We have to get this right. If the curator figures out we broke something, my mom…” I trail off. I shuffle Judgment back into the deck with a sharp riffling sound that draws Ezra’s attention. It’s a tic. I’m always carrying a deck with me, and while this one isn’t mine, it’s something to do with my hands. It comes out worse when I’m nervous. Which is often. “We’re only allowed in here because of years of goodwill my mom’s built up with the museum.”

“All right,” Ezra assures me, taking the cards from my hand and placing them on the altar. “We’ll do the best we can.”

I place the scrying bowl and goblet on the left side of the case. But I don’t know where the bottles go. Shit, where do the bottles go? I place them on the opposite side and back away from the altar like it’s on fire.

“I think we did good? Hopefully they don’t notice one is missing. We have to take the bottle with us. We might be able to superglue it or something.”

“Rory, I don’t think this bottle is actually Temperance’s,” Ezra says, eyeing the bisected bottle questioningly.

“Who cares? We broke it anyway!”

“Sure, but, like, destruction of property that costs five bucks is different from breaking an actual artifact!”

“We can argue about the merits of historical preservation later,” I grumble. “Put it in your pocket.”

Ezra sneaks the broken bottle into his jacket pocket, then checks to make sure it’s not poking out. God help us if he forgets it’s in there and stabs himself…

“And don’t cut yourself—” I add.

“Aw, you do care about me.”

“No, I don’t want you to get blood on the carpets. That’s DNA.”

And potentially a workers’ comp claim my mom doesn’t need.

“How kind. Are we good now?” he asks.

The problem is, I don’t know. Because even if we got the altar close enough and no one ever notices, I’m going to keep hearing Temperance Talbot’s snarling voice in my ear until I understand what it means. I’m not exactly a practicing witch, but it doesn’t take a genius to know nothing good comes from a place that never speaks to you suddenly having something to say.

“We have to be. The tour is waiting for us,” I say to convince myself.

I lock up the house and follow Ezra out. We board the trolley and Vic eyes both of us with deep suspicion. He’s been around since day one of Ye Olde Spirit Tours and my mom seems to have a soft spot for him, but in all those years, I don’t think I’ve ever heard him speak a word. So, even if we did seem suspicious, maybe our secret is safe with Vic.

The hard part now is acting normal. Vic takes off, returning us to the shop, and it’s the first time I’m not able to focus on the facts. It’s the first time I’m grateful I’m co-touring with the human encyclopedia. Ezra picks up the mic.

“Sorry for the delay,” he says, “it seemed we had an attachment we needed to sever before getting on our way. Right, Kitty?”

I shudder at the word attachment. Temperance’s threat will haunt me even if there’s distance between us.

“Kitty?” Ezra repeats. “Oh, heavens! We’ve lost her!”

I jerk back to reality. “I’m here.”

“Thank goodness,” he sighs. “I feared I’d have to talk about the Great Molasses Flood of 1919 all by my lonesome.”

I banter with him as much as I can, but I’m not sure I’m back on this plane of existence yet. Finally, we park outside Ye Olde Spirit Shop. My mom’s closed for the evening and the apartment lights above are on. She’s probably got a glass of wine poured and an episode of Angel City Noir—her newest obsession—queued up.

“And that brings our evening haunt to a conclusion. My dear souls, thank you so much for joining Kitty and me on this adventure. We hope you’ve enjoyed traveling with us, and if you did, we greatly appreciate tips. I’m paying off the local gravedigger to keep letting me out of the coffin. His prices just went up,” Ezra prattles. “In this economy!”

This is the time when I should be jingling my urn and begging for more tips, trying to outperform him in the encore, but I’m much more worried about some kind of cosmic interference we’ve caused than my irritating try-hard coworker.

“Nevertheless, I hope we see you soon again at Ye Olde Spirit Tours!” he concludes.

The guests disembark and, in a haze, I reach for my urn and extend it to the guests as they pass. I fake my best smile and shake the urn purposefully, so no one notices my hands actually shaking. The last customer steps off and Ezra turns to me.

“All right, are you actually possessed?” he asks.

“What? No.”

Ezra leans against the support beam beside him, folding his tips into order, each dollar bill facing the same way. Once he’s done, he licks the pad of his finger and counts through the spoils, occasionally raising his eyebrows in pride as he hits several twenties in a row. “Not bad.”

After a full shift, his already messy hair is windblown and effortlessly tousled and his cheeks are pink and chilled.

“How’d you do?” he inquires. Vic glares at both of us, signaling to get off the bus.

“I don’t care about tips,” I argue. Ezra steps off before me and, shockingly, offers me a steady hand. I’m grateful for it, following our séance table snafu.

“What? You cared a lot about tips all night. Do you know you lost?”

“No,” I argue. “I’m worried about us getting in trouble for defiling Temperance Talbot’s altar.”

Ezra runs his tongue along the inside of his teeth and rubs his jaw as we reach the storefront. “We cleaned up as best we could. I’m sure this isn’t the first time something’s fallen off the table.”

His nerves are different from mine. He’s worried about something practical, like money or losing his job. I’m worried we’ve pissed off a notoriously vengeful ghost. But the longer I think about it, the more I question what someone like Temperance could really do.

She hardly manifests as a full apparition, so her energies can’t be that powerful.

Can they?

“Hey, That’s So Raven,” Ezra says. He crosses his arms in front of his chest as I hesitate at the threshold. “You coming inside?”

“I’m not that kind of psychic.” I follow him into the store. He makes a beeline to the dressing room, untying his ascot with a single hand. “I don’t have premonitions.”

“If you did, you might have picked a shorter skirt.”

“I’m telling my mom you need extra harassment training.”

I remove the bird from my bun and place it inside my locker. Ezra dips into his jacket pocket and slides out the broken bottle.

“You didn’t get rid of it?” I gasp.

“No,” he says. “I tried, but Vic was looking at me all weird. He’s like a gargoyle. Doesn’t move, but he’s always watching.”

“Well, Vic doesn’t like you.”

“Are you in competition with him?”

“No,” I scoff. “I know I’m miles ahead.”

I’m even further ahead now. I’ve never had any kind of mishap on a tour, but the one night I have to share the stage with him, we break antique relics and anger a vengeful spirit.

I take the broken bottle and slide it into the bureau inside my alcove. “I’ll try to fix it tomorrow, but until then…let’s just…try to act normal, okay?”

“I’m not the one you need to lecture on acting normal.”

“Ezra, please.”

Ezra wipes off his makeup, leaving a smudge of black eyeliner at the corners of his dark eyes. He swaps his embroidered jacket for a winter coat and hangs his backpack on his shoulder. The bag—made of dark canvas, with enamel pins fastened to the front of it—has seen better days. The pin that sticks out to me today is a little knife saying “Et Tu, Brute?” It just reinforces that “history guys” are weird. They’re the reason most bookstore history sections only focus on World War II and everything Soviet, because those are the kinds of guys who are so convinced they could survive a gladiator battle or could have single-handedly reversed the course of the Vietnam War.

“What?” he asks.

“When we knocked over the altar…” I hesitate, but when his brows rise and he bites down on his bottom lip in such a patronizing way, I second-guess myself. I shouldn’t count on him to listen. “I…You know what? Never mind.”

“Fine, then.” He raises his hands in surrender. “It’s been a pleasure haunting with you tonight, Ms. O’Brien.”

I groan. “Can you go home?”

“Jesus,” he scoffs, “a guy can’t even say goodbye? Have fun with your creepy bird.”