The Ghost and Miss Demure by Melanie Jackson

Author:Melanie Jackson [Melanie Jackson]
Format: epub, mobi
ISBN: 9781428509009
Publisher: Dorchester Publishing Co., Inc.
Published: 2011-03-06T02:51:14+00:00

Karo made her way across the shell drive. The sound was not cheerful. Every crunch reminded her of the last time she’d been out grinding across the sea’s dead bones. Now, there was an unpleasant old phrase that people didn’t use anymore. Dead bones. There was a cemetery full of human bones just behind the cookhouse, too. She had never previously been troubled by the thought of the dead being close at hand, but the thought of old Vellacourt perhaps hanging out in his family crypt was not a pleasant one. Of course, far better the crypt than the library. What had she seen that day?

Karo ignored her sniveling id as she pushed her reluctant limbs past an overgrown rhododendron and walked up the shadowed step of the first outbuilding she came to. Giving a businesslike shove of the narrow door—she could be Clint Eastwood when she had to—she nearly fell on her face. The hasp wasn’t latched and someone had oiled the hinges. Surprising.

The inside of the old cookhouse was dark, and her graceless entrance had stirred up a smell of melancholy and disuse. The atmosphere was even less appealing than she expected, but that might have been doubled because she was half-prone on the packed earth floor and churning up a great deal of dust and droppings into an unhealthful miasma that made her wonder about the Hunta virus.

She had plenty of time while climbing back to her feet to be grateful that Tristam had convinced her to bunk in the main house. She hadn’t taken up archaeology because she didn’t like being in dirt or dealing with critters that had more than four legs or less than two. This bleak hole had both filth and a probable collection of creatures with improper leg counts. The dust was sticking to her sweaty body with aggravating persis tence, and it itched fiercely. Finishing up her search as quickly as possible, she would rush back to the main house where she could have a wash in antiseptic conditions.

Upright, Karo surveyed the moldy room, letting her eyes grow accustomed to the new dusk. She grimaced at the dozen saucer-sized daddy longlegs hanging on the wall in a living wallpaper. Arachnids, her least favorite too-manylimbed creatures—it figured that they would be here in abundance. At least this kind wasn’t dangerous since their fangs were too small to penetrate the skin. She was a bit prepared for rural perils. Of course, she had other things to deal with. Like, a ghost?

Bravely, she turned her back on the eight-legged abominations and considered the room with an artist’s eye. The space would be marginally brighter when the one tiny window was scraped clean of what she had mistakenly thought were rotted curtains but in actuality were cobwebs and other filth grown dense from years of neglect. “Ugh.” Nothing was going to make the place cheery. An electric light might help the gloom, but it smelled swampy and inhabited by unhealthful objects.

“What did you expect of

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