I was uneasy, but resolved.

I told Pendelton and Elisa what I would need them to do, while giving them only the information they needed to know. Then I asked to speak with Thomas, alone.

After I knocked on the bedroom door, a small voice said, "Come in."

I sat down in the chair next to his bed, where he was sitting, holding a small book on his lap.

"How are you feeling?"

He shrugged and closed the little book of children's rhymes. "Things are very bad, aren't they?"

Rather than lie, I decided not to answer. "I need you to do me a favor," I said. "I need you to ask the nurse to stay with you, and look after you."

He angled his head and looked at me very thoughtfully for several moments. I began to feel uncomfortable. "Is this a trick? Are you trying to capture her?"

Clever boy. Under other circumstances, he may have been correct. "No," I said. "In fact, I'm trying to catch the bad one and I need her help to keep you safe while I do it."

"The bad one? You mean the one who always feels angry? The one who's trying to... bother me?"

So he did realize it. I nodded.

"The nurse doesn't like him at all." He made a face.

"So, will you ask her to help us?"

"I can ask her, but..."

"What?"

"I think the bad one is much stronger than her. I think she's a bit afraid of him, too." I thought about what Gertrude said. The brother's pull was strong. But so was mine. We'd see what happened when our forces were opposed.

Thomas put the book under his pillow. "Hm," he said, "maybe the new one can help also."

"The new one?" I asked cautiously.

"Yes. She came when you came, I think." He looked at me expectantly.

I felt a prickle at the back of my neck. "When I came?"

"Yes," he said. "Do you remember when I drew a picture for you?" I nodded. "She showed me that, so I drew it."

I had long ago pushed my ghosts aside, but now my long-held suspicions were verified. They were still there. They were still following me. Or at least one was.

"What else does she show you?"

"Well, she never stays for long and I usually don't understand the pictures. Mostly they're blurry." He picked up a pile of papers from the floor beside the bed and shuffled through until he found the one he was looking for. It was a simple drawing, in crayon, of a circular form with a line attached, which led upwards and disappeared off the page. It looked all the world to me like a yo-yo.

I wasn't prepared to ask more questions.

"Anyway, why do I need them to protect me?" Thomas asked. "What are you going to do?"

I stood up. "I'm going to have a little face to face chat with our unfriendly ghost." I tried to sound untroubled.

He crawled out of the bed then, saying, "Wait a moment," and went to the windowsill. Then he carried the small snail shell to me and solemnly placed it in my hand. "For good luck," he said.

**********

It was well into the afternoon when I seated myself in the drawing room before the fire. Pendelton hung further back, anxiously watching, for I'd told him only that I was going to act as bait for the ghost this time and he should only take action if I were in severe distress. The children were secured in their rooms partaking in rainy day activities, and Elisa was with Thomas. I hoped the nurse was, too.

The bones were laid out around me on the rug, as were the photographs. Any objects that I hoped could be used to form bonds with the ghost.

I arranged my tools easily to hand as well, having reinfused the dampening cloth. The snail shell for good luck rested in my pocket. I put on my gloves and took a few deep breaths.

In my younger days, after leaving school, I had tried many paths to tame my ghosts, settle my mind, to live an unhaunted life as it were, on the path to becoming an esoteric scientist.

Now, I sat and gazed into the fire as an elderly wisewoman, a shaman, had once taught me so many years ago.

As a child, I was like Thomas, welcoming and unafraid of the entities that crowded round my bed, and at the edges of my senses. They were sometimes wary, sometimes curious, often playful and active, but they never harmed me.

Yet I learned that having ghosts caused misery.

Ghosts drove my parents from me. Ghosts brought the priests and doctors. Ghosts got me sent to a puritanical boarding school full of superstitions and lies.

I gazed into the flickering flames, trying to let all these thoughts pass by, like boats on a current.

After speaking with Thomas, the revelation that my ghosts still haunted me filled me with anxiety. Now that I knew that at least some ghosts were sapient, I wondered what they thought of me for pushing them away all these years.

I reached out my awareness, visualizing it spread out around me like ripples in a pond. Like ripples in the pond that my sister drowned in, while I played in the grass, unaware.

I shoved the thought from my mind. Not now.

I focused on my own breathing and continued to push out my consciousness, looking to meet an other. Some sentience on the ethereal horizon.

There was something there. I tugged at it.

As I now began to look around me, my ethereal vision overlapped with my physical sight. I saw that the room had faded as if behind a curtain of muslin fog. And within this fog were shapes and shadows and glowing lights, but they all seemed far away. I pulled and they swirled around me.

One of them pulled back.

I stood up slowly, my limbs both heavy and floating, as if underwater. The cool air enveloped me as I followed an amorphous warm light. A light like springtime sun. It was playful and felt like laughter. It was familiar.

The other forms floated about at a distance as I followed this ghost through the doorway and into the main hall. It began to move up the stairs.

But wait. My thoughts were hazy. I was supposed to reel in the ghost, wasn't I? Catch it? I was supposed to be in control. I felt the snail shell in my pocket and had a momentary realization that my tools were still in the drawing room, on the floor before the fire.

I resisted the pull and turned back.

As I did, I felt another force at work and it was as if an icy wind rushed down the stairs. It was strong. I looked to see. The figure of light I'd been following paused on the steps in the face of a shadowy figure looming at the top. The figure from the cliff.

I felt true dread as I heard the ghostly words echoing in my head. He said, "I do as I like. I think I'll keep the boy. After all, no one stops me."

Nausea washed over me. I felt dizzy. Then the light rushed up the stairs straight at the shadowy form, dispersing it.

They both were gone and I stumbled backwards into Mr. Pendelton's arms, shaken and momentarily disoriented.

I recovered my senses quickly. Pendelton's face was grave and pale.

"I didn't dare disturb you in your trance, but I followed in case you needed assistance," he explained, his hand still on my arm. "I-- I heard what it said."

He had heard it, too? If he was indeed a sensitive, then perhaps my abilities amplified his own. Gertrude would surely find that of interest, as well, but I had little time to think about it.

I barged up the stairs to the spot where the beastly ghost had been. Pendelton came behind me. 

I was more attuned now. I didn't need any etheric rod to sense the ghostly residue. And at least for the moment, I thought I could follow its trail.

We made haste to Thomas's room where I threw open the door at once. Elisa sat on the bed with the boy. He leaned back against her, rocking forward and back as he drew with pencil and crayons. A hazy aura shrunk back into the far corner, but it didn't disappear entirely.

"It couldn't get in," Elisa whispered. Her face looked gaunt and I couldn't tell if it was from nerves or just an effect of the lamplight next to her.

Thank Heavens. I glanced at the ghostly form in the corner. The nurse had protected him.

Then Elisa said, "Because something else did, I think." She looked down at the boy with concern. "He's not himself right now."

I approached and knelt down next to the bed, trying to look at Thomas's face. He was entirely focused on his drawing and acted unaware of my presence, as he gently rocked.

He colored hastily. Then he tossed the paper aside and started on a new one. I picked up the discarded one, turning it left and right. It seemed like a bunch of small shapes inside one larger cylindrical one. I couldn't make heads or tails of it.

"There's something you haven't told us, Miss Holte," Pendelton said quietly. "There's more than one ghost here, isn't there?"

I looked up. "Yes," I said. "There's one who looks after him." Pendelton said nothing, but the way his eyes scanned the far side of the room made we wonder what he saw. "He calls her the nurse." A momentary look of surprise crossed Pendelton's face.

"And what was that other...that thing you were following in your trance? Was that a... spirit guide... or something?"

Suddenly, Thomas looked at me with clear eyes. "Mella?" I froze. No one had called me that in a very long time. And only one person ever had.

He held the paper out for me. "She's gone again," he said, "but... this is for you."

The drawing featured the same girl as before--I recognized the checkered dress and brown hair, the one Thomas said was me, standing in grass with purple flowers and brown spikes and little blue dots. Yet he had colored over the whole thing with a haze of white crayon.

I reached out to take it and as we both were touching the paper, I had what I can only call a vision. It was a momentary flash. An image of myself, seven years old, playing with my yo-yo in the grass. I saw myself there, in my checkered pinafore, behind irises and cattails and closer to me, tiny blue forget me nots. There were still some of the little blue flowers clutched in my hand, as I was dragged under the water.

My body lurched and I gasped for air, startling Pendelton and Elisa, as I snapped out of the vision. That was the last thing Annie saw in her short life. Me playing among the flowers.

Thomas was looking at me with concern.

In that moment, I didn't care who was around or what they thought. I put my face down on the boy's bed and cried.

I felt his small hand on my arm. "It's okay, Mella," he said. "It's okay."