The Skeleton Key Page 2

  Soon those who slept beyond those covered windows would wake.

  Given the opportunity, it was advisable to get home before this occurred. My timing was good.

  I slid my house key into the lock, and after a murmured word of encouragement, managed to open the heavy wooden front door. The entry lobby always seemed to have a tomblike chill and I pulled my collar close as I stepped inside. Perhaps it would warm up a bit come summer? There was little doubt this entry area would have once been grand. It boasted a high ceiling, beautiful tilework and a lift encased in an intricate – if broken – cage of ironwork. A circular staircase to one side snaked up to a mezzanine floor, barred by a large door I had not yet managed to open. Above me, the large lobby chandelier was impressive, though it hung askew, draped in layers of cobwebs and dust.

  At the sight of it I rolled my eyes.

  I’d lost count of the number of times I’d taken out my great-aunt’s ladder and straightened that chandelier. How many times had I dusted it and carefully wiped down the heavy, tear-shaped crystals? There had to be a draft somewhere, pushing the dust around. It was disappointing, but never mind.

  Schraaack.

  I took a step across the lobby and stopped.

  Thrrrraaaaaaack.

  There it was again. I’d heard those sounds before, always in the lobby. Was it something beneath the floor? A kind of movement? A trick of acoustics? I couldn’t identify the source of the noise and it seemed that every time I stopped to concentrate on it, the house grew quiet again. Like it knew that I was listening. But tonight was special and precious time was passing, I reminded myself. I made my way towards the old-fashioned lift, my heels clicking on the tiles. The elevator was waiting for me on the lobby floor and as soon as I pushed the call button, the doors opened with a squeak. I didn’t hear any weird noises from the lift, and I didn’t want to think about them for the moment anyway. Mind firmly on the evening ahead, I took the elevator to the top floor, watching the dusty landings pass as I went. I hadn’t attempted to clean those landings; it seemed decidedly unwise considering the others who lived on the middle floors. Plus, it wasn’t really my job, was it?

  On the top floor, I stepped up to the big midnight-blue doors of my great-aunt Celia’s penthouse. Knocking first was one of my great-aunt’s rules. I rapped my knuckles on the old door, slid my key in and stepped inside.

  ‘Hi, Great-Aunt Celia. I’m home,’ I declared cheerily.

  The penthouse was warm and comforting as I entered. I hung my coat on the mirrored Edwardian coat stand and slipped off my heeled shoes, sinking a couple of inches.

  Celia’s penthouse still had the power to take my breath away. It was a remarkable space, with high domed ceilings and sparking chandeliers. Unlike the chandelier downstairs, these ones – and in fact the entire penthouse – never collected dust. The floors of the penthouse were gleaming polished wood and the main room in which I now stood was filled with rows of bookcases holding thick, mysterious tomes, some in languages I didn’t even recognise. Each item of furniture was antique – Victorian, Edwardian, art deco. Tables and chairs bore animals and mythical creatures, carved into the wood. Glass-fronted sideboards held artefacts as varied and curious as any museum’s. A carved tusk. A Venus flytrap. A two-headed coin. Fertility statues. An art deco nymph. Butterflies and moths in gleaming glass domes. A live black widow spider in a glass cage. (That last item made me shudder.)

  Tonight Celia had the curtains open over the tall, arched windows to reveal a crimson and maroon sunset, set against the spectacular Manhattan skyline. The Empire State Building stood out, silhouetted in black. Soon I would be there with Luke, enjoying the view, I hoped.

  My great-aunt was seated, as usual, under the halo of her reading light in the lovely nook where she spent much of her time, surrounded by her books. I could see her elbow, and then she peeked her head around the corner.

  ‘Good evening, Pandora. What very good timing you have. The Crow Moon will rise soon,’ she said.

  She had her feet up on the leather hassock and, next to it, her cat Freyja was curled up. Freyja was pure white, an albino, with beautiful opal-coloured eyes. She lifted her head and purred at me contentedly, then snuggled into her furry paws again. She must have had a big day of adventure to be so tired.

  ‘The moon will be spectacular,’ I agreed and nodded enthusiastically. There was just enough time to quickly shower and change. I didn’t want to miss a minute of the evening ahead. ‘You didn’t need to send Vlad,’ I told my great-aunt. ‘It’s too generous of you.’

  ‘But you wouldn’t have arrived in time for sunset,’ she replied calmly, forever pragmatic.

  ‘Still . . .’ I began.

  My great-aunt’s slim ankles were encased in fine stockings – she always wore the kind with the line up the back – and now she uncrossed her ankles and slipped her feet into a pair of elegant, heeled slippers. She leaned forward and placed a feather in her book to mark the faded page. It was a leather-bound tome and one, I imagined, filled with great knowledge. She swung herself around and regarded me.

  Despite working at a fashion magazine I don’t know a whole lot about the fashion world, but, lucky for me, my great-aunt Celia is an unusually stylish woman. She was once a designer to the stars of Hollywood’s Golden Era and she was never seen in anything less than an ensemble worthy of the pages of Vogue – 1940s Vogue, specifically. Tonight she was wearing an emerald-green silk dress, cut on the bias, a thin black leather belt circling her willowy waist. Partially obscuring her face was a black widow’s veil, positioned at an angle over her jet-black locks. Celia did not like to be seen without her veil. Her husband, a photographer, had died many decades before and I supposed she remembered him with some fondness. Still, it seemed an eccentric habit. Beneath the mesh of the veil my great-aunt’s cheekbones were high and sculpted. Her lips were painted in a blood-red lipstick and her skin was as smooth as a pearl. Which is odd, as by my calculations she should be nearly ninety. This fact had caused some suspicion from me early on in our friendship, but I’d now pretty much grown used to this odd characteristic of hers. And others.

  Celia had encouraged me to apply for the position at Pandora after I’d been rejected by other publications. Some­how she’d just known I’d get this job.

  She has a spooky way of knowing things.

  ‘Oh, you know I have to keep Vlad busy,’ my great-aunt said, dismissing my protest with a wave of her manicured hand. ‘Where will you go tonight?’ She tilted her head and waited.

  I grinned. ‘The Empire State Building. We’ll walk.’

  ‘Oh, that will be a pleasant stroll,’ Celia said. ‘Do you think he’ll be able to get there okay?’

  I knew what she meant.

  ‘I think so. I feel positive about it,’ I said. She’d been encouraging me to go with my instincts and my instincts told me that tonight would be a breakthrough.

  ‘Good. Well, that should make for a very interesting evening then. Be sure to wear something warm in case it gets chilly.’

  I thought of Celia’s vintage fox stole. She’d been wearing it for decades and it did rather suit her, but though she’d offered to let me borrow it I didn’t feel all that comfortable wearing a whole animal around my neck. Maybe that was hypocritical of me, considering I wasn’t even a vegetarian.

  ‘The fox stole is on the coat stand if you want it,’ she said.

  I thought I detected the tiniest hint of mischief in her voice. Sometimes I swear Celia knows what I’m thinking.

  ‘That’s okay. Thanks anyway. I’d better get ready now,’ I told her and started walking to my room.

  ‘Deus wishes to see you tonight,’ she said, just as I had my hand on the doorknob.

  I stopped and turned. ‘Really? Deus?’ At the thought, my mouth became dry.

  It had been one month since I’d last seen Deus, on the night he’d saved me from falling off the roof. It had been a complicated situation but, suffice it to say, I was pretty uncomfortable
about owing him my life. Deus was very close to Celia, that was true, but still, he was Sanguine. You know – an undead person. Sanguine means of blood. The V word is very politically incorrect, and I don’t recommend using it unless you’d like to get necked.

  Deus was a very busy creature. And ancient. And pretty important from what I could tell. A meeting with him was no small thing. It almost certainly meant that something serious was up.

  ‘Do you know what he, um, wants to see me about?’

  ‘He says he needs to tell you in person.’

  ‘Oh,’ I said.

  ‘You go ahead and have a good time with your soldier tonight. If you’re back around midnight he’ll see you then,’ my great-aunt said.

  She said this as a statement. Not a possibility. I’d be back at midnight then.

  I went to my room and showered quickly in the ensuite, being careful not to wet my hair, then laid out some of my favourite clothes on my four-poster bed. My great-aunt had a stunning wardrobe and she was always giving me things to wear. I’d arrived from Gretchenville with barely the clothes on my back, and even those had not been very nice, but by now I had borrowed quite a collection of vintage dresses and tops. Incredibly, everything of Great-Aunt Celia’s fitted me, even the shoes. She said it was because I was a Lucasta, like her. If surnames were not so unwaveringly patriarchal, I would have been Pandora Lucasta instead of Pandora English, as Lucasta was my mother’s maiden name. Lucasta women are always the same size, Celia claimed. Lucasta women also had a few other things in common. They each had different ‘gifts’, as Celia called them.

  My unusual abilities sure hadn’t seemed like gifts when I was growing up. My father had admonished me for having an ‘overactive imagination’, and after I predicted the death of the local butcher and claimed to be in contact with him after he passed, people stopped visiting our family house. I was branded with the ‘weird kid’ tag and that was even before my parents died in an accident in Egypt when I was eleven. After that I was sent to live with my well-meaning but rather strict aunt Georgia, my dad’s sister. She was the local maths teacher in Gretchenville and not very popular. And she was even less tolerant than my father had been of my little ‘quirks’. Aunt Georgia even insisted on calling me Dora to save me the embarrassment of being named after the woman who was the ‘cause of all sin’. (Please don’t call me Dora. I beg you.) Truthfully, I had no hope of fitting in and my whole world was turned upside down when Great-Aunt Celia, my only other relative, invited me to live with her in Manhattan a few months ago. I’d imagined I’d be looking after a geriatric. How wrong I’d been.

  I’d never even met Celia before she’d sent me that letter. Now I wondered how I’d ever lived without her.

  For a moment I stood in my bedroom in Celia’s penthouse in a towel, my arms folded, considering my options. In only five minutes I had changed outfits three times. My date would not have cared how I was dressed, but I suppose I was nervous. Lieutenant Luke was always formally dressed. (He didn’t have much choice about that.) This was also the first time we were technically going out together so it felt like too special an occasion to simply wear my favourite jeans and T-shirt. In the end I decided on a simple but perfectly tailored silk dress, a sapphire-blue one my great-aunt had designed in the early 1950s. It buttoned at the chest and had a pussy bow at the neck, and the hem fell to just above my knees. I wore it with a pair of drop earrings and a comfortable pair of ballet flats. The flats were good walking shoes.

  I examined my reflection in the mirror on the oak dresser and patted down my naturally light brown hair. Good. It was pretty much under control. I stepped closer to my reflection. Funny, but now that Morticia had mentioned it, I could see that I did have a bit of a tan. I guess I’d been walking a lot to and from work. Should I bother with lipstick even though I hoped it wouldn’t stay on for long? Perhaps not. I frowned. Okay, maybe just a little. I patted on some red lip gloss with a finger and rubbed my lips together. The colour made my amber eyes a little brighter.

  Butterflies. There were butterflies in my stomach.

  The sun had set, and now the moon’s strength could be seen outside the open windows. I thought I felt it, too. There was an electricity in the atmosphere.

  Without further pause I cleared the clothes from my bed and straightened the covers out of habit. Then I knelt on the hardwood floor. A sword sat under the bed, wrapped in a thick velvet stretch of cloth. I grabbed it by the grip just below the hand guard and pulled it out. Carefully, I unwrapped the cloth to reveal the gleaming blade. The sword had a gentle curve and it was engraved with the initials of its owner.

  L.T.

  It was Second Lieutenant Luke Thomas’s cavalry sword. Holding it tightly by the grip, I stood up, closed my eyes and took a deep breath. ‘Lieutenant Luke,’ I said with purpose, and with some effort held his sword aloft.

  After a second – during which I had the usual flicker of doubt wondering if he would really come – a peculiar chill descended around me. On feeling that chill my heart sped up with excitement. My eyes were wide open now, and I watched as a white and nebulous form slowly materialised before me, gradually taking the shape of a man. The obsidian ring on my finger began to grow hot and the white form took hold of the sword in its spectral hands. There was a sudden flash of light and heat that passed from the ring all the way down my hand and through my entire body.

  I blinked slowly and when I opened my eyes Lieutenant Luke and I stood inches apart, his two strong hands over mine on the grip of his sword.

  He is a man. He is a full, flesh and blood man.

  I looked up into his handsome face and smiled broadly. ‘Hi, Luke.’

  ‘Good evening, Miss Pandora,’ he said in his formal way, his hands still closed over mine. His bright blue eyes took in my face like a man who’d spent weeks in the desert would gaze upon a glass of water.

  I grinned like an idiot.

  Luke unburdened me of the sword and glanced briefly at the tall, arched windows. ‘The moon is powerful tonight,’ he remarked and slid his shining sabre into the metal sheath on the leather belt he wore around his waist.

  ‘It is,’ I replied.

  Luke was dressed – as always – in the neatly pressed uniform of a Union soldier. It’s what he’d been buried in and when he was a ghost, which was most of the time, that was how I saw him. In the flesh like this, the uniform was all the more striking. His dark blue cap was emblazoned with a pair of golden swords, crossed in the centre. Beneath it, his sandy blond hair was long around the collar. Luke had sideburns, which had been popular in his day. His 1860s frockcoat fitted his masculine form beautifully, the gleaming buttons done up all the way to the neck. The uniform was tailored at his broad shoulders and it tapered in at his slim waist, cinched tight with the leather belt. He had been a second lieutenant in the Lincoln Cavalry and had died in battle at the start of the Civil War when he was only twenty-five years old.

  Somewhere along the way Luke’s spirit had ended up trapped in this mansion in Spektor. He didn’t really know why or how, and in our many discussions we’d talked about that mystery, and others, but on the night of the last full moon we’d discovered Luke’s missing sword in a storage trunk in the mansion and that had been something of a breakthrough. It seemed his sword was a kind of talisman for him and although we didn’t quite understand how it all worked yet, we guessed it was probably exhumed after his death by Dr Edmund Barrett, the paranormal scientist who apparently had considerable interest in raising the dead. Perhaps he’d been trying to communicate with Luke’s spirit? Perhaps he’d been trying to divine the future? Whatever his intentions – and whether he knew what he’d done or not – it seemed Dr Barrett had cursed Luke’s spirit to be trapped in the mansion he built.

  And on that same night we’d also discovered that when the moon was full, my obsidian ring and Luke’s sword appeared to act as amulets or talismans of some kind, allowing him to take human form again, if only for the night. That had been a rather
pleasant revelation.

  I could wait no longer. ‘Thank you for coming,’ I said and stretched up to circle my arms around his strong neck, marvelling at his solid form. I tilted my chin up, brought my mouth close to his, and when our lips finally met, flesh to flesh, I shut my eyes and felt a wave of pleasure and relief. Luke’s mouth was warm and soft. I’d missed the sensation. Though my feet were firmly planted, as we kissed I felt like I was lifting from the floor. Luke had that effect on me.

  Growing up, I’d always been able to communicate with spirits but never in my wildest fantasies had I imagined I would develop a crush on one.

  ‘Tonight we’re taking a walk,’ I said after catching my breath. My face felt warm and I knew my cheeks were extra rosy. I slid my arms around Lieutenant Luke’s firm waist.

  He tilted his head. ‘A walk?’

  I nodded.

  ‘Do you not wish to explore the mansion tonight?’

  Since my great-aunt had given me the special skeleton key, we’d been doing a fair bit of that each night, when I was not too tired from my day job. The mansion had many undiscovered secrets and Celia had said that Luke was my ‘spirit guide’. I didn’t fully know what that term meant, but there was no denying he’d spent a lot of time in the mansion and knew it better than I did. We had been exploring it as a team.

  ‘No,’ I said. ‘Tonight I just want to go on a normal date. I want to do the things normal people do.’

  I nearly said ‘things normal couples do’, but that seemed a bit simplistic, perhaps even presumptuous. Our relationship was complicated. Luke was my friend, my spirit guide, my confidant and tonight he was my date. There was no need to complicate it with more labels.

  ‘What sort of things do you wish to do, Miss Pandora?’ Lieutenant Luke asked, and cupped my hand in his.