Free Ghostsitters by Angie Sage

stiffly.
    â€œNo!” I said quickly. “No, I didn’t mean it was time for you to go to Catheter Cottage. I meant that it is time to go to the auction . It is time, Sir Horace,” I said very dramatically, “to get back what rightfully belongs to you!”
    â€œWhat rightfully belongs to me, Miss Spookie?” Sir Horace sounded puzzled.
    This was the moment I had been waiting for—the moment when I would tell Sir Horace my Big Plan. But sometimes Plans do not happen the way you plan them. Sometimes there are things that someone has not told you, so you make your Plan without, as Uncle Drac says, having all the bat poo on the shovel.
    But right then I didn’t know that. I pulled out the deed from my pocket and said, “Soon it really will be your home, Sir Horace. Because we are going to go to the auction and we will show them this ! It proves that all this”—I waved my arms around like they doon airplanes when they tell you how to escape—“still belongs to you !”

    â€œIf only that were true,” Sir Horace groaned.
    â€œBut it is true,” I told him and waved the deed in front of his visor just in case he had not seen it.
    Sir Horace groaned and put his head in his hands, which I found very annoying since Wanda and I had just spent a very long time putting it back on. It is a bad habit that Sir Horace has gotten into; he says it helps him think. But it doesn’t help anyone else think.

    â€œThis deed is worthless ,” boomed Sir Horace’s head.
    â€œNo it’s not,” I said. “It’s your castle. The deed says so.”
    â€œAlas, it is not. It belongs to FitzMaurice. Itis his .” The head let out a horrible moan. “He paaaaaid me for it.”
    Now I was really mad at Sir Horace. “You have been telling me lies, Sir Horace.” I looked at him sternly. “That is not what you said before.”
    â€œI only discovered the truth yesterday,” said his head with a big sigh.
    â€œYesterday?” asked Wanda. “What happened yesterday?” Which was exactly the question I was going to ask.
    â€œ I am chief detective here, Wanda,” I told her. “So I ask the questions.” And before she could disagree I said, “What happened yesterday, Sir Horace?”
    â€œYou know what happened yesterday, Miss Spookie. The ring that you are wearing. That happened yesterday.”
    â€œYes, where did you get that ring, Araminta?” asked Wanda suspiciously. “What have you been doing?”
    â€œIt’s nothing to do with me ,” I said, feeling like someone who suddenly realizes they are the prime suspect when they thought they had only been asked to the police station for a friendly chat over a cup of tea.
    â€œIt’s always something to do with you,” said Wanda.
    â€œIt is not !”
    â€œStop!” boomed Sir Horace’s head, which sounded horribly like Nurse Watkins. “I will explain.”
    So we sat in that smelly old ruin, with one of the pink fairy’s wings slowly ticking its way toward her right knee and six o’clock, and we listened to the terrible story of what hadhappened five hundred years ago in the caves far below us.
    Sir Horace put his head next to him on an old bat poo sack, then he leaned against the wall and his head began to speak.
    â€œI shall tell you the terrible tale of how I became a ghost.” His voice echoed around the keep and sounded really spooky. Wanda and I shivered and I got goose bumps all over.
    â€œThe FitzMaurices were brigands and thieves,” Sir Horace began. “They lived in a huge castle in the next valley, but that was not enough for them—they wanted my castle too. One night Fang ran off, which he often did at a full moon. Edmund and I went out looking for him and we were ambushed by a party of FitzMaurices. They were a nasty bunch, Miss Spookie. Armed to the teeth with cudgels, swords,