Free A Haunting Is Brewing: A Haunted Home Renovation and a Witchcraft Mystery Novella by Juliet Blackwell Page B

sepia-toned family portrait off the wall so we could compare the dolls to the faces in the photo.
    “Who opened that door?” I asked Lily, the back of my neck tingling as I noted the hatch to the attic was open. The animals were clearly up there—we could hear them overhead.
    “I . . . I’m sure it’s nothing to worry about,” said Lily, sounding evasive. I studied her as she climbed the attic stairs. Could she have somehow opened the door with witchcraft. . . . ?
Get a grip, Mel
.
First you aren’t sure you believe her at all, and now you think she’s capable of opening doors long-distance?
    “Maybe . . . maybe someone left it open.”
    Lily looked at me over her shoulder as though she could read my mind. “It could have been my pig. He’s . . . remarkably capable.”
    “Your—?”
    I was cut off by the sight of our pets gazing at the mannequins. Dog was doing that strange growling/mewling sound he sometimes did when confronted with spirits. Oscar-the-pig was trotting back and forth excitedly, his little hooves tapping loudly, as though he could barely contain himself.
    Lily nodded. “It’s as we thought. Definitely something about these poppets. . . . Not those two,” she said, pointing to one man and one woman, “but these here.” She grouped the suspect dolls: one male, three females.
    We consulted the photo.
    “The two on the end are empty—they must have been Thaddeus’s sister and her husband. These here are Thaddeus, Miriam, Betsy, and Charity,” said Lily. “Can you communicate with them?”
    I grounded myself as I’d been taught, doing a body scan and establishing myself as part of this earth, this time period. Next I began rubbing the gold ring at my neck. Closing my eyes and regulating my breathing. Clearing my mind to allow for errant vibrations or energies. Calling out psychically.
    I opened one eye. The four Spooner family members were staring at me, heads cocked, glassy eyes wide.
    They weren’t talking.
    “No luck, sorry. If they don’t want to communicate, I can’t force them. Like I said . . . I’m really not much good at this.”
    Lily shrugged. “None of this is easy or straightforward. My training is all about how to affect reality while maintaining control, but I’ve been studying most of my life and I still can’t always get the results I was hoping for. Keep working at it; you’ll get better.”
    “I suppose,” I said without much enthusiasm.
    “It’s a privilege to have contact with those beyond the veil, Mel,” said Lily. “A rare gift.”
    “I’d rather win the lottery,” I said. “So anyway, as I told you, Reginald’s doll is missing. Given what Herve told us, I’m thinking we should check his trunk for magic tricks.”
    “Good idea,” Lily said.
    I turned toward the corner where the old steamer trunk sat. Scratch that:
used
to sit. Now there was a dust-free rectangle marking the spot.
    The trunk was gone.

Chapter Nine
    “What have you got so far?” Annette asked the two of us over mochas at Coffee to the People, a café in the Haight that was a holdover from the famous Summer of Love. We had stashed the animals at Aunt Cora’s Closet, where Bronwyn was cosseting them shamelessly.
    “According to the records we found, most of the Spooner family died in 1918,” I said. “That was the year of the great flu epidemic, so it wasn’t that unusual for whole families to die within days of each other. But there was a bit of a scandal because the surviving family members, especially Thaddeus Spooner’s sister Hazel and her husband, Frederick, accused their nephew Reginald of something nefarious—they said he wouldn’t let anyone visit when his family was sick. He also sent the servants away.”
    “And everyone died except Reginald?” Annette asked.
    “Yes, he survived his family. He worked as a stage magician and was fairly successful on the local circuit. He continued for a while longer, but according to what I could glean from