The Ghosts of Wonky Inn: Wonky Inn Book 2 Read online

  Now, as I sank back into the overly warm water, intent on turning my skin pink, I watched Mr Hoo as he preened and picked at himself at the open window. I observed the steam drifting outside, drawn by the cooler air there, and I remembered how I had doodled a heart in the condensation on the window a few months before and uttered a love spell.

  Well quite honestly that had backfired, hadn’t it?

  What’s that saying? It is better to have loved and lost than never to have loved at all? What a load of old twaddle, I thought with some bitterness. Only a complete idiot would think that a broken heart was better than a whole heart.

  I’d been convinced that my spell had drawn Jed to me. Until it turned out that the only thing Jed had been interested in was feathering his own nest, by destroying my wonky inn and the land it stood on. The scoundrel had reeled me in hook, line and sinker, and only the intervention of Wizard Shadowmender and his friends had saved the day.

  The thing is, all my adult life, while I’d had a few relationships, I had never fallen hard for anyone before, not the way I had with Jed. He had caught me unawares, and filled a gap in my life, bridging a huge chasm of loneliness, and meeting a need for intimacy I hadn’t known I’d craved. It’s one thing to be the life and centre of the party, as I had been in London while working in pubs and clubs and doing a good job of being the ultimate hostess. But it’s quite another to manage close friendships and relationships and have someone you can rely on in your personal life.

  How many people had known the real me in London? The witch with a damaged past, estranged from her mother? None. And worse still, nobody had wanted to know or probably even cared.

  It hurt.

  The whole sad scenario with Jed had cut me to the quick.

  Taken aback by a sudden rush of emotion, I splashed water on my face to hide the fact tears were squeezing their way from beneath my eyelids. Even so, the sob that escaped me took Mr Hoo by surprise, and he jolted upright, staring at me with huge worried eyes.

  “It’s not fair,” I moaned, and slapped at the surface with the flat of my hand, sending a huge spray of water across the bathroom in Mr Hoo’s direction. Probably fearing he would be drowned if he remained, he took flight through the window and headed off in the direction of the wood.

  I watched him go, my heart sinking, feeling like a prize chump.

  “Now look what you did!” I scolded myself and promptly burst into tears.

  It helped, getting all that misery out of my system.

  I gave myself a bit of a stern talking to about not letting things get to me, but on the whole I was relieved to be rid of some of my pent-up despair and gloom.

  A short while later, feeling calmer, and a little bit stupid, I perched on the edge of the bath drying between my toes and pondering whether to make myself a mug of hot chocolate, when I heard someone else crying.

  Misery loves company, they say.

  Frowning, I wrapped the towel more tightly around myself and crept out into the hall. The sound seemed to be coming from one of the bedrooms in the main guest area. The empty rooms were perfect conduits of sound, I’d found. Now I followed the muffled cries until I stood outside one of the back bedrooms.

  Even as I turned the handle the sobbing halted abruptly. I entered the bedroom anyway, assuming I’d find Florence inside, but the room was empty. A double bed, the mattress bare, a wash stand, a small chest of drawers and one slim wooden wardrobe were all that occupied the room.

  “Hello?” I asked quietly, imagining perhaps one of the inn’s other resident ghosts might be in the room, but as I stood and listened I heard nothing new, and nobody showed themselves.

  Shaking my head, suddenly chilled in the draughty room in my damp and semi-naked state, I walked out and closed the door, padding bare foot along the corridor towards my rooms.

  I drew up short when the sound of sobbing resumed once more, whirling about to catch the culprit, but the noise had moved further away than before. On the next floor perhaps?

  I hurried up the next flight of stairs and followed the sound, but quickly found myself on a wild goose chase. Every time I thought I was close to the source of the tears, the sobs would stop, and I’d have to wait until they started somewhere else, usually in the opposite direction.

  When I finally found myself in the attic, I decided it was time to call a halt to the ridiculous pursuit of nothing. I pulled open the attic door, briefly catching sight of the new moon through the large round window that overlooked the grounds, before I flipped on the light switch and the outside world disappeared.

  Staring about at the miscellany of junk housed beneath the thatch roof, I twisted my face in disgust. Sorting through centuries worth of my family’s belongings would be an interesting job.

  One day.

  For now, I simply scanned the space and made sure everything was where I expected it to be.

  On a whim, I stepped over to where a pile of family portraits had been covered by a dust sheet. I pulled the sheet away from the top of the pile and found the image of my great grandmother Alfhild Gwynfyre Daemonne, looking both distinguished but vaguely disapproving.

  “What on earth is going on, Grandmama?” I asked, before covering her over and heading back to my room.

  The sound of crying woke me three times that night. Although I ventured out of my warm nest the first time, a superficial search for the culprit yielded no results. The second and third times I opted to stay where I was, ramming a pillow over my head in an effort to drown out the noise so I could get some shut-eye.

  Finally, ever the rebel, I switched the radio alarm off and decided I’d sleep as late as I wished.

  I could tell the morning had progressed without me when I opened my eyes in a squint. The light suggested it had to be around ten, possibly later. I could hear the distant hum of a lawnmower, although I had no idea who would be mowing my lawn. Even though we owned the only lawn in the vicinity, I couldn’t be bothered get up and investigate.

  I knew it was the wrong thing to do, but I closed my eyes instead and snuggled back down. From deep in my warm pit, I groaned. My motivation to get up and get on with sorting the inn - had dissipated dramatically. At this rate Whittle Inn would never be ready to open its doors again.

  I’d hoped that following my own spectacular bath time breakdown, I might have had a decent night’s sleep. After all, emotional exhaustion normally works every time. I roundly cursed the offender who had contrived to spoil that for me.

  “Are you intending to remain there all day?” The plum tones of my great grandmother drifted beneath the duvet, and startled I pushed the covers away from my face.

  “Grandmama? What are you doing here?” I asked, blinking in the sudden deluge of light.

  “I live here, remember.” Her icy tone reminded me of the show downs we’d had on several occasions since we’d first met.

  “Yes, of course, but I thought we agreed that seeing as… erm… I’m in the here-and-now and you aren’t, I have preference when it comes to using these rooms.” My great grandmother hated being reminded that she was dead.

  “We agreed nothing of the sort,” Gwyn as I called her—although never to her face—bit back.

  I’m fairly sure we had, but it was a moot point given that the argument was ongoing, and in any case she wouldn’t abide by any agreement. Gwyn still thought of my suite of rooms as her own, and as she had been the longest resident owner of the inn in the family’s history, having been in situ between 1918 when she married my great grandfather after he had arrived back from the Western Front, and 1969 when she passed away, she did have a point.

  I was the usurper.

  I sat up, pushing my hair out of face, trying my very best not to scowl at the crotchety old ghost standing at the foot of my bed.

  Our bed.

  “It’s a poor show, Alfhild. You spend all your days moping around, while the inn lapses back into decay around you. You were doing such a good job before—”

  Oh please don�
��t let her start in about Jed.

  “I know, Grandmama.” She was right of course. “I’m just struggling to put it all behind me.”

  “You need to find some backbone, my girl. We Daemonne women are made of sterner stuff than this. We will not be felled by one mistake, and we will not be defined by the men in our lives.” Gwyn pursed her lips and I could well imagine her standing alongside Emmeline Pankhurst and the other suffragettes back in the day.

  But that was Gwyn, not me. It’s all very well for you to say, I thought. You married into the family. The inn was already established. You were never alone the way I am.

  “Being a wife in the early part of the twentieth century could be incredibly isolating, Alfhild,” Gwyn said, and I wondered whether Gwyn was telepathic or whether my face had given me away. “Your great grandfather was not the easiest man to live with. Besides I didn’t really know him very well when we married in 1918. He was fresh back from war, and most of our courtship had developed by correspondence. I’d only met him half a dozen times I think, and five of those were with a chaperone.”

  “A chaperone? Wow.” I smiled in genuine amusement. How times had changed.

  Gwyn nodded approvingly. “That’s better, Alfhild. Keep calm and smile. It’s the least you can do.”

  “Did you love him?” I asked her.

  “Your great grandfather?” Gwyn though for a moment, her eyes peering down a tunnel to the past and the faintest of twitches curled her lips. “A lady doesn’t talk about such things. And besides, what is love?”

  I sighed deeply and lifted my shoulders into a shrug. I had no real answer to that. “A massive inconvenience, when you’re treated poorly, and it leaves you feeling hurt and bewildered.”

  “You’re so melodramatic, Alfhild. That’s the problem with young people today. Too much emphasis on emotion and not enough on duty and responsibility.”

  I was about to issue a snarky retort when I became aware that the lawnmower, now louder than ever, had relocated beneath my bedroom window.

  “What on earth is going on outside?” I asked, hoisting myself out of bed.

  “I’ve asked Zephaniah to mow the lawns. They’re in a terrible state.”

  “Who is Zephaniah?” I opened the window to lean out and catch a glimpse. A tall thin man, in a First World War army uniform, expertly drove our little ride-on lawnmower in circles around the grass. He only had one arm but was doing a better job than I could have done with two.

  “Another ghost? Where are they all coming from?”

  “There must be something about you that attracts them, my dear. Now get up and get dressed. We have so much work to do. I’ll see you in the office later.” With that, she melted away, leaving me looking at the empty space she had inhabited at the foot of my bed. Her words echoed in my ears.

  Duty and responsibility.

  From a distance, anyone not in the know, would have wondered how the rake managed to move around the garden collecting lawn trimmings by itself. As with all of the ghosts inhabiting my wonky inn, one had to focus to see them, especially if you weren’t expecting them to be around

  After grabbing a coffee from Florence in the kitchen, I sauntered outside to have a chat with Zephaniah.

  He stopped when he spotted me and pulled his khaki hat from his head. I guessed he was in his early twenties, like Florence. He’d been a handsome man.

  “Morning,” I greeted him. “You’re, Zephaniah?”

  “Zephaniah Bailey, Miss.”

  “Pleased to meet you, Zephaniah. You can call me Alf if you like. My great grandmother tells me she asked you to help out in the gardens. What brings you to Whittle Inn?”

  “I used to work here, Miss Alf. Before the war. I worked in the gardens with my Uncle, Horace Bailey. He was the head groundskeeper here for many years. I always wanted to come back. When the war was over. You know? But I didn’t get the chance in life.”

  “You were killed abroad?”

  “Yes, Miss Alf. In Ypres.”

  It was hard not to shudder at the mention of the infamous town where so many allied soldiers perished. “I’m surprised the battlefields of Belgium aren’t teeming with ghosts,” I said thoughtfully, wondering what had brought him back here.

  “Oh they are, Miss. But it was cold over there. Nothing but mud and spent munition cases and barbed wire. I yearned to be back here. I always have.”

  “And it just happened. You just transported back?”

  “Yes, Miss.” Zephaniah nodded, and his pale face clouded over. “Very suddenly as it happened. I’ve been hanging around here at the inn for a little while now, wondering what to do with myself. I’ve been feeling a bit down in the dumps, truth to tell, not really knowing where to place myself, but your great grandmother offered to put me to work. She’s a good woman, Miss.”

  There seemed to be so much about ghosts and the way they ‘lived’ their after-lives that I didn’t really understand. Yet here was I, supposedly adept at summoning ghosts to be my followers, without the foggiest clue how or why. It sometimes seemed my witchy powers were more about luck than any skill or judgement on my part.

  I pointed at the lawn mower he had been riding on. “I’m surprised you’re able to embrace our new technology.”

  “I learned to drive here at the inn, Miss Alf,” Zephaniah’s face lit up at the memory. When I first started here, that would have been in 1907, the inn just had horses, carts and carriages. But later, the elderly Mr John and young Mr James decided to purchase an automobile. I learned to drive it and used to transport Mr John around from time to time, just down the lanes here—into Honiton, Abbotts Cromleigh—for the markets—and up to Exeter, that kind of thing.”

  “I see,” I said, impressed at the idea of him driving one of those early vehicles.

  “There’s not much difference between those early cars and this. Apart from using a key instead of a hand crank to get it started. It operates the same.”

  Even so, I figured his flexibility and desire to adapt would come in handy around the inn if he intended to stay. It sounded like he wanted to. Another ghost worker for me.

  And that gave me an idea.

  I had Florence in the inn and Zephaniah outside it. What if I created a whole team of ghost workers to help me? Would they be up for it? I stared back at my lopsided inn. The place was full of ghosts, idling their time away. And they had a lot of time to idle. Surely they would appreciate having more work to do? It would give them a sense of purpose. I recalled how I had been able to put my followers to good use in the days before and after the Battle for Speckled Wood. They had cooked and cleaned for a whole gathering of people – and done it pretty well.

  Painting, decorating, sorting, gardening, cooking and cleaning. They would be perfect as a Wonky Inn Clean-up Crew.

  Zephaniah stared at me strangely and I realised I was smiling at my own thoughts. “Will that be all, Miss Alf?”

  “Oh yes. Sorry. Of course. Thank you.” He turned away to get back to his raking when something else struck me. “Zephaniah?”

  “Yes, Miss Alf?”

  How should I broach this? “Ah. I don’t suppose…you aren’t…well.” I stumbled over my words. Zephaniah watched me patiently with his soft soulful eyes. “I’ve been hearing someone crying in the inn overnight recently, and I just wondered…” I trailed off and then added. “You said you’d been feeling down.”

  The shutters came down, covering his face from my scrutiny. I’d hit a nerve.

  “No, Miss. It wasn’t me.”

  “Do you know who it was?” I probed, but Zephaniah clamped up, his open friendliness replaced by studied nonchalance.

  “I really couldn’t say,” he replied, and studied his shoes intently.

  Taken aback, I regarded the ghost in front of me. It was easy just to think of them as benevolent spirits, hanging around for eternity with nowhere else to go. But in reality, they were more complex beings than that, still full of the wiles and vulnerabilities they’d had as mortal
s. I sensed Zephaniah knew more than he was letting on, and I was intrigued as to why he wouldn’t tell me more, but I could hardly force him to spill the beans about my sobbing spirit unless he wanted to.

  “Well, thanks for your time, Zephaniah. See you soon,” I said and watched him go back to his raking.

  I meandered slowly back up the drive, the gravel crunching beneath my feet, thinking about what I could say to appease Gwyn. I skirted Jed’s van as always, hardly looking at it, but as I climbed the step to the inn’s front door I glanced back at it. Anger flared inside me, burning briefly with a fierce heat.

  On a sudden whim, I turned back and rushed towards it, wishing with all my heart I knew a spell that would cause the van, this permanent reminder of Jed and what I thought I had found through being with him, to disappear from my view. I didn’t know such a spell. Instead, buoyed up by my sudden rush of energy, I screamed and kicked at the driver’s door hard, denting the panel and hurting my toes in the process.

  “Ow-ow-ow!” I hopped up and down and then slammed my hand viciously against the roof, the pain ricocheting through my palm, along my wrist and up to my elbow. I stopped then, tears smarting in my eyes, and took a few deep breaths to calm myself down. Behind me, I sensed eyes staring at me from the windows of the inn, and knew the other ghostly inhabitants were watching me make a fool of myself, including Gwyn no doubt.

  I avoided looking up at them. Instead I pulled the van’s door handle, and to my surprise, it opened.

  I ducked my head inside. The faint scent of Jed lingered in here. Climbing in, I pulled the door closed behind me and inhaled. The van smelt slightly musty, a combination of well-used upholstery, damp, turps, and paint, but underneath that was Jed’s own musky working-man scent, mingled with his favourite cologne.

  For a fraction of time I felt him close, and the yearning inside of me burned strong, but slowly I became aware of the palm of my hand, still stinging from where I’d slapped the van. I looked down at it in wonder, glowing red and warm, the pain fading but still real, unlike the love I’d thought Jed and I shared.