“Not from you,” I said.
“I’ve looked in all of the pertinent books, and I cannot find a single ritual more powerful than the one that failed to, well, dislodge your grandmother. And you’ll notice that while she has made several appearances here, she hasn’t been able to move to different locations, although she could have caused serious trouble if she’d decided to vandalize the stock at the shop or cross the field to scare Zeb and Jolene’s children. It seems as though her obsession with the family home has bound her spirit too tightly to this particular building, and as such, it will be impossible to force her to move on involuntarily.”
“Well, that is incredibly depressing news … which, again, makes me question the whole ritual thing.”
Jettie nudged me with her insubstantial hip. “If you flip the problem over and look at it from another angle, it makes more sense. If we can’t force Ruthie out, what can we do to make her want to leave, not only the house but the earthly plane?”
“If the answer is burn down the house, I have to say that’s a little extreme.”
Jettie rolled her eyes. “No, honey. What does Ruthie hate more than anything?”
“Feminists, unruly children, long-haired dogs, certain unnamed ethnic groups, beach weddings, people who e-mail thank-you notes, and me.”
Jettie gave me a pitying but understanding glance. “Being married, Jane. Your grandmother loves marrying men, and she loves burying them, but she’s never been very good at anything in between. She loves the romance and the excitement of the big events, but the everyday stuff bores her to tears. Frankly, I was shocked that she spent enough time around your grandpa John to have your mother.”
“Didn’t need that mental image, but you make an excellent point,” I said.
Grandma’s interest tended to wane after she threw the bridal bouquet. She’d send her husbands off to their hobbies while she occupied herself with Junior League or the Garden Club. But the moment one of them suffered a bizarre accident, she was the consummate grieving widow, a postmenopausal Juliet elegantly distraught over the loss of her soul mate.
“We were thinking that inviting a few people here to discuss Ruthie’s occupation at River Oaks might prompt her to pull up stakes,” Jettie said.
I gasped. “We’re going to summon all of Grandma’s dead husbands?”
Jettie’s lips quirked. “No, Ruthie’s various exes will be here at midnight. Gilbert and I have spent weeks talking them into coming here.”
“So, that’s where you’ve been.”
Jettie continued, “The summoning is for Ruthie. We want to force her to appear and keep her here long enough to talk to her.”
“Um, midnight is in about twenty minutes,” I said, checking the clock on the mantel.
“Which means you need to go outside for that bath,” Mr. Wainwright said, gently pushing me toward the door.
“Can’t I just run upstairs and take a shower?” I whined.
Clothed in white pajamas, Gabriel and Jamie held up a ring of sheets around a metal washtub in the yard. The light of the full moon overhead lent a silvery, otherworldly glow to the unceremoniously simple bathing station. I stepped into the little tub and winced at the cold water lapping around my feet.
“You have to be cleansed outside the house, so that none of your creepy grandma’s energy can affect you,” Jamie said, his eyes alight and averted as I stripped down. “Can you believe all this?”
“Yes. I’ve spent two years surrounded by ‘all this’ at the shop,” I told him, dutifully washing my arms and legs with the hyssop soap Gabriel had left out for me. “Mr. Wainwright was talking Loch Ness and poltergeists before the end of my interview. I’ve probably read every occult title available in print.”
“That’s what you sell at the shop?” Jamie exclaimed, although he was respectful enough not to turn and look at me.
“Yes. What did you think we sold at the shop?”
Jamie shrugged. “Romance novels. Girlie books.”
Gabriel sighed. “It’s been nice knowing you, Jamie.”
“Romance novels!” I cried. “Why would I open a vampire-specific store for romance novels? Didn’t you ever read any of the titles when you were in the store?”
“Uh, I was a little busy trying to scope out you and Andrea without Dick noticing,” he scoffed. He bit his lip when he realized his admission and the fact that I was standing mostly naked on the other side of a very thin sheet. “Not that I would do that now, because you’re sort of this big-sister-mother-figure for me, and that would be weird.”
“Thanks.” I grunted, turning the hose on and shrieking when the cold water hit my skin.
“Can I come down to the shop sometime?” he asked. “If this is the kind of stuff you have there, I’d really like to look at some of the books.”
“Aw! I would love that!” I chuckled. “I would hug you right now, but I’m naked, and my big vampire fiance is standing right behind me.”
“I appreciate that,” Jamie said.
“Thank you for thinking of me,” Gabriel said with a snort. He pulled a brand-new set of white cotton pajamas out of a shopping bag by his feet and tossed them over the curtain. I eyed them curiously. “Mr. Wainwright said we should wear clothes that haven’t been in the house yet. I know better than to try to pick out clothes for you, but I thought pajamas would be safe.”
I beamed at him. “You are so the guy for me.”
Suitably cleansed and dressed, the three of us entered the house just as the clock showed ten till midnight. I picked up the book and began reading the passage Mr. Wainwright had marked: “I summon the spirit of my ancestor. Ruth Ann Early Lange Bodeen Floss Whitaker, come forth from the mist. Pull back the veil and speak.”
Silence. The only noise in the room was the ticking of the clock on the mantel.
“Ruthie Early!” I called. “I am your blood! I command you to come forth and speak!”
Nothing.
“Grandma Ruthie, if you don’t get your see-through butt down here, I’m going to tear out the kitchen and put in a home gym! You know I don’t eat, so that’s not an empty threat!”
An angry swirl of red energy emanated from the center of the symbol, rising to eye level. Grandma Ruthie appeared, her silvery eyes flashing dark as she tried to hover over my head, intimidating me. I felt Gabriel and Jamie at my back, ready to shove me out of the way if Ruthie happened to have found her scissors. The symbol kept her inside the circle, unable to rise.
She glowered at me and crossed her arms over her chest. “Who do you think you are, Jane Jameson, telling me what to do in my own house?”
“Grandma Ruthie, I’m giving you one last opportunity,” I said. “Leave my house now. Find some other place to spend your time. Better yet, move on to the next stage. I don’t want any more ugliness between us. And I think we can agree that trying to exist in the same house will only lead to more ugliness.”
“I have no reason to leave my house, Jane.” She sniffed. “If anyone is going to leave, it’s you.”
“Are you saying that if I gave you reason to leave, you would move on?”
“I can’t think of any possible motivation you could come up with that could change my mind.” She sneered.
“Oh, I don’t know about that,” Jettie sing-songed as several translucent forms shifted through the walls of the parlor and hovered around the circle. We watched as they solidified into human shapes. And I began recognizing faces.
Grandpa John I only knew from pictures my mom had around the house. His face was young, handsome. He’d been in the prime of life when the truck struck him down. I had a hard time imagining this man, who was currently winking at me and grinning like a fool, ever marrying my grandmother. On purpose.
Then there was Grandpa Tom, dressed in natty picnic attire. He and Ruthie had been on their way to a Labor Day celebration when he’d sampled her famous strawberry-rhubarb pie and discovered a serious allergy to rhubarb. His airway swelled shut before the ambulance could even arrive. Grandpa Jimmy looked skittish and nervous, which was exactly what you would expect from someone who died from a brown recluse bite on the inside of the throat. And poor Grandpa Fred, struck down on the twelfth hole at the Half-Moon Hollow Public Golf Course, was still wearing ugly plaid pants and a hat with a little puff ball on top. I could not imagine spending the rest of eternity dressed like that.
I was glad to have Aunt Jettie out of the house with Grandpa Fred there. They had a … complicated history. Aunt Jettie and Grandpa Fred began dating, or what could be considered dating when one was a shade of the Great Beyond, shortly after her death. (In her defense, there weren’t many men in the Hollow who hadn’t been married to Grandma Ruthie. It limited her dating pool.) Through my employment at the shop, Aunt Jettie met Mr. Wainwright, who was still living at the time. They started spending time together. Mr. Wainwright died. And the next thing he knew, poor Grandpa Fred and his little puff-ball hat were all alone.
The only ex unaccounted for was Grandma’s former fiance, Bob, who’d died as the result of a Viagra mix-up the previous year. I guessed he considered his business with Ruthie concluded.
“What is the meaning of this?” Grandma Ruthie shrieked, shrinking away from the ghostly circle forming around her. “What kind of cruel, inhuman joke are you trying to pull, Jane?”
“I didn’t have anything to do with this, Grandma Ruthie. But I think your former husbands have some things they’d like to say to you.”
And with that, a wall of chatter seemed to crash through the room like a tidal wave. Hurts, disappointments, past arguments, resentments that each man had carried to the afterlife from his time with Ruthie. You know those British Parliament sessions they show on C-SPAN, where everyone’s talking over one another and shouting and booing, and you’re thinking, Middle-school social studies would have been so much more interesting if we got to study this? It was a lot like that.
Grandpa John told Ruthie that the only reason he’d been hit by that truck was that he was leaving at dawn to squeeze in extra hours at the saw mill to pay off the bills she’d run up all over town pretending to be some Southern belle. And he was insulted that she’d moved on so quickly and married his best friend less than two years after he’d died. Grandpa Tom accused her of marrying him because she liked his house but not him. Grandpa Jimmy wanted to know why Grandma Ruthie banned his family from his funeral and said she had no right to hold on to the Civil War memorabilia he’d planned to pass on to his grandsons. And Grandpa Fred said that death was a “sweet relief,” even if it meant getting struck by a billion volts just to get away from her nagging.
The barrage of relationship dysfunction continued for half an hour before I could get any of my former grandfathers calmed down. Jettie had settled on the couch and was gleefully watching it all play out like a tennis match, so she was no help. Ruthie’s ghostly form seemed to shrink in on itself with every volley lobbed by her exes. Finally, it took Jamie sticking his fingers in his mouth and whistling for the jabbering to slow down.
“Fine, fine, fine!” Grandma Ruthie screeched. “Maybe I wasn’t the best wife to any of you. But you were miserable excuses for husbands! Maybe if you’d tried just a little bit harder, life would have been a little easier for us. But it’s all over now. We’re all dead! I hope you all got your closure, so you can just shut up and move on!”
“But Grandma Ruthie, they’re not moving on,” I said, smiling sweetly.
“They’re not?” she asked, her voice growing suspicious.
“Shoot, no, but they’re all going to move in with us.”