Olivia wallowed in the rapidly cooling bathwater, slipping slowly back towards sleep, knowing that she shouldn't sleep in the tub but too tired to care. Her thoughts tumbled like autumn leaves, in gusts and drifts of vivid-coloured dreamlike images. Downstairs, she could hear doors open and close, people coming and going. It sounded so normal, so every day. She'd listened to the distorted sounds of conversation from the k...
Verity found Imogen in the kitchen, standing and staring in bewilderment at the kettle. The ghost sat carefully down at the table, folded her arms, put her head down, and burst into tears. Verity's first impulse was to put her arms around the old woman's shoulders, but of course, she couldn't. Instead, she stood there awkwardly at a distance. For the most part, Imogen had coasted through the first few days after her death...
Olivia woke with her head pounding, her vision blurred as a dark shape loomed over her, sickly-sweet floral perfume stifling her. Voices washing in and out like waves crashing on the shore. Fragments of memory exploded in her aching head. An impulse came over her, to run and run until her legs gave out. Heart bounding, she threw herself out of bed, tearing at the sheets that tangled around her shins, and she crashed onto...
An icy breath awoke Verity. She lay still, her eyes closed. "Would you like a cup of tea, dear?" asked a familiar elderly voice in the dark. Verity opened her eyes to see Imogen looking down at her. The cheerless watery light of morning shone through big French windows. Verity sat up, wiping her bleary eyes and trying to remember why she'd gone to sleep curled up on the sofa in the icy cold living room, when there were se...
By evening, Imogen had fallen into a doze in the chair by the fireplace, her nerves worn out, and Eli had vanished without a word. This left Verity practically alone, to examine her surroundings at her leisure. At the mantlepiece, she investigated the curious assortment of ornaments: a collection that ranged from ugly worthless knick-knacks to objects of considerable beauty and perhaps considerable value. Out of it all, o...
First of all, Grace wanted a room with a sturdy lock on the door: the werewolf's victim must be secured in readiness for her painful and disorienting first transformation. They chose the guest bedroom which Olive had already cleared of most furniture and other obstacles and got Eli to move Olivia again, careless as if she was a sack of potatoes. Then Grace sent Eli out to find chains, and Imogen dissolved into tears again...
It all happened so fast. Eli grabbed the dog by the scruff of the neck and the animal wilted into submission at once, whimpering. Olivia lay in the grass, still and silent. Imogen hung back, not daring to look. "Is she -" her voice wavered. Without touch, taste or smell, events were passing unstoppably before her, like a nightmare she couldn't wake from. She couldn't hold back the tide of dread over-topping her composure....
Olivia, despite warnings from her mother, intended to carry out as much of the redecorating as she could by herself, and had decided to try her hand at stripping the wallpaper in the guest bedroom. This latest flurry of activity fascinated the cats: several of them overcame their misgivings about Olivia enough to stalk and harass the falling curls of paper, coming over to rub against her legs when her work ran on into fee...
Olivia woke to slippery blood on her thighs, her nightdress clinging. She got up, the cradle of leaden pain between her hips making her slow and clumsy as she stripped the sheets to see that she'd bled through to the mattress. This was not an auspicious start to her plans. Even before entering the house, she'd noticed the weathered and cracked paintwork, the slates missing from the roof, that broken window in one of the r...
Twilight had surrendered to the full dark of night before Olivia remembered to call her mum and let her know that the funeral had proceeded without incident (mostly) and that she was settling in. "Don't forget it's only a couple of weeks before you start at the library," said her mum. "I haven't forgotten." "It's a good job for you, and I don't want you wearing yourself out over all this business with Auntie Imogen's hous...
A black cat almost tripped Olivia before she'd even crossed the threshold, winding around her shins in enthusiastic greeting, no doubt hoping for food. Auntie Imogen had always collected cats. China cats, to begin with. Cloth cats, carved wooden cats, cats of every workable material. Later on, after her mother's death had closely coincided with the death of the family cat, and the last of the small band of servants who'd...
As the mourners filed into the pews, Olivia shuffled in amongst them, head down and focused on reaching her seat. She jumped when she felt a tap at her elbow, and looked round to find a small, pale young woman leaning over the back of the pew from the row behind her. She was perhaps a couple of years younger than Olivia, wearing a pretty black dress and resting a lacy black parasol on the back of Olivia's pew. Olivia didn...
Great soft snowdrifts of white roses filled the church. It looked more like a wedding than a funeral, made worse by the fact that on the morning of the big day, Imogen had found her clothes transformed into a wedding dress without her consent. She could only guess it stemmed from some embarrassing corner of her subconscious, and she grumbled to herself as she talked back and forth between the pews, peeling off the long la...
Dear diary,I am dead! And working through a medium, hence this dreadful handwriting. The girl is very young The pale wisp of a girl holding the pen stopped, sitting back from the writing desk. "I'm not that young," she said. Her voice, light, and chirping like a bird's, didn't help her case. "I'm just not used to this." She pushed back the unruly black curls of her hair and folded her arms. "You needn't be rude about my h...
