Ghost Silk (Ghost Perfume, Book 2) | ✔

3 - Promise me - Part 3

The ghosts (continued)

An orange-white cat meandered out of the house and into the garden, its eyes trained on a spot of shade and sun under the mesh of the beach chair. It stretched there and rolled over on its back.

Astor reached out a ghostly foot to poke the cat through the side. The cat yowled, its hair standing on end, and shot back inside the house.

"Don't be childish, Astor," Ilium said from the grass.

"Well, I'm bored," the gentleman said mildly.

A teenage boy appeared at the back entrance to the house, running his hand through the mop of hair in his eyes. "I know you two are terrorizing Mickey," he barked. "Stop it."

"Zee, shut up," a woman's voice called from inside the house.

"Mom. I'm not talking with them, I'm telling them to leave Mickey alone," Zee said, his voice fading as he returned to the house. "You don't care about Mickey."

"We don't acknowledge the dead," the woman said sharply. "Did you finish Tying Up Hearts?"

"No."

"Finish it. Tomorrow your granny's testing you on the diagrams in the last chapter."

Zee's voice faded further as he grumbled, presumably walking deeper into the house.

"Tying up hearts," Ilium repeated quietly. "What kind of textbook is that? It sounds like a paperback romance."

"I had a look when the boy was studying earlier," Astor said. "It's summaries and simplifications from the first two volumes of Knots and Ties of Strong Emotion."

"What was wrong with our old textbooks?"

Astor scoffed. "Too complicated for them?" He drifted over to Ilium. "I wonder -"

A girl stepped out into the garden, biting a malicious grin. "Just between you and me," she whispered, her eyes darting from Ilium's chest to Astor's chest, "Mickey needs a good scare now and then."

The girl had long straight brown hair and a long thin face, not unlike Astor's.

"Kat," the same woman from before shouted. "Why are you out in the garden?"

Kat ran to the beach chair. "The sun's out. I'm tanning," she shouted back.

She wore baggy clothing, a loose long shirt and pants, that covered her from neck to wrist to ankle. Even as she spoke, she pulled a baseball cap from her pocket to ram it on her head.

"Did you finish your reading?"

"Yes, auntie."

"Fine," the woman inside eventually called. "You're a good girl, Kit-Kat."

Kat furtively pulled an epistol out of her canvas bag.

"You see, the younger generation is more open-minded," Ilium said with a pleased air. He rose to his feet.

"I'm Katharine," the girl whispered, opening the epistol to a blank page.

"I'm Ilium, your great-uncle," Ilium said. Words began appearing in the epistol. "A pleasure to meet you."

"And my name is Astor. I am your late mother's first cousin. I'm very happy to make your acquaintance."

"So cool to meet you too," Kat breathed. She adjusted her seat so that her ankles crossed under her butt, the epistol in her lap. "Please will you answer some of my questions?"