Tag: Character: Alice Atkins

Chatoyant College Book 14: Ghost Stories

Chatoyant College Book 14: Chapter 59: A Guest

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Tuesday, November 14

Corrie and Edie walked into their Intermediate Elementalism class. Corrie was working to hold back a smirk. Professor Lal probably wouldn’t like it if she was smirking at her. It would make her even less likely to take what Corrie was about to say seriously.

The two of them waited at the front of the class, by Professor Lal’s desk. There was also another presence along with them. Corrie couldn’t see or sense her, but—unless she had chickened out—she knew she was there.

Professor Lal frowned as soon as she came in, striding directly to her desk. “Corrie, Edie. Is there a problem?”

Corrie shook her head, working even harder to control her smirk. “Everything’s going well. We’ve just brought a guest to class, and wanted to let you know.”

Professor Lal raised her eyebrows. “A guest? Is that so.”

The professor obviously didn’t believe them. “Yes. Her name is Alice Atkins.”

“Corrie—“

“We’ve spoken to her,” Edie said. “She told us her name. She doesn’t like to communicate with people, but was willing to work with a medium.”

Professor Lal looked between the two of them, her lips pressed thin. “This is the ghost.”

“She has always hidden from magic professors because she was ashamed and embarrassed,” Corrie said. “We’ve known she was haunting Mary Thomas for months, and we spoke to her for the first time about a month ago, but we didn’t find out until recently how you and the other magic professors managed to not know about her.”

“We’ve investigated,” Lal said.

Corrie nodded. “She always hid from you and the other magic professors because she died making a huge mistake with a spell. She was trying to impress her magic professors at the time. Seeing any of you reminded her of the reason she died. You can understand how that would be painful.”

“I…” Lal’s eyes roamed around the air between Corrie and Edie as though she would be able to see Alice. Corrie was perversely pleased that they’d managed to render the faerie speechless.

“She doesn’t remember having you as a professor, which makes sense, since you didn’t remember her, either,” Corrie continued. “She remembers Professor Rook, so he might remember her, too. She’s not ready to face him yet, but she wants to—needs to, I think—come to magic classes.”

“Of course she can’t enroll as a student, since she has no way to fill out the forms or take tests, except through the medium, and the medium has their own classes to deal with,” Edie said. “But if she comes to classes, she’ll learn anyway.”

“And then maybe she’ll understand whatever went wrong with her final spell,” Corrie said.

Professor Lal sighed. “How do you know she’s here?”

“Alice?” Corrie said. “You don’t have to talk to Professor Lal, but can you move something on her desk so she knows you’re here?”

For a moment nothing happened, and Corrie feared that Alice had decided she couldn’t face a magic professor after all. But then a folder on Professor Lal’s desk flipped open and the papers slid onto the floor. To her credit, Lal didn’t jump, just looked down at the pile on the floor with her lips pressed together.

“Well, I can hardly stop your guest from attending class,” she said. “Not if she can’t be seen or touched. But I’ll get in touch with Lin and see if she can’t help illuminate this a little more.”

Corrie and Edie grinned at each other. Lal pointed at the papers on the floor. “However, we did have a handout for class today. So unless your ghost is willing to pass the papers to your classmates, the two of you have just volunteered to pick them up and do that. And hurry, because class ought to have started several minutes ago.”

Corrie shrugged. “Fair enough.” She bent, picked up the papers, gave half the stack to Edie, and began handing them out.

They’d helped Alice as best they could—and that had been quite a lot. From here, any more changes that had to be made, she could make herself.

Chatoyant College Book 14: Ghost Stories

Chatoyant College Book 14: Chapter 58: Otis

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Saturday, November 11

Dawn was very disappointed that her friends had managed to actually get Alice’s full story without her present. When Roe managed to get in touch with Otis Atkins, she insisted that they all had to be there when Alice got to speak to him. Link had given Otis Roe’s phone number, and Roe had given Otis the basics of the situation, but they needed him to talk to Alice himself. Between his schedule, Lin’s, and everyone’s classes, it had taken them a few weeks to schedule something.

Finally, though, they all crowded into Annie’s room one more time and watched Lin sit in the chair and brace herself. She waited a moment, then frowned, her eyebrows drawing together quizzically. Dawn would have thought it was Alice who was confused, except this still seemed to be Lin’s expression. Was Alice somehow failing to show up?

Lin’s eyebrows lifted. “It’s okay,” she said softly. “I came here today to help you. I won’t come into this building unless it’s to help you.”

Then she gasped, closing her eyes, and when they opened again it was Alice who looked through them. She looked around. “Is it time? Really?”

“It’s time,” Annie said, smiling.

Roe took out her phone and dialed, setting it to speaker so they could all hear it ring. Then a male voice on the other side said, “Hello? Roe?”

“Hi, Mr. Atkins,” Roe said. “We have someone who wants to talk to you. Will you identify yourself?”

“Yes, of course. My name is Otis Atkins. I’m named after my grandfather, who was named after his father. I have an aunt named Alice Norburn. She was named after her great-aunt, Alice Atkins, who died while she was attending Chatoyant College.”

Alice gave another gasp and began to cry. “I’m Alice Atkins.”

“I know,” Otis said. “It’s amazing to be able to speak to you. I wish my grandfather could be here to witness this.”

“Your father is my brother Otis’s son?”

“Yes. He never knew you, of course, but he grew up hearing stories of his brilliant aunt.”

Alice cried harder. “I’m not brilliant. If I was, I wouldn’t have… I would have found a way to learn the spell I needed, instead of having it blow up in my face. I would have returned to help my family.”

Dawn felt sorry for Alice in her obvious difficulty of thinking of herself as dead. It made sense—she was here and talking to them, wasn’t she? And yet, of course, if she weren’t dead, she wouldn’t be a ghost forced to possess a medium in order to communicate. From what Dawn had learned about attitudes toward death in her sociology class, she couldn’t be sure that she wouldn’t feel the same way as Alice after she died. Though, of course, she hoped she wouldn’t be forced to become a ghost.

“But from what my grandfather told me, Otis was very proud of you,” Otis said. “He was so impressed that you had worked hard enough to be able to go to college, and to not even have to pay for it. He never went to college himself, but you inspired him to work hard. Do you remember where he was working when you went to college?”

“Yes, of course. He was an assistant at Nickelson’s Shoe Store.”

“Well, that store went on to be the Atkins Shoe Store.” Otis’s voice was warm.

Alice swallowed hard. “Really?”

“Yes. My great-grandfather owned that store. My grandfather turned it into a franchise—seven stores throughout the state. My father inherited the franchise and ran it well, but decided to send me to college. To the same college you attended. I learned so much here, but I never imagined that the ghost I heard about, haunting the girls’ dorm—Mary Thomas was all girls then—was actually my great-aunt.”

“So my family… they did all right without me?”

“Yes, from what I know. Otis worked hard all his life, but his children never wanted for anything. I don’t know exactly what happened with your sister Grace, but she married and had seven children, so I assume she was happy, too.”

Alice gave a watery chuckle, but her tears seemed to have stopped. “Grace always doted on children. I’m glad she got what she wanted. What about my father?”

“I’m afraid I don’t know. My grandfather never spoke about his own grandfather. But the family didn’t fall into ruin. All his descendants have happy lives.”

“Your life is happy?”

“Very much so. I retired a few years ago from my job as a lawyer. My father sold the shoe stores, and the money was divided between my three daughters. I have two grandchildren now and another on the way. Maybe if it’s a girl, I’ll ask them to name her Alice.”

“Oh, no, you don’t have to do that,” Alice said quickly. “I’m so happy to hear you’re all doing well. It’s… it’s all I could ever ask for.”

“Would you like me to come visit you?” Otis asked. “Perhaps when the students here are on a break?”

“I… no. You don’t have to do that.” It was plain from Alice’s face that she didn’t like the idea of her great-grandnephew visiting her. Dawn agreed that it was a strange thought. If she had lived, they would have never met unless she had lived a very long time indeed. “You won’t be able to see me, after all, and I can’t ask for any more of this medium’s time.”

“Oh. Yes, that makes sense. Still, it’s good to know that you’re there.”

“Thank you so much for speaking to me, Otis,” Alice said.

“Thank you for speaking to me,” he said.

“Can I ask a question?” Corrie put in.

“Certainly,” Otis said politely.

“When you went here, you heard stories about the ghost, right? How come you never investigated?”

“I, well—“ He gave a little cough. “I did, once. A friend and I, along with our girlfriends, who were living in Mary Thomas, tried to have a little seance. But the ghost tipped over our candles. Nearly set Mary Lou’s dress aflame.”

Alice’s hands flew to her mouth. “Oh, I’m so sorry.”

“No worries. I didn’t think much of it, really. I didn’t know who you were, and you obviously didn’t know who I was.”

“No, I… suppose not.”

There was a moment of silence. Then Roe spoke. “Mr. Atkins, do you have anything else to say to Alice?”

“Ah, just that she should feel free to get in touch with me at any time. You have my phone number?”

“Yes, I do. And Alice knows how to get in touch with me. Thank you.”

“Goodbye, Alice.”

“Goodbye, Otis,” Alice whispered. She covered her face with her hands for a moment, then when the hands lowered, it was Lin’s face looking out at them once more.

Chatoyant College Book 14: Ghost Stories

Chatoyant College Book 14: Chapter 56: Compulsion

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Edie raised her eyebrows and looked at Corrie. Was she thinking what Edie was now thinking? If Alice could learn what she did wrong with her spell, maybe she would be able to stop haunting Annie.

“Corrie, do you think Lin would be okay with it if Alice used her body to leave?” Corrie said.

Roe nodded. “If she doesn’t like it, she can just expel her, remember.”

“Is that what happened?” Alice touched her shoulder. “This is a medium… yes, I remember learning about them. That makes sense. I didn’t like being shoved out… but when the space returned, I had to enter. It was half a compulsion, half desperation to make someone actually understand me.”

Edie bit her lip. No wonder Lin didn’t like being around ghosts, if they were even in part compelled to enter her body and use it. That fit with what they had seen, too. If Alice had been given free choice as to whether to possess Lin—well, the ghost they had tried to communicate with a few weeks ago wouldn’t have done it, not when she could just continue scaring people.

“Do you want to try it?” Annie asked. “If you want to stay in the building, that’s perfectly understandable. You’re safe here. But you’re safe out on campus, too. The worst that will happen to you is Lin—the medium—expelling you again.”

Alice took a deep, shuddering breath. “Let’s try it. What do I have to lose?”

She stood and took a step forward. She seemed unsteady on her feet, and Roe held an arm out. Alice took the arm and balanced herself, then moved forward to the door.

Edie quickly got up to follow, as did Annie and Corrie. They made an odd little procession as Alice, moving like a decrepit old woman, walked down the hall on Roe’s arm, with the other three following close behind.

Alice stumbled on the steps, but by the time she’d reached the bottom, she seemed to have regained her balance. By the time they reached the front door, she hardly seemed to need Roe’s arm anymore. She reached out for the handle, but pulled her hand back, hesitating.

“Here,” Annie said. She stepped forward and opened the door.

Alice let go of Roe’s arm and took a step through the door. Her right side, then her left, moved out into the reddish light of the setting sun. She turned to face them, smiling, her hands spread wide. “Here I am.”

Edie couldn’t help grinning. It was a surprisingly beautiful sight. But suddenly Alice gasped, put her hand to her forehead—and then she was Lin again.

“What happened?” asked Annie, running forward. “Did she get pulled back into the building?”

“No,” Lin said, shaking her head and taking a step back. Roe held her hand out, but Lin made a gesture as though to ward her off, and Roe stepped back as well. “I expelled her. I was tired of it. I didn’t want to be moved around.”

“I’m sorry,” Corrie said, walking out of the building as well. Edie followed. “I thought it was worth a try, and that you would expel her if you didn’t like it.”

“And I did,” Lin said, holding her hand out now to stop Corrie. She took a deep breath. “It’s all right. I felt the ghost use my body to stand up, and I chose to let it happen. It just went far enough. I’m going now. I’ll talk to you later, Roe.”

They watched in silence for a moment as Lin walked away, then glanced at each other uncertainly. “Well, it doesn’t sound like she hates you for dragging her into this,” Annie said to Roe.

Roe grinned. “No, I guess not. At least she learned something!”

“I wonder if Alice will talk to us now,” Corrie said thoughtfully. “I mean, using tarot cards or something. We might not have to go through Lin.”

“Let’s try it,” Edie said.

Corrie looked around. “Do you think she’s out here still?”

“If she’s not, then she’s probably back in my room,” Annie said. “And I have tarot cards there. Let’s see… didn’t you say she did some knocking when you were first trying to talk to her?”

“That’s right,” Corrie said. “Alice, if you can hear us, please knock on the door once.”

They were silent for a moment. All Edie could hear was someone shrieking with laughter on the other side of the building.

“Back inside, then,” Annie said, leading the way.

They headed back in to Annie’s room and shut the door. “Alice,” Annie said clearly, “if you can hear us, please knock once.”

They were silent. This time Edie heard a very distinct knock. They all grinned at each other.

“Alice,” Corrie said, “if you know any other way to communicate with us, please knock once.”

This time they were answered with silence. Annie rummaged through her drawer and came out with a box of tarot cards. She shook the cards out into her hand and spread them onto the bed. “Alice, if you can, please pick out a tarot card to communicate with us.”

The cards rustled, as though in a strong breeze. Several of them flipped over, and then they sprayed in every direction—similar to how they had swirled the first time Corrie had tried to communicate with the ghost, but without as much force, so even though a few of them hit Annie, they fell down harmlessly.

Edie took a deep breath. “Alice, are you frustrated? Please knock once for yes, twice for no.”

There was a knock. Edie nodded. “You’re having trouble controlling the cards?”

Another knock.

“That’s what I thought,” Edie said. “This must be very frustrating for you. I’m sorry. We’ll try to come up with another way to communicate with you.”

There was a pause, then another knock, and the girls all laughed.

“Alice, while we’re thinking, do you want to try one other small thing?” Corrie asked. She paused, but there was no response. “I was thinking that you could follow us to our dorm—me and Edie, that is.” She gestured at Edie. “If you are able to leave the building without the medium, you can let us know once we’re there, and then we’ll know you can move around campus on your own.”

Edie held her breath for a moment. Alice knocked. She grinned.

“Great!” Corrie said. “Let’s go!”

She led the way back down the stairs and out of the building; Annie and Roe came with them, too, plainly curious. They didn’t go quickly, in case Alice couldn’t move quickly without a body. Inside Sayer, they went up the stairs and into Corrie and Edie’s room.

Dawn looked up from her desk when they entered. “Hey, there you are,” she said. “Where have you been?”

“Shh,” Edie said.

Corrie closed the door carefully behind them and looked around. “Alice?” she said. “Are you here?”

For a moment Edie thought they had failed. Then there was a knock.

Edie and Annie cheered. Corrie and Roe high-fived. Dawn stared at all of them. “What the heck did I miss?”

Edie looked at Corrie, and all of them started to laugh.

Chatoyant College Book 14: Ghost Stories

Chatoyant College Book 14: Chapter 55: Hope

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Edie had no idea what kind of spell Alice could be talking about, and she didn’t want to interrupt to ask. It must have been ritual magic; maybe Annie would understand it.

“I lit the candles—I used fire magic to light them all at once. Do you know how to do that?”

“Yes,” Annie said. “I’ve learned elemental magic. I don’t know any spells like the one you’re describing, but that makes sense, since I’m only in my second year.”

Alice looked down. “Yes, it would be too advanced for you.”

“What did it do?”

“What did it do?” Alice’s voice grew sharp. “It was intended to reveal to me the paths to other worlds. Each color of agate should have risen up into a bright ribbon to follow, and at the end of each I should have found the door to a certain world. Blue for heaven, black for hell. I cannot tell what the other colors should have been.”

Edie’s breath caught in her throat and she clutched her notebook tightly. If she had known this spell, would it have shown her the way to Faerie? She had looked so long—had the knowledge been with Alice all along?

It didn’t matter now, though. If Leila was there again, she didn’t want Edie following her. And it sounded as though the spell hadn’t worked for Alice, so it probably would not have worked for Edie, either.

“That’s not what happened,” Annie prompted her.

“No,” Alice said. “I pulled the power to myself in the center of the circle, as the spell indicated, and then pushed it back out to the edges of the circle. But it backfired on me. I remember… I remember great pain.” Her voice faltered. “And the next thing I remember, my room was clean and empty, not mine any longer, and I could not communicate with anyone. I don’t even know how long it has been.”

“What year was that?” Annie asked softly.

“1879.”

“It’s been more than a hundred years.”

“I thought as much.”

“It’s not your fault,” Corrie said. “We’ve found books with bad instructions for spells, too.”

Alice shook her head. “I overreached. I asked for too much. I…” She reached out into the air, as though she could grasp whatever it was she had been trying to reach for. “I thought I was ready for my time here to end, but I was not. I had not learned what I needed to learn.” She shook her head, then dropped her hand back into her lap. “If I had simply waited, perhaps I would have been too late for my father, perhaps not. And now I will never know what happened to my family.”

“I think we can help with that,” Edie said, lifting her head. They didn’t have Professor Strega anymore to help track down family members—but Alice’s family were all humans. They didn’t need a faerie with special knowledge to track down secretive faeries. If they could get on a genealogy site, or find any living relatives of Alice Atkins, they could probably get more of her family’s story.

“What? How?”

“We can look for living relatives today. Did you have… well, I guess you wouldn’t have known him, since he wasn’t been born, but we found an Otis Atkins who went to Chatoyant College in 1965.”

Alice gasped, putting her hand to her mouth. “Otis is—was—my brother’s name.”

“So if this Otis was named after his grandfather, or if the name was passed down, then he’s probably a relative,” Corrie said. She turned and grinned at Edie. “Good thinking!”

“We’ll try to find him,” Edie said, “or any other living relatives you might have. Can you tell me your other family members’ names? Or where they lived?”

“It would probably help to know what years they were born,” Annie added.

“Otis was born in 1861,” Alice said in a faraway voice. “Our sister Grace was born in 1867.” She told them the names of their father and mother, uncles and aunts and cousins, and Edie wrote it all down carefully. It seemed to take her more time to remember the locations where they had lived, but she said they were all fairly close together in the next state to the south. Edie hoped they were still in that area. That would make it easier to track down anyone who remembered Alice.

“Does this help?” Annie asked.

“Yes… thank you.” Alice bowed her head for a moment, then lifted it again. “You have given me some hope. I have never had hope before.”

“I have another question, if it’s not too difficult,” Corrie said.

“Please. You have helped so much, I can hardly begrudge you another question.”

Corrie took a deep breath. “Are you able to leave this building?”

Alice looked slightly taken aback. “I do not know. I have never tried.”

“Really? Never?” Edie asked. “You were never so upset you tried to get out of the building?”

Alice frowned and put her fingers to her temple. “I… I can’t be sure. There are so many things that don’t seem to match. Memories that stop and start before they should.”

“Is there anywhere you would go, if you could leave?” Annie asked.

Alice nodded. “If I could leave, I would go to my family… but I do not know where they are now, of course.”

“I wonder if you can leave the building but not the campus,” Corrie said. “If you could leave campus, you would probably have done that way at the beginning of this and gone to your family. Is there anywhere else on campus you would go?”

“No… not that I can think of. Perhaps to the library, to see if there are any books that would explain to me exactly what I did wrong.”

Chatoyant College, Chatoyant College Book 14: Ghost Stories

Chatoyant College Book 14: Chapter 54: Reverse the Process

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Wednesday, October 18

Edie truly meant to talk to Annie, but it wasn’t easy to get her alone. They didn’t have any classes together, and when they met for meals, they were always with their other friends. With the ghost hanging around, Edie didn’t want to just show up at Annie’s dorm room, so she hoped that the opportunity would come up naturally.

However, it didn’t come up before Wednesday, when Lin met them for dinner to say that she was ready to work with the ghost again. No one wanted to take any more breaks than they had to from talking to the ghost, so after dinner they all headed to Annie’s room. Corrie had suggested waiting for Dawn to finish her shift at work, but Lin didn’t want to stay up that late. Corrie tried calling Dawn to see if she had any updates about the newspapers she’d been looking at, but she didn’t answer—no surprise, if she was working—and they decided it would be okay if they didn’t wait for her.

Lin set herself up in the same way as the last two times and, as before, it was easy to see once the ghost entered her. Alice looked around with wide eyes. “You’re here again. You really want to talk to me?”

“We’ve wanted to talk to you for a while,” Annie said. “A lot of people have.” They’d all agreed to let her be the one to talk to the ghost unless it was necessary for someone else to say something; she seemed to have the best way with Alice, upsetting her the least.

“I didn’t know that.”

“A few weeks ago, my friends tried to talk to you,” Annie said, speaking slowly and carefully, as though thinking through her words as she came up with them. “You seemed to get really upset. You threw their cards at them and, when they followed you out into the hall, you made an illusion so they thought they were going to fall through the floor.”

“I—“ Alice covered her face with her hands. “I’m so ashamed.”

“It’s okay,” Annie said gently. “You can tell us about it. We won’t judge you.”

“You won’t be angry?”

“Definitely not.” Annie looked around at the others.

“No, I won’t be angry,” Edie said. Corrie and Roe agreed with her.

Alice lowered her hands into her lap and twisted her fingers together. “I used to try to talk to people. But they couldn’t hear me, or they couldn’t understand me. There didn’t seem to be any way to make them understand me. This is the first time I’ve been able to have a real conversation with someone. This…” She waved one hand in front of her face. “I don’t know what is happening right now, but I’m grateful that it is. But I started to get really upset when people tried to talk to me, because I couldn’t, and I’m so angry with myself.” Her last few words were half-lost in a wail.

“That’s perfectly understandable,” Annie said. “It must be stressful to be unable to talk to people when you just want them to understand you.”

“That’s not it,” Alice said. “I’m angry with myself for messing up. I reached too far. I wanted more than I was ready for, and I lost everything.”

Edie was pretty sure Alice was referring to how she had died—but she couldn’t be certain. In their last two conversations, Alice had seemed to get upset at the idea that she was dead, so Edie didn’t even know if she understood that she was a ghost. But what did she think was going on, if she couldn’t accept the idea that she was dead?

“I ruined everything for my family,” Alice continued bleakly. “And I can’t do anything to fix it.”

“What happened?” Annie asked. The whole room seemed hushed. “Maybe we can help you fix it.”

“You can’t reverse the process. You can’t…” Alice put her head in her hands. “I know there’s no magic that does that.”

Maybe she did understand that she was dead, but couldn’t bring herself to say it. Edie hoped Annie would be able to keep talking around it. It was a little confusing.

Annie shook her head. “I know that. But maybe we can help you fix the mistake you made.”

“How can anyone do that?”

“I don’t know, but I have no chance of figuring it out if I don’t know what happened.”

“All right. All right.” Alice seemed to shake herself, straightening up. “I needed to graduate. I needed to do a final project. I had to prove myself to the magic professors, to show them that I knew everything I needed to know. I found a spell in a book that I thought would be perfect, but of course I had to test it myself and be sure I understood all the parts before I could perform it in front of them.”

“That makes sense,” Annie said.

Alice nodded. “So I gathered all the components in my room, here.” She gestured at the room. “Juniper branches, candles, agate and amethyst crystals. I arranged them in the prescribed circle.”

Chatoyant College, Chatoyant College Book 14: Ghost Stories

Chatoyant College Book 14: Chapter 47: History

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Edie hurried to take a seat; Dawn, the last to enter, hastily pulled the door shut behind them. Lin had adopted the same tense, stiff posture she’d had yesterday when the ghost entered her. This time it had happened much more quickly, though. Could it be that the ghost actually wanted to talk to them?

“Alice,” Annie said. “Thank you for returning to speak to us again.”

Alice turned her head and nodded at Annie. “What do you want?”

“That’s our question for you,” Corrie said.

“But we can take our time to figure that out,” Annie said quickly. “We want to know more about you. You lived—you live here in this dorm room. What is the dorm called?”

“Mary Thomas,” Alice said. “Just like the scholarship.”

Edie raised her eyebrows and wrote that down—she was glad she always carried a notebook with her. She’d never heard of a Mary Thomas scholarship.

“Are you here on that scholarship?” Annie asked.

“Yes.” Alice swallowed and looked down at my hands. “I was lucky to find this place. My family—I want to support them, make life easier for them. If I can learn magic, then I’m sure I can find a way to make money.”

“It will definitely help,” Dawn said. “That’s a great idea. My aunt knows magic and it helps her support herself as a single woman.”

Edie wondered if, like Pru, Alice had gone through a doomed romance with a faerie. Or just a doomed romance with a human student, like the story Sam had told—though, now that she thought about it, there was nothing in that story that made it impossible that the ghost’s lover had been a faerie. He had refused to marry her, even though they loved each other, like Tom had refused to be with Pru.

Was Annie trying to find out whether Sam’s story was true? It certainly matched so far. She was a scholarship student trying to make life better for her family.

“Thank you,” Alice said, but her voice was soft and she looked down at her hands, twisting her fingers.

“Is that what you want to do?” Edie asked. “Support yourself as a single woman?”

“If necessary.”

“There isn’t anyone you want to marry?”

“Me?” Alice looked up, shaking her head. “No, no. I’m much too focused on my work. I don’t have the time to get to know any men.”

At least she wasn’t getting upset. Edie realized belatedly that it had been a risky question—if she had truly killed herself over a man, thinking of him would likely be distressing. But it seemed that Sam’s story wasn’t quite accurate.

Annie seemed to want to press the point. “Not even a fellow student? You haven’t worked with any young men in your magic classes?”

“I suppose.” Alice shrugged. “I’m friendly with some of the others. But we don’t really speak outside of class. Sometimes I work with the professors. I have been working with them recently, since there’s a big project I want to do.”

“Tell us about that,” Annie said. “Is it an independent study?”

“Yes, it’s the last thing I need to do before graduating,” Alice said. “I need to graduate and return home—my father is ill. The professors agreed that I could graduate early if I was able to prove my mastery of the magical disciplines, but…” Her voice faded.

“Yes?” Annie pressed her. “Tell us about that. It sounds very difficult. How do you prove your mastery? It’s more than taking an exam?”

“No… no…” Alice’s voice was faint. Suddenly Lin went limp again, though this time she didn’t collapse like she had yesterday, but caught herself on the sides of the chair.

She pushed herself upright, smiling faintly. “Sorry if that was a bad time to end the conversation,” she said. “The ghost was getting distressed again, and I didn’t want to risk it freaking out like yesterday.”

“That’s okay,” Roe said. “We don’t want you to overtax yourself. Thank you again for helping. It looks like you’re dealing with it well.”

Lin stood up and stretched, her smile widening. “It’s so freeing to know that I can eject a ghost anytime I want to. Doing it a second time proved that it wasn’t just a fluke. I hope I can keep them out when I don’t want them, too, though I won’t test it with this ghost until we’re done. Do you guys want to try another session later?”

“Yes,” Annie said quickly. “If you don’t mind. We still haven’t figured out how she died or why she’s haunting… or, crap, when she lived. I got distracted with the scholarship conversation. I was going to ask her what year she thought it was.”

“Next time,” Lin said. “I’ll be in touch. Right now I’m going to go have a nap.” She opened the door and left quietly.

“Well, that was a lot more illuminating than our last session,” Edie said, looking down at her notes. “We’ll have to see what we can find out about this Mary Thomas scholarship.”

“That might help us narrow down the timeline, too, if it only existed for a little while,” Dawn said. “Then we won’t have to ask her about the year. Though I guess we should still ask her about Otis Atkins.” They hadn’t been able to find Alice Atkins in the yearbooks at all. They’d come to the conclusion that since the first yearbook they could find was from 1910, she must have lived earlier than that; there was certainly plenty of Chatoyant College history to go through.

Chatoyant College, Chatoyant College Book 14: Ghost Stories

Chatoyant College Book 14: Chapter 44: Expulsion

claredragonfly

Corrie took two quick steps forward, then stopped, uncertain. How did one comfort a ghost, even one who was inhabiting someone else’s body? Did she even want comfort? Corrie didn’t want to touch Lin’s shoulder to comfort Alice. But she didn’t want someone coming to investigate the scream and freaking the ghost out further, either.

The scream suddenly ended in a gasp. Alice’s shoulders jerked, then she suddenly flopped over in the middle, like a marionette whose strings had been cut. Her arms dangled nearly down to her ankles.

Roe rushed forward. “Lin! Are you okay?”

Alice—or Lin—took Roe’s outstretched arm and used it to pull herself upright again. She was grinning wildly.

“I’m better than okay,” Lin said. “I did it! I expelled the ghost! I forced her out of my body!”

Annie stared at her. “But we’ve hardly gotten any information out of her.”

“I couldn’t hear the conversation,” Lin said. “I could just tell she was getting distressed, and…” She shook her head and wrapped her arms around herself. “But the important thing is, I can do it! I can remove ghosts at will!”

“That’s great, Lin!” Roe said, grinning. She and Lin seemed to be the only ones pleased with this development.

Corrie was really confused. “I’m glad that it went well for you, but… that wasn’t very helpful. We didn’t get far in our conversation.”

“We found out that her name is—“ Dawn started.

Lin held up her hand. “No, I don’t want to hear any of the details. This is information for you to use, not me.” She took a deep breath and stood up. “I’m going back to my own room now. We can try again another time. Now that I know I can expel the ghost, I think I’ll be more comfortable with letting it in, but right now I’m exhausted.”

“Do you need anything?” Edie asked. “Help getting back, or some food?”

Lin shook her head. “I’d rather just get back to my room. I’ll get in touch with Roe when I’m ready to try again.”

She left, shutting the door quietly behind her. Annie sat back on the bed, looking stunned.

Corrie took a deep breath. “Well, we’ve made some progress, right? We can look up Alice Atkins. If she was a student, we might be able to find her in a yearbook. We can search online, too. Maybe someone will have some information about her life or death.”

“It’s a start,” Dawn agreed. “When she was saying no at the end, do you guys think that meant she didn’t die here, or was she just objecting to the idea that she died?”

“I think she was just freaking out,” Roe said. “Maybe she just doesn’t like to think about having died.”

“But we have to find out how she died to find out how to appease her, don’t we?” Annie asked.

“It might not have anything to do with that,” Dawn said. “Maybe it was just an accident, and if we find out more about her life we’ll know more about how to help her. Or get rid of her. It could be that there’s some magic tying her here.”

“What if we’ve just made everything worse?” Annie asked. Her face was pinched with worry. “She got so upset, and then Lin kicked her out, so she couldn’t even continue talking to us.”

Corrie could touch Annie’s shoulder to comfort her, so she stepped closer and did that. “Maybe we’ve made things better. Now that we’ve made some real progress in talking to the ghost, she might feel like someone actually cares, and bother you less.”

“If you want to stay in our dorm again, you’re welcome to,” Dawn said.

Annie shook her head. “I’ll think about it.”

“Let’s go to the library,” Edie said, standing up and closing her notebook. “It’s not busy right now, right, Dawn? We can look at the old yearbooks and see if we find any more information.”

“Good idea,” Corrie said. “Better than sitting around doing nothing while we wait for Lin.” She held her hand out to Annie.

Annie half-smiled and took Corrie’s hand. “Yeah, okay. I just hope we can find something.”

Chatoyant College, Chatoyant College Book 14: Ghost Stories

Chatoyant College Book 14: Chapter 43: Presence

claredragonfly

A few minutes later, they had all gathered in Annie’s room. The room was small and narrow, so it was a bit crowded with all of them there, but they weren’t quite packed in like sardines. Annie and Edie sat on Annie’s bed with a few inches of space between them; Corrie, Roe, and Dawn stood between Annie’s bed and the wall; Lin had taken Annie’s desk chair, sitting on her own.

“Is there anything we need to do?” Annie asked, clutching the notebook in her lap until her knuckles turned white. “To call the ghost or something like that?”

Lin shook her head and closed her eyes. “It will show up.” Her voice was shaking slightly. “It’s… they’re drawn to my presence, and if this is where the ghost spends most of its time, then it shouldn’t take long at all.”

“Unless it hates me, Edie, and Dawn now because we tried to talk to it earlier,” Corrie muttered. She hoped she hadn’t made everything worse by trying so hard to communicate with the ghost. Scratch that, she knew she had—she just hoped it wasn’t something Lin couldn’t fix.

“We just need to wait a few minutes,” Lin said.

“You can’t tell where the ghost is?” Roe asked.

“Just that it’s in this building,” Lin said. “They don’t necessarily take up physical space, it’s more like—oh.” She let out a breath, then took one in sharply, a loud gasp. She was suddenly sitting ramrod straight in the chair, her shoulders so stiff they almost looked pointed.

“You,” she said. It was Lin’s voice, and yet it wasn’t. Corrie could not figure out the difference between now and a moment ago, other than the fury in the voice that definitely hadn’t been there before.

Lin—no, the ghost—glared around at all five of them. “What are you doing here? Leave me alone.”

“We just want to talk to you,” Corrie said quickly.

“If you don’t want to talk,” Roe said, “we don’t have to. You can leave the medium.”

The ghost looked down at Lin’s hands, stiff in her lap, and lifted the fingers to flex them. It was clear that she didn’t want to leave Lin’s body; she was probably enjoying corporeality for the first time in centuries.

“What do you want?” Annie asked. “Why are you haunting this dorm?”

The ghost covered her face with her hands—Lin’s face with Lin’s hands—Corrie didn’t know what to think, except that she was pretty sure Lin had nothing to do with anything her body was doing right now.

No wonder Lin didn’t like telling people she was a medium. It must be incredibly disconcerting to find yourself in a situation in which you have no control over your own body, but something else does. How had she even found out what she could do? “Could do” wasn’t even the right phrase here—it didn’t seem like she had a choice about whether or not to let ghosts in, they just showed up when she came close enough.

“I just want to be left alone,” the ghost said.

“But there must be a reason you’re haunting this dorm,” Annie said. “Did you die here? Did you kill yourself over a man?”

“What? No!”

“Is your name Mary Thomas?” Dawn asked.

“No! No! Leave me alone!”

“You’re welcome to leave at any time,” Roe said patiently.

“My name is Edie,” Edie said. Her voice was soft but determined. “What can we call you?”

The ghost swallowed visibly and lowered her hands. “My name was—is—Alice Atkins.”

“I’m Corrie Vine,” Corrie said, since obviously Edie had the right idea and they should all introduce themselves to the ghost. Maybe making a connection to her got her to open up a little bit more.

They all introduced themselves. Annie went last. “I’m Annie McGillan, and you’ve been haunting my room all semester,” Annie said. “Why me?”

Alice looked around. “This is my room!”

“Well, that’s one reason,” Annie muttered.

“So you lived in this room, when you were alive?” Edie asked. “Did you die here, Alice?”

Alice covered her face again. “No! No! No!” The last “no” spiraled into a scream, higher and higher in pitch.