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* * *
“I am Melisandre.” Like everything else about her, her voice was exotic filled with promise—of what he didn’t know.
“Lancel Lannister.” He offered her his hand. Hers was surprisingly warm. “Come in. Do you need help with your equipment?” And then he realized she wasn’t even carrying a handbag.
She radiated faint amusement. “I do not use such things.” She stepped into the foyer.
“What do we do first?” The cynic in him figured she’d want a check straight off. The website had been very vague about fees.
“Take me around the house and tell me what has been happening.”
“Sure. I bought the place six months ago and at first it was completely ordinary.” Lancel gestured around the room. “This is the foyer.” He pushed open the pocket doors. “Here’s the parlor.”
Melisandre glided into the room in question. “You have had no activity here.” It was a statement.
“Nothing downstairs at all.”
Still, she asked to see the cellar and the rest of the first floor. Nothing was said about a fee. He wondered if he should ask about that now. Father and Uncle Tywin would have fits if they found out—neither man believed in the supernatural.
“There is no charge for the consultation,” Melisandre told him unasked.
He let her precede him as they ascended the stairs. She didn’t so much walk as she wafted. Perhaps she’d been a dancer? Her body wasn’t quite right for that, though. Weren’t dancers typically slight? Melisandre had a figure and her backside was such that he was beginning to forget the original reason for her visit.
She paused at the top of the stairs. “Here.”
“Some stuff.” Lancel exhaled. “It didn’t happen right away. Like I said I bought the house about a half a year ago. We were—”
“‘We?’”
“My ex-girlfriend. It’s my house, but she was living with me.”
“I see. Go on.”
Lancel thought back to how hopeful he and Sansa had been. She had loved the house. Part of the reason he’d even bought it was because of her enthusiasm. “We were focused on the outside at first. The roof was a tear-off. There had been water damage and the plumbing and rewiring was a mess. I’ve read about renovation ghosts, but—”
“—Do not diagnose. Just tell me what you’ve experienced.” Melisandre slipped into the first of the guest rooms and then the next.
“Nothing in here. But we—I’m never in either of these rooms so I don’t know.” He took her to the bathroom. “When we moved in, it was fine for the first month or so. Sansa was the first to notice it. Her makeup would get messed up. She’d open up the vanity drawer and the lipsticks would be out of order—she’s very tidy. We came back from a party and the whole upstairs reeked of her Chanel #5. Like someone had sprayed it everywhere. Sansa was so angry. We thought it was kids who had broken in, but there was no sign of forced entry.”
They moved into the office next.
Melisandre dragged a finger across the top of the monitor. She inspected the dust on the tip.
“I’ve been crashing at my parents’ house,” Lancel explained. “She likes this room.”
“Your ex-girlfriend?”
“No,” Lancel responded shortly. “The ghost.”
“‘She?’ On the phone, you said nothing about having seen or heard it.”
Lancel shrugged. He’d been vague on the phone because he knew he sounded crazy when he tried to explain this to anyone. “I’ve never seen her, but I’ve heard her and . . . felt her.” As the blood rushed up to his face, he felt himself growing warm. “She started talking to me in here.”
“What does she say? This spirit.”
“I can’t always hear her clearly. Sometimes it’s kind of muffled, but she wants me to make sure ‘he’—I don’t know who she means—drinks all the wine. I’m supposed to make sure I bring extra? And then I’ve felt her caressing my face and she promises that we can be together if I do this for her.” He shuddered. “And sometimes she gets mad because I haven’t done what I promised I would do. And she scratches at me. We took photos of the scratches if you want to see them. I have a journal with the time and dates for each of these events. We started keeping it after the third month.”
Melisandre absorbed this. “Later.”
Lancel led her to the master bedroom. He watched as Melisandre stiffened and then began inspecting more closely. When finally she turned to him, he took a deep breath. “This is mostly where stuff happens. Sansa started feeling someone in here pretty quickly. Sansa said she had the sense that whatever, whoever this thing is, it didn’t like her or want her around. And she’d hear things. I guess the spirit would call her ‘little dove’ and something like ‘valonqar.’ Well, we think it’s ‘valonqar.’ We couldn’t figure out what it meant, but we searched it on Google and that’s what came closest. It means ‘little brother’ in ancient Valyrian, I guess.”
“Or ‘younger sibling’,” Melisandre murmured. “Continue.”
He went through the rest of it: the mysterious noises, the scratching, the hisses and snarls. And knowing for certain that his pale cheeks were aflame, he mentioned the touching.
Melisandre made no comment. She asked to see the attic and then, in the kitchen over a cup of tea, she inspected the journals and photographs.
“What happens now?”
“Our team makes a site visit over the course of the next three nights and we help the spirit move on.”
The fees he was quoted were reasonable enough, but he was enough of a Lannister to require them in writing and to demand complete discretion. He could well imagine the mockery if his cousins ever found out. It would be open season on him for the next ten years if Cersei, Jaime, or Tyrion ever got wind of it.
* * *
“How crazy do you suppose he is?” Asha asked as she put the van in park.
“Mel thought not crazy at all. She said she could feel a presence the minute she walked in the door.” She’d also gone on at length at what a sympathetic person she’d felt Lancel Lannister to be.
“He probably has a nice ass,” Asha speculated.
Even though Davos know he shouldn’t snicker, he did. Melisandre was a great partner and a smart woman. The business wouldn’t be what it was without her. But she did have certain weaknesses, and a firm backside was one of them. It was impossible to tell from this angle if the man in his twenties on the porch did possess such an attribute, but he was undoubtedly attractive.
“Not bad,” Asha admitted. “But I’d bet money he’s not nearly as good as Qarl when it comes to going down.”
Davos groaned. “Asha, can you not?”
Before she could reply, Mel and Sam got out of the car. Introductions were performed and they went about setting up. Lancel Lannister followed them around anxiously. Davos couldn’t blame him. He seemed to be the type of client who had never believed in the supernatural until lately and who probably thought they were charlatans of the first order.
“Do you have to go to university to be an investigator?” he asked as they were hooking things up.
Sam looked up from the camera. “I have a PhD in psychology, but no, you don’t. Excuse me, please, I need to get another cable.”
The client tried again. “So how did you come to be in this line of work?”
“Answered a Craigslist ad,” Asha told him. “Davos, angle that a bit more towards me. Yeah, thanks. That’s perfect.”
“Asha is selling herself short,” Davos interjected smoothly. “Melisandre and I hired her for her expertise with audio.”
“That EVP stuff they’re always talking about on Ghost Hunters?” Lancel Lannister hazarded.
“That’s just great,” Asha muttered. “He watches Ghost Hunters.”
Davos shot Melisandre a look and she mercifully got the client out of their way. Davos was still fairly skeptical about the paranormal. He’d gone into partnership with Mel because he was good with cameras and computers, and because no matter what, the work was never dull, not because he believed in ghosts, but there was no denying he had been in some very creepy spaces. This house didn’t have that feel, but he had been in spots where one minute everything was normal and the next his skin was crawling.
For now though, this was just a renovated old house in a gentrifying part of King’s Landing. From what Sam said, supposedly a castle had once stood around here somewhere. You couldn’t tell that now, though. There were just streets of well-built Westerosi Foursquares.
“I hate this fucking job,” Asha muttered as she adjusted the monitors. “Yet another couple of nights sitting around because some yuppie thought he heard—”
Davos glanced over. Asha’s mouth was hanging open. “What’s wrong?”
“Oh my fucking god.”
* * *
Asha wasn’t surprised. Sam was a nice guy, but he was pretty much afraid of absolutely everything: heights, muggers, the number thirteen, birds, cooked fruit, and a whole host of other things both rational and irrational. That he had taken the job with Mel and Davos didn’t make a ton of sense, but Asha had never given it a lot of thought before.
She had also never believed in ghosts. The rational part of her brain was trying to convince her that what she’d seen on the monitors and felt in the room was faked. But that room had been fucking cold and for one nauseating second, Asha had her hand, her actual fucking hand, pass through that . . . that thing and it had been enough to nearly scare the actual shit out of her.
“You left the client in there?” Davos said aghast.
The client had not impressed her much, but there was no way he deserved to be stuck in that room alone. Asha squared her shoulders. “I’m going in.”
Davos nodded.
Melisandre took over. “No.”
“We can’t leave him in there,” Davos protested.
Melisandre approached Sam. Leaning forward, she cupped her fingers around his chin. “It will be all right. I need you to go down to the van. No one else has your expertise with the equipment.”
That was a lie if Asha had ever heard one. Davos was a fucking genius with that stuff, but Mel’s strategy wasn’t a bad one. Stroke Sam’s ego, get him out of the way, and put him to work.
“When we bring Lancel down to you, I will need you to calm him,” Melisandre said.
By the time they got back into the bedroom, the spirit thing, which was now looking a hell of a lot more solid than it had in the last five minutes, had Lancel pinned to the bed. She was slapping him repeatedly. Lancel was probably going to need an elephant tranquilizer to calm him.
The only thing holding Asha back from hauling the guy out, over her shoulder in a fireman’s carry if she had to, was the spirit, who turned at their entrance, held out a spectral hand, and shot what felt like a bolt of ice at them. The temperature in the room dropped so rapidly that Asha could see her breath.
“Here now. Stop that!” Davos said sharply, the way a parent might instruct a misbehaving child.
And then to the mutual surprise of everyone, including possibly the spirit, she did. Unfortunately, this meant that the spirit was now focused on Davos and Asha knew this was going to be a bad thing.
Davos displayed no fear. If anything, he only grew calmer. “Right. You and I need to talk.”
“How in the seven hells is talking going to help anything?” Lancel yelped.
“Now,” Melisandre hissed.
Asha grabbed the client’s hand and physically dragged him out.
“We will take him down to the kitchen,” Melisandre instructed when they were free and clear. “She doesn’t care for that room. I don’t know why.”
It wasn’t so simple. Lancel wanted to outright leave and never come back. “She keeps telling me I have to give him the wine. I tried claiming I had, but she said it was all lies.”
“Davos and I have the situation in hand,” Melisandre reassured him.
“Come on, Blondie. If Mel says the kitchen is safe, then the kitchen is safe.” Asha had no way of knowing if this was the case. Everything she’d ever believed had gone askew. Before this particular house, she would have sworn that all the things she’d seen Mel do were the product of a few chemicals and some sleight-of-hand. Now, though, she wasn’t so sure. “What about Davos?” she muttered to Mel as she watched the client gulping down a four-ounce glass of straight vodka.
But Mel was already heading back up.
“Seven hells,” Lancel moaned. “I wish I’d never set foot in this house.”
“Are you one of the wealthy Lannisters?” Asha asked. She took a glass and the bottle he offered her and poured herself a shot.
“I have a trust fund. Why?”
“Take a loss and sell the house. Have it razed if you have to.”
He nodded as if this was a decision he’d reached about ten minutes ago when a non-corporeal entity was beating the shit out of him. “Maybe I can get Sansa back.”
“That’s the ex-girlfriend?”
“Yes. I thought she was crazy at first. She said if I didn’t believe in her, there was no future for us. I don’t know,” he said gloomily. “I think she’s seeing someone else.”
They jumped at the sound of house-shaking thuds from the upstairs. And then all was quiet.
At Asha’s insistence, he stayed seated. She noted the exits and waited.
Fifteen minutes Melisandre re-emerged. Her hair was standing on end as if she’d had a bad incident with a teasing comb, her dress was torn, but she looked triumphant. “Davos has it under control.”
* * *
Melisandre patted the client’s hand. “You have trusted us this far. The ordeal is over and we have helped the spirit move on to the astral plane.”
Davos coughed and Asha was rolling her eyes, but the client seemed to be taking heart at these words. Melisandre had been spending an awful lot of time with him at his temporary home in an extended-stay hotel. “To reassure him,” she said. Sam had heard Asha wondering how much of this reassurance was done in a horizontal setting, which had led Sam to think about that too. This had excited him for other reasons, but every time he thought of the client, he thought of that thing in the upstairs bedroom and his ardor cooled.
Everyone was looking at Sam expectantly and Sam realized it was his turn. Sam stood and hesitantly began sharing what he’d uncovered. “From my research and from what Davos told us, we think we can identify the spirit as Cersei Lannister. She was the wife of—”
“Cersei’s my first cousin,” Lancel interjected. “My mother talked to her the other day and she’s alive and well. She lives in the Reach with her husband, Willas. She’s in charge of Uncle Tywin’s agribusiness company now that he’s semi-retired. We’ve never been really close and she can be sarcastic, but she’s a very kind, well-adjusted woman. Are you suggesting she’s behind this somehow?”
Sam shook his head. “Not at all. Although I wasn’t able to do extensive research on the Lannister house history, it appears that the name Cersei is a family name, just as your own, Lancel, is.” He queued up his PowerPoint. “The . . . spirit Cersei—for the sake of clarity, I’m going to refer to her as Queen Cersei?” He waited for the nod and then continued, “was the wife of King Robert Baratheon. He was—“
“—Sam,” Melisandre murmured, her deep red lips quirked ever so slightly upwards in a faint, serene smile.
He correctly interpreted this as a directive to keep the history lesson to a minimum. “We don’t know a lot about their personal lives, but from what she communicated to Davos, it wasn’t a happy marriage. Among other things, he mistreated her, beat her, and sired over fifteen illegitimate children all over Westeros. He was killed in a boar hunt.”
The client was frowning. “I think we learned about this at school. The War of the Five Kings started when he died, right?”
Sam beamed. He loved history, but so few people knew theirs. “Yes, that’s right.” Catching a glare from Asha, who definitely did not care about history, he advanced to the slide that showed the woodcut he’d found. “This is Lancel Lannister the Holy. He was first cousin to Queen Cersei and squire to the king. He turned to religion and in the year 300AC, testified against her that she had committed adultery with him and that she had suborned him to supply the king with ‘over-strong wine’ before and during the boar hunt that killed him.”
Lancel absorbed this information. “All right, fine, but what exactly does this have to do with me or my house?”
“Sometimes factors align and it can aggravate paranormal activity,” Melisandre explained as if this was perfectly obvious.
Sam advanced to the next slide. “This was the Red Keep. It was built on Aegon’s Hill. It was destroyed in a conflict—” he stopped, caught himself before he delved further into more history, and refocused, before continuing. “The point is that it once stood where your neighborhood now stands. And this,” he said as he pointed to one of the towers on the image, “is approximately where your house is located now. The queen’s quarters were there.”
“But that’s still a big area and I had an apartment two streets over for two years. Nothing happened there.”
Melisandre shrugged. “We cannot exactly be certain what prompted all of this to begin, but you were renovating the house and you yourself mentioned the possibility of that stirring up activity. Also, your former girlfriend may have been a factor.” She gestured for Sam to advance the slide.
Sam had had a lot of images from which to choose. For over two hundred years after her death, Sansa Stark had inspired any number of artists. Sam was about to share a little about the historical Sansa when Lancel’s mouth gaped a little.
“Shit. Now I remember. Sansa told me about her when first met. It’s starting to come back to me. She was mixed up with the queen, right? Sansa—my girlfriend—never mentioned the name, but she knew the story.”
“There was some discord,” Davos agreed. “Cersei—the spirit—was angered by her presence here. That came out clear enough.”
Melisandre laid it out for him: the renovation, the location, the names, the ancestors, the dead queen’s bitterness, how spirits sometimes got caught in a pattern. It was a perfect storm of factors that had led to her reemergence.
“But you said she’s gone now.”
“She is,” Davos confirmed.
“How? Did you perform an exorcism or what?”
It was funny, but Sam got the feeling Melisandre was not at all happy about how it had all gone down.
“I talked—er—communicated with her.” Davos shrugged. “From what I could sense, I think she felt marginalized most of her life. She felt she was sold into marriage and she wanted her husband to pay.”
Melisandre interrupted, “We did a cleansing.”
This wasn’t exactly true. Davos had spent practically days in the room patiently listening and providing sympathy, persuading the spirit that she was, in fact, a spirit, and that if she moved on, she would be with her beloved children again. It didn’t sound all that dissimilar from therapy really, Sam reflected.
Lancel had more questions, but Melisandre fielded them all and finally he was satisfied. As Melisandre walked him out, they all relaxed. Asha began perusing takeout menus. Davos put on his reading glasses and started typing up the invoice, while Sam shut down his PowerPoint presentation.
“Why was Melisandre so dismissive of what you did?” Sam asked.
Davos glanced up over the rims of his glasses. “Well, you know, Mel. She likes the mystery of it all. Me sitting down and talking it out with a spirit is pretty pedestrian.”
“Ah.”
“If we never encounter a real ghost again,” Asha opined, “It will be too fucking soon.”
“I don’t know,” Davos said. “I didn’t mind most of it. Anyhow, you can’t say this job is dull anymore.”
“I wouldn’t mind going back to dull.” Asha peered out the window. “Who is she kidding? Reassurance, my ass. She’s fucking him.”
Sam began perusing his email. “Hey, we got our next case. It sounds interesting, but we’re going to have to travel.”
Davos opened up his newspaper. “Where to?”
“Dragonstone.”
* * *