"You should be flattered. She rarely shows herself to anyone outside the family—or so the legend goes. You shouldn't feel threatened, Stella."

"But I did. Last night, when I got home, and went in to check on the boys. I heard her first. She sings some sort of lullaby."

" 'Lavender's Blue.' It's what you could call her trademark." Taking out small clippers, Roz trimmed off

a weak side stem. "She's never spoken that I've heard, or heard of, but she sings to the children of the house at night."

" 'Lavender's Blue.' Yes, that's it. I heard her, and rushed in. There she was, standing between their beds. She looked at me. It was only for a second, but she looked at me. Her eyes weren't sad, Roz, they were angry. There was a blast of cold, like she'd thrown something at me in temper. Not like the other times, when I'd just felt a chill."

Interested now, Roz studied Stella's face. "I felt as if I'd annoyed her a few times, on and off. Just a change of tone. Very like you described, I suppose."

"It happened."

"I believe you, but primarily, from most of my experiences, she's always been a benign sort of presence.

I always took those temper snaps to be a kind of moodiness. I expect ghosts get moody."

"You expect ghosts get moody," Stella repeated slowly. "I just don't understand a statement like that."

"People do, don't they? Why should that change when they're dead?"

"Okay," Stella said after a moment. "I'm going to try to roll with all this, like it's not insanity. So, maybe she doesn't like me being here."

"Over the last hundred years or so, Harper House has had a lot of people live in it, a lot of houseguests. She ought to be used to it. If you'd feel better moving to the other wing—"

"No. I don't see how that would make a difference. And though I was unnerved enough last night to

sleep in the boys' room with them, she wasn't angry with them. It was just me. Who was she?"

"Nobody knows for sure. In polite company, she's referred to as the Harper Bride, but it's assumed she was a servant. A nurse or governess. My theory is one of the men in the house seduced her, maybe cast her off, especially if she got pregnant. There's the attachment to children, so it seemed most logical she had a connection to kids. It's a sure bet she died in or around the house."

"There'd be records, right? A family Bible, birth and death records, photographs, tintypes, whatever."

"Oh, tons."

"I'd like to go through them, if it's all right with you. I'd like to try to find out who she was. I want to know who, or what, I'm dealing with."

"All right." Clippers still in hand, Roz set a fist on her hip. "I guess it's odd no one's ever done it before, including myself. I'll help you with it. It'll be interesting."

* * *

"This is so awesome." Hayley looked around the library table, where Stella had arranged the photograph albums, the thick Bible, the boxes of old papers, her laptop, and several notebooks. "We're like the Scooby gang."

"I can't believe you saw her, too, and didn't say anything."

Hayley hunched up her shoulders and continued to wander the room. "I figured you'd think I'd wigged. Besides, except for the once, I only caught a glimpse, like over here." She held up a hand at the side of her head. "I've never been around an actual ghost. This is completely cool."

"I'm glad someone's enjoying herself."

She really was. As she and her father had both loved books, they'd used their living room as a kind of library, stuffing the shelves with books, putting in a couple of big, squishy chairs.

It had been nice, cozy and nice.

But this was a library. Beautiful bookcases of deep, dark wood flanked long windows, then rose up and around the walls in a kind of platform where the long table stood. There had to be hundreds of books, but it didn't seem overwhelming, not with the dark, restful green of the walls and the warm cream granite of the fireplace. She liked the big black candlesticks and the groupings of family pictures on the mantel.

There were more pictures scattered around here and there, and things. Fascinating things like bowls and statues and a dome-shaped crystal clock. Flowers, of course. There were flowers in nearly every room

of the house. These were tulips with deep, deep purple cups that sort of spilled out of a wide, clear glass vase.

There were lots of chairs, wide, butter-soft leather chairs, and even a leather sofa. Though a chandelier dripped from the center of the tray ceiling, and even the bookcases lit up, there were lamps with those cool shades that looked like stained glass. The rugs were probably really old, and so interesting with their pattern of exotic birds around the borders.

She couldn't imagine what it must have been like to have a room like this, much less to know just how

to decorate it so it would be—well, gorgeous was the only word she could think of—and yet still be as cozy as the little library she'd had at home.

But Roz knew. Roz, in Hayley's opinion, was the absolute bomb.

"I think this is my favorite room of the house," she decided. "Of course, I think that about every room after I'm in it for five minutes. But I really think this wins the prize. It's like a picture out of Southern Living or something, but the accent's on living. You wouldn't be afraid to take a nap on the couch."

"I know what you mean." Stella set aside the photo album she'd looked through. "Hayley, you have to remember not to say anything about this to the kids."

"Of course, I won't." She came back to the table, and finally sat. "Hey, maybe we could do a seance. That would be so spooky and great."

"I'm not that far gone yet," Stella replied. She glanced over as David came in.

"Ghost hunter snacks," he announced and set the tray on the table. "Coffee, tea, cookies. I considered angel food cake, but it seemed too obvious."

"Having fun with this?"

"Damn right. But I'm also willing to roll up my sleeves and dive into all this stuff. It'll be nice to put a name to her after all this time." He tapped a finger on Stella's laptop. "And this is for?"

"Notes. Data, facts, speculation. I don't know. It's my first day on the job."

Roz came in, carting a packing box. There was a smudge of dust on her cheek and silky threads of cobwebs in her hair. "Household accounts, from the attic. There's more up there, but this ought to

give us a start."

She dumped the box on the table, grinned. "This should be fun. Don't know why I haven't thought of it before. Where do y'all want to start?"

"I was thinking we could have a seance," Hayley began. "Maybe she'll just tell us who she is and why

her spirit's, you know, trapped on this plane of existence. That's the thing with ghosts. They get trapped, and sometimes they don't even know they're dead. How creepy is that?"

"A seance." David rubbed his hands together. "Now where did I leave my turban?"

When Hayley burst into throaty laughter, Stella rapped her knuckles on the table. "If we could control

the hilarity? I thought we'd start with something a little more mundane. Like trying to date her."

"I've never dated a ghost," David mused, "but I'm up for it."

"Get her time period," Stella said with a slanted look for David. "By what she's wearing. We might be able to pinpoint when she lived, or at least get an estimate."

"Discovery through fashion." Roz nodded as she picked up a cookie. "That's good."

"Smart," Hayley agreed. "But I didn't really notice what she had on. I only got a glimpse."

"A gray dress," Roz put in. "High-necked. Long sleeves."

"Can any of us sketch?" Stella asked. "I'm all right with straight lines and curves, but I'd be hopeless

with figures."

"Roz is your girl." David patted Roz on the shoulder.

"Can you draw her, Roz? Your impression of her?"

"I can sure give it a shot."

"I bought notebooks." Stella offered one and made Roz smile.

"Of course you did. And I bet your pencils are all nicely sharpened, too. Just like the first day of school."

"Hard to write with them otherwise. David, while she's doing that, why don't you tell us your experiences with ... I guess we'll call her the Harper Bride for now."

"Only had a few, and all back when I was a kid, hanging out here with Harper."

"What about the first time?"

"You never forget your first." He winked at her, and after sitting, poured himself coffee. "I was bunking in with Harper, and we were pretending to be asleep so Roz didn't come in and lower the boom. We

were whispering—"

"They always thought they were," Roz said as she sketched.

"I think it was spring. I remember we had the windows open, and there was a breeze. I'd have been around nine. I met Harper in school, and even though he was a year behind me, we hit it off. We hadn't known each other but a few weeks when I came over to spend the night. So we were there, in the dark, thinking we were whispering, and he told me about the ghost. I thought he was making it up to scare me, but he swore all the way up to the needle in his eye that it was true, and he'd seen her lots of times.

"We must've fallen asleep. I remember waking up, thinking somebody had stroked my head. I thought it was Roz, and I was a little embarrassed, so I squinted one eye open to see."

He sipped coffee, narrowing his eyes as he searched for the memory. "And I saw her. She walked over

to Harper's bed and bent over him, the way you do when you kiss a child on the top of the head. Then she walked across the room. There was a rocking chair over in the corner. She sat down and started to rock, and sing."

He set the coffee down. "I don't know if I made some sound, or moved, or what, but she looked right