Dead Letter Office, Parish Mail #1

Celia calls...

Thank you Wattpad readers for voting! And the winner is... CHOICE B.   

 " I have a lot of work to do. And if I’m going to solve a murder with clues over 140 years old, I’m going to need help."  

CHOICE B: Tilly- This is no ordinary investigation. Tilly understands magic and the spirit world; I'll definitelly need her skills in cracking this mystery.

***

 We’re in the back room of Beauchamp’s House of Voodoo. Tilly reads the letter excitedly as Lenore eyeballs me from atop a cow skull on one of the many crammed shelves. “Oh my gosh, you’re so totally right,” Tilly exclaims when she finishes. “This letter and the guy they found the other day must be related. It’s clearly some kind of metaphysical energy pattern.”

“There’s a name for it?” I boggle.

“Well, no, I kind of just made that up,” Tilly admits. “But that’s what’s happening, right? The energy from a traumatic event long ago just stuck around and eventually found its way out into another event. The portal being opened probably had something to do with it.”

“That’s what Luc said,” I reflect, leaving out that his version involved holding hands with me.

“Oh! Did you find out who he is?”

“Sort of. I found out who he was.”

Tilly stares as I tell her about the Abellard, and Luc appearing at twilight, and our long walk home. To my surprise, her excitement changes into something else. Concern. “I don’t know, Cee. Getting involved with a dead guy sounds like trouble.”

“I’m not involved with him! I just met him.” It’s disconcerting how Tilly accepts without question that I went out walking with a ghost, and is only worried that I’m considering him boyfriend material.

Tilly grows pensive and idly plays with one of her necklace charms. “Everyone receives un cadeau, a gift, when they’re born. Something magical. Like, if you’ve ever known anyone who was super lucky, all the time?” I nod. I’ve had friends like that, who were uncanny at finding parking spaces or guessing lottery numbers. “Some people never discover their cadeau, if they’re not open or just don’t connect the dots. I thought mine was spell magic, like Claire, but it’s just been so glitchy...” She trails off, pondering. “Anyway, I’m thinking maybe yours is spirit-sensing.”

That would match what Luc said, that there was something about me that made it easier for him to become tangible. But what does that mean for the darker spirits out there, the ones Luc mentioned? Is the man with the green crown in my dreams one of those? “I’m not sure I like being a ghost magnet.”

“Well, it may help you solve a murder.” Tilly’s matter of fact, reaching to pull a slim box down from a high shelf.

“So you’ll help me? With your—magic?” The word sounds bizarre on my tongue.

“Duh, of course,” Tilly says, grinning. She opens the box. It’s an old Ouija board. Not the cheap kind you can get at any toy store, but solid, fragrant wood, beautiful with a polished mosaic of inlaid stone forming the letters.

She doesn’t seem to care that I’ve pulled a 180 on what I told her just yesterday. “So…I believe now. In magic, ghosts, you name it.”

Tilly shrugs. “I figured you would, in time. Cee, people believe what they experience, I know that. I wouldn’t expect you to take all this on faith. That would be crazy.” This makes me smile. Tilly may look like a weirdo at first glance, but she’s just about the most down-to-earth person I’ve met here. She sets up the Ouija board. “So. Let’s get to work.”