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make a good nurse.”
    Okay, he’d changed the subject, but she loved a challenge. “My sisters and I practically raised each other. We’re good at scraped knees and such.”
    “There are more like you?”
    “You have no idea. Scary thought, isn’t it? But that’s not the point.”
    “There was a point to this?”
    “There was a point to the toys. A message.”
    Confusion furrowed his brow. “Which is?”
    Harmony huffed. “Gussie was toying with me to show me she could. Then you rescued me and we joined forces, so to speak, so Gussie toyed with us both. Ergo, a bayonet landed too close to your man brain for comfort.”
    Paxton winced. “I’m not a cliché. I stopped using my ‘man brain,’ as you call it, when I was in high school.”
    “You wore it out?”
    “No, I used it for nefarious purposes and got myself screwed in every possible way.”
    “Even so, you don’t live like a monk, because the way you kiss—”
    “I’m a sane man with a strong sense of self-preservation . . . and a healthy libido. I choose carefully, nearly to the point of celibacy.”
    “And yet, you just put your ass in my hands.”
    “I must have been in shock.”
    “You could have gone to a hospital.”
    “They’d have put me on the psych ward if I told them how it happened.”
    “Whatever.” Harmony looked toward the toy room. “Warning taken, Gussie,” she called.
    “I’m going up to change,” Paxton said. “Want me to walk you as far as the cedar dressing room?”
    “No thanks. This parlor’s like a museum. I’d like to look around for a while. Gussie’s too tired to cause any dire mischief. Besides, this parlor is nowhere near as negative as the toy room, plus Gussie likes me .”
    “I’ll come back for you after I’ve changed and checked on the crew. Don’t go back to the toy room.”
    “I’m not crazy.”
    “See, that’s where our opinions differ.” He limped away.
    The formal parlor emitted an unusual vibe. Harmony was used to different people’s vibes warring for prominence in her mind, but strangely enough, the only warring energy in this room, whatever Harmony touched, belonged to Gussie. Glory, the poor witch even fought with herself.
    After the toy room, Harmony understood her better. Mad, sad, and belligerent, Gussie had lived and died to wreak havoc. She caused discord and fed on it, either for fun or to set herself up as both controller and arbitrator, which meant that she had probably been universally disliked, even in life. But why? And while wreaking havoc might have satisfied her in life, nothing seemed to satisfy her in death, so what did she really want?
    That new but familiar cold draft and decaying lilac scent entrapped and danced around Harmony while the answer filled her mind: Vindication . “Oh boy.” The scorned, mad, dead witch, who for some reason liked her, or thought she could use her, wanted vindication.
    Vindication from what? And who had scorned her? Two more vague pieces to an indefinable puzzle.
    Harmony thought she should get her twitchy witchy self out, and fast. But despite the psychotic ghost and because of the psychic mandate demanding to be fulfilled, she needed to explore the castle, its treasure of vintage clothes, and its owner, not necessarily in that order. To that end, she wandered the formal parlor, sat on a piano stool with dolphin feet, and played “Chopsticks.” She opened every drawer, searching for the other half of her ring or another clue. Sensing Gussie, she sat in a Queen Anne chair beside a long wall covered by an equally long tapestry.
    The chair, or the area surrounding it, vibrated with Gussie’s energy—not simply her malevolent ghostly energy like in the toy room, but her true spirit, as it might have been in life, some of it powerfully positive .
    Pay dirt. Gussie had frequented this area in good times and bad, and the sum of her energy seemed to boil down to this one wall.
    The strains of Brahms’s “Lullaby” reached Harmony, and