Strong Spirits [Spirits 01] Read Online Free Page B

harangues that much harder to take.
           Pudge removed his hat, as if he’d just remembered his manners. “Are you sure you don’t want me to drive you, Miss Desdemona?”
           “No, thanks, Pudge. I don’t know how long I’ll be, and I don’t want you to stay up too late. You have to go to school tomorrow.”
           He made a face, which made me laugh, which made for a distinct improvement in my mood. “I don’t mind,” he said in a pleading sort of voice.
           It was nice to know that at least one male member of the human race appreciated me, even if he was only eight years old. “I’m afraid your mama would mind, though. Not to mention Miss West.” Miss West was Pudge’s teacher, and she was a true Tarter. I knew it for a certified fact, because she’d taught me when I was in the third grade, and I could still feel that ruler come down on my knuckles; I flexed my hands in remembrance. I’d been a lighthearted girl and not the best-disciplined student in the universe.
           “Sorry, Pudge.” I chirped to Brownie, who grumbled once and started walking. I don’t know what Brownie would do if a real emergency occurred, since his pace was either slow or slower, except when he stopped walking altogether.
           Fortunately, Mrs. Kincaid’s house wasn’t very far away from ours, geographically speaking. Socially, the Kincaids were about as far above my family as the stars were from the earth. Not to mention money-wise. She and her husband and daughter lived in the huge mansion her father had built on Orange Grove Boulevard, the street where the rich people lived. Lots of rich people lived in Pasadena, and not all of them lived on Orange Grove, but nobody who lived on Orange Grove wasn’t rich. They had a son, too, but he didn’t live with his parents.
           I loved visiting the Kincaids’ mansion, and not only because one of my best friends worked there. While I was supposed to be either preparing myself for séances or taking tea afterwards, I absorbed my surroundings and pretended the house was mine. Fat chance. I might make a relatively good living, but I’d need to own a railroad or a gold mine or a South American country before I could have an estate like that.
           Still, it was nice of Mrs. Kincaid not to treat me like a servant. After a séance she always asked me to stay and take tea with her friends. She even introduced me to everyone, and they all talked to me as if I were their equal. Which I was in the overall scheme of American life. But we all know that rich people are different from the rest of us, if only because they can buy stuff we can’t. The truth was that Mrs. Kincaid seemed a little in awe of me, as Pudge was. It might have been laughable if I didn’t appreciate it so much in both of them.
           I drove the three-quarters of a mile to the Kincaid mansion, urging Brownie on with promises of sugar cubes and carrots. Brownie pretty much ignored everything but food, including motorcars and me. The first was a blessing since there were so many more of them on the streets by 1920 than there had been only a couple of years earlier, and the second didn’t bother me since he did what I wanted him to do anyhow. I haven’t met very many horses, but it seemed to me that Brownie was a particularly phlegmatic example of the species. He plodded on, looking like a horse who hated what he was doing but had no choice. Which might have been true, come to think of it.
           Brownie perked up when we approached the huge iron gate in the huge iron fence surrounding the Kincaid estate. He’d been there before, and he knew the Kincaids’ stable hands liked him and always gave him treats.
           Jackson, the guardian of the gate, saw us coming and pressed the button that made the electrically operated gate open. It was an impressive sight, those massive black gates sliding apart—and doing so to admit me , of all