“ ‘Even as Ora Lee told me these things, she begged me never to mention Rebecca’s name to my father or to my Aunt Camille.

“ ‘ “Your Aunt Camille was done in by those days,” Ora Lee told me. “That poor child was always morbid, but she went deep into her shell and never came out anymore.”

“ ‘To return to the history of your illustrious ancestor,’ Aunt Queen went on, ‘I didn’t need Ora Lee to tell me that he had kept bringing his Irish girls to the house and keeping them in the front bedroom upstairs for many a year. I was a girl of twenty or so when my mother told me all about it—how just after my birth my father had begged the Old Man to please stop his bad behavior on account of his grandbaby coming into the world.

“ ‘The Old Man had cursed and fussed and slammed his fist down on the dining table so hard as to rattle the silver, but he agreed. For a daughter-in-law he hadn’t bothered, but for a grandbaby, well, he would, and so he removed himself from the big upstairs best bedroom, in which you now reside, my blessed nephew, and he took this bedroom here on the back of the house. And even during my early years—before I was too young to remember—he slipped his women in by the back door.

“ ‘The changing of the room had a great significance for everyone. The priest of those days, Fr. Flarety, stopped calling on Manfred for his wicked ways, and by the time I was ten, by the time the Old Man gave me the cameos, he was pretty much just a pitiful slobbering old creature, raving at the empty air and trying to hail with his cane anyone who chanced to pass the door.

“ ‘My mother became the official lady of Blackwood Manor because Aunt Camille was a wounded being who could never take such a place.

“ ‘And as for the trunk, well, I suppose I forgot about it, and it just became one of many up there, full of uninteresting clothes. Oh, of course, I always meant to go and explore the attic, but thinking it a monumental chore to put a lot of chaos in order I never bothered, and neither has anyone else.

“ ‘And now, Quinn, you know more about what happened to Rebecca Stanford than anyone living, even me. Her ghost is a danger to you, Quinn, and to everyone around you.’

“ ‘Oh, but I don’t know,’ I answered. ‘I found those chains out there, Aunt Queen. Rusted chains. But I don’t really know what happened to her!’

“ ‘Quinn, the important thing is you don’t call up this ghost again!’

“ ‘But I never really called her in the first place.’

“ ‘Yes, you did, Quinn. Not only did you find her things, you wanted to know her story.’