Tempt the Stars

looked back up at me. “I wanted bosoms, you know.”
    “All right, that’s enough,” my host’s irritated voice came from behind me.
    I turned around slowly, because too-fast movements weren’t working so well for me lately, and found him holding another pan of water. Or maybe the same one, only it had been washed out and a towel was draped over his arm. He thrust them at me, along with a bar of rose-scented soap.
    “In case you want to clean up,” he said stiffly.
    I felt like pointing out that it would take more than a pan of water for that, like maybe a river. But I didn’t. Because he hadn’t had to bring it, and just getting my face clean would be nice.
    Of course, I could have done that at the sink, just like he could have emptied the pan there. Maybe he was fastidious, and didn’t want to wash off forest gunk in the same sink he prepared food over. But I was betting on another reason.
    I deliberately didn’t look at the stairs. “Thank you,” I said, and sat at the table again.
    “Your friend will be fine,” he said, after a minute, without mentioning how he knew. “And once he is, you . . . well, you need to be going.”
    I ignored that, because I wasn’t up to a fight right now. And because I wasn’t going anywhere. I settled for washing my face while he stood around awkwardly.
    I decided it was kind of nice not to be the one doing that, for a change.
    There was a shiny silver kettle on the stove. I saw it when I was washing the back of my filthy neck. “I’d like some tea,” I told him, because I would. And because it would stall for a while.
    He looked like he was debating telling me he was out, or possibly to go to hell, but then the woman ghost spoke up. “Some of the peppermint, dear. It’s wonderful for nerves.”
    “Don’t help me,” he snapped. But he went to make it.
    My stomach rumbled, having never gotten dinner, however many hours ago that had been. “And there’s some shortbread,” she added. “I think it’s in the—”
    “I know where it is!”
    “He’s not usually like this,” she confided as a bread box was opened and then slammed shut. “Just when he’s nervous. I’m Daisy, by the way.”
    “Daisy.” Daisy the ghost. Okay.
    “Well, my real name was Gertrude, but I always hated it. Named after my grandmother, and I could never stand the woman. My husband called me Daisy, ’cause I loved them so.” She smiled, a bit teary-eyed.
    I looked from her to the . . . lieutenant? Colonel? Whatever. “Is . . . is he—”
    “Good Lord, no,” he said, mustache fluffing up in indignation.
    “He should be so fortunate.” She sniffed. “Ralph was my husband. He died in, oh, 1942, it was.”
    “Under enemy fire?” I guessed, considering the date.
    “No.” She looked surprised. “Under the six a.m. to Hoboken. He got drunk and went to sleep on the railroad tracks.” She sighed. “He was not a bright man.”
    “All right, I mean it,” Roger said, coming over with a tin of cookies. “Cut it out.”
    She rolled her eyes at him, too.
    I took a cookie.
    “Who are they?” I asked, gesturing at the robots again.
    “Daisy has already introduced herself, I believe,” he said sourly. “That’s Sam.”
    “Servant, ma’am,” the old gent muttered, and emerged the rest of the way out of the clock. He had a portly body covered by a starched blue uniform. “I left it outside,” he told the man, I guess talking about Big Red. “Do y’want me to go back, see if I can salvage anything?”
    “I don’t know.” My host looked at me. “Is there anything left?”
    “Of the other one?” I guessed.
    He nodded.
    I thought about it. “The hat?”
    He scowled. “No,” he told the colonel, who muttered something and went over to give Pritkin the hairy eyeball.
    “What did we destroy?” I asked, in between stuffing my face. The cookies were homemade. God, so good.
    “Do they not feed you in your time?” my host demanded.
    “Not often,” I said honestly.
    He joined the colonel in scowling at Pritkin.
    “What was that thing?” I asked again as the kettle went off.
    “My gardener,” he told me, getting up to attend to it. “Your—my wife,” he amended, glancing at Pritkin, “is fond of the woods. But there was not much left when we arrived. The former owners had cleared some land for farming and more to build the main house. And then Tony burnt a bunch of the rest in order to have an open field of fire, in case any of his enemies