Holding Court by K.C. Held Page A

Henry went into the passageway by himself. And I realize he was probably in there long enough to get rid of a dead body. He could have hauled it up the stairs to his private rooms or tossed it down the stairs or…
    I stop outside the door to King Henry’s study, suddenly nervous about losing more than my job as a psychic nun at a cheesy tourist attraction. Just how far was Hank Bacon, Tudor superfan, willing to go to get into character as Henry VIII, a guy who hanged or beheaded anyone who pissed him off?
    As a precautionary measure, I pull out my cell phone and dial Gran’s number. When her voicemail picks up I whisper into the phone, “Gran, it’s Jules. Just so you know, I’m about to go into a meeting with Hank Bacon, aka King Henry. If I don’t come home tonight tell the police to look in the secret passageway. There’s an entrance behind the suit of armor in the main hallway on the ground floor. I love you. Bye.”
    I stick the phone back in my backpack, take a deep breath, and knock on the heavy wooden door.

Chapter Eight
    Should Have Seen That Coming
    “ H ave a seat, Mistress Verity,” King Henry says when I enter the room. He’s sitting behind his desk, still in costume. “How are you feeling?”
    “Like I’m about to be beheaded for treason? I’m not really sure how to answer that question.”
    “Nervous? Confused? Scared? I would think one or all of those would apply. Mistress Verity, I will be honest. This is a new one for me. I have never had an employee, psychic or otherwise, claim to see a dead body that then disappeared before anyone else could verify its existence. I hardly know how to proceed. What does one do under these circumstances? Call the police? Close the castle and have it thoroughly searched? Take a head count and make sure all of my employees are accounted for? Contact all of the visitors who came to the castle today and make sure they left with the same number in their party that they came with? Do you see the quandary I’m in? I do not wish to alarm anyone, but at the same time the safety of my employees and that of the castle guests is of the utmost importance to me. As I am sure you understand.”
    “Yes, Your Majesty.”
    “The whole affair is somewhat complicated by your, shall we say, unique gift?”
    “What do you mean?”
    “I mean, as someone with the gift of visions you are privy to information that we lesser mortals are not. Therefore it is difficult to know what you saw, versus what you might have…intuited.”
    “There’s no way that girl was some sort of vision. I touched her. I promise you, she was real.”
    “In the end,” King Henry continues as if I haven’t said anything, “I decided upon the simplest course of action.” He stands up, and I’m pretty sure this is the part where he’s going to go all Henry VIII on me and either lop my head off or order one of his minions to do it. “I called your mother.”
    “ What? ” So not what I was expecting.
    “I said, I called your mother. She was kind enough to give me her phone number when I visited your family’s antique shop. I told her what occurred here tonight and asked her what conclusions she might draw from the episode—if it’s possible that what you saw in the secret passageway is somehow a manifestation of your gift. I understand these kinds of things run in your family and I thought she might be able to shed some light on the situation.”
    “Awesome. I bet that was an enlightening conversation.” My mom’s gift is completely different from mine, and completely different from Gran’s. And while Gran has chosen to share her gift with the world in the most obnoxious way possible, my mom has chosen the incognito route. No one except Gran and I, and my dad, know the specifics of her gift. And while she’d never fire me for having an involuntary blurting episode in her shop, I know she thinks there are things I could be doing to control my gift instead of arbitrarily spewing