Price's landlady showed us up to the tiny parlor where a thin man with short white hair and a long white beard sat eating breakfast. The Times was open on the table beside him and several books and journals were piled or scattered around the small space. Oddly, the mantelpiece was empty except for a smoking pipe on a wooden stand. The walls too were bare. It was almost as if he'd just unpacked after moving in.
Although it was almost noon, Price didn't seem concerned that he'd been caught eating at such a late hour, or that he'd been caught eating at all. He kept right on shoveling eggs and bacon into his mouth as if it was his first meal in a week. By the thinness of him, it might very well have been.
He greeted George with a nod of his long, horse-y head but hardly acknowledged me at all until George introduced us. My name did, however, catch his attention.
"Emily Chambers," he said, pausing in chewing to look me over properly. "Well, well, well." He had eyes of the palest blue, like a frozen lake, which left me shivering in the wake of his bald scrutiny.
"You've heard of her," George said, sounding pleased.
Price wiped his mouth with the back of his hand, all the while watching me. It was most unnerving. "I have indeed. She's the spirit medium. Quite a good one, I hear."
I did not like the way he spoke about me as if I wasn't there, or as if I was an object without the capability of thought or speech. "Mr. Price, if you would stop staring, I would be most grateful." I gave him a tight smile. "I'm not at my best today you see." It was a light-hearted attempt to cut through the awkwardness I felt in his presence but it was also a grim reminder of why I wasn't looking my best-I'd been up half the night crying over Jacob.
I shoved all thoughts of my ghost away. I needed to concentrate and I couldn't do that if I let sadness consume me.
Price snorted a laugh and sat back in his chair. The move made his smoking jacket gape open, revealing a plain linen shirt underneath. "Sit, sit, both of you." I sat on the only spare chair, a hard-backed, unpadded affair that looked as old as the white-haired man himself. George removed a stack of books from another chair and, not finding anywhere to deposit them, piled them up on the floor near the unlit fireplace. He sat too and offered me a small shrug. Price wouldn't have noticed since he was still staring at me. I felt like an exotic bird at the zoo, a feeling that wasn't entirely foreign but definitely not welcome.