Haunted

chapter 6


AN EARTH-SPOOK. THOUGH I’D NEVER HEARD THE term, I understood the concept. When we die, most of us go on to an afterlife, but a few stay behind. Some are what the headless accountant purported to be—spirits trapped by unfinished business. Only they aren’t really trapped. Like the crying woman in Savannah’s house, they’re stalled, thinking they have unfinished business.

This could have been the headless accountant’s problem, but I’d lay even money that he fell into category two of these “earth-spooks,” those who were sentenced to this limbo for a period after death. If so, he wasn’t going anywhere until the almighty powers decided he’d learned his lesson. At this rate, he’d be pestering necromancers into the next millennium. But I was about to strike one off his calling list.

Since my quarry was trapped in this plane and couldn’t teleport out, following him was easy enough. Although I followed less than fifty feet behind, he never noticed me. I’d changed into a baggy windbreaker and blue jeans, put my hair in a ponytail, and slapped on a ball cap. I kept a cover spell readied, with my blinding power as a backup, though I wasn’t sure how well either worked in this plane. I had a lot to learn.

I gumshoed him halfway across the Windy City, taking two city buses plus the el train. Then he marched across the lawn of the ugliest building I had ever seen. It looked like my high school, which—to me—had always looked like a jail. Part of that was my own feelings about formal education, but I swear the architect of that school had a real grudge against students. Probably spent his teen years stuffed inside a locker, and vowed revenge on every generation to follow. This building was that same shit brown brick, that same looming bland facade, those same tiny windows. It was even surrounded by a similar ten-foot fence.

My first guess was, of course: jail. Seemed like a good place to keep Mr. DUI. But when I passed the ancient sign out front, I read: DALEWOOD PSYCHIATRIC HOSPITAL. So the headless accountant was hanging out in a psych hospital? Didn’t seem to be helping.

In the parking lot, I waited behind a minivan until my ghost went in through a side door, where a half-dozen staff members stood getting a quick nicotine fix, huddled against the bitter chill as the sun dropped below the horizon. I crossed the grass-free strip of lawn, skirting past the smokers. Two steps from the door, a beefy bulldog-ugly orderly stepped into my path. I didn’t slow, expecting to pass right through. Instead, I hit a solid wall of fat and muscle. Another ghost. Damn.

“Where you think you’re going, boy?” he rumbled.

As I lifted my head, he blinked, realizing his gender blunder. “Look, lady, this is private property. You wanna join, you gotta talk to Ted.”

I looked him full in the eyes, and switched on my blinding power.

“You deaf or something, hon?” he said. “I know I’m good-looking, but you ain’t my type. Stop staring and start walking or I’m going to introduce my boot to your pretty butt.”

As quick as I am to correct an insult, I’m just as quick to recognize an obstacle when I see one. Sure, I could probably just kick his ass the old-fashioned way, but that might tip off my quarry. So I murmured an insincere apology and trekked back down to the end of the laneway.

As a kid, when my mother had harangued me to get involved in extracurricular activities, I’d signed up for track-and-field. Was pretty damned good at it, too. Got to the city finals. I can still remember that moment, poised at the starting gate, before a crowd that had included my mother and all the Coven Elders. I crouched, waiting for the starter pistol, then leapt forward…and snagged my shoelace in the gate. Fell flat on my face. And that was pretty much how I felt now. My first job in the ghost world, and I was sucking dust at the starting line.

The worst of it was that, like forgetting to tie my shoe, my mistake was inexcusable. That earth-spook bouncer had clearly known I was a ghost—that’s why he’d stepped into my path. How had he known? I’d been careful not to walk through anything. And why hadn’t I recognized what he was? Basic afterlife skills. Time to admit I needed help.

My house was in Savannah’s historic district. Before my daughter had been born, I’d scoured the supernatural world for greater sources of power, and a few of those stops had been in Savannah. I’d loved the place. I don’t know why. Savannah was the epitome of genteel Southern charm, and there wasn’t an ounce of gentility or charm in my body, nor did I want there to be. Yet something about the city struck a chord in me, so much so that I’d named my daughter after it. After I died, and had my pick of places to live, I’d chosen Savannah.

My house was a two-story antebellum manor, both levels decked out with verandahs and thin columns looped with ivy. A squat wrought-iron fence fronted the tiny yard, which was filled with so many palms, ferns, and rhododendrons that I had yet to see a blade of grass.

Kristof calls this my “Southern Belle” house, and laughs each time he says it. When he teases me, I remind him of where he’s ended up. This is a man who has spent his life in ten-thousand-square-foot penthouses, with every possible modern convenience at his fingertips and a full staff ready to operate those conveniences for him, should he not wish to strain said fingertips. And where had he chosen to live in the afterlife? On a boat. Not a hundred-foot luxury yacht, but a tiny houseboat that creaks as if it’s about to crack in half.

Kris wouldn’t be at his houseboat now. He’d be in the same place he’d spent almost every evening for the past two and a half years. At my house. He’d started coming by as soon as he’d realized we shared the same ghost dimension. Less than a week after his death, he’d showed up at my door, walked in, and made himself comfortable, just as he used to do in my apartment thirteen years before.

At first, I hadn’t known what to make of it, chalked it up to death shock, and told him, very nicely, that I didn’t think this was a good idea. He ignored me. Kept ignoring me, even when I moved on to less polite forms of rejection. After a year, I couldn’t be bothered objecting with anything stronger than a deep sigh, and he knew he’d won. Now I expected to see him there, even looked forward to it.

So when I peered through the front window, for a second, I saw exactly what I expected to see: Kristof sitting in his usual armchair before a crackling fire, enjoying a single-malt Scotch and his evening reading material—a comic book or a back issue of Mad magazine. Then the image vanished and, instead, I saw an empty fireplace, an empty chair, and a stoppered decanter.

I blinked back a dart of panic. Kristof was always here, as reliable as the tides. Well, except on Thursdays, but that’s because on Thursdays we—Shit! It was Thursday, wasn’t it?

I raced through a travel incantation, and my house disappeared.

A blast of cold air hit me. The bone-chilling cold of the cement floors seeped through the soles of my sneakers. In front of me was a scarred slab of Plexiglas, so crisscrossed with scratches I’d need my Aspicio powers to see what lay on the other side. To my right rose a wave of bleachers, wooden planks so worn that I couldn’t guess what their original color had been.

I moved past the Plexiglas to an open section of the boards. Two teams of ghosts ripped around the ice, skates flying, their shouts and laughter mingling with those from the stands. I scanned the ice for Kris’s blond head. The first place I looked, I found him: the penalty box.

Hockey had always been Kris’s secret passion. Secret because it wasn’t a proper hobby for a Nast, especially a Nast heir. There were two sports a Cabal son was expected to play. Golf, because so many deals were brokered on the greens, and racquetball, because there was nothing like a kick-ass game to show your VPs why they should never cross you in the boardroom. Baseball and basketball were good spectator sports for impressing prospective partners with skybox and courtside seats. But hockey? That was little better than all-star wrestling. Nasts did not attend hockey games, and they sure as hell didn’t play them.

As a child, Kristof had never so much as strapped on a pair of skates. Not surprising for a native Californian. At Harvard, he’d had a roommate on the hockey team. Get Kristof close to anything that sounds like fun, and he has to give it a shot. Once back in L.A., he’d joined a league, using a false name so his father wouldn’t find out.

When we’d been together, I’d gone to all of his games. Yet I’d waffled about it every week, telling him maybe I’d show up, if I had the time, but don’t count on it. Of course, I’d never missed a game. I couldn’t resist watching him play, beaming behind his face mask as he whipped around the ice, grinning whether he scored, missed, or got knocked flat on his ass. Even sitting in the penalty box, he could barely manage to keep a straight face. How could I miss out on that?

He’d joined this ghost-world team about six months ago, and by then, we’d been close enough that I’d made sure I was always in the stands to watch.

I checked the scoreboard and wondered whether I should wait for the period break or head back to the hospital and try to muddle through on my own. I was about to teleport back to the return marker I’d laid, when Kristof hit the boards beside me, hard enough to make me jump.

“Hello, gorgeous,” he said.

He pulled up to the side and grinned, his smile so wide it made my heart do a double-flip. Impossible for a ghost, I know, but I swear I still felt it flip, as it had since the first time I’d seen that grin; the gateway to “my” Kris, the one he kept hidden from everyone else.

As he planted his forearms on the boards and leaned over, a shock of hair flipped up from the back, mussed out of place by his slam into the boards. I resisted the urge to reach out and smooth it down, but let myself move a step closer, within touching distance.

“I thought you were in the box,” I said.

“They let me out every once in a while.”

“Silly them.”

Our eyes met and his grin stretched another quarter-inch. Another schoolgirl flip—followed by a very un-schoolgirl wave of heat. He leaned even farther over the boards, lips parting to say something.

“Hey, Kris!” someone yelled behind him. “If you want to flirt with Eve, tell her to meet you in the penalty box. You’ll be back there soon enough.”

Kristof flashed him a gloved middle finger.

“He’s right,” I said, shaking it off as I stepped back. “Time to play, not talk. I just wanted to say I’m sorry for being late. I was busy and completely forgot.”

A soft sigh as the grin fell away. “What did Savannah need now?”

“Sav…?”

Having spent days in the time-delayed throne room and that wasteland dimension, I’d forgotten that only hours had really passed since I’d last seen Kristof.

“No, it wasn’t Savannah,” I said. “The Fates have been keeping me busy. Seems you’re not the only one who thinks I need a job.”

“The Fates? What—?”

A shout from a teammate cut him short. He waved to say he’d be right there.

“Go on,” I said. “I can talk to you later.”

“Uh-uh. You aren’t tossing out that teaser and running off. Stay right there.”

He skated back to talk to his teammates, and within minutes was off the ice, back in street clothes, and escorting me outside to talk.

“Bounty-hunting for the Fates, hmm?” he said, settling onto a swing-set outside the arena. “Well, if it keeps you from obsessing—” He bit the sentence short. “If you need to know how to deal with haunters, you’ve come to the right place.”

“You’ve haunted?”

“Surprised?”

I laughed. “Not really.”

“I tried it. Didn’t see the attraction. A hobby for cowards and bullies. But I learned enough to help you take care of this guy. First, we need to teach you how to get past the earth-spooks without being made as a ghost.” He leapt off the swing, landing awkwardly, but righting himself before he toppled. “Ghost lesson number one, coming up.”

“You don’t need to—”

“I know.”

His fingers closed around mine and we disappeared.

Back inside the arena, we switched dimensions, slipping into the living world. On the other side of the Plexiglas barrier, a troop of preschoolers lurched past on tiny skates. Decked out in snowsuits that made them as wide as they were tall, they bobbed and swayed like a flock of drunken penguins, struggling to cross the few yards of ice between themselves and the instructor. One near the middle stumbled, and knocked over a few of her fellows. A cry went up and a gaggle of parents swooped down. A few kids on the edges of the pack decided to topple, too, so they wouldn’t be left out of the sympathy rush.

“You must have taught Sean and Bryce how to—” I stopped, noticing I was alone. “Kris?”

“Eve!”

Kristof slid onto center ice, arms up as he pirouetted in his street shoes. I bit back a laugh.

“Test number one,” he yelled. “How can you tell I’m a ghost?”

“’Cause you’re standing in the middle of a frigging ice rink wearing loafers and a golf shirt, and no one’s yelling, ‘Hey, get that crazy bastard off the ice!’”

He grinned and shoe-skated over to the boards. When he reached the gate, he grabbed the edge with both hands and jumped. Fifteen years ago, he could sail right over it, even in full hockey gear. Today, well…

“Hey, at least you cleared it,” I said as he got up off the floor.

“You know, I hate to complain,” he said, brushing invisible dirt from his pants. “The Fates take away all those twinges and aches of middle age, and that’s great, but would it kill them to give us back a little flexibility?”

I kicked one leg up onto the top of the boards. “Seems fine to me.”

A mock glower. “No one likes a show-off, Eve. And, I could point out, if I’d died at thirty-seven, instead of forty-seven, I’d have been able to do that, too.”

“A good excuse.”

“And I’m sticking with it. On to test number two.”

Before I could object, he jogged into a group of parents hovering around the boards.

“How can you tell I’m a ghost now?” he called.

“Because you’re walking through things. I know all this, Kris. It’s common sense. If I want a ghost to mistake me for a corporeal being, then I have to act corporeal. When I passed by that group of people outside the hospital, I moved around them.”

“Ah, but you missed something. Last demo. Professional level now.”

He bounded up a half-dozen steps, then walked into a bleacher aisle. As he slipped past people, he was careful to make it look as if he were squeezing around their knees, even murmuring the odd “Excuse me.” Halfway down he turned and lifted his hands expectantly.

I shook my head. “You would’ve fooled me.”

“Only because you’ve never gone haunting. Haunters have to be extremely careful. Bump into the wrong ghost, and you’ll be reported in a heartbeat. Now I’m going to try it again, and this time don’t watch me. Watch them.”

He came back my way, still skirting knees and whispering apologies. I watched the faces of those he passed, but saw nothing. They just kept doing what they were doing, acting—

“Acting as if you aren’t there,” I said. “That’s it. They don’t react to you.”

“Correct,” he said, jogging down the steps. “At that hospital, you walked past a group of people, and not one even glanced your way. That isn’t natural. Especially if any of them were male.”

A wink and an appreciative once-over. Had I been alive, I’m sure I would have blushed. But Kris just smiled and launched into a quick list of tips, the compliment tossed out as casually as a comment on the weather. Typical. Kris knew all the tricks, all the ways to say “I want you back” without ever speaking the words. An offhand compliment, a lingering look, a casual touch—silly little things that somehow sent my brain spinning.

I wanted him back. No question about that. I’d never stopped wanting him, and there were times when I’d look at him, feel that ache of longing, and wonder why the hell I was holding out. I wouldn’t be going anywhere I hadn’t been before. And that’s exactly why I wouldn’t take that next step. Because I had been there before.

I wasn’t cut out for relationships. I’ve never felt the need to share my life, never sought out others for more than casual friendship and professional contacts. When someone did worm their way in—Ruth Winterbourne, then Kristof, then Savannah—I let them down, making choices that always seemed so right at the time. As much as I wanted to say I now resisted Kristof to avoid hurting him, I knew I was, at least in equal part, protecting myself.

Kris finished his list of tips. “That’s all I can think of, for now. Time to put the theory into practice.”

“Practice? You mean with the haunters? Thanks for the offer, but—”

“It isn’t an offer; it’s a demand. You owe me.”

“Owe you?” I sputtered.

“I tried to give you some work at the courthouse—work that would have given me an excuse to pursue adventures otherwise unsuitable for an esteemed member of the judicial system. You turned me down. Robbed me of the first chance for hell-raising I’ve had in—”

“Hours. Maybe days.”

He shot a grin my way. “Much too long. Now you’ve brought me a replacement opportunity, and I’m not about to let it slip past.”

“So I’m stuck with you?”

His grin widened. “For now and forever.”

I muttered under my breath, grabbed his hand, and teleported us back to my marker.

Before we were close enough to the hospital for the phantom bouncer to recognize me, we skipped around to the back. Once inside, we went in search of our haunters. Didn’t take long to find them. Just had to follow the screams.