“You do realize it’s not even eleven o’clock.” She climbed behind the wheel.
I made the mistake of glancing at the house. In an upstairs window stood a man. I could tell right away from the shape of his silhouette that it wasn’t Bobby Doucet. Both the shoulders and the shape of the head were too narrow to be Bobby, or even the spirit that had followed him downstairs. And it wasn’t one of the few I’d encountered when I lived in the place, or even since. I knew each of them by both name and shadow-shape.
Ghosts attach themselves—some to a place, like Stafford—others to a person, for instance Bobby Doucet—for reasons known only to the ghosts. At least until they tell them to me.
I peered at the window again. The silhouette was now a woman’s. How many ghosts did this guy have?
“Homicide detective,” I said.
“Really?” Jenn threw her car into gear and drove down the dirt road as if she were Danica at Daytona. “From where?”
“New Orleans.”
“Why?”
“I think he was born there.”
She didn’t bother with the eye roll. I heard it in her voice. “I got that much from the nummy accent—Southern and a little bit more.” She made a purring, revving sound. “I meant why is he here?”
We still hadn’t gotten to that. And, really, we should have. There’d just been so many other things to get to.
“I assume it has something to do with the murder.”
We reached the main road, and Jenn turned toward her place. “Where are you going?”
She kept her gaze on the road. Despite her need for speed, she was a good driver. “You said you were staying with me.”
“That was only so I could get out of there without a gun.”
“It’ll be fun.”
“Take me home.”
“No.”
“I don’t have any clothes for tomorrow.”
“You can get some in the light of day. Right now it’s too damn dark.”
“You’re afraid of the dark?”
“Only when I’m with you.”
I cast her a quick glance. She never asked me how I knew things, why she sometimes caught me talking to the air. She pretended not to notice. But despite her party girl ’tude and her lighter-than-could-possibly-be-natural hair, she wasn’t a fool.
“You don’t have to be afraid.”
Ghosts couldn’t hurt you. They might startle you—make that me. And what they told me could be terrifying. But they were ghosts. Blasts of cold air and sound, no more corporeal than a wisp of smoke.
I glanced at the bruise on my forearm. Or at least they hadn’t been until today.
“I know that too,” Jenn said. “You’re still staying with me.” I opened my mouth to protest and she continued, “Unless you want to leap out of a moving car, don’t even bother.”
My mouth shut. To be honest, I had no interest in staying in my apartment. Even if the meat-cleaver-wielding maniac had been a ghost, and at this point I was pretty sure he was, who wanted to see that coming at them in the dark?
The guy would be back. He might even turn up at Jenn’s. Ghosts came to me for a reason, and they didn’t leave until I’d helped them make the reason go away. Despite the meat cleaver he wouldn’t, couldn’t, hurt me. Permanently. However, I’d rather discover the purpose of his visit when it wasn’t pitch-black dark and I was alone. If that makes me a coward, too bad.
Jenn lived at the opposite end of First Street from my apartment, in an adorable cottage set back from the road. The building would make a fantastic bookstore, café, or antiques shop, if New Bergin were the go-to vacation spot of west-central Wisconsin. Except the only tourists we saw were those on their way to La Crosse, Eau Claire, or Minneapolis who had a sudden need for gas and a restroom. Which meant we had no need for a quaint bookstore, café, or antiques store. Still, Jenn’s place was much nicer than mine, even without factoring in the meat-cleaver maniac.
Jenn turned on all the lights. Like that would help.
I’d been trying to get the old woman in the corner rocking chair to cross over since Jenn had moved into the house. But she was attached to the cottage, and she wasn’t going to leave until the building either burned to the ground or was razed—maybe not even then.
Instead I responded to her nod with one of my own—when Jenn’s back was turned—and went on with my business. Directly to the kitchen and the nearest bottle of red. I’d only had a swallow—large though it had been—of my nightly allotment. I was due.
Jenn held up two wineglasses. I snatched the one that was more of a brandy snifter and filled it with enough wine to be unfashionable then did the same for her. Whenever I went to a restaurant I had to fight not to laugh—or sometimes cry—at the splash of liquid considered a serving.
“TV?” Jenn asked.
I shook my head, sipped my wine.
“You wanna tell me about it?”
I wasn’t certain which it she was talking about. The intruder? My father? The murder? Bobby Doucet? Didn’t matter.
“Nope.” I took a seat in the living room and continued to sip.
“You should take the plunge.”