After a few tweaks, the final picture was ready. When he saw it, Ethan gasped. “That’s her!” There was no mistaking that hard mouth or the cold eyes. “Are you sure she’s not the Reaper?”
“She certainly doesn’t look like a Florence Nightingale,” Christian agreed. He went to his desk and sat down. “I’ll plug the picture into Google and see if something comes up.”
Now that his job was over, Ethan wanted to continue helping. “What about if I get on the Final Cut and try to connect with her there?”
“No!” Christian said firmly. “I got Sophie mixed in with that crap. There’s no way I’m doing that to you.”
“I’m willing to take the risk,” Ethan argued.
“Final Cut is what pushed her over the edge,” Christian said. “It’s a deplorable site. Nothing that you, or any other person with your gifts, should be messing with.”
Ethan wanted to protest again, but thought better of it. He’d already dabbled in enough wretched things over the past two days. He didn’t want to add to that.
“Besides,” Christian said, “I have a hit. Look at this.”
Ethan joined him at the computer. The woman on the screen wasn’t smiling, but she wasn’t frowning, either. It looked as if the picture had been snapped without her knowing it. She was older than Ethan had predicted, maybe sixty, and her dyed-brown hair was gray at the roots. “Where did this picture come from?” Ethan asked.
Christian tapped a few keys. “FaceBook. Looks like it was taken two years ago. Vacation pic.” He muttered each detail as he continued to click away on his mouse. “Connie Drake. Lives about forty miles away.”
Christian brought up another picture of the woman. She smiled at the camera on a beach and wore large sunglasses and a straw hat. This time, though, she was next to a man, and she looked a good deal heavier than Ethan remembered. “Maybe that isn’t her,” he said. There was something about those eyes he’d seen in the vision. They’d been hard. Almost cruel. The woman on Christian’s computer, however, had a softness about her that the woman from the vision hadn’t shared. He ground his teeth. He’d thought that once they had a picture, the rest would be easy. Apparently not.
Christian tried another social media site and shook his head. “This woman is an elementary school teacher. Not a nurse.” Defeated, he pushed his chair back from the desk. “Well, this is what PI work mostly boils down to. Lots of dead ends. But I’ll keep looking. She’s out there somewhere.”
Christian’s phone rang, and he answered it. There was a long pause. “Don’t worry. I’ll be there right away,” he said. His face was tense.
“What’s wrong?” Ethan asked.
Christian jumped up from his chair. “An emergency.”
Chapter Ten
Christian went into action like a firefighter responding to a five-alarm fire. However, his preparations were bizarre. He grabbed several electronic items off of his desk, shoved them into his black duffel, added several containers of salt and a handful of black candles. When he took a shotgun from a locked cabinet, Ethan’s eyes popped.
“These are all for your PI business?” he asked, amazed. It looked more like Christian was heading to a seance.
“That’s right.” Christian nabbed a camera bag and slung it over his shoulder. “Usually, I have my stuff already packed and ready to go, but business has been a little slow, so I’ve let my guard down.”
Ethan grabbed his coat, ready to leave, but Christian stopped him at the door. “It would be great if you came along, too. I could really use the help.”
Ethan frowned. “With what?”
“Trapping a ghost.”
Surprised, Ethan laughed. Then seeing that Christian was serious, he stopped. “A ghost? I thought you were a PI!”
Christian cleared his throat and scratched the back of his neck. “That would be Paranormal Investigator.”
Suddenly, everything fell into place. No wonder Christian had needed Sophie. She’d been his eyes for spotting ghosts! “I can’t,” Ethan protested.
“I wouldn’t ask, but I’m really in a bind,” Christian confessed. “Poltergeist are quick, little devils. If it was another ghost, I’d use an EMF meter, but I need both hands for this. I’ll pay you, too,” he added. “Two-hundred dollars. C’mon! It will be fun.”
Fun was the last word Ethan would have picked, but he was intrigued. If he didn’t go, he’d be banging around his empty apartment, waiting for news about David. Determined, he squared his shoulders. “Let’s do it.”
Ethan had been expecting a dilapidated house in a bad section of town, but to his surprise, Christian pulled up to a two-story, brick colonial in a swanky neighborhood. The windows were dark, but a light bobbed in the first story. Ethan eyed the home warily. Now that he was here, he wondered if he’d been too rash. No good could come from confronting a ghost. Meredith had taught him that.
“Here’s the plan,” Christian said. “You point out the ghost when you see it, and I shoot it.”
“I don’t think so!” Ethan protested. “What if you shoot me instead?”
“I won’t,” Christian assured him. “Besides, the gun is full of rock salt, not lead. Even if you got hit, it wouldn’t kill you.” Then he considered. “Course, it could get messy if it hit you in the face. You want goggles?”
“I want to get this over with,” Ethan grumbled.
He followed Christian out of the car, up the walk, and onto the porch. “The homeowners are gone,” Christian said, “but they gave me their security code.” He quickly punched in a four-digit number and opened the front door.
Immediately, something slammed into Christian, knocking him into Ethan who nearly fell. A bespectacled young woman in a Harvard sweatshirt brandished an enormous, black flashlight, nearly bringing it down on Christian’s head.
Christian seized her wrist, immediately disarming her. “Whoa there. Who are you?”
“Who are you?” she spit back. “This is my house!”
“10839 Brook Dr.?” Christian asked. “Home of Joseph and Barbara Sykes?”
The young woman blinked. “Those are my parents. I came home from college this weekend to surprise them, but no one was here and the electricity is off.” She glanced at the neighbors’ houses, all of which had their porch lights on. “Though we seem to be the only ones without power.”
“Your parents hired me to get rid of a poltergeist,” Christian said.
“A ghost?” The young woman laughed. “They’ve been telling me that the house is haunted. They’re crazy, of course. There’s no such thing as…”
A terrific crash came from the back of the house. With a screech of terror, a cat zipped through the door like the devil was on its tail.
“Zoe!” the woman cried.
The lights flared on, then off. Glass crashed. “It knows we’re here,” Christian muttered.
The woman’s face paled. “You mean there really is a ghost?” She moaned. “Oh, God! It might be my great-aunt Ethel. Her ashes are on the fireplace mantle.”
The young woman looked ready to pass out. Christian grabbed her shoulders to keep her from falling over. “What’s your name?” he asked gently.
“D-Daphne.”
“Okay, Daphne. Go find your cat. Ethan and I will have this taken care of in no time.”
Ethan tried for an encouraging nod, but it was difficult. The poltergeist had brought up images of Meredith, and how she’d nearly drowned him in Lake Superior. He wasn’t eager to relive the experience. Then he glanced at Daphne’s terrified face. As much as he dreaded what was about to happen, he had to help her. “It will be okay,” he told her.
Daphne nodded then scampered away after her cat. Christian handed Ethan the large flashlight. “Ready?”
Ethan nodded. “Let’s do this.”
Ethan nearly tripped over a bunched-up rug in the foyer, but soon got his bearings in the dark house. Street lights offered enough illumination for him to see the living room. Beyond that lay the kitchen with an
enormous island separating the two spaces. Everything was quiet.
Christian had taken the shotgun from its case and held it at his side. “Well?”
Ethan drew in his breath while he gathered his inner eye. When he was ready, he reached out with his senses. He knew something hid among the shadows, but he wasn’t sure where.
A frying pan whizzed through the air, painfully grazing the side of his head. He yelped and clapped a hand to his burning ear.
“You’ll have to be quicker than that,” Christian said, sounding amused.
Annoyed, Ethan crept across the living room while pushing his senses harder. “There!” he shouted, pointing.
Without hesitation, Christian shouldered the shotgun and fired. The sound was deafening. “Did I get it?” he yelled.
Another pot flew at them. Ethan swung the flashlight like a bat, catching the pan in mid-air. The pan ricocheted off the flashlight, back into the kitchen. “There!” Ethan cried again.
Another shotgun blast. When a potted plant crashed to the ground, Christian swore. “I missed, didn’t I?”
“ ‘Fraid so,” Ethan said.
In less than a minute, Christian had the gun reloaded. “You have to be faster!”
“I’m trying,” Ethan said, annoyed.
Since the activity seemed to be focused in the kitchen, Ethan ventured there. He spread his inner sense as far as he could, probing the dark corners and the recess next to the refrigerator. “I can’t find it anymore,” he said.
Before Christian could answer, the refrigerator door swung open. A carton of eggs zipped through the air and smashed into Ethan’s chest so hard that he staggered backwards. Yolks and whites oozed down the front of his shirt. He cursed out loud. The shirt had been a gift from David, and it was one of his favorites. He pulled the sticky cloth from his chest while Christian snorted a laugh. “Very funny,” Ethan growled.
Christian laughed harder, but then was met with a face full of water from the sink sprayer. He turned his gun in that direction and fired, but missed by a mile.
Ethan saw a flying bag of flour and shouted a warning, but before he could get the words out, the bag ripped open. Flour spread like a cloud, covering both of them. Now, they too looked like ghosts.
“Aunt Ethel apparently has a sense of humor,” Christian said sourly. He grabbed a dish towel from the counter and wiped his face. Ethan used the one clean spot on his sleeve to wipe the flour from his eyes. Enough playing around. It was time to find this ghostly prankster and get rid of it.
A thump from overhead had them racing for the stairs. Christian pounded up the steps, Ethan on his heels. They ducked through the first doorway they saw. It was an office with built-in bookshelves. Immediately, Ethan dropped to his knees. A second later, Christian joined him. “Why are we on the ground -” Christian started.
Books flew from the shelves, raining down like enormous pellets of hail. Ethan covered his head and scooted towards the desk, taking refuge in the knee hole. Christian cursed and dodged behind a chair.
Ethan ground his teeth. He hated being bested by a ghost that was the equivalent of a naughty child. Christian was right; he was too slow. He needed to spot the poltergeist faster.
The ghost overturned the desk and scattered the contents of the drawers. A small, slim object dropped into Ethan’s lap. He grabbed it as he dashed across the room and back into the hall. Christian, panting, joined him. “This is going nowhere,” Christian muttered angrily.
Ethan agreed. Plus, he’d forgotten to grab the flashlight. They were now operating blindly. Then he realized he held the small object. Thinking it was another flashlight, he pressed the button on the side. To his surprise, a red dot of light appeared on the ceiling. This wasn’t a flashlight; it was a laser pointer.
Something swooped overhead. Reflexively, Ethan trained the laser on it. “There!”
Christian shot another blast of salt. The ghost howled in pain and outrage.
“Almost!” Ethan said. He flicked the pointer to another corner. “There!”
This time when the gun went off, the poltergeist’s wail was more deafening than the shotgun’s blast. “I got it!” Christian shouted gleefully. He jammed his hand into his duffel and withdrew a container of salt. With a few words in Latin, he spread the salt over the area until black smoke curled up from the carpeting.
Ethan felt the air around him build, then release, like a cosmic sigh. “It’s gone.”
“Good riddance!” Christian clapped him on the back. “I couldn’t have done it without you. That laser pointer idea was brilliant.”
Ethan grinned. For the first time in his life, coming in contact with a spirit had actually been, well, fun. Who knew?
Daphne was waiting for them by Christian’s car. The cat was in her arms. Her eyes widened when she saw them. “What happened to you?”
Ethan glanced at himself in the side mirror, grinning when he saw his egg-and-flour visage staring back. “Aunt Ethel had a hell of a sense of humor.”
“Is it over?” Daphne asked worriedly.
“It is,” Christian assured her. As if agreeing, the house’s lights went on.
Daphne leaned towards Christian. “That was amazing! I mean I never would have had the guts to do what you did!” She suddenly seemed to realize that she was in the presence of a very handsome man. Ignoring Ethan, she moved closer to Christian. “I’d love to hear more about your work. It must be fascinating!”
Christian blocked her advance by shoving his gear into the car. “It’s a living.”
Daphne continued to crowd close to him. “Can I gave you my number?”
“It isn’t necessary,” he said. “I have your parents’ number if I need it. Well, good-bye!” he said. He awkwardly side-stepped Daphne to get into the car.
As they drove away, Ethan laughed. “I think she likes you.”
Christian frowned. “Not interested. Maybe if she had a brother, though.” He turned a corner. “But that’s still a big maybe.”
Ethan laughed again. Ethan’s phone buzzed with a text. It was Tessa, David’s sister. Call me back, she said. It’s urgent.
Chapter Eleven
Ethan was nearly out of the car before Christian had fully stopped. Tessa said that David’s condition hadn’t changed, but that Bev and John were away for the moment. If Ethan wanted to see his boyfriend, he’d need to hurry.
“Don’t you want to shower first? Maybe change into some clean clothes?” Christian asked.
“No time.” Ethan dug in his pocket for his keys as he hurried towards his car. Between the eggs and the flour he looked like he was coated in cake batter, but right now, he didn’t care.
“Best of luck to you and David,” Christian said, following him. “I’ll say a prayer.”
Ethan pressed the unlock button on his key fob. “I don’t believe in that stuff.”
“Maybe not, but I do. Besides, it doesn’t hurt to cover all bases.”
“True,” Ethan said. He paused before getting into the driver’s seat. “And thanks, by the way. You really helped me out today.”
Christian smiled. “We helped each other. We make a great team.”
As Ethan sped across town, he considered his strange relationship with Christian. The fact that the Nordic god had kidnapped him and sent him straight into the path of a ghost should have shut down all possibilities of a friendship. Yet, Ethan had to admit that he liked the guy.
Ethan sensed loneliness under Christian’s joking. He wondered if Christian had anyone special in his life, or if Sophie had been his sole companion. If that was the case, Ethan felt sorry for him. Without David, Ethan would have been alone as well. Cara was a there for him, but she had a live-in boyfriend. Ethan’s parents barely tolerated him. Tessa, David’s sister, was a kind soul, but she was married and traveled frequently.
Ethan shook his head to clear away his gloomy thoughts. Things were bad enough right now without making himself miserable. Besides, his isolation was mostly his own fault.
He avoided people because he felt that his curse set him apart. Since childhood, he’d felt that he was on the outside looking in.
He parked in the hospital’s structure and nearly ran all the way to David’s room. When he got there, his eyes went to David who lay still as death on the bed. Tessa and Cara stood nearby, talking softly together.
“Ethan! Oh my God, what happened to you?” Cara asked.
“Would you believe a poltergeist?” Ethan said.
“You’re the only person I know who could say that with a straight face,” Cara said.
Tessa looked too distressed to be worried about Ethan’s appearance. Despite his eggy shirt, she nearly threw herself at him. Her beautiful face was red and puffy from crying. “My God, I’m so sorry!”
Ethan nodded without saying anything. He’d been doing alright since he left the hospital earlier, but seeing David and that ventilator made his throat clench and his eyes burn with tears.
Cara laid a hand on his arm. “Tessa and I have been talking. She thinks she can work out a deal with David’s parents.”
“Mom and Dad have no right to kick you out,” Tessa said. Her eyes blazed. “I told them so myself.”
“And?” Ethan asked hopefully.
Tessa shook her head. “They won’t listen to me, but I’ve called Grant, and he’s getting his attorneys on this.”
The tension in Ethan’s chest eased. Tessa’s husband was a very wealthy man with plenty of connections. With his backing, Ethan was sure he’d be allowed to visit.
“Also, we’re taking care of David’s medical bills,” Tessa said. “We’re calling in the best specialists we can find.”
Ethan wiped his eyes, embarrassed. “Thank you.”
“We’ll get him well again,” Cara said.
Tessa picked up her purse from the chair. “Cara and I thought we’d go for coffee to give you some alone time,” she said. “Turns out we have a lot in common.”
“Really?” Ethan asked, surprised. David’s sister and his best friend had never met, but he’d always suspected that they would get along. It was nice to know that he’d been right.
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