by AJ Sherwood
“I’m here, I’m here,” I assured him, running for the hallway. I looked around anxiously, trying to catch any hint, and there was a trail of spectral energy already dissipating. Brandon stood planted in the middle of the hallway, gun still held at the ready. I couldn’t see the area he’d shot at. “Did you see him?”
“More like I saw the trace of him,” Brandon explained, nodding toward the floor.
I saw what he meant in an instant. One of the flower pots had been broken in multiple pieces, dirt now strewn along the floor. A neat set of footprints tracked through it. No wonder he’d had an idea of where to shoot.
I don’t know how the rest of the world perceives ghosts, but a medium’s eyes have a different spectrum. I’ve never seen pure light and darkness. I see the twilight in between. Especially then, when I focused on the spectral energy trailing through the hallway. I followed the trace of wispy, white ethereal fog drifting through the area. The ghost had retreated from the hallway and back into Cali’s room, and he’d been agitated doing it. Like a whirling dervish, he’d torn through her bedroom, upsetting everything and turning it upside down, before puffing out of the visible spectrum. I tracked him straight into a wall and then stopped in sheer frustration.
Brandon followed me in, staring over my shoulder. “Here?”
“Energy’s strongest here,” I explained, lifting both hands to frame it like a picture. “I think this is where he went to ground, but the whole room is pretty lit up to my eyes. I can’t swear to it, cher.”
“It’s fine,” Brandon assured me darkly. “I’ll tear the whole damn room apart if I have to.”
I looked up at him askance. The set to his jaw was hard enough to build a skyscraper on, and his eye visibly ticked. It appeared the ghost had just tapped into the Havili protective instinct. Poor life decision for the ghost. Or would that be an after-life decision? “Just leave the house standing, cher.”
He gave a grunt that could, possibly, be interpreted as agreement.
“I don’t think they should be here tonight, or possibly at all until we’ve got this sorted,” I decided, still glaring at the wall. My feelings matched Brandon’s precisely. I hated that this entity thought he could scare my family just because he felt territorial. “Let’s get it cleared to move them to a hotel.”
“Great idea. I’ll help them pack, you call Sylvia.”
I nodded, already pulling my phone out. But I did need more info to report than the bit I’d seen. I followed on his heels as he retreated back outside.
“Did you get him?” Edmée asked anxiously.
Shaking my head, I said, “He took refuge in the wall. Looks like we’ll have to do some demo. Cuz, tell me what happened.”
“I was just pulling out the ingredients for lunch and I heard Cali squeak and run for me. I turned and saw it, this” —fear hovered in her eyes and turned her pale— “it looked like a lump of black coal dust, if that makes sense. Towering, and it blocked the light, but I could see through it, too. And it reached for the nearest flower pot—just touched it—and the thing exploded and sent dirt and flowers everywhere. I screamed, grabbed Cali, and hoofed it out here.”
I ran a hand over my face. Intimidation tactics, eh. “Alright. I’m going to call my boss. I think I can get it cleared for you to stay at a hotel on the FBI’s silver dime until we get this sorted. Either way, you’re not staying here until I get this thing rooted.”
Edmée nodded in relief. “Yes, please.”
Cali remained buried in her mother’s arms, crying those hiccupping sobs children do when they’re crying too hard to draw proper breath. Heart breaking, I soothed a palm along her back as I called up my boss. Cali was shaking, fine tremors under my hand, and for the first time in my life, I felt murderous.
Sylvia answered with her usual promptness. “Speak.”
“I need approval to put Edmée and Cali in a hotel for the next few nights,” I said bluntly. “I also need approval to break some walls. That damn thing just manifested in front of them, exploded a flower pot, then upturned Cali’s room before disappearing into a wall.”
Sylvia blew out a whistle, sounding impressed. “Manifestation, moving objects, and all, huh. You’ve got quite the first case on your hands there, newbie.”
“Tell me about it,” I ground out between clenched teeth.
“Both requests granted. Type me up a quick report—narrative’s fine—and email it to me. Just something I can put on the form so we can follow it later. You’ve got an expense card on you, correct?”
“No, didn’t have time to get one.”
“Dammit. Alright, use your card for now. I’ll get reimbursements to you fast as I can. And mail you a card overnight, so be on the lookout for it. How’s Brandon handling things?”
“Madder than a sick alligator with a sore tooth,” I informed her, grinning now. Brandon stood nearby like a bouncer, just daring something to come near us. “If the house is still standing at the end of this, I’ll be surprised. He’s gotten fond of Cali, and he’s not taking it well that the ghost keeps scaring the daylights out of her.”
“Try to rein him in,” Sylvia said dryly. “Alright, go. Keep me posted.”
“Yes, ma’am.” I hung up and assured everyone listening, “We’re approved. Brandon, Sylvia requests you leave the house standing.”
“Fat chance,” he told me, but he was mostly kidding. I could tell from the glint in his eyes and the way his mouth kicked up on one side.
Brandon and I served as a guard as my cousins packed up. It meant putting Cali’s room to semi-rights to find clothes and toys, and she stayed firmly in her mother’s arms during this process. Then we drove over to the Hampton Inn to get them situated. There weren’t many choices of hotels in Opelousas, and as far as I knew, this was one of the nicer ones. Hopefully they saw it as a little mini vacation.
With them settled, we headed back to my mother’s house to get the tools, then back to Edmée’s. You know the cat who ate the canary? It had nothing on Brandon in that moment. “Cher, you’re looking forward to this.”
“I love breaking stuff,” he admitted, a grin stretched from ear to ear. “Best part of being SWAT, really, breaking in doors. The paperwork afterwards was no fun, but breaking into houses was worth it. Really glad this new job comes with demolition too.”
Lord preserve us.
Growing serious for a moment, he stopped at a stop sign and turned his head to meet my eyes. “What do you expect to find? What can ghosts attach to?”
“Practically anything,” I answered with a splay of hands. “Hairbrushes, chairs, rings, mirrors, anything the person held a strong attachment to in life. It’s why flea markets and auctions horrify me. People can so easily buy something and bring it home and have no idea what’s attached to it.”
“So we could find practically anything in the wall.” He eased the car into motion again as the light turned green. “What’s your guess?”
“Something small, obviously. He’s so attached to the house, I have to wonder if it’s a deed or something along those lines.”
“In a wall?” Brandon asked dubiously.
“Wall safes were all the rage at one time,” I explained. “My uncle had one installed in his house and bragged to everyone about it.”
“Huh. So maybe someone renovated the house and sheetrocked over it?”
“It’s a possibility.”
We pulled into the driveway. A tingle of anticipation danced along my nerves as I considered what we’d do next. Brandon wasn’t the only one looking forward to breaking something. I unloaded and grabbed a crowbar and hammer from the back, leaving the sledgehammer and saw to Brandon.
But as I turned toward the house, my anticipation fell flat. A cold chill seized me as I took in the energy all around the house. It had never been welcoming, but now? It looked malevolent. The ghost had been agitated before.
Now it was enraged.
8
One look at Mack’s face, the way he stopped
dead in his tracks, and I knew something had changed. I couldn’t sense any difference. The little Monopoly house looked the same as always: the grass in need of a cut, the red brick a little green along the bottom edges, white blinds down in the windows. But clearly something had changed as Mack looked torn between bolting and girding up for battle.
Leaning in, I asked quietly, “Honey? Something up?”
“Energy around the house has changed,” he reported, studying the house warily. “Looks eerie, like a Category Five hurricane right before it hits.”
“Ouch. Ghost that pissed off, huh?”
“It wasn’t like that as we drove in,” he said. “It became like that when I took the tools out.”
“Ah. Doesn’t like the idea of us messing with the house.” Either that or he’d figured out we were coming after him. “I’ll put goggles on so I can see him. Glock’s loaded and on me. What else can I do?”
“Keep a sharp eye out at all times. And if I say duck, drop.”
“Can do.” He still looked a little nervous, but he wasn’t used to this. Growing up, situations like this would have terrified him, as he’d had no idea how to handle it and no backup if something went wrong. Now, with nearly nine months of training under his belt, he knew what to do. He wasn’t confident in it yet. That would take more time.
Hoping to jostle him out of his nerves a bit, I offered, “Kiss for luck?”
He blinked up at me, then a smile tentatively took hold, the barest lift at the corners of his mouth and eyes. A hint of color grazed his cheeks, from nerves and agitation. Popping up on tiptoes, he leaned into me and kissed me sweet and slow. With both of our hands full, I couldn’t hold him like I wanted, so I lingered over the kiss a bit instead to make up for it. I could feel his nerves as I kissed him.
Pulling back, I murmured against his mouth, “I’ve got your back.”
“I know you do.” He sucked in a huge breath, then let it out again, and determination seeped into his expression. “Come on, cher. We’ve got some ghost butt to kick.”
“That’s the spirit. Pun not intended.”
Mack rolled his eyes at me. But he was back in motion, heading into the house. “Don’t joke.”
“Should we obey horror movie rules? I can rush in alone and leave you here defenseless.”
I got another eyeroll for that. “Shouldn’t that be the other way around?”
“I do wonder some days who’s protecting who. I’m armed, but you’re deadly. And cute. All in a fun, bite-sized package.”
Mack swatted me on the ass. “I’ll take care of you and your sass later.”
I was proud of myself for jostling him out of his fear for a second. He looked steadier now as we waded in. My mother always said that if you could laugh at something, anything, it made the fear abate. Made it more manageable. It worked in this case.
I opened the door and came to a stop myself. “Well, damn.”
Mack ducked under my arm to get his own view of the living room and then swore roundly and in such a thick fly of Creole I couldn’t begin to decipher it. Didn’t need to. I felt the same way.
The ghost had been busy while we were gone. Nothing was intact—the couch lay upside down and shredded, the sleeping bags and air mattress no longer tucked into a corner but turned into nothing more than confetti, the blinds hung half ripped off—it looked like World War III had hit. I was fiercely glad in that moment we’d moved the girls out before going for tools. They would have been injured for sure if we’d left them here.
“Cher, let’s get this done,” Mack encouraged as he slipped past me. One look at his face and I knew his fear lay well buried under anger now. My cute Creole could get pissed, and heaven help the world when he did, because he didn’t have many fucks to give when he got to this point.
I followed him with a tight grin. This was going to be quite the show.
He stalked through the halls like a predator cat searching out its prey, the crowbar in his hands like a katana. I didn’t doubt that if he hit a ghost with it, he’d do damage. He had to hop over something barring the doorway to Cali’s room—the bed. It had been moved and flipped once again. It didn’t stop either of us from entering.
Mack didn’t even take in a breath. He just slammed the pointy end of the crowbar into the wall with both hands and started ripping into it.
I set the saw down at my feet, putting a foot on it just in case, then slammed the sledgehammer into the sheetrock. It made a very satisfying hole and I felt like whistling as I continued to rip into the wall.
The ghost didn’t like that, of course. He lifted some of Cali’s toys and tried to chuck them at us. I ducked one, threw an arm out toward the other to prevent it from hitting Mack. It struck hard—the wooden block couldn’t do more than bruise, but it did smart.
Mack was one hundred percent focused on getting into that wall, and I fell into a defensive posture at his back, blocking the attacks with my own body. I couldn’t see even with the goggles on where the ghost was—it was all streaks of yellow energy emanating from the objects it chucked at me.
A grunt sounded then Mack hissed in victory. “Found it!”
I dared a glance over my shoulder, moving forward a half-foot so he had room to maneuver. Mack stood and in his hands was something shiny, something that looked like a silver pocket watch.
Watching Mack’s medium powers come into play was always fascinating through the goggles. You could literally see the energy pouring out and around him. The goggles registered it as heat—flashes of purples, blues, reds, and yellows—but of course it wasn’t heat. It was energy on a level I couldn’t perceive any other way. His power flowed and ebbed around him as he lifted the watch in his hand, and he forced that power into the watch. I wasn’t sure what he was doing for a second.
And then the ghost became visible to me for the first time.
I popped the goggles up to rest on my forehead so I could see him properly instead of as a bundle of energy. He was distinct in appearance, not more than two feet away. His skin was swarthy, black hair curly and tight around his head, nose a little crooked and too large for his thin face. He stared at us with hate—and at Mack with fear.
“What are you?” the ghost demanded of Mack, the words hissing like water on hot stone.
“A medium. A pissed-off medium, in fact, as it’s my cousins you’ve been terrorizing the past month or more,” Mack answered flatly. The hand holding the watch shone white around the knuckles, he held it so hard. I suspected he wanted to chuck it at the ghost’s head. “Why are you trying to force them out?”
“MY HOUSE!” the ghost roared, his mouth gaping open unnaturally wide.
Chills ran up my spine. I palmed my gun and slid it from the holster, raising it to point center mass. If that thing even twitched, I’d shoot it. I slipped the glasses back on with one hand, just in case he tried to pull another quick disappearing act.
The ghost eyed me, and the gun I held, sideways. “I won’t be bullied off. This is my land.”
“It was your land,” Mack corrected. “You’re dead. Time to move on. You can do that peacefully or I can forcefully exorcise you. I warn you, if you force my hand, it means I scatter what’s left of you to the winds. There will be nothing of you left.”
The ghost looked unnerved. “You can’t do that.”
“Done it before,” Mack drawled, accent deepening. “Not much you can do to stop me. Which is it to be, sir?”
The ghost started to shake his head, refusing, his energy building in wide arcs I could see through the glasses.
Mack moved.
I had no other way to describe it. He reached out, past all the clutter and toys, and clamped a hand around the ghost’s neck, wrenching him off-balance and forcefully closer. The ghost found himself face to face, nearly nose to nose, with a pissed-off medium who had hit the end of his patience. The built-up energy spluttered and died, and the ghost stared at Mack like he couldn’t believe it.
“How are you touching m
e?” he whispered, shocked.
“Medium, remember?” Mack reminded him, sounding bored. “You’re like flesh and blood to me, spirit. In fact—”
Mack slid his left hand right into the ghost’s chest and the ghost heaved around it. I imagined it felt like a living hand squeezing around a man’s heart and my own chest clenched in sympathetic reaction. The ghost writhed, and he would have been crying tears if he could.
“—it’s worse for you. I have no barriers where anything spectral is concerned.” Mack’s smile spoke of chains and lye and torture racks. “Well? Which is it to be?”
The ghost was still half curled over the arm in his chest, heaving and gurgling, and he nodded, then shook his head, eyes pleading. Mack withdrew his hand, and the ghost was finally able to get full words out.
“I’ll go, I’ll go peacefully, don’t kill me—”
Mack grunted in agreement, but I think part of him still wanted a little revenge. “Cher, you got a light?”
“For you, always.” I handed him the high-powered mag flashlight I carried on me. It had been one of the things drilled into me during training. When you were a medium’s anchor, always, always carry at least one light source with you. The brighter, the better.
Mack flicked it on, pointing it to the opposite corner of the room. Despite the overhead light, it overpowered the room, and a straight beam of light hit the wall in an expanding circle. “Move along the light.”
The ghost hesitated in obeying, looking longingly around at the house. “I wanted to stay. I just wanted to stay.”
“You could have, as long as you weren’t terrorizing the living.” Mack had no sympathy for him. He pointed ahead. “Move.”
The ghost moved reluctantly, one foot in front of the other. The thermals didn’t show anything different, but he started to dissipate as he moved along the light. By the time he reached the opposite wall, he was gone entirely from my view. I slipped the goggles down to my neck, out of the way.
Mack left the light on another few seconds, then snapped it off. He let the flashlight hang at his side and turned to me with a victorious expression. In that moment, he looked the conquering hero. He was confidence, elation, and satisfaction. His chin was up, shoulders back, and he oozed charisma like a superhero. He was so sexy I vibrated with the need to get my hands on him.
