Ghost Maker

by Robin D. Owens

  She shrugged as she walked into the main bathroom. “I hear you.” Then she closed the door, so he knew she didn’t expect shower sex, a habit of theirs. Too bad.

  Behind him, Zach felt a wavering in the atmosphere. “Hey, Enzo.”

  The phantom dog flowed toward him, not pretending to trot or anything. He didn’t meet Zach’s gaze. Hello, Zach.

  Zach went with his gut and the usual greeting Enzo gave to Clare. “I love you, Enzo.”

  Enzo perked up, but the fog in his eyes had darkened, and, yeah, Zach could see the animal-spirit-guide-whatever just fine now, maybe due to interacting with the Other. He wondered if that would continue, continue only with Enzo, or fade in and out with both spirits.

  A single wag of the tail. The Other made me stay with him while he talked with you. I didn’t like that.

  “I’m sorry for you, but I’m glad for me,” Zach said.

  Enzo’s ears lifted slightly. Yes?

  “Yes. I promised that I couldn’t tell Clare that I’d made a deal with the Other.”

  Oh! Then Enzo sat and scratched his ear with his back leg. It’s not good to make a promise when you plan not to keep it, is it? Enzo sounded confused.

  “That’s right, in general. And I don’t plan on ever doing that with you or Clare,” Zach explained firmly. “But you and Clare are generous, compassionate, and honorable beings. I don’t believe the Other is any of that.”

  Nooo. The Other doesn’t like Clare, Enzo fretted. And he doesn’t like YOU, either.

  Zach could see the shadowy dog’s head tilt. He dislikes you a LOT.

  “That’s okay,” Zach said comfortably. “He’ll hate me by the time I’m done with him.” He paused. “I think the Other is breaking rules right and left. If you can find out about that, it would be good.”

  Maybe. Enzo’s glance slid away from Zach’s.

  Zach slipped his gaze aside from the dog since he intended to continue to make the minor spirit uncomfortable. “You know that entity Clare spoke with earlier in the month, at the end of our case in Creede?”

  Enzo gasped. I . . . I know of it, Zach. Please don’t make me grovel to her, Zach. Pleeease.

  “I won’t if you’re so anxious about it.”

  She is FAR higher than me. A minor angel.

  Okay, Zach wasn’t sure of his spiritual beliefs, but decided right then and there he didn’t want to talk about angels . . . except as a last resort. He sent a mental message to Enzo. We won’t bother her unless Clare really needs her. I love Clare, Enzo, and I would do anything for her.

  You are not allowed to die for her, she said so! Enzo retorted.

  I plan on living for her, with her, for a long time. But if we need to save Clare, I will ask you to be brave.

  I can be brave for Clare! Enzo exclaimed. I love Clare and she loves me and we are all a team and I can do brave things for her!

  “I know you can,” Zach said aloud. “But we won’t call on the, uh, angel, unless Clare really needs her.”

  Okay, Zach.

  “So, you were with the Other when we talked, huh? Was he being honest? I know he wasn’t being kind or compassionate.”

  I don’t know what kind of favor he will want from you. Enzo the Lab sat and looked at Zach, cocking his head. Maybe for you to lie to Clare or something.

  Zach snorted. “Like I’d do that.”

  Enzo brightened. You were very clever, and you made him worried, too. As worried about Clare as the rest of us.

  “I hope that will get his ass in gear.” Zach heard the shower in the main bathroom turn off. “Are you going with Clare to the doctor’s?”

  Yes, it is downtown so I get to see and walk with ghosts of our time period. I love downtown.

  “Okay, keep an eye on her.”

  Yes!

  “I will do whatever I have to, to keep her safe, and that includes deceiving the Other.”

  Yes. But I don’t know if I can keep a secret from the Other. He might learn that you deceive him.

  “Yeah? Well, he’s also figured out by now that he might need to keep Clare alive to stay out of trouble himself. I guess we’ll learn how spiteful a being he is.” Zach paused, but Enzo didn’t comment. “And he may figure out the angel is aware of Clare. You haven’t been giving her all her gifts from the universe, have you, Enzo?”

  Only the jewelry from J. Dawson, ’cause that’s what he wanted her to have, Enzo said.

  “And she likes that the best,” Zach reassured the dog. “The other stuff we’ve been selling.” He glanced at the walk-in closet where the last gift sat propped against the far wall, too big for the safe, but hidden by Clare’s clothes. He hoped Clare kept that piece, too.

  He hadn’t seen her go into the small room, but Clare walked from the closet, dressed in nice slacks and one of the new thin cashmere sweaters she preferred, this one in dull gold. Since it hugged her body, Zach liked the top, too.

  She sighed, sat on the bed, and drooped a little. Enzo flopped on her feet, or through her feet. Zach came and sat next to her and put an arm around her shoulders. “I have another doctor’s appointment. It’s only been a month and five days since the full physical I had when I first started seeing ghosts.”

  That was Clare, with a calculator in her head, and too concerned about time. “They’re going to think I’m a hypochondriac,” she complained. “And the—”

  “Don’t say anything about cost,” he warned.

  She shut her mouth.

  He squeezed her and murmured into her hair. “There is nothing so valuable as your health.”

  She turned and hugged him back, tightly. “You are, Zach.”

  “Then humor me and see the doc.”

  “Right,” she said and they embraced, neither of them saying a word. Zach suspected the physician would find nothing wrong with her, and thought Clare believed the same.

  This moment Zach didn’t feel that anything was right.

  Chapter 6

  Zach’s phone played the tune announcing his boss had initiated the SeeAndTalk app. He picked up his device and answered Tony Rickman. “Slade here.”

  “Good to see you.”

  “No, I’m not in my cubicle,” Zach said and went on the offensive. “Did your wife call you about the gathering tonight?”

  Rickman’s brows raised. He recognized the strategy. “I think Desiree is speaking to our receptionist.”

  “Clare’s and my place, five p.m., steaks will be on.”

  Rickman inclined his head. “Fine by me. Now, can I have you in here in a half hour for a consultation with a couple of new clients?”

  “Investigation?” Zach asked. As far as he was concerned he was the only real investigator Rickman had. The other guys all leaned heavily on the security side, though Zach was teaching Rickman himself and a couple of others some of his tricks. They’d be good at it if they put in their ten thousand hours of work.

  “That’s right. Time’s running down. See you soon.”

  “I’ll be there,” Zach said, and they cut the call at the same time.

  Clare stood, hands on hips. “I hate when he does that, calls and wants an immediate response.”

  “Because he keeps you off balance,” Zach said.

  “And I don’t think on my feet nearly as well as any of the rest of you.” Clare sniffed.

  Zach put on his brace and special shoes, smiling wryly at all the talk of balance and feet, then stood and kissed Clare, let himself feel her, emotionally as well as physically. Better, for sure. Relief trickled through him. No matter what he had to do, threats, blackmail, anything, he’d make sure the Other kept her in fine form until they found a good ghost to completely heal her.

  As she drew away, he brushed her lips a last time and said, “Later.”

  “Yes.”

  * * *

  C
lare walked with Zach to the front door, kissed him good-bye and waved him on his way, then went into the kitchen and began working on a detailed menu for the evening get-together that Desiree had chivvied her into. When she found herself humming, she decided that she was ready to have people over and show them her new-to-her historic home, built in the 1920s.

  Enzo barked. Hello, Clare, I love you, Clare! I’m glad you are feeling better!

  She put a hand to her spectral wound. It did feel as if it had healed some during the night . . . less painful than it had since the ghost bit her sixteen days ago. “I’m glad, too, but it’s probably best to continue to try and find a . . . quicker cure than just resting at night.” Not a casual wound, never a casual hurt, and she shouldn’t have treated it so. Denial slowed action.

  It is wise to find a healer, Enzo said.

  She glanced at him as she listed ingredients for a couple of homemade salad dressings. The phantom Lab sat with muzzle parted in a small dog smile, tail a slow metronome. We spoke last week about you becoming a true medium, one who handles recent ghosts, he said.

  And who dealt with their grieving families, despairing at their loss so much that they’d consult a psychic who spoke with the dead. Clare’s stomach knotted. Call her wimpy, but she didn’t want to be that person; she would truly feel like a fraud.

  Bad enough that the failure to help one of her regular clients move on—which she hadn’t faced yet but which would inevitably happen—would mean a spirit stuck in the gray dimension until someone else could help him or her. To fail desperate, living families . . . “I can’t do that, Enzo.” She didn’t speak of the turmoil of her emotions. Being her spirit guide, he’d probably sense them anyway. So she stated rational reasons why she wouldn’t take that road. Point one, a very big obstacle: “I don’t have a spirit of my time period to act as an intermediary between myself and new ghosts like Great-Aunt Sandra did.”

  John Dillinger helped Sandra for his own reasons, Enzo said.

  “To try and redeem himself before he went on.” Clare continued to believe in some sort of judgment system, though she hadn’t seen that. So far no evil ghosts had been ripped to pieces and tortured before her psychic eyes, or pulled down to fiery flames, screaming in agony.

  Yes, I believe that is why Dillinger stayed with Sandra. Enzo grinned.

  She refused to ask Enzo if he knew of a judgment process . . . yet. She did wonder.

  “So I can’t be a real medium because I don’t have an intermediary phantom.” Enzo had told her that trying to deal with the living would shred him . . . hurt him and perhaps destroy him.

  She straightened as a notion occurred, something she should have thought of earlier. “Now that I’m following up on those clients Mr. Welliam gave me and charging them to move their ghosts on, am I, ah, no longer of interest to, ah, the Powers That Be? Will they no longer direct me to certain specters or reward me with gifts when I help those phantoms transition and close the case?” Not that she needed the money. The Cermaks had been ghost seers for a long time, even before they emigrated from Bohemia. Clare had inherited her great-aunt Sandra’s fortune—mostly because Clare hadn’t taken her share of Great-Great-Uncle Amos’s wealth like the others in her family.

  And gotten the Cermak ghost seer curse . . . gift, to boot. “The Other told me that if I became a medium and took money for helping spirits move on, I would be crass and commercial and he’d no longer help me.” Not that the greater spirit helped her anyway, more like hindered and infuriated. Good riddance to him, then.

  No, Clare, the Other is still with us. Enzo, the younger and smaller spirit, looked pained. Enzo had to share his form with the Other. And he . . . was mistaken. Since you continue to help ghosts of your time period transition, you are fulfilling your duty as a Cermak ghost seer and can charge for that, if people will pay you like those on Mr. Welliam’s list do.

  Clare figured the Other had shaded the truth to her. Unsurprising. “Too bad the Other isn’t gone,” she muttered. She put her hand on the phantom dog’s head, petted it, her fingers going numb in seconds. “I like you much better than him.” She sniffed. “Mistaken that I can’t charge for my usual services, huh?”

  Mistaken, Enzo whispered.

  “To make sure I understand this, I can charge for what I do now, help the apparitions I can see and communicate with myself—in my time period.” She’d been told that the human mind could only comprehend specters from a defined slice of time—or maybe that was the Cermak mind. Or maybe it was defined by the contract the original Cermak had made with the Powers That Be . . . which the Other had told her of but she knew nothing more about. Too much she needed to learn since she’d been a ghost seer for only a month and a week.

  Hopefully there’d be time to learn.

  With a little cough, she pursued her line of reasoning. “So, it’s only when I work as a medium for the living, for helping modern ghosts to move on . . . or talk to them for their folks . . . Those are what I can’t charge for.”

  Correct.

  “But if I did, I would lose the Other and you, too.”

  Yes.

  “I don’t want to lose you. You are a great help to me.” She added Enzo’s favorite sentiment. “We’re a team and I love you.” If Enzo ever moved on, she’d really miss him. He’d been with her since the very beginning of this whole situation.

  Enzo barked joyfully. Yes, yes, yes, Clare! And I love you, too.

  “I know you do; additionally, I wouldn’t doom any ghost to the suffer the gray dimension, to stay and make me a medium, instead of going on.” She shivered. Enough specters had spoken of that flat existence between life and the next world to make her think the gray dimension could be a torment.

  Not to mention that if she became a medium, she would lose any valuable gifts the universe manifested as payment at the end of a case. She had the latest upstairs in her walk-in closet.

  What I wanted to say to you, though, Clare. Enzo grinned a puppy grin, and his tail picked up beat. Was that perhaps Sandra decided to become a medium for new ghosts and their families because her own time period was so short . . . and because she lived during the first part of that time period.

  “Makes sense.” Clare hesitated, but spoke a truth. “And she never married, I’m not sure if she had a steady . . . fellow in her life. She didn’t have children, and she liked people and helping people.” None of which applied to Clare. Accounting and financial help was a universe away from soothing friends and relatives ravaged by a recent loss.

  Enzo stretched out in a patch of sunlight. Though he no longer pretended to be Great-Aunt Sandra’s Lab, he still had doglike characteristics. Clare thought the real Enzo might have been the template for this spirit and the Other. He seemed to have some memories that the dog would have of Sandra.

  Clare had remembered the dog and thought kindly of it. At the very beginning, it had been much less threatening to talk to a doggy being who insisted that she had the Cermak ghost-seeing gift than some sort of human-type apparition.

  And she’d gotten distracted again. She’d have liked to blame the spectral wound, but instead she thought it was the nature of her new career that didn’t need linear thinking like her old accounting vocation, and maybe that less-tamed gypsy nature of hers that she’d suppressed began to break free. Heaven knew, Zach encouraged that side of her.

  Her phone pinged an appointment reminder. Beginning Yoga in half an hour. Tentatively she stretched; the invisible slash in her side remained the same. All right, yoga this morning. She’d market while out, prepare salad, cook side dishes.

  Doctor’s office in two hours. Clare sighed, she’d have to take the car service—she couldn’t drive in a high-phantom area due to the press of noisy and not-quite-see-through ghosts.

  Yoga—something she was beginning to enjoy—then grocery shopping and cooking, which she did enjoy. But then she’d have to suffer t
hrough another futile situation. For which she paid a significant amount. She hated that.

  Enzo yipped. What’s for dinner?

  “As if you can eat anything.”

  I can smell the good smells, and that is excellent. His tongue came out, whisking over his chops, leaving a string of drool dribbling from his mouth . . . that vanished before it hit the floor.

  No, she didn’t think she could face this whole thing without Enzo. Or Zach.

  * * *

  When Zach entered Rickman’s office, two men rose from the gray leather barrel chairs. One guy was stocky and florid with wavy gray hair—five foot eight, about 165 pounds; the other tall, thin, and elegant at six foot one, 155 or so, receding white hair from a high forehead. Both wore tailored suits, and their mouths smiled but their eyes scrutinized.

  Fair enough, since he’d scanned them for their vital statistics, too: height, weight, distinguishing marks.

  Rickman had risen from behind his desk, eying Zach with his own intent gaze. “This is my operative—my investigator, Zach Slade. Zach, Mr. Craig Jessup, attorney at law, and Mr. Peter Boutros of the accounting firm of Boutros, Feldman and Waters.”

  Zach walked to the shorter one and held out his hand. “Mr. Jessup.”

  Rickman’s lips tipped up, no doubt pleased that Zach could distinguish the attorney from the accountant at a glance. Easy.

  They shook and Zach turned to the elegant guy, who said, “A pleasure to meet you, Mr. Slade.” Zach knew him to be the senior partner in the accounting firm Clare had worked for before she’d inherited her fortune and psychic gift from her great-aunt and gotten dumped into the ghost-seeing gig.

  “Mr. Boutros’s and my firm have a joint client—the estate of Charla Utzig—that we want to hire Mr. Rickman for,” the attorney, Jessup, stated.

  Leaning a little on his cane—the attorney had reacted to the slight hitch in Zach’s step, the accountant hadn’t—Zach aimed his words at the lawyer. “Missing heir?”

  “That’s right.”

  “Please sit, gentlemen, and we’ll discuss this,” Rickman said.