Reynard looked up, his gray eyes filled with something she couldn’t name. Sorrow, but deeper, as if the bad boy and the gentleman had stepped aside, and the real Reynard looked out at her for the first time.
“No,” he said, his voice suddenly rough. “Not at all. My niece and nephew were just the same.”
Lore wasn’t going to be around until the next morning, so Ashe and Reynard had plenty of time to keep Holly’s ghostbusting appointment. Ashe was glad it was going to be a quick job. She had far more interesting worries, not the least of which was the man sitting next to her. They were well into day two of the Great Urn Search, and she still didn’t have a lead and wasn’t sure where to begin looking. She was a slayer, not a detective.
“Pursuing any of the supernatural problems at hand will shed light on the others,” Reynard had maintained as he’d wrestled with the mysteries of the SUV’s seat belt. She hoped he was right.
Her tussle with Reynard this morning had nailed home the fact that, whatever her brain was thinking, her body wanted to know him a whole lot better. Her self-control circuits were seriously overheating.
She could feel herself sizing up Reynard for long-term potential. Which, of course, didn’t exist. Obviously, her libido wasn’t very bright. She was almost grateful when they reached their destination. She needed those last few brain cells for the task at hand.
She found a parking spot, sacrificed to the meter gods, and looked around.
The bookshop at Fort and Main was in an old two-story house. The front yard was separated from the street by a picket fence. Along the walk, a few hyacinths were just coming into bloom. The rest of the garden looked overdue for a good weeding. Ashe and Reynard walked to the porch. The paint was peeling around the windows and porch rail, and last fall’s dead leaves drifted in the nooks and crannies of the steps.
A wooden sign carefully lettered with BOOK BURROW hung above the door. The name had nagged at Ashe since she first heard it, but she couldn’t place why it was familiar.
“This place is neglected,” Reynard commented.
“If it’s a new owner, maybe he hasn’t had time to clean up yet,” Ashe replied. “I remember this store. Old Mr. Cowan used to own it. It was called Cowan’s Books back then. He used to save the Nancy Drews for me. He had an uncanny memory for which ones I still hadn’t read.”
“Nancy Drews?” Reynard asked.
Ashe walked up the porch stairs. “Mystery stories. I had the whole set when I was ten years old.” She paused, trying to sense anything odd about the house. It wasn’t sentient, just a house, but a faint sadness curled in the air like smoke. Maybe whatever was haunting the place missed old Mr. Cowan. She turned the brass knob and went in, setting off a door chime.
Reynard followed, looking around. The floor creaked beneath his boots. “It smells like mildew.”
“Maybe the roof leaks.” Ashe fought claustrophobia. There had always been lots of bookcases, but they had multiplied. Now they lined both sides of the hallway, leaning precariously where the old floor buckled and heaved. Stacks of boxes jostled for space in the corners. “I don’t remember it being this crowded. There’s got to be twice as much stock.”
Cardboard signs were tacked to the wall, each with an arrow and subject area. Cooking, this way. Military history, that way. Novels, upstairs. While Ashe scanned them, a faint sound came from the left, no more than a footfall on the thin carpet. She whipped around, far jumpier than she needed to be. There was nothing there—no monster pouncing from the shadows. She took a deep breath, letting it out slowly.
The noise had come from the room she remembered held the cash desk, where Holly’s client was probably waiting. She listened again. Nothing hit her senses as a threat.
Then why am I so jumpy?
Get moving. The best thing to do was follow that noise.
She had to go carefully so that she didn’t knock something over. The store’s new name was apt: It was like burrowing through a tunnel of books. Reynard had to turn slightly, his broad shoulders brushing the shelves. High above, a stained-glass window shed a thin light over the mess.
The main room was much as she remembered it. The walls formed a hexagon, glass- fronted shelves reaching to a twelve- foot ceiling. The topmost books could be accessed by a library ladder that wheeled around the room. A bay window faced the street. Reynard paused to peer into a glass case. A stuffed marmot snarled from inside the dusty prison. “Why would anyone want this?”
“Yeah, especially when there’s a perfectly good two-headed squirrel over there. C’mon.”
He still hesitated, distracted by a collection of miniature sailing ships.
“Reynard?”
He pointed to the ship in the middle. “I sailed to India on one like that.” He straightened. “It was a bit bigger, though.”
Ashe envisioned Reynard on the high seas, and felt a pang of confusion. Imagining him in the past seemed right and wrong at the same time.
“Do you see anyone here?” she asked.
“No.”
The service desk was where she remembered it, at the back of the room. A huge, antique cash register, covered in brass scrollwork, perched on the mahogany counter.
“Hello?” she called. The sound seemed to die as soon as it left her lips. Bad acoustics, with all those books around. “Hello?”
“I’ll go look in the other rooms,” Reynard said, his brows drawing together.
“Just remember he’s a bookshop owner, not a demon.”
He looked down his nose. “Do you think I’ve forgotten how to deal with common humans?”
“You looked kind of serious there for a moment. I’m just saying . . .”
“I’ll mind my manners, madam,” he said a touch frostily, but the twinkle in his eyes gave him away. He walked back the way they had come, a slight swagger creeping into his step. It did nice things for his blue jeans.
Ashe’s heart gave a little gallop. “You do that, Galahad.”
Job. There’s a job, remember? She tried to tune into the house again, let her own energy fan outward until it touched the spirit of the place. Old places gathered memories, moods. It wasn’t active magic, just the silt of years past.
Heavy. Tired. Sad.
It came through faintly. The presence of the books muffled the feeling, absorbing the house’s energy as effectively as they did sound and light. Ashe could feel each volume, too, rows and rows of presences, individual auras rich with the trace of every reader who had thumbed their pages. A few books carried more than that, some pulsing with magic. Interesting, but not why she was there.
She pushed past the walls, reaching outward. Reynard was hunting through the rooms to the right. Mice tiptoed behind the baseboards, stopping, sniffing. Above, far above, someone waited. Not a human someone.
That presence sent a chill trickling down her body. She definitely had a ghostbusting job to do. Why isn’t the owner here?
There was an open door behind the service desk. Through it, she could see a flight of stairs to the floor above. These were plain and steep, originally a servants’ stairway. The main stairs were by the front door.
Ashe rounded the desk, ducked through the doorway marked PRIVATE. She’d never been back here before. She gave a curious look around. The room was cluttered with empty packing boxes. Mud smeared the old linoleum, leaving a crunchy film of dirt.
The place had the sour, close smell of neglect. No wonder it had ghosts. They loved undisturbed spaces.
Reynard joined her. “An eclectic collection. If only I had time to do some reading.”
“You find the owner?”
“No. There is a shed behind this building, though.” He leaned against the wall, the muscles of his arms and chest working the black T-shirt he wore. He could have modeled for Workrite’s next catalog. All he needed was a hard hat and a sign that said REAL MEN USE HAND TOOLS.
A bead of sweat trickled down Ashe’s spine, making her shiver. Nerves and lust warred with each other. Ashe lo
oked up the stairs. She could see more bookshelves. The second floor had always been the fiction section. The Nancy Drew books used to be kept by the narrow window that looked out on Fort Street. What would Nancy do? Would she ever jump her guy and forget the case?
No, by now Nancy would have found the owner hiding in a secret passage, tied up the villain, and driven away in her cute blue roadster without mussing a single Titian-red hair. Preppy bitch.
Ashe could feel the inhuman presence above, waiting with arachnid patience. It was starting to piss her off, and she had a pocket full of Holly’s charms. “I’m going to check upstairs.”
Reynard nodded. “I’ll investigate the shed and meet you up there shortly.”
“Okay.”
Reynard slipped away, quiet as a cat.
Ashe pulled a stake out of the side pocket of her pants—not that it would kill a ghost, but it made her feel better. She rolled her neck to relax the knot between her shoulder blades, and began mounting the steps. A-hunting we will go.
There was no handrail and the floor humped at the top of the steps, making for iffy footing. On the other hand, the second story was relatively uncluttered. She moved quietly through the romances to the mystery section, scanning the shelves and bookcases that lined each of the four upstairs rooms. The only light came from dirty sash windows, cords broken and frames painted shut. She saw Reynard outside, emerging from the shed. It didn’t look like he’d found anyone.
She kept moving, looking for signs of the ghost, but the second floor was far less spooky. In fact, not much had changed in this part of the store since she’d been a kid. There were still a handful of the old, yellow-spined Nancys where she thought they’d be. The sash window by that shelf—the only one that opened—was still the same, looking onto the metal fire escape that zigzagged down the side of the house. Mr. Cowan had let her sit out there and read sometimes. He’d been a sweet old guy.
She made a circuit of the upstairs, finding nothing. Ashe began to relax. On a nostalgic whim, she slipped a copy of The Sign of the Twisted Candles from the shelf. That had been the first one she’d ever read. She wondered if her old books were around and if Eden would like them.
“Have you found what you’re looking for?”
Ashe raised the stake as she jerked around, ready to strike. The book fell to the floor with a thunk.
A man stood there, his hands in the pockets of his chinos. “You must be the ghostbuster I called.”
“Yeah,” Ashe replied, feeling foolish.
He was a few inches shorter than she was, a few years older. He had curly dark hair, big brown eyes, and a day or two’s growth of beard. He smiled, showing white teeth and a set of dimples calculated to melt the female heart.
“I’m Tony,” he said. “Welcome to my mess.”
“You have a lot of stock.”
“I got a shipment from a huge estate sale, and I’m still trying to find a place to put everything.”
He gave off an easygoing, relaxed air. “I’m sorry I wasn’t downstairs to meet you. I’ve been lugging boxes up the stairs all day. I guess I didn’t hear the bell.”
Ashe slowly lowered the stake and crouched to pick up the book. “I’m Ashe Carver. My partner’s downstairs. You gotta ghost?”
Tony’s gaze wandered from the Nancy Drew to the stake, obviously trying to put the two together. “Yeah. In the attic. I was going to use that space for storage, but no way. Not until it’s cleaned out.”
Then the ghost was definitely the creepazoid presence she felt.
He gave her a curious look. “I thought your name was Holly?”
“That’s my sister. The agency’s a family business.” Not like she could say she was the second-stringer. Ashe looked around. “Where’s the attic entrance?”
“This way. Appropriately enough, it’s in the room with the thrillers.”
He started for the door, casting a look back over his shoulder to make sure Ashe was coming. She set Twisted Candles back on the shelf and followed Tony.
“So who is this ghost? The store’s been around for years. I’ve never heard of any spirit activity, and I used to come here all the time as a kid.”
“A child died in this house a hundred years ago. Don’t know her name. For some reason she’s acting up all of a sudden.”
“What does she do?”
“She sings. Bangs around. Makes noise.”
Ashe looked at him.
He shrugged. “It’s worse than it sounds. She knows just how to get to you.”
“Did something happen around the time the ghost first appeared? It’s rare for a quiet spirit to become active.”
“The old owner died. Maybe she misses him.”
The attic stairs were behind a door. The door was one of the bookcases that swung out on creaky hinges, forming the obligatory secret passage. Ashe had walked right by it twice. Nancy would have found it. Perky teen detective one, professional slayer zero.
Tony held open the door with the air of a nervous butler. “You don’t need me for this, do you?”
“Probably better you stay down here.”
He looked wobbly from relief.
“Are there lights?”
“Just this.”
He reached through the doorway and pulled a chain. It made a chink noise, and a single bulb lit a flight of painted stairs. Ashe slid the stake back in her pocket and pulled a Maglite from her belt.
“Send my partner up when he comes in, okay? He’ll be here in a sec.”
“You got it,” Tony said. “You’re set? Can I get you anything?”
“I’m set.”
“Good luck.” He looked worried.
Ashe ignored his expression and headed up the stairs. She’d wiped out whole vampire nests. This should be a piece of cake. She flicked on the flashlight and started up the steps.
Even though it was only April and starting to cloud up, the attic was hot and stuffy. It was unfinished—just a raw wood floor and a few piles of junk here and there. Someone had been busy with rolls of pink insulation, but had run out of supplies or ambition about three-quarters of the way across the roof. There were a couple of vents with screens to keep out the birds, but no windows. In some ways the lack of sunlight was good. Ghosts were easier to see in the dark.
Then she felt it. Fingertips against her cheek, so light they tickled. Annoyance flared. “Don’t be a pain in the ass.”
Wind huffed along the floor, stirring dust. Ashe heard a scampering of bare feet, quick and light as a child’s. A faint gurgle of laughter. Yes, it sounded like a girl.
Oh, great. She looked around for the obligatory china-faced doll, or the rocking horse that teetered back and forth all by itself. Ghosts loved their clichés.
There was a big captain’s chair shoved in the corner. Dollars to doughnuts, that was where the spook would appear. Ashe pulled a piece of chalk out of her pocket and drew a circle around the attic floor, making sure to touch each wall. Then she took out her packet of charms. Holly had used a Ziploc sandwich bag to keep the herbs fresh. Ashe pulled it open, getting a heady whiff of mint and something bitter. All she needed to do was position a few of these around the attic, light a spell candle, and she was finished. Prefab despooking even a broken witch could manage.
She felt the ghost’s breath on her cheek, as intimate as if she were peering over Ashe’s shoulder—which was probably true. The temperature in the place was beginning to drop. Ashe’s fingers fumbled as she pulled the first charm out of the bag. It was a cheesecloth bundle the size of a walnut. She wasn’t sure what was inside. This was Grandma and Holly’s special recipe.
She felt for her inner compass, found east, and placed the charm against that wall. The Carvers used a simple, respectful spell to release a ghost, to sever its earthly bonds and send it where it needed to go. “Goddess of word and thought, I invoke you; cut this knot.”
She felt the bloom of power as her words activated the power Holly had packed into the charm. But that wasn’t all
she felt. The cold deepened, chilling her till she shook. The ghost was fighting back. Some just didn’t want to go.
Give me a vampire any old day. She found the south wall and tipped a charm out of the plastic bag, letting it roll into place. Her fingers were suddenly too numb to fumble with the cheesecloth balls. She blew on her fingers, warming them enough to set the charm right side up. “Goddess of sun and heat, I invoke you to this feat.”
Her words came out in little clouds. Her nose was dripping. The lightbulb over the stairs—the only light in the attic besides her flashlight—went out with a fizzle. She heard the footsteps again, and the sound of a child softly crying. Sobbing. The heartbroken, wretched grief that only a young child can fully express. Ashe stopped in her tracks, the sound leaching the strength from her limbs.
How could anyone stand that weeping? It was the sheer despair of an abandoned child. Ashe felt that sadness through her whole body, clawing deep in her guts. Eden had cried like that when her father died. Had she cried the same way when Ashe left her at St. Flo’s? Goddess! Goddess, forgive me.
Ashe felt tears freezing on her cheeks. Don’t go there. That’s how the ghosts get you, through your own fears. She had to hang on, be stronger.
West wall. It was so dark she could barely see, but somehow she got one more charm out of the bag and into place.
“Goddess of womb and heart, pull these earthly bonds apart,” Ashe murmured through chattering teeth. She hoped divine spirits could read minds, because her words were barely words at all, just frozen chunks of breath.
A voice lisped next to her ear, “He wants me to go away because I can see what he is. I’m trying to stop him. Help me! He’s very, very bad.”
Ashe whipped around, stumbling because her feet were numb.
It had been a little girl.
Stop him? Stop whom?
The temperature spiked, the air suddenly stuffy and warm again. Ashe stood, shaking as her body tried to bring heat back to her bones. The stairway light flickered back on.
Something felt very, very wrong.
Ashe rushed to the north wall, nearly throwing down the last charm in her haste. “Goddess of earth and arctic wave, send this spirit from its grave.”
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