Haunted Redemption

by Rebecca Royce

  “Trust me. I know it. Maybe you’ll really like your broker.”

  ****

  The Butterfly Bar at the Vortex was outside, which meant I was lucky the weather proved nice. I’d actually never been to the location before, and from the moment I pulled into the parking lot, between a dry cleaner and a hotel, I wasn’t sure I shouldn’t turn around. It took me ten minutes to find a spot. On the way to the door, gravel got into my shoes.

  For the occasion, I’d opted to wear my black pants and a white turtleneck matched with a pair of sensible black pumps. I wanted to look like someone he could take seriously. Or maybe I’d wanted to feel like someone I could take seriously. This wasn’t a joke; this was me taking steps toward a new career.

  I was really overdressed for the location. Picnic tables were placed on the outside of the bar and around a food truck that seemed to be selling organic Italian food. My stomach rumbled. I’d been so nervous I hadn’t wanted to eat before I came to find the so-called Malcolm.

  The crowd appeared diverse, and since I hadn’t been given a physical description of Malcolm, I had no idea what to expect. Was he young? Old? Would he be here by himself or in a group?

  I crossed the crowd toward where it looked like I could enter the bar area. A young group of tattooed, pierced girls shrieked while next to them a gay couple held hands; one of them vaped a substance that smelled like oregano.

  I’d never been young, not like they were. I’d gone from the life with my parents to college to Levi’s wife. I’d never shrieked with a group of single girlfriends—although I guessed I didn’t know if the women were in relationships or not. I kind of liked thinking of them as a group of single girls. Austin’s own version of Sex in the City.

  Walking inside the bar proved an assault on my senses. The darkness of the inside contrasted with the still sunlit exterior. A movie streamed soundless on the wall with subtitles telling me what the characters were saying. It wasn’t a film I recognized. Next to the screen, a man played lightly on a steel drum. The walls were littered with eclectic artwork and posters for various exhibits or protests for one thing or another.

  The room smelled like popcorn.

  I got in line to wait for my turn to order a drink, though I didn’t want one. I needed something to do while I figured out who Malcolm was. That was when I saw the ghost.

  I guess it would be more accurate to say, that was when I felt him. Any occurrence with the supernatural always began with a physical reaction in my body before my eyes and my brain caught up. In that respect, I wasn’t different than regular folks who couldn’t do or see what I did. Even Levi could probably feel the shift in things when a presence that shouldn’t be there arrived. However, when their brains didn’t then fill in the blanks for them by presenting the image of what caused the shift, they stopped noticing the changes.

  For me, the room dropped several degrees, and my hands tingled. I could tell myself I couldn’t see the ghost; I could make that choice, and the image would fade.

  Only I’d come here to do the opposite. It was time to use my curse to earn some money to pay for my half of karate lessons for Dex and maybe a better bottle of wine.

  My parents held one belief solidly, and they’d impressed it to me often when I was growing up. No ghost was a good ghost. If they were here, if they hadn’t crossed over or vanished or whatever—none of this was about religion; as far as I could tell we’d never practiced any—then they weren’t good energy. They were to be gotten rid of, end of story. I was certainly not supposed to speak to them.

  They were evil.

  Only … my own experience varied slightly and had since I’d encountered my first group of ghosts in a movie theater in Chicago when I was sixteen. Homeschooled and always travelling, I hadn’t made a lot of friends and that was why, when a group of practitioners gathered in Chicago one hot August day to talk trade craft, I’d embraced the idea of hanging out with their kids.

  Who those random teenagers were hadn’t stayed with me. They were nameless groups, a way to spend the night away from my parents, a way to picture what could someday, hopefully, be my life. What I remember in particular from that occasion were the ghosts in the theater. I know now that movie theaters always harbor a lot of supernatural activity. If the place is crowded and germ-filled then it is likely to also, for whatever reason, have ghosts, demons, or the average, floating poltergeists running around in droves.

  I hadn’t been trained yet to rid the world of the things—my parents made my first solo experience my seventeenth birthday present—but I could see them just fine. The ones that were supposed to scare me did. Their faces were distorted, blood dripping from their dead mouths to accompany their dead eyes. Only some of them didn’t bother me at all.

  They seemed lost souls, and they didn’t want to hurt me. They were simply… lonely.

  The ghost at the Butterfly Bar screamed sadness to me. The loneliest ghost in the room …

  “Where is he?” I directed my question to the ghost. “Malcolm.”

  I could almost guarantee if there was a proprietor of the paranormal running around, the ghost in the room would know where. The ghost turned his attention on me at the same second a woman in front of me in line turned back to see if I spoke to her. I ignored her. For years, I would have pretended I hadn’t been speaking or made an excuse, but I had no time for that now. I’d come to find Malcolm, and I didn’t have time for the regular humans at the moment.

  The ghost was tall—at least a foot over my five foot five inches. He dressed in old-fashioned clothes that looked like they were circa early nineteen nineties, all the way to the ripped jeans. He’d be trendy if he was alive. Oh hell, with the variety of dress at the Vortex he’d fit right in.

  “He doesn’t bother me and I don’t bother him.” The ghost’s voice sounded raspy. “I’ve never bothered anyone. I made mistakes. Big ones. We can all make large errors. I’d take it back. I am sorry. I’m waiting. That’s all.”

  My hands tingled. My powers, now nice and awake, wanted to send him on. But if Malcolm and the others who came here to deal with him left the man alone, I wasn’t going to screw with the status quo. Maybe he was, like, some kind of pet.

  I held up my hands. “I’m not going to bother you. I need to meet Malcolm.”

  “I like this place.”

  The problem with talking to ghosts was they didn’t always make sense. They rambled; they obsessed. I groaned. I wasn’t getting anywhere quickly.

  I stepped forward. I was next in line for the drink I didn’t want when I noticed the bartender holding my eye contact. She was a short woman, barely five feet tall, with all of the visible skin on her body covered in bright ink designs that made her look fierce.

  She nodded her chin toward the door, and I followed her gaze. Leaning against the wooden frame stood a tall man. He had olive skin and dark brown hair shaved close to his head. A dusting of whiskers covered his chin and cheeks. His eyes were dark pools of heat, and I swallowed trying not to get lost in them. He’d look my ex-husband in the eye if they stood head-to-head, which put him around six feet tall—significantly taller than me. He’d dressed in a gray t-shirt and a pair of jeans.

  Like the bartender, his arms were covered in ink, but I couldn’t make out the designs.

  My body went on high alert. The man was hot.

  He sauntered rather than walked toward me. “Are you talking to my ghost?’

  I took a deep breath and didn’t give in to the urge to fan myself. Damn, this had to be Malcolm. He should come with a warning: Very hot. Beware.

  Chapter Three

  “I didn’t realize he was your ghost.” I tried to swallow despite my suddenly-gone-dry throat. “Are you Malcolm?”

  He raised a dark eyebrow but otherwise didn’t comment. Instead, he turned and walked back out the door of the bar. I had a choice. I could throw the whole thing to hell and go home, or I could follow him. The first option seemed more and more appealing. Malcolm had made my whole b
ody go on alert, and he’d only spoken one sentence to me.

  I needed his help, and running would not get the water bill paid during Austin’s hot months, which were rapidly approaching. I wasn’t going to give up the house or ask Levi for help. There had to be somewhere where I drew a line, where I put on my big-girl panties and said I could handle my own shit. Six months was enough time of half measures. No more saging or taking a few hours here or there from Victoria.

  I followed him out the door. He sat at a table by himself, his gaze on me as I approached. I’d missed him the first time due to where he’d positioned himself on the deck. Or maybe I hadn’t. Was he somehow able to block himself from view unless he wanted to be seen? Anything was possible, and in this world I needed to steel myself for the weird actually happening all the time.

  “How is he your ghost?” I sat across from him, although I’d not been invited to sit, and tried to pretend sitting without invite didn’t irk my sense of decorum. Despite, or maybe because of, my unusual upbringing, I’d been raised to be polite. “Did you bring him here?”

  Malcolm shrugged. “He’s my ghost because I say he’s my ghost.”

  The not-so-subtle implication being, what he said, was what was. Or maybe I overthought things; maybe he was just a guy who didn’t say very much.

  His accent wasn’t southern, and I didn’t hear Texas in it either. Other than that, I had to say I couldn’t place his origins. All of the moving around should have made me adept at defining differences, however it had the opposite effect in the long run. Sounds tended to run together in my head.

  Being closer to him hadn’t diminished his hotness. Looking at him objectively, I could actually see how he wasn’t going to be on the cover of any romance novel or in a men’s magazine. His face wasn’t beautiful. His lips were pouty and his chin pointed out a little bit too much. His dark eyes sank deep into his face, and although they were huge, the deep set of them could be a little off-putting, particularly when he stared at me across the table as though he wanted to throw me out with the garbage can across the way.

  He wasn’t buff but rather had a lean frame with well-defined muscles. I’d guess he wasn’t a gym rat.

  And yet my initial impression didn’t change. This man oozed sex appeal, and my panties were getting wetter by the second being close to him. He smelled like cloves, and I tried to breathe him in without being obvious.

  “What do you want?” Malcolm didn’t move unnecessarily. I hadn’t seen him fidget even once.

  “My name is Kendall Madison …”

  He held up his hand. “I didn’t ask you who you are, I asked you what you wanted.”

  Malcolm spoke the last words very slowly, as if I wasn’t very bright and might need him to be very clear in what he said. I sat straighter. I’d been scared as hell to do this, but he’d just gotten my back up. I had a service to provide, and he could find me jobs. For a portion of my fee, he’d get paid for nothing more than an introduction. I really didn’t need to put up with so much crap in the process.

  “It’s easier to talk to someone if you know their name. You haven’t introduced yourself to me, which doesn’t mean I’m not going to give you the courtesy of my name.”

  He rubbed at his chin, the first unnecessary movement I’d seen him do. “If you think I would let a woman in one of my cities go around saging the homes of the rich and ridiculous without knowing who she is, then you have misjudged me, Kendall Yates.”

  His use of my last name made me flinch. I hadn’t wanted to mix the two parts of my life, hence my use of my maiden name. In fact, I’d never once told anyone in the paranormal world I was a Yates. Or that I had been. I guess, since I’d gotten divorced, I should probably give up the Yates anyway. At the moment, none of that mattered since apparently Malcolm knew me anyway.

  “How did you know the Yates?”

  “I asked around.” His brown eyes flared for a second with an emotion I couldn’t identify. Who was this man? Outside of brokering the paranormal, did he do anything else? Did he have fun? Hang out with friends? Come home to a wife and child? His left hand was bare, no ring in sight, yet I knew that didn’t necessarily mean anything. Some people didn’t feel the need to put a ring on to be in a serious relationship.

  His answer got me nowhere, and I wished I’d gotten that drink. “Who could you possibly ask? I’ve never advertised to anyone, not a single time, with my actual last name. I have children to take care of.”

  “Why aren’t you with them now? Why are you here on this eighty degree night bothering my ghost and taking up my time?”

  I leaned forward. “I’ve been a mother for a decade. I know deflection when I hear it.”

  “I don’t have to answer your questions. You only have to answer mine. You came here to see me. That means you want me to sign you as a client. I don’t take every would-be spiritualist who darkens my table. If I did, I would be overthrown faster than I could say boo. So tell me, Sage Lady, what do you want with me? Interested in preforming some séances? Contacting the other side for a very large fee?”

  Enough was enough. I pointed my finger at him, an act my children understood to mean I’d reached the end of my vast amount of patience. Malcom had to be around my age, so I didn’t in any way feel parental toward him—more as though I wanted him to really understand what I was about to say.

  “I am the daughter of two of the greatest practitioners to ever grace the earth. I was raised in the back of a van watching the worst and most horrifying scenes imaginable. By the time I was eight, I’d seen more filth, more horror, more utter pain than most people will experience in their lives, ever, and more power to them for living a whole life without it. I am not a woo-woo, séance woman. I’m the girl who took a single look at your ghost and ached to send the thing on to its next existence and resisted the urge. That’s how powerful I am. I can actually turn my powers off and did for twelve years.”

  I sat back in my chair. I breathed hard. I’d never said so much on the subject before, other than starts and stops with Levi who would never really understand. This man in front of me, he actually might, and as I forced myself to calm, I realized he’d probably gotten exactly the rise out of me he wanted. Being bated always made me feel small, as though I couldn’t see enough of the shape of a conversation to realize when I’d been manipulated.

  When he spoke again, he sounded less condescending than I’d heard the first time. “Then what made you turn it back on?”

  “I’m divorced. I have to support my kids and myself. I’m not looking for pity, just a chance to do what I never allowed myself to before. I can help people and make us both a lot of money.”

  Malcolm stood, his chair flying backwards from the movement. The severity and suddenness of his unexpected rise made me sit back in my chair. He came around the table until he sat next to me. I scooted back even further. We were in public; he couldn’t hurt me physically. I wasn’t afraid as much as I didn’t want him to touch me for fear he’d turn me into an angry puddle of desire on the floor. I needed to see a therapist. Too much of my desire seemed wrapped up in my temper these days. My body shouldn’t be equating sex with anger.

  Before only in the case of Levi did I get so twisted up, but now in a more explosive way, for the confusion of it all, it would seem I wanted Malcolm the same way.

  “Why now? You’re here. Okay, you’re divorced. You haven’t worked in twelve years.”

  “I wasn’t given any choice, and I really don’t want to talk about it.”

  He shook his head. “Here’s how this works, Sage.” I already hated that nickname, but I couldn’t argue everything. One thing at a time. “If you work for me, I ask you whatever I want to whenever I want to. You don’t like it, walk away. I’m not going to interfere with your Craigslist business. I’m totally uninterested in it. You want me to find you some real deal, money-making clients? You answer whatever I ask whenever I do, or we’re done with this conversation.”

  “That’s incredibly inv
asive.”

  “Yep.” Malcolm leaned forward, and I could see for the first time he had the smallest scar on the side of his face. Had someone cut him with a knife? I shivered. Coming here had been a mistake. I was a mom with three young children. I had no business being at a bar verbally dueling with a man who had at some point very likely been knifed on his face. “Are you a coward?”

  I hated his question. “Yes. At my core, I’m a coward. I ran from the life I was born into straight into the arms of a man who could keep me safe. I pretended to be one of them, one of the people who need saving instead of the woman called in the deepest of night to come save them. And if I could go back and do one evening differently, I’d still be living that life. If someone offered me that chance, I’d take it. So, yeah, I’m a coward. I don’t want my children burdened with this life. I don’t want it myself. You make me shake in my boots. I’m a coward. A big one.”

  “At last she says something entirely true.” He laughed, a long hard sound that didn’t have any mirth in it. “You’re right. I’m terrifying. You should be scared of me. I’m the most dangerous person in any room. That’s why I’m alive. You told me some truth, so I’ll tell you. Your father only got my name last week because I gave permission for him to receive it. I’ve been waiting to see if you’d show up; takes balls to walk in here and even look for me.” He rubbed at his eyes. “I’m grouchy but not usually this bad. I had a long night. So how about you tell me the rest of it. Let’s get this done.”

  “I was sitting in a PTA meeting. I used to take care of the fall fundraising drive. You know, the usual. Selling wrapping paper or ad space on our website.”

  He shook his head. “Actually, I didn’t know those things went on. But whatever. Get to the point. You were at PTA meeting.”

  “Right. I didn’t know they did these things either until I had kids. I grew up going to school in the back of my parents’ van.” If I’d thought he would offer more of his own information when I said that, I’d been wrong. I hated to think I’d said it to try to draw him out. I needed to run from knowing too much about Malcolm, not push my way into his life in anything other than a professional manner. “I was standing, talking about what kinds of numbers we hoped to have, the money I wanted to earn for the school, when this ghost launched into the room. I hadn’t seen one in a long time. I’d chosen not to, if that makes sense.”