Of Ash and Spirit_Piper Lancaster Series

by Denise Grover Swank

  The kitchen door opened behind me, and Gill strutted in and released a low whistle. “Holy shit, Piper. I know you fake things, but this takes it to a whole new level.”

  I lowered my phone to my side. “Me fake things? Are you kidding me? You’re the master of fakery.”

  “Yeah,” he said, moving closer and looking down at me with disdain. “Good luck proving it, princess.”

  I gave him a brittle smile. “Challenge accepted.”

  The footage should go a long way toward doing just that. Then I stormed past him, heading straight through the living room and out the front door.

  Gill followed, probably because he was worried I might make good on my threat.

  Evelyn was standing in the front yard, gnawing on her fisted knuckles. She dropped her hand to her side when she saw me, took a step toward me, and then stopped. “We all heard the commotion in there. Are you all right?” Her eyes flew wide. “Oh my God. You’re bleeding!”

  I glanced down and remembered the glass in my arm. All that adrenaline must have masked the pain. Blood had dripped down to my elbow and then continued its path down my forearm after I lowered my phone. I realized I was still recording and used my thumb to turn off the camera while I twisted my arm to get a better look at the injury. “Just one of the hazards of dealing with asshole entities.”

  Gill was on the porch, and I shot him a dark look.

  “Did you get rid of it?” Manny asked in an irritated tone.

  “No,” I said. “The time limit was ridiculous. I’d barely just begun my investigation.”

  Manny turned to his wife. “I told you she was a waste of time.”

  I heard siren wails in the distance. Had the Crawfords called the police?

  “I saw it,” I said. “I spoke to it.”

  Evelyn’s eyes widened, and even Manny’s attitude shifted to wariness.

  “What did it say?” she asked.

  I might as well use Gill’s deception to my advantage, especially since he would never admit to having set any of it up. “Unfortunately, I’d only begun to converse with the entity. It took two shapes in two different parts of the house. First, it appeared as a little girl at the top of the basement stairs. Then it took a more . . . grotesque appearance in the kitchen. I think I know why you have so much activity in the kitchen.”

  “It’s hungry?” Gill asked in a snarky tone.

  I glanced over my shoulder and rolled my eyes, then turned back to Evelyn. “I think it’s been trying to communicate with you. Whenever it spoke, vibrations filled the air. Cabinet doors opened and things flew across the room.”

  “What did it say?” Manny asked. “What does it want?”

  I hesitated, not sure I wanted to admit what it had said, especially since doing so would mean playing right into Gill’s hands. “It said it feels trapped here. It’s looking for a way to leave this spiritual plane, but it’s lost.”

  “So you saw two spirits?” Gill asked with a snicker.

  “I caught that too,” Evelyn said. “Are there two ghosts?”

  I lifted my shoulders into a slight shrug. “I’m not sure. When I spoke to the girl, she seemed scared and quickly vanished. It could be that she’s choosing to take a more monstrous appearance to deal with her fear. Or, if there are two entities, she may be frightened of the other one.”

  “Entities?” Evelyn said. “On your website, you call them spirits. What do you think is in there?”

  “It doesn’t matter what’s in there,” Gill said. “Me and my guys will take care of it.” He gave me a patronizing smile. “You’ve had your fun, Piper, but it’s time for experts to deal with this.”

  I was done. This butthead had ruined what could have been a lucrative gig . . . and a possible in to the TV world. While I hated the thought of acting unprofessional in front of a client, I was at my wits’ end. Not only had he stolen from me, but he’d been bullying me all night—first with physical force, then with his holograms, and now with his condescending attitude. No more.

  “Experts?” I asked, marching toward him. “You think you’re an expert?” I stopped in front of him and jabbed my index finger into his chest. “You’re a clown with a bunch of expensive equipment that I paid for! Fifteen thousand dollars’ worth of it. Well, guess what?” I snatched the video camera from his hand. “I want it back.”

  His mouth dropped open.

  I spun around and headed toward Ricky and Ethan. Ethan’s eyes filled with fear as I reached for the tripod. What was I thinking? That thing probably cost twenty bucks. I was going after the expensive stuff.

  Stomping past them, I headed to the open van and peered inside, searching for the high-ticket items.

  “What the hell do you think you’re doing, Piper?” Gill shouted from behind me.

  “I think you know what I’m doing!” I moved a laptop aside and picked up a camera even bigger than the one I’d taken from Gill. It was heavier than I’d expected and I nearly dropped it.

  “That’s not your stuff!” he shouted, reaching around to take the ginormous camera from me.

  I twisted to get it out of his reach. “Yes, it is, Gill! I paid for it!”

  “You’re gonna start using equipment now?” he asked as he reached over my shoulder and grabbed my arm. “You’re gonna trade up your stupid-ass smudge sticks?”

  “Let go of me!” I shot my elbow into his stomach, and he stumbled backward.

  “Damn you, Piper! I’m calling the police!”

  “Already taken care of,” Manny hollered from in front of the house. “They’re on their way.”

  “Did you hear that?” Gill asked, leaning over with his hands on his knees while he tried to catch his breath. “The police are coming to arrest you!”

  “Arrest me? I’m going to tell them what you did, and they’ll arrest you!”

  “You’re making a fool of yourself, Piper! Just get out of here, and I won’t press charges.”

  I heard more sirens, although they hadn’t stopped wailing since I’d come out of the house. Did I really want to deal with the police? Nana would flip her lid if I got arrested, which ordinarily would be an automatic go, but I’d never been arrested and I had no desire to make it a habit. Especially at a client’s house.

  I pointed at him. “This isn’t over, Gill! I’m going to make you pay for what you’ve done!”

  A grin spread across his face. “You just keep telling yourself that, pip-squeak.”

  His slur of my name pissed me off, but that smart-ass grin was what really made me do it. “You want to keep this stuff? Fine.” I dropped the camera onto the ground, letting it smash. “You can have it.”

  “Are you crazy? That cost four thousand dollars!”

  “Then find a new girlfriend to sucker her out of her money!” I strode toward my car, only then realizing that Evelyn was staring at me in horror.

  Crap! I took a deep breath and faked a warm smile. “I’m sorry I couldn’t help you, Evelyn. And I’m sorry about this . . .” What did I call this fiasco? A horror show? A display of incredible immaturity and unprofessionalism? “Scene.”

  She shot a quick look at her husband before turning back to me. “Trust me, I understand. Thank you for trying.”

  I got inside my car and pulled forward, making a U-turn and heading toward the road. Gill stood to the side of the driveway, waggling his fingers in a mocking wave. His obnoxious grin said he knew he’d won, and I could hardly deny it.

  I looked forward to bringing the bastard down . . . I just needed to figure out how to do it.

  I turned right to head down the mountain and rolled down my windows, needing the fresh air. When I rounded a curve about a hundred feet later, I found the source of all the sirens. Three police cars, a fire truck, and an ambulance were arrayed on the side of the road and in the opposite lane, completely blocking it. A policeman stood in front of the blocked lane, directing what little traffic there was around the accident. I slowed to a crawl as I drove past, and I couldn’t help glan
cing at the scene. At first I was confused by what I saw—there was only one car with a dent on its hood parked on the side of the road—but then I saw a sheet-draped body on the ground behind it. A gust of wind picked up the edge of the sheet and exposed the body that lay underneath.

  It was a little girl—with blond hair and red sandals.

  No.

  The blood rushed from my head and I hit the brakes as I stared at her in disbelief.

  A police officer rushed over and covered her up again, but not before I saw her denim shorts and pink tank top, the exact outfit she’d been wearing in Evelyn’s house. A man in a dress shirt and tie stood behind the car, sobbing as he talked to another officer.

  I rolled down my window and called out to the policeman directing traffic, “What happened?”

  He motioned down the road. “Ma’am, I need you to move along.”

  My hands shook and I felt like I was about to pass out. “No,” I said, my voice breaking, “I need to know what happened.”

  He looked irritated, but his face softened when he saw my tears. He walked closer and lowered his voice. “I’m not at liberty to say. The best thing you can do for the family is to move along.”

  I heard a loud thump on the passenger side of my car and I shrieked, jumping so high the top of my head hit the roof of the car.

  Calm down, Piper.

  The guy who’d rapped on my car looked just as distraught as I felt. He motioned to the side of the road, telling me to pull over. His khaki shorts and T-shirt indicated he was a pedestrian, but I obeyed him anyway.

  I drove forward about twenty feet and parked on the shoulder. Moments later, the guy leaned down to my still-open window.

  “What happened?” I asked.

  “You know her?” he asked, squatting next to my car so he wasn’t hunched over.

  Of course he wanted to know why I was so upset, but it didn’t feel like outright lying. “I was just at a client’s house . . . and I saw her, the little girl. I can’t believe it . . .” My voice broke again and I choked back a sob.

  Two people had died in close proximity to me today, and both had appeared to me after death to give me some kind of cryptic warning. Did that mean I was responsible for their deaths? That I was really seeing ghosts?

  Oh my God. Am I really believing this?

  The guy rested his hand on my door, but he clenched his fist when his hand started to shake. “The kid ran out into the street and the guy hit her. She flipped on top of his hood, then landed on the side of the road. I saw it happen from my yard. I ran over, but she was already gone. The parents tried to do CPR, but all that blood . . .” The color leached from his face. “It was too late.” He shook his head. “The driver is freaking out. He keeps saying he tried to hit the brakes but something made his foot push down on the gas. He sped up instead of slowing down.”

  My mouth parted. “Do you believe that?”

  “I saw him speed up, but as far as the other part?” He gave a shrug. “There’s a lot of weird shit goin’ on since that colony appeared on Roanoke Island, so yeah, maybe I do.”

  He might believe it, but I couldn’t. I was having a hard enough time reconciling that I’d seen this same little girl in Evelyn Crawford’s house minutes after she died . . . and that she’d taken the trouble to appear to me after dying. Did that mean I’d had something to do with her death after all?

  I couldn’t let myself make the logical leap about what I’d seen in the kitchen.

  “How long ago did it happen?” I asked.

  “Not long. Twenty minutes. No more than thirty. When did you drive by?”

  I’d seen the girl at the top of the stairs about fifteen minutes ago. “Uh . . .” I lifted my hand to my forehead. “I . . .” Get yourself together, Piper. “Maybe thirty or forty minutes.”

  “So you just missed it.”

  I swallowed the burning lump in my throat. “Yeah, I guess I did.” I took a deep breath and turned to face him. “Thanks.”

  I pulled back onto the road, driving home on autopilot. If I really believed this—and how else could I explain that little girl?—then one thing was very clear.

  The thing in Evelyn’s kitchen had been real.

  Chapter Five

  When I got home, I locked myself in the house and then proceeded to turn on every light on the first floor. Once the house was lit up like a Christmas tree, I called Hudson.

  “Where are you?” I asked as soon as he answered. “You were supposed to be here by now.”

  He was silent for a moment, and his delayed answer said it all. “I got . . . uh . . . caught up in something.”

  “The chef’s bedsheets?”

  Hudson groaned. “She has a name, Piper.”

  “You mean other than cheater?”

  “What’s got a burr up your ass?” he said, sounding grumpy.

  He was going to think I was a stark raving lunatic if I told him I’d seen two ghosts and a demon today. It sounded like the beginning of a bad joke or a long stay in a mental ward. Better to start with something tamer. “Gill showed up at my client’s house tonight.”

  It was hardly a good sign that my epic meltdown with Gill was the least exciting thing about the night.

  “Oh crap,” Hudson said. “I take it that didn’t go well.”

  “Understatement of the year.” I opened my cabinet and pulled out my carton of salt. Crap. It was only half-full.

  “So you want me there to commiserate.”

  “That and other things.” Like making sure the boogie monster from Evelyn Crawford’s kitchen didn’t get me.

  “Well, call Rhys because I’m busy.”

  “Why are you wasting your time on that cheater Charlotte?”

  “Obviously you’ve never been in love.”

  He had a point, but that wasn’t the issue here. “News flash, Hudson. That’s not love.”

  “Sometimes you can be a real bitch, Piper.” Then he hung up.

  “Tell me something I don’t know.” I poured salt across the threshold of the back door, pretty sure that would keep demons and ghosts out. Or was it just ghosts? Maybe I should brush off my Supernatural DVDs and give myself a refresher course on the things that went bump in the night.

  One thing was certain—I didn’t have enough salt for the doors and the windows, so I’d salt the doors first. Of course, going to the store for more salt was an option, but there was no freaking way I was leaving this house until the sun rose tomorrow morning.

  After I finished salting the doors and most of the windows on the first floor, emptying the canister of salt, I retrieved the tiny ghost-shaped salt shaker from the cabinet (a gift from Rhys) and another bottle of beer from the fridge to help calm my nerves. I’d downed over half the beer and pried the rubber stopper out of the bottom of the salt shaker when my phone rang.

  Startled by the ring, I shrieked and jumped in fright.

  I needed to get ahold of myself, because if I encountered another ghost or demon, shrieking like a scared ninny wasn’t going to help.

  When I saw it was Rhys, I drank the last of the beer and answered. “Hey.”

  “So?” she asked. “How’d it go?”

  “It was a disaster.”

  “What happened?”

  “You’re not going to believe what I saw.”

  “Oh jeez,” she said. “Please don’t tell me that you think you saw a ghost.”

  My back straightened. “Why would you say that?”

  “Because you sound freaked out. And you’re one of the most levelheaded people I know, so if you jumped on this ghost bandwagon like half the population of North Carolina, I might have to have your head examined.”

  She had a point—on both counts. I was the last person on earth to believe in ghosts and demons, yet I was pretty sure that’s exactly what I’d seen today. Maybe I really did need to have my head examined.

  “Piper,” she said. “What happened?”

  After that lead-in, there was no way I was going to te
ll her what I’d actually experienced at that house. At least not yet. Maybe I just needed to let the whole thing settle. A good night’s sleep seemed like a major impossibility at this point, but maybe I’d feel better if I got drunk off my ass. Logically, I knew it wouldn’t help, but I wasn’t really in a logical place.

  I told Rhys about Gill, including my epic freak-out, but I left all the supernatural stuff out of it.

  “So did you get to investigate?” she asked.

  “I got fifteen minutes.”

  “Was it enough to convince her that you’d cleared the house?”

  “No. Not even close.”

  “So no money,” she said. “No TV show.”

  I got another beer and popped off the lid. “Nope.”

  She was silent for a moment. “I can tell there’s a whole lot more you’re not telling me.”

  I shook my head. “I can’t deal with it right now. I’ll tell you tomorrow.”

  “Are you okay, Piper?”

  I really wanted to tell her—I needed someone to assure me that I wasn’t crazy—but she was not the person to fill that role. “I also had an argument with Hudson. I was a bitch.”

  “So what else is new?”

  That made me feel even worse. “Great.”

  “Hey,” she said. “I meant arguing with Hudson, not the bitch part. And you did it out of love.”

  “How do you even know what I was a bitch about?”

  “It’s what you’re always a bitch about. Hudson being stupid in his love life.”

  “He’s a grown man,” I said. “He can make his own decisions.”

  “Hudson’s one of the most brilliant guys I know, but we both know he has terrible taste in women. Even worse than you with men.”

  I couldn’t help laughing. “Gee, thanks.”

  “But you’re learning from your screwup. You didn’t see Gill tonight and want to jump his bones, did you?” She gasped. “Oh my God. Please tell me that’s not what you’re freaked out about. I know he’s hot and all, but—”

  “What? No! The only thing I wanted to do with his bones was snap off the arm he used to manhandle me and shove it up his ass.”

  “Eww . . . that’s an image I’d rather not picture, and yet there it is . . .”