Give Up the Ghost

by Jenn Burke

  “No shit,” Lexi confirmed. “Kee overheard me say something about being a witch and assumed that meant Wiccan.”

  “So let me guess—today’s a field trip day instead of shopping.”

  “Unless Hudson needs you in the office for something? This’ll be a few hours.”

  Aurora House was located well north of the city, so it was a hike to get there and back. Which was fine. Getting away from work-Hudson was not a bad idea. I was still a bit peeved from the night before.

  I slouched back in my seat. “I’m not even going to ask him.”

  She cast me a sideways glance. “You know he’s got a point, right?”

  “So do I.”

  “You’re both going to have to work out a compromise on this.”

  “Compromise?” I scoffed. “Have you met Hudson?”

  I let out a sigh and tried to release some of the resentment I still carried about the “no paranormal cases” thing. Lexi was right—Hudson did have a point. But I honestly, truly felt we could be doing something more than just skip tracing people or following cheating spouses. We all knew about this whole other world that most people never even saw—didn’t that mean we had an obligation to help other people who were in on that secret?

  “Hey, Wes?”

  I shook off my ponderous thoughts and looked at Lexi. “Yeah?”

  “Did you feel something at the café last night?”

  “Other than lots of little teeth biting me?”

  “I mean magically.”

  My heart thudded a little harder. “Uh... I felt your magic. Kind of. It made the hair on my arms stand on end, like usual.”

  She shook her head, her curls bouncing. “Not that. I was tired, down to the dregs, and then...suddenly I wasn’t.”

  I could tell her. It hit me—this was the opening I’d been waiting for. Wanting. I could confess and tell Lexi everything. How worried I was, how scared.

  And then she’d flip out and get distracted, and we wouldn’t be able to help Kee.

  I looked out the windshield again. “Sounds like you got your second wind.”

  Out of the corner of my eye, I saw her scrunch up her nose. “Eh. Maybe.”

  “Oh hey. I like this song.” I turned up the volume on a pop song I’d never heard before and hoped Lexi would let it go.

  She did. I wasn’t sure if I was thankful for that or not.

  * * *

  A hundred years ago, when the farmhouse that was now Aurora House was built, its location would have been on the edge of civilization. Now, though—well, it still felt like it was on the edge of civilization, but at least we had cars these days.

  Kee had shared that they’d inherited the house from a relative, and it had been in a sad, saggy state of disrepair when I’d first seen it last summer. It was a classic brick farm home with a rainbow-striped front porch—which I might have helped with. It looked fantastic, if I did say so myself. A barn sat a little ways off to the right of the house, looking much more solid than it had in the summer. I wondered if Kee had decided what to do with it yet.

  Kee ushered us inside and out of the cold as quickly as they could. Today they wore a frilly, flowy dress and makeup, slipping into a feminine presentation, and they looked fantastic. A silk scarf with streaks of yellow, orange and blue was wrapped around their short hair, the long ties swept over one shoulder like a colorful ponytail. Tomorrow they might dress in a more traditionally masculine style, and look equally amazing. Kee rocked their genderfluidity.

  “Thanks for coming over so quickly,” Kee said and offered to take our jackets. Eventually we made it down the hall to their office, and sat in the chairs in front of the broad desk. “Can I get either of you a coffee?”

  “I’m good, thanks.” It was a testament to Lexi’s curiosity about what was going on that she turned down coffee. “Tell us what’s happening, hon. You sounded spooked on the phone.”

  “Spooked. Yeah.” Kee took off their aubergine-rimmed glasses and rubbed the bridge of their nose. “The first report we got was last September, shortly after the renovations were done. One of our residents said that she heard her door open in the middle of the night. The light in the hall was on, so she was able to watch it swing completely open, and there was no one there.”

  “Was it possible she was half-asleep and missed whoever opened it?” I asked.

  “That’s what I thought at the time, so I didn’t pay too much attention. It happened again to that resident about a week later, and then another couple of residents on that floor reported the same thing.”

  I shared a look with Lexi. “That’s a little creepy,” she said.

  “Right? And it gets worse.”

  According to Kee, the activity had only increased over the next few months. It went from doors opening on their own, to the TV and lights turning off and on randomly, to personal items being moved and put in very unlikely places, such as a toothbrush on top of the kitchen cabinets, and every pair of socks one resident owned suddenly hiding out in the freezer. One resident’s radio started blaring in the middle of the night—and it wasn’t the sort that could be programmed as an alarm, either, which made it doubly weird.

  As unnerving as all of these events were, they were benign, and the residents and Kee laughed them off and lived around them. But last week a mirror shattered when a resident was looking at her reflection. Another resident reported being grabbed roughly by the arm, and watched as scratches appeared on his skin. And today, the newest kid in the house reported that as he was walking down the stairs, someone nudged him from behind—not enough to make him fall, but enough that if he hadn’t been holding on to the banister, he might have.

  As Kee related all of the events, I couldn’t stop my shoulders from getting more and more tense. At first I thought it was because of the escalating incidents, and the number of them—I’d heard of echoes happening for an extended period of time, but the moving of items to weird places, and the scratching and almost-shoving pointed to this being an intelligent haunt. For a ghost who knows they’re a ghost to continue with that sort of stuff even when it becomes clear none of the living people are sensitive enough to communicate...that bothered me. A lot.

  I rolled my shoulders—then froze as I felt a finger brush my cheek. “Shit.”

  Lexi and Kee immediately stopped discussing details of the events at my soft curse. “What is it?” Lexi asked.

  “Something touched me.”

  Lexi looked around the room, then shook her head. “I don’t see anything. Or feel anything. Are you—”

  I nodded tersely. I could feel it standing behind me, which was so beyond weird. Normally when I was in my living form, I didn’t sense much that was otherworldly. For all intents and purposes, in this form, I was human, if longer-lived than anyone else. I might feel a gentle tug if there was something on the otherplane, or the flare of Lexi’s magic. On the otherplane itself, it would be totally different. There, my magic sustained me, suffused me, but there wasn’t usually anything to sense because the plane was empty.

  But I’d never felt this—this whole-body shiver-shudder, as though I sat in the path of a blizzard-cold draft wafting from a window. There was only one window in the room—it was behind Kee’s desk, with its heavy, thick curtains drawn. No, the draft I was feeling had nothing to do with the weather outside sneaking in, and everything to do with whatever the fuck was in the room with us.

  It couldn’t be a regular ghost, could it? Feeling like that? What if it was another demon? What if it was something worse?

  “Wes?” Lexi whispered. “You okay?”

  When had I started breathing so fast? When had my heart decided to try to beat its way out of my chest? I couldn’t look. I didn’t want to look. I didn’t know what would be worse—looking and seeing something watching me, or looking and seeing nothing, knowing that everything I was feeling was al
l in my head.

  Neither option was helping my breathing.

  I was vaguely aware of Lexi murmuring something to Kee, something about me being sensitive or whatever, and then she was focused on me again. “Slow and easy. C’mon,” she encouraged. “In through your nose, out through—”

  Fuck it, I had to look.

  I turned.

  A man stood in the corner. His clothes were old—I was no historian, but the shirt, pants, and suspenders looked to be from the turn of the last century, which would place him right around the time this house was built. He wore tiny round spectacles and had slicked-back hair, and he looked as solid as Lexi. As solid as Kee. As though he were in the living plane and not in the otherplane.

  It shouldn’t have been possible.

  When our eyes met, his widened. “You can see me?” he exclaimed and took a step forward.

  I jolted up and out of my chair. One of its legs caught on the carpet and it tipped onto its back. I nearly followed it, but I recovered and stood my ground in front of the spirit.

  The spirit I shouldn’t have been able to see. Not when I wasn’t in the otherplane.

  “Wes, you’re kinda freaking me out,” Lexi said quietly.

  I was kind of freaking myself out.

  There was a—a blip, and another ghost appeared beside the first. A woman this time, in biker leathers. Her long hair was caught back in a braid that extended almost to her butt, and she so didn’t fit the house or the first ghost. Which should have intrigued me more than it did, because it was another fucking ghost I shouldn’t be able to see.

  The implications terrified me. My interactions with ghosts—as infrequent as they were—had always been under my control. What did it mean that I could see them in the living plane? And two at once? Was I about to get swarmed? Did the ghosts have a fucking metaphysical telephone to tell others that hey, here’s a guy who can help you out?

  When a third ghost appeared—a big, burly guy with an intimidatingly bushy beard—and said, “Finally,” like I was the answer to all of his prayers, I broke. I backed up and promptly tripped over the upended chair and landed on my ass. Lexi jumped up to help me and I think I might have kicked her by accident—but my brain was in full-on flight mode and I couldn’t stop to worry about it.

  Especially not when the temperature around me plummeted. The ghosts had gotten closer. I flinched back as a ghostly hand slipped through my arm.

  I needed to get out of here. I needed to get out of here now.

  I didn’t realize I was mumbling to myself until Lexi said, “Okay, Wes, we’re going.”

  She helped me to my feet and we staggered out of the room. Kee trailed behind us with our jackets, murmuring apologies. They didn’t understand what had happened, that was clear, but the concern they showed was a trickle of warmth in an otherwise cold and shocking day.

  Once we were in the car and its heater was bringing the interior above freezing, Lexi turned to me and demanded, “What the hell was that?”

  “That was fucked up, is what that was.” I held my hands in front of the vents and explained, in a trembling voice, what I’d seen.

  Lexi’s brows rose to meet her hairline with each detail I conveyed. “You saw ghosts while you weren’t in the otherplane? How the hell?”

  “They were in the living plane...maybe. I don’t know.” I looked out the passenger window at Aurora House—we hadn’t left yet, and I didn’t think I’d feel completely warm again until we were well away from this place. “I, uh... I guess I’m a little sensitive now?”

  Inwardly, I groaned. Way to chicken out.

  “Sensitive?” Lexi considered that, and I thought she’d call me on it. If she did, I’d tell her everything...but she didn’t. “Yeah, I can see that. You touched a lot of magic when you used the Crown of Osiris.”

  I couldn’t help but shudder at the mention of that damned thing. “Right,” I said weakly.

  “Do you think Kee and the kids are in danger?”

  “No.” With some distance and regained objectivity, I could see that the ghosts weren’t trying to hurt anyone. “None of them seemed aggressive, despite everything that Kee reported. I think they’re just eager to talk to someone.”

  “Like you.”

  “Like me,” I confirmed, and sighed. “Sorry for the freak-out. It caught me off guard and they started moving toward me—”

  “I get it.” Lexi gave me a look. “Well, I mean, I don’t get it, because I’ve never seen it, but I can imagine how startling it would be. You think you’re up for another visit?”

  “If you can cleanse the room or something, sure.”

  “That’s not a bad idea. It would keep them from overwhelming you again...but then you might not be able to talk to them and figure out what the hell’s going on.” She shifted the car into gear and started back down the long driveway. “I’ll figure it out.”

  * * *

  It was past time for me to show up at the office when we got back to the city. I had her drop me off there instead of at Hudson’s place.

  “You want me to come in and talk with him?” she offered.

  “I think I can manage to talk to my boyfriend on my own.”

  “Without yelling?”

  I didn’t bother to answer that.

  Iskander was wrapping a scarf around his neck as I walked into the office, but Hudson was nowhere to be seen. “Where are you off to?”

  “First meeting with a new client.” He checked his pompadour in the mirror, making sure everything was smooth.

  “Hud’s not going with you?”

  “Had errands to run.” Iskander’s dark gaze flicked to mine in the mirror, but he turned his attention back to his hair before I could figure out what that brief glance meant. “He’ll be back later.”

  “Did Evan go with him?”

  “No. He’s on a date.”

  “Oh.” Another one? I wondered if it was the same guy as last night. “Look, can I talk to you about—”

  “Running late.” Iskander pulled on his jacket. “Back in a couple of hours. Text if you need me.”

  And before I could even argue it was important, he was gone.

  Well then.

  Before I could dwell too much on that brush-off, the phone rang. I scooped up the receiver and spent the next fifteen minutes talking with a potential client. It wasn’t the most glamorous part of the job—not that any part of being a PI was truly glamorous—but I’d found over the past few months that I was pretty good at digging out details over the phone. It wasn’t that much different from what I’d done as a thief for hire. I might not have the license or the official training to be an investigator, but I had a shitload of life experience that neither Hudson nor Iskander had. It made me surprisingly good with people. Hudson and Iskander had dubbed me the Director of HR, which was a fancy title to say I was in charge of everything but the investigation side of things.

  Worked for me.

  After promising to consult with my partners and get back to the client, I spent the next couple of hours writing down all the pros to investigating Aurora House officially. No need to write down the cons—I was sure Hudson would fill those in without any effort. As I worked, I sent a few texts to Hudson, just to check in.

  They went unanswered.

  It was past eleven when I heard footsteps crunching on the snow and salt on the walk. Hudson strode into the office a few minutes later and stomped his feet. “Hey,” he said brightly.

  I leaned back in my chair and crossed my arms.

  “What?”

  “What?” I echoed. “Is your phone dead?”

  “I was driving.”

  “For three hours?”

  Something flickered across his expression. “I had errands.”

  “Again, I repeat, for three hours?”

  He shrugged off h
is jacket and I tried not to notice how his gray sweater hugged his chest and shoulders. “I don’t need to report what I do every minute we’re apart.”

  “No, but a return text would be nice. Just so I’m not imagining you as a pile of dust somewhere.”

  He hung up his jacket with a sigh. “You’re right. I’m sorry.” He walked over to my desk and pressed a kiss to my forehead. “How was your day? Did you have fun shopping with Lexi?”

  “Funny you should mention that.”

  “Uh-oh.” He perched on the edge of my desk as I rolled my chair back a bit. “What happened?”

  “Kee—remember Kee?”

  He frowned. “The youth home coordinator?”

  Okay, he earned a smile for that one. He hadn’t been able to volunteer at Aurora House because, well, vampires couldn’t work day shifts, and also he’d been taking courses to get his private investigator license. The fact that he remembered Kee’s name and who they were said a lot about how much he paid attention to me. “Yeah. They called Lexi today about possible ghosts at the home.”

  “Huh.”

  “So we drove out there to have a look. And I, uh...” I cleared my throat. “I saw a ghost without being in the otherplane.”

  “What? How?”

  I shrugged, trying to play it off as no big deal to minimize the chances he’d freak out. “I’ve been a little, um, sensitive since...you know. The crown.”

  He pushed off the desk and stood straight. “Why is this the first I’m hearing of it?”

  God, here was the proof I needed that not telling him the truth was the best plan I could’ve come up with. Go, procrastinating me. Because, damn. If he was this annoyed about a minimized version of the issue...

  “It’s not a big deal,” I said.

  “This is a very big deal.”

  I threw my hands in the air. “It’s not.”

  Except he was right—it was. The words to tell him the truth were on my tongue, but fear held them back.

  He sighed. “You’ve been so closed off.”

  “What’s that supposed to mean?”