Mack's Perfectly Ghastly Homecoming (Mack's Marvelous Manifestations Book 2)

by AJ Sherwood

  Falisa, ahead of us, turned and gave me a grimace. “I couldn’t have described it better myself. Ken, you got that popgun of yours out?”

  “Always. Figured I needed to, what with Brandon having his hands full.”

  “I appreciate it,” Brandon responded, sounding more polite than sincere. “Ken, if you don’t mind my asking, what’s your background?”

  “Sharpshooter with the Army up until I met this one.” He nodded his head toward Falisa. “I was about twenty-six then. Switched careers to stay with her. I understand you were SWAT?”

  “Yeah. I was scouted before I ever met Mack, though.” Brandon seemed to settle with the answer, and I could only assume he’d not been easy until he understood what Ken was capable of. “We need to talk guns after this.”

  Ken perked up visibly. “Okay.”

  “Boys,” Falisa grumbled with an audible roll of the eyes. “How about here?”

  The entire dorm floor was laid out in a giant rectangle, as far as I could tell. The hallways connected to form a circular path, one that led back to the stairs and hallway. Falisa wanted to put one near the intersection of two hallways. I agreed it was a good place, but I couldn’t help but put out my own opinion. “Maybe not precisely in the juncture? A little out from it?”

  Falisa nodded absently, already pacing the area off. “We don’t want to get tangled up in an etheric flow.”

  Seeing the blank expression on Brandon’s face, I filled him in. “Buildings like this, that have a circular floor plan, they’re easy for ghosts to wander and get lost in. They just keep going in circles. It’s part of the reason why this is getting worse, I think. Because it’s like a rat trap in here. The junctures are especially dangerous, as you can’t see around the bend.”

  “So we put a safe place close, but not on top of it, to give ourselves time to react.” His expression cleared up. “Makes sense. Mack, if you’ll take the lights? I’ll pour salt.”

  And that’s what we did, all three floors, using half the bag to do it with. I was glad for that other half, as I had a feeling we’d need to barricade something else before our time here was done. We found three other talismans in the process, all of them over the doors. One was upright, one was upside down, and one was sideways. I winced at the sideways one. I didn’t even want to contemplate what that had done.

  As we worked, I could sense something watching us. I hoped it was the kind ghost, the one who was just mischievous and not harmful. Knowing my luck? It wasn’t the kind ghost.

  Yeah. This was going to go so poorly.

  12

  Clearing the building took almost three hours, enough time for Connie to pull some of the students together for a quick interview. Falisa and Ken wanted to keep hunting for talismans, so we left them to it with Delaney. Mack and I headed for the quad, hopefully to meet with the students and get some answers.

  Connie sat at the outdoor tables along with four other students, all of them eating a spread of hot dogs, hamburgers, and two baskets of fries. Connie, it seemed, was not above bribes to get things rolling. It was a shaded bench, pretty and picturesque and didn’t match the strained atmosphere of the group sitting around the table.

  I flashed her a thankful smile and slowed my approach at the table. For this crowd, I felt like it was a good idea, so I pulled my badge and flashed it. “Special Agent Brandon Havili, Paranormal Activity Division. This is my partner, Special Agent Mackenzie Lafayette. Hiya, folks.”

  Connie left her seat and bustled around it to stand near me. “I told them y’all were coming, Brandon, Mack. Here, sit, they’re ready to tell you the story. This is Tommy—”

  A disheveled blond wearing a worn-in sweater and shorts gave me a nod hello, looking shy and overwhelmed.

  “—Jill,” Connie indicated a young woman with tightly braided black hair and a heart-shaped face, “Damica, she’s the RA of the building.”

  Damica gave a friendly hello and a wave. She looked a little older than college age, cute with her upturned nose and freckles, but her expression was serious as she met my eyes.

  “And this is Kit, her twin.”

  Kit did indeed look it, sharing the freckles, oval-shaped face and dark hair. He was hunched in on himself and obviously uneasy with meeting two Federal agents. I couldn’t say I blamed him.

  “Nice to meet all of you,” I said with my best smile. “I can promise you we’ll sort out this problem soon. If I could get just a little more information from you, that’ll help.”

  “Can you really get rid of whatever it is that’s hurting us?” Damica asked uncertainly.

  I put a hand on Mack’s shoulder. “He can. He’s a medium.”

  “I’ve got another team in with me, other mediums,” Mack added, turning a particularly charming smile on her. I could practically see Damica melt a little under it. “So in fact you’ve three mediums on this case. We’re not going to quit until we’ve made this safe again, I promise you. Can we ask a few questions?”

  Jill’s sweet featured hardened. “If you can get that thing out, I’ll tell you anything I can. What do you need to know?”

  I took the last open bench and sat, Mack settling in next to me. “First, tell me what you know about the friendly ghost. The one that was here before this shit storm hit.”

  “Oh, her?” All of them exchanged uncertain looks but it was Jill that answered. “We really don’t know much. She’s been here for decades, like maybe the ’70s. No one knows her name or anything. There’s stories that she was a student here, but no one knows how she died, either. Some people said she’d committed suicide. Others swear it was just bad health, and she died suddenly here. Some rumors say it was an accidental overdose.”

  “I have attempted to look this up before,” Connie inputted as she regained her seat. “But we have no records of a female student dying in that dormitory.”

  “So if she did die here, she wasn’t a student here.” I frowned as that made her a little harder to track down. Assuming she’d died here at all in recent memory. It could well be that she predated the college campus altogether, which would make it even harder to figure out her identity.

  Kit asked suspiciously of Mack, “If you’re a medium, can’t you just ask her?”

  “I can if she’d come out to speak with me. She’s as spooked by what’s in your dorm as the rest of you. She’s constantly hiding from it. I’d hoped that if I had a name for her, I might be able to call her out and get her out of the line of fire.” Mack’s mouth went flat with aggravation. “Alright, second question. We found a great many talismans hanging over the doors. Who put those up?”

  “Uh, not us,” Tommy denied with a shake of the head, sending his hair out in all directions. “That was Rachel, wasn’t it?”

  “Yeah, the ghost—the friendly one—spooked her right out,” Damica replied with a grimace. “No one was really comfortable with the ghost there, but it wasn’t like she did anything more than play pranks. We kept telling Rachel that. But she was seriously scared and she couldn’t transfer out to a different dorm. No one wants to be in ours and they weren’t willing to trade with her. So she was stuck. She copied the talismans out of a book and slapped them up over the doors.”

  “Rachel was the first one to be seriously injured,” Connie put in for our benefit. “She’s at home resting with a wrenched knee now.”

  Mack rubbed a hand wearily over his face. “I’ll need to speak to her. What she did was actually counterproductive.”

  Damica hissed in a shocked breath. “Did she do this?!”

  “Quite unwittingly, I’m sure,” I said with a stay-down gesture of my hands. “But she happened to use legit talisman designs. She didn’t copy them correctly, but the design’s solid.”

  “Worse, she hung them either upside down or sideways,” Mack added, still exhausted by all of this. “Doing that doesn’t close off a building, but opens it. She invited anything to come in and play.”

  Tommy flopped dramatically over the table. “Are you
shitting me?”

  “Wish we were,” I said sympathetically. “When we first saw the talismans, we all just about had a heart attack. They’re down now—at least we hope we found all of them—but yeah. Don’t do that without training. Don’t let anyone else do it, either. You call the PAD hotline and get one of us to come out, okay? We’re happy to help.”

  “I’ll need to speak with her,” Mack told Connie again, determined on this point. “I don’t want to accidentally miss one.”

  “Of course, I’ll call her immediately after this and arrange a conversation.”

  “Thanks. Alright, guys, I need you to stay completely clear of the place until we’re done with it. That might take a few days at the rate this is going. What’s in there is bad news and unfortunately rather hard to lay hands on. So, whatever it is in there you need, try to do without it.”

  I reached into a pocket and pulled out a card holder. “If you do need something, you give me a call and I’ll escort you through. Absolutely do not go in there without one of us, okay?”

  They each took a card, looking reassured by this.

  Jill was the one brave enough to ask, “Are you sensitive too?”

  “What, a medium? Nah, nothing like that. But I can shoot them.”

  That brought a smile to her face. “I’m okay with you shooting them.”

  “Yup, me too. Okay, anything else you want to tell us?”

  There was a few glances around the table and a lot of head shakes. I didn’t think they could tell us anything more. The crowd dispersed from there, only Connie staying long enough to speak with us. She had a phone in hand, and she offered it to Mack as she switched seats to sit closer. “I’ve looked up her number.”

  I’d prefer calling her over traipsing across town. “Thanks, let’s see if she answers.” Mack dialed it in on his own phone, then put it on speaker and set it on the table so we could all participate in the conversation.

  On the third ring, a groggy voice answered, “Hello?”

  Mack leaned his forearms over the table to speak more directly into the phone. “Hi. I’m Special Agent Mackenzie Lafayette with the Paranormal Activity Division. Am I speaking with Rachel?”

  Clear trepidation hovered in her voice as she answered shakily, “Yeah, that’s me.”

  “I’m here to investigate and deal with the ghost in your dorm building.”

  “Oh thank god,” Rachel blurted out. “That thing is seriously bad news. What can I do to help?”

  “We can start with some information. You put up several talismans around the building, correct?”

  “Uh, yeah?”

  “I’m sorry to say, those weren’t helpful. In fact, they opened your dorm building to the malevolent that stormed through.”

  Rachel’s voice went faint. “Are you serious.”

  “Unfortunately, yeah. I’ll give you proper talismans to use in the future so that you can block ghosts out, so please, please don’t copy anything else out of a book. Okay? And you now have my number and are free to call me directly if something else like this happens.”

  “Oh god, did I do this? The ghost in there, was that my doing?”

  “Yes and no. You didn’t create it, but by putting the talismans on the walls as you did, you opened up a path for it to come in.”

  There was a muffled gasp that sounded like panic.

  “Miss Rachel, you’re absolutely not in trouble for that. As I said, you didn’t create him. It would have settled in a place eventually and someone would have been forced to deal with it. But I need to know precisely where you put all the talismans and remove them. If I don’t seal the building off, it will invite other things in and give the malevolent an escape route. Do you understand?”

  She still sounded a little panicked and beyond remorseful. “Oh god, I’m so sorry!”

  “Shh, don’t worry about this. We’ll handle it. And I understand your fears, okay? My partner’s brother is terrified of ghosts, does unreasonable things sometimes to get away from them. Fears are fears. Just help me fix this mess.”

  Rachel sucked in a breath, then another. “You can really undo this? Get rid of it?”

  “Yes. I’m not alone, I have other mediums helping me. But help me, okay?”

  “Yeah. Yeah, okay. Um, first one was above the front door.”

  “That one we found. And the one above the elevator. Where else?”

  She was rattled, upset, perhaps crying, but Rachel walked us through each one. Mack didn’t blame her and as he steadily walked her through the building, I could hear her nerves settling. As it turned out, we’d missed two of them. I sat beside Mack, making notes of them all to double check.

  Ignorance really could bring about a world of trouble.

  We went back to the dorm building armed with the list and found the remaining talismans. Falisa burned them all before scattering the ashes, thoroughly putting that possible pitfall to rest. It was a relief in a way, but it didn’t really solve the problem.

  None of us were particularly rested, so we left campus for dinner, caught a catnap, then returned. Hopefully with the nap and enough coffee we’d be alert enough to face tonight. As I drove us back to the dorm, I caught the expression on Mack’s face. He did not look thrilled, to say the least. “You don’t expect things to go well, do you.”

  “I’m waiting for the fuckening.”

  I’d not heard the term before but could guess what it meant. “Sort of like, the day is going too well, you don’t trust it, and you’re waiting for shit to finally go down?”

  “Yeah, that’s exactly the feeling.” His nose crinkled up, hands tightening around each other. “I call it the fuckening. I wish I could really describe to you what that building looks like to me.”

  “It’s not pretty, you’ve told me that much. And that’s all I really need to know.” I thought about not saying anything, but what kind of partner would I be if I let him walk into a situation blind? “Mack, one thing.”

  He gave me a look that said, oh god now what?

  “Delaney’s…uneasy around me. You somewhat, me especially. Or that was the vibe I got from him. I don’t know why. He was okay with us up until I called you honey, and then it was like a switch went off.”

  “He’s not comfortable with us because we’re obviously together?”

  I shrugged, as I honestly wasn’t sure. “Maybe. I can’t pinpoint it, as he’s not being obvious right now. But something’s bugging him, that’s for sure.”

  Mack pursed his lips, clearly thinking. “I’ve never been out like this with a boyfriend. I guess I didn’t pick up on it.”

  “You were distracted hunting for a ghost.” I found this news interesting, though. Mack still had a lot of background history he hadn’t filled me in on. For good reason—we’d been so busy training it hadn’t left us a lot of downtime. They’d passed me on a lot of things at Quantico automatically because of my SWAT background, so it wasn’t like I had to go over basic firearms training or anything like that again. But still, there was a lot of information to learn when you switched careers. I had multiple classes about ghosts, demons, basic first aid for supernaturally inflicted wounds, how to aid mediums and exorcists, etcetera. With that much information to cram into my brain in a matter of weeks, it hadn’t given me the time to focus on Mack like I’d wanted to. “You really never dated someone openly before me?”

  Mack shrugged, and I didn’t think it was my imagination he couldn’t seem to meet my eyes. “I had a friend I messed around with in high school. One of the painters I worked with when I was nineteen, he and I sort of hooked up. Both experiences burned me bad about hooking up. I was invested. They weren’t.”

  My heart ached even as my hands twitched, wishing for a throat to squeeze. I could look them up, right? I was in the right area to have a little chat with them.

  His hand found mine, and he smiled at me, that shy smile speaking of affection. It made my heart twang again, in a different way, as that smile hit home. “It’s why I wa
s really glad, that first night we were together, when you asked just what we were doing. You didn’t want to leave any confusion, you wanted to know. I appreciated that beyond words. It’s why I asked to date. I thought I had a good chance of having that with you.”

  I tangled my fingers with his, and even though I was driving, shot him a quick smile. “I didn’t want to do some wishy-washy shit and lose the chance with you. I’ve made that mistake before. I was really happy you asked outright to date.”

  “Didn’t think I’d have you as a work partner, too,” he admitted, still shyly.

  Yeah, okay, that seemed a good segue. Even if we only had five more minutes before we reached the dorm, which potentially would bring trouble on our heads, I still wanted to get this out there. “Mack, I really like being your anchor. I don’t know if you need more time to decide, or if you want to give us a little longer, but I’m ready to make that official.”

  His hand spasmed in mine. “Pull over.”

  Okay, so we’re definitely talking about this now. I pulled over to the first spot I saw, which was an emergency fire lane, but it was fine for now. I put the car into park and turned to look at him. Mack’s eyes were so wide they consumed his face. I didn’t think what I’d said was that shocking. Surely he knew by now I adored him and didn’t want to separate?

  Mack’s mouth moved, but no sound emerged. Finally, he croaked out, “You’re serious.”

  I didn’t know how to take his reaction. He was stunned but didn’t look pleased. Was he not on the same page? Worry cramped my stomach and dried my mouth out. “You don’t want to?”

  In a flurry, he was over the divide between the seats, landing sideways on my lap. I gave a soft grunt at the impact, hands reaching out to steady him. Mack caught my head with both hands and peppered kisses all over my face, making me laugh.

  “You gorgeous man, of course I want you!” he said in between kisses. One of them finally landed on my mouth and I kissed him deeply, our tongues tangling in a hot glide. Pulling back three inches, Mack panted for breath, eyes searching mine. “You really mean it?”