The Victorian is ablaze with light when I pull up in my truck. Other vehicles crowd both sides of the street, so I have to park two blocks down and dodge raindrops on my way to the house. Someone on the porch is handing out candy to children and flyers to the adults. Someone calls my name, but when I turn around, I can’t see who it might be.
I stand in the rain for a heartbeat, considering whether I really did hear my name or not. Too many children squeal and cry out, too many adults scold. I can barely hear my thoughts. Pink cotton candy dresses and sparkly tiaras compete with black capes and white fluttering sheets. My heart stops at this last.
A child’s idea of a ghost.
Oh, there are so many tonight. All children, I tell myself. Just costumes, from the store. No bed sheets. No bridal veils.
No entity. Not here in Springside, and not here in this modern replica of a Victorian mansion. The rain splatters harder and chases me inside.
Gregory’s tech crew crowds the front part of the house. I push past the flow of people and duck into the kitchen. There, I find Malcolm. I exhale. I didn’t realize I’d swallowed a good dose of anxiety along with dinner.
“Hey,” he says. “You okay?”
I nod. “It’s just crazy out there.”
“Yeah, I’m not sure the sprites wanted that much attention. I can’t seem to tempt any of them out.”
His samovar is throwing aromatic steam into the air. I catch the hint of saffron and other exotic spices. That alone should be enough to lure a sprite. It certainly works on me.
“Is there enough that I can have a cup?” I ask.
“For you? Anything.”
He pours. I sip. The warmth spreads through me, melting away the last bit of my unease. Then I start in on my own brew.
“I’m beginning to think that if there’s going to be a show at all,” he says, “it’ll be up to us to bring the sprites. I mean, really. Do you sense anything? You’re better at that than I am.”
Maybe, but not by much. After I measure the coffee and set the percolator to brew, I take a slow walk around the kitchen.
“I called out that sprite earlier today, but I’m not really getting anything. You’d think with all of that—” I wave toward the front of the house. “They’d be ecstatic. Kids, grownups, everyone shrieking at their antics.”
The kitchen door flies open, and Gregory sticks his head in.
“Hey, you two, the show’s out here,” he says. “Don’t want to start without you.”
“We’re just getting some supplies ready,” Malcolm says.
“What did I tell you? Coffee won’t catch this thing.”
“It’s for the crew,” I pipe up. “In case it’s a late night.”
“How sweet.” He trains a dazzling grin on me. “Come on. The viewers will be disappointed if you’re not there when we start streaming. The haunted hottie already has a fan club.”
Malcolm waits until Gregory vanishes. Then he lets out a groan. I can’t help it. I giggle.
“Come on, partner.” I hold out my hand. “We wouldn’t want to disappoint your fan club.”
He contemplates my hand, but the expression on his face is odd, like he’s uncertain, but not about me. More like, he’s uncertain about himself. But he takes my hand, his skin warm like always, and we push through the kitchen door and into the main part of the house.
* * *
In a matter of hours, the Ghost B Gone crew has transformed the living room from airy and modern to cramped and closed. The space feels as though it has aged. Heavy drapes hide the big bay windows. The fireplace mantelpiece is loaded with ornately framed photographs of unsmiling ancestors. The red in the rolled-out Persian carpet looks like blood. The muted lighting gives the space a dank feel.
It looks like a child’s idea of a haunted house.
“Do you think he supplies his own ghosts, too?” I whisper to Malcolm.
He nods toward Terese, whom Gregory is leading center stage—for lack of a better term.
“Ladies and gentlemen!” he booms. “Welcome! Tonight Ghost B Gone will confront its toughest foe yet, but confront it we will. And we will drive this malicious spirit from this space and reclaim it for the family dream home it should be.”
Terese stands beneath the lights. They cast a blue tint on her hair. The strands flow and undulate, and I glance around for a wind machine or even a fan, but I don’t see any. Stagecraft, I think. He’s nothing but stagecraft. Still, that doesn’t explain why the floorboards rumble beneath our feet.
“Ah,” Gregory says, his stage whisper echoing through the space. “As everyone knows, Mistress Terese does not speak until she’s made contact. She saves her strength in order to communicate with those beyond our realm.”
Terese shoots her arms into the air, a look of ecstasy on her face.
“Touchdown?” Malcolm whispers in my ear.
I stifle a laugh and nudge him. He squeezes my hand.
The chandelier above Terese’s head rattles, the crystals clinking against each other. Plaster clouds the air and coats Terese’s skin and hair, the red robe she’s wearing fading beneath the dust.
“Terese,” Gregory says, voice low and urgent. “Have you made contact?”
She looks as if she’s about to speak, and her expression is that of an actress uttering well-rehearsed lines. So this is a play, I think, with some well-managed stagecraft, and we’ve all been fooled.
But Terese’s words never come. Instead, her eyes grow wide with shock. She stares straight at the camera. Then she collapses to the floor, robes billowing around her.
“Terese!” Gregory throws himself at her. He kneels at her side, patting her hand, checking her pulse. “Get our EMT,” he calls out.
Behind us, the crew chatters. A woman pushes through the crowd and shoves Gregory out of her way.
“She’s unconscious,” the woman says.
Gregory gives her a no kidding sort of look, then schools his face for the camera. “Ladies and gentlemen, it appears this entity is stronger than we first imagined. In fact—”
A howl echoes through the house. It’s exactly the sort of sound you expect to hear on Halloween, low and almost mechanical. I’ve heard this sort of noise a hundred times while walking through the costume aisle at the store. And yet, something about it makes me grip Malcolm’s hand even tighter.
“Perhaps our ghostly friend would like to make contact,” Gregory says.
Behind him, the EMT continues to care for Terese, although I suspect the only thing to do is get her out of this place and take her to the emergency room. No one suggests this. I’m about to when something flutters in my peripheral vision. I whirl, but whatever it was has vanished.
“Malcolm,” I say, keeping my voice even and quiet. “I think we should leave.”
I turn to do just that, Malcolm’s grip still firm, and watch as the front door slams shut. The fluttering comes again. Bed sheets on a clothesline. A bridal veil. The metallic undertones in that howl.
The lack of sprites. The empty feel of the kitchen. I shake my head, but denial isn’t going to keep this entity away. My fingertips itch as if they long to touch that spot on my cheek. It’s colder now, waxier, as if it really isn’t a part of me.
“That’s because it isn’t, my dear. It’s a part of me.”
The voice trumps all other sounds in this space. The crew’s chatter dies. Gregory stands, slack-mouthed, eyes darting, searching for the source.
“Have ... have we made contact with the other side?” he manages at last.
“That would be a first,” one of the crew mutters.
Something inky peels itself from Terese’s inert form. A blob at first, the thing solidifies into shape, more or less. It still lacks substance. It is still ethereal. But it looks like a man now, tall, with angular features. If you saw this silhouette and nothing more, you might think him handsome.
“Ah, yes, my dear. I thought you might like this incarnation. Tall. Dark. Handsome. Of course, I don’t have my own fan club,
but then I’m not as needy as some of the people in your life.”
Gregory storms toward the entity. “Who are you? What do you want? Who are you talking to?”
He is either stupid or naive or completely clueless about this thing. Can’t he feel its menace? How stale the air is? The taste of cold metal against his tongue? I break free from Malcolm and lurch forward. My fingers skim Gregory’s back just as he reaches the entity.
“Don’t touch it!” I cry out.
Too late. Gregory is there, ready to shove a hand through the thing’s murky chest. His fist goes straight through. Gregory pulls back, studies his hand in awe.
“What the—” he begins.
Something flutters. Gregory soars through the air and crashes against the fireplace. The photographs teeter and rain down on him. Glass shatters, shards scattering across the hardwood floor and embedding themselves into the carpet. Drops of blood speckle the tile surrounding the fireplace.
Someone screams. Someone else barks orders. In between, voices rise again, the undertone frantic, panic filling the air.
“Silence!” The entity’s voice shakes the entire house.
The shouts and urgent voices die, the only sound the hitched breathing of someone who might be crying.
“Much better,” it says. “Now, could someone come sweep up this buffoon?” Again, a fluttering, a flick of a bed sheet. Rajeev from the tech crew rushes out and heaves Gregory to his feet.
The entity turns toward me. Or should I say, it oozes. It is not corporeal. This, I can tell. What it truly is?
I have no idea.
“Now, Katy, my dear. Didn’t I warn you? You can’t run. Not then, and certainly not now.”
He is right about that. I will have to puzzle this out, figure a way to fight this thing. I can do this, I think, even if the enormity of the task overwhelms me. Despair—that this thing is too big to fight—fills me. I pull in a breath and widen my stance.
Malcolm slips in behind me, one hand at my waist, the other on my shoulder. He is warm and solid. Even in the stale air that surrounds us, I catch a hint of nutmeg and Ivory soap. I exhale.
I won’t have to do this alone.
“Katy’s not prepared,” Malcolm says. “She doesn’t even know what you are.” He gives my shoulder a squeeze and then steps around and in front of me. “On the other hand,” he continues, “we’ve been doing this dance for some months now.”
The entity shifts, loses its new form for a moment, then solidifies its shape. “Necromancer, are you still here? How amusing.”
“She isn’t willing,” Malcolm says, his voice preternaturally calm. “You can’t take her if she isn’t willing.”
“I can be most persuasive when I wish to be. Once she understands what will happen to Springside Township should she refuse me, I believe she’ll see things my way. I almost persuaded her grandmother, after all, and Katy isn’t half the ghost hunter she was.”
Something that starts as a cry clogs my throat. I move my mouth, but can’t make actual words emerge. The thoughts that cloud my head I can’t process. Malcolm? My grandmother? This entity? Why am I the only person here—other than Gregory B. Gone—who doesn’t understand what’s going on?
The entity oozes toward Malcolm. When they’re a mere foot apart, it takes on more of his features. “I will give you this, Necromancer. There was a window of time when you were my equal. You and me?” The entity sighs, a strange sound of longing and regret. “It would’ve been good.”
“It still can be,” Malcolm says.
“Oh, but now your desire isn’t pure enough. Your attention has been ... fractured. And who can blame you? I find myself unusually distracted by her as well. But you couldn’t hold me. I’d burn through you in a matter of months. Look what I did to your brother in a meager five minutes. Love makes you weak, Necromancer. Remember that.”
I take tiny, staccato breaths, as if some invisible hand is squeezing the air from my lungs.
“This isn’t fair,” Malcolm says. “It isn’t fair to Katy.”
“Fair? Fair?” Scorn in the entity’s voice fills the room. Another dusting of plaster drifts from the ceiling. “Was what her grandmother did to me fair?”
Malcolm casts a glance my way and lunges. Before he can reach me, something white and fluttering snaps between us. Less bed sheet and more bridal veil, it cuts Malcolm from me. When I reach for him, my fingers become ensnared in what looks like an intricate pattern of lace and feels like a spider web. I jerk my hands back and cradle them against my chest.
“Are you enjoying the weather, my dear?” The entity shifts again, its attention on me now.
As if on cue, lightning flashes, illuminating the heavy drapes. The thunder in response shakes the house, knocking the last framed pictures from the mantelpiece.
The entity swipes the air. There, in the middle of the room, is a portal to the outside. It’s like a viewfinder, and the scene shifts from one part of town to the next. The little creek where we release ghosts overflows its banks. In the Springside Long-term Care Facility, the staff races to place bowls and buckets beneath relentless leaks in the ceiling. Shingles fly from the roof of Sadie’s house. She stands in the yard, drenched and miserable, her attention skyward as if she’s praying to a cruel god.
“This is only the start,” the entity says. “Thanks to your grandparents, I’ve spent a very long time ... restrained. I’m in the mood for a little havoc—physical, emotional, spiritual.”
“The entire town,” I say. “You would do that to the entire town simply because you want revenge?” I say these words to buy time. I say these words in hopes this thing will reveal ... something. I never knew my grandfather. He died long before I was born, or so my grandmother always said, but she kept his photograph on her bedside table.
It sits there now. I ponder what that might mean, beyond her love for him.
“My dear,” the thing says now. “Revenge, by itself, is a rather petty emotion. I long for some companionship. I’ve decided yours will be most suitable.”
“Katy!” Malcolm’s voice is tight with fear. “It can’t take you if you’re not willing. That’s the rule, the pact this thing has made with humanity.”
Something flickers in Malcolm’s direction, another fluttering bed sheet that sends him soaring into Tim the camera guy. Even as they crash to the floor, Tim keeps the camera elevated, lens trained on the entity and me.
“I must be willing,” I echo. “In that case, I need a guarantee that everyone will be safe, that you won’t hurt anyone, that...” I trail off, because this is the sort of bargain that cuts more than one way.
“But of course, my dear. I think you’ll find me utterly obliging.”
I hold up a hand. “I’m not through yet. There can’t be any loopholes. When I say I want the town safe, you can’t shrink it down and put it in a snow globe. Things like that don’t count.”
The house quakes. For a moment, I can’t tell why or the source. Then the entity itself shivers. It’s ... laughing. At me.
“Oh, my dear, you are a delight. I am so going to enjoy our time together. I may consider extending your existence, you delight me so. Would you like that?”
“If I go with you,” I say, picking my way through words, through the right phrasing, like picking my way through a barbed wire fence. “I need to know that no one here will be harmed, that my words won’t be twisted, that what I say won’t be used against me or the people of Springside. No tricks.”
“But I’m all about trickery,” it says.
“Yeah. I figured that much.”
“Ah, you drive a hard bargain. Your grandmother was especially good at bargaining. It must be a family trait.”
The entity contracts and grows silent. Is it thinking? Devising some new way to trick me? I need to agree to its terms, eventually. But I won’t do so foolishly. I won’t throw myself at it in hopes of saving everyone else, not with this cold doubt in the pit of my stomach.
Before the entity sp
eaks again, before I can do something foolish, a force shoves me to one side. Malcolm stands between the entity and me, his breath labored and harsh.
“I will be your willing sacrifice,” he declares.
The house rumbles, the floorboards buckling beneath my feet. The entity expands and contracts again as if exhaling an angry breath.
“No interference, Necromancer.”
“You can’t refuse.” Malcolm doesn’t waver. “If a willing sacrifice steps forward, you must take it. That’s part of the pact.” He spreads his arms wide and tips his head back. “I am that willing sacrifice.”
The thing expands again, larger this time, as if it means to encompass the entire room. I lurch forward, my arms outstretched to capture Malcolm around the waist, to pull him away from this thing.
One moment, he is there, solid and warm. The next, my arms meet air. I pitch forward, land on the floor. On hands and knees, I stare up at the entity. Its form roils with rage.
“Love makes you weak, Necromancer,” it murmurs.
“Malcolm?” I glance around, but he is truly gone, all of him, his warmth, that nutmeg smell, his wonderful laugh.
The entity reforms, again into the shape of a man, more like Malcolm than ever before.
“Well, my dear, it seems we’ve returned to the status quo.”
“Status quo?”
“Where I am.... sated by a willing sacrifice. Do you know who my last willing sacrifice was?”
That cold dread invades my stomach. I don’t want to ask. I’m certain I don’t want to know. Either way, I can’t speak. I shake my head.
“Your grandfather. And do you know why I remained dormant for so long?”
Again, I go with a headshake.
“Your grandmother’s tremendous love for him. She never wavered. Unusual. Humans are normally so fickle.”
That bed sheet flutters in dismissal, as if this thing could flick away every last one of us.
“Her love alone kept the pact secure for decades, but when she died, so did its hold on me. Null and void, as they say.”
And that was when things started to change. I shut my eyes.
“Yes, indeed they did,” the entity says. “And now? Do you know what your love for Malcolm is like, Katy?”
Coffee and Ghosts: The Complete First Season (Coffee and Ghosts: The Complete Seasons Book 1) Page 18