“Oh.” There was timekeeping and timekeeping. A monthly ghost? Who knew? And Clare suddenly wanted this over. With another big breath, keeping her own eyes narrowed to focus that other world, she scanned the area. Yes, a hoop! A wooden hoop, about half the size of the girl, who, Clare saw, held a small stick. All right. She could do this.
You can do this! Enzo cheered.
Getting up, focused on the light gray hoop, Clare scuttled through real people and ghostly shades. Those who weren’t ready for her help? Weren’t at a time when she could help? Later, she’d think about all that stuff later. She had a job to do right now.
The wooden hoop lay on the ground. Could she touch it? Clare didn’t know, but she curved a hand around it. . . . like closing her fingers around a searing dry icicle. She clenched her teeth and straightened, feeling like she was ripping the object away from sticky ground.
A loud squeal came: I can see it! I can see my hoop!
There came little pattering footsteps and the girl grabbed the hoop. More ripping, this time like a layer of flesh from Clare’s palm as she released it. Tears stung her eyes at the pain. Setting her hands on the top, the girl jumped through the hoop, feet first. And disappeared.
Hoop and girl rippled in a shocking burst of color in what had become a sepia beige-and-brown world, then vanished.
Clare stood panting, her mind spinning. “Enzo?” she croaked.
Yes, Clare?
Clare settled her mind to pluck words from the chaos. Are there other, um, beings than ghosts? She wasn’t sure where that idea came from. But she was trembling now.
Yes, Clare, Enzo said in that deeper-than-doggie voice he used sometimes.
“O-kay.” Like you, for instance?
Perhaps. And like the one your great-aunt Sandra called John Dillinger.
“Clare, are you all right?”
It was Ted Mather who’d put his arm around her shoulders . . . and that was when she realized she was swaying. Darn it!
He didn’t smell or feel right, so she made sure her feet were under her and drew away. Her right hand still curled against pain, she took the couple of paces back to the bench she’d been sitting on that still held her bag. No one else had taken the spot and it didn’t look as if anyone had stolen anything. How much time had passed? To her it seemed like just a few minutes, but it could have been any amount of time. Any at all.
Her heart thundered, pulse rushing in her ears.
Ted followed. “You haven’t been looking good lately.”
For sure a clammy sweat covered her, too. Would that always happen? She used a controlled fall to hit the bench, swung her body around more as if she were a puppeteer than by control from her brainpan. She put her feet on the ground, straightened her spine, made her face pleasant, and looked up at Ted.
Not for long, since he dropped down beside her on the bench and she bit the inside of her cheek not to protest.
“I think I might have a summer cold.” She tried a cough, and it came out far too easily, and racking.
He frowned. “You should be home.”
“I’m in the midst of moving.” To her delight, her offer had been accepted and Arlene had set up the closing rapidly . . . three days. Clare had checked in with her brother, who’d been packing up the moving trucks from Aunt Sandra’s house—had Clare only left there a week ago? And he would have the truck bring everything to the new place on the same day.
She should be working on the move. She should be sorting stuff in her old home—the sentimental and valuable to keep, everything else to go to one of the thrift stores. She hadn’t packed her house with items . . .
“Clare!” Ted demanded her attention.
She twitched up a smile. “Yes, you’re probably right. I should go home.” She stood, and even though it wasn’t ladylike or professional, she needed a good stretch. Since she was a weird ghost-seeing person with no job, she had little image left and really worked her muscles, reaching her arms toward the sky.
Maybe she’d take up yoga. Great-Aunt Sandra had loved yoga.
After shifting her shoulders and shaking out her feet, she did feel more like herself—her changing self. Still, she managed a sincere smile at Ted. “Thanks for your concern, Ted.”
He offered her a bottle of unopened mandarin orange fizzy water. “Here, I got you this.”
“Thank you.” She twisted the top off, and drank deeply. “Very good, thank you.”
Shrugging, he said, “I didn’t want you to think I was a loon about that stage robbery. You’re right, I have to check better sources.”
She was the loon. The taste of the water went flat and her eyes went beyond Civic Center to focus on the skyscraper that had held her old office. Right now she yearned for some nice books to balance. “Everyone makes mistakes,” she said. Quitting her job hadn’t been one. She feared she wouldn’t be able to function in an office environment anymore, and someone else had needed her job to survive. She didn’t.
She wasn’t quite sure what all she needed to survive, but money wasn’t an issue anymore.
“You’re quite welcome for the water,” Ted said, but he looked disgruntled, as if he didn’t like her daydreaming.
“I feel much better. I think I must have made a turn in this sickness.” Not a sickness, not a craziness, just an affliction for the rest of her life. And she’d break up the time packing boxes with genealogical research. Aunt Sandra had lived into her nineties; what of the others who accepted the gift?
Ted’s deepening scowl impinged on her. “Thanks again. Take care,” she said.
“Yeah. Will we see you in the Western History reading room soon?”
He was not hitting on her. No such vibes, and even the thought . . . ewwww.
She’d have given him another cough if she hadn’t just said she thought she was getting better, and all too easy to start coughing and not quit. Instead she shook her head. “No, I think I’ll rest at home. I left the desk in the Western History room tidy enough.” The librarians and docents preferred to reshelve books themselves.
“You always leave your space tidy,” Ted said mildly.
“I like tidy,” Clare said. “Good luck on your studies and with your job for the prof.” She couldn’t recall the prof’s name, though Ted had told her twice. Her brain now had holes in it for sure.
Sweeping up the detritus of her lunch, she hurried back into the restaurant and deposited her recyclables into one of their bins, then headed back out. Ted was entering the library doors, and that banished a little tingle along her spine—not a good tingle as if she were with Zach.
She hadn’t called him. No reason to.
Forty minutes later she was picking up boxes at a liquor store at a small strip mall close to her current neighborhood and stacking them in her car. Driving around her area of town was much easier. Though she did see the tall figure of a Native American standing on a rise, wrapped in a blanket and staring west toward the mountains.
Clare would have to learn more about the tribes here.
“Enzo?”
The dog appeared around another car in the parking lot, though he hadn’t accompanied her earlier. Clare puffed out a breath.
He sat in front of her and scratched his ear with his hind leg, grinning. Hello, Clare. Hello! Long time I haven’t seen you! Hopping to his feet, he ran toward her, through her with a chill, licking her hand along the way.
Whoops! Right THROUGH Clare! Hey, Clare!
“Hi, Enzo. I, uh, saw a Native American ghost. Can I . . . uh . . . help him?” Why hadn’t she researched the rules yet? “What about religion and stuff?” She flapped a hand.
All religions have spiritual people who help the dead move on, said Enzo, switching to that deeper voice of his.
“I guess that’s a yes.”
No answer. She shut the door, accepting the presence of Enz
o on the passenger seat. “I’ll help him . . . soon.” Another thing to do: to continue to read her great-aunt’s journals, glean the rules from them. So far she hadn’t found much that she hadn’t discovered on her own.
Time to buckle down.
• • •
Zach lounged in one of Rickman’s client chairs. The man had called him in to talk about the robbery the day before. Apparently he was working on a “hot” case this Saturday morning. That he didn’t keep banker’s hours pleased Zach.
Behind his desk, Rickman leaned forward, hands clasped before him. “You aren’t telling me everything about the incident yesterday.”
Raising his brows, Zach gave a slight nod. “You mean that when I touched Clare Cermak, I could see the ghost of a cowboy waving his hat and yelling, ‘Bank robbery’? That what you want to hear?”
Rickman winced, spun his chair around so he could stare out the window. He looked like a brood had fallen right over him like a painter’s dropcloth. “No. I don’t want to hear that.” He cut the air with his right hand. “Absolutely not. Why do I get all the characters?”
Zach didn’t know whether that meant guys with attitude or people who interacted with those who—were touched by strangeness like Mrs. Flinton or Clare Cermak. “I could introduce you to Clare, if you want.” He offered just to bug the guy.
His boss glanced at him over his shoulder. “Not right now. Maybe later.”
All right, that surprised Zach. “That’s all I have for you.” He’d given the guy a written report on his lack of progress on Mrs. Flinton’s case, and his idea regarding tracing the financials.
“Fine. Here.” Rickman swung back to his desk, pulled out a drawer, and flipped a couple of cards onto his desk. One was a magnetic key to Rickman Security and Investigations’ workout rooms in the building. They were just a bulletproof door away from a fitness club that shared some of the facilities, though from what Rickman had said, some of his staff didn’t consider the arrangement very secure. Didn’t bother Zach. He also had a recommendation for a masseur who worked in the club next door.
The other white card had a dark blue drawing of two men in suits and flat hats fighting with canes and read, Bartitsu for You.
“Bartitsu?” Zach asked.
“Cane fighting.” Rickman’s mouth twitched. “I hear the studio caters to the steampunk crowd.”
“Steampunk,” Zach said flatly.
“Not much steampunk in Montana, huh? Some in Boulder.”
Zach grunted. “Some of everything in Boulder.”
“And our local Denver science fiction readers and writers community has a thriving steampunk group.”
“Right.”
Rickman laughed. “Hey, if Robert Downey Jr. playing Sherlock Holmes can do it, you can.”
“The original private investigator.” Zach tightened his grip on his cane.
“That’s so.”
“Any of your ex-military guys do this?” Zach flipped the card in his fingers. Just showed the name of the studio, phone, and an address in southwest Denver.
“Nope.”
“Didn’t think so.”
Now Rickman sighed. “Get on with your life as it is now, Zach.”
Zach turned and left.
He didn’t go to the gym like he’d thought he would; instead he gave the number for Bartitsu for You a call and found an instructor who was willing to meet with him.
TWENTY-THREE
THE SPARRING WITH the tall skinny white guy with a mustache waxed into points and fuzzy sideburns didn’t go as well as Zach would have liked. He couldn’t take the man down and that was solely because the dude was awesome with a damn cane. At least he didn’t go down himself and was sweating less in his shirt sleeves—ungartered—than the instructor.
Pretty much a draw.
Mr. Laverstock pulled a large white handkerchief from his trousers pocket and wiped his face. “We can work one-on-one as we have now, or I have a schedule of classes.” He walked into the open doorway on the far end of the room and returned with a sheet of paper. Zach glanced at it and noticed it was the same as the one posted on the bulletin board. The class coming up in a half hour was called “Victorian Vixens.”
“Our rate sheet is on the back.” Laverstock looked Zach down and up. “You’re good. Even good with that cane when you don’t know much of what you’re doing. Get some sturdier orthopedic shoes and braces for your left foot and ankle. These are the best folks.” He handed the sheet to Zach along with a card. Then he patted his face again with the handkerchief. “Get a brace so you can move your foot better and get more aerobic exercise.”
“Thanks for the time.” Zach bit off the words.
“Welcome.” Laverstock scooped up a water bottle from the floor and arced a stream of it into his mouth.
Zach left the building that looked like a failed restaurant, a small standalone place in the lot of a big mall.
A woman wearing a long skirt, a fitted jacket, and a huge hat got out of a sports car. He stared. She raised her brows and winked at him, giving him the once-over and a flirtatious smile.
“I’m early,” she said, twirling her cane.
“I’m late,” he responded.
She pouted, noted his cane and how he leaned on it, which had his mouth flattening, then walked past him, her skirt swishing. All right, he turned and looked.
And she twitched her ass at him.
He could only think of how Clare might look in the getup. Woman must have had one of those . . . bustles? . . . on. Now that he thought of it, Clare’s ass looked good under a sundress, would look good augmented with that bustle thing, and, most especially, would be a fine sight bare.
Just that morning Mrs. Flinton and Mrs. Magee had commented on how he walked carefully, no doubt from “hammering the bad guys.” Rickman had told him to get on with his life. The card Laverstock had pressed on Zach was in his jacket pocket; the woman—one from the Victorian Vixens class?—had coolly noted his cane and that he had to use it.
From the minute they’d met, Clare had treated him as if he . . . as if he didn’t have a cane . . . like she’d have treated him if they’d met before he’d made the stupid mistake that had gotten him crippled.
Last night he’d told her of the painful loss of his brother and gotten understanding, tenderness, sweet sympathy.
A bird called. Zach tensed, slid his gaze around. A woodpecker, not a crow.
So far he hadn’t seen any crows today, and no unfulfilled rhymes dangled. Not that he was thinking about that.
No, he was thinking about Clare. She had her problems, her vulnerabilities, too. He could easily call up her white and frantic face, her dull and blind-looking eyes, when they’d been in LoDo less than twenty-four hours ago.
Another vehicle, a minivan, drew up, and a lady in a white blouse and long skirt got out, pulling a cane she didn’t need to walk with from behind her seat. One of those standard wooden deals with a curved top, instead of his straight-handled cane. She smiled at him and hurried into the dojo—not a dojo, a studio.
Greetings and laughter came from the building behind him. Get a brace, Laverstock had said.
Clare Cermak had braced Zach last night, was bracing for his spirits. He’d go see her. She’d do him fine.
• • •
Clare had worked on the kitchen, emptying drawers, pretty much just moving into boxes the plastic containers in which she kept everything. The remembrance of the lonely melancholy of the Native American pulled at her, along with Enzo’s big dog eyes and huge expectations. So she nerved herself and returned to the ghost.
His passing took a very short time and was unnerving. He’d spoken oddly in her head with more images than language; she’d had to assure him that no one of his tribe remained for him to protect, that his horse was gone, too. Then he’d walked down the rise, sending a cold win
d her way, and vanished.
Enzo had congratulated her, but with less enthusiasm than when she’d helped the little girl. By the time Clare got home, she’d recovered her warmth and eyed her house. Even with all the fans and cross-ventilation she could manage, it would remain hot. Not conducive to research.
Now that she knew she was home for the rest of the day, she changed into an old and shapeless faded blue cotton sundress—the coolest thing she had in her closet. She opened the place up and continued with the kitchen; most of that would have to move with her. Naturally her new kitchen was a gourmet one with about three times the amount of cabinet space Clare had here. Her low-cost dishes would fit in one of them. Though she’d been bequeathed one of Great-Aunt Sandra’s sets, that fine china wasn’t for every day. Not that she cared. Clare’s mother got a set and so did Clare’s sister-in-law.
The kitchen was done quickly. Clare left out only those dishes she might need over the next couple of nights—a single setting.
A couple of hours of work and Clare was wringing wet. Enzo kept her amused with comments, still strictly in his doggie state, running back and forth and through the box fans she’d set in the back and front doors. Apparently dodging the blades was great fun. The thought made Clare’s head hurt.
She had canceled her appointments with Dr. Barclay. Unfortunately, he kept Saturday hours and his receptionist had put on the man himself, who expressed extreme concern, but Clare had been so relieved she’d acted like her pre-curse-gift self and had laughed, saying she’d come to terms with herself. On impulse, she’d offered to take him out for lunch. To her surprise, he’d accepted, and for the next day. They made a date downtown at one of the fancier restaurants. She could afford it now, and the meal might be less than he charged for a session, and worth it to get rid of him. Could she ever forget the misery she’d felt in his office enough to enjoy the attractive man’s company?
No.
And with all his smoothly groomed, expensive looks, Barclay wasn’t nearly as sexy as Zach Slade. The doctor’s whole person didn’t affect her as much as one intense look from Zach. How great that Zach believed in her . . . or was willing, at least, to listen. Just thinking of him made her hotter than ever.
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