Of Ash and Spirit: Piper Lancaster Series

by D. G. Swank

  I’d seen him before. But when had I seen him before? It wasn’t the kind of face you could forget.

  My phone vibrated in my pocket, and I jumped. Calm down, Piper. You’re becoming a basket case. I tugged it free, relieved to see Rhys’s name on the screen. She could wait. I hit the button to ignore her call and glanced back up at the mystery man.

  He was gone.

  First, the old woman had disappeared, and now him. Maybe I really was losing it.

  I climbed into my car and cranked up the air-conditioning on high. Asheville was surrounded by the Blue Ridge Mountains and the higher elevation helped keep the summer heat down, but the temperature had broken ninety degrees and there wasn’t a cloud in the sky. The rest of North Carolina—which was suffering in the upper nineties and hundreds and much higher humidity—would likely bitch-slap us if we dared to complain.

  As I pulled away from the house, I called Rhys back and put her on speaker. “Sorry,” I said. “This was the first chance I got to talk to you.” Thankfully, my voice didn’t betray that I was possibly losing my mind.

  “No worries. How’d it go?” she asked eagerly, but that was nothing unusual. She loved all of this and hated that she was the behind-the-scenes person. “You rushed me on the research for this one. I was worried I missed something.”

  “You had all the pertinent facts. You were right. It was her father.”

  “I knew it.” I could hear a grin in her voice.

  I flipped my turn signal, then made a left back toward my house in North Asheville.

  “You still have an appointment tonight at that house out on Beaucatcher Mountain?” she asked.

  “That’s why I’m calling. Have you found anything yet?”

  She hesitated. “Nothing. The house is only about thirty years old, and nothing I found on the internet or in the Citizen-Times microfiche could lend itself to a haunting. I resorted to digging up information about the general area. The only thing I come up with is Helen’s Bridge.”

  “Helen’s Bridge,” I scoffed. “That’s a good quarter mile away from Evelyn Crawford’s house. That’s a stretch.”

  “It’s all I’ve got, Piper.”

  Helen’s Bridge would be excuse enough—it was arguably the most haunted site in Asheville—but it felt too clichéd and obvious to use it. Besides, the bridge’s “hauntings” had always been reported at either the bridge itself or the large historic house next to it, Zealandia Castle. Never in Evelyn Crawford’s neighborhood.

  I pushed out a breath. “Maybe I should reschedule. I hate evening appointments anyway. I prefer to do them in daylight.” Unlike Gill. I’d always been creeped out by the prospect of visiting some abandoned, supposedly haunted place after midnight. But Evelyn’s house wasn’t technically abandoned. Sure, she hadn’t stayed in the house for the last week, but all her things were still there. It was a lot less creepy that way.

  According to the email she’d sent, stuff had started getting weird about a month ago and had gotten progressively worse ever since. Things that went bump in the night or moved around, the usual signs of a psychosomatic manifestation. I usually followed up with an interview on the phone, but this appointment had been too rushed for me to fit one in.

  “I thought she needed this taken care of fast,” Rhys said. “Isn’t she trying to sell her house because of her divorce?”

  “Yeah.” Her soon-to-be ex-husband was my number one suspect. He wouldn’t be the first person to try to scare an ex out of their shared home. Evelyn had mentioned in her note that they were locked in a bitter dispute over who would get the house. I was reluctant to get in the middle of it, but if I found evidence that Mr. Crawford was moonlighting as the resident ghost, I’d have to call out a human source.

  “And isn’t her brother a producer on one of those cable channels that broadcasts ghost hunter shows?”

  That was what had finally convinced me to take a chance.

  Over the last year, my original life plan had hit a speed bump, although it was admittedly one I’d put there. Last summer, I’d made the decision to put my last year of law school on hold, much to my grandmother’s utter dismay. I’d assured her—and myself—it was temporary, and returned to Asheville to work full time as a legal assistant at my deceased father’s law firm. The Gill thing had kind of just happened, partly out of boredom, partly because he was sexy as hell and I’d needed a diversion, and partly out of some strange interest in ghosts that I’d never allowed myself to indulge before. But six months ago, that speed bump I’d hit had turned into an enormous wall forcing me to pull a U-turn.

  My deceased father’s bombshell six months ago only accounted for a few bricks in that wall. Gill Gillespie’s highway robbery of part of my inheritance two weeks later sent me into a full-blown midlife crisis at the ripe age of twenty-four. I officially dropped out of law school and took up my new “hobby.”

  I’d considered quitting the ghost whisperer gig more times than I could count, especially since it paid so little, but I couldn’t ignore that I felt like I was actually helping people, even if I was duping them to do it. I wasn’t just doing this to mess with Gill . . . I kind of liked it.

  In the meantime, I’d gone from working full time to part time at my father’s law firm. I’d been there even less over the past month, though the situation wasn’t quite the Piper’s-messing-up-again catastrophe my grandmother believed it to be.

  At least I had something to do. And besides, I had help. Rhys had been a junior when we’d met my senior year at UNC Asheville, and we’d kept in touch after I moved to Durham for law school. So when my first ghost-hunting case accidently fell into my lap—okay, so it was a case I’d stolen from Gill just to piss him off—I asked her to help me research the house and surrounding area. As the cases became more frequent and people began to tip me for my services, I continued to seek out her help—in return for half of my unsteady income.

  One night, after a few glasses of wine too many, I’d joked that we could get our own ghost-hunting show, and she’d latched on to the idea like a dog with a bone. (To be fair, there probably wasn’t a whole lot of money in her future. She’d stayed at UNCA to get a master’s degree in early Roman history.)

  “That doesn’t mean she’ll recommend me to her brother,” I said. “And it would be tacky to bring it up.”

  “I know you think her asshole husband is the culprit, but if you can make it a badass ghost, it’s sure to resonate with her more.”

  “Rhys . . . ,” I sighed. “If it is her husband, the haunting won’t go away. Which would be worse. My clients believe in me, and the activity stops if they want it to. If it’s her husband, it will look like I failed.”

  “I suppose you’re right,” she said with a pout in her voice. “I was sure that guest spot on Darling Investigations was going to do more for us.”

  Back in April, a producer had found my blog, The Gentle Ghost Whisperer of Asheville, which was full of stories about my clients—names changed to protect the innocent, of course—and invited me to be on a new reality TV show with a has-been former child actress, Summer Butler. Rhys had gotten her hopes up about my appearance on the show. “Too bad they cut my entire segment,” I grumbled. “It just wasn’t our time.”

  Rhys sighed. “We’ll figure it out. I’m about to head to a study group. We’re only into our second week of school, and this Latin class is already intense.”

  “Is that the class you have with that cute redhead, Abby?”

  I could hear the grin in her voice. “Maybe . . . but that has nothing to do with my need to go to the group. She’s just an added bonus. Let me know how tonight goes.”

  “Miss Louisa gave me sixty bucks, so I’ll add it to the spreadsheet and PayPal you your cut at the end of the week.”

  “Sounds good. Good luck at Evelyn Crawford’s.”

  I hung up, thinking I needed all the luck I could get tonight.

  When I pulled into my driveway, an uneasy feeling settled in my gut. That had been
happening a lot lately too. Like I was being watched. Like something bad was about to happen. My best friend Hudson claimed it was because I was wallowing in a trough for unhealthy feelings and bad juju. Maybe he was right—okay, I was sure he was right—but I couldn’t bring myself to care. Gill deserved all the payback I could give him. Shame on him for stealing the fifteen thousand dollars in cash my father had left for me in a manila envelope. Shame on me for putting my father’s reputation above my need for cash.

  As far as I was concerned, I’d only just begun to make Gill suffer.

  But there was no denying my increased paranoia, and as I walked toward my kitchen door, my whole body tensed as if it knew I was about to face danger. Maybe Hudson really did have a point.

  When I walked into the kitchen, I found the source of my unease—my grandmother was sitting at my kitchen table, and the glare in her eyes guaranteed she wasn’t interested in a friendly chat.

  Chapter Two

  “Nana Maureen,” I said in a dry tone as I dumped my purse on the table. “What an unexpected surprise.”

  “Don’t be cheeky, Piper. It doesn’t become you.”

  I resisted the urge to grin. Nana Maureen had spent the last fifteen years trying to make me into a cultured young lady. It still hadn’t worked. I was impressed that she hadn’t yet accepted it was a lesson in futility.

  “You have two weeks, Piper. Two weeks. What are you going to do?”

  I opened the refrigerator and pulled out a bottle of beer. Not that I wanted one, but it would piss my grandmother off, another hobby I’d embraced lately. To up the ante, I offered, “Want one?” I’d never seen my grandmother drink a beer.

  She curled her upper lip. “It’s barely four o’clock.”

  I gave a lazy shrug as I popped off the top. “Daylight savings means it’s almost five in real time.”

  I sat in the chair opposite her and rested my forearm on the table, preparing myself for her newest lecture. I’d gotten plenty of them over the last year.

  She studied me for several seconds before her face relaxed. “Piper, I know I’m not the easiest person to talk to, but I understand what you’re going through.”

  “I politely disagree,” I said before taking a pull of my beer.

  “Did you ever consider that maybe I’m hurting? That maybe I was blindsided by this too?”

  I lowered my bottle, realizing I’d never bothered to imagine myself in her shoes. I’d been thoroughly enjoying my pity party for one.

  A satisfied gleam filled her eyes when she saw she’d finally gotten a reaction out of me, but I let her have it. Lord knew I’d given her plenty of grief in the six months since we’d met at my father’s law firm to open the codicil to his will. While we’d known about the codicil for years, Nana and I had assumed it had to do with my father’s share of his law firm. We’d expected some dry-as-dust legal brief, not the heap of crazy we’d found in those papers. That was the wall I’d found myself driving toward six months ago . . .

  My dad had left directions that the codicil should be opened six months to the day before my twenty-fifth birthday. My birthday was now a couple of weeks away, and I still hadn’t managed to make any sense of it.

  She folded her hands on the table. “I’ve looked into posthumously declaring him mentally incompetent, but his partners refuse to cooperate, and they were the witnesses to the codicil. We’ll waste more money than your share is worth if we try to legally fight this.” Her mouth tightened. “Nevertheless, I’m willing to try in the name of decency.”

  I knew how hard it was for her to contemplate publicly declaring my father a fruitcake, and I had to admit that she was trying to help me, whether I’d asked for it or not. It couldn’t be easy knowing the son-in-law she’d loved like a son had jumped off the deep end of conspiracy theories. It certainly wasn’t easy for me. Somehow it was even harder given that we’d been in the dark for over a decade and a half after his murder.

  But I’d be lying if I didn’t admit that there were certain peculiarities attached to my parents’ deaths. Especially since their murderer had claimed he’d acted at the urging of a secret group called the Guardians, a piece of information that hadn’t made it into any of the news reports. I hadn’t found out until I requested the police report soon after my eighteenth birthday. Then there was the strange fact that the murderer had committed suicide in his jail cell after giving a full confession and claiming the Guardians would kill him for doing so.

  At the time, I’d been too young for those details to matter much. What had mattered most was that they were gone, but parts of the story still bothered me. Even more so after seeing my dad’s codicil.

  “Giving up on everything isn’t the way to deal with this,” she said.

  I leaned to the side of my chair. “Is that what you think I’m doing? Giving up on everything?”

  “Isn’t it?” she challenged with raised eyebrows. “When was the last time you went to work at the office? Linda says she hasn’t seen you in a couple of weeks.”

  I groaned, then took another sip before setting the bottle on the table. This wasn’t the first time my grandmother had come over to check on me. As far as she was concerned, I’d jumped off the deep end like my father and she showed up from time to time to offer me a life preserver . . . or to maybe try forcing one over my head. “They don’t need me at the office, Nana. I’m superfluous there.” Especially since I no longer planned to become an attorney and take over my father’s position. They’d been phasing me out ever since. They hadn’t given me work in weeks.

  “Not true. There’s always a place for you there.”

  “There was until Dad’s weird demands. If I don’t do what he asked, I’ll lose all claim to a position at the law firm, so I don’t see the point of working there anyway. I don’t give in to blackmail. Even if the blackmailer is my dead father.”

  And there was the rub.

  Before becoming a law school dropout, I had been poised to become the latest of a long line of Lancaster and Baker attorneys. My parents had met in law school, and the Bakers—my mother’s family—had been attorneys in Ashville since the 1890s. My father’s family went back even further, though they’d started out in the Outer Banks area and eastern North Carolina. But the way he’d used the legal system against me to ensure I fulfill his demands had made me question everything. The truth, whether Nana wanted to hear it or not, was that I didn’t regret my decision to drop out of law school. I’d followed my parents’ career path out of family obligation—and I felt so much freer now that I was no longer bound to it.

  “There has to be a way around this,” Nana said.

  “We looked into all of it, Nana. This is pointless. We need to accept it for what it is—” I lifted my eyebrows and anchored my gaze on hers. “Over and done.”

  “All right,” she said, “so you don’t want to fight the codicil; you still have to think about your future. You don’t have to be an attorney, Piper, though I still think you should finish what you started. You just need to figure out what you really want to do.”

  She was only echoing my own thoughts, but I lifted an eyebrow anyway. “Something other than ghost hunting?”

  She made what I liked to call her sour-lemon face. “You need something that will pay your bills.”

  “I still have some life insurance money.”

  “Not much. Not after you paid off the house. The cash we found in the envelope with the codicil would have helped . . .” The look on Nana’s face suggested she’d murder Gill on sight if he crossed her path. “Until that nincompoop stole it.”

  I couldn’t help but grin. She’d always hated Gill. That was one instance I should have listened to her. And this was one instance she’d agreed with me. No pressing charges for theft. Not after Gill had threatened to expose my father as the crackpot his codicil made him out to be. My father’s prestigious reputation as an attorney who had fought and won several highly publicized civil rights cases would have been shot to hell. Sure, he
was dead, but I refused to destroy what was left of him.

  But a few weeks ago, with my birthday looming on the horizon, Nana had changed her mind. While we couldn’t prove Gill stole the cash, it would be in my best interest if we declared my father mentally unbalanced.

  She frowned. “This isn’t amusing, Piper Lynn. We both know that the HVAC system and the roof need to be replaced. There’s no way you can afford that without a decent income. If you’re not careful, you’ll lose it.”

  That was a very real possibility. When I’d turned eighteen and gained control of my parents’ money, I’d paid off the loan on my childhood home, which my father had remortgaged to help fund their law firm. It would have been saner for me to sell it. I didn’t need a nearly four-thousand-square-foot Victorian home with a detached guesthouse, and truth be told, sometimes I got creeped out living there alone. But it had been in my grandmother’s family for three generations; it might literally kill her if I sold it. My grandfather refused to live in it, preferring their newer house by Biltmore Village, and he wouldn’t allow any more of their money to go toward fixing it, not that I blamed him. In its current form, the place was basically a money pit. I’d considered moving and renting it out, or even just renting out a couple of rooms, but I couldn’t bring myself to do it. It was the obvious solution, but whenever I started to write an ad, a feeling of wrongness would flood my body, and it would only go away when I tabled the idea. It was my home, and I didn’t want any outsiders living here. Nana actually agreed with me on this one. She’d made tax and insurance payments on the empty house until I was old enough to make the decision for myself, saying it was a Norris family home, and only Norris family members should be living in it.