Haunted

by Irene Preston

  “That’s your idea of weird?”

  “I know, pretty flimsy. But it caught my eye. So I’m sitting up here, trying to figure out if the door was really unlocked all along, or what had happened, when I realize she just broke into the house. I mean, the woman with the key went in the kitchen door, and I watched her lock it when she came out.”

  Adam refrained from pointing out that he knew definitively the kitchen door had been locked when Noel got there. Scruffy gave him a quick side-eye that indicated he hadn’t missed the implications. “You’re not impressing me here, Morales. So you went inside, then I showed up. What am I missing?”

  Adam set the charm bag on his desk in front of Noel. “This. The car was gone by the time I got around the block, but I figured I’d check to see if anything was obviously disturbed. I went inside and…well, you know how it was. The place reeked. Hell, I can still smell it over here if I open the window. I pulled my shirt up over my nose and made it into the hall, where I almost stepped on what I thought was a jewelry bag on the floor. Except when I picked it up…”

  Adam paused, drawing out the suspense just like he would on the show. Noel already thought the bag had done…something…so he should eat this up. “When I picked it up, the smoke smell disappeared completely. All I could smell was the herbs or whatever in the bag.”

  Noel finally condescended to turn and look at him.

  Adam nodded at the bag. “Pretty freaky, huh?”

  “Are you shitting me?” Noel spat out. “That’s what you call freaky? Something smelled nicer than smoke?”

  “Well, yeah. Not just nicer. It was the only thing I could smell.”

  Noel snorted. “Tell me something, Professor. You believe all those stories you tell on TV?”

  “I like to keep an open mind,” he responded automatically. It was practically his catch phrase on the show. Except had he? Had he really kept an open mind? After years of no-show ghosts and outright hoaxes? He had never been a True Believer. The ghost stories had always been interesting folklore with the side benefit of making him more money than teaching at the community college.

  “Yeah, sure.” Noel nodded at the gris-gris. “I’m out of here. Have a nice time with your magic potpourri.”

  Chapter Six

  Noel

  Jesus, Mary, and Joseph, this dude really thinks that magic baggie means something. Noel stopped at the top of the steps outside the apartment, flexing his fingers, trying to shake off the burn in his palm. He needed to leave, vamoose, get the hell out of Rio.

  And do what?

  He’d wrapped up his report on the Mandeville explosion, or come as close as he could until the cops or the FBI or whoever came up with an actual suspect. It might be worth talking to Sarasija Mishra, if he could get through the smokescreen put up by his lawyer. The First Street house fire hadn’t been assigned to an investigator yet, but since there was every indication the hospitalized man had started it, no one at Hughes Wallace seemed too interested in running down the cause. His boss hadn’t actually discouraged him, but…

  The only reason Noel didn’t push was that in the two visits he’d made to the site of the Mandeville explosion, he’d never so much as had indigestion, let alone the kind of godawful weirdness he’d felt here.

  Time for a drink.

  Except, gin would only get him drunk, which wouldn’t truly solve anything. Noel dug his fingertips into his temples. Shit. There’d been a moment, when Adam had him trapped against the door, when it had taken all of Noel’s self-discipline not to spill everything. The man had…something. The word strength kept coming to mind, except that implied Noel himself was weak.

  Well, damn. A weak man would empty his flask on the way to the bar. Noel shook his head, half wondering why he wasn’t safely in his Lexus already.

  And half-sorry he’d left the apartment in the first place.

  Because more than anything else, he was really fucking tired of being alone.

  What was he going to do? Call Bergeron and…what? Hang out in a titty bar? Go back to the office and get handed another lame investigation he could do in his sleep…or dead drunk? Noel kicked at a clump of camellia blossoms, their white petals creased and bruised. Adam may be crazy and suspicious and untrustworthy, but at least he’d tried to meet Noel partway.

  And shit. Who better to disprove the stuff he’d seen and heard and felt than a professional ghost hunter? Besides, Adam could still be lying, and unless Noel wanted to end up on some stupid show, he should stick around and protect his own interests.

  He still didn’t move off the top stair. So many reasons, and not one had to do with that moment when Adam slammed his hand against the door. Noel had been trapped, but instead of anger, he’d felt heat. Gut-churning need.

  Yeah, he wasn’t going anywhere. Probably another sign of weakness. All he had to do was come up with a reasonable excuse to get himself back inside the apartment.

  The best he could come up with was a firm knock. Adam opened the door an inch or two, his eyes widened, and he swung it open the rest of the way.

  “Um, hi.” Noel ignored the heat in his cheeks, though he found it difficult to meet that frank, green-eyed gaze.

  “Did you forget something?”

  “Yeah.” But I can’t remember what or why. Grasping at the nearest available idea, he forced a note of confidence. “You’re going to bring that thing back?”

  “Thing?”

  “The bag.” Noel refused to sound like an asshole.

  Adam shot a guilty glance over his shoulder. “I’m not sure.”

  “Look, I’ve got no reason to care one way or the other. I came over the first time to scratch an itch, and my boss is pretty clear they’ve got no reason to deny the homeowner’s claim.” He shrugged, forced to admit to himself he sounded like an idiot. “So unless you think whatever that is will make it on your show, you might as well put it back.”

  Adam shook his head, messy curls falling into his face. “Sure wouldn’t want the neighbors wondering where their gris-gris wandered off to.”

  “What? You said it was a bag of herbs.”

  Adam laughed, a solid, likeable sound. “What do you think a gris-gris is?”

  “I have no clue.” Noel brushed some imaginary dust off the sleeve of his suitcoat. “But unless you want me to walk away believing you made up the whole thing, I say we put it back where it belongs.”

  “Hang on. Let me get my shoes.” Adam waved Noel into the entryway. “I can’t help what you believe, but for some reason, I don’t want you walking away.”

  That makes two of us. Noel barely kept himself from saying the words out loud. Instead, he stood awkwardly, ready to parry any other blatant attempts at flirting with a scowl and a heated stare. None were forthcoming. Adam kicked on a pair of Adidas and squatted down to tie them. The silence between them stretched, and when Adam rose, Noel felt even stupider because he couldn’t think of anything to say.

  This had been his problem all along—with Stephen and with every other man he’d dated. Noel Chandler, police detective and surfer, was better when he could be quiet. He liked being with people and listening to them talk, but he hated being forced to have something to say. He tended to overcompensate, to come on strong and mouthy, especially after a drink or seven.

  But right now, he was sober and strung out and…quiet.

  Oh, well—his shrug was mostly internal—he’ll either put up with my weirdness or he won’t.

  “So…”Adam broke into his internal monologue. “Let’s get this over with.”

  Get this over with? “Gotta love your enthusiasm.”

  “You want me to start skipping with joy?”

  “Glee.” Noel had to press his lips together to keep from grinning.

  Adam snorted. “Fine.” He took the steps two at a time, stopping next to the camellia at the bottom. “Glee.”

  The mock disgust in his tone made it hard not to laugh, but Noel kept a (mostly) straight face. He followed the other man down
the steps and across the small lawn to the sidewalk.

  The place they were headed may have been on the diagonal from Adam’s house, but the only way to get there was to go around the block. A paved driveway ran along the side of that house and ended in a garage that probably started life as a stable.

  They’d taken about three steps toward the driveway when a black Dodge Challenger roared up behind them. Adam reacted first, shifting his route and bumping into Noel as he steered them both farther down the path.

  A black woman sprang from the vehicle, her gaze locked on them. She was dressed in skintight black, with some kind of rope belt tied around her waist.

  Noel nodded in her direction, but since Adam didn’t stop walking, he didn’t either. Her frown was enough to chase them both off.

  Her gaze weighed on him until they were nearly to the end of the block. His instinct to turn around and stare back at her became a tic he had trouble controlling. “Do you know who she is?” he murmured, hoping she didn’t have superhearing to match her Batgirl outfit.

  “Not sure.” Adam used a more conversational volume. “She’s been in and out of the house ever since I got here, and she came by to let the fire marshal in, but I don’t think she lives there.”

  Figuring they’d know it if she’d been eavesdropping, Noel spoke normally. “We can leave the magic baggie when her car’s gone.” He shot a glance at Adam, and the brush of those green eyes sent chills over his skin. “How did you end up living right next to crazy anyway?”

  They crossed First Street under the shadow of a live oak, and Adam pointed in the direction of St. Charles Avenue. “There’s a little sandwich shop a couple of blocks that way. Are you hungry?”

  Noel pulled out his phone. Almost noon. “Sure. Do they serve beer?”

  “Is this New Orleans?”

  Noel snickered. “So I can get it in a to-go cup.”

  “Yup.” Adam smiled, and Noel wanted to freeze the moment in time: the hazy glare of the sun, the muggy warmth, the easy way Adam moved his big body. He had a comfortable sort of confidence, his body toned but not obsessively buff, as if he had other things on his mind besides appearance.

  Noel wasn’t ready to let his guard down, not really, because Adam the ghost hunter could fuck him over in a heartbeat. Lunch, though? How much trouble could he get into having lunch with the guy?

  “Do you ever watch Haunts and Hoaxes?”

  Noel snorted before he could get control of himself. “No.” No point in insulting the guy. “I don’t watch much TV.”

  “Too busy with PBS and your symphony subscription?” The laugh lines framing Adam’s mouth deepened. Adam’s mouth. Capable of flame-throwing kisses and who knew what else.

  “Nah, I just…” Spend too much time in bars. Nope. Don’t make yourself look like a loser. “My job in LA didn’t leave a lot of time for television.”

  “Ah. Yeah, I can see that.”

  Here it comes. The question we’ve all been waiting for. Noel gritted his teeth, sure that Adam was about to ask why he’d left LA. He had a bunch of sorta true answers, but for some reason, he didn’t much want to use any of them.

  Instead, they kept walking, and after a block or so, Noel exhaled with relief. “You never answered my question.”

  “What?” They reached St. Charles Avenue, and Adam steered them to the right. “Just a couple more blocks this way.”

  “Sure.”

  “You asked how I ended up living here?”

  “Yeah.” Noel was happy to follow along, as long as he wasn’t the topic of conversation.

  They stopped on the corner of the next block, waiting for a car to turn left, and though the silenced stretched, Noel didn’t feel compelled to break it. Possibly the biggest difference between Stephen and Adam. With Stephen, one of them had to keep the air full of words or else they’d figure out how little they had in common.

  “I’m, like, the research guy. Someone reports something funky, or I read something online, and part of my job is digging through the bullshit to come up with something we can put on the air.”

  Adam paused, but again, Noel let him take his time. They exchanged glances, and Noel let his smile do the encouraging.

  Adam stumbled over a broken piece of sidewalk, and they both laughed.

  “Anyway,” Adam said when they’d calmed down. “Someone made a Reddit post about a disturbance near here last August, so I came to check it out.”

  “Disturbance?”

  “Yeah, I don’t have many specifics, but something hinky went on in the old Lafayette Cemetery No. 1.”

  Noel stopped in place. “You came all the way to New Orleans because someone put something vague on Reddit? Dude…”

  They were in front of what looked like a grocery store, the kind of family-operated place that catered to the neighborhood’s tastes.

  “This is the place,” Adam said. “Now let’s go get some food, and I’ll tell you about all the creepy stuff I’ve seen over at Anne Rice’s house.”

  “You’re full of shit.”

  “Yup, but she used to live on my block. That’s why I signed the lease on this apartment.”

  Laughing, Noel followed Adam into the place, his mouth watering at the smell of garlic and spice. They ordered a couple of po’boys, took two Abitas from the glass-fronted cooler, and sat down at the only empty table, one of the half-dozen or so in the place. Before Noel took a bite, Adam raised his bottle.

  “To calling a truce.”

  Noel tapped Adam’s bottle with his own. “Works for me.”

  ~⚜~

  Adam

  Adam sipped his Abita and watched Noel efficiently demolish a shrimp po’boy and a small mountain of fries. He looked down at his own basket, which still contained half a sandwich and the soggy fruit he’d subbed for the fries. So much for his inexplicable impulse to feed the wildlife. Figured Scruffy would be one of those guys who could eat anything and still look vaguely malnourished. Meanwhile, Adam was under constant pressure from the show to fit into jackets that didn’t allow him to draw a deep breath and slacks that constricted his junk to the point he worried about the viability of his little swimmers.

  Noel managed to look like a grumpy supermodel while downing a million calories of fat and cholesterol, not to mention working on his second beer. He swiped the last fry through the sea of ketchup in the bottom of his basket and popped it into his mouth, then eyed Adam’s side of the table. “This place isn’t bad.”

  Adam picked out another oyster and fought a compulsion to push the basket across the table to see if Noel was still hungry. His story instincts were screaming. He wanted to ask Noel a dozen questions. What had happened to the job in LA? Why was he here in New Orleans? What freaky shit had happened in the house on First Street after Adam left? Why was Noel so tense and jittery? Did he maybe want to go back to Adam’s place and work off some of that nervous energy against the door? In the bed? Over the…

  “What made you want to be a cop?” The subject change was abrupt and didn’t cover any of the questions he wanted to ask on either a personal or professional level. The real question was why did you stop being a cop? Adam figured if he led with that, the conversation would be over before it started. He was nowhere near ready to let Noel walk away if he could keep him.

  One side of Noel’s mouth twitched in an expression that didn’t even pretend to be a smile. “According to my mother, I only did it to annoy her.”

  “She worry about you?”

  “You’re cute. I’m thirty-three. She’s still calling it a phase.”

  Interesting. Noel responded as though he were still a cop. Whatever his mother thought, the job had been serious for him. “Could be worse. You could be hosting a show on basic cable.”

  “True that, my dude. How’d that happen, anyway?”

  Adam had a list of standard responses for fans who asked the same question, but he found himself responding with the truth. “Accident.”

  Noel snorted. “What? You trip
ped and wound up on TV?”

  “My girlfriend’s family had this old place that dated back to before the Civil War and was supposed to be haunted six ways to Sunday. My degree’s in history. I specialize in sort of American oral histories, legends, that kind of thing. I like to figure out how they fit into what we can confirm factually. What started the legends, you know? Why the stories stuck. Almost all the ghost stories are built around real people and events. Understanding people, how they lived, what their lives were like, what their hopes and dreams were… Those are the things that make history relevant.”

  Adam broke off. Noel was staring at him like he had grown a second head. “Anyway, the local chamber of commerce said they’d pay me to write it all up. Apparently, the article was popular with the tourists, and I started getting emails from people wanting me to research other ghosts. Then I got this idea to do more of the same but put it in a sort of travel guide. Next thing I knew, I was the ghost guy.”

  Noel narrowed his eyes. “What happened to the girlfriend?”

  Adam laughed. “Annemarie? Dumped me and moved to Hollywood. Now she’s my producer.”

  “Still dumped?” The question was casual, but there was a weight behind it that caught Adam’s attention.

  “Yeah. She was always way more into the paranormal stuff than I was. Said the shit out at the family place was real and was always pissed she couldn’t prove it.”

  “You didn’t believe her?”

  “I—” Keep an open mind. But he couldn’t say it. “I didn’t not believe her. But I never saw any proof.”

  He had wanted to believe her. And for a while…for a while, he’d gotten caught up in the whole thing. But when push came to shove, he hadn’t seen or heard anything that couldn’t be explained. Not then, not in all the years since. The stories were fun, though. The people he met were interesting, and the money wasn’t bad. He wasn’t getting rich, but he got to wander the country digging into anything that struck his fancy. All he had to do was keep finding the sexy story angle and keep an open mind.