Not Quite Mine

by Lyla Payne

  “Where are we going?”

  “Heron Creek.”

  And suddenly her appearance there yesterday morning makes sense. Especially the part about her not having been to bed yet. She’d been in town working a case, not to see me. At least, not only to see me.

  “Where?”

  She shoots me an exasperated look. “Why, do you know everyone in town?”

  “Pretty much. Or at least, I know of them.”

  “That’s what I was afraid of. I don’t want you to know anything.”

  I sigh. “It’s possible I won’t know who lives in the house. If you don’t tell me.”

  “We’ll try that.”

  It doesn’t take us long to get there, but I’m regretting not bringing my car now that I know where we’re spending the evening. It annoys me that she made me drive all the way to her trailer in the middle of nowhere, too, but if I’ve learned anything about Daria over the past several months, it’s that she doesn’t answer questions she doesn’t like.

  We roll through the streets of what I can’t help but think of as my hometown. They’re quiet and still, with frost dusting cars and light posts outside the windows. We stop at the one stop light, then take a right on a street just past the library. It’s an old part of town where the houses are mostly two-story Victorians with wide front porches and plantation shutters covering the windows.

  Daria pulls up in front of a white one that looks as though it’s seen better days. As a child, I knew plenty of kids who lived in this neighborhood but can’t recall who owned this one specifically.

  I shake my head at Daria’s raised eyebrows.

  She nods, satisfied. “Okay, good. Let’s get ready and get inside, then. I’m more than ready to be done with this one.”

  I can’t say that she looks scared exactly. I’ve seen her frightened—like everyone else, Mama Lottie made Daria border on crapping her pants—and this is more…spooked with a side of annoyed.

  We get out of the car and spend the next ten minutes going through the grounding process she taught me, my teeth chattering so hard it makes it hard to concentrate. Once I’m finished and have asked my spirit guide to keep me safe—worrying the whole time that even if he or she or it exists, she might not be able to deal with an entity that’s not a ghost—I open my eyes.

  Daria’s remain closed, so I use the time to mentally go over what I learned about poltergeists on the Internet. Not that I expect the majority of it to be true or useful, but the consensus is that they are not ghosts or spirits, they are some other kind of entity, as Daria said. They’re powerful, they’re troublesome, and many people suppose they’re some kind of demon manifestation.

  Personally, I’m keeping my fingers crossed that whatever’s disturbing the people in this house is a simple ghost that’s parading around acting bigger than its britches. Even an old, strong ghost is preferable to something nobody, not even people accustomed to this kind of thing, can really explain.

  “I’m ready,” Daria informs me, staring up toward the house with a determined set to her jaw. “Let’s go.”

  I follow her up the front steps and in through the unlocked front door. She’s not carrying anything besides a flashlight, and neither am I, but the last time we went to Drayton Hall she had a bag full of goodies. I’ve never been with Daria on one of her missions to actually remove spirits or whatever else from someone’s property, and for the first time, I kind of want to observe the cleansing part of the process, too. It’s not something I’ve had to do, since the ghosts who come to me tend to move along on their own after I figure out what they want and help them accomplish it, but who’s to say all of the spirits who wander my way will be nice?

  Mama Lottie certainly wasn’t, and a shudder works down my spine at the memory of what we went through with her.

  The house is big, with one of those old, grand foyers with the staircase sweeping to an open second floor, but the place isn’t exactly in good condition. The floors are creaky and need to be refinished—it’s probably the original wood—and the furniture in the library or parlor to the left is covered with sheets.

  “Does no one live here?” I ask.

  “The woman who hired me does. She’s renting, though, and it’s just her so she doesn’t need this much space.” Daria shrugs. “It’s a big house.”

  “I guess the rental market in Heron Creek is pretty small.”

  Daria doesn’t reply as she continues on her trek, going straight for the staircase. “Most of the activity has been upstairs, in one of the bedrooms. It’s at the top, to the right. I just need you to tell me if you see something.”

  “Aye, aye, Captain.”

  My salute does nothing to lighten the mood or to dispel the nerves swirling in my stomach. Daria prefers to work in the dark, with only the weak beams from our drugstore flashlights to illuminate the steps as we climb them, but it gives me the creeps. I see ghosts in broad daylight so I don’t understand why the ghoulish approach is necessary, but those are the kinds of questions my new friend refuses to answer.

  My foot has barely touched the top landing of the staircase when a silver teapot whizzes past my ear. It leaves a whistling wind in its wake, and even if I’d seen it coming, there’s no way I could have moved in time.

  “What the hell?” My muscles go rigid, my eyes sweeping the space in an attempt to glimpse the next attack.

  “That happens,” Daria says. “Particularly with the silver, though it will throw whatever it can get its hands on.”

  The teapot clatters all the way down the stairs, landing with a loud clang and rolling along the uneven hardwood before coming to a stop.

  I take a few hesitant steps forward and peer into the bedroom she indicated, noticing that the doors on the china hutch at the top of the steps are hanging open. Inside, I glimpse a seemingly endless supply of silver available to be hurled and I quickly move out of the way. The room is empty, the windows shuttered, but something moves in one corner.

  It’s hard to see, and when the beam of my flashlight hits the figure, she almost disappears because she’s sort of misty and white, not at all like the solid spirits who show up in my life at all hours of the day and night.

  “Do you see something?” Daria asks from the doorway behind me.

  I don’t answer right away because I want a better sense of the woman—or at least, what’s appearing as a woman to me. There’s no doubt something threw a tea kettle at my head, and based on the silverware clutched in her hands, I’m guessing it was her.

  When her eyes latch onto mine, a bolt of rage slams through me. She lifts one hand, chucking forks and spoons my direction with such precision and power that no mortal could have done it. I dodge most of them but catch a spoon in the eye. Pain explodes in my face, and I hear Daria howl behind me, the sound part pain but mostly pissed off.

  “Dammit!”

  I turn around, holding a palm over my throbbing eye socket and see a fork sticking out of Daria’s shoulder. My eyes widen as she pulls it out, but it’s not until more stuff starts flying that I realize turning my back on the wrathful spirit was a mistake.

  Daria reaches out and yanks me onto the floor. Most of the projectiles fly over our heads, though a second spoon—a big serving one this time—does catch me on the ear on the way down.

  “Gracie, all I see is flatware being hurled from a dark, empty room. If that’s all you’ve got too, we can get the hell out of here,” she mutters, her teeth clamped together. Daria doesn’t take kindly to any sort of entity tossing forks into her body, apparently.

  Not that I blame her.

  “I see a woman. It’s hard to make out her features, but she’s throwing shit, and all I feel in my chest is this unstoppable rage…” I trail off, assessing a little further. “And maybe betrayal.”

  I glance over at the ghost, who sweeps past us onto the landing, presumably to gather more ammunition. The way she moves makes me think she’s younger than the tired lines on her face make her appear.

>   “She’s not saying anything?” I ask, knowing Daria can often hear things I can’t, just as I can see things that are invisible to her.

  She shakes her head. “Nothing. I get the feeling she doesn’t want me here.”

  “Gee, what gave you that idea?” I roll my eyes. “Well, unless a poltergeist can look like a woman and have feelings, I don’t think that’s the issue.”

  “Is she still here?” Daria stands up, brushing dirt and cobwebs from her pants.

  I peek through the doorway. “She’s getting more silver.”

  “Let’s go. If you notice anything else about her, that would be awesome.”

  We hustle out of the bedroom and onto the landing. Daria heads straight down the stairs but I pause to look again at the ghost. The light is a tad better out here, with the soft glow of the moon pouring in through the big windows in the foyer. The woman turns from the cabinet, her arms full of more ammunition. When our eyes lock I feel the same boiling rage, this time with definite edges of betrayal and frustration. Her eyes are brown, her hair looks as if it’s graying a little. The longer I stare at her the more details bleed from white to full color—her dress goes black and the circles around her eyes turn to deep purple bruises.

  She snarls and flings a gravy boat at my head, which barely misses, and I leave her be, beating a hasty retreat after Daria. It’s easier to breathe outside, and the farther I get from the woman, the more the hatred in my chest subsides. I’ve never been angry enough to understand the term “see red” until now, not even when I caught my ex-fiancé naked on his desk giving it to one of his grad students.

  But that woman is livid. She’s as mad as Anne was desolate, and no other ghost has twisted my emotions so hard, not even Mama Lottie.

  Daria’s huddled behind the car, having put the metal vehicle between her and the house. I join her and close my eyes, doing my best to calm down and close myself off from the well of…whatever it is inside me that takes down the filmy veil between our world and theirs.

  I suck air in through my nose and blow it out through my mouth, and this time Daria is the one waiting on me to finish. We don’t speak, just climb into the car, and she drives away from the old house. I don’t ask her where we’re going but am not disappointed when we end up at Waffle House, even if I do have to work tomorrow. Ten Years Ago Gracie would have been delighted to set up camp at Waffle House half the night, gorging on fried food and sticky syrup, and binging coffee, and she’d still make it to her final the next morning.

  We slide into a booth, peruse the menus, and order before Daria looks up with an expression that says she wants to know everything.

  “Who do you think she is?” I ask, before she can get a word out. “Like, what do you know about the house?”

  “Not much. You know I like to assess a situation myself first, but it worried me that I couldn’t hear anything. It’s also a little strange for properties in this area to only be home to one entity, which is why I thought maybe it wasn’t a ghost. Poltergeists that strong can run off most anything else, and they prefer to be alone.” She pauses, stirring a buttload of cream into her coffee. “Who do you think she is?”

  “A lady who’s angry as hell and not going to take it anymore.”

  “Why?”

  I shrug. “I couldn’t hear her. That’s your gig. But she wasn’t talking, anyway, not that I could see. Just throwing things.” I pause, taking a sip of my water, thoughts tumbling around in my skull like drunk pixies. “Why would she want you to think she’s a poltergeist if she’s not?”

  Daria frowns. “They do that sometimes, the powerful ones. The angry ones. They don’t want to leave, and they know that’s why I’m there. Or she could know that she’s scarier without a face. The person who’s renting the house is ready to move out tomorrow if I can’t help.”

  My curiosity over who else in Heron Creek believes in spirits and shit enough to call in Daria burns a hole in my brain. “Who lives there?”

  “A woman named Taylor Nash. She moved in a few weeks ago. I guess she’d been renting a place closer to the beach, up in Driftwood, but she got tired of the tourists.”

  It takes me a moment to place the name, but then I remember: Leo dated her once, or maybe a couple of times. She’s a reporter for the Creek Sun.

  I can’t help but wonder if she’ll turn this into a story or if she’ll try to keep it quiet.

  “Maybe I’ll give your friend Mel a trial, see if she can dig up anything on this woman. It would be nice to turn over the tedious research to someone else.”

  My eyebrows shoot up, true surprise twisting my lips. “You don’t like that part of the job? Finding out who they are, what they’re doing here still? How they died, and when, and everything else?”

  “God, no. I’m not like you, Gracie. The ghosts don’t come to me. I go to them, and usually because they’ve got their dander up and are causing a whole lot of heartache for the living. My field is moving them on, regardless of how or why. You’re the helper.”

  It makes sense, I suppose, though I can’t imagine not wanting to know everything about them even if it wasn’t my intention to try to help them get closure.

  Not everyone enjoys history, or spending hours chasing down dusty rabbits on the Internet or in the library, I remind myself. Some people enjoy doing taxes, God bless their little pea-pickin’ hearts.

  “Are you really going to ask Mel to help?” I ask, still rolling the idea of her working in an investigative field around in my mind. The more I think about it, the more it doesn’t seem so strange—she’s always been the first one to jump at going along with my schemes, and she’d proven herself quite apt last month when she dug up all that dirt on the Middletons.

  Well, until she’d gotten arrested, at least.

  I guess we’ll have to hope that if she decides this is the career she wants, she’ll get better at not getting caught.

  And then she can teach me. I could really use a neat little trick like that to keep in my sadly lacking bag.

  When Mel brings Grant and Marcella into the library for story time the next day, I can’t help but jump at the chance to ask her about the whole working-for-Daria thing. After twelve or so hours to think about it, I’ve come up with at least half a dozen reasons it’s a terrible idea, which means that if and when she tells Will, he’ll probably find twice as many inside a hot second.

  Once the kids are settled around Amelia, restless but wide-eyed with anticipation, I give Mel a tip of my head that indicates we should slip away to the front desk. She casts a glance toward her two charges, but both are already wrapped up in the story. Marcella is so close to Millie that she’s practically sitting on my cousin’s feet. They’re fine, and even if they have one of those for-no-reason meltdowns that kids their age seem prone to, Amelia or LeighAnn can handle it.

  “What’s up?” Mel asks when we get back to my desk. She rests her butt on the corner with an oof. “My feet are killing me. No one tells you the second pregnancy is harder.”

  “It’s because the powers that be tricked you by making the first kid an angel. This one is going to come out with horns, and she’s a girl, besides. Yikes.”

  “You’re so good at giving comfort, Gracie. How could I have forgotten that about you?”

  I grin, then remember why we’re out here and pin her with an accusatory glare. “How could you not tell me you called Daria about a job?”

  “Oh, she told you?”

  “Yeah. Was it a secret?”

  Mel avoids my gaze and bites her lower lip. “No, not a secret. I was going to ask what you thought the other day at your house, but there was so much going on…”

  I remember when she means, and I also remember something else. “Will showed up.”

  “Yeah…”

  “Melanie Massie, are you keeping secrets from your husband?” I tsk her, sort of kidding but sort of not. When I first came back it would have made me feel…I don’t know, relieved maybe, to find out things weren’t perfect be
tween the two of them, but things are different now. They work, and I love them both.

  “I’m going to tell him. I just wanted to see what Daria thought first. No point in stirring the pot if the burner won’t light.”

  I walk around the desk and stand in front of her so she can’t avoid my eyes. “It’s not nothing. If this is really what you want to do, and you want to get your PI’s license and everything, then you should do it even if Daria decides to be, you know…Daria and blow you off.”

  “Do you think she’s going to blow me off?” Hope shines in Mel’s brown eyes.

  I can’t snuff it out. “No, actually. She’s thinking about asking you to do the background on a case we went out on last night.”

  Despite all of the times I’ve wished the ghosts would leave me alone and let me be normal, I’ve always known the latter would be impossible. The former seems improbable at this point, but even if it isn’t, I’ve found myself thinking about that angry woman more than a few times today—who she is, when she lived, what happened to piss her off. Maybe I’m cut out for this after all. Or maybe, like Frank says, it’s in my blood.

  “That would be awesome.” Mel looks right at me now, one eyebrow raised. “How much do you think she pays?”

  “Dude, I don’t know. I seriously couldn’t even guess how much people might pay her to get rid of ghosts.”

  “Well, I guess it’s more than I make now.” The attempt at a light tone tumbles onto its face.

  The worry lines around her eyes make me want to reach out and hug her, but Mel and I don’t really do that. We’re tough bitches. At least, that’s how we like the world—and each other—to see us. Amelia is the hugger.

  “I hope you don’t think I’m stepping on your toes, Gracie.”

  “What? Like I own the ghostly business in town?” I shake my head. “Believe me, I can use the help and so can Daria. She might even be a bigger mess than I am. I think you should try it out, but after you talk to Will.”

  She sighs. “I know what he’s going to say, though.”

  “You know he’s going to have some good points because he’s Will—levelheaded and a worrywart and always the buzzkill, but also the guy who kept us alive through our teens.”