by Kim Harrison
“What?” Jenks yelped, the burst of yellow pixy dust settling onto the floor to slowly fade. “How come we didn’t know before? We’ve been here a year!”
“We do live next to a graveyard.” I looked over my kitchen, feeling it was alien suddenly. Damn it, I should have gone with my first gut feelings when I saw the tombstones. This wasn’t right, and my knees weren’t feeling all that sturdy. “A ghost?” I stammered. “In my kitchen?” Then my heart did a flip-flop, and my gaze shot to my demon library, down from the belfry. “Is it my dad?” I shouted.
Ford put a hand to his head. “Back up. Back up!” he cried. “You’re too close.”
Heart pounding, I looked at the eight feet between us and pressed into the fridge.
“I think he meant for the ghost to back up,” Jenks said dryly.
My knees started to shake. “This is freaking me out, Jenks. I don’t like it.”
“Yeah,” Jenks said. “Like I’m all peach fuzz and nectar here?”
Ford’s expression eased, and the amulet around his neck went a sorrowful brown tinged with the red of embarrassment. “He’s sorry,” Ford said, gaze unfocused as he concentrated. “He didn’t mean to scare you.” A smile came over him, unusually soft. “He likes you.”
I blinked, and Jenks started to swear in one-syllable sentences in a way that only a pixy can manage. “Likes me?” I stammered, then got the willies. “Oh God,” I moaned. “I’ve got a peeping Tom of a ghost. Who is it?”
The amulet went entirely red. Ford looked down at it as if needing confirmation. “I’d say not a peeping Tom. I’m getting that he’s frustrated, benevolent, and he’s starting to feel better now that you know he’s here.” Ford’s eyes slid to my bag. “Ten to one he’s the person who has been changing your ring tones.”
I fumbled for a chair, yanked it to the fridge, and sat down. “But my phone has been doing this since the fall,” I said, looking at Jenks for confirmation. “Months.” Anger started trickling in. “He’s been here all that time? Spying on me?”
Again, the amulet went an embarrassed red. “He’s been trying to get your attention,” Ford said gently, as if the ghost needed an advocate.
I put my elbows on my knees and dropped my head into my hands. Swell.
Clearly frustrated, Jenks landed on the sill beside his brine shrimp tank. “Who is it?” he demanded. “Ask him his name.”
“Emotions, Jenks,” Ford said. “Not words.”
Taking a calming breath, I looked up. “Well, if it’s not my dad…” I went cold. “Kisten?” I warbled, feeling my entire world take a hit. God, if it was Kisten. There was a spell to talk to the dead who were stuck in purgatory, but Kisten’s soul was gone. Or was it?
Ford seemed to waver, and I held my breath. “No,” he finally said, and the amulet swirled with black and purple. “I, ah, don’t think he liked Kisten.”
Jenks and I exhaled together, and Ford straightened in his chair. I didn’t know what I was feeling. Relief? Disappointment?
“Sir,” Ford said to a corner in the kitchen, and my skin crawled. “Think about your contact to this plane. Ah, that would be Rachel, probably.”
Again I held my breath. Jenks was shedding gold sparkles. Colors shifted across Ford’s amulet, but I didn’t know enough to interpret them when they were all mixed up like that.
“I’m feeling the excitement of a past danger shared,” Ford said softly. “Of fondness, gratitude. Heavy gratitude to you.” His eyes opened, and I stifled a shiver at the alien look in them. They were his, but they carried the shadow of the soul of the person he was picking up on.
“Have any of your clients died?” Ford asked. “Someone you were trying to help?”
“Brett,” Jenks said.
“Peter?” I blurted out.
But the amulet went a negative gray.
“Nick,” Jenks said nastily, and the color on the metal disk became a violent shade of purple.
Ford blinked, trying to divorce himself from the hate. “I’d say no,” he whispered.
This was really weird. Whoever it was knew my old boyfriends. My eyes closed in a wash of guilt. I had known a lot of people who were now dead. I was a freaking albatross.
“Rachel.”
It was gentle and caring, and I opened my eyes to find Ford looking at me with compassion. “You are worthy of accepting love,” he said, and I flushed.
“Stop eavesdropping on me,” I mumbled, and Jenks’s wings hummed an agitated whisper.
“The ghost thinks so, too,” Ford added.
I swallowed a lump. “Are you sure it isn’t my dad?”
Ford’s smile turned benevolent. “It’s not your dad, but he does want to protect you. He’s frustrated, watching you these past…months? And being unable to help.”
I let out my breath in a huff. Jenks’s wings hit a higher pitch, and he took to the air. Great. I really needed another white knight. Not. “Who is it?” Jenks said, almost angry. Then, in a burst of sparkles that rivaled the lights, he shouted, “Rache, where’s your Ouija board?”
I stared at the wildly darting pixy, then, understanding what he wanted to do, I shuffled through Ivy’s papers for the back of one she wouldn’t miss. “I don’t have one,” I said, turning over a hand-drawn map of the conservatory and writing out the alphabet in big, bold letters. “They give me the creeps.”
Feeling light-headed, I pushed the hand-drawn alphabet in front of Ford and backed up. Ford gave me a wondering look, and I said, “Run your finger under the letters. When you feel a positive emotion, that’s the first letter of his name.” I looked at the empty-seeming kitchen. “Okay?”
The amulet went gold in affirmation, and I sat down to hide my shaking knees. This was really, really weird.
“I’d say he’s okay with that.” But Ford looked uneasy for the first time. With a single finger, he began at A, running over them with a deliberate slowness. I watched as he paused at one, then backed up. “P,” Ford said.
My thoughts flashed to Peter, then Piscary. One dead, the other really dead. Both impossible. But what if it was Peter? He was living as an undead, but if his soul was in purgatory, and I could get it into his body, would he be whole? Was this Ivy’s answer?
I licked my lips and watched Ford reach the end of the alphabet and start over. “I,” he said, then hesitated. “Yes, I.”
My exhale was long. Not Peter, then. But Piscary? Ford had said the ghost was benevolent, and the vampire hadn’t been. Unless it was a trick. Or Piscary had been a good man before he’d become a vampire. Did their souls renew themselves at death, not disintegrate? Revert to a state before everything went wrong?
Ford reached the end and started again. “E,” he said, looking as if he was more relaxed. Not Piscary, then, and I felt better.
“Pie,” Jenks said snidely. “Did you kill a baker we don’t know about, Rachel?”
I leaned forward, breathless. “Shut up, Jenks.”
Ford’s finger stopped again, almost immediately. “R,” he said, and I felt myself go cold, then hot. No freaking way…
“Oh my God!” I shouted, jumping to my feet. Jenks hit the ceiling at my outburst, and Ford covered his ears, eyes closed in pain. “I know who it is!” I exclaimed, eyes wide and my heart pounding. I could not believe it. I could not freaking believe it. But it had to be him!
“Rachel!” Jenks was in my face, shedding gold sparkles. “Stop! You’re killing Ford! Knock it off!”
His hand to his head, Ford smiled. “It’s okay,” he said, grinning. “This is good stuff. From both of you.”
Wonder filled me, and I shook my head as I looked around my kitchen. “Unbelievable,” I whispered, then more loudly said, “Where are you? I thought you were at peace.” I stopped, hands falling to my side, disappointed somehow. “Wasn’t saving Sarah enough?”
Ford was leaning back in his chair, grinning as if he was witnessing a family reunion, but Jenks was pissed. “Who the hell are you talking to, Rache? Tell me or I’m g
oing to pix you, so help me Tink.”
Hand gesturing at nothing, I stood in the middle of my kitchen, still not believing it. “Pierce,” I said, and Ford’s amulet glowed. “It’s Pierce.”
Nine
The dusty box my mom had brought over last fall was pretty much empty. There was a scarily small T-shirt from Disneyland. Some bric-a-brac. My old diary, which I had started some time after my dad died and I realized pain could be remade once you gave it the permanence of words. The books that had once filled the box were now in the kitchen, but the eight-hundred-level ley line arcane textbook Robbie had given me for the winter solstice hadn’t been among them. I hadn’t thought it was here, but I had wanted to check before I went over to my mom’s and got her stirred up by looking for it in her attic. It had to be somewhere.
But it wasn’t in my closet, and sitting back on my heels, I pushed a long curl out of my eyes and exhaled, gazing at the single-paned, night-darkened stained-glass window my bedroom had. Without the book, I had no hope of re-creating the spell I’d done eight years ago to give a spirit in purgatory a temporary body. I was missing a few hard-to-find ley line tools as well. Not to mention that the charm needed a whopping big boost of communal energy.
Being at the closing of the circle at Fountain Square on the solstice would do it. I knew that from experience, but the solstice was come and gone. I was banned from the Howlers’ arena, so that was out, even if they did have a game in the snow. New Year’s was my next best bet. They didn’t close the circle, but there would be a party, and when people started singing “Auld Lang Syne,” the energy flowed. I had three days to find everything. It didn’t look good.
“Well, Tink loves a duck,” I said, and Jenks, resting on my dresser among my perfumes, buzzed his wings. The pixy hadn’t left my side since finding out we had a ghost. I thought it was funny. Pierce had been here almost a year. Why it bothered Jenks now I had no idea.
Though our hour had come and gone, Ford was still in the kitchen, slowly talking to Pierce one letter at a time as I listened in while whipping up a batch of earth-magic locator amulets. The demon curse would have been easier, but I wasn’t going to twist demon magic in front of Ford. I had a bad feeling I’d done the complex charm wrong since nothing happened when I invoked the first potion with a drop of my blood and spilled it on the amulet. Mia was probably outside the quarter-mile radius within which it worked, but I should’ve smelled something.
“You think the book is still at your mom’s?” Jenks asked, his wings a blur though his butt was still settled on my dresser. The sound of his kids playing with Rex was loud, and I wondered how long the cat would last before she hid from them.
“I’ll find out tonight,” I said firmly as I refolded the box and shoved it into a pile of boots. “I must have left it at Mom’s when I moved out,” I said around a stretch to get the kinks out of my back. “It’s probably in the attic along with the stuff to do it.” I hope.
I stood, glancing at my alarm clock. I was meeting Marshal at his apartment in less than an hour, and from there we were driving to my mom’s so it would look more like a “date.” Finding an excuse to get up into the attic might be hard, but Marshal could help. I didn’t want to ask my mom about the book. The first time I’d used it, I’d gotten in major trouble with the I.S.
Hands on my hips, I gazed at the unusual sight of the back of my closet. Shoes and boots were everywhere, and the thought of Newt possessing me, clearing out my closet in the search for her memory, rose up. Suddenly nervous, I shoved the box away and began carefully putting my boots back.
Jenks took to the air, his legs unfolding to reach the top of the dresser and his face tight with worry. “Why do you want to give him a body anyway? You don’t even know why he’s here. How come Ford hasn’t asked him that? Huh? He’s been spying on us.”
Wondering where that had come from brought my head up. “Jenks, he’s been dead for a hundred years. Why would Pierce be spying on us?” I huffed, nudging the last of my boots into line.
“If he’s not spying on us, then why is he here?” Jenks asked, arms crossed belligerently.
Hand on my hip, I gestured in exasperation. “I don’t know! Maybe because I helped him once and he thinks I can help him again. That’s what we do, you know. What’s with you, Jenks! You’ve been bitchy all night.”
The pixy sighed, his wings stopping to look gossamer and silk. “I don’t like it,” he said. “He’s been here for a year watching us. Messing with your phone.”
“He’s been trying to get noticed.” The air pressure shifted, and Ivy’s footsteps echoed in the sanctuary.
“Ivy?” Jenks said loudly, then he darted out.
Hearing Ivy’s steps, I started throwing my shoes in the closet, trying to get it shut before Ivy offered to help me organize. My thoughts went back to that solstice night, trying to remember the charm. I saw Robbie pick up the rare red-and-white shallow bowl before we fled Fountain Square. But what he did with it between that and Pierce and me going to the vamp’s house and saving the girl, I didn’t know. The kitchen had been clean by the time I was strong enough to stand again, and I had assumed Dad’s ley line stuff was back in the attic. I never did see the book again. My mom hadn’t said much about me summoning a ghost out of purgatory, and it would be just like her to hide everything to keep me from doing it again. Especially when I’d been trying to summon my dad, not a young man accused of witchcraft and buried alive in the mid-1800s.
Ivy’s shadow passed my door, Jenks a small glow and a hushed voice of panic on her shoulder. “Hi, Ivy,” I called as I kicked the last shoe in and forced the door shut. Then, knowing how she disliked surprises, I added, “Ford is in the kitchen.”
From Ivy’s room came a preoccupied “Hi, Rachel.” Then a terse “Get out of my way, Jenks,” followed by a soft thump. “Hey. Where’s my sword?”
My eyebrows rose. Nudging my flip-flops under the bed, I went to the hall. “You left it in the belfry stairway after you oiled it the last time.” I hesitated, hearing Jenks tattling on me. “Ah, what’s up?”
Ivy was halfway back to the sanctuary. Her long winter coat swayed, and her boots hit the wood floor with purpose. Gold sparkles fell from Jenks as he flitted back and forth in front of her, flying backward. I hated it when he did that to me, and by her stiff arm movements, I figured Ivy did, too.
“It’s a ghost, Ivy!” he shrilled. “Rachel summoned it when she was a kid, and it’s back.”
Leaning against the door frame with my arms crossed, I said, “I was eighteen, not a kid.”
His sparkles shifted to silver. “And he likes her,” he added.
Oh for God’s sake, I thought, losing sight of them in the dark foyer but for Jenks’s glow. “We have a randy ghost?” Ivy asked, faintly amused, and my eyes narrowed.
“This isn’t funny,” Jenks snapped.
“He’s not randy!” I said loudly, more embarrassed by Jenks than anything else. Pierce was probably hearing every word. “He’s a nice guy.” But my gaze became distant as I remembered Pierce’s eyes, the flinty black of them and how I’d shivered when he kissed me on my front porch, ready to go off to tag the bad vampire and thinking he could make me stay behind.
I smiled, remembering my past emotional inexperience. I’d been eighteen, and totally impressed by a charismatic witch with mischievous eyes. But it had been the turning point in my life. Together, Pierce and I had saved a little girl from a pedophile vamp—the same vampire who’d gotten him buried alive in the 1800s, which I thought beautiful justice. I’d expected the deed would have been enough to put his soul at rest, but apparently not.
That night had been the first time I’d felt alive, the adrenaline and endorphins making my body, still recovering from disease, feel…normal. It was then that I realized I’d risk anything to feel that way all the time—and most days, I did.
Ivy’s lithe shape seemed to ghost across the dim sanctuary toward me, pixies whirling in her wake with too many questions. She h
ad her sheathed sword in her hand, and concern hit me. “What do you need your sword for?” I asked, then froze. She’d been out to the boat. She’d found something, and was going to follow it up with cold steel before sunrise. Crap. “You’ve been to the boat.”
Her perfect, oval face was placid, but the intent eagerness of her pace tightened my gut. “I’ve been to the boat,” Ivy said. “But I don’t know yet who else was out there, if that’s what you’re asking. Don’t you have a date tonight with Marshal?”
“It’s not a date,” I said, ignoring Jenks hovering nearby, shedding frustrated sparkles. “He’s rescuing me from my overzealous mother. How come the sword if you don’t know who was at the boat?”
“The hell with the sword, Ivy,” Jenks shouted, and I didn’t wonder that his kids were now whispering in the sanctuary’s shadowed rafters. “This is serious! It’s been here for months! Changing her ring tones and scaring my cat. Spying on us!”
“Pierce is not spying on us. God, Jenks, lighten up!” I exclaimed, and Ivy came out of her room with her sword, a rag, and the cleaner she used on her steel. “I don’t mind skipping dinner at my mom’s. You want to take a girls’ night out?” I asked, eyeing her blade.
“No, but thanks for the offer.” Ivy eased the blade out an inch and the biting scent of oiled metal tickled my nose. “I got a look at the list of people who visited Piscary when he was in jail.” Her smile made me stifle a shudder, and when I dropped my gaze, she added, “The sword is a conversation starter. Rynn…” A faint blush marred her pale complexion, and she started for the kitchen. “I’m not his scion, but he’s letting me lean on him.”
Lips pressed, I couldn’t help but wonder what she gave him in exchange, then squelched it. Not my business. As long as Ivy was happy, I was happy.
“So did your chat with Ford bring anything to light?” Ivy asked over her shoulder, and I pushed into motion behind her, headed for the kitchen.
“Just that we’ve got a freaking ghost!” Jenks said loud enough to make my eyeballs hurt. Rex padded at Ivy’s heels, ears pricked up and eager. “Aren’t you listening? I think it’s one of her old boyfriends she killed, spying on us.”