Happy Medium: (Intermix)

by Meg Benjamin

  “Yeah.” She sighed. “This gets complicated, but the short explanation is most ghosts don’t stick around too long. People die, the spirits linger for a little while, and then everything is over.”

  “But?”

  “But some spirits get stuck here or something. Anyway, some ghosts stay around for a long time—sometimes a very long time. So long some of them forget they were ever human—they lose contact with what made them people once upon a time. Those are the Old Ones. The demons.”

  He blinked. “Demons? You mean like pitchforks and horns?”

  She shook her head. “No, not like that. They’re just very old ghosts, not something from hell. Although they’ve got some fairly hellish ideas sometimes. They exploit humans when they can. And some of them start feeding on the living.”

  The hairs on the back of his neck did a little dance. “You’re talking zombies?”

  She grimaced. “No, these are spirits, not reanimated bodies. And they don’t actually eat people—not literally, anyway. They usually take their souls, their essence. Doing that increases their own power.”

  “Usually?”

  She avoided his gaze again. “Danny’s ghost actually consumed people along with their souls. But I understand that’s relatively rare.”

  “Good to know.” He rubbed his eyes, suddenly more tired than he’d ever been before.

  His sister pushed herself to her feet. “Okay, that’s enough for one night. I’m sorry you had all of this thrown at you at once. We can sort it out over the next few days, but for now you’re going to sleep.” She took hold of his arm, pulling him gently upright. “C’mon, bro, let me show you to your room.”

  He followed her, managing not to stumble over his own feet. With any luck, he’d stay vertical until he found a bed.

  Rosie opened a door at the top of the stairs, switching on the light. “You can have this one. The bed’s all made up. Bathroom’s next door. Grab whatever you need—I think I can dig up a disposable razor for you from Evan’s stuff.”

  He closed his eyes for a moment, leaning a hand on the doorjamb, then turned back to look at her. “Thanks, Rosie. For everything. I think knowing all of this will help once I get the facts sorted out.”

  She nodded slowly. “It probably will. Don’t push it, though. Give yourself time to absorb it all. Then we’ll talk again.”

  He blew out a breath. “Right.” He headed into the room, fully intending to sleep for at least twelve hours straight. If his midnight lover came by, she’d be disappointed. He’d never felt less like having sex in his life.

  For a moment, Emma Shea’s face swam into his thoughts, but he resolutely pushed her away. With all the other complications that had just entered his life, the last thing he needed was somebody else to worry about.

  Even if that somebody else did have eyes the color of a spring sky and hair like flaming embers.

  He pulled off his shoes and stretched out across the bed, falling asleep in under five minutes.

  Chapter 7

  Emma drove by what she’d begun to think of as the Hampton house before she stopped to pick up coffee. She didn’t see Ray’s truck in the driveway. Maybe he really had found another place to sleep last night.

  Which was good, since he’d been totally worn out the last time she’d seen him. She hoped he’d gotten a good night’s sleep—that he was still sleeping in fact. Although she couldn’t help wondering with whom.

  The question was absolutely none of her business. Ray Ramos’s love life was not her concern and she needed to stay out of it. Even thinking about it was probably unwise.

  She grabbed a cup of coffee at the coffee shop where she’d gone with Ray, not because she was checking up on him or anything but because they made really good coffee. As she sipped, she reflected on the fact that she was full of it.

  She and Ray Ramos didn’t exactly have anything going on, but she had the feeling that they could have, a strong enough feeling that she wished she’d found him sitting on his front steps as she had the last couple of days, instead of off doing who knew what with who knew whom. What she might have said if she had found him she hadn’t a clue. Maybe on reflection it was just as well that she hadn’t seen him.

  The very idea of starting anything with Ray Ramos filled her with a combination of terror and delight. But at the same time, the very idea was also faintly ridiculous. Men who looked like him did not end up with women who looked like her. That was a given.

  The King William Historical Society didn’t open until ten. Emma spent the time before that as she had the past couple of days, searching the Internet on her laptop for information about the previous owners of the Hampton house.

  Allard Hampton was easy enough to find. He had indeed owned a box factory on the west side. He was a pillar of the Episcopalian church, a widower without children. He was survived by a couple of nephews and a niece, probably the ones who’d spent two years fighting over how the property would be divided. Most likely by the time they’d reached an agreement, the economy had tanked and the demand for houses in King William—particularly houses that needed some serious renovations—had dropped off. Enter Ray Ramos and company.

  Emma dismissed the possibility of Allard Hampton being their sex-starved ghost without even thinking much about it. The idea that anybody that bland could come back as a sex machine struck her as a non-starter. But that left several other names on her list. Hampton and his wife had lived in the house for thirty years. That only took them back to the late twentieth century, and the house had been built almost a hundred years before that.

  She sighed, staring down at the list of names again. She’d already done several Internet searches, turning up not much of anything. The owners were all men, which she could believe in terms of her groping ghost, but not the one who’d gone after Ray. Unless the ghost was seriously omnisexual. On the other hand, Ray’s guarded references to his dreams made her think the ghost who haunted him was female.

  She narrowed her eyes, considering. If the ghost wasn’t a man and wasn’t on her list, maybe she was someone associated with one of the men who was there. A wife, a daughter, a mistress. She could even have been someone who worked in the house—a housekeeper or a maid. Maybe a woman with a grievance. Maybe a woman who was using her sexuality now as a means of revenge.

  She’d check for any mention of women who’d died in the house, accidentally or otherwise. Surely even if it was just a housemaid falling off a ladder, someone would have noticed and commented.

  At ten, she tucked her laptop into her briefcase and headed for Gracie DeZavala’s desk. Ray had said she knew everything about the district. Maybe she’d remember something about a woman who’d had some bad luck at the Hampton house.

  Unfortunately, the woman sitting at Gracie’s desk was most definitely not Gracie. Her hair was a decorous shade of brown. She wore a button-down shirt with pale blue pinstripes along with a khaki A-line skirt. She also looked to be about the same age as Emma herself.

  Emma screeched to a halt on the other side of the desk, her heart dropping. “Is Ms. DeZavala here?”

  The woman shook her head. She seemed faintly annoyed, maybe because Emma was asking about Gracie rather than seeking her help. “This is Ms. DeZavala’s day off. I’m filling in. Can I help you?”

  Emma managed not to make a face. She had a feeling the woman wouldn’t like it. “I’m working on a research project, trying to find out information about one of the houses here in the district. I wanted to ask Ms. DeZavala if she recognized the names of any of the previous owners.” She gave her a hopeful smile. Maybe everybody who worked there had the history of the district engraved upon their synapses.

  The woman’s eyebrows arched up. “I wouldn’t know anything about that. I’m just filling in until she comes back tomorrow. The catalog is over there.” She waved in the general direction of the back of the building.


  Emma headed for the computers, sighing as she went.

  A couple of hours later she wondered if a person could actually die from boredom. While death might not be probable, a nap seemed to be a real possibility. She’d gone through the society’s database and checked out the owners who’d lived in the Hampton house prior to the seventies, the ones who hadn’t shown up on Google. A banker. An insurance broker. The insurance broker’s son, also in the insurance business.

  Emma read their obituaries with glazed eyes. They had wives. A few daughters. Undoubtedly they had female help around the house, but nothing in the sources she’d found mentioned them. She checked the King William paper—published until the forties—for references to the Hampton house address, but discovered that the index for the paper wasn’t organized that way. She checked the San Antonio paper and got the same result.

  Emma rubbed her eyes. She had a feeling that any deaths at the Hampton house would somehow figure heavily in the ghost’s backstory, but she hadn’t a clue how to find out about them. Assuming they’d even been covered by the local newspapers, since newspapers were sometimes a little reluctant to write about nasty things that happened in the houses of the rich.

  She typed the next owner’s name, Alexander Grunewald, into the database and waited. The usual obituary headed the list of citations. She scrolled down and found a wedding announcement along with a few citations for social news and the occasional business note. Most of the dates were in the teens and twenties except for the obituary, which was from 1932. She glanced at her list with its dates of purchase and sale. Grunewald hadn’t owned the house when he died. That was marginally interesting since most King William residents of that era seemed to hold on to their houses for life. Still, she supposed it wasn’t particularly suspicious that Grunewald had sold out.

  She switched to the files of the San Antonio paper and opened the obituary. Grunewald appeared to have lived to a ripe old age—eighty-two according to the death notice. She scanned the rest of the story. He was a banker, or at least an employee of the Salado Trust Bank, which was long gone. Married with three children, two sons and a daughter, all suffocatingly respectable. He apparently lived in what was now the Alamo Heights area. In fact, he was one of the earliest residents in Olmos Park. There was no mention of any King William connection, yet Grunewald had still owned the house within five years of his death. Even though he apparently hadn’t lived there for a decade or more.

  If he hadn’t lived in it, who had? Mother, wife, mistress . . .

  And if it was a mistress, how the hell would she ever find out? That name certainly wouldn’t be listed among the owners.

  Still, it was worth checking. She underlined Alexander Grunewald’s name for future reference.

  ***

  Ray was a little relieved that Emma wasn’t waiting for him when he got to the house—he was afraid she might have come by earlier. He’d slept longer than he’d meant to, and Rosie hadn’t bothered to wake him even though he’d asked her to.

  “After the last couple of nights, you needed to sleep as long as you could,” she explained. “There’s nothing waiting for you at that house that can’t wait a little longer.”

  As far as the house went that was definitely true, although he was less sure about Emma Shea. With any luck she’d come by later.

  He stepped inside the front door tentatively, not quite sure what to expect. He was still processing all the things Rosie had told him the night before. Were the ghosts in the house likely to talk to him? What the hell did he have to say to a couple of ghosts anyway?

  He knew what he’d like to say—keep your hands off my dick. And while you’re at it, just get the hell out and stay out.

  He sighed, gathering up his tools and the plastic sheeting to move them to the upper floor. Deep down he still had a hard time believing most of the stuff his sister had told him. He could believe Rosie and his mom had some kind of weird abilities. Rosie had always had something special, and his mom had even more of it. Whether you called it female intuition or a sixth sense, both of them clearly had it in spades, even when Rosie was little. He could also accept the idea that his brother Danny had some kind of psychic mojo, given his success as a real estate salesman in a lousy economy.

  But not him. He was a carpenter, for God’s sake. He ripped down walls and built floors and basically fixed up whatever was rotten. No psychic mojo there, just a lot of sweat. And he’d never had anything weird happen to him before.

  He paused then, holding the plastic sheeting he’d been ready to tack across the window. He hadn’t really had anything weird happen, had he? Other than a couple of times he’d steered clear of jobs that turned out to be massive butt pains because something about the house made him feel uneasy when he walked through the front door. But that was just experience, not any kind of psychic message. Right?

  And he sure as hell hadn’t gotten any psychic warnings about the Hampton house.

  Right. Not going to consider any of that right now.

  He plugged his iPod into a set of portable speakers he’d brought with him from Boerne. Up until now, he hadn’t bothered using them, but today he felt like having some music along with the noise he’d make with his tools. If stuff got covered with dust, so be it. Nonetheless, he draped the whole sound setup in its own plastic sheet for protection from flying wallboard.

  Twenty minutes later he was prying off more wallboard as the Band of Heathen blared from his speakers. Surprising what a good blast of roots rock could do for your point of view. He sang along with “Cornbread,” bellowing “Sometimes it cooks up real, real slow” at the top of his lungs. The piece of wallboard he was prying loose popped off with a snap.

  And the iPod went silent.

  Ray paused, waiting for the next song, but nothing happened. “Crap,” he muttered, pulling off his dusty gloves as he walked across the room.

  The iPod screen glowed back at him when he picked it up. He checked the connection to the speakers. He checked to make sure everything was plugged in. He even blew into the ports to make sure no dust had worked its way into the connections.

  Nothing.

  For a moment, a chill moved down his spine. Then he felt a welcome hit of burning rage in his belly. “So you don’t like my taste in music? Fine. Go somewhere the fuck else.” His voice echoed in the room. “You’re dead, Goddammit! You don’t get to choose anymore.”

  The silence stretched for a moment longer, then the iPod blared to life so suddenly he almost dropped it. “Very funny,” he muttered, draping the plastic sheeting over the speakers again.

  “Ray?” A woman’s voice floated up from the lower floor.

  He managed not to jump. At least this voice was human. “I’m up here,” he called, walking to the top of the stairs.

  Emma’s face appeared below. “Hi. I stopped by earlier but you weren’t here yet, so I went on to the historical society.”

  He nodded. “Yeah, I slept at my sister’s. Didn’t set my alarm.”

  For a moment, he almost thought she looked relieved. Then he decided that made no sense at all. “I’ll come up,” she said. “I’m dressed for scraping today.”

  He glanced at her pressed khakis and powder blue Ralph Lauren golf shirt. Right. In Emma Land, this was apparently casual wear. On the other hand, the shirt did a decent job of outlining her more-than-decent breasts. Reluctantly, he started toward the back bedroom. “Okay, let’s get you set up.”

  They worked in companionable silence until the afternoon. Since he’d eaten breakfast late, he didn’t bother to break for lunch. He figured Emma would leave for food if she needed to. When shadows began to stretch through the windows, she wandered into the room where he was tearing out a particularly nasty piece of wallboard. “Do you want dinner? I’m getting sort of hungry.”

  He paused, staring at the clock on the iPod. Five o’clock. “Hell. I lost track of time. Did y
ou get any lunch?”

  She shrugged. “I wasn’t hungry.”

  Somehow he doubted that. “Okay. Let me clean up a little.” He paused. “Actually, let me grab some stuff here and then we can swing by Rosie’s place. I need to take my clothes over there anyway.”

  “Your sister?”

  “Right. She should be home because her boyfriend’s out of town.”

  Emma looked a little doubtful. Maybe she thought Rosie would disapprove. “It’s no problem if you come along. Besides, maybe she can give you some ideas about research. She used to be a librarian.” He did his best to sound reassuring.

  “What does she do now?”

  Interesting question. At one point he would have said Rosie was an independent researcher. Now he wasn’t entirely sure what she did for a living. Somehow he doubted it had much to do with libraries. “She does private research,” he said vaguely.

  “Oh.” Emma’s expression cleared. “A contractor. We use people like that sometimes for the show. Maybe I can add her to our list.”

  “Maybe.” Actually his sister might be a great source for supernatural research now that he thought about it. Of course, the stuff she came up with might not be all that helpful to somebody like Gabrielle DeVere.

  Emma followed him to Rosie’s house. She could probably have left her car at the Hampton house, but he didn’t particularly want to go back there after dark even to pick up her car. Which made no sense at all when he thought about it since just that morning the ghost had provided him with a practical demonstration of its ability to wreak havoc in daylight as well as nighttime.

  Emma stepped out of her car, staring up at the gingerbread wonder of Rosie’s mansion. “This is really cool. Any ghosts?”

  He shook his head firmly. “Nothing.” If his sister had any supernatural guests, he figured she’d want to keep it to herself.

  Rosie met them at the door, wearing what he thought of as her Mom expression—polite interest coupled with some eyebrow raising in his direction.