To Seize a Wayward Spirit

by R. L. Naquin

  “Not this week.” She waved the plunger at him. “And enough with the ‘ma’am.’”

  As much as I appreciated Tahm rushing in to save me, then scouring my room for monsters, I couldn’t stand there pretending to be a helpless damsel for long. He opened his mouth to answer her, but I cut him off. “There was a naked eyeball hanging in the air in my room. Is that part of the welcome package? If it is, you might have warned us. It really startled me.” I tried not to sound accusatory, but if she had parts floating around, she shouldn’t have kept it as a surprise.

  Miss Angelica blinked at me. “A what, now? A floating eyeball?”

  I nodded. “It didn’t hang around long.”

  “You mean, like a beholder in Dungeons & Dragons?”

  I frowned. “I have no idea what you’re talking about.”

  “It’s a huge, bloodshot eye with a fanged mouth and it has eye stalks on the top. Very powerful.”

  “No, this was just a normal eye. No fangs or stalks with more eyes.” I frowned deeper. “Is that really a thing, what you just described, or are you messing with me?”

  She gave me a slow shake of the head and an expression that said she didn’t think much of my brain capabilities. “No, dear. It’s part of a game.” She turned to Tahm. “Is it gone, whatever it was? Should I call in an exterminator? An exorcist? I have both on speed dial.”

  That didn’t make me feel any safer.

  “No, ma’—Miss Angelica. It seems to be clear for now. If we have another problem, we’ll certainly tell you.”

  “Well, then.” She stepped into the bathroom and dropped off the plunger. “Just in case. Never hurts to be prepared when there are leprechauns in the house. See you at dinner.” She shuffled down the stairs without further comment or apparent concern over what I’d seen in her house.

  “Sorry for making a fuss.”

  Ash patted my shoulder. “It sounds kind of terrifying.”

  “Not really. I was startled more than anything else.” To be honest, my pride was a little wounded, too. But I didn’t want to mention that. “If everybody’s ready, maybe we could get back to work. We have a few hours before dinner.”

  Tahm closed my door and joined us in the hallway. “Where do you want to start?”

  “Let’s start with Felicia. The trail is fresher with the banshee, but I doubt she’ll go far. The goblin escaped first.” The longer a soul wandered away from its body after death, the less rational it became. “I’m afraid to leave her for too long.”

  Ash folded her arms across her chest. “You don’t think she’ll hurt anyone, do you?”

  I shrugged. “I hope not. But until we get a sighting, we won’t know if she’s hanging out with her still-living dog or tossing toasters in her enemies’ bathtub.”

  Ash shivered. “I guess we’d better hurry.”

  I led my team to the truck, trying hard not to think about how many souls we had to capture. Here I was worried about the mental state of the first soul we had to catch. There was no telling how bad the souls would gradually get.

  By the time we tracked down and captured the seventeenth soul, we might have a lunatic on our hands.

  Or a serial killer.

  Chapter Three

  The parking lot at the small, family-owned hardware store didn’t look like much of anything. It certainly didn’t look like a place where someone had died. There was less space than the toy store parking lot. I supposed people needed baby dolls more often than they needed hammers.

  That sort of made sense. You could never have enough baby dolls. Who needed more than one hammer?

  Tahm and I split up and walked around the lot with our soul stones out, checking for any interesting blips.

  Ash followed behind me, scowling. “I still don’t get why he has a soul stone but I don’t.”

  She knew why, so I didn’t go over it again with her. “Because Art’s trying very hard to make you miserable.” I turned and faced her, my fist in the air. “Resist! Don’t let him win!” I returned to my scan of the parking lot.

  She knew why Art had made her a stoneless apprentice, while Tahm was a trainee with his own stone. Tahm was a full djinn with a lifetime of knowledge about the Hidden world both before and after the change that made everyone pass for human. Ash, however, had only learned about the Hidden world a few months ago, and up until then, had every reason to believe she was human.

  Turned out, she was half human. While full djinn had three magic-filled gems embedded in their wrists, a half djinn only had one. And since the gems didn’t fully appear until the djinn—or half djinn—turned eighteen, poor Ash hadn’t had a clue what had been going on until I’d picked her up hitchhiking right before her birthday.

  She had to become comfortable in the Hidden world before Art was going to give her something as powerful as a soul stone. I was pretty sure she understood. But having Tahm show up and be forcefully shoved into our party already stung. She and I had been bonding. Handing him a stone and not her was salt in the wound.

  I focused on the shiny, black surface of my stone. I’d spent money I couldn’t afford at the time to have a jeweler set it in the back of a golden scarab beetle. The effort and design was an expression of my commitment to being a soul chaser long-term. Kind of like opting for the embossed business cards and paying out of pocket instead of taking the flat, boring company-issued ones.

  Also, I liked to be fancy.

  I rested the scarab pendant in the palm of my hand and stared into the depths of the soul stone as I walked. From time to time, a spark shot across the surface or blinked a few times, Poor Dead Pete making sure I knew he was still in there.

  As I walked, the stone warmed in my hand. I turned left at a blue Nissan and the stone cooled a bit, so I reversed my steps and turned right. The heat increased, and I walked faster, almost skipping with excitement. Normally, soul stones vibrated to relay directional clues. I followed the trail, playing a game of hot and cold either with the stone or with Poor Dead Pete. He’d been there the day Felicia had died. He would know where it had happened. I supposed the heat signals could have been my stone becoming more attuned to me from years of use. I hoped it was Pete helping, though. He wasn’t officially part of the team, but to me, he was our fourth member.

  I wasn’t sure what I expected to find. The trail was four months cold. But I weaved between cars until the stone pulsed with heat. If I hadn’t been a djinn—a creature of fire myself—I’d have had to drop the stone and hold it by its gold chain.

  As the temperature reached its peak, I looked up in time to find Tahm plowing straight into me coming from the other direction.

  “Oof.” I stumbled, and my pendant flew out of my hand, dropping neatly against my chest and swinging by its chain.

  Tahm grabbed my elbows and kept me standing upright. “I’m so sorry. Are you okay?”

  I nodded, afraid to speak. Despite the heat I’d felt from my soul stone a moment earlier, the heat from Tahm’s hands was scalding. My stomach clenched, and I couldn’t meet his concerned gaze for fear he’d see how I really felt. I had to look away. “I’m fine. Just clumsy.” I stepped back and allowed his hands to fall away from my arms. Without his touch, I felt a chill.

  Tahm cleared his throat and looked away. “Well, then. I suppose this is where it happened if we both tracked it to here.”

  I looked at the pavement at our feet and didn’t see anything at first. Months of traffic—both human and vehicular—had passed over this patch of pavement. A foot away from where we stood, a double streak of black swooshed away from us. The skid marks were short, as if whoever had made them had waited until the last possible minute to apply the brakes.

  Ash pointed at the marks. “Is that what we’re here for?”

  I shrugged. “Maybe. For all I know, the skid marks and the stones insisting this was the spot where Felicia died coul
d be unrelated.” But I didn’t believe they were. And that wasn’t the only thing I thought was more than coincidence. “Guys, two parking lot hit-and-runs where the victim was a member of the Hidden community can’t be random. Can it?”

  Tahm kneeled, his face thoughtful. “I was thinking the same thing. The way those tires squealed yesterday after the banshee was hit seemed like it wasn’t an accident. There was no hesitation, like there would be if they hadn’t seen her until it was too late. And now these skid marks. They don’t look hesitant, either.”

  I squatted next to him to get a better look. “So, now what do we do? Take pictures of the marks and try to match them to some exotic tire that only one type of rare car uses, thus tracking it down to the murderer?” It all sounded very exciting and forensic-like, but we didn’t have that sort of equipment, and if we did, we wouldn’t know how to use it.

  Tahm grabbed his phone and held it out, taking pictures from every angle. He gave me a sheepish expression. “You never know.”

  Of course, there was a good chance we were trying to reinvent the wheel. I snagged my own phone and scrolled through my contact list until I found the number for the local OGRE squad. They were the cops and detectives of the Hidden world. Now that we had a feel for the location, it was time to call the experts and discover what they already knew.

  * * *

  “I don’t understand how you could call a hit-and-run an accident, then close the investigation.” I slid a file across the rickety folding table to the satyr in front of me. In the past, I’d worked with OGRE squads and hadn’t ever had a problem. Everyone behaved professionally and did their jobs. This guy hadn’t even bothered to put on his human disguise to answer the door.

  The OGRE headquarters was in an abandoned warehouse in a part of town that made even me nervous. The satyr was in charge, which was never a good idea. His name was Ziggy, which was about the stupidest name I’d ever heard for someone who was supposed to enforce law and order in the community. He appeared to be more concerned about picking a popcorn hull from between his teeth than he was in helping us.

  Tahm leaned forward, hovering over Ziggy in intimidating closeness. “Did you do any kind of investigating whatsoever?”

  The satyr sat back in his seat and propped his cloven hooves on the table. “Look, it’s like I said. Hit-and-run. No clues. No witnesses.”

  Ash folded her arms across her chest and scowled. “Well, that’s not true. There was a reaper there. He probably saw it happen. Reapers usually arrive before the event occurs.”

  “Good point, Ash.” I took back the file and flipped it open again. “Didn’t you at least interview the reaper?”

  He had no way of knowing the reaper in question was dead. Well, his body was anyway. I touched my pendant through my shirt and felt an answering heat. Poor Dead Pete was listening to us talk about him.

  Ziggy held his arms in the air in surrender. “I’m shorthanded. So, sue me.”

  I scanned the single sheet of paper in the folder, hoping to find something useful. All I could learn that I hadn’t known before was the exact time of death and who’d claimed the body. That might actually be handy. I wrote it down in my tiny notebook. At the bottom of the page was the name of the investigating OGRE. “Who’s Tyrell Reese? I’d like to speak to him.” I wrote that down, too.

  “Good luck with that.” Ziggy stretched and yawned. “I told you. I’m shorthanded.”

  “Where’s the rest of the squad?” Tahm pushed his chair away and rose to scan the dimly lit warehouse.

  “You’re looking at it.” Ziggy placed his feet on the floor and sat up straighter. “Everybody else cleared out.”

  Even if I hadn’t met Ziggy in person, I’d have assumed the personnel shortage was his fault. That sort of thing only happens due to poor leadership—at least in my experience. “I assume you’ve informed Headquarters of this development?” I smiled at him, a sweet smile that I knew didn’t reach my eyes. I’d been in this guy’s presence for all of twenty minutes and I was already wondering if anyone would miss him if he had a hit-and-run situation of his own.

  “Sure, sure.” He watched Tahm wander past him and open the file cabinet. “Hey, that’s government property, buddy.”

  Tahm shut the drawer and opened the next one. “Good thing we work for the government, then.”

  Ziggy flashed an annoyed look, then returned to his neutral expression. “Look, if you’re so worried about it, why don’t you check with the reaper yourself? They don’t usually stray far.”

  I closed the worthless folder again. “He’s dead now, too, so you might want to be more cooperative going forward.”

  The satyr swallowed. “Is that a threat?”

  We all looked at him, then by mutual, unspoken agreement, ignored him.

  “If you’ll give me the names you have in the file, I’ll start tracking them down.” Ash reached out her hand, and I gave her the notebook with the names I’d found of the arresting officer and the next of kin who’d picked up the body.

  “We’ll be in touch.” I tossed him a half wave and marched toward the door with my team following close behind.

  “You’re not going to report me, are you?”

  The last thing I heard as I closed the door was a soft, pathetic bleat.

  We climbed into the truck and buckled in. I sat for a moment with my hands on the steering wheel and the engine still off.

  “Well, shit.” I started the engine. “Art is not going to be happy about what’s going on here.”

  Ash patted my leg. “He’ll thank you for reporting it.”

  Poor Art. He’d inherited a mess. The entire government had broken down. So many folks had died. Everybody was shorthanded. But this was ridiculous. Having a satyr on the squad at all was stupid. They were notoriously lazy, self-serving, perverted little beasts. They were equally as likely to steal a wallet as they were to dive headfirst into a woman’s cleavage, uninvited, and make motorboat noises. They were the trailer trash of the Hidden community. Ziggy never should have been given a badge, let alone be allowed to be in charge. I was certain Art hadn’t authorized it.

  “I’ll call Art tonight. Maybe he can send someone to take over.” I rubbed the spot between my eyebrows in an effort to stave off an approaching headache. “So, where to, navigator?”

  Ash held up her phone. “Felicia’s next of kin, Gardenia Appleton. Mother of the deceased. According to the paperwork, she’s the one who claimed Felicia’s body.” She held up her phone. “Here’s the address.”

  I examined the map, then glanced at Tahm. “You’re really quiet. You have another plan?”

  “What? No.” He chuckled. “Sorry. I was just thinking how much a djinn could accomplish, given that guy’s position.”

  I raised my eyebrows in surprise. “Are you wanting the job?”

  “Oh, no. I was just thinking.” He smiled, and my heart did a little pirouette.

  Dammit. That was getting old. I had to get a grip. “Okay, then.” I put the truck in gear, hoping no one would notice my hand shaking. “Let’s go see Gardenia Appleton and find out what she knows.”

  It had to be more than we did.

  * * *

  Gardenia Appleton knew a great deal more than we did. And she was so happy to have someone finally investigate her daughter’s death, she invited us inside without hesitation. When she opened the door, she was a tall human woman with a sandy-blond updo. The irises of her light brown eyes were ringed with green, and her expression was warm and welcoming. Once we’d introduced ourselves and come in, she closed the door and let her human cover fall away. Before us stood a small, round woman less than five feet tall. Her skin, hair and eyes were various shades of brown, and her ears pointed out from beneath her course hair.

  By goblin standards, she was a handsome woman. By my standards, she was lovely.

  She led us into th
e living room, chattering all the way. “My stars, are you the very same djinn who fought in the Great War and saved us all from The Crossing and from having to hide from humanity?”

  I blinked at her from beside a blue, overstuffed chair. Since when did they start referring to what happened as the Great War and The Crossing? “I was there, yes. Would you mind if we asked you a few questions about Felicia, Mrs. Appleton?” Better to downplay the whole thing. Maybe she wouldn’t ask. Besides, I wasn’t the great hero in all that stuff. My friend Zoey was. I’d only helped. A lot of us had helped.

  “Ask me anything, especially if it’ll help you find who did this to my girl.” Her cheery demeanor slipped from happy hostess to grieving mother without warning. “I don’t mind.” She led us into the living room, and we settled on the couch in the same formation we naturally took in the truck—Tahm and I on the ends with Ash as our buffer. Probably best I didn’t read too much into that.

  I took out my little notebook. “Can you start by telling us a little about Felicia? Where she worked. Who her friends were. What she liked to do.”

  Tahm shifted and clasped his hands between his knees. “Any enemies she might have had.”

  The goblin woman’s eyes widened. “You don’t think someone did this, do you? Like, on purpose?” Her dark brown skin went from the shade of hot chocolate to a light caramel.

  I gave her a gentle smile. “We’re just trying to be thorough. Check all angles.”

  She nodded in understanding. “Well, I appreciate it. When it happened, I felt like nobody wanted to help me.”

  “We want to help, ma’am. Honest.” I did, too. Of all the cool things about this job, it was the fact that I could actually make a difference in the lives of the people I crossed paths with that I loved the most.

  “I think you do, too.” She dabbed at her eyes with a tissue. Clearly, talking about her daughter wasn’t easy for her. “Well, you might as well know she’d broken up with her boyfriend a few weeks before. And the rest of the players she hung out with weren’t the best influences, either.” She sniffed. “This will be the first con she’s missed since she was eight.” She swiped at a tear as it fell, but she missed. “Honestly, there were quite a few people who didn’t like her. She was a little abrasive, my Felicia. Blunt. She didn’t believe in treating people like precious flowers.”