by Clare Kauter
“Anyway,” I said, “that’s enough talk about me. Why don’t you tell us a bit about yourself?”
It was a decent walk to my place, and we needed to find out about Ravi for the case anyway. I figured chatting to him was a good way to pass the time.
He nodded. “Uh, sure.” He frowned. “Are we going to walk all the way to the cemetery? Surely flying would be faster.”
I gave Henry a pointed look as I replied, “What a novel idea. Did you hear that Henry? Ravi just made an excellent suggestion.”
“Walking helps me think,” Henry lied. “Tell us about yourself, Ravi.”
“Well, I work – worked – at a carpet and broom rental place.”
“Ooh, did you hear that, Henry? Maybe Ravi can get us a deal.” I turned back to Ravi. “Do you get a staff discount?”
“Uh…”
“Ignore her, Ravi,” said Henry. “Keep telling us about yourself.”
“Well, there’s not that much to tell, really.”
“Are you single?”
My jaw dropped. “Wow, Henry,” I said, pressing my hand to my chest. “I’m right here.”
Henry cut his eyes to me and gave me a look of disbelief. “I’m figuring out potential suspects, not hitting on him.”
“Are you two…” Ravi made a weird gesture with his hands that didn’t make much sense but definitely seemed sexual.
Henry frowned at him. “What, are we caressing each other’s hands in a highly creepy and uncomfortable manner?” he asked. “No, we’re not.”
“I meant –”
“Ravi, we have more serious business to attend to,” I said firmly. I didn’t want to get into talking about what was happening between me and Henry. I hadn’t meant to bring it up – it just kind of slipped out. “Now,” I continued, “do you have any suspects for your murder? Anyone who might have wished to harm you in any way?”
“Yes, like a spouse, which is the reason I asked whether you were single,” said Henry. He looked at me out the corner of his eye. “Not for any other reason.”
“Well, yes, I’m single,” said Ravi. “And I don’t know who could have done it.”
“No crazy exes who might have it in for you?”
He shook his head. “Nope.”
“What about your co-workers?” Henry asked. “Have you trodden on anyone’s toes there?”
Ravi shrugged and shook his head again. “Seriously, I have no idea why anyone would bother killing me.”
“Gambling debts?” I asked.
“Nope.”
“Overhear some shady characters plotting a dastardly act?”
“Uh-uh.”
“Encounter a werewolf death cult intent on bringing their ghostly ancestors back from beyond the grave?”
“Um…”
“That seems a bit far-fetched, Nessa,” said Henry, sending me a ‘shut up’ look. I sighed. Henry was such a worrywart. He didn’t want me to go around blabbing about the death cult, largely because they’d been sacrificing humans and light-dwellers in my honour. I guess it kind of made sense that he didn’t want me to spread the knowledge that such cults existed. We didn’t want anyone to connect it back to me. I mean, it’s not like it was my fault they’d been killing people, but it probably still paid to be cautious.
“Well, I’m out of ideas,” I said.
“Maybe we’ll find something at the crime scene.”
Chapter 5
We asked Ravi further questions about his life as we made our way to the cemetery near my house. To get there, we had to walk past the church where our coven met each evening and then through a forest. Due to the proximity of the full moon, the Black Forest was filled with magical beings and beasts. Everyone was getting ready for tonight, when they would collect various mosses and barks and herbs for their spells and potions, charge up their crystals and perform rites in the moonlight. Tonight’s moon was not as powerful as the full moon, but it was still worth using as a magical boost.
It wasn’t just the humanoid magicals that reacted to the full moon this way, either. Plenty of beasts came out during this period of heightened magical energy. We could hear strange noises coming from amongst the trees, low growls and rustling. Of course, that could have just been a hung-over goblin who’d passed out on a log after a night on the town, but I was pretty sure it was something bigger.
Up ahead, I spotted something on the trail. I tipped my sunglasses down and looked over the top before grabbing the others and dragging them under the cover of the trees. Well, I grabbed Henry. I mostly just gestured furiously at Ravi to get out of sight, seeing as he didn’t actually have a physical form for me to grab.
“What is it?” Ravi whispered once we were all hidden behind a fallen-down tree.
“A pink aura,” I explained.
Henry folded his arms at me and gave me a severely unimpressed look. “Seriously?” he said. “That’s all?”
“What’s a pink aura?” Ravi said.
“A ghost,” I explained.
He frowned at me. “Do you have something against ghosts?”
“Not as a general rule,” I said. “I worked as a medium before I became a cop, and usually I prefer the dead to the living. It’s just that I know that pink aura, and he’s not someone you want to mess with.”
Ravi’s eyes widened. “Is he some kind of evil spirit?”
I nodded. “Oh, totally. Last time he was on the trail when I was walking home, he bailed me up for an hour.”
“How?” asked Ravi. “What did he do?”
“Didn’t you once tell me that poltergeists have green auras?” Henry asked me. “How exactly did he manage to detain you without touching you?”
“Conversation,” I said. “He just goes on and on and you can’t get away. Trust me, we’re best off sneaking around him.”
Henry took a deep breath and looked like he was trying not to get annoyed with me. “Nessa…”
“I had groceries with me! All my frozen stuff melted!”
Henry looked like he was about to say something, but instead stood and headed back for the narrow gravel path. I shook my head. He didn’t know what he was in for. Ravi looked like he was considering following Henry. “Don’t,” I said. “Trust me.”
Ravi and I picked our way through the trees, stepping around sticks, rocks, cauldrons left to simmer and a young weredingo couple making out furiously behind one of the eucalypts. They were in human form, but I recognised them because they both had their pack’s tattoo. Even though they weren’t in animal form, they were certainly behaving like it. If they didn’t calm down they were going to rip each other’s faces off.
Ravi and I eventually drew level with Henry, who had almost reached the pink aura. He was standing up straight (as much as a gorilla can) and his plan of attack seemed to be to simply walk past the ghost. I shook my head at him. Amateur.
“Excuse me, sir,” said the ghost, whose name I’d forgotten. “You don’t have the time on you, do you?”
Henry looked up at the ghost. Big mistake. The spirit floated over in front of Henry, blocking his path. “Uh, sure,” said Henry. He removed his phone from his pocket and checked the screen.
Although in gorilla form Henry appeared to be naked, in his human form he was wearing clothes, and the pockets functioned as if he was just wearing his normal outfit. It was a magical physics thing that I didn’t understand – much like all other magical physics things. I was pretty sure you had to go to university to understand stuff like that. Or even high school. Satan had been a pretty good tutor, but there were some things she hadn’t bothered teaching me, and physics was on that list. Not that I’m complaining. Every time the Reaper had tried to explain time travel or something to me it felt like my brain was melting. I was happy to not understand.
The ghost didn’t wait to hear what the time was. “Ah, a phone!” said the ghost. “Back in my day, when I was alive, you see, I worked as a clockmaker…”
“Here we go,” I muttered. I turned to Ravi.
“You and I should just go on ahead. He’s going to be stuck here for a while. Like, the next ten years.”
Ravi appeared concerned. “Shouldn’t we, uh, try to help him or something?”
I shook my head. “Henry needs to learn this lesson for himself.” The lesson that Nessa always knows best. Well, OK, not always, but at least in this instance. Seriously, what was Henry thinking, coming into my forest and trying to tell me what’s what? He deserved to be accosted by a pink aura.
Ravi and I continued through the forest as quietly as we could manage so as not to alert the pink aura to our presence. I figured once we were out of the woods (ha) I’d shoot Henry a text and let him know that we’d continued on ahead. He’d have no trouble catching up – he could just transform into something that ran fast.
We skirted around a campsite with tents pitched by a campfire, the whole site protected by wards. The wards did nothing to block the stomach-churning scent of whatever was bubbling in the cauldron suspended in mid-air over the fire. I’d smelled month-old corpses that weren’t as bad as this. Ravi and I both started gagging at the smell and I covered the lower half of my face with my robes to try and block it out as we hurried away from the cloud of stench.
Eventually we were clear of the campsite and the pink-aura ghost, so Ravi and I risked heading back for the path. Once we were back on the gravel, we were able to make much better time. I’d had difficulty picking my way through the forest, and since Ravi was new to ghosting so had he. Technically he could have just floated above the ground and through all obstacles, but after years of being a human, ghosts usually found it difficult to adjust to using their new abilities at first.
As we cleared the forest, I noticed Ravi beginning to fidget. He seemed uncomfortable, and I decided not to take him straight to the cemetery. He looked like he could do with a moment to compose himself first.
“Let’s head to my cottage,” I said. “We can wait there for Henry.”
Ravi nodded, looking relieved. “Sure.”
I shot Henry a text telling him to hurry up and then led Ravi through my front gate and up the path to my door. The front yard of my house was filled with herb and vegetable gardens, as were all the other parts of the yard. I was a long way from town, and since I didn’t have a carpet or broom to ride to carry my groceries home, I grew as much as I could myself. Plus there was the added advantage that the less time I spent walking through that forest, the less likely I was to be waylaid by a chatty ghost.
Well, that had been part of the reason for the garden. That and the fact that I used to be permanently broke. Now that I was in the coven, though, and working as a cop, I was on the government’s payroll and I actually had more than double digits in my bank account. Being in the coven also meant I had to walk through the forest every evening to get to the church where our meetings were held, though, so it did have its disadvantages. (Exercise plus the chance of running into magicals along the way? That was something I could do without. Still, now that I was actually making money, I was saving up for a carpet so that I could avoid the creatures on the ground, so things would work out eventually.)
My shack was multiple storeys high, but they weren’t stacked directly on top of each other, giving the cottage a higgledy-piggledy Jenga aesthetic. I put the key in the lock and tumbled it, turned the knob and opened the front door to my home. I didn’t know why I bothered locking it when I went out. The place was covered in wards to keep people out and besides, only an idiot would see this house and think it looked like a place worth burgling.
I walked through to the kitchen with Ravi trailing along behind me. He took a seat at my small dining table while I filled the kettle with water and put it on to boil.
“I’d offer you a cup of tea or a biscuit, but…”
Ravi frowned at me, not understanding at first. Realisation crossed his face as it clicked. “I can’t eat?”
I shook my head. “Not here. You can in the afterlife, though. If you took a trip to Hell you’d be able to eat there.”
“What about Heaven?”
“What about it?”
“Could I go there?”
I crossed my arms and leaned back against the kitchen bench, eyeing him. “Well, you could, if you want to be totally lame.”
“What?”
I sighed. “Go wherever you want. Point is, you can eat in the afterlife, but right now you’re just going to have to watch me.”
“I guess it makes sense that I can’t eat anything,” he said. “I can’t even touch stuff. How would I pick the food up?”
I nodded. “Yep. But even ghosts who can manifest – poltergeists – can’t eat here on earth.”
He frowned. “Right,” he said thoughtfully.
I took out a dragon-shaped teapot and measured some loose leaf Earl Grey tea into it before pouring the boiling water in. Replacing the lid, I sat the pot on the counter and retrieved two cups and saucers from the cupboard over the stove. They were white with fly agaric mushrooms (the red ones with white spots) printed on them. I placed the tea and teacups on the dining table. Ravi looked questioningly at the two cups. “For Henry,” I explained. His eyes widened in understanding and he nodded.
Returning to the kitchen, I took a plate that matched the tea set from the cabinet and filled it with the snickerdoodles (still a hilarious name, no matter how many times I’ve heard it) Henry had given me a couple of days earlier. I’d just placed the plate on the table when there was a knock on the door.
“Come in,” I called out, and Henry strode through the door. It didn’t matter how many times I told him he didn’t have to wait for an invitation to come in, he insisted on being polite and knocking. Something about his British upbringing, I guess.
I raised my eyebrows when Henry entered the room in his human form. He rarely appeared as a human, usually favouring a gorilla or, occasionally, a wolf. Right now, though, he didn’t look like he had the energy to shift. His face was drawn and bags had appeared under his eyes. I recognised that look. That was what a pink aura could do to you. He leaned exhaustedly against the doorway to the kitchen and looked at me. I raised my eyebrows.
“I’m so sorry,” he said. “I should never have doubted you.”
“Tea?” I said, not bothering to hide my smugness. Henry simply nodded and slid onto a chair at the dining table. I poured the tea and handed it to him before pouring one for myself and sitting at the table.
“That was horrendous,” said Henry. “But this tea is delightful.”
I smiled.
“Can I ask you a question?” Ravi asked. Henry and I nodded. “What did you call that ghost?”
“Oh, I called him a pink aura,” I said.
“He didn’t look pink to me,” said Ravi. “Am I meant to be able to see auras?”
Henry shook his head. “No, I can’t see his aura either. That’s one of Nessa’s special talents.” He gave me a warning look.
What? I mouthed.
Be careful, he mouthed back. Again, he was worried about Ravi finding out too much about me. I didn’t know why he was so concerned. Ravi had been a normal when he was alive, and he was pretty clueless about occult matters. He wouldn’t know what was normal and what wasn’t.
“So what does a pink aura actually mean?” Ravi asked.
I looked at Henry, wondering whether I should answer. He bit his lip, thinking. Eventually he shrugged, and I took that to mean that he was OK with me explaining it to Ravi.
“Well, not a lot of people can see auras, but it’s common knowledge that there are different types of ghosts,” I explained. “Poltergeists, like I was telling you about earlier, can manifest a physical form. Magicals can see ghosts, whereas most normals can’t. But pink auras – I forget their proper name – can appear to normals.”
“Why are there different types? Like, what causes that?”
I shrugged and looked at Henry. He was the educated one, so maybe he knew more about this than I did.
“There are a few theories
,” he said. “There are scientists studying different types of ghosts, but so far there’s no consensus.”
“I’ve always thought it had something to do with the personalities of the ghosts when they were alive,” I said. “The ones who end up as pink auras always seem to be the kind of people who were deathly annoying during their lives. The kind that accost shop assistants and talk to them for hours and hours about their many woes, the trials and tribulations of their daily existence.”
“I think that might just be the ghost living in that forest,” said Henry.
“It’s not,” I said. “I’ve called up pink auras for séances and medium work before, and they’re always here for hours after the client who called them leaves. I used to charge extra for them.”
Henry folded his arms. “I’m sure you’re just generalising.”
“I’ve had to exorcise four different pink auras from this very house, Henry.”
“It does seem like you’re being unfair,” he said.
“What, have you met a nice pink aura before?”
“I can’t see auras,” Henry pointed out, “but I’ve never met another ghost as annoying as that one.”
“Really? I know a certain poltergeist I would have thought would be in the running.”
He narrowed his eyes. “Annoyance and pure hatred are different emotions.”
“What type of ghost am I?” Ravi asked.
I’d been afraid he’d ask that question. I didn’t want to break the news to him about his sickly grey aura, the kind that meant he had no special abilities whatsoever, at least as far as I could tell.
“Not pink,” I said. “And that’s all that matters.”
Chapter 6
After Henry had drunk some tea and eaten a couple of biscuits, he looked a little less exhausted. Tea was basically medicine for him, being that he was from England. Once we were done with our cuppa, we decided to head down to the cemetery. When Henry and I reached the front garden, though, we realised Ravi wasn’t following us. We walked back inside and found him still sitting at the kitchen table.