The Good, The Bad and The Ghostly ((Paranromal Western Romance))

by Keta Diablo

  Someone like Ruby, on the other hand—that was a different story. He suspected she could take those Agency spells and twist them around into something downright powerful.

  If it took anything more powerful than an exorcism, some salt, or a silver bullet, Trip wasn’t your man.

  Never before had he run into the kind of trouble he was beginning to suspect had followed—or possibly led—Ruby Silver, aka Rowan Argent, to this small town. He didn’t know if he would be able to help her find her way out of that trouble, but he sure as the dickens—as sure as the very devil outside his door right now—was going to try.

  And he wasn’t about to let her die in the process, either.

  Part of him wanted to tell her that, to meet her intensity with his own, but he wasn’t a hero, and this wasn’t some Beadle’s Dime Novel, either. What was happening in this town was real, and it was deadly. There was no way to guarantee that either of them would survive the night.

  For that matter, he had only known her one day. No matter how drawn he was to her, or how much he wanted to clear away the desolation in her eyes, he didn’t have any evidence that he would be able to do that for her. Or that anyone would.

  Instead of matching her penetrating stare, he stared at the floor for a moment, settled his hat back on his head, and said, in his best, drawn-out Texas drawl, "Well. If you’re so almighty determined to see it to the end, I reckon I’ll just have to join you."

  Trip didn’t look up, but her surprise reverberated through the tiny space.

  "Are you sure about that?" she asked. "There’s nothing holding you here."

  "I took the job. I might not have known exactly what I was signing up for, but this isn’t the first haunting I’ve investigated. I’m not some greenhorn. In fact, technically, I’m the senior agent, you’re the junior agent. I’m supposed to say whether or not we stay to fight. And. ..." He paused, finally looking up to meet her gaze before continuing. "I’ve a mind to make sure this demon of yours never bothers anybody again." A hard knock against the door punctuated his statement.

  Ruby closed her eyes and pressed her lips tightly together, then, as if coming to an important decision, nodded once, firmly, and said, "So be it. Understand, though, if we make it out of this town alive, we go our separate ways. I’m not looking to team up with another partner." Her voice dropped. "I won’t."

  "Understood."

  She stuck out her hand as if to shake on a deal. As much as he hated to do anything that might seal this compact and bind him to an agreement that required him to part ways with Ruby, he also sensed that she wouldn’t hesitate to abandon him if she thought he might renege on that arrangement.

  When he took her hand, a shock shot through him, straight from his hand to his toes. Trip jerked back his hand, but it was too late—the covenant he had made with Ruby felt cemented into his very core. "So what would happen if I tried to follow you out of town now?" he asked.

  The other agent didn’t try to pretend she didn’t know what he meant. "That pain you felt a moment ago? It would be nothing compared to what you would experience if you broke our agreement."

  "Well," Trip muttered. "I guess no man’s ever going to lie to you."

  She shot him an exasperated look, but didn’t bother to respond. Instead, she began packing her magical items back into her carpet bag, and Trip realized that the church had been quiet for several moments.

  "I believe we can make a run for it now," Ruby said calmly.

  Trip stood, picking up the last candle and moving it to a shelf where it seemed unlikely to catch anything else on fire. If he were more conscientious, perhaps he would blow out the flame before he and Ruby left the room. As it was, however, he planned to focus all his attention on getting the two of them out alive.

  The church building be damned.

  Or something like that.

  "Ready?" Trip held his hand out to Ruby, who looped her carpet bag over her wrist, threaded her fingers through his, took a firm grip, and nodded. With his other hand, he signaled the count: one ... two. ... On three, he flung the sacristy door open and sprinted for the main church entrance, pulling her with him as he ran. The carpet bag dragged at their clasped hands, but neither let loose of the other.

  They made it halfway down the aisle before a howling wind screamed through the building, sending objects flying. Trip ducked his head down, covering it with his free arm, but kept moving toward the heavy wooden doors. He risked looking up long enough to glance back at Ruby. She, too, had lowered her head toward the floor, but rather than protecting herself with her arm, she was waving it in a circle above her head, fingers flying in some complicated pattern—one that seemed to be offering them some protection from the various items sailing toward them, he realized, as a Bible bounced off some invisible barrier directly in front of his forehead.

  "Thanks," he shouted over his shoulder.

  "Keep moving," she replied.

  Trip leaned into the increasing wind. "That’s not as easy as it might seem."

  "Neither is this." A cracking noise followed a particularly elaborate hand gesture, and Ruby shook her head. "If we can get to the open air, I think I can shut down the wind. Somehow, the building itself is powering all this."

  Nodding, Trip redoubled his efforts, virtually dragging Ruby through the wind. Without her mystical interference, he was certain they would have been flattened against the back wall by now. But he heard her smooth alto voice repeating several phrases in what sounded like it might be Latin, and her incantation seemed to push against the unnatural wind that whipped around them, the words themselves expanding into a bubble around the two of them.

  When they reached the doors, Trip pulled Ruby up beside him, and they each grabbed a door handle. Ruby shouted, "Hang on!" and made a chopping motion as she bit off the last of the incantation. The protective bubble around them dropped away, and the wind that had been pushing at them took over, shoving them backward, but helping them open the heavy church doors in the process.

  As soon as they made their way outside, Ruby took up the chant once more. This time, Trip wrapped his arm around her waist to pull her outside.

  Even in the midst of the chaos surrounding them, he noticed how perfectly she fit in his arms.

  He shoved the thought away. There would be time for that later—if they survived this attack and rid the town of whatever was haunting it.

  And if he was able convince her to let go of the dead man she still carried in her heart.

  That might end up being harder than exorcising Rittersburg’s "poltergeist."

  With a final push, he propelled the two of them down the church steps and out into the dark, dusty street. Night had fallen completely while they were inside the building. Only a few lights flickered from inside the buildings. Despite the sound of the wind shrieking from inside the church—or maybe because of it—no one had ventured out to check on the two agents.

  Apparently, though, Ruby’s prediction had been right: once out in the open air, she was able to contain the supernatural wind inside the building. A slight glow seemed to cover the open doorway, a sheen-like light reflecting from glass. And like glass, it provided a protective shield.

  As he watched, the wind inside the church began to die down, leaving behind only a jumble of ripped books, broken candles, and various tumbled items atop the burned flooring.

  When the wind had completely abated, Ruby said, "I can’t tell what is the demon’s doing, and what is being caused by the poltergeist. For all I know, they’re the same thing."

  "So how can we find out?"

  "We need to talk to some more people, find out everything we can about these poltergeists."

  Trip’s mouth twisted to one side. "I wasn’t getting much of any use from anyone earlier. I’m not sure who to talk to about it, if they all go mule-stubborn when we try to get the story out of them." He dug the toe of one boot into the hardened dirt below his feet, working a small rock out of the ground and kicking it, sending it skitterin
g toward the now-quiet church.

  Ruby steepled her hands together and tapped them against her mouth as she chewed on her bottom lip for a moment. "I think," she finally said slowly, "that it might be worth it to skip trying to talk to the elders of the town."

  "You thinking the kids might have something of use to tell us?"

  "When I was leaving Mr. Schmidt’s home earlier, a young girl spoke to me in the voice of the demon. I think that the young are more malleable, and therefore more easily drawn to the Other Side. We might be more likely to get real answers if we talk to them first."

  Trip nodded. "Any of Mrs. Baumgartner’s girls young enough, you think?"

  "Perhaps. We can certainly begin there."

  Despite their apparent agreement, though, neither of them moved toward the boarding house.

  "Does something about all this strike you as odd?" Trip’s cadence slowed even further than usual as he gestured, taking in the entire town. "For a place all beset by these noisy ghosts, it sure does seem awful quiet all the time."

  "Except, of course, for when their poltergeists are attacking us."

  "Exactly."

  Ruby gazed thoughtfully around the main street. "The interior of the bank had a number of chips in the marble from earlier attacks."

  "But not the church." The same church that now appeared utterly quiet again.

  "No," Ruby agreed. "The church seemed untouched until our arrival. The glass attack appeared to originate with my appearance in town."

  "That seem a mite peculiar to you? ’Cause it does to me. Nothing like any ghost I ever encountered before."

  "I have been assuming that this haunting’s oddities were a result of either its German origins or its demonic nature. But you’re suggesting that there is perhaps another reason?"

  "Or at least more to it than that."

  "Another dimension, would you say?"

  Nodding, Trip pressed his lips together to make a slight popping noise before he replied. "I might say exactly that, in fact."

  A slow smile spread across Ruby’s face as she regarded him—the first he had seen on her. Not enough to kill that desolation deep in her eyes, but perhaps the barest beginnings of a thaw in a frozen wasteland.

  Or rain in the desert.

  Trip had seen the desert after rain, all its glorious profusion of blooming and multiplying.

  Somehow, he felt certain that there was equal life waiting in the depths of Ruby Silver’s soul—if only he could find a way to open the right floodgates.

  He realized that he had been holding her gaze for too long, but she didn’t seem any more inclined to break this tenuous connection than he was, at the moment.

  "Mr. Austin," she finally said, her beautiful alto voice smooth and soft, "I do believe that I might enjoy working with you, after all."

  With that, she turned and headed toward the boarding house.

  Then again, maybe I’m the desert and she’s the rain.

  He hastened to follow her.

  * * *

  As Ruby walked along the path that led from the main road to the boarding house, she found herself thinking aloud. "Mr. Schmidt put in the request to have a Tremayne P.S.I Agent sent out. And yet, when I spoke to his wife, she told me nothing of any use."

  "Some men don’t confide in their wives," Trip offered.

  "True, and yet. ..." Ruby trailed off, her brow creasing as she tried to tease out all the implications. "Outside their home is where I was approached by the child who was, I am fairly certain, demon-possessed."

  "But the little girl didn’t do anything other than talk to you?"

  "Nothing. In fact, the possession seemed to end almost as quickly as it began. As if. ..."

  "As if?" Trip prompted.

  "Almost as if the demon possessing her was unable to maintain his control."

  "If it’s the same demon that you and Flint fought in New Mexico, then how did it get here?"

  Ruby shrugged. "How do demons travel anywhere?"

  "You saying you don’t know?" He arched one brow at her, and she found herself oddly charmed by his teasing.

  "That is precisely what I am saying. Sometimes, they seem to travel by means of possession—by taking the body of a person and riding it, much as one might ride a horse. Other times, they must travel in spirit form, or by some means we do not currently understand."

  Trip scuffed his boots along the ground as they walked, kicking small stones out of the way as he thought. "So what’s the connection between Rittersburg’s poltergeists and this demon of yours?"

  "I am beginning to fully believe that they are one and the same." She managed to keep her voice steady, but at the thought of facing the fiend that had murdered Flint, her heart began to pound and a chill sweat broke out along the back of her neck.

  "If that’s the case—and I’m not saying it isn’t, but if that is the case, then why go through the trouble of hiding it?" The more interested he became in the case, the more Trip’s deep Texas drawl came out, as if he were forgetting to moderate the way he spoke.

  Could that be true? Was Trip Austin attempting to sound less Western than he actually was?

  Why would a Texan in Texas attempt to hide his native accent?

  A mystery for another time. The man is not your focus, she admonished herself. And yet her interest in him had grown over the last hours.

  The thought made her stomach clench, as if by merely noticing another man she might be showing disloyalty to Flint.

  Don’t be stupid, Ruby. Flint would want you to ...

  To what?

  To find someone else? To go on?

  To live.

  Her breath hitched in her chest as the words echoed in her mind, almost as if in Flint’s voice.

  "You alright?" Trip was too perceptive for his own good. Or at least for hers.

  "I’m fine." She lengthened her stride as they came in sight of the boarding house. "I believe we should continue our discussion inside."

  As they approached the front door, though, she slowed. "Have you noticed anything about the serving girls here?"

  "They’re all young and pretty?"

  Ruby waved that away. "Yes, yes. I’m well aware that they are prostitutes, despite Mr. Schmidt’s reassurances. It’s not that." The upper windows were mostly dark, though candles flickered in a few. "It’s the fact that they are all so cheerful."

  Trip’s features were obscured by the gathering darkness, but Ruby felt his gaze settling on her as he tried to follow her thought processes. "They seem well treated enough."

  "When you received your assignment to join me here, what information were you given? What were the exact words of the message you received sending you here?"

  "I was up in Fort Worth. I got a telegram that said. ..." Now he was the one who trailed off for a moment. "It said that I was to join a new junior agent in Rittersburg. The next line was ‘Town overrun by ghosts.’"

  "Did that seem unusually precise language for our employer to use in a telegram?"

  Trip laughed, a sharp bark of sound in the soft night air. "It seemed awful particular for a Tremayne telegram. Downright detailed, in fact."

  "That was the wording of my communiqué, as well." She gestured expansively. "Despite our experiences upon our arrival and in the church tonight, does this, in fact, seem like a town that has been ‘overrun’ by the unhappy spirits of the dead?"

  Trip frowned, and even in the dark, she saw him shake his head as he stared at the boarding house.

  "In fact," Ruby continued, "I would go so far as to say that, although the townspeople of Rittersburg appear to be avoid us, they don’t seem to be particularly haunted, at all."

  "They don’t even seem particularly scared," Trip agreed.

  "There is more to this than we know." Ruby’s foot tapped impatiently against the ground. She didn’t like mysteries—not the earthly kind, anyway. She preferred her unknowns to be connected to the Great Unknown, the Other Side, that part of the world that was largely unseen
.

  She had to admit, however, that discussing the evidence of the town’s lack of haunting with Trip had distracted her enough to calm the over-fast beating of her heart. The coppery taste of fear had faded from her mouth.

  For a minute, it had almost felt ... not familiar, exactly. Flint would have pushed Ruby to come to her own conclusions, then come up with a definite plan of action.

  But discussing the case with Trip was comfortable.

  Perhaps even comforting.

  Acknowledging that didn’t get her any closer to understanding the issue at hand, however.

  "I believe," she said, "that I might have a plan to discover what the good ladies of the Baumgartner Gasthof und Biergarten can tell us. How good are you at acting?"

  "Acting?" Trip asked, startled.

  "Yes. I am going to need you to follow my lead."

  "Well, I can sure give it a shot." Amusement laced his words.

  Ruby grinned, true delight shooting through her for the first time in months. "Excellent. Gather the girls and Mrs. Baumgartner, and meet me out back, in the biergarten."

  Chapter Nine

  "I need to hold a séance," Ruby announced, her blond hair flying around her face in the breeze in a way that made Trip’s hand itch to smooth it back. "It’s the only way we’re going to trace all of these spirits back to their sources."

  "You’re absolutely certain there’s more than one ghost?" He managed to keep his hands at his sides by looping his thumbs through his gun belt.

  The girls of the house stood around them in a loose semi-circle, eyes wide, mouths agape at the two agents. Mrs. Baumgartner stood some distance behind them, arms crossed over her ample bosom as she scowled.

  That one’s a skeptic.

  If anyone could make a believer out of her, it was Ruby Silver, aka Rowan Argent.

  "No, I’m not at all certain of the number of spiritual presences in Rittersburg," Ruby was saying. "That is why I absolutely must hold a séance. I fear these German poltergeists act more demonic than ghostly, and I am finding it difficult to exorcise them." She paused, chewing on one corner of her bottom lip. Trip’s hands tightened on his belt involuntarily as he stared at her mouth, mesmerized by the way her tongue swept the spot her white, even teeth had been.