“You sure they’re here?” Jennie asked.
Lupe nodded. “We have enough intelligence to believe so. They haven’t done a great job of laying low since you flushed them all out.”
Jennie’s face hardened. “Then let’s go before they get wind of our presence.”
Lupe rang the doorbell. It made an ugly electrical buzz that was quickly followed by a deep voice demanding an identity.
Lupe gave them his name, and the doors clicked open. As they headed inside, Jennie saw a pair of curtains twitch above.
The inside was just as rundown as the outside. There was a stench of urine in the gray concrete stairwell. They followed Lupe to the fourth floor, where he knocked three times on the door. A skinny man in a white tank top and black shorts let them inside.
“Thank you for coming out so late.” He spoke quietly, eyes darting back down the corridor, where a door stood a few inches ajar.
“It’s our job,” Lupe told him. “You got a problem, we fix it.”
He’s got a few problems, Jennie thought, her eyes catching the small puncture marks on the inner crook of the man’s elbows. The corridor stank of marijuana, and there was a thin haze of smoke in the air. Television light flashed from a room at the end of the corridor, and she could just make out the paper-thin outline of a woman’s leg.
“Where is the nuisance?” Lupe asked.
The man turned back to the room with the door ajar. Something scuffled inside. He pointed.
“At first, I thought it was just a rat or something, but rats don’t glow like that, man. They don’t make shit fly and say ‘woo’ like a ghost, y’know?”
Jennie wondered if they were wasting their time. A man clearly hyped up on drugs could see any number of imaginary things if he tried hard enough. What if this was all just a drug-induced trip?
Lupe nodded and motioned for Jennie to follow. She quickly overtook him and wasted no time in shoving the door open and stepping inside.
The room was faintly lit by a naked low-watt bulb that hung from the ceiling. Blankets and pillows were gathered in an untidy pile on the bed, and mountains of dirty laundry littered the floor. In the far corner of the room was a small corner desk with an outdated laptop and a series of Rastafarian figurines, each with dreadlocks, yellow, black and green hats, and comically large spliffs hanging out the corners of their mouths.
Jennie placed a hand over her mouth. The stench of body odor, cigarettes, and something stale she couldn’t place her finger on was overwhelming.
“Nice place you got here,” she mumbled through her arm. “Is this room available for rent, or…”
The man hovered behind them in the doorway. “It was in there, man. I swear. Hovering and…and…glowing and shit.”
Jennie examined the room. She could feel spectral energy somewhere nearby, but that easily could have just been Baxter standing behind her.
“What do you think?” he asked.
Jennie took slow steps around the room. She nudged the bundle of blankets, and a waft of that stale smell exploded like spores into the air. “I think this guy needs to get a cleaner in. When was the last time a bottle of detergent entered this place?”
The room was quiet.
“I’m not asking a rhetorical question,” she told him sternly.
The tenant lifted his hands. “Hey, man, don’t judge. We all gotta live in the way we know how.”
“I bet his mama taught him better than that,” Baxter whispered.
Lupe scoffed.
Jennie ran a finger along the length of the desk and left a small trail behind her where the dust gathered and clung to her finger. Several millimeters thick, she now realized the desk was not actually black, but rather dark brown, and so filthy it appeared as dark as obsidian in the shoddy light.
Several small marks dotted the desk. Perhaps that was where the figurines stood before they made their trip into the air and floated in front of the heroin addict?
Did she believe him? Not completely, though in her line of business, she’d come to expect the unexpected.
She turned back to her group.
“Okay, we’re going to have to turn this place over. Flip the duvets, turn the pillows, check every nook and cranny of this room.” She spoke deliberately loudly. If a specter was hiding in the apartment, they’d know their time was almost up.
They reluctantly got to work. At first, Lupe turned a pile of clothing over with his toe. A waft of stale sweat floated up and made him gag.
“Get over it,” Jennie told him. “Until you’ve come face to face with a three-week-old rotting corpse buried under the floorboards, you’ve smelled nothing.”
Baxter made to open his mouth.
“Don’t ask,” Jennie told him, silencing him before he could fire his question.
Deciding that quickly ripping off the band-aid was better than slowly peeling it off, Lupe reared his foot back and kicked the nearest pile. Shirts bunched up on his foot flew across the room, unfolding as they went.
Now the smell was unmistakable. With the laundry removed, the floor was stained and crusted with vomit and urine. Jennie flipped the blanket over, and the smell grew to a level that made Baxter nauseous.
If it hadn’t have been for the specter who burst out from under the sheets and darted over to the desk to hurl the figurines at Jennie and the group, they might have all stopped and spilled their own guts, adding to the overwhelming stench in the air.
Chapter Thirty-Two
The specter looked like he belonged in the mess of the room. His hair was matted and clumped, he wore a pair of socks littered with holes, and he had lost enough teeth to make his grimace resemble a broken keyboard.
He cursed the intruders, especially Baxter, the only being in the room he believed was able to see him.
The figurines flew through the air and smashed against the wall. Although Baxter didn’t feel any of them as they passed through him, his reflexes from his time as a mortal caused him to throw his hands over his head defensively.
Jennie allowed the specter a moment of anger before she spoke. “You realize you’re going to have to pay for those?”
The specter whirled toward her, not quite believing he was meeting her eyes.
Jennie stared him down. “That’s right. I can see you, Casper.”
The specter’s rage subsided to confusion, then flipped back to anger. Projectiles began to launch toward Jennie at a rapid pace. She calmly waited, batting each one aside by blocking it with her forearm. Sure, it stung a little, but that was nothing compared to what might come to this poor specter if he didn’t get his act together. “When you’re quite done, I’m more than happy to have a civilized conversation with you.”
That seemed to anger him more.
Tank Top watched in horror from the doorway, ducking out of reach of the damage as the specter began to spin rapidly. A cone of air began to grow in the center of the room as he sped up, whirling himself into a mini-tornado that picked up the laundry from the floor.
The items swirled around, encouraging the stink to spread.
Jennie stood with her feet planted by the wall, her patience beginning to wear thin.
Baxter found himself caught in the current and tried to fight it.
“I’m going to ask you one more time,” Jennie bellowed, her voice hardly audible above the tornado. “Calm your shit and let’s talk. I don’t want to hurt you.”
The specter let out a loud, shrill cackle. Even the tenant heard it. He clapped his hands to his ears and seemed to shrink. A female voice called from the living room, but he ignored it.
Jennie sighed and reached into her pocket. She dug deep, then pulled out an imaginary can.
She mimed flipping open the ring pull, made a hissing sound with her mouth, then handed the can to Lupe. “Here, hold this can of whoop-ass, would you? I’ll likely need to top up in a few minutes.”
Lupe chuckled, his eyes almost closed as he fought against the wind.
Jennie cla
pped her hands and gave them a rub, then reached toward the center of the tornado and concentrated on connecting with the specter.
She could feel his energy pulsing in the room. She could also feel Baxter’s as he swirled, caught in the tornado. Every time she thought she’d locked onto the specter, Baxter would complete another revolution and break her hold.
Jennie felt her patience wane. She reached for the holster on her hip and drew her pistol, aiming it into the dead center of the room.
Tank Top’s eyes grew wide in alarm. “Shit, she’s got a weapon! Veronica, call the 5-0!”
Lupe grabbed his wrist before he could run. “Calm your shit,” he growled. “You asked for help. This is how we help.”
Tank top looked uncertainly from Lupe to Jennie to the swirling vortex of dirty fabric. He yelled back to Veronica to cancel the call and shrank more when Lupe released him.
Jennie lined up her shot, doing her best to track the exact location of the cackling, swirling specter. When she found it, she lowered her line of sight several inches, waited for the blur of Baxter to subside, then took the shot.
The report thundered around the room, causing the others to clap their hands over their ears. Jennie smirked. The shrill sound of someone in immense pain rang out around them. The blanket and the laundry dropped to the floor, scattered across the room in filthy piles.
No difference there, then.
The only real change was that the pathetic excuse for a specter sat in the middle of it all, holding his foot and screaming out to the room. Silver drops of spectral blood fell from the smoking hole in his foot, disappearing shortly after touching the floor.
“You shot me!” the specter moaned indignantly. “You fucking shot me! How is that possible?”
“I have my ways,” Jennie told the specter, crouching nearby and staring intently at him. “You know you’ve been a bad boy, right? We don’t like poltergeists in my order. Why have you been tormenting this man?”
The specter stared at her, a look of disbelief on his face. “You can see me?”
“We can see you,” Lupe replied.
“But…but you’re not dead.” He leaned closer. “Are you?” He screwed his eyes shut as a fresh wave of pain passed through his body.
Jennie chuckled. “Observant, aren’t you? Now answer my questions, poltergeist.”
“I ain’t no poltergeist,” the specter replied. Although he was in pain, there was venom in his eyes. “Just because I fuck with humans when I’m bored, it doesn’t make me a poltergeist, okay? Have you ever met those guys?” He shuddered. “It’s like horror manifested into one batshit crazy storm.”
“Then what are you doing?” Baxter asked. He was on his feet, one hand held to the side of his head. He wobbled unsteadily and struggled to focus on the specter on the floor.
The specter’s eyes narrowed. “You think I’m going to tell you guys anything, you’re as crazy as you think I am.” He stared at each person in turn, eyes flicking toward Lupe and the flash of gold he had just seen around his neck. The pendant of Mjölnir hanging loosely from its chain.
The specter jumped back, pushing himself with his hands. “The Spectral Plane! It’s you fuckers!”
He closed his eyes and began to sink into the floor. His ass and legs were gone in the blink of an eye, but before his shoulders and head could disappear, Jennie latched onto him.
A thin tendril of spectral energy lassoed his neck and dragged him back into the room, despite his furious protests and struggles. “What the…”
“Talk,” Jennie barked. “Now.”
Eyes wider than Jennie thought possible, the specter reared his head back, cupped his hands, and yelled, “Run!” to the apartment.
Veronica screamed. The TV turned itself to full volume and furniture fell over as several specters sprang out of their hiding places and ran.
Their spectral blurs sped past the doorway and out toward the stairwell before anyone had a chance to stop them. Five of them, by Jennie’s count.
“What was… What’s happening?” Tank Top asked, spinning on the spot and shivering in the aftereffect of the specters passing through him.
Jennie ignored him.
“How noble,” she told the gruff specter. “You realize you’ve saved your friends at the cost of yourself? No matter what you do now, you’re my bitch until you decide to answer my questions and let me know what the hell you were doing here.”
The specter smirked, mimed zipping his lips, and sat with his arms folded.
Without a moment’s pause, Jennie took her pistol and shot the ghost in the kneecap. The bullet tore through the specter’s bone and straight into the wooden floorboards. It left a small hole behind and sounds of alarm could be heard from below. “Want to speak now?”
“You’re crazy.” The specter hissed in pain. “You’re insane. What the fuck are you?”
This time, Jennie aimed a shot over the specter’s right shoulder. It missed his ear by millimeters and tore into the building’s brickwork.
“Hey!” Tank Top shouted.
“Baby! Are you okay?” Veronica called.
Tank Top glared in the direction of the living room. “If you really gave a shit about me, you wouldn’t be hiding in there, would you?”
“You think I’m gonna run toward gunshots?” the reply came. “Baby, you’re crazy.”
“Bitch, you crazy!” Tank Top retorted.
“Can you save the drama for when we’re gone, please?” Jennie asked. She twirled the pistol around her finger and stared at the specter. “Anything to say?”
The specter struggled in Jennie’s hold, but it was useless. His eyes darted from hers to the gun and back.
“You’ll have to kill me,” he told her, exploding in maniacal laughter. “Kill me? Get it!”
Jennie shook her head and stared at the floor. The specter grinned with glee, sure he had bested her. No mortal on Earth could kill a specter, could they?
Jennie’s arm moved faster than he could track. The next thing he knew, the pistol was gone, and he was staring down the wide barrel of a gun the likes of which he had never seen. The thing yawned at him as he stared into the darkness inside. Somewhere down its throat, there would be fire—fire that would kill.
“I see my friend has garnered your respect.” Jennie smiled, lifting an eyebrow at the specter. “The Big Bitch tends to do that to people. That’s why I stay on her good side. I tell you, if I angered this one, I wouldn’t know what she’s capable of. You think that pistol does damage?” Jennie let out a low whistle. “You should see what the Big Bitch does.”
The specter had gone cross-eyed. Impossibly, small beads of sweat appeared on his forehead. He gulped, seemed to debate his options, then finally capitulated. “Fine. Tell me what you want to know.”
“That’s better.” Jennie lowered the Big Bitch and patted the specter’s cheek. “Now, who are you, and why are you here?”
“My name is Rustin Chewley,” the specter told her begrudgingly. “I died a few days ago and needed somewhere to stay, okay? Somewhere away from all the psychos and weirdos who crowd your grave when you’re gone. I used to live in the next apartment over and found that this was close enough to my old place to visit anytime I wanted, but far enough away that I wouldn’t always be watching my girlfriend.”
“That’s actually kind of sweet,” Baxter murmured.
“It’s bullshit,” Jennie told him, her hand tensing on the Big Bitch. “What’s the real reason?”
The specter’s demeanor changed in an instant. “You didn’t buy any of that, huh? Fine. My name really is Rustin. I’m a recovering addict and I like the smell of weed, so I hang out here to try and get a passive high. You know it’s almost impossible to get high when you’re dead, right?”
“Then why were you drawing attention to yourself?” Lupe asked. “Why were you freaking these guys out?”
Tank Top stared blankly at them all, confused about who they were talking to and what was being said. He cho
se to be smart and remain quiet.
Rustin shrugged. “Boredom? Fun? You pick. It could be any number of things.”
“Really?” Jennie looked over the top of her sunglasses. “That’s your reason?”
Rustin stared at her.
“Okay, then. We have a motive, be it a juvenile one at best.” Jennie had other questions. “Why freak out when you saw my friend’s jewelry there? What do you know of the Spectral Plane?”
Rustin withered under the spotlight. Something found the tip of his tongue, and he didn’t like the taste. He debated long and hard internally, and finally said, “I know the Spectral Plane are scum who are operating against the paranormal court and want New York City for themselves.” He spat on the floor and leered at Jennie.
“Go on,” she told him calmly.
“You know you can’t beat the crown? Her fingers stretch long, and her grasp is tight. You Spectral Plane shits think you stand a chance against what’s to come? You have nothing on us.”
“So I’ve heard,” Jennie mused. “But you disbanded. Your scumbag New Wavers departed into the city, your leaders destroyed.”
Rustin gave another high-pitched cackle. “You think some random group of rebels is enough to disperse and kill what’s coming? Just because some bitch and her pet exorcized the brothers, it doesn’t mean the hydra doesn’t grow more heads.”
Jennie’s eyes narrowed. She brought the Big Bitch back to Rustin’s face. “That ‘bitch and her pet’ was me and mine.” She spoke quietly, but venom laced her words. “You be careful who you’re speaking to, otherwise I’ll exorcise you and end your pitiful existence of living among shit-stained sheets. Got it?”
Rustin, suddenly realizing who he was talking to, took a deep breath. “It was you? You’re the one they call Rogue?”
Jennie winked. “In the flesh.”
“The machine can’t be stopped,” Rustin repeated, sounding now as if he were giving advice rather than a threat. “The flame is lit. The wheels are already turning. It’s far too late for that. The gatherers are preparing for the revolt, and when it comes, it’ll be like nothing the city has ever seen. Freedom for the queen.”
Rogue, Renegade And Rebel (In Her Paranormal Majesty’s Secret Service Book 1) Page 25