Old Haunts

by Nova Nelson

“Ten years is nothing,” Donovan said. “It just means I have more stamina than the men your age.”

  “Not more than Ansel,” she said.

  He opened his mouth to reply then paused. “Yeah, that’s probably true.” Finally, he seemed to remember who I was and that he was dating me. “Oh, don’t worry, this was a while ago.”

  “Not that long ago,” I said. “Can’t be more than a few years. But don’t worry. If I have to come in second to anyone, I don’t mind it being Jane.”

  “Oh please,” he said, leaning close, “You became my first choice the second I laid eyes on you.”

  A tingle ran through my body as he wrapped an arm around my waist, leaning me back and kissing me.

  “That’s my cue to leave,” Jane mumbled before she walked away.

  Chapter Four

  The final match was Stu and Ezra versus Ted and Count Malavic.

  Everyone picked a side, and it was heavily weighted against the vampire and the grim reaper. Although I knew Ted to be one of the most harmless and lighthearted people in town, not everyone felt that way about him or had the opportunity to dispel their biases through forced interaction. And whatever forced interactions some of them had shared with him were not under the best of circumstances. So, despite his protests that he only cleaned up the bodies of the dead, many still assumed he had a little something to do with the selection of who stayed and who went.

  I decided to root for him. Not for Malavic, though. No matter how much I liked Ted, I couldn’t hope for anything good to come to Sebastian Malavic. That vampire had rubbed me wrong from day one, and while he’d proven himself useful on occasion, especially when big crawly things were pouring through the portal into the center of town, only a fool would actually like him. And I think he knew that and didn’t mind it. He cared more for power than affection.

  I also rooted for Ezra and Stu. Why not? Ezra had probably cheated, but I liked them both, and at least they’d come up and told me “good game” after the match, unlike some people…

  Donovan was solidly anti-Stu and Ezra, though I wasn’t sure he would be rooting for the other team.

  I leaned over after he shouted yet another cheating accusation at Ezra and said, “Can you take it down a notch? At least if Stu and Ezra win, we can say we were eliminated by this year’s champions.”

  It wasn’t enough of an argument to completely turn his mood around, but it did keep him from continuing to yell once the play started.

  The match was close and went into extra rounds, but ultimately the competition concluded with Ruby and Bloom cheering wildly, singing a chant whose words I couldn’t make out, and Donovan erupting into outrage again before rushing at Liberty Freeman with a new set of allegations.

  While most of the room went over to Stu and Ezra to celebrate, I approached Ted. “Good game.”

  “It was, wasn’t it?”

  “You don’t sound sad,” I said.

  “Why would I be? We made it to the finals! Besides, look how happy everyone is.”

  I looked around. He wasn’t wrong. “But they’re happy that you lost.”

  He nodded, his dark reaper hood billowing around his head. “Exactly. The count and I have won for the last three years, but everyone loves to see a reigning champion knocked off his throne. So I was able to make them happy by losing.”

  “Wait… did you throw the game?”

  “Oh, no, no, no. I would never do that. I suspect Ezra used magic to cheat!” And again, he didn’t sound at all upset.

  “So how come you’re not over there, backing up my boyfriend?”

  I nodded to where Donovan was pacing in front of Liberty, who looked about three seconds away from officially being done with Donovan’s nonsense.

  Ted followed my gaze. “Oh, good. Looks like Malavic is going to intervene.”

  “What?” I saw the count heading toward them. No, that was not good. The only thing that could make this situation worse for Donovan was getting the vampire involved. “I’d better go.”

  Malavic was holding Donovan back while Liberty turned and joined the rest of the celebration. He grinned at me when I arrived next to them. “Ah, I was wondering when his babysitter would show up.”

  “He’s just a little drunk,” I explained, hoping that was actually what was causing this totally ridiculous behavior. I didn’t mind making a scene at a bar every so often, but this was something else. This was the kind of thing that might become part of scufflepuck folklore around Sheehan’s.

  “I’m just saying,” Donovan protested, “there ought to be a rematch. Everyone saw the way his puck changed directions.”

  Malavic handed off Donovan’s arm to me, passing the torch of responsibility as he said, “There are no redos. Not in the game, not in real life.” And now he looked at me. “Sometimes there are second chances, though. But only for those willing to risk it.”

  I shook my head and rolled my eyes. “I don’t even know what you’re saying, and I’m too tired to play your dumb games.”

  He smiled that cracked-earth grin of his, and said to Donovan, “Thank you for defending my honor. You’re a real hero.” And then he turned around and slipped off.

  It wasn’t long after that Fiona and Kelley reached their limit on the rowdiness and kicked everyone out a half-hour before closing time. A few witches had ridden brooms to the event, and the sheriff made quick work of vanishing those to avoid any drunken flying accidents. As their owners complained, she informed them they could pick up their rides at the sheriff’s department the following day.

  The crowd lingered in front of the pub for a while, but I was more than ready to go home and get in bed. Medium Rare was set to open late the next day, but I thought it might be nice to have a slow, easy morning. And I really did need to catch up on some studying if I was ever going to officially graduate.

  The throng dissipated quickly once it reached the street, many of the folks splitting off toward their homes in Erin Park and the surrounding neighborhoods while the rest of us made toward the center of town. Donovan walked next to me, and I allowed him to hold my hand, even though I wasn’t super thrilled about the way he’d conducted himself. Ezra carried Ruby down the street in his arms, and Stu recapped each of his throws, play by play, to Stella and Kayleigh Lytefoot.

  Our group of twenty or so began to thin, but by the time we were almost to Fulcrum Park, there were still easily a dozen among us.

  I don’t know who saw the body first, but a chill ran down my spine the second I heard the bloodcurdling scream.

  Chapter Five

  “Back up! Everyone take a step back!” Stu hollered at the gawking group.

  Nobody listened, so he simply muscled his way through to get a look.

  I was already there, having known the second I heard the scream what must have happened.

  I stared down at the man’s body. It just looked like he’d passed out or fallen asleep on his stomach in the grass. “Who is it?” I asked Stu. I didn’t even know what kind of being we were looking at—were, witch, something else?

  I could rule out faun and minotaur since there were no animal parts, and fairy and pixie since there were no wings. He was certainly pale enough that he could have been an elf or vampire, but I suspected neither of those were what we were dealing with.

  Stu checked for a pulse to confirm what was obvious to the rest of us, and then he rolled the body over onto its back.

  “Twenty tines,” he cursed. “It’s Dmitri.”

  I’d heard that name before tonight, but when?

  Then it clicked.

  “Dmitri as in the witch?”

  Stu nodded. “Dmitri Flint.” He turned back toward the onlookers, still crouching. “You folks go on and get home. You’re all drunk and no help to begin with. Show the man some respect.”

  “You’re drunk, too,” came a deep voice from the small crowd.

  “Yeah, but I hold it better!” the deputy shouted. “Now get a move on!”

  I raised to st
anding and he said, “Not you, Ms. Ashcroft. I might need you to stick around.”

  I groaned. Did this long night really have to get longer? “Maybe Ruby can—”

  “Ruby can do no such thing!” Ruby announced. “Ruby is too old for swirls like this anymore. Besides, Ruby is retired!”

  Ezra, still carrying her, said, “Ezra will escort her home.”

  I shot him a sharp look. “Ezra will make sure she’s safe inside and then depart.”

  “Ruby is a grown woman and can make her own decisions!” said Ruby. She reached behind him, smacking him on the backside and said, “Onward, my steed!”

  Ezra tossed me what-can-you-do? shrug and continued carrying her down the hill toward our house, the pair of them loudly singing a lilting tune.

  Once the rest of the group, except for Donovan, had cleared out, Stu asked, “You sense anything? You reckon it’s murder or natural causes?”

  “I don’t sense much of anything,” I said, “but I’ve been drinking all night. Doesn’t exactly help the Insight.”

  He nodded. “I don’t see anything that immediately points to homicide, but do me a favor and let me know as soon as possible if he turns up.” He sighed and slapped a palm to his forehead, shaking his head slowly. “A dead guy in the middle of the road. Can’t I just get one day off without anything terrible happening?”

  “Maybe you should call for Bloom.”

  “Yeah, I suppose I should. Well, you two kids get home and try to get some shut-eye. I know the sight of this isn’t conducive to a full-night’s sleep, but well, nothing you can do about that.”

  “We’ll be fine, Stu,” Donovan assured him. But I could still hear a little iciness in his tone.

  “You take care of yourself,” I said to the deputy. No one in Eastwind needed a vacation like Stu Manchester needed a vacation.

  Donovan put his arm around me, and we proceeded on down the road. But when we got to the place where he would have gone left and I would have gone right, he seemed just fine continuing to the right along with me.

  I pulled up short. To say I wasn’t feeling it after his behavior and finding a body in the middle of the road would be a gross understatement. But I knew he didn’t handle rejection well, so I eased in. “I think I just need some sleep tonight.”

  “Yeah, that’s fine. I’m tired too.” He tried to continue forward with me, but I didn’t follow, so he stopped walking again.

  “I sleep better when I’m not sharing a bed,” I said.

  His lips parted slightly as the not-so-subtle hint landed. “Is this because of the tournament?”

  “You mean how you spent most of the night verbally abusing a genie until a vampire had to intervene? No, it’s not about that.”

  He narrowed his eyes. “Ah, I see. I embarrassed you.”

  “Yeah, a little. But it’s really not about that,” I said. Because it wasn’t entirely about that.

  “What’s it about?”

  I remembered Landon showing me the gleaming sapphire. “I’m tired, that’s all. Too much socializing. I just want to be alone for a little bit to recharge before work tomorrow.”

  He frowned, but, thankfully, bought it. “Yeah, okay. I get that. There were a lot of people there tonight.” He closed the space between us and pulled me close. “I’m sorry I got too competitive and embarrassed you. I know I can be a little much.”

  I felt myself soften against him. “It’s okay. Everyone was drinking.”

  “I’ll apologize to Liberty in the morning. Well, maybe not the morning. I plan on sleeping off a hangover until about noon. But I’ll send him a letter before I go into Franco’s tomorrow.”

  I smiled and he kissed me. “If that dead guy shows up in your bedroom, do me a favor.”

  “What’s that?” I asked.

  “Let him know you have a jealous boyfriend who’ll kick his hide if he lays a hand on you, and that being dead already isn’t going to save him.”

  I laughed. “I’ll be sure to pass along the word. But hopefully it’ll be a quiet night.”

  One last (long) kiss, and we parted ways.

  When I finally made it inside, I expected Grim and Monster to have made their way upstairs for the night, but instead, I found the munchkin cat hot on Grim’s tail as he fled in circles around the parlor table, shouting, “It was just a joke! I would never eat your food!”

  “We both know that’s a lie,” I replied, leaping out of the way as Grim tried to use me as a human shield. “Monster, it’s too late for this. It’s been a long night and I just want to go to sleep.”

  “If you think we’re the loudest thing happening in the house tonight…”

  He didn’t have to spell it out. I groaned and said, “Everybody upstairs.”

  Clifford was sleeping outside Ruby’s bedroom door on the second story landing when I beat on her door and said, “Sound silencing spell, please.”

  Clifford wagged his tail, which I took to mean “thank you.”

  I climbed up the stairwell to my room on the third story, kicked off my boots, flopped facedown into bed, and was out like a Quenched light.

  Until…

  It was the humidity that did it. Or maybe it was Grim’s weight pressing down the mattress, so I rolled slowly into his fuzzy legs. Either way, when I woke up, the first thing I saw was his slobbery jowls hanging open over me as his hot breath assaulted my face in repeat blasts. “Off the bed,” I mumbled, trying to get my bearings.

  “I can’t sleep.”

  I opened and closed my eyes a few times, struggling to follow along. “What, did you have a nightmare?”

  “Unfortunately, not. I love nightmares. It’s the tapping that’s keeping me awake.”

  “What tapping?” But then the sound rose to the forefront of my brain.

  “At the window,” he said.

  I whipped my head around to see. “Oh, for fang’s sake.” I temporarily collapsed back onto the bed before rallying and going to the window. I cracked it open just enough so that the spirit could hear me clearly. “Come on in.”

  I closed the window tight again, and the ghost of Dmitri Flint nodded and glided through the glass. Now that I wasn’t trying not to gawk (like I had been back at the park), I could get a real look at him. His dark hair was long and curly, and he wore it with the sides pulled back into a knot. Though I guessed him at a handful of years older than me, he had the large round eyes of a dangerously curious boy. There was likely a good story behind his visibly crooked nose, and laugh lines framing his mouth completed the impression that he had, in fact, lived every day with vigor like it might be his last.

  “Sorry,” he said, “I didn’t want to intrude. I mean, more than I am.”

  Offering him the empty chair in the corner of the room, I went and took a seat on the end of my bed and tried to will my eyes to stay open. “You’re here and I’m awake, so we might as well get into it.”

  As Dmitri floated past her, Monster woke up with a start, looked around in all directions, then arched her back and bounded away from the source of the chill. She could always sense the spirits coming in and out, but since she couldn’t see them like Grim and I could, they sometimes sent the usually fierce feline into a panic when they snuck up on her.

  Once she was tucked under the bed (Grim followed her for good measure, flattening himself out as much as he could to shimmy underneath), I went ahead and launched into it. “I presume you were murdered.”

  But to my surprise, Dmitri frowned and shook his head slowly. “No, not murdered.”

  I squinted at him through the darkness. The moon was low in the sky, giving off little light, which allowed him to glow unusually bright. “You sure?”

  “Pretty sure.”

  “O-kay… Unfinished business then?”

  “No, none that I can think of.”

  I blinked. “All right, then you haven’t come to terms with your own mortality. That has to be why you’re here.”

  “Again, sorry, but no. I came to terms wi
th that years ago.”

  I was stumped. “Then why are you here?”

  He chuckled. “That’s what I came to see you about. I have—had—a preexisting heart condition that I knew could kill me at the drop of a coin. Doctor discovered it a few years back but couldn’t explain it. I even traveled to a specialist in Avalon and she couldn’t figure it out. So I made peace with the fact that every day could be my last, and I got all my affairs in order. And then I just kept on living. Until I didn’t.”

  “Clearly,” I said. I mulled over the few facts I had, then asked, “You’re sure you weren’t murdered?”

  “Pretty sure. The specialist told me it would be a fairly painless death, just feel like someone punched me in the chest, and then I might feel some sharp pains in my heart and then it’d be over. Well, that’s about what I felt. And I don’t know of anyone who would want me dead.”

  I waved that off. “The murdered rarely do. What were you doing when it happened?”

  “Just walking up the hill toward Sheehan’s for the tournament.” He paused. “Oh man, Bryant must be furious at me. He was so set on winning this year.”

  “I’m sure he’ll understand when he hears the news.”

  “Then you’ve underestimated how competitive he can be. He won’t accept my death as a valid excuse for not making it.”

  He was right. I’d underestimated Bryant. Again, I was reminded of how little I actually knew about him. I considered suggesting to Donovan that he and Bryant team up for next year’s tournament. But then I quickly dismissed it; pairing up two people that competitive would likely turn into a nightmare for everyone.

  Dmitri continued. “I assume it was the hill that did it. I’m not as in shape as I used to be, and the strain might have triggered the heart defect.”

  I nodded. “I’m not a doctor, but that seems plausible enough.” It wasn’t an especially steep hill going toward Erin Park, and Dmitri wasn’t what I would call overweight, but what did I know about how all that worked? I was a psychic who owned a restaurant, not a cardiologist.

  But still, I lacked even a hunch about why he was sitting in my bedroom chatting with me rather than enjoying the great beyond.