Haunted

by Kelley Armstrong

  "No, it wasn't Savannah," I said. "The Fates have been keeping me busy. Seems you're not the only one who thinks I need a job."

  "The Fates? What--?"

  A shout from a teammate cut him short. He waved to say he'd be right there.

  "Go on," I said. "I can talk to you later."

  "Uh-uh. You aren't tossing out that teaser and running off. Stay right there."

  He skated back to talk to his teammates, and within minutes was off the ice, back in street clothes, and escorting me outside to talk.

  "Bounty-hunting for the Fates, hmm?" he said, settling onto a swing-set outside the arena. "Well, if it keeps you from obsessing--" He bit the sentence short. "If you need to know how to deal with haunters, you've come to the right place."

  "You've haunted?"

  "Surprised?"

  I laughed. "Not really."

  "I tried it. Didn't see the attraction. A hobby for cowards and bullies. But I learned enough to help you take care of this guy. First, we need to teach you how to get past the earth-spooks without being made as a ghost." He leapt off the swing, landing awkwardly, but righting himself before he toppled. "Ghost lesson number one, coming up."

  "You don't need to--"

  "I know."

  His fingers closed around mine and we disappeared.

  Back inside the arena, we switched dimensions, slipping into the living world. On the other side of the Plexiglas barrier, a troop of preschoolers lurched past on tiny skates. Decked out in snowsuits that made them as wide as they were tall, they bobbed and swayed like a flock of drunken penguins, struggling to cross the few yards of ice between themselves and the instructor. One near the middle stumbled, and knocked over a few of her fellows. A cry went up and a gaggle of parents swooped down. A few kids on the edges of the pack decided to topple, too, so they wouldn't be left out of the sympathy rush.

  "You must have taught Sean and Bryce how to--" I stopped, noticing I was alone. "Kris?"

  "Eve!"

  Kristof slid onto center ice, arms up as he pirouetted in his street shoes. I bit back a laugh.

  "Test number one," he yelled. "How can you tell I'm a ghost?"

  "'Cause you're standing in the middle of a frigging ice rink wearing loafers and a golf shirt, and no one's yelling, 'Hey, get that crazy bastard off the ice!'"

  He grinned and shoe-skated over to the boards. When he reached the gate, he grabbed the edge with both hands and jumped. Fifteen years ago, he could sail right over it, even in full hockey gear. Today, well...

  "Hey, at least you cleared it," I said as he got up off the floor.

  "You know, I hate to complain," he said, brushing invisible dirt from his pants. "The Fates take away all those twinges and aches of middle age, and that's great, but would it kill them to give us back a little flexibility?"

  I kicked one leg up onto the top of the boards. "Seems fine to me."

  A mock glower. "No one likes a show-off, Eve. And, I could point out, if I'd died at thirty-seven, instead of forty-seven, I'd have been able to do that, too."

  "A good excuse."

  "And I'm sticking with it. On to test number two."

  Before I could object, he jogged into a group of parents hovering around the boards.

  "How can you tell I'm a ghost now?" he called.

  "Because you're walking through things. I know all this, Kris. It's common sense. If I want a ghost to mistake me for a corporeal being, then I have to act corporeal. When I passed by that group of people outside the hospital, I moved around them."

  "Ah, but you missed something. Last demo. Professional level now."

  He bounded up a half-dozen steps, then walked into a bleacher aisle. As he slipped past people, he was careful to make it look as if he were squeezing around their knees, even murmuring the odd "Excuse me." Halfway down he turned and lifted his hands expectantly.

  I shook my head. "You would've fooled me."

  "Only because you've never gone haunting. Haunters have to be extremely careful. Bump into the wrong ghost, and you'll be reported in a heartbeat. Now I'm going to try it again, and this time don't watch me. Watch them."

  He came back my way, still skirting knees and whispering apologies. I watched the faces of those he passed, but saw nothing. They just kept doing what they were doing, acting--

  "Acting as if you aren't there," I said. "That's it. They don't react to you."

  "Correct," he said, jogging down the steps. "At that hospital, you walked past a group of people, and not one even glanced your way. That isn't natural. Especially if any of them were male."

  A wink and an appreciative once-over. Had I been alive, I'm sure I would have blushed. But Kris just smiled and launched into a quick list of tips, the compliment tossed out as casually as a comment on the weather. Typical. Kris knew all the tricks, all the ways to say "I want you back" without ever speaking the words. An offhand compliment, a lingering look, a casual touch--silly little things that somehow sent my brain spinning.

  I wanted him back. No question about that. I'd never stopped wanting him, and there were times when I'd look at him, feel that ache of longing, and wonder why the hell I was holding out. I wouldn't be going anywhere I hadn't been before. And that's exactly why I wouldn't take that next step. Because I had been there before.

  I wasn't cut out for relationships. I've never felt the need to share my life, never sought out others for more than casual friendship and professional contacts. When someone did worm their way in--Ruth Winterbourne, then Kristof, then Savannah--I let them down, making choices that always seemed so right at the time. As much as I wanted to say I now resisted Kristof to avoid hurting him, I knew I was, at least in equal part, protecting myself.

  Kris finished his list of tips. "That's all I can think of, for now. Time to put the theory into practice."

  "Practice? You mean with the haunters? Thanks for the offer, but--"

  "It isn't an offer; it's a demand. You owe me."

  "Owe you?" I sputtered.

  "I tried to give you some work at the courthouse--work that would have given me an excuse to pursue adventures otherwise unsuitable for an esteemed member of the judicial system. You turned me down. Robbed me of the first chance for hell-raising I've had in--"

  "Hours. Maybe days."

  He shot a grin my way. "Much too long. Now you've brought me a replacement opportunity, and I'm not about to let it slip past."

  "So I'm stuck with you?"

  His grin widened. "For now and forever."

  I muttered under my breath, grabbed his hand, and teleported us back to my marker.

  Before we were close enough to the hospital for the phantom bouncer to recognize me, we skipped around to the back. Once inside, we went in search of our haunters. Didn't take long to find them. Just had to follow the screams.

  7

  WE WERE IN A DARKENED THERAPY ROOM. THE SHOUTS came from the adjoining room. Using my Aspicio powers, I cleared a peephole in the wall and looked through. Kristof slid onto the desktop to wait, knowing only I could see through the holes I created.

  Three people sat in the next room. The oldest was a woman in her late fifties, seated behind a steel desk. She wore a multicolored caftan, enormous loop earrings, and a necklace with an ugly wooden elephant slipping trunk-first between her breasts. The elephant looked scared. I didn't blame him.

  The woman was leaning back in her chair, writing in a small notepad. Over her head, a huge poster screamed, YOU ARE THE CAPTAIN OF YOUR OWN SHIP. The photo was the famous Titanic shot of Leo and Kate with their arms spread on the bow. Stick me in front of that poster for an hour a week and I'd be ready to commit myself.

  A man and a woman, both in their late twenties, both dressed in jeans and sweatshirts, sat across from the therapist. The woman had one foot pulled under her, just as comfy as could be. Her neighbor was so tense he seemed to be hovering above the chair, poised to leap up at any provocation.

  "No, she's right here!" the young man said. "Why can't you se
e her?"

  "Tell me what you see," the therapist intoned.

  "I've told you!" the man said. "I've told you and I've told you and I've--"

  "Barton," the woman said. "Remember what we say? Anger has no place in our house. Like trash, we must take it to the curb."

  "God, what a bunch of horse crap," the younger woman said, yawning as she stretched her legs. "Tell her she's a bitch. A stupid, blind old cow."

  "You're blind," he said to the therapist. "If you can't see her sitting right here--"

  "For God's sake, Bart. Stop being such a pussy. She's a bitch. Say it to her face."

  "No!"

  "What, Barton?" the therapist asked. "What's she saying to you?"

  Barton clamped his mouth shut and shook his head. The younger woman leaned over and whispered into his ear. He tried to brush her off, like a buzzing fly, but his hand passed right through her face.

  "Go on, tell her," the ghost urged Barton. "Better yet, take a swing. Smash her smug face in. Now, that'd be real therapy."

  Barton leapt to his feet and took a swing...at the ghost. When his fist passed through her, he threw up his hands and howled. Then he stopped and slowly turned to the therapist, who scribbled furiously. The ghost convulsed with laughter.

  I clenched my fists and turned to Kristof.

  "Can I smack her? Just one good smack--"

  "Oh, we'll do better than that," he said. "But first we have to find the others."

  Again, the ghosts gave themselves away, this time not by making patients scream, but by sitting around chatting about it. No one knows why some mental patients can see ghosts. Maybe mental illness breaks down the boundary between possible and impossible, so, like small children and animals, the brains of the mentally ill weren't always jumping in to edit their perceptions. Or it could be that these people have necro blood, but their families have strayed from the supernatural community. When they began hearing voices and seeing apparitions, everyone around them would assume the problem was psychological.

  So when we came across a group of four people, laughing about how they'd made a patient piss his pants, we knew we'd found our haunters. Either that or we'd found the world's first psych hospital staffed by the National Sadists Institute.

  "No, no, no!" said an elderly man with a snow-white Van Dyke beard. "We had one better than that. Ted, remember Bruce? The one you convinced he could fly?"

  "Oh, yeah," chortled a ghost with his back to my wall.

  "What happened?" asked a plump teenage girl.

  Ted shifted to better face his audience and I recognized my headless accountant. I backed up and motioned to Kristof that I'd found our ghost. He nodded, and I returned to my peephole.

  "...sailed clean off the roof." Ted was laughing so hard he could barely get the words out. "Like Superman. Only, as he soon discovered, he couldn't fly. Landed right on Peterman's Jag. Hit so hard his fucking teeth popped out like Chiclets. Peterman was picking them out of his seats for weeks. That's what he gets for leaving his sun-roof open."

  The haunters roared with laughter.

  The old man waved his arms again, like a bird attempting takeoff. "The best part was when the dumb fuck hits the roof. For a second, he just lies there, dying. Then his spirit starts to separate. He looks around, gives the biggest grin you've ever seen, then jumps up and dances a little jig on the top of the Jag, yelling, 'I did it! I did it! I can fly!' Then--"

  Ted stepped in front of the old man. "Then he just happens to look down, and there, under his feet, is this body. His body. He stops--freezes on the spot--stares down, and goes, 'Oh.'"

  "Just like that," the old man chortled. "'Oh.'"

  I looked at Kristof.

  "More smacking in order?" he murmured.

  "Smacking's too good. Think I can rip out their intestines and use them for harp strings?"

  "You could try. Or..."

  He tilted his head toward the paper-thin wall.

  "...are the best," someone said, then sighed. "We haven't had a decent new one in weeks."

  I glanced at Kristof. We smiled at each other.

  We found an empty room farther down the hall, where we could talk without being overheard by the haunters.

  I perched on the bed. "So one of us will play patient and the other should be a nurse or--"

  "First, I need you in a nurse's uniform."

  "I don't think I saw any nurses on the way in. I should go see what kind of outfits--"

  As I slid off the bed, he put out a hand to stop me.

  "I think I can handle this," he said. "May I?"

  Being able to change women out of their clothing may be most adolescent boys' idea of heaven, but ghosts can't do it unless they're given tacit permission by the other party. I closed my eyes and concentrated on letting Kris change my clothes.

  "There," he said.

  I looked down and saw my boobs looking back at me. Well, the tops of them anyway, stuffed into a white shirt with cleavage so low I was bound to pop out if I so much as sighed. I wore a skintight white nurse's dress that barely covered my rear. Speaking of adolescent fantasies...

  I glared at Kris, who was grinning like a thirteen-year-old.

  "Hey, it's a nurse's uniform," he said.

  "Yeah...from a porn movie."

  A wide grin. "Works for me."

  As I sighed, he stepped closer, finger sliding along the hem of my dress, rippling the fabric so it tickled against my thighs.

  "Remember the last time you played nurse for me?" he murmured. "I was working at the New York office, and you came up for the weekend. We were supposed to get together for dinner, but you called--"

  "I remember," I said, quickstepping away. "Now, we need a plan--"

  "Oh, you had a plan." He stepped as close to me as he could get without touching. "I was on my way to a meeting and you called and said, 'I can't wait for tonight, Kris.'"

  I opened my mouth to say something--anything--but his gaze met mine, and the words dried up, leaving me standing there, lips parted, face tilted up to his.

  He continued, "You said I didn't sound very good, and suggested I come by the hotel room so you could play nurse for me. Which you did. Most effectively. Ordered me into bed...and, by the time you were done, I couldn't have got out of it if I wanted to." A slow grin. "Of course, neither could you."

  Thank God for ghost-hood sometimes. No need to worry about pounding hearts or sweaty palms or heavy breathing. All I had to do was keep my gaze down, and he wouldn't know how badly I wanted to say "To hell with it" and cross that last quarter-inch between us.

  His lips moved closer to my ear. "I remember every second of that afternoon, Eve. I've replayed it so many times...in bed, in the shower, even in the car, once during a traffic jam--I was sitting there and I saw a billboard for the hotel we'd stayed in and next thing you know..." A deep chuckle. "I found a way to make the delay a whole lot more bearable."

  I backpedaled so fast I fell right through the wall. Kristof grabbed my arm to steady me, but I moved out of his way.

  I righted myself and glowered at him. "God, you are--"

  A quick grin. "Incorrigible?"

  "Oh, that wasn't the word I had in mind."

  "I like incorrigible. Much better than desperate. Or horny. Or desperately horny."

  "Arghh!" With a blink, I changed back into my jeans. "There, better?"

  He took my hand and pressed it to his crotch. "Nope, no change. Have I ever mentioned how great your ass looks in those--"

  "If you do, you're going to find yourself on the wrong end of a shock-bolt spell."

  "Hmmm."

  "Don't even try it."

  "Not going to. I'm just wondering whether I should risk unzipping or just let you continue like this."

  "Like what?" I followed his gaze down to see my hand still pressed against his crotch. "Damn you!"

  "I take it that's a no on the unzipping?"

  I bit back a retort and settled for striding across the room, giving my brain time to
find its way out of the lust-fog. "I need a real nurse's uniform."

  "No, you're going to be the patient."

  "But you said--"

  "I said I needed to put you in a nurse's uniform. I didn't say it was part of the plan."

  I rolled my eyes and fought the urge to laugh. "Okay, tell me what you have in mind."

  I was going to play patient--a more thorough disguise, since two of the haunters had already seen me. Stained, baggy sweats, my hair snarled and oily, eyes red and sunken--the look of someone for whom personal hygiene has been a low priority for a while. After I finished the glamour, Kristof conjured a wheelchair for me, and we headed back to the haunters.

  8

  "YOU SHOULD HAVE SEEN BART'S FACE." THE YOUNG woman who'd been taunting Barton to violence had returned to the other haunters. "Franco couldn't write her report fast enough. She was on the phone to Peterson before Chang even came to collect ol' Bart."

  Kristof wheeled me into the room, and silence fell as every eye turned our way. Outfitted in a generic orderly's uniform, he grumbled under his breath about the nurses being too busy to help settle me in. He steered carefully, making sure not to run through anything that should be solid. He left me in the middle of the room, and grabbed the folded bedding from the foot of the bed. With a quick conjure, he duplicated it into a ghost-world set, then began unfolding the top sheet. I sat motionless, chin on my chest, gaze downcast.

  "Well, looky-looky," chortled Ted, my headless accountant.

  I lifted my head and scanned the room. I frowned over at Kristof.

  "We got audio," the teenage girl said. "But I think the video's on the fritz."

  "Damn," the other woman said.

  "I prefer the listeners," Ted said as he sauntered toward me. "Much more unsettling, isn't it, honey? You can hear us, but you can't see a damned thing."

  "Who--who's there?" I said.

  Ted leaned down to my ear. "I'm right here. Can't you see me?"

  "N--no."

  "Well, maybe that's because you're crazy."

  The others laughed.

  "Only crazy people hear voices," Ted whispered. "Are you crazy, honey? Lost your marbles? Not playing with a full deck? Loony as a...loony as a..."

  "Jaybird," Kris said.

  They all looked over at Kristof. He shook out another sheet, and let it drift onto the bed.