“What?How?”
“Your mom was the one who called before. She got an assignment from someone who believed they were haunted by a ghost. Guess what she was wearing?”
“The pearls….”
“Yep. Linda told me it seemed suspicious that two women from the Victorian era were following this woman around and causing her trouble if they were her family. We all know that normally those ghosts tend to protect their family line, this wasn’t that.”
“What happened then?”
“Linda is bringing her to you.” He laughed at my lack of response. “Have fun!” Then the bastard hung up on me.
“The thief is coming here? With my mom and sister?” Alice asked warily.
I nodded. “It appears so…”
Three pissed off ghosts, two mediums, and one thief all sat in a living room. It shouldn’t have sounded like the start of a bad joke, but it did. Too bad it was my reality. My mom had walked inside the house with confidence as she’d dragged the pearl thief along with her. We already knew the woman wasn’t a relative, so those pearls had to have been stolen from the house.
We now sat and began our interrogation; the thief just had no idea three ghosts were there too.
“Your name is Nikita, right?” Mom asked, likely wanting to ease the woman into it.
“Yes, I told you when we met,” she snapped, clearly not liking being back here.
Mom simply hummed. “And do you knowwhyI brought you back here?”
Nikita shook her head. “I have no ties to this place.”
Mom pointed at the necklace around her neck. “It appears you do.”
Nikita looked down, even if she couldn’t see the pearls since they sat so high up her neck. She touched them gingerly instead. “These are mine. Passed down through generations.”
“Liar!” Alice roared, flipping the only table in the room, making Nikita jump from the couch.
“Sit down,” I ordered firmly. “We don’t like liars, so tell us why you stole the necklace. We’d also like to know how you even got in here in the first place.”
Nikita seemed to realize she’d lost and she finally admitted, “I was the realtor. I found the necklace in a drawer upstairs and left with it before the new owner showed up. I thought no one would miss it! This house has been empty for years and there are no living relatives!”
“When you took the necklace out of the property, the curse got activated,” Mom explained.
“C-curse?” Nikita stammered.
Mom nodded calmly. “You have three ghosts who are very angry with you, so I would suggest you take it off and hand it over to me.”
Nikita didn’t even hesitate. She quickly unclasped the necklace, handed it to Mom and hurried out the door. She would have a fun time finding her way back home since Mom drove her here.
“What do we do now?” I asked, looking at the pearls.
“Now we help them move on.”
And so, we did. Each ghost touched the necklace and then we helped them move into the light. It was a rather easy thing to do with them having found peace together again. Curses happened by accident, and the ghosts often got riled up because of it. I’d heard it could be disorienting and confusing, which quickly turned into anger, then rage. If the ghost or ghosts that were affected by said curse could touch stuff, it could end up deadly for the living people around them.
When we knew they were truly gone, I asked. “What about the pearls?”
“I believe a museum would like to display them. It feels wrong leaving them here when the house is getting renovated anyway, and since they’re no longer cursed, it will be safe.”
“See?” Mom said with a knowing grin. “It went perfectly! And they were so thankful too!” I rolled my eyes affectionately. Yes, she’d been right, but I doubted the man we’d spoken to at the museum was excited about the necklace. He seemed far more enamored with Mom, who was oblivious to it, of course, or she was justthatgood at ignoring men’s advances on her.
I hoped I never found out which it was.
