Rachel turned her head toward Harry and scanned him up and down. “There’s one here right now,” Rachel said. “I can sense them.”
Oh, okay, color me surprised, she was a sensitive. Perhaps she couldn’t fully see Harry or hear him.
Harry froze and eyeballed the tiny teenager. “Can she see me?”
Rachel tilted her head. “He’s wearing a suit and looks worried.”
Wendy reached out and gripped her daughter’s hand. “I’m sorry, we will fix this. Safely. I will be with you every step of the way.” Good, she’d taken the safer, albeit more difficult, route. There was hope for Rachel yet. “And before you know it, those demons and spirits will be something in the past.”
I rubbed my temple. This was now a delicate matter. I’d somehow backed myself into a corner accusing Rachel of being an addict—which I believed was also in play—but how to tell her mother that she could also see ghosts? Ugh.
“I would like to see you for a monitoring visit each month,” I told Wendy.
She nodded. “Of course, Miss Roberts, we will be back next month.” She gripped Rachel’s arm and urged her up. Rachel stepped around Harry, confirming she knew exactly where he hovered. I would break the news of their darling daughter’s gift to them in the coming months. I had to get them on the withdrawal program first.
I wrote a quick script out for some meds which would help with the tremors and handed it to Wendy. “For when the night sweats and shakes get too bad.”
Wendy folded it into her brown leather handbag and ushered Rachel out of the room. I turn to Harry. “What’s wrong?”
He swallowed. “There’s someone here to see you.”
I arched a brow and leaned against my desk. “That’s hardly a pineapple situation. Perhaps we need to go over the guidelines.”
Harry shook his head. “There’s an issue with this visitor.”
Oh no, please don’t tell me my grandmother had arrived for an impromptu visit. But my wards hadn’t clanged in my mind in warning, and my grandmother’s power packed a punch. I would have known.
“What’s the issue?” I asked.
Another male ghost with bloodshot eyes and scraggly brown hair, floated through the door, somehow stumbling over nothing. Impressive, when you could literally pass through anything.
“The issue, Miss Roberts, is he’s dead.”
Chapter Five
When everyone close to you has a pre packed bag, what does it say about you?
It had been weeks since I’d seen another ghost that wasn’t Harry. It wasn’t that people weren’t dying, because that would be a naive belief. It was that I didn’t have a beacon of heavenly light drawing the deceased to my premises. I’d also stashed the soul stone which held some power over the dead in the Roberts’ family vaults. Which meant the only way the dead would find me is if someone directed them to me.
I folded my arms and leaned against my desk. “Who are you?” I asked.
The guy ran his hands through his hair. The strands didn’t move when his fingers disappeared inside his head, and I resisted the urge to grimace as he all but stroked his phantom brain. “My name is—” He shook his head like he could shake loose the information. He was most definitely recently departed. Sometimes they were a little confused at first, clarity came with time and acceptance. Occasionally they failed to understand that they were even dead.
Harry floated closer to me, a look of mistrust plastered on his face. “It’s okay,” I said to the mystery ghost. “Can you tell me how you got here? Or who sent you?”
The guy’s eyes snapped to mine. “I was sent by a man with power.” Okay, that hardly narrowed it down. Every second person in this town had some kind of power.
“Are you from White Castle?”
His brows furrowed and he lurched forward, his hands passing through my face as he tried to clasp my cheeks. I sighed. The sensation wasn’t particularly pleasant. There was a reason people attributed random cold spots to ghosts. Spirits were here but existed in an alternate frequency to us. In an attempt to warn us that something otherworldly was nearby, our bodies registered the changes in temperature which lifted the hairs on your arms.
“I don’t think so,” the guy answered. “No, not White Castle, that’s where I’ve been sent.”
“Try to concentrate on one thing at a time, it will help with the confusion.”
“I don’t trust him,” Harry stated.
“If he meant me harm, he would have never gotten through the wards.”
