“We won’t,” he said. “This is clearly someone trying to disrupt the owner’s business. They might have another goal, but we won’t know until we catch them.”
“A goal like haunting?” I said.
“Maybe they have a YouTube channel,” he said. “Or a Tiktok.”
“To show off theirhaunting?”
“To show off their pranks.”
Shaking my head, I said, “I checked the outside pretty thoroughly before I came inside. So wherever the remains are, they’re inside the house. None of the reports said anything about any ghost activity outside.”
“We should go room by room,” King suggested.
I gestured with my hand. “Be my guest.”
Moving forward, hand resting on his taser, he checked the downstairs rooms. I put Laurel’s book in my satchel, my free hand brushing leaves and a couple of small twigs to the side. The rocks I was less careful about. They’d settled in the bottom of the bag. I traced my fingers over a bottle, checking for any leakage, but my fingers came out of the bag dry.
King was in the kitchen, and I heard him use a voice that was straight out of the police academy.
“I’m with the SAPD. You need to immediately cease your activities and get down on the ground, hands behind your head.” Firm, an order that would have had a werewolf following directions.
I came into the kitchen, one hand rummaging in my bag for anything I could use. In front of King, there was a figure hovering an inch above the floor. Old clothes, the sort of high neckline that reminded me of a particularly kinky librarian.
Piled high on her head in a complicated knot, her hair looked black. If she hadn’t been faded like a photograph left in the sunfor too long, most of her would have looked normal. Her face was where it got real weird.
Behind her glasses, her eyes were two holes in the universe. It wasn’t that they were black, it was that they were literally sucking all the light in the room into them. A lightbulb in one of the can lights made a lowpopand rained down delicate glass.
Her mouth was a wide rictus of sharp teeth. She was a werewolf gone rabid, a vampire that somehow lookedmoredead than the bloodsuckers usually did.
She snapped her teeth together, and the sound ricocheted around the room like a gunshot. With a flicker, she was closer to King, startling him into a shriek. He drew his taser and yelled a warning before pulling the trigger.
The high voltage wires passed through her and hit the kitchen wall, giving the newly installed oven the ride of its life. The ghost roared and flickered again, shoving King back until he hit the kitchen island. Its mouth opened, displaying the shark teeth and a jaw thatunhinged.
Great. We were dealing with a poltergeist.
Three
Grabbing the small Santa saltshaker off the table, I loosened the top and threw it hard at the poltergeist. It arced, Santa’s head coming off midway through the throw, and showered the poltergeist in salt. With a shriek, she flickered backwards and disappeared.
Thank all the gods in every pantheon I could name. Salt had been on the list of “maybe works???” in Laurel’s book. Of all the possibilities, it was the only one on hand.
“Just to be clear,” I said, moving towards King as I looked around the room for any hints of our attacker. “That was just smoke and mirrors. A trick of the light.”
“That touched me,” King said, his eyes wide. He turned towards me, and I saw there was a slight tremor in his hands when he bent to pick up his dropped taser, popping out the spent cartridge and loading a new one.
“That was a ghost,” I said.
“That’swhat caused your cold spots?” he challenged, turning to me with a dubious tilt to his head. He re-holstered the taser and shrugged his shoulders, like a boxer about to go another round.
My eyes followed the motion, and I admired the whole physique again. He was a little taller than me, but not by much. His uniform and heavy utility belt showed off his broad shoulders and slim hips. I wasn’t wrong when I’d guessed that under his bulky rain coat he had some muscle, although everything about him looked functional, as though he was a triathlete who didn’t want any weight that he wouldn’t use.
His eyes had a hint of green, making them a warm hazel that accented the golden undertones of his skin. I imagined what they would look like if they were sleepy after a night of fun.
“I think it’s turned into a poltergeist,” I said. “A ghost that’s been poisoned so that it only wants to hurt people.”
He frowned, crossing thoseyes, pleasearms over his chest. “That was some sort of transmitted energy. Probably a spell that allows for only short bursts of physical interaction. A child can do those sorts of spells for brief periods of time.”
“Seriously? You’re attacked by a ghost and your reaction is that it’s a kid playing a prank?” I shook my head. “You screamed. I heard you scream.”
