Page 2 of How I Met Your Murderer

I turned up the radio to drown out any more thoughts whatsoever and focused on searching for the unpaved, hidden turnoff that would take me to the lonely, haunted homestead at 12 Athenry Lane.

I’d gone into what I now call The Shed Incident with my blaster guns blazing (the PolterPulse V2.1 and the X5000 Turbo Pro, for the technically minded). The homeowner had me wound up with all her talk of unholy screeches coming from the equipment shed on the property that her grown son maintained for her, stories recounted as she trembled and clutched a rosary between bony fingers. The faint sounds of something I could only describe as inhuman carried on as I stood outside on the cottage porch in the deepening dusk, gathering my wits.

“It’s just a ghost, O’Meara,” I muttered under my breath. “Not the damn dentist. Not your ex. Not some tourist puking up shamrock-green beer. How hard can it be?”

It definitely wasn’t a pep talk worthy of Coach, or even much of a game plan.

Based on what little I’d read of The Handbook and the violent knocks and bangs that sweet old Mrs. Murphy had described to me over a cup of weak tea, my guess was that we were dealing with a poltergeist. Chaotic, yes, though likely not out to cause real harm.

But not even the disaster of having dated a demonologist could have prepared me for what happened when I unchained the shed door and eased it open to the sounds of rustling and shrieking and something rapping on the wall.

A parrot—some kind of large, colorful bird—dove at my head and slapped me in the face with its wings as a bunch of other creatures cackled and jeered. My bad knee wobbled a little, but I stood my ground even as part of me wanted to recoil.

I clicked the trigger of the PolterPulse V2.1 threateningly as I tried to reassess exactly what I was dealing with.

Then the bright lights of another vehicle coming up the drive shattered the shed’s dim interior and I met the glittering eyes of several monkeys in cages who seemed, more than anything, glad for the entertainment. Here for the craic.

For a moment, as we stared at each other, I grinned, too.

It was admittedly pretty funny, me bursting in here all determined, like I was going to zap creepy crawlies with a clunky piece of equipment that would have barely tickled a living being (I’d tried it on my thigh during training). I was armed to fight the unseen forces that feed on terror, while the creatures in here were just hungry for some peanuts and seeds.

But the grin was quickly wiped away as a pair of Gardaí burst out of their vehicle on the drive and stormed up to wrangle my arms behind my back, cuffing my wrists together.

“You can’t arrest me. I’m just a friendly neighborhood spirit extraction expert!” I panted as they hauled me off toward the cottage’s cramped kitchen for interrogation. Finally remembering my earlier flash of Second Sight, I realized they probably thought I was breaking in.

Thankfully, all it took to clear up the matter was one of the officers grabbing my ID from the van. It turned out that, unbeknownst to her, the Widow Murphy’s son was wanted for exotic animal trafficking. And when the officers had seen my van trundling up the lane, they had assumed they were finally going to catch the guy in the act.

There was no poltergeist at 12 Athenry Lane, but there was a boa constrictor loose in the ductwork of the cottage, feasting on a mouse infestation. A lemur dangled from the shed’s rafters, shitting on the caged monkeys, and a few foxes and a badger were locked away in another of the outbuildings I hadn’t explored.

While the Widow Murphy followed us around, insisting she had “known all along” that her cottage wasn’t really haunted, I helped the Gardaí corral the various howling, shrieking animals for safe transport, and at one point even found a baby crocodile snapping at my boots. I felt obligated, as I was still getting paid. And besides, I was brand new at this. Maybe breaking up the occasional smuggling ring was an expected part of hunting and removing ghosts.

Although, in that case, ExorSquad really should have covered that during training.

I got a few more calls like that early on in my career, if I could call it that. Like the assignment that took me north toward Galway, where the first proper ghost I ever encountered was that of an angry wildcat. The couple didn’t have any pets and hadn’t lost any recently, but they did collect quirky taxidermy pieces. After the Shed Incident, I was just relieved to be dealing with the dead that time rather than any nippy crocodiles or attack parrots.

And to finally see the X5000 in action (well—after I charged it, recharged it, and whacked the damn thing against the wall a few times to wake it up).

As I settled into Van Life and my strange new job, the pain of losing hurling started to fade like the pain in my knee, probably because I was keeping so busy. I even managed to read a few more pages of The Handbook, which I realized might actually contain some useful advice when I got to Rule #24.

Rule #24: Never Flirt During an Exorcism

Demons thrive on chaos like flirting and banter, and during a high-pressure haunting, distraction can be deadly. Exorcisms demand absolute focus, discipline, and respect for the unholy forces at play. Attempting to charm your partner during such a ritual—or worse, charm the possessed person or creature—only invites catastrophe.

Above all, remember this: the only sparks allowed to fly during an exorcism are from the protective candles.

That was more or less the story of how I had broken up with my last boyfriend, Ronan the Demonologist. The only guy who had ever been more than a month-long fling, two months if we were lucky, even though we probably didn’t make sense on paper: the goth and the sportsman. Ronan and I had gotten together when I was still on the team, and he had stuck by me through my ACL surgery. Had stayed with me in the hospital as much as visiting hours allowed, charmed the nurses and my parents, brought my favorite foods and kept my spirits high.

But well into my recovery, when he had invited me to spend the night with him while he investigated supposedly demonic activity at a pub, we’d been doing some heavy flirting and teasing by the barstools when something came over him. His face changed. Even his eyes looked different in a way I couldn’t quite describe, though they were still the same color.

“Feeling all right?” I had asked uneasily, because he hadn’t prepared me for what I was supposed to do if anything went wrong on the job. He had assured me, many times, that it simply wouldn’t. I’d edged closer, even though I didn’t really want to. I was worried he was going to faint or something. “Can I bring you anything? Some water, or—”

“Oh, Raff,” he had crooned in a rough voice, almost like he had just woken from a deep sleep. “What could you possibly give me? Since the accident, you’re all temper and no direction. You’re losing that rock-hard body that made me want you in the first place. You’ve gone soft, in more ways than one, sat around all day in your sweats. Like a pensioner.” His eyes had changed more, getting darker, like an extra shadow passing over his face. The effect was intense enough to make me notice even though the words had just driven a knife right through the heart of all my insecurities. “You’ve got nothing left. Without any other talent to speak of, you’ve lost the one thing that made you interesting.”

And that’s when I left him.

Walked right out of the pub, slammed the door, and held it to trap him in there while I called one of his friends to come sort him out.

When he eventually resurfaced a week later, no longer possessed and trying to grovel, I told him I didn’t want to hear it and officially broke things off. Because I couldn’t stop hearing what the demon had hissed through Ronan’s lips, things I had quietly feared since the day they carted me and my useless leg off the pitch.