Page 29 of How I Met Your Murderer

“I don’t know,” I answered truthfully. Then, shifting my bag of books to one hand, I nodded to her basket. “Help you with that?”

The woman smiled, all white teeth and dimples that made me think of Eric. She had tight, twisty curls of light brown hair that fell across her forehead and bounced around her shoulders, and eyes that, when they settled on my face, felt like the rest of the shop: inviting, but uncanny. “That’s awful decent of you, but this won’t take long,” she said cheerfully.

She set about restocking the candles while I stood there like an eejit with my bag of books. The rain still came down in sheets, or else I probably would have been on my way.

Instead, I said, “I’m Raff. I’m working up at the castle.”

“That so?” she said, never missing a beat as she kept arranging candles in neat rows. “I’m Niamh. And how are you finding it at Ardruin?”

“Haunted,” I said as the pan flute abruptly stopped. It had probably come to the end of a track, but the timing was odd. “And I’m supposed to be the one doing something about it. I’m with ExorSquad—”

“Oh, no,” Niamh interrupted, sighing as if I’d let her down. “Not them, with all their shite gear and daft approaches.” Frowning, she added in a reproachful tone, “There’s other ways of handling spirits than what’s down in the company code, I promise you that. If you’re having trouble, it’s because you’re approaching the other side all wrong.”

I might have asked her to tell me about some of those ways of handling spirits if she hadn’t started assuming a lot of things without actually knowing me. “You make it sound like they’re the ones who need protecting,” I said as politely as I could. “When I’m the one who got threatened last night.”

She looked at me as if waiting for me to elaborate, but what else could I say? I wasn’t about to explain the whole scene, how Eric was with me and what we were almost definitely going to have a row about when the angry spirit interrupted—things I didn’t want to look at too closely, myself. No, I just wanted to get back to the castle, to talk to him. I hadn’t seen him since I limped out to the van late last night.

“Sounds like you’re in need of some spiritual protection, then,” Niamh declared after a moment. The flute music resumed as she glided over to a metal sculpture of a twisted tree, its skeletal branches hung with glittering pendants. She brought one over to me, a teardrop-shaped glass vial dangling on a silver chain. The pendant was filled with what looked like some kind of fine black powder.

“Any other witch trying to earn a paycheck would probably sell you a pretty crystal and a lie, but I won’t do that. Those things are useless against most spirits. This is black salt, to absorb negative energy and ward off any entity who wishes you harm,” Niamh explained while I copped the price tag. A hundred and twenty euro. That would nearly wipe out an ExorSquad paycheck, just staying protected from all the shite I went through for them.

I still paid, though, before trudging out into the damp afternoon with a bit of sparkle around my neck.

If it worked, it would be worth every cent.

eleven

Sad Wet Cat

Raff

It was only midafternoon when I got back to the castle, and a busy one at that. The trial banquet was tomorrow, on the first of October, so Caoimhe and her team of decorators were outside fighting the wet lawn and high winds to put up streamers, tinsel, paper bats, and extra signage. And since Basil was directing things, that meant Jordy and Pepper were out there, too.

That left the castle practically empty but for the new chef and her team making a racket in the kitchen as they prepped for a hundred guests.

This was going to be quite the production.

After a late night and early morning, I could feel myself dragging, the weight of exhaustion heavy in my limbs as I strapped on my utility belt and started kitting up with every piece of equipment ExorSquad had given me. I might have taken a nap in the van, but talking to Eric couldn’t wait. Not after the way we’d left things, galaxies between us.

I checked the PolterPulse V2.1 at my left hip. The X5000 TurboPro at my right. The Temporal Distortion Logger—another device for measuring otherworldly energy fluctuations, or maybe just mice in the walls—in one pocket, and the ECH000 Spirit Receiver—for picking up and amplifying spirit voices, or at least catching the local radio stations from the next town over—in another. Finally, I tucked the slim S-TRK 88 “SpecterTrack” Monitor in my back pocket. It was a device that allegedly provided a visual temperature map of any unseen entities in a room who might want to get the jump on me, but would probably just direct me to catching the nearest Pokémon. Two weapons for zapping, even if it only bought me a few minutes in a pinch, and several sleek devices that supposedly would help me track any spirits who weren’t manifesting visually.

I wasn’t taking any chances after last night. Not with one of the castle’s permanent residents apparently having it out for me.

I’d made a life-altering mistake once, trusting my instincts in hurling. I couldn’t afford that here, where trusting my gut about the ghosts could prove fatal. I’d thought I had everything under control, after all. Look at how wrong I’d been.

Rather than put on a performance to summon Eric, I trudged up the first flight of stairs with all my gear and headed for Síofra’s usual haunt. The castle didn’t feel quite as restless as it had last night, though just like at the strange shop I’d visited earlier, the air was thick and the nearly solid shadows hummed with anticipation as I passed. I put a hand on the holster of the PolterPulse, just in case.

Síofra’s room felt a little better. I was able to take a deeper breath when I stepped inside. The familiar scent of honeyed rot, floral and foul on the same inhale, at least promised I wasn’t fighting to fill my lungs like I had in the hall.

I flopped down in the covered armchair by the hearth, where I had left it at Síofra’s direction after I got Caoimhe to agree that the room could be arranged to the resident spirit’s wishes. Draping my knee over one arm of the chair to rest it, I glanced into the newly hung antique mirror (a replacement I was glad I hadn’t been asked to pay for) and waited until a familiar shadowy outline appeared.

“Dia duit,” I greeted the lady in Irish before switching over to English in the hope that Eric was here, too. Even if I didn’t feel him. The soft energy of his presence was something I had come to recognize, though I couldn’t pinpoint the exact moment that happened. I hadn’t even realized it until now, but rooms where he wasn’t always felt, somehow, emptier.

“Dia is Muire duit,” Síofra recited the standard reply to the greeting as her visage solidified in the mirror: shiny chestnut hair full of pearlescent pins, a dainty nose, painted lips, and only a few reddish, open sores marring her skin. Hardly her most frightening manifestation, though it had been days since I last saw her rotting at all—I wondered if what happened last night had affected her, too.

Catching my eye, she smiled. “Surely I’m not the ghost you’re looking for.”

“No,” I agreed, returning the smile. “But it’s nice to see you all the same.” I was grateful she understood. By the gleam in her eye, I supposed she probably had the measure of a few things I still wasn’t facing head-on myself. “Where is he? I need to talk to him. Last night got . . . strange. Complicated.”