Duck Duck Ghost (26 page)

He would have been better hidden if he’d dressed himself in a bunny suit and sprinted in front of a pair of greyhounds named Ickle and Jim as they lazed about in a small backyard. Rolling over, Tristan wedged his back into the base of a crate as Wolf peppered Daylen with salt-filled rounds.

Daylen screamed and writhed when the coarse fragments struck him, and as one, the boxes’ faces howled with him in an air raid of terror. Wolf cracked open the double-barreled shotgun to eject the rounds, then caught them before they hit the ground. Snapping apart the unfired round, Wolf filled his palm with the crystals and threw them into Daylen’s stretched-open mouth.

Daylen choked, and his eyes rolled back, the color slowly bleeding back into them. The faces gave one last modulating howl, then vanished, leaving behind black pockmarks on the boxes to show Tristan hadn’t hallucinated the whole thing.

Wolf caught Daylen as he fell. Blood poured from the man’s wounds, but his bones were pulling back into place, submerging once more beneath his torn flesh. Welts rose on Daylen’s exposed skin where he’d been hit by salt, and blood matted down his once perfect hair. A thin trickle wove down out of his nose, dropping bright red splatters on Wolf’s bare arms.

“You okay, babe? Shit, that round was hot. Burned my hand a little bit.” Wolf hefted Daylen up and waited for Cin to push a wider path through the boxes. After passing the unconscious man over to his cousin, Wolf helped Tristan out of his corner and hugged him tightly. “God, what the fuck happened in here?”

“I don’t know,” Tristan admitted. “But what we need is in here somewhere. And as soon as we find it, we need to destroy it, because this ghost is going to kill every last one of us if she can.”

“D
ID
YOU
get them on their way?” Wolf looked up at Cin as he came into the kitchen. His cousin was drenched and muddy, but other than a bit of fatigue around his golden eyes, Cin didn’t seem to be too worse for wear getting Sey, Gildy, and the injured Daylen across the gulch and into his car. “You came back fast. I expected you to be gone longer.”

“Yeah, I didn’t drive them in. Sey told me to get my ass back here. She didn’t want to leave you guys alone in case the ghost came back.” Cin began to strip down, then stopped to eyeball his cousin. “You don’t give a shit if I do this here, right?”

“No. I don’t want to mop the fucking stairs,” Wolf muttered over his coffee cup. “I called the farm guys across the way and told them Sey needed some help. They came and got the livestock out of the barn. Told them she had a short, and the rain sparked up a fire. I didn’t want the animals to get fucked up in this.”

“We should have done that at the first sign of trouble. Sey’s so stubborn. It’s like a family curse.” Cin peered out the window toward the barn. “So they’ve already come and gone?”

Wolf quirked his eyebrow. “Worried someone will see your naked body, get overwhelmed by your sexiness, and come tap your ass?”

“I was going to ask if they needed help, but sure, we’ll go with my sexiness.” Cin picked up his clothes and walked over to the mudroom. A bang of a metal lid and a few rustling noises; then Cin came back in, dressed in black jeans and tugging a shirt down over his head. After checking the coffeepot, he helped himself to the steaming brew, then flopped down in a chair next to Wolf. “Fuck, I am tired. How’s Tristan doing?”

“Rattled a bit. He’s worried about the kid,” Wolf said. “You gotta admit, that was some pretty scary shit.”

“Scary doesn’t even begin to describe it,” Cin agreed. Rubbing at his face, he mumbled through his fingers, “Where the fuck do we start? How many dolls are in those damned boxes?”

“So far, thirty. I’ve got them all in a couple of bins in the living room.”

“Tell me you’ve got them in a circle.” Cin growled at Wolf’s eye roll. “Look, it’s a valid question. You’re not—”

“I’m not a Hellsinger because I was tossed out of the family,” Wolf reminded him. “Doesn’t mean I don’t know the basics.”

They’d tossed the crates quickly, pulling out as many of the dolls as they could find. Sey’d cautioned them about separating the toys from their original boxes, or she’d lose track of the toys’ provenance, but after Daylen’s bones were wrenched clear of his flesh, she no longer seemed to care about anything other than ridding her house of its malevolent spirit.

“Salt?”

“Sugar,” Wolf said smugly. “I’ve found it’s got a better resonance and reflective level.”

“It also attracts ants,” Cin shot back.

“Ants are the least of our fucking problems, Cin. Did you see what she did to that kid? You think I want that to happen to Tristan?”

“I think Tristan’s the one that brings this shit out. If you ask me, he’s the reason this thing manifested. There’s something about him, Wolf. Something dark that makes these things come out.”

Wolf was out of his seat and pushing Cin before his cousin could say another word. “Tristan is not—”

“Wolf!” Tristan’s sharp voice cut through their raised voices. “Don’t. Cin, let him go.”

The cousins parted, each grumbling under their breath as they dusted off their clothes. Wolf lifted his chin and stared Cin down, poking at his cousin’s chest. “Don’t you say another fucking word about—”

“About me bringing this all down on us?” Tristan held up the red rubber ball they’d found in the shower. A few feet away, Jack bounced up and down, his stubby transparent tail moving so quickly it was a blur of light trails and shapes. “Do you see him, Cin? The dog?”

“Shit, she’s got a dog now too?” Cin reached for the salt shaker on the table, but Wolf stopped him.

“Don’t. That’s Jack. He’s… he really shouldn’t be here.” Wolf frowned. “I really thought you’d just brought a ball with you. You know, to fuck with me a bit, but—”

“Nope, he followed me. Or you. Depends on his attention span.” Tristan bounced the ball across the kitchen floor, and the terrier lunged after it, chasing it into the next room. There was a rattle, and then a scramble of claws up the stairs was followed by Crowley’s outraged howls. “Shit, the cat. I’ve never had a cat. He probably chases them.”

“You brought a manifestation with you?” Cin’s weight landed hard on one of Sey’s chairs. “What the fucking hell are you sleeping with, cousin?”

“Who, not what,” Wolf corrected sharply.

He wasn’t going to let Cin turn Tristan into something less than human. There’d been too many times Tristan called himself a freak or flinched when he spoke to his uncle on the phone. Wolf wasn’t going to have one of his own blood relatives do the same to his lover—even if Cin was as close to him as Bach or Ophelia Sunday.

“He came here on his own,” Tristan replied calmly. His changeable eyes were bright but evenly balanced in color. A flash of green signaled a hint of irritation, but the storm was held at bay by the wide smile he’d given Wolf. “But Cin has a point. They
do
come to me. There’s something about me that attracts ghosts. Whatever happened at the Grange—whatever your mom did back then—it pushed it down a bit, but it’s growing stronger again.”

“Tris, before we left, Mara… you were having problems seeing Mara,” Wolf confessed. Tristan’s hands were chilled when he reached for them. Rubbing his palms over Tristan’s fingers, he tried warming them up.

“Yeah, I know.” Tristan pulled a face. “I saw her after I spoke to you. She told me I’d walked through her a couple of times. But you’ve got to admit, Kincaid. This ghost started getting more… real with me here. And after what happened to Daylen, we can’t really screw around with her anymore. We’re going to have to do something drastic.”

“Drastic like what?” Cin growled. “Another one of Meegan’s séances? Because that shit will kill you. And probably level the house. I can’t believe you guys did that the first time without setting off a zombie apocalypse.”

“Not exactly like one of her séances but maybe something close.” Tristan took a deep breath, then kissed Wolf’s mouth with a tender brush of his lips. “What we need to do is draw her out, and I’m going to be your bait.”

 “I
T
WAS
a dark and stormy night,” Tristan said softly as he heard the screen door open behind him. “Who said that?”

“Other than Snoopy, I don’t know,” Cin admitted as he joined Tristan in leaning against the back porch’s thick railing. “I think it was the same guy who said the pen is mightier than the sword.”

“So, pretty much the grandmaster of the literary go-to lines.” He thought about it for a moment. “Did he do a bird in the hand, two in the bush thing too?”

“I think that’s a proverb,” Cin replied. “Could be even biblical. I’d have to look it up.”

All kidding aside, it was a dark and stormy night. Well, dark outside but stormy inside. Leaning forward, Tristan looked up into the endless black above them and wondered when it was all going to fall down on them. The air smelled of lightning and anger, but other than the hint of rain on the wind, it looked like the night was going to pass without another deluge.

The same couldn’t be said for Tristan’s next conversation with his lover, but he’d hoped Cin would have some success in smoothing over Wolf’s ruffled feathers. From the glowering look on the man’s face, it looked like Cin had as much luck with Wolf as Tristan had.

“How pissed off is he?” Tristan ventured, sneaking a look over at Cin. “On a scale of one to ten.”

“I’d say four point five nine, but I think he’s more pissed off he can’t think of a way out of it.” Cin turned, his golden eyes shaded to a burnt amber in the light shining out from the kitchen windows. “You’ve got the best plan. He hates that. Not the plan but that you’re… the piece of cheese in the trap.”

They’d gone round and round in the kitchen. Wolf had stalked back and forth outlining every single one of his objections only to have them shot down by Tristan. Cin sat there silently until an hour into the seemingly endless argument; then he weighed in.

“He’s right, Wolf.” If Cin had taken a knife from the butcher block and stabbed Wolf with it, Wolf couldn’t have looked more shocked. “We’re going to have to use him to draw her out.”

“You have no fucking idea what you’re—” Struck nearly dumb by what he’d obviously thought was his cousin’s betrayal, Wolf shot back, “Just wait until you fall in love, cuz, and some asshole wants to offer him up like a sacrifice to Quetzalcoatl. Then we’ll see how you feel.”

He and Cin sat in stunned silence for a few minutes before Tristan announced he needed some air. Fleeing to the porch seemed like his best bet. He’d been about to head to the barn to stare at Sey’s hippie cows, but they were already on vacation. After twenty minutes and a small panic attack, Cin joined him, and they were now both staring out onto a shadow-shrouded back garden while the house loomed behind them in silent judgment.

“Do you have any idea how we can do this?” Tristan finally asked. “Is there something in the Hellsinger bible that covers stupid tricks you can do with your paranormally enhanced boyfriend?”

“Can’t say I ever saw it,” Cin commented dryly. “The bible. Not the spell where we hang you out like a gutted deer to catch a cougar.”

“They really do that?” Tristan shuddered. “The poor deer.”

“Sometimes they have to because the cougar’s poaching on herds or is too close to houses. Depending on the place, it’s usually a catch and release, but it can lead to someone killing it.”

“You’re not convincing me to do this,” he pointed out, shifting his feet. Cin said nothing, just stood there—silent and watchful. “Just so you know. I mean, I know what I’m doing here. Well, not the actual doing. I’m going to need help with that, but it feels like it’s something I should do.”

“Yeah, I’m not convinced either,” the Hellsinger admitted softly. “But you were right—about a lot of things, actually. She’s dangerous. Probably the most dangerous phantasm I’ve ever encountered. Certainly the most powerful. What you’ve got… what you can do, it’s pretty scary, Pryce. Most Hellsingers go for decades only seeing orbs and EMF readings. You’ve already racked up God knows how many manifestations just living at… what did you call it? The Grange?”

“Hoxne Grange,” Tristan supplied. “And just so you know, it’s off limits to Hellsingers. Or at least anyone looking to exorcise my guests.”

“I don’t force out spirits unless they’re problematic.” Cin eyed him. “Wolf said you’ve got a couple of live-ins—other than the dog.”

“Yeah, mostly Mara. She’s the one I couldn’t always see these past couple of weeks. God, when I found that out, it was like someone ripped out my balls.” Tristan sniffed, refusing to cry in front of the behemoth Wolf called a cousin. “She kind of raised me. Weird I guess, if you think about it. Oh, and there’s Cook too. She comes every Tuesday. She’s a repeater. Sort of.”

There wasn’t any way he could explain how horrified and scared he’d been when Mara told him they’d not always been in sync. She’d cried when he’d been getting ready to go, and he hadn’t wanted to leave, but the spectral housekeeper insisted, telling him to come back stronger.