Duck Duck Ghost (29 page)

“That diary say anything else?” Wolf leaned to look at his cousin behind Tristan’s back. “Who wrote it? Leona?”

“It was the aunt’s diary. She didn’t talk about Charity, other than she’d caught pneumonia after almost drowning,” Cin replied. “That’s what killed her, according to the doctors.”

“The pneumonia?” Normally a ghost manifested from strong emotion, and to Wolf, dying of a lung ailment didn’t lend itself to a raging afterlife. “Kind of… passive, isn’t it? Passive death doesn’t usually lead to rage.”

“Gets better.” His cousin leafed through the diary. “According to this woman’s very hard-to-read writing, she suspected Charity of not only drowning Leona’s little girl, Simone, but also somehow killing Sinclair’s second wife, who was pregnant at the time of her death. The woman apparently fell in front of a subway car while the family was on a tour of New York City.”

Cin looked up from what he was reading. “So how old does that make her at her first kill? And how old are we seeing her now?”

“How old did you think she looked, Tris?” Wolf thought about how the translucent girl looked, but she’d been a flash of panic and light when he’d seen her. “Ten? Eleven? If she had a hand in the second Mrs. Sinclair’s death, she was about seven when that happened.”

“Isn’t that kind of young for murderous thoughts?” The astonished look on Tristan’s face would have been comical if they weren’t in the crosshairs of one pissed-off Charity Sinclair. “Shit, I was just learning about how to draw perspective at seven.”

“So obvious you were an only child.” The words were out of Wolf’s mouth before he could stop himself, and the small wince in Tristan’s right eye was noticeable enough that he leaned over to squeeze his lover’s hand. “Sorry. My fucking mouth—”

“It’s okay. I mean really, for all intents and purposes, I
was
an only child.” He returned Wolf’s clench, then let go to pick through the papers he’d left on the couch. “Most of the kids I’ve ever been around are dead, and there weren’t that many of them. I don’t think most kids know they’re dead.”

“You’re like a Hellsinger idiot savant,” Cin said, shaking his head in amazement. “All of the knowledge but none of the training.”

“Training Wolf should have had.”

Wolf had to give his lover a point for loyalty.

Cin wasn’t having any of it, and his cousin shook his head vigorously. “That one’s not on me. I wasn’t the one he had a hissy fit with. I was in Spain when all that shit went down.”

“I think you were in Guatemala.” Wolf tried to think back on when his life went to shit. “Or maybe it was Venice. I don’t remember. No matter. We’re getting sidetracked. Charity—that’s what we need to focus on.”

“And how to get rid of her,” Tristan said as he rubbed his eyes. “God, it’s late. So far we know Charity died of pneumonia, supposedly killed her younger sister named Simone, and had a doll that looked like her.”

“Might have been killed by her stepmother.” Wolf dug through more of the papers, looking for anything resembling another diary or book. “You know what would be good? If people put information all in one place, like study guides or something.”

“They never do. At least we’re not trying to walk through seventeen million cemeteries looking for family graves,” Cin grumbled. “Always seems to rain or snow when I’m stuck doing that.”

“Hey, ask and ye shall receive.” Wolf grinned at the other men. Holding up a leather-bound book, he waved it in the air triumphantly. “Got the nanny’s ledger of what happened in the family for what looks like the last few years before Charity’s death.”

“What? Woman just jotted down everything for shits and giggles?” His cousin reached for the book, but Wolf jerked it out of the way.

“It’s how she got paid. She marked down major events and the days she worked. Then marked off when she’d gotten her money,” Wolf explained. “Pretty smart of her, really.”

A loud rattle came from the front door, and the three men froze in place, each alert for any other sounds. Wolf put down the diary and reached for one of the bags of rock salt they’d made as Cin reached for his shotgun. Tristan stood before the two Kincaids could and shot them a look.

“It’s the fricking front door, for God’s sake,” he snapped. “It’s not like we’re in a fucking zombie apocalypse.”

“We could be in a zombie apocalypse,” Wolf heard Cin muttering as he put down his gun. “You never know.”

Wolf headed to the front of the house. Even if they weren’t being overrun by the undead, someone was still breaking in, and suddenly Cin’s loaded shotgun didn’t seem like a bad idea. He’d almost reached the foyer when the rattling suddenly stopped. A heavy thump, then the front door burst open, slamming into the wall. A very familiar female voice echoed through the hallway, breaking the tension in a bubbling sling of hot words.

“Motherfucking rain. This door always sticks. I’ve got to get it—” Sey jerked to a stop, surprise widening her eyes, and the keys in her upraised hand fell from her fingers, hitting the floor in a bright jangle. “Jesus Christ, Wolfie! What the hell is that?”

“Get out of the way,” Gildy grumbled loudly and shoved her niece aside. “And that’s a juju bag. Any fool can see that.”

“It’s actually just salt.” Wolf showed Sey the inside of the bag. Taking in Gildy’s bright orange scrubs and the curly green wig the old woman now sported on her head, he took a moment to gather his thoughts as Cin and Tristan came up behind him.

“What the fuck is she wearing?” Cin blurted out. “And what the hell are you two doing here?”

“We’re here to help kill off that damned ghost,” Gildy announced. “And since it looks like you boys haven’t gotten a clue about how to do it, it’s a good thing we came back.”

T
HE
K
INCAIDS
were insane.

There really was no other word for it, at least not in Tristan’s mind. He’d never thought of Wolf as being particularly off his rocker, but oddly enough, while most people drank when they were around their family, Wolf appeared to become more bossy and dictatorial.

The others were just plain nuts.

“I still don’t get why you came back,” Wolf said for what must have been the fifth time since Sey and Gildy walked through the door.

“Because this is my house, and I’m as much a damned Kincaid as you are.” Sey stood in the middle of the kitchen with her hands on her hips and fire in her eyes. “You think I’m just going to roll over and take it up the ass from a damned ghost?”

“You were supposed to stay safe and out of the way,” Cin shot back. “And why the hell did you bring Gildy back with you?”

“Oh, like I was just supposed to go find a kitchen somewhere else so I could make sandwiches for the menfolk?” If Sey’s hair wasn’t already in its faux coxcomb, her spitfire sarcasm would have raised it up on her scalp. “And where the heck was I going to put Gildy? It’s past midnight, so it’s not like I could have swung by the zoo so she could pet the goats.”

Since Sey had a fricking camel, petting goats would have been a step down for Gildy, but Tristan thought he’d live longer if he stayed out of the conversation. At some point, he’d picked up Jack’s ball and begun rolling it from the kitchen chair he’d pulled over to the side and down the short hall to the mudroom. So far, the terrier remained tucked into the Veil, an unseen presence to everyone in the room, but the ball was returned like clockwork, appearing near Tristan’s hand, followed by the faint scramble of doggy toenails on the floor.

“And Tristan, if you throw that ball one more time—” Sey took a breath, pausing as she shook her head. “Sorry, I shouldn’t snap at you. You’re the only one in this kitchen who
isn’t
yelling, and I go and attack you.”

“It’s okay.” He gave her a smile. “When my family fights, it’s all brittle silence and lawsuits. Kind of nice to hear people screaming at each other.”

“Your family sues each other?” Gildy snorted. “That’s when you should all get into a room with boxing gloves, lock the door, and let God sort it all out.”

“I was hoping for rotten eggs at twenty paces, but beating them would be good too.” He rolled the ball again and turned his attention back to the fuming Kincaids. “Look, I don’t know about the rest of you, but it’s late, I’m tired, and they’re already here. Can’t we just figure out what we need to do to get rid of her and throw water balloons at each other later?”

Someone would have thought Tristan’d suggested they have relations with a dead sheep for the looks he was getting.

“Okay, so bitching each other out is part of whatever Kincaid ritual there is to get rid of her?” He cocked his head at Wolf. “We didn’t do that with Winifred. Is that’s why it got so fucked up?”

“That got fucked up because amateurs were screwing with something they shouldn’t have been doing.” Cin stabbed Wolf in the chest with a finger.

“What was I going to do? Wait for you to come back from Scotland?” Wolf gave his cousin a light shove, putting some distance between them.

“And we’re back to screaming at each other.” Tristan threw his hands up in disgust. “Tell you what. I’m going to go back and read through shit that really isn’t going to help me figure out what the fuck to do while everyone who might have a clue can stay in here and decide who’s going to be chosen for the
Mauk-to’Vor
.”

He was halfway down the hall when Tristan realized he hadn’t filled a cup of coffee to take with him.

“Fuck it.” There was no way of slinking back in, especially not after having an exit line referencing a murderous Klingon ritual. Sighing, he flopped down onto the large sofa and picked up the ledger Wolf’d abandoned when they’d all gone to check on who was breaking into the house. Staring down at the faded crab-scrawl on the yellowing paper, Tristan tried to make sense of what day he was looking at. “There’s got to be more than one of these. How long did she work for them? And what the hell do they think we’re going to find in here,
To remove ghost, please read this passage while turning around three times in front of a mirror
? So far all we’ve found out is she was a fucking spoiled brat who maybe liked to murder people. I figured that out days ago.”

Tristan’d just settled back into the couch cushions to read another few pages about the long-dead Charity Sinclair’s weekly activity. From all accounts, it looked like the woman spent most of her day trying to keep people from killing the Sinclair monster child. Between her refusal to do lessons and her treatment of the house servants, Tristan was surprised Charity lived as long as she did.

“Mommaaaaaaaaaaaaaa.”

He lifted his head to look toward the foyer, not discounting Wolf’s fondness of practical jokes and the very real possibility the man’d grabbed one of the dolls from the storeroom, shaking it just out of view to make it talk. In the house’s echoing depths, he could make out the faint rumble of battling Kincaids: Cin’s deep rumble, Gildy’s querulous parrot voice, Sey’s smooth, husky drawl, and most importantly, the whiskey-gravel pour of Wolf arguing a point. That only left Crowley and Ray as possible suspects, but since no one was operating a can opener, Tristan didn’t think the Persian was the culprit, and Ray was certainly too old to be calling for his mother.

Then the sound came again.

“Moooooommmaaaaaaaaaaaaaa.”

It was nearby, too close for Tristan’s comfort, and he slowly turned to his right to look at Charity’s vintage porcelain doll. It was lying on its belly in a nearby chair, exactly where Cin’d left it. There was no way the doll could be making any noise. Especially since its voice box was old and needed a heavy pumping turn to work.

Pity no one’d told the doll that, because as Tristan stared at the inert toy, it called out again.

“Mommmmmaaaa.”

This time the plea was followed by a soft sobbing, nearly too low for Tristan to catch, but the distant wail echoed in the doll’s hollow head, amplifying the sound just enough to be heard. The crying rose and fell, a siren call warning anyone who heard it to flee. He almost reached for the doll, anything to make it stop, when Tristan heard another—much stranger—sound.

It was almost like rain but uneven and clumsy. He stood and took a few steps to peer out of one of the windows, wondering if somehow the weather had grown chilly enough to dump hail from a passing storm, but it was too dark to see anything outside other than the lamp glow coming from the house.

The shifting chitter was growing louder, an off-sounding chatter and roll to it. It seemed to be coming from the walls themselves. Then Tristan saw a miniscule movement at the door to the living room, and the source of the sound became clear.

The doll heads were moving, descending on the room where he stood watching in a fascinated horror at the wave coming toward him.

Anything with a full body scrambled forward by hooking fingers and toes into the cracks between the boards and dragging the rest of its weight behind. One of the larger clown dolls laughed in a maniacal melancholy whenever its body was turned, and farther down the foyer, a harlequin puppet dragged itself forward with the stumpy remains of its arms.

The hallway was filled with ambulatory toys, and the pieces missing limbs were perhaps the most terrifying.

Many were just faces, turning painted and sculpted eyes and mouths toward the ceiling while scavenged legs and arms worked in lurching strides to move their burdens to the room. Others were full doll heads, their cavities stuffed with limbs, pens, and anything else that could be used to balance their top-heavy loads. One particularly large head had commandeered several slide rules, and the wooden folds opened and closed underneath it, seesawing the old rubber toy across the hall.

The noise grew louder, a thousand scraping rubs of porcelain, rubber, and wood. The floor behind the horde was scarred and dimmed from scratches, and as the wave of jittering toys drew slowly near, the crying behind him got louder and louder.

“Mooooommmmaaaa! Nooooooo Charity! Nooooooooooooo!”