Duck Duck Ghost (15 page)

“Can’t hurt me? Tell that to your boy toy, Trixie.” Gildy snorted at Wolf.

“Tristan,” he corrected absently, shaking each of her pockets and pulling out what he found. “Trixie was… is my intern.”

The haul was another two knives—one paring and one Swiss Army—as well as a set of brass knuckles and a handset from a vintage seventies phone, a sawed-off connector cord dangling from the speaker bulb.

Holding up the phone remnant, Wolf quirked an eyebrow at his aging aunt. “Really, Gildy?”

“Those things are fucking awesome,” she piped up. “You can do some serious damage with one of those. I once took out three bank robbers with just a phone and a knitting needle. Use what’s around you, boy. First rule of being a Hellsinger.”

“The first rule of being a Hellsinger is to reassure people you’re not crazy,” Wolf replied caustically. “And cut the addled old lady act. You’re about as fuzzy as a bowling bowl.”

“Do you
want
people to know I’ve got all my marbles?” Gildy leaned over to whisper as she elbowed him in the side she’d stabbed earlier. “I’ve waited decades to be able to pull off the old lady shtick so people underestimate me. You
trying
to get me killed by blowing my cover?”

“At least lose the swim cap.” He tugged at one of the flowers. “You reek like an old bathmat wearing that shit.”

“Kind of don’t want to.” Gildy jerked her head toward Sey. “I kind of found some of the girl’s crazy hair stuff and tried it out. You know, just to see how it’d look.”

“You know I can hear you, right?” Sey flicked the coffeepot on, then turned around, crossing her arms over her chest. “Okay, Aunt Gildy. Let’s see it. What did you do now?”

“How bad can it be?” Wolf’s jaw dropped when the elderly woman slowly tugged off her cap and her hair sprung up around her head, a riot of blues and purples tipped with dark oranges and red. “Holy fucking shit, you’re a damned were-parrot.”

A slamming car door jerked their attention away from Gildy’s kaleidoscope hair, and Sey craned her neck to see out of the kitchen window toward the front of the house. “You expecting someone?”

“Just Cin, but not for hours yet. He had to wrap up a few things.” Wolf tossed Gildy’s contraband onto the kitchen table. “Leave it there, Gil. I mean it. I’m not having you walk around like a Ginsu commercial while we’re trying to deal with this ghost shit.”

“Well,
someone’s
here.” Sey muttered as she crossed the kitchen floor. “And it better not be another reporter looking for the famous Gildy Wallenda. You’ve milked that old chestnut for the last damned time.”

“Hey, that story’s always good for a drink in Vegas!” the old woman shouted at Sey’s back. Shooing Wolf with a wave of her hand, she grumbled, “Might as well go after her and see who that is. I’m not going to touch any of it.”

“Yeah, like I believe you.” Wolf scooped up the weapons he’d found and shoved what he could into his pockets. The handset was a problem, but tossing it on top of the fridge was as good a place as any to keep it out of Gildy’s reach. “Try to stay out of trouble for at least ten minutes. And whatever you do, don’t
kill
anybody.”

The sky changed in the time it took Wolf to go from the kitchen to the front hall. One moment he was walking through sunbeams. Then in his next breath, the light in the house shifted and he was walking through a pearly gray, with a threatening rumble rolling around at the edges of the sky. With every step he took toward the front door, the light dropped, until he was forced to hit a switch on the foyer wall to turn on the old chandelier hung from the hall’s high ceiling.

The faux candlelight bulbs hummed and threw off a soft golden glow bright enough to be captured in the antiqued tin medallions surrounding its cord. At the end of the hall, Sey stood with the door wide open, ushering in a tall faux-bookish man carrying two old-fashioned pieces of luggage.

Wolf recognized the type. SLO catered to that kind of man—and women as well. His thick black glasses weren’t functional if the lack of distortion behind the lenses gave Wolf any clue. Unlike Tristan’s formerly functional glasses, the man wore the spectacles as a statement rather than to see through. He was the kind of man who could speak eloquently about artisanal sugars and which indigenous animal shits out the best coffee beans to produce the perfect brew.

With his artfully tousled brown hair and expensive, carelessly draped clothes, he was the perfect embodiment of every asshole Wolf went to college with—an entitled pain in the ass who would one day drown like a turkey if he stood in the rain because he was too entranced with the water coming down from the sky rather than seeking shelter.

And Wolf hated him on sight.

Irrationally perhaps, but he’d always been right in following his instincts, and right at that moment, his gut told him to grab the man by the seat of his perfectly rumpled corduroys and toss him back out the front door.

Sey’s nervous but welcoming smile forestalled
that
idea, but Wolf didn’t take it totally off the table—not yet.

“Wolf, I want you to meet Daylen Lee-Smythe. He’ll be staying here with us for a few weeks. Daylen, this is my cousin, Doctor Wolf Kincaid.” Sey hashed out a quick introduction. “Wolf is a parapsychologist—among other things.”

“Ah, one of the soft sciences,” the other man drawled. “It’s good to meet you, Doctor. I hope I won’t be too much in the way while I’m working with Professor Kincaid.”

“Yeah, I doubt that.” Wolf cocked his head, debating where he’d start breaking bones in the man’s slender body. “Can’t imagine you’ll be getting in the way for all of the five minutes you’ll be here.”

“Hold on a moment, Daylen.” Sey motioned toward the general direction of the living room. “Why don’t you put your bags there, and we can get you sorted out in a bit.”

“Charmed.” Daylen clipped the word off with a brittle iciness that didn’t match the pleasant expression he’d plastered on his handsome face. The young man’s aristocratic nose tilted a bit as he cruised Wolf, a flicker of interest firing up in his blue eyes. It died nearly as soon as it appeared, and he smiled with a patented fake warmth at Sey before trundling his bags into the other room. “Thank you, Professor Kincaid. I’m looking forward to working with you.”

“What the hell?” Wolf hissed under his breath. “Who the hell is that? And when the fuck have you been called Professor Kincaid?”

“He’s an exchange student from Canada. And I’ve been a Professor at Cal Poly for years, mostly graduate students. How the hell do you think I pay for all of this? Fixing broken dolls? Well, okay, I
teach
about history and restoration, so I guess it does pay the bills a bit,” Sey muttered hotly. “Really, Wolf. You’re not the only one in the family with a brain.”

“I never said that,” he protested. “What is he doing
here
?”

“I agreed to an exchange program—one where the student would stay with me and be immersed in reconstructing fragile porcelain antiques. With Gildy staying here and this damned haunting, I forgot he was showing up today.”

“Well, send him back!” Wolf grumbled. “We’re trying to figure out what the hell is wrong with this place! Do you want people to know you think you’ve got ghosts?”

“It’s only Ontario.” Gildy popped her head up around Wolf’s elbow. Both cousins jumped, and Sey put her hand over her heart, patting her chest. “What? That’s only a couple of hours to drive. Hell, knock him over the head and dump him in the trunk. I’ll take him down myself.”

“Ontario in
Canada
, Gildy. Not the one by Chino,” Sey corrected. “You didn’t notice the accent?”

“Nah, I just figured he was being an asshole. Putting on airs and all that kind of shit.” She snorted and jerked her thumb at the living room. “Tell me he doesn’t come across as an asshole.”

“Well, I can’t get rid of him. You’re just going to have to act like this is one of your jobs, Wolf.” His cousin held up her hand before he could protest. “Look, you and Tristan can work this out, and Cin’s going to be here in a bit. I’ll keep Mr. Lee-Smythe busy while you guys figure it out. It’s not like I can do anything. I’m about as useful around a ghost as Gildy here is.”

“Damn it, I was a very good Hellsinger!” The old woman shook her bathing cap under Sey’s nose, grazing Wolf’s face with rubber flowers as she swung her arm about. “I came here to relax between jobs!”

“You threw holy water on the mayor of Sacramento because you said he was possessed by an onion demon,” Sey reminded her. “It was either come here or stay a few months in jail.”

“Shoulda chosen jail,” Gildy muttered.

“Still an option!” Sey replied cheerily. “Seriously, Wolf. Just… figure out whatever this thing is. I want to go back to my normally scheduled life. Or as close as I can get to with Gildy here.”

“Hey, I found something—” Tristan came out of the back of the house just as Daylen Lee-Smythe emerged from the living room, an impatient look on his finely drawn features. They nearly ran into each other at the juncture in the hall, and Daylen threw his hands up to capture Tristan’s shoulders as the blond swayed unsteadily to a stop.

“Well, who do we have
here
?” Sey’s exchange student purred. Any hint of conceit faded from Daylen’s face, and Wolf watched in abject fury as the young man’s hands roamed down Tristan’s arms and came to rest on his lover’s slender hips. “Are you studying with Professor Kincaid too? Tell me we’re sharing a room.”

“Yeah, Sey, tell you what—you keep your damned student away from me and Tristan, and I promise I won’t fucking kill him,” Wolf growled at his cousin. “Because right now, that looks like it would be the solution to
all
of my problems.”

“T
HAT
’
S
T
RISTAN
.
He’s my… partner,” Wolf drawled, walking past Sey’s newly minted intern to slide his hand across the small of his lover’s back. “He’s here visiting with me.”

“I think I’ve lost something in this conversation.” Extracting himself from Daylen’s grasping hands, Tristan stepped back. “Um, who are you? Is this Cin? And what happened to Gildy’s hair?”

“Toucan skull-fucked me. It stained,” the old woman muttered.

“Gildy!” Sey and Wolf barked together.

“Let me introduce myself. I’m Daylen Lee-Smythe, late of Ontario. Canada, that is. Apparently, California has one as well,” the stranger offered up, and his hands were back, this time stuck out in front of him for Tristan to shake. “I’m here to learn about antique restoration from Professor Kincaid.”

“You restore antiques?” Tristan poked Wolf in the ribs, teasing. “You never told me that.”

“Not me, Sey. I’m Doctor.” He fended another stab off, grabbing Tristan’s wrist. “She’s the Professor.”

“If I were you, I’d rather be Ginger,” Gildy complained. “She was hot. I’d have gone gay for her. Maybe even Mary Ann too.”

“So you investigate ghosts too?” Daylen sidled up to Tristan. His fingers were back, going places only Wolf had been. “You’re going to have to tell me about it.”

It felt… odd having another man’s touch on his skin, and Tristan fidgeted, putting as much distance as possible between the man’s roving hands and his own body. Another step made him feel better, then another. Before he knew it, he’d slammed Wolf up against a hall table and still felt like he needed another mile or so away from Sey’s student.

The photographs on a Queen Anne table rattled when Wolf’s hip struck its edge, and Gildy jumped. Reacting quickly to the noise, the old woman shoved her hand down a pocket and came up with a handful of rock salt, which she flung at the rocking table.

Unfortunately for Wolf, she caught him full in the face as he scrambled to catch the frames before they hit the floor.

“Are you fucking insane, Gildy?” Wolf followed up with a string of blistering Gaelic Tristan was sure could be heard back a few generations.

“Don’t give me any of your shit, boy,” the old woman growled back. “I’ve got cayenne on the other side.”

“Kitchen,” Tristan ordered Wolf. “Let’s wash your eyes out. And don’t antagonize her. She’ll saltpeter you next.”

“Don’t give her any ideas,” he mumbled. “I’m going to see if I can guide dog my way to the kitchen.”

“I’ll get Daylen settled. Then I’ll come help.” Sey ran her hands through her hair, tugging it with her fingers in frustration. She looked like Tristan felt—overly tired and needing a good meal or at least something strong and alcoholic, but the woman shook her head when Tristan offered to help with Daylen. “No, you go on.”

“I certainly can assist,” Daylen pronounced loudly. “I’m certified in first aid and common emergency medical procedures. It was a requirement for the trek I made through Nepal and Tibet. You’d be fascinated to find out how similar many exotic insect infestations in the human skin resemble salt burns. I would be glad to—”

“We’re good.” Tristan smiled tightly at Sey. Wolf was already gone, having disappeared down the hall toward the kitchen. “Maybe Gildy can help you too.”