Duck Duck Ghost (9 page)

“Wolfie?” Tristan’s drawl dripped with amusement. “That’s cute.”

“Ah, is that the boyfriend?” Sey whispered into his ear before slapping Wolf’s shoulder for him to release her. “God, he’s hot. Are you dying? Is he taking pity on you? Do you have consumption, Wolf Kincaid, and didn’t tell anyone? Or are you lying to the boy so he’ll sleep with you?”

“Tristan Pryce, I want you to meet one of my favorite cousins, Sey Kincaid. Sey, this is Tris.” Wolf bent over to murmur in her ear. “Behave. I like him. Don’t scare him off.”

“Boyfriend might be debatable but something for certain.” Tristan yelped when Sey embraced him, her sinewy arms wrapping around him tight enough to make him squeak. “Uh, hi.”

“Ah, love, you are simply too gorgeous to be stuck with that one.” Sey winked, her eyes bright with mischief. “Tell me you like older women too.”

“Why? Do you know one?” he managed to squeeze out as she hugged him again.

“Oh, you I am going to like.” Letting Tristan go, she put her hands on her hips and examined the duffel bags they’d brought with them. “So, one room or two? How does someone ask that without hinting around things? I’m thinking I need to put the two of you far away from my room, or I’ll hear you through the walls, but that bed’s one of the old iron ones. It’ll probably scream up a racket the moment either one of you gets going on it.”

Tristan’s face went red, and she burst out laughing, startling the cattle behind the stiles. The calf galloped about, bouncing through the herd, and bellowed loudly. Muttering a pardon under his breath, Tristan fled for the fence, his head down low so his shaggy blond hair covered most of his blush.

“Ah, Sey. He’s new to this,” Wolf admonished. “Go easy on him.”

“What? Being a boyfriend or Kincaids?” She grabbed at one of the bags, exclaiming at its heft. “What have you got in here? Shrunken heads?”

“No, you’re the one with bits and bobs lying about the house.” He liberated the bag, slinging it over his shoulder. He hit the release for the back hatch, and the SUV’s rear door popped up. “And Tris is—special. To me.”

“Then why is he over there cooing at the cows instead of over here making puppy eyes at you?” Sey frowned at him. “Did you fuck it up already?”

“Oh, how you know me so well.” He’d only packed the barest of necessities for a ghost hunt in the car, but it would still take him two trips to get his equipment into the house. He set the largest case down on the driveway, then elongated its handle so it could be wheeled in. “He’s a medium. Probably one of the strongest I’ve ever seen.”

“And you’ve brought him here?” Sey’s slate-blue eyes practically boggled out of her head. “Are you insane? Didn’t your mom tell you I’ve been having problems?”

“Yeah, that’s why I wanted him to come.” Wolf stopped unpacking the car and stared down at his older cousin. “They speak to him, Sey. He sees them. Hell, I think he actually accentuates their existence in a lot of cases. He also needed out of where he was for a bit. Someplace different than where he’s grown up. Mom said she told you about Hoxne Grange—”

“Holy shit! He’s
that
medium?” Sey tsked in sympathy. “God, that poor kid.”

“Okay, I don’t know what she told you, but stop with the poor kid thing. It’ll piss him off.” Wolf craned his head to study Tristan scratching the young calf’s nose. “He’s strong, Sey. Solid but kind of fragile in a lot of ways. I don’t think his folks treated him right, and shit, I didn’t do him any favors a couple of weeks ago.”

“Lost your temper, then?” She sniffed at his nod. “Hotheaded Scot to the core.”

“I’ll own up to that,” he replied. “I brought him here because Ophelia Sunday seemed to operate on his wavelength a bit, and he needed to get the hell out of the Grange for a while. It’ll be a change of pace for him while I hunt down your problem.”

“I’m not one of your cases, Wolf. This isn’t rats or some crazy rabid bat. Things are moving around the house, and now I swear to God I can almost hear whispering.” Sey shifted her hips, her expression serious as she stared off at Tristan’s distant form. “I know there’s something wrong here. I can’t pinpoint what it is, but I’m not one of your hoaxes. The only reason I told Meegan I’d let you have a crack at it first is because it’s not so bad. Just a little worrisome, but really—”

“I don’t think you’re a hoax, Sey.” It was bad enough most of the family thought he’d crossed the line into full-blown skeptic. Wolf didn’t want to piss off one of the few relatives he had who still liked him. “I’m here to see what I can find. And maybe Tristan can help me figure it out. He’s
good
, Sey.”

“And you love him. He’s kind of fond of you. He keeps looking back here, and it’s not because I’ve got a great rack.” She nodded her chin at the blond. “Only you would bring a guy on a ghost hunt. What happened to dinner and a movie?”

“Tristan’s not a typical kind of guy, and hell, we didn’t exactly ever….” Wolf paused suddenly and swallowed. “Fuck me. I’ve never ever actually taken him on a date.”

“And he’s already met your mother.” Sey whistled softly. “He
must
really like you, because Meegan? She’s a deal breaker in my book. I’d run screaming for the hills if you brought that hippie around me and said welcome to the family—and I’m already related to her. Tell you what, let’s grab your shit and get it into the house, and you and Tristan can go canoodle in the barn or something. Go take a roll in the hay. It’ll be good for you both. Nothing gets the juices going like a night in the country.”

“With my luck, he’s allergic, but it’s worth a shot. Hell, I’m desperate, Sey. I
really
fucked up.”

“What did you do?”

“Kind of accused him of doping me, but really, it was something Mom left behind. He was innocent, and I sort of lost my shit. Totally on me,” Wolf confessed. “I don’t know how much of it was me seeing pink elephants or how scared shitless I am about loving him. Fuck, Sey. I think about him all the damned time. Every other guy I could just walk away from. Not him. Not Tristan. And it scares the wrinkled skin off my ball sack.”

“Well, then, you better pray he goes easy on you, because, Wolf, you’ve got it bad, and there’s no way in hell you’re going to get out of it alive.”

There had to be a little hope, because Tristan looked his way just as Wolf stared down the length of the lawn at the paddock. Tristan gave him a smile—shy and faint with a touch of lust in his eyes. Wolf knew that look well. He’d lived for that look, and his heart did a little jig when Tristan brushed as much of the calf hair as he could off his hands and walked toward them.

It didn’t take Tris long to get to Wolf’s side, and Wolf grabbed at Tristan’s hips before he could slide past. Tristan smelled like sugar, sunshine, and a bit of the farm. Wrinkling his nose in gross exaggeration, Wolf leaned over to sniff at Tristan’s skin.

“Mmmmm… eau de baby cow. My favorite.” Wolf chuckled as he nipped at Tristan’s neck. “Saw you made a new friend.”

“Yeah, he seems to like getting his head scratched.” Tristan ducked to block Wolf’s teeth, but he didn’t pull away. “Is there a bathroom inside, or am I going to have to go look for a tree?”

“Outhouse,” Wolf lied with a broad grin. “Half-moon on the door and—”

A loud boom shook the air, and the SUV’s passenger side mirror blew off, bits of metal and glass pebbling up into the air around them. Wolf shoved Tristan down behind the side of the vehicle, and he shouted as another shotgun blast went off, shot peppering the fender and the dirt near their heads.

Hooking an arm around Tristan’s waist, Wolf pulled his lover back to the rear, trying to keep the thick tires between them and whoever was shooting at them. The cattle were bellowing in terror, and off in the distance, something screamed in a high-pitched wail. The air grew thick with the smell of trampled grass as the Highland cattle fled the front of the paddock, quickly becoming shaggy red dots on the far hillocks, with the calf clustered in on all sides by the protective herd.

Sey lay on the dirt behind the SUV, her smile wavering a bit when Wolf reached her, dragging a stunned Tristan behind him. Another blast hit a mock-orange bush, and the air went fragrant with green and blown-to-bits flowers.

From the house, a quaking old voice called out to them, feeble but menacing. “I’m going to run your fucking fed asses off our property! You ain’t got no business here! I’ve got my rights.”

“You hurt?” Wolf ran his hands over Tristan’s prone body, checking for injuries. The blond shook his head, but he sounded winded, and his face was pale with shock. “Stay down. Sey and I have to have a little chat.” Glaring at his cousin over his lover’s long legs, Wolf cocked his head toward the house. “When the fuck were you going to tell me Aunt Gildy was here, and who the hell gave her a shotgun?”

“Y
OUR
FAMILY
is nuts.” Tristan was talking to himself. Wolf wasn’t even nearby, but the sentiment remained. He didn’t need his family to commit him. He’d found his own loony bin, right there in a place called SLO. Turning around, he shook his head at the insanity surrounding him. “Really. Wow. No words.”

Tristan stood in the house’s main living room and stared. It was all he could do—stare. And everywhere he looked, something stared right back at him.

And only one of those things was alive. But the gray Persian he thought was stuffed blinked just as he looked away, so he upped the live body count to two.

The house was a ramble, rooms connecting to other rooms and a long hall off the foyer with a staircase curling up to the upper floors. Pale gray walls did their best to lighten up the miles of dark cherry floor, but it was a losing battle. The house’s furniture appeared to be mostly castoffs thrown down from a beanstalk, because everything seemed enormous and upholstered in the oddest fabrics, ranging from a cow print to tapestry, and there was no rhyme or reason on style. A mission-style table sat in a dining room off the main space, its utilitarian plainness surrounded by Victorian armchairs dressed in various shades of velvet.

The oddly comforting furnishings paled into the background with the sheer glut of antique dolls and teddy bears bristling and poking out of nearly every place possible. Wide worktables were placed against the room’s one long wall, and almost every inch of flat surface was covered with bits or tools.

But mostly bits.

And eyeballs. Lots and lots of eyeballs or things with eyeballs.

Sey and Wolf were off hiding the shotgun they’d found Aunt Gildy wielding, leaving Tristan alone with the short silver-haired old woman. If anything, Tristan wasn’t really certain the fey-faced woman wasn’t one of Sey’s creations, because her bright beady eyes followed Tristan about the room as he moved.

“We sure Sey’s name isn’t really J.F. Sebastian?” Tristan offered the old woman a weak smile. “Because I think we’re one marching soldier doll away from finding an origami unicorn on the porch.”

Up close—and unarmed—the elderly woman seemed innocent, even harmless, if he didn’t take into account the cunning I-can-kill-you-with-my-mind look in her eyes. Her floral housedress was a bit too big for her slender frame, and she swung her bare feet back and forth as she sat on the too-tall couch, her toenails painted lime green to match the leaves on her dress. Gildy’s gamine face was nearly as bare as her feet, embellished only by a smear of shockingly pink lipstick against her thin crepe skin.

“So you’re one of those kind of boys? Like Meegan’s oldest boy?” Gildy quizzed Tristan while he studied what looked like a stuffed squid on a nearby shelf. “You fancy the dick? Sey told me you like the dick.”

He gave up trying to make sense of the cephalopod once he spotted a toucan beak hidden among its tentacles. The only elderly person he’d actually interacted with before was his Uncle Mortimer, and he’d never even whispered the word penis, much less any of its nicknames.

“Who, Wolf? Yeah, he can be a dick sometimes.” Tristan went with being obtuse. It was safer that way. “Actually, he can be one a lot of the time. But I
do
like him when he’s less dickish.”

“Aunt Gildy, leave Tris alone.” Wolf strolled in, then bent over to kiss the woman’s cheek. She slapped at his leg, her eyes twinkling at him. “You okay, babe? Talking to Gildy can sometimes be like bartering with a used car salesman.”

“I’m a Hellsinger—or used to be,” the old woman grumbled back. “Always know who you’re up against. Best advice I can give you. If I like you, anyway. Otherwise, I’d just shoot you.”

“Tristan’s one of the good guys. No shooting him.” Wolf hooked an arm around Tristan’s waist, and he let Wolf pull him in. Bending over, his whisper tickled Tristan’s ear. “Gildy was a horrible Hellsinger. Don’t let her tell you anything different.”

“I’m old, Wolfgang Kincaid, not deaf. I was a
great
Hellsinger. I just had some problems with the ghost part of the job.” The old woman’s gnarled finger poked at the air. “I took down the Chicago Seven.”