Authors: Jennifer Rardin
He wasn’t nearly as good at comforting as Vayl. But my boss had decided to stay clear of the youngsters. Instead he’d gone to the window and flipped aside the curtain to glance at the countryside, glowing with the soft light of evening. After spending his first thirty-eight years as your average Roma family man, he’d turned. Which meant it had been over two and a half centuries since he’d seen daylight. Now that he didn’t have to concentrate fully on the job, he could relax and just enjoy. His face settled into a new sort of immobility. One I equated with Buddha statues and transfixed lovers.
I could’ve watched him reacquaint himself with twilight for hours. If the room had been quiet. How could he just stand there while Sniffette honked her way through an entire box of tissues? I looked at the watch Bergman had made for me. At this rate it might continue for hours. I was voting with Cole on this one. Geesh! She’s like a damn sob machine!
Trayton would’ve peered at me through his curtain of fine black hair and said, “You really need to work on your people skills, woman. Where did you learn sensitivity anyway?”
To which I’d reply, “The Marines.” End of conversation. At least until I was sure I wouldn’t have to kill the girl hiccuping into her hand.
Vayl tossed his handkerchief to Cole, who gently dried her tears with it before wrapping her fingers around it.
She wiped her nose and dropped the handkerchief on her lap so she could sign as she spoke.
“I’m sorry,” she said, through Iona, her lips forming the words along with her hands. “I’ve just been overwrought lately.”
“Hold that thought,” I said, raising my palm toward her. Some signs must be universal, because she stopped talking and stared at me as I began to clear the room. Starting at the corner nearest the door, I pulled the incense holder out of my bag and fired up the sage already packed inside with the lighter Tolly had given me before she left.
“This is how you light fires,” she’d told me sternly. “Any other way is gonna lead to you staring out the barred window of a high-security psych ward. Guaranteed.”
The incense holder Tolly had lent me, a cast-iron goddess image with hollow eyes and a gaping mouth, swung from my hand as I moved clockwise around the perimeter of the room. I whispered words she’d made me memorize, remembering that I must genuinely want to push Scidair and her trollops from this room for the spell to work. After a single lap I stopped and rang the bell that doubled as the holder’s handle. The shield closed with a psychic whoosh that made my scalp tingle. If I’d taken two more circuits it would’ve lasted as long as I stayed in the house. But that felt too extreme, at least until I knew Viv and Iona were innocent. So it would only work until I left the room.
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“Why did you do that?” asked Iona as I sat the goddess by the door and sank down beside it, mainly to keep Jack from knocking it over. I’d discovered quickly that anything within reach of his nose either got sniffed, poked, flipped, or sneezed on.
“We didn’t want the ghosts to eavesdrop,” I said. “You wouldn’t believe how snoopy they are. We have this one that follows us everywhere we go. I think we picked it up in Pamplona when we were putting the shade of a murdered chef to rest.”
I waited for the girls to call my bluff. Okay, Viv might be too upset to catch the lie. But if Iona had really spent any time around Viv and her crusading mom she’d know that—
“Ghosts don’t travel,” she said flatly.
I smiled. “You got me there. I’m kidding, of course. The sage ceremony is just something I do to cleanse a room before important conversations. Helps everybody relax and also ensures that the conversations remain honest.” I shook my head regretfully. “You’d be surprised how many people try to lie to us about their haunt problems. And we can’t be effective when we begin with false information. You can see that, can’t you?”
The girls nodded as if they completely understood our predicament.
“So how can we help you?” asked Cole.
Iona said, “Viv would like to hire you to eradicate a ghost. Not lay it to rest,” she emphasized,
“but get rid of it forever.”
As Vayl and I competed to see whose eyebrows could rise the highest, Cole sat back on his heels, moving so fast he nearly fell over. He finally managed to say, “That’s a tall order. Why us?”
Viv began some mad signing. Iona said, “She agreed to accompany her mother here because she knew that every year a few groups like yours also come to GhostCon trying to drum up business. We looked you up on the Web and phoned your references. You come highly recommended.”
Thanks a lot, Pete. You know, you could’ve told the operators to tell callers we sucked!
“Viv can pay you well,” Iona added. “And it’s for a good cause. The best, in fact.”
“And that is?” asked Vayl as he dropped the curtain and turned to listen to Viv’s explanation.
“Finally ridding the world of a murderer.”
Chapter Eight
To give the girl credit, Viv didn’t burst into tears again, though it looked for a minute like we were going to have to break out the sponge mop. Then she gave a full-body shudder and went on signing, with Iona launching into first person, probably hoping to affect our decision by speaking as if her words were Viv’s.
“Last year, when I was at university, my roommates and I were attacked by a man. He raped them and cut their throats. But when it came to me he had to hurry. My mum had been calling all that night, and when no one answered she and my dad had shown up at the door. So he stabbed the knife into my throat, severing my vocal chords. He had a gun too, which he used to shoot through the door. He killed my dad. While my mum was on the floor, trying to stop the bleeding,
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he ran out of the apartment. She told the police she didn’t get a good look at him. And she made me agree that I hadn’t either.”
Viv had begun to lose so much color I considered shoving her head between her legs to make sure she didn’t pass out. Her fingers were also shaking so bad Iona couldn’t have been able to tell what she was saying, but she must’ve heard the story before, because she went on without a break. “Mum tells strangers I was born deaf and mute so she doesn’t have to explain the real reason I need to sign. To friends and relatives, she said I’d been injured in a car accident and, because she knows a lot of highly connected people, my part in the tragedy was left out. The newspapers related that I’d gone home for a few days because I was sick and needed tending. And I was ill, too weak and distraught to do much more than cry. It wasn’t just what had happened to me and my friends. He’d killed my dad too. Leaving me with a mum who’d never really understood or connected with me. But she loved me. How much I came to understand months later. When I saw the ghost of my dad’s murderer at the bus stop.”
I held up my hand. “Hang on. Are you sure it was him? And that you weren’t, you know, having a little bit of a breakdown?” Especially since I knew they could reattach vocal chords. Which meant if she couldn’t talk now, the reason might not be totally physical.
“I’m positive. Because Mum saw him too. She gave a little scream and said, ‘Viv, that’s him, isn’t it?’ as she pointed beyond the waiting crowd. How could I mistake that thin brown hair and those long yellow teeth?” Viv shook her head. “She was so furious! ‘He’s died!’ she said. ‘I’ve been paying private investigators to find him for months, and he’s gone and snuffed it! What do you think of that?’
“I said that I thought it was the best news I’d heard in forever. But she couldn’t be consoled. ‘It’s not enough for him to be gone,’ she said. ‘I’ve got to chase him into the afterlife and make his existence there a misery as well!’ And ever since then she’s been obsessed. She only sleeps two or three hours a night. She won’t entertain any other topic of conversation. She keeps me close to protect me, but it’s making me feel wrong now just being around her. I can’t get shed of my past because she won’t let it go. So I want you to do it for her. Kill that ghost. Make it so she can never lay eyes on him again. Can you do that?”
Oh, shit.
Cole looked back at me with such hope that I felt doubly guilty for agreeing to a cover that desperate people would flock to. Vayl walked over to Viv and held out his hand for hers. He rubbed the small, nail-bitten fingers between his as he said, “Let me explain what is happening so that you understand what you ask of us.”
She nodded, as if she believed Vayl really needed permission for anything he decided to do. He said, “Ghosts are not typical spirits, most of whom find absolute release when they die and can only be reached through mediums. Even then contact is limited and communications often confused. They are so far away, you see. Ghosts, on the other hand, exist in a place we call the Thin, because the wall between their plane and ours is so often breached. You do not have to possess special abilities to see or even interact with a ghost, though the latter is highly inadvisable.”
“Why?” asked Iona. “You do it all the time.”
After a pause Vayl replied. “We understand the dangers involved. Why do you suppose you have heard so many ghost stories since you were old enough to sit with a fld esit witashlight shining into your face?”
“Because it’s fun?” suggested Cole.
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Since I sat too far away to kick him I shot him a shut-up! look instead. He zipped it. Vayl continued. “Most cultures understand how important it is to instill the fear of ghosts into their children. Because they truly are the shades of their former souls. The dark and hungry remainder of what was abandoned when the rest was either saved or condemned.”
“I don’t understand,” Viv signed. “Why are you telling me this?”
“Because these creatures exist in torment. Think of it. When a soul is offered paradise, it sheds all that was evil and despicable within it. But that part does not always dissipate. In the same way, when a soul is ravaged unto hell, a section is sometimes left behind. Like a lobotomy, the soul’s rebellious tendencies are ripped away, so that the tortures Lucifer designs for his victims are endured rather than revolted against.”
“But it doesn’t happen in every case?” asked Iona.
“Only in extremes,” he said. “But this causes the Thin to be a savage world from which ghosts constantly seek escape. When they find a way to rip through, into our plane, sometimes they find a moment of tranquillity. A time when they remember who they were. What you are asking us to do by releasing this man from the Thin, the man who raped and murdered your friends, who killed your father and tried to kill you, is to give him peace.”
Vayl paused, searching Viv’s eyes. “Are you ready to do that?”
Viv had begun to shake. Just a fine tremor throughout her body that hardly even moved her unless you looked closely. And then you could see it everywhere, as if we’d connected her to a low-voltage current while Vayl talked. And he wouldn’t stop. He said, “You must also understand that even if we lay his ghost to rest, your mother would still be obsessed. Her fury at your father’s death and your injuries is so immense that it terrifies her. So she pushes it outward.”
“Still,” said Iona, not even looking to Viv for confirmation, “maybe this would help her.”
Vayl nodded. “Perhaps. I simply want you to understand all the parameters of this solution before you make the choice.”
Viv sighed and dropped her hands to her lap, her eyes studying the painting of a bright red poppy that hung over the bed on which she sat. She signed something and when Iona nodded without speaking I asked Cole, “What did she say?”
He looked up at her sadly. “She said she just wants it to be over.”
I would’ve suggested that she talk to her mom about how she felt, but I also had a bullheaded parent who wouldn’t listen to reason. Eventually Viv would have to figure out that she was a grown-up, and it was time for her to do what she needed to make herself whole again. Even if that meant she left Rhona alone, ranting about organizing ghost town so she could somehow achieve revenge on the shade of her husband’s killer.
Cole stood up slowly and rubbed the kinks out of his legs. Without consulting either one of us he said, “We’ll do whatever you need, Viv. Just let us know your decision Anyour de, okay?”
She nodded, tugging at the scarf around her neck like it was a noose. As I stood to leave, hefting the goddess lamp and scratching Jack on the head when he leaped to his feet, Vayl said, “I wonder if you would mind answering one last question for us. Floraidh seemed anxious to avoid discussing the man we nearly ran over in her lane. Are you sure you have not seen him walking in that area?”
Iona said, “Actually I did, just as we turned in. I hated to mention anything earlier; Floraidh
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seemed so disturbed by the idea. But he was standing on the corner with his hands behind his back, watching us rather mournfully. I pointed him out to Viv, but when she tried to get a glimpse, he’d gone. He seemed an old-fashioned dresser to me. Almost like an actor in a costume, wouldn’t you say?” she asked.
Vayl nodded. “Indeed. The longer I think on it, the more I believe his suit was from a different era. Perhaps the late 1800s.”
Cole asked, “How could you tell?”
“I recalled his suit coat was buttoned only at the top. And his vest was cut straight across at the waist.”
“So you’re into period clothing?” asked Iona.
“We run into a lot of ghosts from that age,” I said. “Don’t know why. Just plenty of remnants from the 1880s.”
“So we saw a ghost?” Cole asked.
“Certainly this discussion has made me wonder,” said Vayl. “I suppose there is only one way for us to find out. We will simply have to set up our equipment. With Floraidh’s permission, of course.” He turned to Viv. “As for your issue, it is as Del, here, suggested. We will await your decision and act accordingly.”