A Ghoul's Guide to Love and Murder (12 page)

“Whitefeather's here,” I told Heath.

He glanced over his shoulder at the corner where I was staring. “He is?”

“Yeah,” I said, pointing. “He's right there.”

The room was dimly lit, as all the blinds were closed, but enough light was seeping in to form shadows against the walls, and one shadow in particular was a little darker, or should I say thicker, than the background it stood out against. The shadow had the vaguest outline of a person. Someone tall and broad shouldered. Just like my husband.

Centuries ago, when Heath's tribe was still fairly young, a great warrior named Whitefeather had saved his tribe from an unimaginably evil demon. Whitefeather had entombed it in a sacred clay vessel, but hundreds of years later, grave robbers had broken the vessel and unwittingly released the demon inside.

That demon had very nearly killed us all, but Whitefeather and Heath had worked together to bind it back up. Afterward, Whitefeather had gone back to the land of spirits with his spirit tribe and we'd not heard from him since.

Until now.

“Is he talking to you?” Heath asked.

“No,” I said. “He's just standing there. I think he's standing guard.”

Heath looked from the wall back to me, then back to the wall. “It's you,” he said. “You're carrying my baby. He's protecting the newest member of his tribe.”

I felt a warmth settle over my shoulders and I knew that Whitefeather was confirming what Heath had just said. It gave me great comfort that Heath's ancestor was protecting a baby girl as fiercely as he would've protected a baby boy. In the land of spirits, they get it.
All
lives have equal value.

“How long do you think he can stay with us?” I asked. The longer a spirit had been away from the mortal plane, the harder it was to show up here and hang out. It had to be costing Whitefeather a tremendous amount of energy to linger in the corner of the bedroom. But then, Whitefeather was a tremendously powerful spirit.

“Probably as long as it'll take to get you packed,” Heath said, and moved to the closet.

“Packed? Heath, we can't leave. What about Oruç's dagger?”

“We're not leaving Boston,” Heath said. “We're just
going to a hotel with lots of people and their noisy energy where the spooks won't like to follow us.”

He had a point. Spooks find it hard to connect with people in a crowd. You'll never see a ghost at a concert, and even the ones that haunt theaters almost always wait for the patrons to leave before they start following the actors and set crews around.

While Heath got out our suitcases and began to shove clothes into them, I sat numbly with the bag of ice pressed to my throat, shivering a little. It was probably a reaction to the attack. “She picked the exact right moment to come after me,” I said, looking toward the bathroom door again. “I was naked, without any magnets, and the room was filled with steam. The perfect environment for a spook.” (Humidity and ghosts go hand in hand. The electrostatic energy gets amped up when there's water in the air. Again, why you'll never find a spook haunting a desert at high noon.)

Heath paused in the packing of my things. “We'll have to carry spikes with us at all times,” he said. “Or wear our vests. From now on, we're never away from some heavy-duty magnets.”

I sighed and put a hand across my stomach. “Is it ever going to be over?”

He paused again to look at me, and his eyes were pinched with worry. “We'll figure out a way to protect ourselves, Em. We will.”

The shadow in the corner of the room moved closer to Heath, and Whitefeather seemed to be taking a stand behind his descendant, the same way he had
when Heath kicked open the bathroom door. The move suggested that Whitefeather had our backs.

“I'm kind of surprised your grandfather hasn't chimed in. I thought we'd hear from Sam by now.” Even as I said that I felt a presence enter my mind.
Hello, Mary Jane,
he said.
I see Whitefeather beat me here.

I pointed at Heath, then upward. “Speaking of Sam . . .”

“He's here?”

I nodded.

“What's he saying?”

“Nothing other than he's acknowledging Whitefeather. Hang on while I get the skinny.” Focusing on Sam, I mentally said,
Can you tell us what's going on, Sam? I was attacked by the Grim Widow a few minutes ago, we think Sy the Slayer showed up in my living room last night, and Oruç's
dagger has gone missing and we suspect the demon is free of its bonds.

Sam's spirit came closer to me, surrounding me and making me feel truly connected to him. That in and of itself was a very paternally protective thing; not quite a hug, but as close to it as a spirit could physically manage, and when the essence of him surrounded me, there was a note of something . . . something that felt like fear and worry all mixed up—a disquiet that was as intense as his love. And just to let you know how extraordinary that is, I've never felt a soul who'd crossed over to the other side emote anything even remotely close to fear. The other side is a blissful, happy place where nothing bad happens; there's only love and joy and freedom from worry—fear, worry,
anxiety, have no place there, but Sam's energy was giving it off in spades. And that shook me to the core.

Mary Jane,
he said in my mind.
I and the other members of your spirit counsel believe a portal has been opened to the lower realms and only those dark spirits whom you and my grandson have sent there have been called through
.
Oruç's dagger is at the center of this, but we can't tell who's behind the theft. Or where the portal is. It seems to be in motion. And it seems that the darkest demons you've entombed in the lower realms are coming for you.

Sam's words both stunned and chilled me to the bone. For a long moment I couldn't even breathe I was so scared.

“Em,” Heath said softly. “Talk to me.”

I opened my eyes and they immediately misted. I was terrified for myself, for my unborn child, and for Heath. “They're all coming back,” I said to him.

“Who's coming back?”

“All the demons. All the spooks we've locked up. They're coming back for me all at once.”

“Is that what Sam said?” Heath asked. He too looked extremely shaken.

I nodded. “Oruç's dagger has opened up a portal which is allowing the spooks to come find me.”

Heath walked over to the bed and sat down next to me. “But that shouldn't be possible, right? I mean, spooks create their own portals so that only they can go through them. They don't share.”

“It doesn't mean they can't,” I said. “A portal is just a portal, Heath. If one spook creates the hole and gives his permission to the others to use it, there isn't
anything that should stop them from doing that. And if a spook like Oruç, who not only hates women, but hates me in particular, decides the best way to get his revenge is by forming alliances with other spooks who'd also like to see me dead, then there's not a lot stopping him from opening up that portal and letting all our worst nightmares run free.”

Heath stared at me with widened eyes. “Oh,
shit
!”

“Yeah.”

And then Heath said, “If the dagger is opening up the portal, then that means that son of a bitch who stole it and just let the Grim Widow attack you has to be close by, right?”

Another jolt of alarm went through me as Heath raced to the window and looked outside. I watched him as he lifted the blinds and peered this way and that. “I don't see anybody suspicious,” he said.

“He could be in the building,” I told him.

My husband's back stiffened and he stepped away from the window, paused, then flew out of the bedroom. I heard the front door open and close, and I wasn't sure what to do. I was still reeling from the attack, and didn't think I could chase after him until I'd caught my breath. Finally, Heath came back into the condo and the bedroom. “I couldn't find anybody who didn't belong here in the hallways or outside,” he said. “He might've already gone.”

“And if we don't know who this guy is, then we won't be able to recognize him when he does show up with the dagger again.”

Heath looked shaken by my words. “We've got to
get you out of Boston,” he said. “We'll go into hiding. Maybe we can head to Santa Fe and find a hotel or an apartment there for you to stay.”

“Where will
you
be?” I asked.

Heath got up and began to edge toward the suitcase on the floor again. “I'm gonna shut Oruç's portal down.”

I thought about that for a minute. Heath was a damn good ghostbuster. He'd fought by my side on dozens of ghostly encounters, and he'd always had my back, but he'd never faced anything like what was coming at me right now.

One on one, Oruç's demon, the Grim Widow, and Sy the Slayer had been almost more than Heath, Gilley, and I could handle. How the hell did Heath think he'd be able to take them all on alone?

And then another thought occurred to me—and that was, if these spooks and demons were coming after me, wouldn't they also be coming after all of us? Gilley had been on more ghostbusts than Heath, and one of those had involved one of the most vile, disturbing ghosts I'd ever had the great displeasure of meeting. A ghost named Hatchet Jack, who'd enjoyed torturing and murdering young boys.

A chill traveled down my spine when I thought of Hatchet Jack and Sy the Slayer getting together to conspire about taking us down. “I can't go anywhere,” I said to Heath.

He paused the frantic motions of pulling open dresser drawers long enough to say, “You're going, M.J. I'll call my mom and my cousins and my granduncle.
We'll get you on sacred ground and protect you and the baby.”

I stood up and bent to retrieve my jeans and a clean hoodie that'd missed the suitcase when Heath had heaved it over his shoulder. “Heath, we both know that even on sacred ground I could still be vulnerable. If Oruç's demon has opened this portal and he's encouraging every spook and demon we've ever encountered to come back through it, then there's a certain demon out in Santa Fe who's gonna love to come visit me again, sacred ground or not.”

“Whitefeather won't let that happen,” Heath said defensively.

Pulling on my jeans, I sighed. “Honey, there isn't going to be an inch on this earth that's safe for me as long as that dagger's portal is open.” I just knew that to be true, and looking at him, I had the feeling that my husband did too.

Heath was holding an armload of my clothes tight to his chest. I saw him waver as his gaze traveled to the suitcase on the floor, then back to me. “I'd die if anything happened to you, Em,” he said. “Please let me take you to my family. The tribe will protect you.”

I moved over to him and pulled the clothes out of his arms. Setting them aside, I cupped his face and
said, “Don't you think I'd also die if something happened to you? I can't be in this world without you, Heath. I know what it does to you to lose the person you love most in the world. You never get over it. You never heal. And if I leave, they'll all come after you. And Gilley. And the rest of the crew. You can't face them alone. You need me, and I need you.”

Heath's face was a mask of pained indecision. He knew I was right, but his protective spirit and fatherly instincts were at war with the truth.

I turned away from him to let him think it through, and quietly put my clothes back in the dresser. Then I went out to the front hall closet and got dressed in all my ghostbusting gear. When I looked up after pulling on my boots, Heath was standing in the kitchen, staring at me. “Okay,” he said when I caught his eye. “You win. It's you and me in this thing to the end.” I knew it cost him something to admit he wouldn't be able to deal with all the spooks on his own.

I nodded to show him that I understood and we never needed to talk about it again.

“Where d'you want to start?” he asked, after I'd handed him his own magnetically lined clothing.

“The museum,” I said, grabbing an infinity scarf to hide the bruises around my neck. It was a loose scarf, but I figured I could fiddle with it in the car using the vanity mirror. I didn't really want to be in the condo one minute longer, so, to hurry Heath along, I reached for the handle of the front door. “If we can't reach Gopher and we don't know who might've blabbed
something to the wrong person about the knife, then we've got to work backward starting with the crime scene and figure out how the thief broke in without triggering the outside alarm, and also figure out how Oruç's demon overcame all the magnets. There has to be a clue to the killer's identity in all of that. And, in order to get a look at the crime scene, we're gonna have to play nicey-nice with the police. Which means we'll start by paying a visit to Olivera at the precinct.”

With that I turned and pulled open the door, ready to march down to the car, but stopped short and even jumped back a little when I saw the very person I'd just mentioned, standing on my doorstep with raised fist, ready to knock.

The police, it seemed, had saved us a trip, and the look on Olivera's face, as her gaze settled on my neck and then shifted to Heath standing behind me, made me quickly understand that nicey-nice had up and gone out the window.

“Detective Olivera!” I said a little too loudly.

“Mrs. Whitefeather,” she replied. “What happened to your neck?”

I wrapped the infinity scarf around my throat twice and pulled it up a little to cover all of the exposed skin between my chin and my collarbone. “It's a rash,” I said. “I'm gluten intolerant and I must've been served something with gluten in it this morning at the restaurant we ate at for breakfast.”

She cocked her head and squinted at me. “Oh, yeah? I'm gluten intolerant too. I'd hate to go to that same restaurant. Where'd you eat?”

My mind went blank. I couldn't think of a single restaurant. Not one. “Um . . . ,” I said, fumbling for the name of literally
any
restaurant. “I . . . it was . . . McDonald's.”

She cocked one eyebrow. “You're gluten intolerant and you ate at McDonald's?”

“I figured the egg and hash brown special would be safe,” I said, fiddling nervously with the scarf.

Her eyebrow remained cocked. “I've never seen anybody break out in a rash quite like that,” she said. “Mind if I take a look?”

“Yes, actually,” I said, tucking the scarf more snuggly into the top of my jacket. “Anyway, my rash isn't important. What is important is that we need to talk to you about the break-in at the museum.”

Olivera studied me suspiciously. “I'm listening.”

“We want your permission to take a look at the crime scene,” Heath said from over my shoulder.

“Why?” she asked, her eyes narrowing even more at him.

“Because what happened shouldn't have happened,” he said simply. “There's no way that demon could've overcome the electromagnetic field created by all the magnets in that room. Something else was at play there, and if M.J. and I can just take a look at the scene, maybe there'll be something there that will offer up a clue about the killer's identity.”

“My CSI team has been all over that room, Mr. Whitefeather. If there was a physical clue there, we would've found it.”

“So what's the harm in having us take a look?” I asked.

She crossed her arms. “I'm not sure yet. But your names keep getting connected to trouble, which is why I'm here.”

A note of alarm went off in my mind. And I knew some other terrible thing had happened, even as Detective Olivera continued. “You mentioned a former detective in San Francisco who could vouch for you. It took me almost two hours, but I finally found a murder case connected to an Inspector MacDonald where the victims were stabbed and the murder weapon—an antique dagger—mysteriously went missing from the evidence room.”

Olivera pulled out a file from the inside of her coat. From that she extracted a photo of the dagger. Of course it was Oruç's. “The murder weapon was photographed before it came up missing,” she said. “Look familiar, Mr. and Mrs. Whitefeather?”

“Okay,” I said, with a shrug. “So what? Inspector MacDonald entrusted us with the dagger. Yes, that was wrong, but people still went to jail. Justice was still served.”

“I'll say,” she said. “I talked to an inspector this morning about your old pal. He came up in a police report from last night, as a matter of fact.”

A cold shiver vibrated along my shoulder blades. “What happened?” Heath asked urgently.

“Ayden MacDonald was found in the airport parking garage beaten to a pulp. He's sustained severe injuries.”

I gasped and put a hand over my mouth. My knees buckled slightly and Heath caught me, steadying me as I absorbed the news. “No!” I whispered. “No, no, no, no, no!”

“In his pocket,” Olivera continued as if I hadn't
reacted at all, “was a one-way ticket to Logan. I'm assuming he was coming here to meet with you about the missing dagger?”

“He was,” Heath said. “We were expecting him around three this afternoon.”

I took an unsteady breath and tried to hold back the tears that were flowing down my cheeks. Even though I hadn't had a lot of contact with Ayden since our time in San Francisco, I still considered him a dear friend.

“Yeah,” she said. “I figured.”

My mind was spinning. I couldn't imagine Ayden dropping his guard enough to let somebody sneak up on him and pummel him nearly to death. He was too much of a seasoned investigator for that. “Do the police have any leads?” I asked.

“Nope,” she said. “His wallet and watch were stolen, so the police initially thought he was mugged. That is, until I told the inspector all about the two of you and the murder at the museum. Said you two could be involved in MacDonald's attack, and I'm here to inform you that he's pretty anxious to talk to you.”

I wanted to yell at Olivera. She was being mean on purpose. “Of course we didn't have anything to do with Ayden's attack!” I snapped. “We were with you until close to midnight last night, remember? There wouldn't have been time to catch a plane, fly to California, beat up Ayden, then get back here in time for
this
stimulating discussion!”

“How much money did you make last year, Mrs. Whitefeather?” she asked nonchalantly.

I shook my head. “What the hell does that have to do with anything?”

“Humor me,” she said. “What'd you pull down last year?”

It was my turn to cross my arms. “Well, let's see, I made a sum total of none of your damn business, Detective. What'd
you
make last year?”

She smirked. “Funny. I made a whole lot less than that last year, which is my point. You two had to pull down some serious cash for this movie, and that cash can be spent in a lot of ways. If you two did steal back the dagger, and this former inspector got wind of it and wanted to come investigate, you've certainly got the means to hire someone out in San Francisco and shut MacDonald down before he even gets on the plane.”

I turned to look at Heath. “Can you believe this bullshit?”

“Em,” he said softly, and laid a hand on my shoulder.

I took a deep breath. He was right. She was pushing my buttons on purpose, trying to see how I'd react. Reining in my temper, I turned back to her. “Detective, we didn't hire anyone to hurt Ayden. He's our friend. A close friend actually. Which means one of two things is at play here: One, he was actually mugged, or two, whoever stole the dagger has an accomplice and they're the ones who made sure that Ayden didn't get on the plane. Which means this thing is a whole lot more complicated than we originally thought.”

“What does that mean?” she asked me.

“It means that stealing the dagger and unleashing the spooks and demons was only part of the plan. The other part seems to be causing those of us trying to keep it under wraps harm.”

Olivera tapped her finger on the side of her arm. I knew she believed me, but I also knew she didn't want to. “Okay, Mrs. Whitefeather, who do you think took the dagger and murdered Phil Sullivan?”

I sighed. “I don't have any suspects in mind, but if you'll just let us look at the crime scene, maybe there'll be something there that will stand out to us. And it'll help us help you.”

“All right,” she said easily, and I breathed a sigh of relief.

It was short-lived.

“I'll take you to the crime scene, but only after you tell me why it looks like
someone
”—she paused long enough to look meaningfully at Heath—“choked you hard enough to cover your neck in bruises.”

My hand reflexively went to my throat to make sure the scarf was still in place. With a sigh, I realized she was waiting for exactly that reaction. “It's not what you think,” I said.

“It never is,” she said drily.

“The problem with the truth, Detective, is that you won't like or believe it. But the truth is that I was attacked here just half an hour ago. My husband was the one who saved my life.”

Her arms fell away from their crossed position. “Did you call nine-one-one?”

“No.”

“Why not?”

“Because, as far as I know, your station doesn't have a demon investigation unit.”

She rolled her eyes and shook her head. “Are you really going to make jokes with me right now, Mrs. Whitefeather? Do you
get
that I could haul your husband down to the station on suspicion of domestic abuse? The bruises
alone
are enough to send him to a holding cell.”

I took a step toward her. “Have you
watched
our movie, Detective Olivera? Seen any of the footage we took in Scotland?”

“Nope.”

“Then you're right. Of course you don't know that I'm not joking. I'm not joking about any of this. The demon spook we encountered in Scotland is back. She attacked me in my bathroom as I stepped out of the shower. She did this,” I said, pulling down the scarf, “and a couple of years ago, she nearly drowned Heath and put him in the hospital. She's a killer, and she's loose, and this dagger is at the center of everything.”

Olivera squinted at me. I held her gaze. “You guys ever see a shrink or spend time in a mental institution?”

I sighed heavily. “We're not crazy. You need to watch the movie.”

“What's that going to prove?” she said. “Other than Hollywood is very good at special effects?”

I turned back to Heath and threw my hands up in the air. How do you reason with someone so skeptical?

“We could take her to Mrs. Ashworth's place,” he said, and I brightened.

Lucy Ashworth was an elderly woman who owned several old apartment buildings all around Boston. Heath and I had been working to clear a couple of spooks from her properties in the weeks leading up to our newfound wealth and success. We'd easily taken care of all of the spooks that'd been causing disturbances in her apartment buildings, save one, and that spook had
refused
to leave. No amount of cajoling or coaxing could get Mrs. Grady—who'd died in 1999—out of the Ashworth Commons Apartments.

As spooks went, Mrs. Grady wasn't especially dangerous—just mean. Or, better yet, she was temperamental . . . emphasis on
mental
. She liked to shove people and throw things. She also liked to shriek in your ear at two a.m., and I can tell you from personal experience that spook was
loud
.

She began haunting the Commons shortly after she tripped down the stairs of the apartment building and snapped her neck. Initially, she stuck to her former apartment, sending the new tenant screaming in terror on his first night there. Five other tenants had come and gone since then, and Mrs. Ashworth had given up trying to rent out Apartment 4B in 2000. But then, about a decade later, Mrs. Grady figured out that she could travel easily through walls. She started checking out other apartments in the building, found the extra room appealing, and began to terrorize all the other tenants until they left too. One by one every renter
moved out until the place was abandoned. Enough one-star reviews on the Internet—all with the notation that the place was haunted—had halted any prospective tenants from even applying.

In desperation, Mrs. Ashworth had called us to tell us about the Commons, but she was also wary of our actual abilities. She tasked us with helping to rid two other apartments she owned of their spectral tenants (far tamer than Mrs. Grady), and based on that test she'd let us have a crack at the Commons.

We'd passed her test with flying colors, of course, and she'd given us a key to the building. We entered that place on the first day, all confidence and bravado. Within a few hours, however, we'd realized this spook was playing for keeps.

Mrs. Grady refused to cross over, and we'd no sooner chased her off the first floor than she'd moved up to the second. Then the third, and finally the fourth. We thought we had her cornered then, but she outsmarted us by heading back down to the first. The Commons had twenty-four apartments. They were large and spacious, with plenty of closet space.
Lots
of places for a spook to hide. The task quickly proved to be way bigger than we'd ever anticipated.

So, we'd offered Mrs. Ashworth the only solution we could, which was a proposal to haul in several hundred pounds of magnetic spikes and drill them into the walls and floors of every single apartment and each of the central hallways. Our estimate had been nearly ten thousand dollars, and it was no surprise to us when Mrs. Ashworth balked. She'd told us that
she'd have to think on it, but it'd been over a month, and she hadn't gotten back to us, and no new tenants had moved in, so it was a pretty good assumption that Mrs. Grady still had free run of the Commons.

So I considered Heath's idea. And I liked it. The worst Mrs. Grady had ever physically done to one of us was to shove Heath into a wall, and me to the floor. She was a pushy bitch, that Mrs. Grady.

Meanly, I thought Olivera could do with a little shoving. I'd probably enjoy watching it. “Yeah,” I said with a wide smile. “Seeing is believing, Detective. You don't believe we're actually dealing with the supernatural? Well, how'd you like to meet a spook up close and personal?”

Her brow furrowed and I saw her move her hand subtly to the gun in her shoulder harness. “What's the deal here?” she asked.

“We know of an apartment building where there's a very active ghost,” Heath said. “She's basically harmless, but she doesn't like visitors. We're thinking that within a few minutes of making her acquaintance, you'll be convinced we're not making this stuff up.”

“That sounds a lot like a setup,” she said.

“Not at all,” I said sweetly, turning away for a moment to scribble Mrs. Ashworth's name and number and the apartment building's name and address onto a piece of paper. Handing it to Olivera, I said, “Make a few calls, Detective. This is the name of the owner of the apartment building, and that's her phone number. Check her out. See that she's legit and then meet us at the Commons in an hour.”