Ghost of a Chance (10 page)

“By my authority as an officer of the watch
of the Akashic League, I seal this house!” Adam bellowed. A little
tingle ran down my back, like a faint electrical shock.

“Are you still here?” Spider asked, giving
Adam an obnoxious glance. “You’ve overstayed your welcome,
Dirgesinger. Get the hell out of my house, and off my
property.”

“No one is leaving,” Adam said, his breath
coming hard.

“Honey?” My father and Pixie helped me to a
chair. Every inch of my body felt like it had been pounded with a
sledgehammer. “Are you all right?”

I watched, praying Adam had the power he
appeared to have, as Spider aimed the little machine at us.

The machine clicked. Dad turned to glare at
Spider. I slumped back in the chair, thanking every deity I could
think of.

“What the hell? It isn’t working!” Spider
said, his voice filled with accusation. He clicked the button a
couple more times, but nothing happened. “I put it on the
poltergeist setting. Why isn’t this working?”

“I don’t know. It was working before,”
Meredith said, taking the machine and popping the back off to look
at the guts. “It looks fine. Maybe you weren’t using it right.”

“Adam has sealed the house,” I said, digging
my knuckles into my temples.

“Nothing that filthy polter can do is any
concern of mine,” Spider said as he looked over Meredith’s
shoulder.

“It should be. He has more power than you
can imagine.” I used two of my father’s arms and one of Pixie’s as
leverage, rather shakily getting to my feet.

Adam stood silent in the middle of the room,
his eyes bright but distrustful.

Meredith half turned toward his wife but, at
a glare from her, prodded the machine in his hand. “There was a
wire loose, I think,” he said, snapping the cover onto the back of
it. “Give it a try now.”

“Over my dead body!”

I’ll say this for my father: he’s fast. As
used to his polter quickness as I am, even I couldn’t see him move.
One moment he was behind me; the next he was across the room,
having snatched up the small black machine en route. He threw it
down and slammed his boot into the plastic, grinding it into the
throw rug before any of us had the time to do more than blink.

Spider lunged at my father as soon as he
realized what Dad had done. Meredith swore. Savannah wrung her
hands and moaned about everything going wrong. Pixie looked
thoughtful. I yelled and threw myself forward, but for once, my
intervention wasn’t necessary. Adam plucked Spider off my father,
separating the two men with an ominous growl. “There will be no
fighting in my house!”

“It’s not your house,” Spider snapped
(somewhat predictably, I thought), jerking himself out of Adam’s
hold. He straightened his shirt and tie with exaggerated, hostile
motions.

Adam crossed his arms and looked
immovable.

“You’ll pay for that, Matthew,” Spider
warned as my father hustled over to stand at my side.

“It will be worth any price to ensure my
ethereal brothers and sisters are free from your evil plans,” Dad
retorted.

“I have a spare one at home,” Meredith told
Spider as the former headed for the front door. “I’ll go get
it.”

My father smiled. Adam smiled. Pixie’s brow
smoothed. Meredith looked confused when he tried to open the door
but couldn’t get it to budge. “Who locked this damned door?”

“It’s not locked,” Spider said, going over
to lend a hand. The doorknob turned freely, but the door itself
wouldn’t open. “It’s stuck. Wood must be swollen or something. The
whole place needs to be torn down.”

Although the pain was receding gradually, my
head throbbed with every beat of my heart. I needed to lie down.
Badly. The sooner Spider understood the situation, the sooner I
could beg Adam for the use of a dark, quiet room. With an almost
inhuman effort, I managed to get to a chair before collapsing.
“You’re wasting your time trying to get the door open. The house is
sealed. Nothing can get in or out. Not so much as a mosquito will
be able to pass through the seal for twelve hours, or more if Adam
renews the seal before it is released. In other words,
soon-to-be-ex-husband”—my lips curled as the irony of the situation
struck me fully—“we’re trapped here. All of us.
Together
.”

“I think I’m going to be sick,” Savannah
said, sinking bonelessly into the nearest chair.

I knew just how she felt.

“This is a lot more interesting than
anything my last foster family ever did.” Pixie squatted next to
me, her frown back in place as she looked at the spot on the rug
where Sergei had writhed in agony before being destroyed. “Although
I have to say, your husband is a dickwad.”

“All that and so much more,” I agreed. I
leaned toward her to add in a soft voice, “I don’t want you to be
alone with Spider, OK?”

Her dark eyes examined me for a moment.

“He’s not safe to be around by yourself,” I
said, sick at the thought of her being soiled by Spider’s filth.
“Just promise me you won’t go off with him anywhere.”

“Normally I don’t take orders, but this
time…” Her gaze flickered over to Spider before dropping. “He’s
really evil, isn’t he?”

“Yes, I believe he is. If I’m not around,
stay with Adam or my father, all right?”

She nodded.

I heaved myself from the chair. “I hate to
be a party pooper, but my head is killing me, and I need to lie
down in a dark room for a few minutes. Adam, would you mind if I
borrowed a bedroom?”

“Upstairs, second door on the left,” he
said, his eyes a dangerous icy blue. “Take your shoes off before
you lay down. My grandmother made the quilt on the bed.”

“I’ll help you up the stairs, darling,”
Spider said, his voice filled with threat despite the endearment.
He grabbed my elbow and half pushed me up the stairs. “There are a
few things I’d like to say to you.”

“I have a fair number of items to discuss
with you, too,” I muttered under my breath. I didn’t particularly
care if anyone knew that Spider and I were arguing, but there were
some things I would rather not say in front of witnesses.

Pixie started to follow us, but I waved her
back. My father flitted over to introduce himself. I knew between
him and Adam she would be safe from Spider’s disgusting
attentions.

Spider shoved me up the last few stairs with
a couple of choice swear words.

“Take your hands off me,” I snarled when we
were out of everyone’s sight. I jerked my arm away from him, but he
just grabbed my wrist and hauled me into the room Adam had
indicated.

“I’ll touch you whenever and wherever I
want,” he spat, flinging me against the wall. I saw stars for a
moment as my head cracked against it, but Spider’s rubbing himself
suggestively against me was what raised the nausea in my belly.
“Don’t pretend you don’t want it. I know how hot you polter bitches
are.”

I swore under my breath, put both hands on
his chest, and shoved as hard as I could. He stumbled backward and
landed on the bed. He laughed and patted the bedspread. “See? Can’t
wait to get me into bed, can you?”

“Why did you bring that god-awful machine?”
I asked, ignoring the taunts. “Why would you bring it if you
arranged for me to clean the house?”

“Because I knew you wouldn’t do it. I knew
you’d simply move whatever parasites are living here to our house
rather than destroy them as you should. Don’t look so surprised;
you don’t seriously think you can pull anything over on me, do you?
I’ve known all along about your little friends that you keep hidden
whenever I’m around. I let you keep them because I knew the day
would come when we’d need to test Meredith’s machine.”

“Why is it so important the entities be
destroyed?” I asked, my arms wrapped around me to keep the pain and
the guilt at bay. “The end result of a cleaning is the same: the
house is empty of all Otherworld entities. Why does it matter
what
I do with the spirits I transport?”

“Because they’re filthy, evil things,” he
said, slowly getting off the bed and stalking toward me. “They’re
unnatural freaks, just like you. The spirits are worthless, and the
others, the poltergeists, like you and your family, are good only
for one thing.”

“Why did you ever marry me if you hate
polters so much?” I couldn’t help asking. I didn’t want to get
sidetracked by a discussion about our relationship, but I was
genuinely curious. “I explained to you about my father before we
were engaged. Why did you propose if you think I’m such a
freak?”

He grabbed my hips before I could move,
rubbing himself against me. “I told you, Karma: polters are hot.
Very hot. The younger, the better, and you were very young when I
met you. Not quite as succulent as that sweet little cousin of
yours turned out to be, but still, enough to keep me happy for a
bit.”

“You bastard!” Rage unlike anything I’d ever
felt filled me. I shoved him away, escaping to the other side of
the room, the realization of what he was saying making me
physically ill. “You had sex with Bethany? That’s illegal!”

“She wasn’t human. There’s nothing in the
laws that says minor polters can’t have sex.”

I swear to god, I was about to vomit on him.
“She was fifteen, Spider!
Fifteen!
She was just a
child!”

“Mmm.” A repulsive smile curled his lips. “A
very
sweet
fifteen. So limber. Limber enough for two, as
Meredith and I found out.”

I stared at him in horror, my skin crawling
with the realization of what he was implying. “You mean that both
of you…”

“Oh yes, both of us. Didn’t you know?
Meredith is my partner in all things, and he shares my taste in
young polter flesh. You wouldn’t believe the things your cousin did
with us. We had a lot of fun, the three of us together… But then
she went and slit her throat. Stupid bitch.”

I fell to the floor, retching up the
contents of my stomach. I wanted to hide from what Spider was
saying, but each word pierced my body with blade-like accuracy.

“You’ve looked better,” he commented,
strolling to the door. “Since you don’t seem to be in the mood to
talk, we will continue this discussion later. Meredith and I need
to figure out what the hell we’re going to do with this polter who
thinks he can get the better of us. When will your kind learn who
your masters are?”

I waited until the door closed before
vomiting again.

“You look worse than ever,” a female voice
said from the shadows at the end of the corridor. The darkness
parted as Pixie stepped forward. “Worse than roadkill, even.”

“Thank you, that makes me feel infinitely
better. Fortunately, the migraine has receded, so I can live with
looking like roadkill. What are you doing hiding in the
shadows?”

Her face was inscrutable as she approached
me. “I dunno. I just seem to like them.”

Most polters had an innate ability to blend
into shadowed areas, making themselves all but invisible to mortal
eyes… but somehow Pixie didn’t seem to be aware of that. “Is there
something you want to tell me?”

“Tell you?” She was the very picture of
innocence. It redoubled my suspicion that something was up with
her. “Like what? You’re not going to third-degree me again, are
you?”

“I’ve never third-degreed anyone, and I
certainly wouldn’t you, but I did want you to know that if there
was something you wanted to tell me about yourself, I promise I
wouldn’t be judgmental.”

She looked for a moment like she was going
to speak, then shook her head. “You get to have your secrets, so I
get to have mine, too.”

“Fair enough. What have you been doing while
I was out of things?”

“
Deus
, you just
said
you
weren’t going to question me! I wasn’t doing anything, all right? I
was over there in the shadows!”

An icy chill, spiked with guilt so thick it
choked me, gripped my guts. “Did Spider follow you?”

“No.” Her eyes avoided mine, but she flitted
around in a manner that said she was agitated about something.
“You’re an exterminator, right? Can you do the reverse? Can you
bring Sergei back?”

A shaft of pain cut through me—but not the
familiar pain of a migraine. This was sadness and remorse, heavily
painted with guilt. “I don’t know. It depends on what that machine
that Spider had did to him; if it sent Sergei to the Akasha, then
there is a chance he can be retrieved. If it actually destroyed
him…” I sighed.

“That’ll suck if you can’t. Sergei was kinda
cool, even if he was a grunt.”

“He wasn’t a grunt, and yes, he was cool.” I
looked at the towel twisted between my hands, forcing myself to
relax them and toss the towel into a hamper. “If it makes you feel
any better, Spider will pay for what he’s done.”

“That’s a given,” Pixie said, an odd look on
her face that cleared quickly when she realized I was watching her.
“So, what now?”

“Now we go down and see how we can clear up
this mess. Where is everyone? What’s been going on?” I walked
quickly to the stairs, then paused at the top to listen for sounds
of arguing. To my surprise, there were none.

“Do I look like some sort of
personal-information slave?” Pixie flounced past me down the
stairs. “They’re down there, I guess. I came up to escape the
Monster from the Planet Flower Child. Oh, by the way, your dad is
cool.”

I stopped at the bottom of the stairs. “He
is?”

“Yeah.” She twirled a strand of long black
hair around her fingers and peeked at me from the corner of her
eye. “He told me if she gets too nosy, I can flash at her.”

My jaw dropped a hair. “Flash?”

“Yeah, you know, turn on and off really
fast. Matthew says it unnerves mortals.”

“You mean flicker?” I put my arm on hers,
stopping her for a second. “Pixie, what’s going on here?”