Ghost of a Chance (2 page)

“You
are
Karma Marx?”

“Yes.” Dad moved on to the dining room,
where I could see him moving around, straightening chairs.

The sound of papers shuffling could plainly
be heard over the phone. “It says here that you were contacted last
week about your offer to help with wayward teens.”

“I’m sorry, but I wasn’t. I don’t know
anything about it. And now isn’t really a good time—”

“The notes say that the caseworker spoke
with…” More paper shuffling. “Mr. Marx on Tuesday the seventeenth
at ten twenty-three a.m. Arrangements for the custodial care of
Pixie were agreed to then.”

“Tuesday?” I rubbed my forehead, trying to
remember where Spider had been on Tuesday. It didn’t make any
sense. Spider would never consent to having someone live with us,
especially a troubled teen. When he’d found out I had signed up as
a foster volunteer with the children’s home, we’d had a huge fight,
which had ended with him storming out of the house. So for him to
be changing his mind without talking to me… A thought burst into my
brain. I wrapped my hand around the bottom of the phone and leaned
into the dining room. “Why the hell did you tell the local
children’s home that I would take one of their teens?”

“Hmm?” Dad was apparently engrossed in
re-shelving by height the books in the bookcase. “I have no idea
what you’re talking about.”

“I’m not buying that at all. You’re in
serious trouble, buster,” I said before uncovering the phone and
speaking to the woman at the other end. “I’m sorry; there’s been a
slight mix-up. My… er… husband forgot that this is a particularly
bad week for visitors, so regrettably, we—”

“The arrangements were made last week,” the
woman said brusquely, shoving aside my excuse. “Pixie will stay
with you for a month. During that time you are to see to her
general health and well-being, and make sure that she attends her
counseling appointments.”

“But you don’t understand—”

“No,
you
don’t understand!” I held
the phone a few inches away from my ear at the outburst.
“Arrangements were made! You cannot simply wait until the last
minute and say it’s not convenient! This organization is run on
strict rules, and as a volunteer, you have sworn to uphold those
rules.”

“But—”

“I need not remind you, I’m sure, of the
importance of steady, reliable volunteers who fulfill the
commitments they make. For them to do otherwise would have grave
repercussions.”

My jaw dropped open a smidgen. “Are you
threatening me?”

“Of course not. I wouldn’t dream of doing
anything so reprehensible. I’m simply pointing out that someone who
holds the position of responsibility and respect that you hold with
the Akashic League should think long and hard before she endangers
that position. Especially someone who is working off wergeld.”

“Son of a—” I bit off the oath, grinding my
teeth. She had me by the short and curlies, and I suspect she knew
that very well. My job with the League was not one I held by
desire, but it was better than the alternative, something of which
anyone who knew my history, as this woman did, would be aware. I
was trapped, good and proper; I had absolutely no choice but to
continue working for the League, but there was going to be hell to
pay if Spider discovered we’d taken in a needy teen for a month or
more.

I sighed. When it came down to a choice
between Spider and the League, there was only one answer. “Fine.
I’ll take the girl.”

“I knew you’d see reason,” she said with
smug amusement. “Pixie will be there shortly. At the end of the
month, your fitness as a foster parent will be reevaluated. Until
then, good luck.”

“Problems?” Dad asked as I hung up the
phone.

“Just an insurmountable one, thanks to you.”
A little burble of frothed milk poked out the top of the latte lid.
I licked it off, ignoring the patter of little feet as a flash of
yellow
eek-eek
ed across the kitchen floor.

“Imp,” Dad said helpfully.

“Don’t you ‘imp’ me! How dare you pretend to
be Spider on the phone! What on earth were you thinking? Spider is
going to have a cow when he finds out I’ve taken in a teenager for
a month.”

“I wouldn’t be so sure of that,” Dad said
softly, avoiding my gaze.

I took a deep breath, ignored the headache
that threatened to blossom, and chewed my father up one side and
down the other. By the time I was done, he was positively dancing
with the need to get out of the room.

“Well, the damage is done,” I said, slumping
against the counter. “The girl is on her way. I have no idea what
I’m going to say to Spider, though.”

“You’re a smart girl; you’ll think of
something. There’s another imp,” he pointed out. “You seem to have
a problem with them.”

I savored a sip of latte. “That’s the
understatement of the day. They think I’m their mother. They’re
like a plague. I can’t seem to get rid of them. I drop them off in
the woods, and they find their way back here. I take them to the
beach, and they come back. I even left them in the Hoh Rain Forest…
and the next day the whole troop of them showed up wet and covered
in moss. Whoever heard of homing imps?”

He gave me a sour look. “If you wouldn’t
mess with powers beyond your abilities, you wouldn’t have such
strife.”

“Not again. Please, Dad, not today.” I took
my latte with me to the tiny dining room, which looked out on a
mundane bit of backyard. The headache that had been threatening me
since I’d woken up burst into glorious being. I rubbed my forehead
and wondered whether a handful of ibuprofen would be enough to take
care of it or if I’d have to go in for the hard-core migraine
meds.

“You wouldn’t get those headaches if you
left well enough alone,” he said, gesturing toward my head. “What
you’re doing is wrong, Karma. Taking spirits from their natural
habitats and banishing them to the Akasha is cruel. I raised you
better than that.”

“You didn’t raise me at all,” I pointed out,
deciding ibu wasn’t going to cut it. I snagged my purse and dug
around in it until I found a prescription bottle, then washed down
a couple of pills with a swig of latte.

“Now you’re being pedantic,” he answered,
taking a stance at the head of the table, his hands on his hips.
“Just because I had the foresight to realize you would be better
off living with your mother while you grew up is no reason to be
snarky. Besides, it has nothing to do with the fact that what you
are doing is wrong on many, many levels. As you well know.”

“It may be wrong, but someone has to do it.
Would you rather it be someone who doesn’t rescue as many beings as
she can? Someone who doesn’t care about them at all?” I rubbed my
forehead again, tired even though it was early morning.

“I’d rather no one exterminated beings at
all,” he said.

“Tell that to the Akashic League; they’re
the ones who insisted I do this job.”

He was silent for a moment, his eyes sad.
“How much longer until you’ve worked off the wergeld?”

“I told you before: I don’t know. It’s up to
the League. And you can stop looking at me like that!”

“Like what?”

“Like I just killed your best friend.”

“I’m not—”

I shoved myself to my feet, my head
swimming. “You think I don’t recognize that look? You’re wrong
there, Dad. Dead wrong. I’m the one who killed her own best friend,
remember?”

“Karma, I won’t have you talking like that.
What happened wasn’t your fault.”

I sat down again, fighting to hold on to a
shred or two of sanity. “I know it wasn’t. But sometimes, I could
swear I see things in people’s eyes… Oh, forget it. I can’t help
having been born with the skill to banish spirits any more than you
can help the ablities you were born with.”

“You look awful,” he said, changing subjects
with the same lightning-fast speed that was characteristic of all
he did. “What have you been doing? Up late? Exterminating? Watching
Spider’s latest orgy?”

“I’ll go touch up the paint in the study,”
Sergei said as he drifted through me, the dining room table, and a
small potted palm on his way to the far end of the house.

I waved him on, rustling up enough energy to
frown at my father as he moved restlessly around the room. He never
could stand still in one place for very long. “Up late, yes. No
exterminating, no orgies, just a restless night.”

“Aw, munchkin,” he said, coming around
behind me, giving me a little hug. “I’m sorry. You’re still
mourning your cousin, aren’t you?”

I leaned back against him for a moment and
closed my eyes, wishing I could be five years old again, comforted
by the embrace of a father I believed could make all the evils of
the world go away.

Now I knew better. “Yes, I’m still mourning
Bethany. She was only fifteen. She was bright, and charming, and
loved life…” Tears pricked hot behind my eyes. I blinked them away,
too tired even to cry. “Did Aunt Chris tell you about the
postmortem?”

“No, I haven’t talked to Chris lately. It’s
all been so distressing.”

“The police said…” I swallowed back a
painful lump. “They said that she killed herself. The marks on her
hand suggested she used a piece of glass to cut her own
throat.”

Dad looked appalled. I hated to have to be
the one to tell him all this, but it was better he understood the
full tragedy that had occurred. “
Killed herself?
But
why?”

“She was raped. The police are speculating
that she was so traumatized by that, she chose to end her
life.”

“So sad. So young,” my father said, shaking
his head. “And for someone to physically abuse her, driving her to
take her own life… horrible. Just horrible. I’ll call Chris
later.”

My hands tightened into fists. “I don’t care
what the police say. She didn’t kill herself; she was driven to it
by whoever kidnapped her and raped her just as certainly as if he’d
cut her throat himself. I just wish I knew who the monster was so I
could string him up by his balls.”

“I know, honey, I know.”

We spent a few minutes in uncomfortable
silence. Dad flitted around the room. I willed the pain away and
wondered how I was going to explain a troubled teenager to
Spider.

“Is this just one of your usual morning
visits?” I finally asked, feeling as if I were a couple of hundred
years old instead of thirty-eight. “You seem edgier than normal. Is
something going on?”

“Well, now that you mention it… I do have a
little something for you.”

I took the large manila envelope he handed
me, a feeling of dread welling up as I undid the clasp. “What’s
this?”

He gestured toward it. “Open.”

I bit my lip, hesitant. I had an idea of
what I’d find in there, and although I knew I had to see it, sanity
urged me not to look. “Dad, you haven’t been following Spider
around again, have you?”

“Open!” he said, more loudly.

“Because you know that’s illegal,
right?”

He just looked at me.

“I don’t know what good you think this will
do. I’ve told you before that I know Spider is a philadering
bastard.”

“Then why are you still married to him?
There’s no reason you can’t get a divorce,” he answered.

“There’s every reason.” I ran my hands
through my hair, remembering when I was young and foolish and
naively believed everything Spider told me. “He was so charming
when we first met, he just swept me off my feet. I was thrilled
when he asked me to marry him. I thought it was the answer to all
my problems.”

Dad snorted, aligning the dining room chairs
an infinitesimal fraction to the left.

“Yeah, well…” I slid my hand across the
envelope. “By the time I figured out the truth, I was stuck. I
couldn’t leave him, couldn’t support myself with the wergeld bound
on me.”

“You could have moved in with me,” Dad
pointed out.

I smiled. “We’d have driven each other
insane in less than a day. And it wasn’t so bad, at least at first.
Spider did his own thing, with the realty agency and his
speculations of fixing up homes and reselling them. I had the
League to take up my time. We just kind of drifted into a
relationship of… oh, I don’t know, more roommates than husband and
wife.”

“All the more reason to be rid of him,” Dad
said, nodding at the envelope. “Open it.” I hesitated for a moment,
then opened it and allowed the photos inside to slide out onto the
table. “Just so you’re aware that it’s an invasion of privacy to
take pictures of people without them knowing. Especially—holy
hell-hounds!”

“You see?” Dad nodded, peering over my
shoulder. “I thought they turned out pretty well, considering the
material I had to work with.”

The pictures were of three people, at least
two of whom were human. One looked like a poltergeist, although it
was hard to tell at the odd angle from which the pictures were
snapped.

“See the backlighting in that one? I like
the corona it gives the redhead. Kind of a Madonna effect,
huh?”

“Hardly that,” I said, blinking at the
positions the three people were twisted into. Odd that I shouldn’t
be more upset about seeing them. Fidelity had always been important
to me, not a concept I took lightly. So why weren’t the pictures
bothering me? Why could I look at them with only mild interest, an
appreciation for the limberness of the females in the picture, and
the realization that Spider needed a haircut? I shook my head,
flinching when a throb of pain had me almost barfing. Careful not
to move my head, I slid the pictures back into the envelope. “All
right. You gave them to me. I saw. Happy now?”

“Happy that your husband is cheating on you?
No. But yes, I’m happy you now admit the truth rather than living
in denial.”

I massaged my temples. “I wasn’t in denial.
I’ve known all along Spider has been fooling around.”