Ghost of a Chance (29 page)

“I think you’ll find people aren’t quite so
gullible as you believe,” Adam told her before moving over to hold
a quiet conversation with his boss.

“She’s really pissed,” Pixie said, peering
through the window to watch the car drive away with Meredith.
Savannah followed shortly in her SUV. “You think she’s going to get
the house?”

“No. She may be a Guardian, but the house is
legally Adam’s. His family were the resident polters, and he bought
it legally from the mortal owners. No court in the Otherworld or
mundane world would think about taking it away from him.”

“Well, that’s a relief,” Tony’s disembodied
voice said from behind my shoulder. “You lot look famished. Shall
we whip up a crab salad?”

“What on earth are you thinking? Crab salad
after a denouement? Were you raised by sloths? Everyone knows the
proper luncheon to be served after such an event is quiche.
Seafood, yes, but in quiche, not a salad.” Jules’ voice was just as
disembodied as his partner’s, dropping in volume as the two spirits
argued their way out to the kitchen.

Adam glanced toward the hallway, then nodded
to my father.

“Honey, why don’t you and the girl go into
the kitchen and ask the boys to make a fresh pot of coffee?” Dad
asked, his hands moving restlessly.

I frowned. “Caffeine is the last thing you
need.”

“Yes, but”—Dad shot a quick look toward the
hall—“I think you and Pixie should go into the kitchen,
anyway.”

I guessed what it was he and Adam were up
to. “No, I won’t, but Pixie will.”

The teen absolutely refused to go. “This is
my last chance to see him,” she argued as the sound of feet
thumping on the hard wooden stairs leading to the basement became
audible.

“I’m just trying to save you from potential
trauma,” I told her, attempting to shove her toward the kitchen.
She dug in her heels and wouldn’t budge.

“Trauma? Are you kidding? This is wonderful!
Can you imagine the sort of poems I’m going to be able to write now
about death? I can’t wait to get started!”

I stopped trying to push her, shaking my
head with puzzlement. “You are the oddest child I’ve ever met.”

“I’m
not
a child. What do you think
of Tertia?” she asked with her trademark change of topic.

“As a name? It could be worse. I have a
suggestion: why don’t you just stick with your own name?”

“Do I
look
like a Pixie?” she asked,
waving her arms around.

I had to admit she had a point. I was about
to suggest she find one name and stick to it when the amused glint
in her eyes rapidly changed to profound interest as the men carried
Spider’s body, still covered by the old blanket, out the door to a
waiting watch ambulance.

“Weird kid,” my father mused as she hurried
off to watch the ambulance. He turned an impish grin upon me.
“Reminds me of someone I know. Think I’ll go help the lads with
that quiche. Their food is good, but not as good as what my Karma
makes,” he added, poking Adam with his elbow and waggling his
eyebrows.

“Dad, wait, I…” I bit my lip as I glanced
around. The three of us were alone. “Can you take Pixie for a
couple of days? She can’t stay with me, and I doubt if the League
can find her a new home so quickly.”

His eyes met mine and held them in a gaze
that seemed to see all. “You don’t have to do this.”

I looked at him in surprise. “You know?”

“Of course I know. I’m not stupid. Or
blind.”

“But how…?”

He shook his head, looking at Adam, who was
watching us both with a speculative look in his bright blue eyes.
“You think I don’t recognize apports when I see them? Things are
fine as they are, honey. Let it go. You don’t have to do anything,”
he repeated.

“Yeah, I do,” I said with a little smile.
“Doing nothing was never an option.”

“So much like your mother,” he said, shaking
his head again. “Don’t worry about Pixie. I’ll see to her.”

“Thanks.”

Dad went off muttering things about foolish
pride and obstinacy.

“You want to tell me what that was about?”
Adam asked. “Wait—before you tell me, what’s up with Pixie?”

I gave him a brief rundown of the pertinent
points. I’d just finished when the captain came back into the
house, followed by Pixie and my father.

“I believe I’ll speak to the young lady
first,” he told us. “We will do our best to not upset her, but we
understand you may wish to protect her delicate sensibilities. We
will allow you to be present during the interview if you like, Mrs.
Marx.”

Adam choked slightly at the phrase “delicate
sensibilities.”

I managed to keep a straight face as I
raised an eyebrow at Pixie. “I’ll be happy to be there with
you.”

“Oh, puh-leeze!” She rolled her eyes and
grabbed Muir’s sleeve, pulling him toward the small sitting room
he’d commandeered as his work space. “Did you get pictures of the
body, by any chance? Karma wouldn’t let me get a close look at him,
so I’d really like to see exactly what death looks like…”

I fought a little giggle at the horrified
expression on the captain’s face as he allowed himself be hauled
away. “Poor man has no idea.”

“I have a feeling Pixie is going to be the
one doing the interviewing,” Adam said with a grin that faded as he
looked at me. “Do you want to tell me what you were talking about
to your father? Or should I tell you?”

I blinked in surprise. “You tell me?
Er…”

Pulling out of his pocket a slim green
glasses case, he waved me over to a corner of the room, where we
could talk without being disturbed. Without saying anything, he
popped open the lid and poured the apports onto my hand.

They were all green. My fingers closed
around them as I looked up into his eyes.

Glacial blue, they gazed back at me with
understanding. “You look so human, sometimes I forget that you’re
half polter. Which means that in addition to having inherited the
abilities to meld into shadows, move with increased quickness, and
generate strength abnormal in mortals, you manifest apports in
times of stress or great physical output. Those are yours, aren’t
they?”

“Yes,” I said, suddenly breathless.

“I figure it’s this way: when Spider left
you upstairs, you were retching as the result of a headache. But
you didn’t stay upstairs the entire time being sick. You followed
Spider down the stairs, sticking to the shadows, keeping yourself
unseen as he met with Meredith, and sneaked down to the basement.
It wouldn’t have taken much effort for you to silently sneak up
behind the men, knocking Meredith out, and killing Spider before he
had the time to turn around.”

The apports grew hot in my hand. I
unclenched my fingers, placing the stones on the table.

“Then you pulled the bookcase down on
Spider’s body, arranged the scene with Meredith, and sneaked back
upstairs to the bathroom without anyone seeing you. With your
quickness, the whole thing probably took… what, a minute? Two at
the most?”

I cleared my throat, unable to say
anything.

“You know,” he said, giving me a considering
look, “if it wasn’t for the apports, I would never have known the
truth.”

“That’s not quite what happened, although
it’s close,” I said, my emotions a tangled knot that sat heavily in
my stomach. “I followed him downstairs after he tried to grab
Pixie. He knew I’d seen him. All I wanted to do was warn him to
stay away from her, but he must have figured I’d tell you about his
connection to Bethany.”

“Your cousin?” Adam asked. “What was his…
Wait a second. You said Spider was having sex with her. Are you
saying now that Meredith also had something to do with her
death?”

I nodded, bile burning my throat. “They both
raped her.”

“Why, for the love of all that is good,
didn’t you tell someone?” he asked, his voice rough.

“I didn’t know until we got here. It’s like
I said: upstairs, in the room I went to lie down in, Spider gloated
about Meredith and him having had sex with Bethany. He said
something that I didn’t pay attention to at first: he said she had
cut her own throat. That fact was never made public, so it meant he
must have been there when she killed herself. He and Meredith
killed her just as surely as if they’d cut her throat
themselves.”

“You should have told me,” he insisted.

“And what would you have done? It was his
word against mine. I had no proof, no tangible proof, that he or
Meredith had anything to do with her!”

“So you killed him in revenge.”

There was a coldness in his voice, a
coldness that stung. “No, I didn’t. As soon as I saw him with
Pixie, I knew what he would do: he’d use and destroy her just as he
did my cousin. I followed him to the basement to warn him away from
her. I kept to the shadows, and heard the two of them talking about
Pixie as they went downstairs to the basement. I admit that I
coshed Meredith on the head; I wanted him out of the way so I could
warn off Spider, but I guess Spider thought I was going to attack
him, too, because I didn’t have time to say a word to him before he
grabbed me and threw me up against the bookcase.”

The memory of that moment assailed me: pain
exploding in my head as Spider grabbed my hair and banged it
against the bookcase, his eyes lit with an unholy pleasure, his
mouth twisted and snarling.

I wrapped my arms around myself and sank to
the floor.

“What was it you had that he said he’d have
when you were dead?” Adam asked, squatting next to me.

I couldn’t look at him, speaking to my knees
instead. “Amanita didn’t hear exactly what he said. It was actually
‘I’ll have her when you’re gone.’ ”

“Meaning Pixie.”

I nodded. “Until that moment, I wasn’t
fighting back. Death seemed like such a pleasant escape from the
sorrow of knowing my husband killed my little cousin. But he swore
he’d have Pixie, and the next thing I knew, he was lying at my
feet, dead.”

“You… er… exploded on him? Like you did as a
child?”

“It was in self-defense this time, but yes.
Just as unintentional, though… and just as deadly.” A sob rose in
my throat.

“Let me see your head,” Adam said, his face
expressionless.

I leaned forward so he could run his fingers
along the back of my head. I winced as he found the sensitive
spots.

“You probably have a concussion,” he said,
tipping my head back to look deep into my eyes. “You have three
good-sized lumps back there.”

“Polters are strong,” I said miserably,
overwhelmed with sorrow—both for what had been and for what might
have been.

“So strong that they can kill easily in
self-defense,” he said, nodding. “And so rather than tell me all
this, you decided to frame Meredith for the murder.”

I looked up at him, blinking away tears.
“No, that was never my intention. I knew that as soon as the seal
was lifted, I’d have to tell the watch what happened. I killed my
husband. It was an accident, and done in self-defense, but I killed
him. I am prepared to face the consequences of that. But I figured
I had twelve hours to make you see the truth about Meredith.”

He was silent for a few minutes. “Earlier,
when you were talking about how sure you were that Meredith was a
murderer, you weren’t referring to the death of your husband, were
you?”

“No. But there was nothing I could tell you
that you’d believe, especially if you knew I just killed my
husband. I thought… I hoped that if the truth about Meredith was
revealed, his connection with Bethany would come out. I had no idea
that Savannah held the key to all that until she turned out to be a
Guardian.”

“I told you I would do whatever I could to
see that your cousin’s rapist was caught,” Adam said gently,
putting an arm around me. “The watch would never have let them get
away with it.”

I made a frustrated gesture. “Thus far the
watch hadn’t connected the two of them to her, and I had no proof,
nothing to convince them. And before you say that wouldn’t matter,
please remember that I
did
tell you Meredith was a
murderer—but you demanded proof, and that was the one thing I
didn’t have.” I ran my hands through my hair, my throat tight with
unshed tears. “I had no choice, Adam. I just had no choice. I had
to take the chance that I could prove the truth about Meredith
before the seal was up.”

“We’ll let that point go,” he said.

I moved out of his supporting embrace and
gave him a weak smile. “Thank you. For… everything.”

“I’m not the monster you seem to think I
am,” he said, getting to his feet and holding out his hand. I took
it, his fingers warm as they wrapped around mine. “I won’t say that
if I had been in your shoes I would have done exactly the same
thing, but I do see your point. I think you need to learn to trust
people more, however. Especially me.”

“Have you seen this?” I let him pull me to
my feet, then held up my hands. On the outer edge of each hand
there was a faint crescent-shaped scar.

Adam frowned at them. “Did you injure your
hands?”

“Not exactly. I was born with six fingers on
each hand. My mother had the doctors take the extras off when I was
a baby. She wanted me to fit in, you see.”

His pale eyes watched me with
consideration.

“She’s never understood that no matter how
human I look, I will never fit in with either world. I’ll always be
on the fringes of both the mortal and polter worlds.”

“The Otherworld is more forgiving of those
who don’t conform than the mortal world is,” he pointed out.

“But even it has limits. A wergeld-bound
exterminator who killed her husband… I don’t know, Adam. I think
even the Otherworld is going to have issues with me.”

He squeezed my hand, his fingers
reassuringly solid. “You’ll handle that, too.”