Ghost of a Chance (5 page)

“Oh, surely no one could object to us
documenting the entities!” Savannah said at the same time. “This
house is unique! Everyone knows it’s the most haunted building on
the Olympic Peninsula! It’s a fabulous resource that has been kept
from true researchers like those of us in PMS for far too long. Now
at last we have a chance to do some serious investigation, and
Jebediah assures me that our work will be fruitful.”

“PMS?” I couldn’t help asking.

“Psychical Mysteries Society. Silly acronym,
isn’t it? It’s a lovely group, though, and very scientific. We seek
to solve the age-old mysteries of life after death, hauntings,
demonic possessions, clairvoyance, and poltergeists.”

“Poltergeists?” Pixie asked, her face a
frozen mask.

Savannah turned her smile on the girl. “Yes.
That’s German for ‘noisy ghosts.’ Poltergeists are known for their
disruptive and malicious behavior. I’m particularly interested in
them because I had a poltergeist experience in my teens that I’ve
never forgotten. It darned near scared the life out of me! I have
high hopes we can call one tonight.”

“I think you’ll find that most of what
you’ve read about polters is fabrication, created to sensationalize
rather than inform,” I said quickly.

“ ‘Polters’ being poltergeists?” Savannah’s
brow furrowed.

“Sorry, yes.”

Her frown cleared. “Oh, are you interested
in them, as well?”

Pixie sent me a warning glare. It was
unnecessary: I had no intention of allowing the woman before us to
see the extra set of arms that Pixie kept hidden beneath the cape.
The kid had enough problems without having her heritage exposed.
“I’m familiar with the history of poltergeists, yes.”

“Excellent! I knew you were a fellow
enthusiast!”

“
Enthusiast
might be an
overstatement. About this séance tonight—I happen to know the new
owner of the house, and I’m sorry to say that I really don’t think
he’d be overly pleased to have people traipsing around inside. From
what I understand, it needs quite a bit of work, so it could
actually be dangerous to go in there—”

“You
know
the owner?” she
interrupted.

“Well… yes. He’s my husband, actually.”

Her face lit up with happiness. “You’re the
owner’s wife? Oh, that’s wonderful! There will be no problem, then,
if you’re along with us!”

“Oh, I’m not here to join your group—”

“But you just said you’re interested in
poltergeists, so of course you must come!” She beamed at me as she
gave my hand a little squeeze before moving off to her car. “Both
of you!”

“I’ll come,” Pixie said quickly with a
defiant glance my way.

“Regardless of my interest, my husband isn’t
going to be pleased with the idea of people holding a séance in a
house he’s about to sell.”

That stopped Savannah dead in her tracks.
She whirled around to face me. “Sell? Your husband is going to sell
this fabulous resource?”

“I’m not privy to his thoughts, but I
believe that is his intention, yes.”

She rushed back over to me, her face
clouded. “But you can’t let him! This house is absolutely unique!
There’s not another like it on the entire peninsula! There have
been hauntings here for the last one hundred and ten years! If new
owners come along… who knows what they will do with it! They may
not provide an environment in which the spirits will thrive!”

“Or perhaps the new owners will be as
enthusiastic as you to have the house investigated,” I pointed
out.

Her eyes narrowed on nothing for a few
moments while she thought. “No,” she said, shaking her head and
marching back toward her car. “I can’t allow that. This house is
too important. My husband will talk to the owner and make him see
reason.”

I didn’t bother telling her that the person
who could change Spider’s mind once he had made it up hadn’t been
born. Instead, I murmured polite, noncommittal noises of vague
agreement.

Savannah’s frown lightened when she rolled
down her window and waved at me. “We’ll start the investigations
proper at eleven, so I hope you are up for a late night. The séance
is at midnight, as I mentioned earlier. I’m so pleased you’ll be
joining PMS!”

“I… but I… I don’t—You haven’t listened to
me at all, have you?”

“Wear something old that you don’t mind
getting dirty,” she called as she pulled away. “We’re bound to have
an evening to remember!”

“I have a horrible feeling those are going
to be famous last words,” I told Pixie as the SUV bearing the
perpetually cheerful Savannah made its way down the winding
drive.

“Yeah, and I can guess who they’ll apply
to,” she said with a dark implication before stalking off to the
verandah.

I had a nasty feeling she was right.

“This house is…” I paused, not for dramatic
effect, but to try to put into the words the sensation that
skittered down my back.

“Clean?” Pixie asked, drifting past me to a
bow-front window that looked over a short bit of scraggly lawn.

“Hardly that.”

“Yuck. Flowers. That’s probably where the
bees were.”

A mouse dashed out in front of me, froze
when it spotted me, nose and tail twitching.

“It looks like Spider will need to contact
the real sort of exterminators. What I was going to say was that
the house is… different.”

The mouse ran off to hide behind a love seat
when I stamped on the floor.

“Different as in
deadly
? Filled with
toxic fumes, do you mean? Carcinogens leaching into the air, the
kind that seep deep into your healthy pink lung tissue,
corrupting
and
destroying
every healthy cell in their
path?”

“You are the strangest child!” I said,
giving her a look that should have scared her silly.

She shrugged. “Strange is what I do
best.”

“Evidently.”

“And I’m
not
a child. I’m almost
sixteen
.”

“What I meant was different as in… well,
different
. Or not, given the present company. Take that
picture, for example.”

Pixie stalked over to the wall opposite me
and stood with two hands on her hips, the other two arms crossed
over her chest, an obstinate look on her face.

We were in what must have been the house’s
parlor, a sunny room that overlooked a small garden that had been
allowed to run wild. Faded heavy maroon curtains dated it to at
least a hundred years in the past, and the thick, dark mahogany
furniture couldn’t have been much newer. Several uninspired, muddy
watercolors hung on the dusty yellow and cream wallpaper,
occasional squares of brighter color indicating where pictures had
been removed.

But there was nary a spirit to be seen.

“What? What’s wrong with it? It’s just a
picture of some boring old people,” Pixie said, her eyes lighting
up at the sight of a sharp letter opener that had been thrust into
a small bud vase.

“Take a closer look at it.”

She sighed the sigh of the put-upon and gave
the picture another glimpse. “It’s just some Victorian people. A
family. OK? Can we go now?”

“Not just yet. How many people are in the
picture?”

Pixie glanced back at it, frowning slightly
as she noticed what I’d seen straightaway. “Four. Oh, I see. So
now, what, you’re a bigot or something?”

“Don’t be ridiculous,” I said, moving closer
to the picture. It was indeed a standard Victorian family portrait,
with two men standing behind a seated woman, a small girl leaning
on her knee… Except the woman clearly had four arms. “I wonder how
a picture of a polter’s family found its way into this house? And
are they all polters, or just the one?”

“No way to tell,” she said, dismissing the
picture and wandering around the room.

“Not unless one of them hadn’t lost her
extra limbs yet,” I said, squinting at the child in the picture.
“Interesting. I might be able to tell in person if someone was a
polter, although my Otherworld radar isn’t the best. My father’s is
much better. Does the child have an extra arm hidden in her
pinafore, do you think?”

“Who cares? They don’t live here, do
they?”

“I doubt it. Some mortal families knew about
the polters who lived with them, but I doubt if they’d include them
in family photos unless there was a blood tie.” I straightened up
and glanced at the other pictures. No other family portraits were
displayed. “Just out of curiosity—how old were your parents when
they died?”

She spun around and glared at me. “You
are
a bigot! You’re a polter bigot!”

“Don’t be ridiculous. Would I have offered
to take you in if I was?”

“Then why do you keep
asking
me and
asking
me and
asking
me about my parents? What does
it matter how old my parents were?”

“Calm down! Polter genetics interests me.
The child in that picture has only three arms, but the woman has
four.”

“She does? Oh. She does. Maybe she’s not
related or something.”

Well, now, that was odd. Polters grew up
knowing the ins and outs of basic polter genetics. There were many
times when children had fewer arms than their more-than-two-armed
parents, mixed parentage being the primary reason. But Pixie didn’t
seem to know that… which was very strange.

“I was just curious if one of your parents
was human, or half-blooded,” I said slowly, doing a little gentle
probing.

“
Deus!
My parents are dead, OK?
Dead!
Will you stop harassing me about them?”

“Sorry,” I apologized, letting the subject
drop. Some polters were very touchy about their heritage,
especially those who didn’t have the protection of the Akashic
League and had to make their own way in the mundane world. “Back to
the picture—I think it’s a safe bet to say that the family who used
to live here was made up at least partially of poltergeists. I
wonder what happened to them.”

“They were driven away by the endless
curiosity of the local townspeople,” a deep voice said behind
me.

Pixie’s startled jump was almost as high as
mine, although hers had a horizontal element that ended up sending
her across the room, leaving me in apparent solitude with the large
dark-haired man who all but filled the doorway.

“Who are you?” I asked, reaching behind me
for something I could use as a weapon. My hand closed around
something smooth and cold.

“I was about to ask you the same question.
Please don’t steal that greyhound. It’s very old, and a favorite of
mine.”

I held tight to the small but heavy statue
of a sitting dog that I remembered seeing below the picture of the
polter family. “Steal? I’m not stealing anything. For one thing, my
husband owns this house. For another, I don’t steal.”

He moved into the room in just a few
strides, making it feel suddenly small and cramped and extremely
full of an evidently angry large man. “You what? You’re not my
wife.”

I frowned, pulling the dog statue around to
my front, hoping he wasn’t so deranged that I had to bean him with
it. “I never said I was!”

He stopped in front of me, his arms crossed
over a broad chest. Somewhat dimmed beams of sunlight worked their
way through the grime-streaked windows, falling on his face and
revealing that angry, deranged, and largely intimidating though he
might be, he was also incredibly handsome. I think it was the
combination of black-as-sin hair and pale blue eyes.

“You did. You said you were married to the
owner. That would be me.”

“No, that is my husband, Spider. Who are
you?”

The man joined me in a round of frowning.
“Adam Dirgesinger.”

“Dirgesinger?” That was a polter name. I
looked him over carefully, but there were no signs of a poltergeist
heritage. He had the normal number of arms and didn’t display the
restlessness that was common even in the most human-looking
polters. “That’s your family in the photo?”

“My grandparents, yes.” His eyes
narrowed.

“So you’re a third-generation polter?”

His frown deepened. “What concern is that of
yours?”

“None, really,” I said with a faint shrug.
“I’m just a bit surprised to hear you acknowledge it. Most people
wouldn’t admit to a polter ancestry to strangers.”

“Would you?” he asked, a challenge in his
voice.

I summoned up a smile I didn’t in the least
feel. “I suppose it would depend on the circumstances.”

“All right, Mrs. Whatever-Your-Name-Is…”

I straightened my shoulders and tried to
look down my nose at him, something I couldn’t quite pull off,
since he had a good six inches on me. “It’s Marx. Karma Marx.
That’s Pixie, but she prefers Desdemona.”

“
Deus
, do you have to keep saying it
like that?” Pixie glared at both Adam and me.

“Fine, Karma Marx—would you like to tell me
just why you feel free to rummage around my house without my
permission?”

I pointed the statue at him. “You keep
saying that. It’s not true. My husband bought this house a few days
ago. I’m sorry if the house went into foreclosure or whatever
happened to cause you to lose it, but ignoring reality isn’t going
to do anything to make the situation change.”

“You’re lying,” he said, his eyes filled
with disbelief.

I sighed. “Look, Mr. Dirgesinger—”

“Adam,” the man interrupted.

“I beg your pardon?” I asked.

“Adam. Call me Adam. I seldom use my last
name.”

How very odd. For a brief moment, I wondered
why he wanted to disown his surname when he was so willing to admit
to his ancestry. “Very well. I’m not lying. I don’t lie. I’m sorry
I don’t have the title papers on me, but I assure you that I am
entirely serious when I say that my husband now owns this
house.”

“I find that difficult to believe when I
haven’t put the house up for sale.”