Chapter 9 With a Rookie
Koa
Leave it to Cas to turn our beloved’s first hunt into a military operation complete with contingency plans for everything from bathroom breaks to full-scale demonic possession.
While Seri’s eyes had widened excitedly at the anxiety attack my older brother called a “safety protocol,” I’d caught the slight twitch at the corner of her mouth. Her amusement at his overprotection apparently rivaled my absolute lack of surprise.
Now, twenty-four hours later, we were cruising toward what Cas deemed “an appropriate introductory field assignment with minimal exposure to potential hazards.” Translation: The easiest moon-damned job we’d had in months.
A perfect way to ease our beloved into the family business without risking so much as a paper cut.
Cas drove with his hands locked at ten and two, his jaw only slightly less rigid than his copy of the rulebook stashed in the glove compartment. Zane had claimed the back with Seri before I could, so I was relegated to navigator in the shotgun seat.
“So what was your most enjoyable hunt?” Our girl’s voice was eager and bright against the steady rhythm of tires on asphalt. “If that’s not classified or anything.”
“Blossom, there’s nothing classified from you,” Zane chuckled. “I mean, Cas even trusted you with the Wi-Fi password last week. Finally.”
“That’s because she actually logs out of her accounts, unlike some people,” Cas muttered, eyes flicking to the rearview mirror.
I turned enough to see Seri bouncing with excitement.
“Haunted house in Pennsylvania,” I answered. “Some amusement park hired actual necromancers to create ‘authentic’ spirits for their Halloween attraction.”
“Moon-damned idiots. Phantom Ferris wheel tried to eat Ko’s ass.”
“But the special effects were incredible,” Zane chimed in. “And the funnel cake was top-tier. You know, before one of the spirits possessed the vendor and tried to choke me with powdered sugar.”
“What happened?” Seri’s eyes went wide.
“Cas got all hero-complexy, and Koa talked the park owner into refunding our admission.” Zane stretched his arm along the back of the seat and cupped her far shoulder in his palm. “After that, the line for the Tilt-A-Whirl mysteriously emptied out, and we rode it six times.”
“Where’s the worst place you ever had a hunt?”
“Catacombs,” the three of us answered in unison.
“Paris?” Seri guessed.
“How did you know?” I asked.
“Just seemed likely.” She shrugged. “All those bones and centuries of history.”
“And small spaces,” I added darkly. “Don’t forget the small, closed spaces.”
“And the smell,” Zane snickered. “Like a gymnasium sock filled with corpse juice and left in a hot car.”
“What’s the most interesting thing you’ve ever hunted?”
“Unicorn,” I answered.
“A real unicorn?” Her voice pitched into a squeal. “Like with a horn and everything?”
“Everything and then some!” Zane waggled his eyebrows. “You’ve never seen so much glitter in your life.”
“What happened to it? You didn’t—”
“We protected it,” I smirked a little, remembering the client’s face. “When we found out what the client wanted with it, we hunted him instead.”
“Oh! Good job, guys! Was there ever a time a target got away? I mean, that you didn’t allow to get away like the unicorn?”
“Negative,” Cas responded, military-crisp.
Sprawling out with the grace of a cat that had knocked something expensive off a shelf and felt no remorse, Zane egged on her excitement, embellishing stories until they bordered on fantasy.
Casimir stoically drove, his eyes flicking to the GPS every now and then as if it wasn’t literally my job to navigate.
It didn’t offend me; it was just who he was.
The micromanaging brother who couldn’t help checking everything twice, then once more for good measure.
As for me, I was lost in a wash of memories for some reason.
Mom singing while she cooked. How she’d slip each of us a second cookie without us asking.
The way she’d smooth my hair back from my forehead when I had nightmares, promising that the ?aumākua would watch over me and how I should listen for them in the space between heartbeat.
I glanced at Cas, wondering if he was remembering, too, but his face was his usual blank mask, eyes focused on the road. He was changing bit by bit, though. We all were.
No, that wasn’t right. Seri wasn’t changing us. She was revealing layers of us. Layers we’d buried the day Mom died, when Lucian decided three grieving six-year-olds needed to become warriors instead of children, sharpening our edges until we cut even ourselves…
“Koko?” Seri’s voice pulled me back. “I asked if there would be any ghost activity at this place? The briefing didn’t mention it, but I thought I should check. Just to be tactically prepared.”
She stumbled slightly over the military terminology, and my heart cracked and sealed in the same breath.
“No spectral anomalies,” Cas answered before I could, his eyes meeting mine briefly. In that split-second glance was a whole conversation.
Cas: She wants to test her abilities.
Me: She’s trying to prove herself useful.
He nodded almost imperceptibly. We’d discovered her “Hauntology,” as Zane had dubbed it, almost by accident. Now she was itching to try it in the field.
“Oh.” Her voice carried disappointment she tried to hide.
“It’s all good, moonbeam,” Zane assured her. “This is just the beginning of your illustrious monster-hunting career. Soon, we’ll have got ghosts, ghouls, and all manner of supernatural nasties lined up for your viewing pleasure.”
Cas’ knuckles whitened on the steering wheel.
“I mean, with your skills?” Zane was oblivious to the storm brewing in our older brother. “You’re a natural. Hauntology, gravitational pull, dreamwalking…You’re basically a one-woman supernatural SWAT team. Before long, we’ll be your backup, bunny.”
I watched Cas’ jaw flex, the tiny muscle jumping beneath his skin.
He wanted to keep her safe, layer her in metaphorical bubble wrap at Evermere.
The idea of Seri regularly joining our hunts made him physically ill with worry, and I understood.
Dark take me, I’d wrap her in my arms and never let go if I could.
But I honored the steel beneath her softness.
The determination in her eyes when she practiced her abilities.
The way she’d stood up to us, to our father, her fang-rotted stepmother…
Seri wasn’t fragile. She was fire, newly kindled and growing stronger every day. To stamp it out or deny it would be worse than anything Arabesque ever did to her.
“Did I tell you about the time we hunted a kraken in Lake Superior?” Zane was saying, spinning some wild tale that had Seri giggling, but my thoughts turned to her training these past four weeks.
We’d kept the Pine Barrens ghost bottled in a containment orb, like capturing smoke in glass.
It hadn’t put up much of a fight, which should have been a warning sign.
Hunting was never that easy. Seri’s eyes had lit up when she’d first seen it through her newly discovered hauntology, and we’d all been too captivated by her excitement to question our good fortune.
Now, looking back, the pieces were aligning in a way that made my skin crawl.
Arabesque’s fingerprints were all over this, even if I was the only one able to see it.
We’d been using the ghost to train Seri in the east wing’s reinforced chamber. Zane would release just enough of the entity to form a partial manifestation while Seri practiced focusing her sight.
“I can see ribbons of blue energy,” she’d said, her eyes tracking movement none of us could perceive. “They’re tangled, like someone tried to knot them together.”
It was Kaori who finally found the real term for hauntology. She’d been researching in the nephilim Council of Elders’ archives when she found the reference.
“Spectral Sight,” she’d said during a video call, her caramel-brown face half-buried in some moldering tome. “An ability exclusive to lunar witches. Through synesthetic mapping, the witch can uncover echoes of past events, lingering spirits, or hidden entities—”
“So what you’re saying is,” Zane had interrupted, “she has supernatural ghost vision?”
“I’m saying,” Kaori had replied with the patience of someone still getting used to Zane, “she can see what even spectral analysis equipment can’t fully detect. Where your lenses show only color blobs, her vision provides complete detail.”
With a sigh, I refocused on the present, on the lingering unease that had settled in my bones.
We never did learn much about the Pine Barrens entity.
Seri said she could pick up only glimmers of magic from it, not enough to form a complete picture of who it had been in life, but Brumous, of all creatures, knew something we didn’t.
The first time the wolf had encountered the ghost, he’d backed away, hackles raised, communicating a single clear impression to Zane through their telepathic link: Lake.
When Z questioned him further, Brummy had simply whined, pressing himself against the wall furthest from the orb.
That’s when my suspicions had first crystallized.
Water magic. The lake. A ghost that gave off only the faintest magical signature, yet clearly retained enough sentience to follow simple commands, like appearing where it was told.
I’d kept my theory to myself, not wanting to alarm Seri unnecessarily, but I was almost certain the ghost belonged to Ondine Filcher, the old water witch who’d helped Amabel and Eluned infiltrate Evermere through our lake a few months ago.
I’d always wondered what punishment Arabesque would inflict for that, and now I knew.
Then Foster Collins had confirmed it during his weekly check-in: “Ondine Filcher terminated. Body unrecovered. Source reliable.”
For me, the final piece fell into place. Arabesque had drained the old water hag, tortured her beyond recognition, then killed her and trapped her ghost.