Chapter Twenty-Seven
“I’ll tell you what kind of bug I hate,” Gracie Dawn said. She pointed a finger at me, like I was the aforementioned bug. “Waspers. I hate those jerks. There’s no point to them, you know? They’re cockroaches with wings and stingers. Mean as hell, too. They’ll sting you because they like it.”
“What the actual hell,” Remy asked, “is a wasper?”
Max made a buzzing sound and twirled his finger through the air. “Wasp,” he said. “In this case, paper wasp. And they are actually docile? Despite Gracie’s belief to the contrary, they’re beneficial to—”
“I don’t care,” Remy said, and walked away.
I laughed as I headed into my office, Joe at my back, leaving Max and Gracie Dawn to their argument over winged insects.
The office was packed, and I was glad. I needed the distraction from worrying about Emma Shope as well as obsessing over why the council was calling me back in. They’d taken Joe, and they’d taken my blade. Did they think I’d appear with Anika Draper in my back pocket, or Voss’s head in a bag?
“Bastards,” I muttered.
Joe stood against the wall, machete in hand, looking as fierce as the clients liked him. “Council?” he asked.
“Yeah.” I hadn’t told him about them calling me back in, because he’d insist on coming with me. Though the magic warding the entrance could have barred him, I didn’t trust the council to refuse him entry. And they might take him again.
So I didn’t tell him.
He was going to be furious.
Remy walked in and fell into a chair across the room. “If Voss doesn’t show soon, I’m going to have to leave you for a while, Kait. I need to fight something.” He grinned at Joe and patted his favorite stake. “Kill me some vampires, maybe.”
Joe pointedly ignored him.
Gracie Dawn escorted the first client to the door. She opened the door, stuck her head in, and asked, “Everybody decent in here? We got a lady in need of ghost busting.”
“Dear god,” Remy muttered, and got to his feet. “I’m going to take a walk down the street.”
And so the night of work began.
Outside the office building, a group of ghosts had gathered, milling about and looking confused. They knew there was something drawing them to the area but couldn’t quite figure out what or exactly where that something was.
I hadn’t even glanced at them on my way in. If they realized I could see them, I’d have been buried beneath a dozen spirits in seconds. All screaming, yelling, gnashing their imaginary teeth, begging for help.
I could handle one at a time. An entire group at once?
No.
I needed to discourage them from gathering near my place of work, because that was just distracting. Occasionally one would find his way into the office, but so far, it hadn’t become a severely haunted building. And I wanted to keep it that way.
The seventh client of the night was a young couple worried about their ten-year-old daughter.
The woman was a pale-skinned redhead with pink rings around her eyes, trembling lips, and exhaustion in every premature line on her face.
Her name was Leah Kelly, and her husband was Keith.
“Our daughter, Mila,” she started. “She’s been sick for nearly a year now.
All her blood work comes back normal. Her scans, exams, MRIs, everything.
All normal. I think her doctors are suspicious that Keith and I are somehow hurting her.
” She burst into tears and dug for tissues in her bag.
“Someone is hurting her,” Keith said grimly, putting his arm around his sobbing wife.
“But we don’t think it’s anyone we can see.
We think it’s a ghost. And it’s affecting her mind, as well.
” He was grimly determined to get the words through to me, no matter how ridiculous he believed they sounded. “She’s…she’s fading.”
“Mr. Kelly,” I started. “I—”
“Don’t say no,” Leah cried. “I can’t take it.”
“I wasn’t going to say no,” I told her gently. “If it’s okay, I can come to your house to see Mila right now.”
They only stared at me.
“Where do you live?” I asked, then clicked on their file to open their address. “Oh. I see you live in Sterling Hills.”
Sterling Hills was a rather elite neighborhood for wealthy people. I’d never been called there or had any real reason to visit, as I had no friends or family there.
“You’ll come?” Leah asked quietly. “Right now?”
“Yes.” I stood and Joe left his spot against the wall. “Right now.”
They got to their feet, still a little dazed that everything was working out for them, and so easily.
Keith pulled his cell phone from his pocket. “I’ll register you so you can get past the gate,” he murmured.
I gave him the make, model, and color of my car, and he quickly added the information.
I gestured at Joe. “My assistant, Joe Patrick, will be riding with me.”
Joe grinned. “Assistant.”
Max walked into the room. “You spelled bodyguard wrong,” he said, then took my arm. “Excuse us, please.”
I went with him to the other side of the room. “What is it, Max?”
“Um, you still have a dozen clients in the waiting room?”
“Yeah,” I said. “But this is an emergency.”
He pursed his lips. “I want you to let me hire another ghost hunter, Kait. I’m good at it. You see how well Gracie Dawn is working out. We’re growing, and you can’t do it all.”
I absolutely didn’t want to think about sharing my space and my clients with another medium/psychic/ghost hunter, but once Max got his teeth into something, he was unlikely to stop bugging me about it. So I simply put him off for now. “I’ll think about it,” I told him.
He put his hands on his hips. “Think about it hard, Kait. And now I’m going to go give those people the news that you’re not going to see them.”
“Max,” I said, before he could leave. “I think we need to stop taking walk-ins.”
“It was your idea,” he reminded me.
“So now asking everyone to make an appointment is my idea.”
“Fine,” he said. “I’ll order a sign and put the information on the website.” And as though afraid I’d find something else to change, he rushed away.
I walked back to Leah and Keith. “Do you have everything you need to get us in?”
“Everything’s set,” Keith said, and for the first time since they’d entered the office, he gave me a faint smile. “Thank you.”
“You’ll help her,” Leah said, her voice strong. “I can feel it.”
“I promise you that I will give it my very best,” I told them.
“Find Remy and tell him where we’re going,” I told Joe as the Kellys left the building. “I’ll apologize to everyone waiting and be right out.”
Honestly, I didn’t think they had a ghost.
I thought their daughter had a demon possession.
I made it to my car before Joe, and while I was waiting for him, I read a text Lucy had sent while I’d been speaking with the Kellys.
When I finished reading, I stared through the windshield, not really seeing anything. Lucy had dreamed—and it was a normal dream, she said—that Rick was in trouble.
I have nothing more than that. He’s in danger, and that’s all I got. Maybe it’s only because my head is being screwed with right now because of the…changes. But warn him to be careful.
I could feel that something was going on with Rick, but I was nearly certain it was because of Beth’s abruptly rekindled interest. He would be torn, stressed, uncertain.
Maybe he would take her back.
That wouldn’t put him in danger, though. So maybe it was the serial killer situation. Or Voss, or just a regular day in the life of a police detective.
Regardless, I’d warn him.
I didn’t call him, though. I sent a text.
Lucy dreamed you were in trouble. Please be careful. If you need me, call me.
He surprised me by calling my phone immediately.
“Rick?” I asked. “Everything okay?”
He sighed, and I could almost see him rubbing his tired face. “There’ve been two more murders, Kait. And this time, they were called in by a man claiming to be the killer.”
I clenched the steering wheel. “What was the time of death?”
“The investigator with the ME’s office puts it between eight and eleven AM this morning.”
“Well, there you go. Sam was at Silverwood all morning.”
“Kait…”
I narrowed my eyes. “You’d better not be about to tell me you don’t believe me, Detective.”
“No, no. I know you wouldn’t cover for him if you thought he was killing innocents.”
I took the phone off speaker and put it to my ear. “What’s going on?”
“Beth came home,” he said.
My stomach plummeted. “Home?” I asked, my mind scrambling to figure out where exactly home was to Beth. “Where’s home? The city? Your street? Your fucking bed, Rick?”
He paused, maybe taken off guard by my reaction. “She showed up this morning at the house. She wants to talk about things.”
“To talk,” I said, my heart pounding with equal parts anger and fear. “What do you want?”
I’d asked him that very question before, and we’d been interrupted before he could answer. I waited now, barely breathing, afraid to hear, afraid not to.
“What I want,” he almost whispered, “what I’ve wanted for so very fucking long, is you, Kait. You. I told you I’m your human world man. I meant it.”
Someone began talking to him in the background, and before I could even begin to put together a reply, he took a deep breath and let it out slowly. “I have to go. We’ll talk tonight.”
Then he was gone.
And I was going to have to talk to Jared about my human world man.