I wandered around the downstairs of the house for a long time, trying to feel anything at all. My shoes clicked on the floor and frustration travelled my spine. Malcolm had given me this job as a test, and I was failing. Maybe I’d been kidding myself. So what if I could still see ghosts? It had been years since I’d done anything about it. I wasn’t even a has-been but a never-was. Oh hell. I was hysterically bemoaning.
Walking up the stairs didn’t fix my situation; I still didn’t feel anything. Four bedrooms, two bathrooms, and not a blip of anything at all inside me. The house was lovely, in transition, and not at all haunted as far as I could tell.
I’d officially failed my test. Maybe I could ask Levi to pay for me to go back to school. It would burn to do so, and I’d feel like more of a failure, but what the hell? I wasn’t going to make it in my parent’s profession.
Lately, it seemed I failed more than I didn’t. I’d read all the books that talked about greatness coming out of losing one’s way. I was supposed to consider every step back as the universe pushing me in the right direction. Maybe that would turn out to be the case, maybe five years from now I would look back at this very moment and see how it had set me on the path of my ultimate destiny. Right then, however, I wanted to throw something, and if there had been anything around I could actually chuck, I might have done so.
I sunk to the floor, sitting on the top step and looking at the house around me. If they were having trouble selling the place, they needed to finish the kitchen, but the trouble wasn’t because of a supernatural entity keeping buyers away.
“Time to face the music.” Talking to myself was a new thing, and I needed to stop doing it before I eventually became that woman walking down the street muttering nonsense.
Rising to my feet, I returned outside to Malcolm. He looked up as I approached, finally putting the phone into his pocket to give me his full attention. “Well?”
“I’m afraid I’ve failed. I’m sorry to waste your time. I thought I could do this, but obviously I can’t. Whatever is going on in the house, it’s beyond my abilities. I couldn’t detect a thing.” My cheeks burned, but I made myself hold his eye contact. “Sorry to have dragged us both out here for nothing. My years away have dwindled my abilities, and I’m not good enough to do the job anymore. Thank you for giving me the chance.”
With what I hoped was a steady smile, I turned to head to my car. We didn’t need to drag out the pain of this any longer. It wasn’t like I’d run into him on the street. Cut and dry. He’d given me a shot, and I’d failed.
“Hold up, Kendall.” Well, at least he wasn’t calling me Sage. I braced myself for the insults that had to be coming. I’d survive the verbal assault, and then I’d go home and drown myself in cheap wine.
After I stopped walking, I turned to face him. He strode over to me until he stood close enough to look at me with what felt like a possessive stance. Men didn’t often invade my personal space, or at least they hadn’t when I’d been married to Levi. Malcolm was close enough I could smell the scent of sandalwood in my nostrils, and I wished I could drown in it.
“You could have lied. I wasn’t inside with you. I’d have no idea, right? If you had done the job or not?”
His words bounced around in my brain. For at least a second or two, I couldn’t think of anything to say to his strange statement. “I suppose I could have, but it didn’t occur to me to do so. I failed. End of story.”
“Actually, you passed.”
I shook my head. “I didn’t do anything. I couldn’t feel an issue to resolve. Weren’t you paying attention to a word I said?”
A smirk touched his mouth. “I never questioned whether you were capable of handling the work. I can feel your power. It pushes against my own. I needed to know if I could trust you. I don’t know you. I have to be sure.”
“Hold on. What?” My heart rate kicked up. I wasn’t sure what was going on. I knew enough to be fully aware I wasn’t going to like whatever he said next, not one bit.
He stepped away from me before he stared at the house. “The test was to see if you’re truthful. I’m not going to be with you at every job. I couldn’t possibly keep up with all my contractors that way. I have to know that when you tell me the job took five hours, it really did. I have to believe you when you tell me what you encountered in the walls. I have to know you’ll call me if you’re in terrible danger. I can’t do that if I don’t trust you.”
“So then you knew?” I advanced on him. “That the house had nothing in it? And you wanted to see if I’d lie to you about it?”
“Do you tell everyone the truth all the time? Are you one of the rare few who never lie, ever?” He put his hand on my arm, and the same electric jolt from the night before moved through me, only this time ten times stronger. My knees threatened to give out, and it was all I could do to stay upright. If he noticed, he didn’t comment. “Did every house you saged actually need the process?”
“No.” I swallowed. “They didn’t pay me to tell them if they needed it saged. They hired me to do so. There are lots of reasons why people want it done. Sometimes it’s just to quell anxiety. I did what they asked me to. End of story.”
He rolled his eyes in a way that would make my ten-year-old envious. “Semantics.”
I wanted to argue, but the truth was I’d hated saging the houses that hadn’t needed the gentle cleanse. It had been cheating. I always performed the service whether they needed me to or not. I’d convinced myself it wasn’t my problem to determine if the client needed me or not, and I’d told myself I’d had no other choice when I knew I did.
I didn’t like telling Levi how bad off I’d gotten. For the sake of pride, I’d taken money for doing jobs that simply didn’t need to happen.
“If you want to know the truth, I’m really disgusted by how low I’ve sunk lately. I can see why you’d think I’m a liar.” If my cheeks got any hotter, they might explode from the onslaught.
“You passed.” He reached into his back pocket and pulled out a new phone. “People do what they have to do. Today, you made the right choice. I cleared this house myself last year. It’s mine. I own it. I work on it on Sundays. Soon, it’ll be ready for me to flip it. Houses are a hobby of mine. This is for you. This is the phone you’ll use to communicate with me and only me. If you’re going to miss a job, you let me know. Don’t neglect to show up without telling me, even once, and we’re done.”
I reached out to take the phone from him. The evening had taken so many twists and turns I could hardly keep up. But it looked like I’d been hired, and that was the key point. “I won’t. I’m very reliable, if nothing else.”
“Tomorrow night is your first real job. The address is in the phone. I’ll pay you five hundred for tonight. Come see me Friday at the Cascade, and you’ll get the cash.” Malcolm had clearly moved on to business dealings; all discussion over whether or not I was a liar and worthy of his jobs had left.
My hands shook, and I squeezed the phone so tightly I might soon break it if I didn’t calm down. “I can do tomorrow. I don’t have the kids.”
“How often do you have them? What’s the schedule?” He said the last word like it tasted bad in his mouth. I didn’t even want to guess why.
“It depends on the week. We have them fifty-fifty. It’s a two-two-five-five schedule that we sometimes adjust to meet certain needs. Generally, that means it shifts from week to week a bit.”
Malcolm looked up at the sky before he spoke. “Fuck me, I’m really doing this. A divorced suburban housewife. I always swore … okay, look, text me every Sunday what days you have free, and we’ll do our best.”
A tingle moved up my spine, and I spun around. The ghost from the Vortex was back. A hundred yards from us, the man stared in our general direction. What was it doing here? I whirled around to stare at Malcolm. “The ghost is back.”
“I know. He’s my ghost. Comes and goes. He’s always with me.”
His answer made no sense. “Why don’t
you send him on? Can’t you?” His powers pushed at me the same way mine must at his. If ghost-clearing didn’t fall under the umbrella of what he could do, I’d gladly do it for him unless he wanted the man around all the time.
“We’re not going to share our secrets. I don’t want yours, and I have next to no interest in you having mine. You can go now.”
And just like that, I’d apparently been dismissed.
I was halfway home before I stopped to throw up on the side of the road. What was it about Malcolm that made me feel so exposed, so unworthy, so completely out of my depth, and why-oh-why did I care at all?
****
When I was a girl, my family had eaten dinner together, just the three of us, nearly every night. We lived on the road, so dinners were whatever my mother could manage to put together in the back of the van or, if we weren’t sleeping in the car, in restaurants near motels. About every three days we would stop to sleep in a cheap hotel on the side of a highway to do what my father used to call ‘stretching his legs’ and to give us the chance to clean up in the showers.
I really couldn’t blame them for wanting to minimize their time in those places. Like movie theaters, motels were loaded with negative energy, and it must have made my parents shudder with pain to sleep in them for very long. As I got older, the discomfort beat at me, too. I’d never stopped to think of all of those meals as family dinners, yet that was just what they had been.
When Levi and I had gotten married and eventually moved into our home, I’d taken great pains to make sure it was clear of negative energy, and then, in the beginning, I’d showered at least twice a day for the freedom to do so.
Since the divorce, I’d become very preoccupied with the idea of family dinners. I’d never given it a thought before we’d split up. Some nights we’d eaten together, others Levi and I ate separately if he had to work late. These days, we never missed a Sunday meal. No matter which one of us had the kids, we ate together.
Tonight Levi grilled steaks. He’d always been able to cook up a delicious piece of meat. The kids hardly ate any of it because it wasn’t breaded or, at the very least, it wasn’t as simple as a grilled cheese sandwich. I sipped on my seltzer and watched as the beautiful man I had once been married to laughed at Dex’s joke and flipped the steak over on the grill.
Things could almost be considered normal…if I wasn’t leaving in an hour to go on my first official job. Gray seemed like he was in a better mood. He’d slept most of the afternoon away the day before, and I was half convinced he’d been sick.
Levi left the meat to cook and came by my side to watch the kids run around the backyard. At my house, we had a playscape, but my younger two seemed content to make fun wherever they went and didn’t seem to notice the lack of “stuff” around their father’s new home.
“How did last night go?” A muscle ticked in Levi’s jaw when he spoke, but he kept his tone cordial—which at least allowed me to ignore the indication of his displeasure at the topic.
I set down my drink before I turned to him. If the conversation moved in a different direction, I didn’t want to be able to easily throw the liquid at his face. “Last night was a bit of a test, which I passed, and now I move on to real work tonight.”
“I’m not at all surprised. You’ve always excelled at whatever you did.”
His compliment surprised me. I hadn’t expected it, nor did I in any way suspect Levi thought of me that way. “Thanks.”
“You’re welcome. Look, I was thinking. Maybe we could get a sitter Wednesday night, and we could go to dinner. You and me.”
Why did he want to have dinner? “I really don’t have the money for a sitter right now.”
“Then I’ll pay for it. How bad off are you?”
“Levi, if I wanted to talk to you about that, I would have before now. If it’s all the same to you, I’d really rather not. Why do you want to have dinner? Can’t we talk about it now?”
“Hell, Kendall.” He ran his hands through my hair. The act stunned me. Levi had always touched me freely, a kiss on the cheek often or a hug from behind. I’d taken it all for granted, and then it had stopped. The loss of his tenderness made a gaping hole inside of me I wasn’t certain I’d ever fill. Even our fast, hot sexual attacks of each other weren’t tender.
Tears threated; I blinked them away. Levi had seen enough of my tears, and I was tired of shedding them. “What do you want?”
“I want to have dinner with my wife. A date. Is that so impossible to arrange? Whatever it takes? Can’t you make it happen?”
I stepped away and moved toward the kids. “I’m not your wife.”
“You still feel like my wife.”
Enough. “Then maybe you shouldn’t have divorced me.”
“You lied to me—for the course of our entire marriage—and I may have overreacted.”
I really didn’t fight with him. We’d gone a decade without ever raising our voices, and now this was our life. “You think? You want to date me? Fine. We’ll see if we can get through a meal without killing each other. You go ahead and pay for the sitter. I’ll make it happen.”
Levi grinned like a kid at Christmas. “Great. We’ll go for sushi. That sound okay?”
“Sure.” I could almost see the future I’d wanted spreading out before me again. We’d find our way back to each other, fall back in love, he’d move back into the house. I could go back to pretending to be normal. Eventually people would forget how I’d exposed my weirdness; some other drama would take its place. The kids would fall back into place. Gray wouldn’t be angry anymore. Dex’s teachers wouldn’t use words like “ADHD” and “counseling.” Molly wouldn’t have to tell people her parents didn’t live together.
We’d take vacations and talk about what movie we wanted to watch after the kids went to bed.
My arms tingled, and I rubbed at them, looking for the cause. Across the fence in the neighbor’s yard, I saw it. A ghost stood staring at my children while they played. I didn’t know what she wanted. Her clothes were modern, and if I had to guess, she hadn’t been dead long.
I didn’t want her near my children.
I raised my arm, and with a flick of my wrist, I pushed my power at the ghost. She shrieked before she disintegrated into nothingness, flying off to wherever ghosts went when I sent them on. Elation flowed through me as fast as the blood rushed and the air entered my lungs. I grinned. That had been easy, like pulling off a bandage off a wound too long left on to fester.
“How do you want your steak?”
My mouth watered. “As rare as you can make it.”
“Really?” Levi pulled my meat off the flame. “You’re usually more of a medium well.”
He was right. “Things change.” I wasn’t sure I ever wanted them to go back Not since I was back in the game.
Not ever again.
Chapter Six
I stepped out of the car in Lakeway. If I could have guessed anywhere in Central Texas where I would have gotten sent on my first job, Lakeway wouldn’t have made the top ten. Most of the houses were well kept and new. I’d never gotten the ghost-y vibe when I’d driven through.
Yet when I pulled my car into the new development and parked outside the address Malcolm had texted me, I knew this wasn’t another honesty test. Goosebumps broke out on my arms, and I rubbed them. This was what I would have felt outside of Malcolm’s house if it had been a real job.
Inside the home was something that didn’t belong, and it was my job to make it go away.
I leaned against my car to study the house. Situated on the end of a cul-de-sac, the brown brick home would be called statuesque in real estate listings. I used to browse the websites on Sunday mornings with my coffee just for fun. Those had been the days. Two-storied, with white shutters framing the outside and a sloped out entrance that drew people inside.
I shuddered. Well, maybe it would if it didn’t have a creature inside that would instinctively make even non-sensitives want to run for their liv
es.
No For Sale sign in the yard meant either it wasn’t a real estate issue, or they simply hadn’t listed it yet. I glanced down at my phone. Malcolm hadn’t given me any instructions on how to enter the house. Should I just ring the doorbell?
I texted him. Hey. I’m at the house. I glanced at the time; I was five minutes early, go me. How am I getting in?
I waited a few seconds, and it vibrated as his message back popped up. Door’s open. Unless you are otherwise informed, it will always be open. I don’t want you interacting with the clients. Too messy.
I hated to think about how things got messy. I placed my phone in my pocket and marched toward the door. Each step I took toward the house caused more dread to slink along my spine. I knew the feeling well; it was called self-preservation. Even those of us with the ability to handle dark things have the instinct to take of running. Buffy Summers handled her vampires with a quip and a laugh. I wasn’t fighting the undead, but even I knew that when dealing with paranormal nastiness, it was a bad idea to make light of any of it.
There were reasons people ended up needing exorcisms. There were too many stories to count of individuals dying from the things I had to get rid of. None of it was funny. I’d been out of the game for too long; I couldn’t afford to be anything but extra cognizant of all that happened around me.
I touched the door and jolted backward when electricity struck my fingers. My heart rate kicked up, and my pulse galloped to a pace better suited for running a 5k.
Well, I could officially say that was a first for me. I’d never been zapped at the door before, although it didn’t surprise me in the least that it happened. Strange things could happen when the entities realized a person who, as my mother would put it, was connected took interest in a clearing. Sometimes doors got jammed or locked from the inside. The ghosts or demons or whatever was hanging around didn’t want to be evicted. The longer they were earth bound, the more powerful they grew. My mother once got so bothered by an entity that she actually forgot how to drive somewhere she’d been a hundred times.