“We need to move quickly,” I said.
“You don’t need to tell me,” Alona said with disgust, stepping back and brushing her hand down the sides of her shorts, creating grayish streaks of dust visible even in the limited light.
“Where’d she go?” I asked. “Did you say something?”
“Why are you always so quick to blame me?” she demanded.
“Because it’s usually you?” I offered.
“This way.” Mrs. Ruiz emerged from the shadows behind us, making both of us jump.
She pushed past us, still carrying her garden shovel, toward what had once been a grand and sweeping staircase. Now, with most of the spindles missing out of the railing and some of the stairs rotted through, it looked more like an eerie smile of broken teeth.
I started to follow her.
“Wait,” Alona said from behind me.
I tensed, expecting that she’d heard something from outside, but when I turned, I found her staring into the dark gloominess of the first room to the right of the front door. “What’s wrong?”
“Give me the flashlight.” I could hear the frown in her voice.
I turned it on and handed it to her.
She swept the beam over the remains of the room. It appeared to have been a study or a parlor of some kind. At the back of the room, a dark doorway to the kitchen or whatever room was next door was a solid patch of inky blackness. Huge rectangular holes dominated the walls where it looked like the built-in bookshelves had been removed. A few scattered, moldering books still lay on the floor along with…I frowned and moved closer for a better look.
“What are those?” Alona asked, voicing my exact question.
In the center of the room, five black metal boxes had been placed on the floor in a precise five-point arrangement, each box equidistant from the others. A thick black cord trailed from all of them to what appeared to be a portable generator.
The boxes themselves looked well-worn. The sides were dented and dinged, and the black paint was chipping off in many places. The roughly soldered edges of the boxes looked like nothing that would come out of a factory. Someone had made them.
I shook my head. “Something to do with the demolition, maybe? Explosives or something. Don’t touch anything.”
She gave an exasperated sigh. “It’s not a Vegas high-rise. They’re going to tear it down, not blow it up.”
I shook my head. Something about this was just off.
“I don’t know. Let’s just get this done and get out of here before—”
“This way!” Mrs. Ruiz’s voice boomed from above, makingus both jump. The former housekeeper sounded annoyed, onthe edge of angry.
“Does she even know other words?” Alona asked.
“Come on,” I said. I took the flashlight back from her and headed for the stairs.
Aiming the light ahead of me, I found Mrs. Ruiz waiting for us at the first curve of the stairs. “This way,” she said yet again, sounding a little more relaxed.
“Cute and a great conversationalist,” Alona murmured behind me. “You really know how to pick them.”
“Watch your feet,” I muttered back.
“Shut up,” she snapped. But then I heard her muttering compliments about the house’s original architecture and style—“Real hardwood floors!”—so I knew I’d been right once again.
The staircase creaked and moaned under our weight, but it held, thankfully. At the top of the stairs, Mrs. Ruizled us down a long dark hallway with doors on both sides. The doors, which presumably led to the family’s bedrooms, were open, but only the faintest light seeped out under the boarded-up windows, and I really didn’t want to point the flashlight inside any of the rooms. I had no idea what I’d see, if anything, and honestly, even my creeped-out level wason the rise. If I happened to look in one and see some littleface staring back at me, I’d probably bolt. Two ghosts were more than enough for now, thanks.
Ahead of us, Mrs. Ruiz stopped at the last door on the right, the only one that was shut.
She looked back over her massive shoulder at me. “This way,” she said, at the same time Alona whispered it mockingly in my ear.
Mrs. Ruiz turned the knob and pushed the door open, the loud creak of the hinges echoing in the empty house. She stepped just across the threshold and stopped. The shovel slid off her shoulder, the metal end landing on the floor with a heavy and hollow thud, and her more-than-sturdy frame began to tremble.
Something was wrong.
I eased past her into the room, with Alona just behind me, and the reason for Mrs. Ruiz’s distress became immediately clear.
All over the room, random floorboards had been torn up with careless effort, splintering the ancient wood into dangerously sharp spikes. Plaster dust coated the floor from the dozens of recent holes punched or cut into the walls. Clearly, someone had been looking for something.
“Told you,” Alona muttered, referring to her plan to come in without Mrs. Ruiz.
I ignored her. “Mrs. Ruiz,” I said, approaching her cautiously.
She didn’t look up, fixated on the destruction, and I wondered if this had been her room. It would make sense that whatever she wanted would have been in the one room she thought of as her own.
“Mrs. Ruiz,” I tried again.
This time, she did meet my gaze, and her fury was enough to make me take a step back.
“You,” she said through gritted teeth.
“Hey, a new word!” Alona, who had moved past me to further inspect the damage and possibly the empty closet, piped up.
I kept my attention focused on Mrs. Ruiz. “No. I didn’t do this.”
But my words had little effect. “Told only you,” she said in that gravelly voice, further deepened by rage.
I held my hands out in a peacemaking gesture. “I’m sure it might seem that way, but surely someone else—”
She hoisted her heavy shovel back up to her shoulder, choking up on the wooden handle like it was a baseball bat.
Oh, crap. Another downside of the giving-physicality-to-ghosts element of my gift was that the pissed off ones could use it to try to kill me.
I backed up slowly. “Alona?”
From the corner of my eye, I saw her look up sharply, registering the note of barely repressed panic in my voice.
She sighed and started toward Mrs. Ruiz, stepping over and around the missing floorboards with a grace that made it look like she did it every day. “Okay, look, I know he can be annoying, but he doesn’t steal stuff. Believe me.”
She gave me an exasperated look. Evidently, she was still irritated that I’d refused to take part in her elaborate plan to get her hands on an iPad. She’d been convinced the touch screen would be sensitive enough for her to use it even when I wasn’t around to give her the physicality to do so. Blogging, Twittering, and a Facebook page—all for a dead girl. I don’t think so.
“So, there’s no need to go crazy,” Alona continued. “He didn’t take your…whatever. Besides, you need to go through me—”
To get to him. Those words had some kind of ritual-like effect, temporarily freezing ghosts who intended me harm. But before Alona could speak, Mrs. Ruiz lashed out with a meaty fist and connected solidly with Alona’s face.
Alona is not a tiny, fragile girl. She is athletic, toned, and muscled from years of tough cheerleading workouts and the relentless pursuit of cellulite extinction. But she was no match for Mrs. Ruiz and the power behind that blow.
She flew backward, striking the wall behind her before sliding down into an unconscious heap on the floor.
“Alona!” I lunged for her, Mrs. Ruiz temporarily forgotten. Yes, Alona was, in theory, already dead, but you don’t spend eighteen years as a ghost-talker without realizing there are all kinds of dead, and some kinds are preferable to others.
I dropped to my knees in front of her, but before I could touch her, she flickered and vanished.
I pulled back. She’d exhausted her energy on this plane of existence.
Alona rarely disappeared completely anymore, having gotten the hang of the positive-energy thing. But every time it happened might be the last, meaning she might not be able to come back.
It would happen someday. It was unavoidable. Alona would be gone, either because she’d disappeared one too many times or the light had returned to get her. The question was, would it be today? I felt sick just thinking about it. I didn’t want it to happen like this, Alona sacrificing herself to save me.
The air whistled above my head in a split-second warning, and I threw myself backward as the shovel cracked down where I’d been kneeling. I landed hard on my back, and splinters gouged through my shirt and into my skin. The other immediate question was, without Alona, could I survive Mrs. Ruiz?
I gritted my teeth and forced myself up even as Mrs. Ruiz brought the shovel to her shoulder again. I scrambled for the door, my back protesting and trickles of blood rolling down my skin.
I fell more than stepped into the hallway, just grateful to be out. Then I heard Mrs. Ruiz’s heavy step behind me. I pushed myself up to my feet, expecting the crack of the shovel again at any second, this time maybe against my head.
Instead, the doors on either side of me slammed closed, followed by the next two, all the way down the hall.
She was closing me in. Damn, she had to have some serious energy to be shutting doors without touching them. Speed wasn’t her strength; strength was. If I didn’t make it to the front door fast, she might be able to slam that one shut on me, too, and then I’d be stuck. I might be able to kick out the plywood covering one of the windows, but I wasn’t sure I could do that before Mrs. Ruiz caught up to me with her shovel.
Panting and gritting my teeth against all my various aches and pains, I hobbled for the stairs as quickly as I could.
At the top of the stairs, the edge of my shoe caught on the rotting remains of the stair runner, and I slipped down the first few steps. I reached for the railing to pull myself up, and Mrs. Ruiz’s shovel slammed into the wood, just missing my fingers. Loose spindles rained down on the floor below.
I yanked my hand back with a yelp. “I was just trying to help you, okay? I didn’t take your stuff!” I shouted at her.
“I did.” A new voice spoke up from below.
I risked taking my gaze off Mrs. Ruiz to aim the flashlight, which I’d somehow managed to hang on to, past the curve in the staircase. A girl I’d never seen before stood at the foot of the stairs, her face pale in the light. Long, dark curly hair floated in a cloud around her head, like it had a life of its own. She was dressed all in black, which helped her blend into the surrounding dimness. Another ghost? Great.
But then I saw she held what appeared to be a flashlight, aimed at the stairs, but it wasn’t on, for some reason. In her other hand, she had a dirty old pillowcase, stuffed full of something with hard edges and with considerable weight. The case looked ready to split open.
So, not a ghost then. A thrill seeker? A looter?
The girl shook the pillowcase, and it made a heavy jangling sound, like coins but louder. “Looking for this?” she asked.
“No,” I said slowly, but she wasn’t looking at me. She was staring at something or someone above my head.
Mrs. Ruiz grunted, and I felt the staircase shake as she started down.
I pulled myself up to my feet and stumbled down the rest of the stairs. I didn’t want to be in her way.
When I reached the bottom, the girl’s gaze flicked to me for split second before returning to monitor Mrs. Ruiz’s lumbering descent. And a delayed realization finally clicked in. This girl knew someone else was there. She could see or hear—maybe both—Mrs. Ruiz.
She was a ghost-talker. A real one. Like me.
Holy shit.
“Silver spoons?” The girl shook the bag again. “Really? They left you their mansion and you stole all their good spoons? From more than one set, too.”
Still reeling from my discovery about this mystery girl, I forced myself to focus on the conversation going on. That’s what this was about? Flatware?
“This place was not a gift!” Mrs. Ruiz shouted. “It was a prison, one I would have escaped when the old woman finally died, but she made me tenant of this place instead of giving me the severance she had promised. I did not own it. I could not sell it. After years of devoting myself to her every need, I still could not leave.” Apparently, seeing her recovered hoard had loosened up her vocal cords. Alona would have been impressed.
Mrs. Ruiz slammed her shovel into the banister, like an All-Star player on steroids. The old wood fractured and collapsed. Bits of it sprayed in all directions. She grinned, a horrible, dark expression. She hadn’t been protecting the house from unworthy people, as we’d thought. She’d been protecting her stash, her self-awarded reward that she’d never gotten a chance to cash in.
“That must have really pissed you off.” The girl gave the pillowcase another heavy shake and began backing up, past the still partially open front door, to the study/parlor room.
The place where Alona had found all that strange equipment.
Suddenly, pieces of this puzzle were falling into place. Whatever that stuff was, Alona had been right. It had nothing to do with the demolition. It belonged to this girl and whatever she had planned for Mrs. Ruiz. We’d obviously interrupted her…what? Investigation? Exorcism?
Mrs. Ruiz, her gaze fixed on the pillowcase in the girl’s hand, was following her into the room, like a dog fixated on a liver treat. A sterling silver liver treat.
As the former housekeeper passed me, I moved to follow, even as aching and bloody as I was. I had to see what was going to happen next, once the girl got her into that room.
That was a mistake.
Mrs. Ruiz, evidently deciding that the girl and I were in on this together or that my continued existence was just another affront she could no longer stand, spun around at me with her shovel. I dropped to the ground, flashlight skittering from my numb fingers.
She missed me, but I felt the rush of wind over my head when the shovel passed. And there was nothing to stop her from another attempt now that she had her sights on me. The front door was only about five feet away, but Mrs. Ruiz was much closer.
From the corner of my eye, I saw the girl jerk her flashlight upward.
A bright blue beam emerged from the device, catching Mrs. Ruiz in the right side.
Rage contorted her face, and she angled her body as if to take another swing at me. I flinched away in anticipation. But even as I watched, her fingers twitched around the handle of the shovel, but neither the shovel nor her arm moved. She tried again and again, with increasing panic. The beam seemed to hold her in place where it touched her.
I let out a breath of relief.
Then she reached for me with the hand that was not caught in the beam. Her gnarled and dirty fingers scraped past my nose.
“More to the left,” I shouted at the girl. She swore under her breath and corrected her aim quickly.
The beam encompassed the entire ghost, and Mrs. Ruiz froze. Then her mouth dropped open in a silent scream. A loud buzz filled the air, and I could feel the hair on my arms stand up.
The light grew brighter for a second, and then Mrs. Ruiz vanished with a pop that made my ears hurt.
The girl cut the beam off immediately, letting loose a torrent of swear words almost as vicious and painful as the pop that had preceded them.
“What was that?” I asked, still stunned.
“That was you screwing up my life. Thanks.” Then she turned on her heel and speed-walked into the room with the equipment.
I scrambled to my feet, grabbing my flashlight from where it had fallen, and followed her more slowly. I watched as the girl gathered up the metal boxes from the floor, yanking the cords out and shoving everything into an enormous black duffel bag she’d produced from somewhere.
“I’m serious. What was that?” After a beat, I realized there was a better question. “Who are you?” The only other ghost-talker
I’d ever known had been my dad. And he’d died—killed himself—three years ago. I’d always assumed there were probably more of us, as rare as we seemed to be. It was, after all, passed down through families. I couldn’t be the only one out there to hit the genetic lotto, so to speak. But I’d figured that most of them were either crazy or dead, given that I’d been on one or both of those paths myself until recently.
“I’d get out of here if I were you,” she said. “Ralph is too scared to come in here on his own, but he’ll call for backup.” She slung the now full bag over her shoulder, and headed toward the door to the next room, lugging the generator with her. The pillowcase of silverware and the flashlight device that had saved my life were nowhere to be seen. Maybe they were in the bag as well?
“Ralph…” I had no idea who she was talking about.
“The security guard?” she asked with disdain.
As she spoke, I heard the rising sound of sirens from outside. Damn.
“Wait. Tell me who you are, how I can find you.” I couldn’t just let her walk away without knowing something. Everything I knew about being a ghost-talker had been pieced together from bits of information my dad had reluctantly let slip, and what little realistic information I could find in books and on the Internet. Most of it was very woo-woo, spiritual crap, nothing very practical. The chance to compare notes, to learn from someone else like me, would be huge. And then there was the weapon she’d used on Mrs. Ruiz. If I had one of those…suddenly I could picture a life where I didn’t always have to be on guard.
She turned, exasperation written on her face, and then something else…fear. She dropped the generator and herbag with a speed that surprised me, and whipped the flashlight device from one of the many pockets on her cargo pants.
“Walk toward me,” she commanded. “Now.”
A flutter of movement to my right caught my attention, and I looked over, half expecting to see Mrs. Ruiz again. Instead, I recognized the vague shape of Alona rematerializing, an indistinct blur of blond hair, white shirt, and red shorts.
Thank God. I let out a breath of relief on multiple counts. “It’s okay. She’s a friend.”