Page 91 of Aberrant Monsters
A fist formed in my chest. “Yeah, of course. I get it. We look out for one another until…”
“We no longer have to.”
“Exactly.”
He nodded brusquely and glanced about the house, a slight frown marring his forehead. “There’s something here.”
“Yeah, the owners say the place is haunted.”
He walked forward, chin tilted up so that his long locks fell down his back in silken strands that moved in the invisible breeze. He had beautiful hair. The kind of hair I could spend ages brushing and playing with and what the fuck was I thinking?
“There is something very wrong here,” he said. “I sense pain and rage. I sense hunger and confusion.” He looked down his nose at me. “It feels…familiar.”
“Wait, could this be something from your past? Genevieve said she knew who you were before. Maybe this is a clue. I’m not sure how it could be, but we could find out?”
His eyes lit up with hope. “Yes, we could.” He drifted toward the stairs. “I’ll check the upper floors for clues.”
“I’ll be in the lounge.” I headed back to Nandi and Archie just as the lights went out.
“What the hell?” Archie flipped switches on his machines. “Power’s out.”
“We need to check the fuse box,” Nandi said. “Mr. Huntingdon said it’s in the garage.”
“Where’s that?”
“Through a door in the kitchen. I’ll go and che—" Nandi froze.
I followed her gaze to find several spectral figures watching us. I’d seen ghosts before. They could look solid if they wanted to, although holding that form took a lot of energy. Most preferred not to suck heat from their environment and remained pale imprints of what they’d been like in life; others preferred to wander as balls of energy or light. They were all still ghosts, but these…These specters glowed an eerie hue of green. Their mouths were slack and their eyelids droopy. They looked like zombies. If zombies were ghosts.
“Nandi?” I knew better than to touch her when she was in a trance. This was her in-between state, a communication with the specters without stepping onto the spirit plane. Touching her when she was like this could hurt her.
“Shit,” Archie said. “Temperature drop. We need the power on now. I need a picture of this.”
“I’ll get the fuse box. You keep an eye on her and don’t—”
“Touch her, I know.”
With a final look at the specters, I headed out of the room and down the hall to the kitchen. The blinds were open, letting in the night, providing enough light for me to find the door to the garage.
Steps led down to the garage floor, almost pitch black without the lights. Shit. Where would a generator be? I needed a flashlight.
Thank goodness for mobile phone torch functions.
I swept light across the garage, over the hood of a car, and across the back wall lined with tools, and yep, there it was, a box bolted to the wall that looked suspiciously like a fuse box.
I flipped it open, and sure enough several of the switches had been tripped. I flipped them back up and the garage flooded with light.
Motion sensors, no doubt.
I needed to get back to Nandi and find out what she’d discovered from the ghosts, but now that the lights were on, I could see the car properly. A gray sedan…gray everywhere except the roof, because the roof was a funny green color, the same eerie green as the ghosts in the lounge.
The same green as my elusive eldritch’s residue.
twenty-three
The residue trailed from the Huntingdons’ car to the door that led into the house. The door I’d just come through. Shit. The eldritch was in the bloody house!
I legged it back to the lounge to find Nandi sitting on the sofa with her head in her hands and Archie crouched beside her.
