Page 3 of Devils and the Dead
When I was a kid, I’d realized that if a soul could journey to the afterlife, but leave a spirit-sized portion behind to knock over pictures and vases, then I could use that spirit to power its own dead body. Then I’d gone from using existing ghosts to summoning them. It had been ridiculously easy to pull a portion of a soul from the afterlife, create a ghost, then use the ghost to animate the body.
Of course, returning the ghost could prove to be a problem, as I’d discovered two weeks ago. That was what made me reluctant to promise Clinton help with his issue. If I failed to send my own self-summoned spirit across the veil, I might fail to do the same to ghosts I hadn’t brought into being myself. Banishing…well, it was hit or miss with me. And given my recent track record, I was probably more likely to miss than to hit.
“I’m not promising anything, Clinton,” I warned him. “I’ll give it a shot, but I don’t know if I can help you.”
His face split with a relieved grin. “That’s all I’m asking, Babylon.”
“Am I gonna clean this place all by myself?” Kristin shouted over.
I pushed Clinton into a chair, where he sat as I started wiping down tables. To the werewolf’s credit, he got right back up again, picked up a washrag of his own, and pitched in. It was weird how much Clinton had changed in the last year. He used to be that big redneck asshole who only came into town to get drunk, fight, and cause trouble, but ever since he’d become the alpha of his own pack, Clinton had developed manners along with a sense of responsibility.
“Why didn’t you go to Cassie with your ghost problem?” I asked him as I filled the mop bucket.
My eldest sister was the most powerful witch of the seven of us, and although we all helped, she was really the witch who ran Accident, the one with the recognized authority to decide who was allowed to stay and who was told to leave.
Clinton shook his head. “I’ve gone to Cassie for a whole lot this year. I don’t want to be seen as someone who runs to her with every problem. Makes me look weak.”
“But running to me doesn’t?” I shut off the water and hauled the bucket to the floor.
“Asking you for help is like calling in an outside consultant,” he explained. “Cassie is another alpha. Alphas assisting each other isn’t a problem, but if the assistance starts to look one-sided, my pack might start to see me as a step below Cassie, which means they’d also see me as a step below my father.”
Werewolf hierarchies were important, and always changing. I didn’t think Clinton had anything to worry about, but what did I know? I wasn’t a shifter.
“Besides, I didn’t exactlyrunto you. I drove.” Clinton grinned. “And I knocked.”
Definitely a kinder and gentler Clinton than the one I’d grown up with. “So tell me more about these ghosts. Do they only appear at night? What sort of things are they knocking off shelves and walls? And exactly what did the one Flick spoke to say about missing Christmas decorations?”
“This is so cool,” Kristin interjected. “Hauntings and seances and shit. I had no idea you did this on the side, Lonnie.”
I grimaced. My human friends didn’t know I was a witch and certainly didn’t know about my gruesome magical specialty. They just saw me as that kinda weird goth girl who had a bunch of sisters, collected bones, and made an awesome margarita. Hopefully Kristin wouldn’t spread the word because I didn’t want to be inundated with requests from randos to contact their long dead uncles and aunts.
“Flick said the ghost couldn’t rest until it found the lost tinsel, or something like that. Flick was kinda shook up, so I can’t guarantee that was the ghost’s exact words, but it was the general gist of the conversation.”
Tinsel. A sparkly Christmas tree decoration. Had the ghost been obsessed with the holiday? I didn’t know all that much about poltergeists, but I got the idea that those trapped in the mortal plane might harp on whatever had been important to them in life, and not just recreate their deaths, or look for some sort of vengeance or resolution of what might have been an outstanding issue at the time they’d died.
But from what I’d gleaned, ghosts tended to haunt either the spot where they died, or a place they’d lived. No one had lived at spirit mountain aside from that group of elves. The elves had abandoned the mountain decades ago. There weren’t a lot of places where fae felt comfortable setting up residence, so everyone had assumed they’d gotten tired of living in Accident and returned to their homeland. It couldn’t be the elves haunting the mountain. They were immortal, or so long-lived they might as well have been immortal. But outside the elves, the only beings in the past that had called Savior Mountain home were animals—and a badger shifter.
Maybe it wasn’t a former resident that was haunting the place, but someone who had died on the mountain. Had the elves killed someone and buried them close to where Clinton and his pack had set up shop? If so, it had to have been someone from outside of Accident. I glanced over at Clinton, remembering the uproar whenhe’dgone missing. Even the most isolated resident had people who would notice if they suddenly just didn’t come home, or show up, one day.
Still, none of that explained the ghost’s need to locate missing Christmas decorations.
“Five households have reported items being knocked over or disappearing. There doesn’t seem to be any pattern to these. Things like pictures, books, candles, kitchen utensils. Rose had an apple pie vanish, but I’m not positive that was a ghost.”
I’d had Rose’s apple pie. If she’d put it out on the porch to cool, it’s no wonder it wasn’t there when she came back. Any of the werewolves might have stolen it, and I couldn’t really see a ghost taking an apple pie. It’s not like they could eat it, and transporting a physical object took a heck of a lot more ghostly skill than just knocking a candle off a shelf.
“The ghost sightings are always at night. If you come out, I can show you where they were. Even with our night vision, no one was able to recognize the ghost or even tell what it really was. Reports are that they’re humanoid, and four to five feet tall, and that they move fast. Kinda flitting around is what Bertram said.”
I thought as I mopped the floor. Four to five feet tall? So ghosts of children? I shuddered, not really wanting to consider that. Maybe they were really short people. Or maybe they weren’t human at all. Lots of the supernaturals who called Accident their home were on the short side.
“I’ll come out tomorrow around lunch time,” I told Clinton. If the situation warranted it, I’d make arrangements to stay the night on Sunday, and maybe I could get up close and personal to one of these ghosts. So much for two days of pajamas and television.
“Thanks Babylon. I really appreciate it.”
Clinton picked up the garbage bags and took them out to the dumpster out back. Kristin watched him go and sighed.
“You sure he’s gay?”
“One hundred percent,” I lied.
