CnC 1 Ghost of a Chance Read online

  “What’s happening?” Harlow was starting to panic, and Andrew was a close second behind her. “Emerald, do something!”

  “Stop this now!” My voice echoed through the whirl of energy, and there was an immediate hush as the lights stopped flickering and the table came to rest.

  One beat, two beats… a swirl of vapor formed near the archway that led into the dining room, and out of the vapor we could see the ghost of Susan Mitchell materializing. Andrew gasped, just enough so I knew he recognized her. Harlow faltered and dropped my hand, pushing her chair back.

  There is a peculiar quality to the dead when they appear in spirit form—a translucent, not-quite-human-anymore feel. Susan had faded since I had last seen her; now she was more vaporous than material. She turned her gaze to me, and I hesitated a moment, sensing less of the pleading victim I’d first met, and more of some subterranean creature who lives in shadows and haunts old houses with memories long gone by.

  “Why is she looking at us like that?” Harlow scrambled out of her chair and was now pressed against a wall.

  “She’s starting to lose what’s left of her humanity. Spirits grow farther away from the mortal realm the longer they’ve been dead, and it gets harder for them to take physical form for very long. But I wouldn’t expect her to be moving away this fast. I wonder what’s been happening to her over there.” Privately, I thought that Mr. Big & Ugly was responsible. I had the feeling he was feeding on her energy. Or maybe she was going through some sort of internal war—wanting to move on but unable to let go because of her unfinished business. I cleared my throat. Susan stayed where she was, not moving, lightly hovering above the floor. Andrew took a tentative step forward, and I motioned for him to stay where he was.

  “Susan, we want to help you. We need more information and were hoping you could point us in the right direction.” She slowly inclined her head. I relaxed a little. She could still understand me, which meant she wasn’t totally trapped between the worlds. “Do you need a pen? Can you still write like you did the other night when you first came to me?”

  One beat. Two beats… and the vaporous form moved forward toward the table, where the pen and paper were waiting. As we watched, the pen rose to hover above the surface while Susan stared at it intently.

  I glanced at the list of questions. “We need to get in •touch with Diana, your daughter. Where is she?”

  The pen hesitated for a moment, twitching, then scrawled something on the page, and the paper flew off the table and feathered its way to the floor. I didn’t feel like getting close enough to retrieve it while the ghost was still standing there, so I thanked her and tried to figure out how to phrase the next question. The last thing I needed was an angry spirit railing at me.

  “Susan, Walter has an alibi—” I had barely begun to speak when a roar came pouring through the room. Susan reared back, eyes blazing with a brilliant blue fire, and the pen went flying behind the sofa. A dark cloud began to take shape behind Susan and she turned to me, mouthing something I couldn’t hear. The fire in her eyes had turned to fear and she tipped her head back, shrieking in her silent world as she vanished through the ceiling. The cloud raced after her.

  “What the hell is going on?” I watched both Susan and the cloud disappear through the ceiling. As we sat there, staring at one another, hesitating, a thin cry pealed through the house from the second story.

  What? Was that Susan? A second shriek, razor-sharp, echoed through the room, and I knocked over my chair in my rush to the stairs. “Miranda!” It couldn’t be—she was over at Ida’s, but I knew my daughter’s voice, and that had been her screaming. Andrew was fast on my heels, Harlow behind him. As we pounded up the stairs, yet a third scream sliced into my heart.

  Chapter Ten

  “Randa! Miranda!” If ripping out my lungs could make me run faster, I would have willingly done so. As it was, I shredded them, screaming as I took the stairs two at a time. Andrew and Harlow were right behind me.

  The railing shook as I propelled myself up to the second story. I slammed open the door. Randa’s CD player was sitting in the middle of the floor, next to an open book. I didn’t see it in time to slow down and my foot got caught in the coiled cord, sending me sprawling. A shower of sparks crackled through the air as the plug tore itself out of the wall. The soft movements of Bach skipped and fell silent. I pushed myself to my hands and knees. Andrew crowded into the room behind me, with Harlow dogging his heels. They grabbed me by the arms and yanked me to my feet.

  “Where is she?” I had to find Randa. I didn’t see her anywhere in the room. Her daybed was mussed, but the covers hadn’t been turned down. The computer was on. An old toy chest stood open in the corner with one of her childhood dolls sitting next to it, but Miranda was nowhere in sight. I started to panic, blood pounding in my head. Then I saw the window. It was open, curtains waving in the icy breeze. I shot toward it, but Andrew beat me to it.

  “Holy hell!” He scrambled over the sill. “She’s out here.” He held her in his arms, my Miranda. She was unconscious, her hair limply trailing in the snow. “She was lying near the edge of the railing.”

  Harlow and I lifted her through, and he climbed back in and shut the window behind him. We got her into bed. She was ice-cold, but she was breathing. She twitched, moaning.

  “Is she okay? What is she doing here? She was supposed to be over at Ida’s.” I knelt by her side, brushing the hair away from her face. Snowflakes still clung to her eyelashes but had started to melt, and now they shimmered like tiny diamonds. I gently lifted her wrist and felt for her pulse. There it was, too fast but strong. She coughed, as if she were starting to come around, but only turned her head to the side.

  ”Randa? Randa! Wake up!” I shook her by the shoulders. “Get me another blanket. She’s freezing.” Harlow retrieved a bedspread off of the brass quilt stand that had belonged to Nanna, and we spread the bedspread over my daughter.

  Andrew raised Miranda’s head to slip in an extra pillow as Harlow scrunched in behind me on the bed, her right foot balancing on the floor, her other knee tucked against my left side. She began to rub my shoulders. I could feel knots of tension ripple under her fingers. Using her thumbs, she dug into a pressure point on the muscles near my collarbone.

  “Jeez, that hurts!” I would pay dearly for the fall and the stress, but right now all that mattered was Randa. “Harl, there’s a bottle in the medicine cabinet that says “Lung Ease” on it. Could you get that for me?”

  “Whatever you need, babe.” She patted my shoulder and popped a quick kiss on my head. “I’m going to call James to tell him I’ll be late.” She took off out of the room again.

  As she clattered down the stairs, I looked up at Andrew. “Those spirits came right through Randa’s floor.” I felt her forehead. Her skin was so cold, and she looked so vulnerable. “What the hell is she doing home?”

  He examined the window again. “Want to make a bet she ran for the only way out she could when they appeared? She probably fainted from fright. Can ghosts really hurt people, I mean… physically?”

  “Some ghosts.” I shrugged. “Not Susan—I don’t think Susan would hurt anybody, but Mr. Big & Ugly is mean. Not only does he have a nasty temper, but he’s also powerful. He got through my warding when Nanna’s charm should have kept him out. Andrew, will you get the paper that Susan wrote on? We don’t want to lose it.”

  We were facing a can of worms, all right, and, as Murray had predicted, there was no going back. I thought about her reading. I’d done everything right and still, fate had intervened and put my child at risk. I racked my brain for the rest of what Murray had warned me about. Andrew leaned over the banister and called downstairs to Harlow, asking her to grab the note Susan had written. I made room for him on the little daybed. Miranda didn’t fill but half of it. The distant ring of the phone startled me, but then it cut short, and I assumed Harlow had answered.

  Andrew whispered, “Everything will be okay” and slipped an a
rm around my shoulders. I rested my hand on Randa’s chest, feeling her breathe, reassuring myself that she was alive.

  Harlow jogged into the room and handed me the bottle of Lung Ease. “Ida called. She just went in to check on Randa, to ask if she wanted a snack, and found out she was gone. Apparently Randa snuck out without anybody knowing. I told Ida that she was here so she wouldn’t worry.”

  Randa and I were going to have a serious talk once everything had settled down. “Andrew, could you please stand over there?” She might just be thirteen, but I respected my daughter’s privacy. I took the bottle and pulled the cork. The lotion flowed onto my hand, wafting up a cloud of eucalyptus and camphor as I rubbed it onto Randa’s chest. I made a bottle every year for colds and coughs, and it worked better than any remedy I could buy on the shelves.

  “Will she be okay? Should we call a doctor?” Harlow took the bottle and sniffed it, then winced. “Jeez, that’s strong stuff.”

  “It works.” I closed my eyes and tuned in to Randa’s energy. There, a bright spot surrounded by a lot of fog. But that central core was burning bright. I touched her with my own energy, blew a mind kiss to her, and gently withdrew. She would be okay… my baby was safe. I began to relax. “Randa should be waking up soon.” Even as I spoke, she began to stir. She shook her head and opened her eyes. I helped her sit up as she started to cough.

  “What happened?” Her voice was thin and scratchy.

  “That’s what I want to know. What are you doing up here? I told you to stay with Mrs. Trask unless it was an emergency, and what happens? I find you here, out on the roof, unconscious. Miranda, answer me: Why did you sneak around like this?”

  She squinted, blinking to brush away the light. “I forgot my book and came home to get it. I knew you’d be mad since you told us to stay at Ida’s for the night, and since you were in the shower, I thought I could sneak in and out without you knowing. Then, when I got up here, I figured that I had time to print out my history report that’s due tomorrow. I’m really sorry, Mom.”

  I tried to remain calm. “You disobeyed me and you snuck out on Ida. She was frantic when she found out you were gone. You knew what we were doing tonight! You know that we have a dangerous ghost. You could have been seriously hurt.”

  “I said I was sorry! Jeez, what happened to me? I ache all over.” She struggled to stand up, but I pushed her back down on the bed.

  “Stay where you are. I told you, we found you out on the roof, unconscious. How did you get there? What happened?” Feeling on the verge of losing control, I struggled to breathe deeply to keep my temper reined in. A layer below the anger, I could feel anxiety churning away. Did the ghosts come through her room? She didn’t seem to remember them, if they did.

  Miranda quit trying to force her way out of bed and fell back against the pillows. After a moment she sniffed, wiping her nose with a tissue from the box on the night-stand. “I don’t know. I don’t remember what happened. By the time I got everything I needed and was ready to go back to Mrs. Trask’s, I could hear all of you downstairs. I didn’t want you to find out I was here, so I decided to stay in my room until after you finished. I was reading. That’s all.”

  I glanced at Harlow and Andrew. Great. Just great, how wonderful. The evening had gone so far astray from our plan that I began to wonder if we weren’t jinxed. Harlow motioned me over to the desk. I asked Andrew to sit by Randa and joined Harlow, who was dangling a piece of paper in her fingers.

  “Susan gave us an answer,” she said.

  I took the page. In answer to my question about Susan’s daughter, the spirit had scribbled, “Ask Karri B…” The rest trailed off into an unintelligible scrawl.

  “Karri B… well, that gives us something to go on.” I handed it to Harlow. “Who on earth is Karri?”

  Harlow took the paper back and tucked it in her pocket. “I was thinking about that. It must be Karri Banks—the librarian. She was probably one of the closest friends Susan had, if you can use the word ‘close.’ Karri and I meet once a month to discuss the literacy campaign; now and then she’s mentioned Susan to me.”

  “Find out anything you can, babe.” Miranda coughed and I joined her again, adjusting her covers and tucking them in. Her cheeks were a bit rosier, the color was starting to come back into her face now that she was warming up. She would be fine. “Harl, could you call Ida back and tell her that Randa will be staying at home the rest of the night? She’s number three on speed dial. Tell her that Randa’s come down with a little cold?”

  Harlow nodded and took off down the stairs. There was no sense in taking Randa back into the cold just to go to Ida’s. I didn’t want to tell her yet that I thought that Mr.

  B & U might be responsible for what had happened. And the truth was, I couldn’t be sure. Nobody had been upstairs except Miranda herself; there was no way of being certain about what happened. In my heart, though, I knew this was the work of the spirits.

  Randa sniffled. “I’m sorry to be so much trouble.” I relented then, unwilling to put her through any more stress than she already had experienced. I gave her a long hug and kiss, then asked Andrew to step outside. When he left the room, I helped her into her pajamas and brushed her hair like I used to when she was a little girl.

  “We have to talk about the fact that you disobeyed me, but we can do that tomorrow. For now, I want you to get back in bed.” I held up the covers for her, and she crept into the brass daybed we had bought when we first moved to Chiqetaw.

  “Stay here?” She reached out for me, as if she were afraid I was going to leave. I took her hand and gave it a squeeze.

  “I’ll be right out in the hall, saying good night to Andrew. I’ll sleep in your room tonight, sweetie. Meanwhile, you close your eyes and rest.”

  Andrew was waiting for me. “Is she okay?”

  “Yeah, I think she’ll be fine. She doesn’t seem any worse for the wear, but I’d sure like to know what the hell happened up here. Okay, well, that about caps it for the night. I’m sleeping in her room. Where’s Harlow?”

  He pointed to the stairs. “Downstairs. You know, until tonight, I would never have believed such things possible. You’ve opened up a scary new world for me, one I don’t know if I’m ready to face. One that exists outside the pages of a book.” He reached out to stroke my face with a gentle hand.

  I kissed his fingers as they ran over my lips. “You don’t have to come back if you don’t want to. I know this must be terrifying. I deal with things like this enough to be used to it, yet these forces still scare even me. Some of us have no choice but to cope with being able to see and feel these other worlds, regardless of whether we enjoy it.”

  He reached down and planted a kiss on my forehead. “I’ll stay as long as you need me to tonight. What I’m trying to say is that when I thought of ghosts before, I thought of Casper and Beetlejuice, but not anymore. Now I have more respect. A lot more. For both the spirits and for someone who can handle them like you do.”

  I looked at him silently. There wasn’t much to say. He didn’t smile, just stared back solemnly. When had life gotten so complicated? I swallowed a throatful of tears. “What am I going to do? Ghosts are threatening my family. But as angry as I am, I can’t help but feel sorry for Susan. Something’s wrong—she wouldn’t show up like this if there wasn’t unfinished business.”

  Harlow reappeared, and when she did, she was carrying a tray containing a teapot, two cups, and a plate of vanilla wafers. “I thought you and Miranda could use something to eat.”

  “You’re such a sweetheart.” I held the door open for her. She carefully maneuvered the tray onto the worktable that Randa had convinced me to get for her instead of a vanity. I poured a cup of what turned out to be chamomile and took it over to my daughter. Randa pushed herself up in bed and sleepily accepted the tea and cookies. I rejoined Andrew and Harlow near the door, where we spoke in low tones so Randa couldn’t overhear us.

  “Okay. Harlow, why don’t you talk to Karri, see
if she can shed any light on what’s going on.” I turned to Andrew. “Meanwhile, I need to talk to Walter. I don’t know what good it will do, but I can read most people; maybe I can tell if he’s hiding something. However, I need to be physically near him to do so.”

  He nodded. “I might be able to help. My writing group has been talking about putting together a small affair for those of us who loved Susan. If I host it, I can make it a public event. Walter can’t avoid coming to something like that—it wouldn’t look good if he snubbed us, especially not to her devoted readers.”

  “We could use that excuse to contact Diana, too. We could invite her up to her mother’s memorial,” Harl interjected.

  “Good idea.” I squeezed both their hands. “This week is insane. I promised to buy a tree and ornaments, and the shop’s annual sale starts tomorrow at noon.” We were offering a 25 percent discount on all tea-related items… teapots, teas, and teacups. I was also holding a drawing for a free teapot. Great promotion, and it brought people into the shop. Even though the teapot wasn’t “fine china,” it had a pretty sunflower pattern, and a lot of people had entered the contest.

  “I wish Nanna could help me. I need her advice.” Nanna had been one of the few I could turn to during a crisis. “Since that isn’t an option, I think I’ll call Murray again, ask if she’ll come over and get a feel for the situation. She’s a damn good psychic as well as a fine cop.”

  “Cop? Are you talking about Anna Murray?” Andrew sounded surprised. “I met her when she questioned everyone in our writers group after Susan died.” Andrew inched toward the door. Fatigue clouded his eyes. Harlow looked just as wiped.

  “Both of you go home. Harl, call me tomorrow if you find out anything. I’ll either be here or at the shop, depending on how Randa feels. And guys, thanks for being here tonight.”

  Andrew pressed his’ lips together. “Em, I won’t run again. Not because of ghosts or spooks or anything else like that. Would you like me to stay over tonight? I can sleep on the sofa downstairs.”