CnC 1 Ghost of a Chance Read online

  Andrew came on the line, and in hushed whispers I spilled my fear into the receiver. “Can you come over right away? There’s something in the house here and I can’t get to the door.”

  “Call the police—just do it! I don’t care if you’re afraid of looking psycho—dial 911. I’m out the door.” The click of the receiver promised that he was on his way, but could he get here in time?

  Should I call the cops? What could they do? Call in a priest? But maybe, just maybe, their presence would make it stop long enough for me to get out of here. I dialed 911. The emergency operator was so calm that her voice gave me strength. I told her that there was someone in my house. She dispatched a unit and I hung up, praying that they would get here soon.

  Thump, thump, thump. The noise was on the stairs now. Shit, I had to get out of here. I eyeballed the door to the backyard, but I couldn’t do it. I couldn’t make myself crawl even that short distance to freedom. Confused by the kaleidoscope of energy that assailed my senses, it was all I could do to drag myself into the pantry and curl up in the corner. I wiped my nose and looked around for a weapon, but the only thing I could find were canned goods. I stacked a few cans of peaches in front of me, thinking I could throw them if nothing else.

  What had Nanna taught me about psychic attack? I struggled to remember her words through the cacophony that sounded around me. Oh, yes—build a wall of energy between the attacker and me. I caught my breath, struggling to remain calm.

  ”Nanna, if ever I needed your help, I need it now.” My whisper was lost in the rush of noise that raced through the walls, through the floor, but it must have gotten through to the other side, because I felt a gentle hand rest on my shoulder as a faint whiff of lilac perfume embraced me. The presence didn’t last long—just for a few seconds—but it was enough to steady my nerves and give me the strength I needed to envision a wall of light stretching across the pantry door, a wall I hoped would keep out anything supernatural, anything that meant to harm me.

  The noise was snuffling around in the living room now, coming closer.

  I closed my eyes, pushing myself back into the corner as far as I could go. I had done what I could, set up a warding that might or might not keep Mr. B & U out. Grateful that my children were safe, I swallowed my tears and straightened my shoulders. Murray would take care of them. How had it come to this? How and why? I had tried to help, had tried to do what felt right. Was this going to be it? Here, on the floor of my pantry?

  Damn it, I thought—no! I wasn’t going out without a fight.

  I struggled to my feet, leaning heavily on the shelf next to me. Maybe I could make it out, could let adrenaline push me through the haze, but if I moved now, I would draw the attention of whatever was out there in the living room. I was out of time—I couldn’t make it outside before the mayhem broke into the kitchen.

  The noises in the living room grew louder. A booming started up, vibrating the walls with thuds and high-pitched squeals of glee as whispers began to cascade amid the thundering. I straightened my shoulders. Mr. B & U would have to drag me screaming into the abyss if he wanted me. As the voices neared the kitchen doorway, I heard something in the background. At first I couldn’t make it out through the din around me, but then it was clear and bright—a sound so sweet that I almost cried. Sirens, wailing into my driveway.

  There was a sudden hush from the living room as the energy pulled back, rolling away from the kitchen like an ebb tide, away from me, away from the house. As the police broke through the back door, the lights came on in a dizzying flash and I cried out once.

  * * * *

  I don’t faint. In fact, I’d only fainted once in my life. But the sudden release of fear made my blood pressure drop. The moment I saw the officer’s face peering into the pantry, I keeled over, deadweight.

  By the time the medics had arrived and I managed to come around, Andrew was standing behind them, pale and drawn. When I opened my eyes and croaked out, “What happened?” he took a deep breath and slumped against the doorway.

  “You’ll be all right; your leg looks banged up and you cut your lip. Otherwise, I can’t find anything wrong with you. Your blood pressure is a little high but not dangerous.”

  “What time is it?” I scooted back against one of the shelves.

  Andrew checked his watch. “About 9:00 p.m.”

  One of the policemen knelt down beside me. “Ms. O’Brien—could you tell us what, if anything, you saw and heard?”

  “Is my house completely trashed?” I wanted to help them but couldn’t focus until I knew the extent of the damage.

  The cop exchanged glances with Andrew, but I couldn’t read what they were thinking. Then he turned back to me. “No; in fact, nothing appears to be out of place.”

  Andrew joined him. He reached out to take my hand. “Everything’s okay, Em, not a scratch in the house, nothing broken, nothing overturned.”

  “That’s impossible. I had heard them wrecking my house. It sounded like a freight train was rumbling through the rooms—”

  The cop broke in. “We’re not sure what happened, Ms. O’Brien, but we found no signs of any intruder. Maybe it was bad plumbing? That can sound pretty bad. Noises always sound louder at night.” He flipped his notebook shut and I could tell that this was going to be his official explanation.

  “If you could just help me into the living room…”

  The medics shrugged and helped me up. Andrew pushed by them and lifted me in his arms, carrying me gently to the sofa. “I rather like rescuing you,” he said softly.

  The younger of the two paramedics grinned. “Are you sure you don’t want to go to the hospital?” I shook my head. “Then please sign this form stating that we showed up and you feel okay and we’re free to go.”

  “Don’t worry,” I grumbled as he handed me the pen. “You aren’t going to get sued, and I’m not holding you liable for whatever happens to me because I didn’t let you strap me to a stretcher.” I scribbled my name across the bottom.

  They gathered up their gear and followed the cops out of the house. I wondered just what the neighbors would be thinking now—cop cars and Medic One units, all with lights flashing in front of my house in the dark winter night.

  Andrew saw them to the door, then returned to the living room, where I was gingerly examining my freshly purpled knee. I’d be okay, but crawling across the floor hadn’t helped the bruises any. Definitely no marathons in the near future. I tried to shake off the ringing in my ears and the tingling that jolted every nerve in my body as I looked around the room.

  Everything was in its place; nothing had been upset or tipped over. After what I had heard, I expected every knickknack to be on the floor, broken. But if a tornado had roared through my house, there was no sign of it now. I glanced out the window, but it was so dark that I couldn’t see anything. Bad plumbing, my ass.

  “You can’t stay here, so don’t give me any grief about it, woman. I’m taking you home with me.” Andrew snagged my coat from the hallway.

  “He was coming for me.” I mutely accepted the coat and slid into it. “Mr. B & U was headed straight for me. He would have killed me.” Andrew helped me with my boots.

  “Yeah.” His voice was thready. “I could hear what was going on when you called me on the phone. I was terrified that I was going to find you dead.”

  I couldn’t help it, I began to cry, tears boiling up from the anger and fear that the evening had wrought. “I’m sick of it. I don’t want to run away, I won’t let that creature have control over my house! I just want whatever this is to go away.”

  ”Ssshh… Murray will come over tomorrow, and then you can take care of it and the kids can come home.”

  I called Murray and told her where I’d be and why. Then, leaning heavily on his shoulder, I let him help me out to his car. As we pulled out of the driveway onto the glittering street, I took a last look at my house. Yeah, I was running away tonight, but Murray and I would be back, and we’d kick some ghostly as
s.

  Chapter Twenty

  The day was more hectic than I thought possible. The only bright spot was the hour I got to spend with Miranda and Kip at the shop before White Deer picked them up to take them back to Murray’s after school let out. Miranda was irritable. She wanted to come home. “Mom, when are things going to get back to normal?”

  “We’re doing our best. If things go right, after tonight you’ll be able to come home and so will the cats.” I promised that Murray and I would be careful. I only hoped that I would be able to keep my word.

  I wasn’t sure what to expect when I opened the door, but the house seemed relatively quiet. Murray slipped in behind me and opened her backpack. She piled an assortment of little packages on the kitchen counter. Dried lavender for peace of mind; black peppercorns to drive out evil; cedar for purification; and dragon’s blood resin, which boiled like blood when dropped on hot charcoal. She added a small package of gum mastic, a resin that helped open the mind to peer into other realms; a packet of jasmine flowers; and a tiny box containing red sandal-wood powder.

  “I have some of these, you know.” I picked up the gum mastic, staring at the pale translucent droplets, each no bigger than the end of a pencil eraser. “This stuff’s insanely expensive.”

  “We won’t need much. And I thought it was better if I brought everything just in case you were out of some of them.”

  “This isn’t all Native American medicine. You’re mixing traditions now?” I grinned at her; she’d been the one to insist that it was time to “go back to her roots” several years earlier.

  She blushed. “Well, I talked it over with White Deer. She convinced me that you have to use what works, whether or not it’s part of your path.”

  “Umm-hmm… good lesson.”

  Murray ground up dragon’s blood, peppercorns, sage, and gum mastic into a fine powder. She used my coffee bean grinder to do so, and I immediately jotted a note on the dry erase board hanging on the fridge to buy a new one. She looked up from the concoction she was making. “Do you have any Florida water?”

  “Yeah,” I said, thinking about the stash of herbs and other oddities that I stored in a little cupboard in the pantry. Not everything fit into Nanna’s trunk. I fished through the cupboard. Rose water and lavender water, there—another bottle of Florida water bought from a Santeria shop in Seattle. “Here we go. Time to lure Mr. B & U out of hiding.”

  “Right. Then we perform the exorcism. After we drive him out, we close the portal using the energy from this incense I’m making.” She frowned, making sure that all the ingredients had been powdered to dust. She opened a small container and tapped a white powder into the incense. Saltpeter, to provide some sparks when the incense hit the charcoal burner.

  “Sounds lovely… sounds hard. Where did you put the incantations I gave you?”

  “I rewrote them on index cards and stuck them in your grandmother’s journal. While I ask the spirits to bless the incense, why don’t you get everything else ready? The journal is back in the trunk.” She closed her eyes and began to chant in her tribal language. I couldn’t understand the words, but the power behind them was chilling.

  Murray had tucked two sets of cards into the journal. I had translated Nanna’s ritual and adapted it for our use, making sure both the ritual and the chants were easy to remember. Basically, it was a directive to “get out and stay out.” By the time I had everything ready, Murray joined me. She tapped the powdered herbs into a small jar and fixed the lid on.

  I took a deep breath as she gave me the same look she used to in college when we were about to pull some incredibly stupid stunt. “Ready?”

  “No, but that’s never stopped us before.” I tucked the book and water into a bag for easy carrying. She added the incense and draped the bag over her shoulder. The stairs looked overly steep, though I knew it was just my reluctance to attack the spirit. “Lead the way.”

  “Ready to rumble?” she asked, putting her foot on the first step.

  My stomach burbled. “Sounds like it. Let’s go.” As we neared my bedroom door, I wondered just how we were going to convince Mr. B & U to show up. “It isn’t quite like calling a dog… Here, boy, come here, boy,” I said.

  Murray stopped a couple of yards away from my room and nodded toward the door. “I don’t think you need to worry. I think he’s waiting for us.”

  I followed her nod. A faint blue light glowed from beneath the door. “What the hell?” Torn, wanting nothing more than to turn around, go back downstairs, and get out of this house, I leaned against the wall and made sure that I’d affixed the seax dagger onto my belt. The weight hung, comforting, against the gauze of my skirt. “Let’s get this show on the road. I’m tired of being afraid.”

  “Wait.” She fumbled in the bag and pulled out the Florida water, yanking the stopper with her teeth. She handed me the bottle and picked up the bag with Nanna’s book and the incense in it. When we were ready, she opened the door.

  The entire room oozed with tendrils of neon-blue light.

  Thick, with an oily feel that slid over the skin, the light seeped into the corners and pillowed like thick, viscous lava. Startled, I pulled back. Murray slipped past me and placed a censer on the end table near the door. She dropped the ouroboros into the brazier and then struck a match to a charcoal round, which she placed atop of the pendant. After the charcoal had lit, she sprinkled a good pinch of the incense on top.

  Light emanated from behind the vanity, where it flowed out from an oval-shaped opening right where my mirror had been. Here it was at its brightest, and my eyes hurt when I looked directly at the vortex. Like a blowtorch, I thought, but I really didn’t look forward to meeting the welder. A thin mist filled the room, hovering over the light. We moved forward, one step at a time, until we were standing in the middle of the room.

  A line of goose bumps rose on my arms, and I shivered. The acid reflux level in my stomach warned me that I was well on my way to an ulcer. Oh, God, if I could be anywhere but right there, but I didn’t have a choice. Nobody else could clear out this room, nobody else could undo the damage that Kip’s spell had caused. Murray and I were on our own. I tried to push down the swelling panic—spirits, like dogs, responded to the scent of fear, and my pheromones were dripping with it. I cautiously loosened the dagger for easy access while keeping one eye on the vortex. The door slammed shut behind us, and we both jumped.

  “Shit!” Murray looked over her shoulder, but I was too scared of what lay in front of us to turn around.

  I hissed at her to catch her attention. “What do you see?”

  She gulped. “Nothing. Nothing at all. The door just slammed by itself. I gotta tell you, Em, my respect for you just shot up 100 percent. If what you went through last night was half as scary as this, then just the fact that you actually stepped back into this house makes you a hero in my eyes.” She opened the book, flipping the pages until she found the cards with the ritual I had prepared.

  “By the way, what do I do with the water?” Now that we were actually here, everything I had memorized seemed to vanish into the ozone.

  “Throw it on him when he comes through the portal.”

  Sure thing. Nothing to it. Just throw it on the astral nasty. Florida water was used in Voudoun ceremonies, that much I knew, and Nanna had used a lot of it, but still, giving a demon a bath wasn’t my idea of a good time.

  We slowed, approaching the central core of light. Murray was whispering, practicing the incantation over and over under her breath. I gripped my bottle of Florida water tightly, hoping against all common sense that it would do some good when the time came. We stood less than a yard away from my vanity, staring into that brilliant mouth of light. I didn’t know whether to whisper. Whatever it was obviously knew we were there. I glanced uncertainly at Murray. She took a deep breath.

  “Isn’t he supposed to be here before we do this?”

  She gave me a long look, as if I were dense. “Uh, I think he already is. Who do you
think created that portal?”

  Exasperated, too tired to think clearly, I was about to make a snarky comeback when a ripping sound tore through the room, emanating from the center of the neon maw. “Great Mother, something’s coming through!”

  “This is it, we have to see what’s beyond that light. Throw the water on it.”

  “Now? You said throw it on whatever moves!” I grasped the bottle, not sure what to do.

  “Just throw the fucking water!”

  I hesitated a moment, thinking: Demon… Murray… Demon… Murray… In the end, my fear of making Murray mad won out over my fear of the demon, and I splashed the water into the light, trying for as wide a dispersal area as possible. I might as well have dropped my blow dryer into the bathtub, considering the fireworks display that let loose when I set off my water bomb. Sparks shot out in a hailstorm of crackling tracers.

  “Yikes, get down!” Smoke swirled around us, the scent of ozone thick. The smell nauseated me, and in an attempt to avoid losing my dinner, I twisted a hard left, promptly tripped over something hidden by the mist and went sprawling on my butt. As my tailbone landed on the floor with a painful thud, all I could think was that at least it was better than if I’d fallen on my knee again. I was immediately swallowed up by the billows of fog that now seemed to writhe and coil from the floor like a nest of serpents. The shock of the fall put an end to my queasiness.

  “Are you okay?” Murray lent me her arm, and I struggled to my feet.

  “Yeah.” My butt ached, but I would survive.

  Her gaze was fastened on the light, which flared so brightly that we had to shield our eyes. I turned my attention to the portal. As soon as I reached out to examine the energy, a cold sweat broke out over my body. “Murray… can you feel it? Something’s moving in there.” All of my courage went AWOL, and I started to panic. “Murray, I do not want to be here when Mr. Big & Ugly comes rampaging out of that electrical door he’s created for himself. I’ll just sell the goddamn house. Now let’s get out of here!”