The Ghost Exterminator Read online

  Lucy turned her attention back to the ghost. “Teddy, can we talk to Angelica for a moment?”

  “Angelica? Why would you want to talk to her?” Teddy huffed indignantly.

  Lucy was momentarily stymied by Teddy’s unwillingness to give up his prized position as ruler of Wyatt’s body. However, Lucy was an only child. Jo, who had grown up with two siblings, knew exactly how they could get Teddy to hand Angelica over to them.

  “Teddy, Angelica is in trouble for pushing the bald man into the pool,” Jo told him.

  “She is?” Teddy asked eagerly. Ripples of green light passed through Wyatt’s form. Wyatt/Teddy twisted and stamped his feet.

  Angelica arrived screaming.

  “I won’t, I won’t, I won’t!”

  The voice was high-pitched and girlish, but Jo didn’t spare a thought for the oddity of Wyatt’s vocal chords forming those sounds. Angelica’s presence completely obscured his. She wore a white nightdress and her long, dark hair curled loosely around her shoulders. She twisted her fingers in it as she stood mulishly before them, the gesture made bizarre by the fact that her hair was at least a foot longer than Wyatt’s, so the hand twisted in the empty air beside his shoulder.

  “Hello, Angelica. Teddy tells us it was you who pushed Scott in the pool.”

  “Teddy’s a tattletale,” Angelica replied in a sing-song voice.

  “Charming,” Jo muttered under her breath. “He had to be haunted by the Brat of Christmas Past.”

  “Why have you taken over this body?” Lucy asked, her voice as calm and soothing as ever.

  “It’s boring in here when we aren’t in charge.”

  “Why don’t you just leave?”

  Angelica shrugged. “Can’t. We’re trapped.”

  Jo leaned forward, her interest snagged. “How did you get trapped? Who trapped you? Was it Wyatt?”

  Angelica frowned at her. “You did.”

  “No, I didn’t,” Jo protested automatically.

  “Did so!”

  Jo gritted her teeth. She was not going to get into a did-so-did-not argument with a nine-year-old girl who had probably died before she was born. She was more mature than that. At least, that’s what she told herself. “Is that why you bubble-gummed my hair?” she demanded instead.

  Lucy burst out laughing, stopping suddenly when Jo shot her a glare. “Sorry. I wondered what happened to your hair. It looks very cute, by the way. Very you.”

  “Thank you, but that doesn’t change the fact that this little brat put about two tons of Double Bubble into it this morning.”

  “Which was very wrong of her.” Lucy nodded solemnly, the flash of her dimples ruining her attempt at sober understanding. “Angelica, supposing Jo did trap you in Wyatt’s body—just for argument’s sake,” she amended quickly when Jo shot her a death glare. “How did she do it?”

  “She was shoving us toward the light. Teddy and me didn’t want to go—”

  “Teddy and I.”

  “—but she was really strong. Then all of a sudden she stopped pushing us toward the light and threw us at him. We just popped right in.”

  Jo coughed, feeling a blush burning her cheeks. “Do you think we could avoid telling Wyatt that I might have been involved in haunting his stomach?”

  Lucy continued speaking gently to the ghost brat. “Do you know how we can get you out of there?”

  “Why don’t you ask her?” Angelica pouted. “She’s the one who did it.”

  “I did not!” she protested automatically.

  “Jo, that isn’t helping. Angelica?”

  The brat shrugged. “I dunno. It’s not my fault. She’s the one who messed up.”

  A screech of tires on the street accented Jo’s irritation as she glared at the one she now identified as the ringleader in Wyatt’s body.

  “Look, kid, we are working on getting you out of there, but until I get my mojo back in working order, you are just going to have to be patient and lay off the pranks. Capicse? If you’re good, I’ll take you to a Pixar movie or something, but that means no more drawing on Wyatt’s face, no more throwing people in pools and absolutely no more bubble gum.”

  “Jo!”

  All three of the non-haunted people on the front lawn turned at the imperious shout. Karma squeezed between two of the parked cars and strode toward them. Every hair was in place, as always, but Jo got the impression that Karma was hanging onto her icy composure by a thread. She’d found something, some clue, some bit of evidence about this mess, and Jo was afraid to ask what.

  “Yo, sis.”

  “Happy engagement,” Karma mumbled vaguely in Jake’s direction, but her eyes stayed locked on Wyatt/Angelica, studying the ghost girl warily. “So you’re the mystery guest?” she asked Angelica, who squeaked and disappeared back into her cloudy hiding place inside Wyatt’s body.

  Wyatt came to, clearing his throat. His posture grew rigid and the perma-frown was back in place even before he noticed Karma glaring at him.

  He groaned, “What did I do this time?”

  Chapter Nineteen: The Plot Thickens

  “We have a problem.”

  Karma waited until Jake and Wyatt disappeared into the house in search of Mike’s much-needed hidden beer stash before turning to Lucy and Jo with those dire words.

  Jo didn’t bother standing up. Living in a constant state of crisis was downright exhausting. She just couldn’t work up the energy to panic about whatever this new development was, even though Karma was showing more uneasiness than Jo had ever seen before. “So is this a new problem or just a modification of the same problem we’ve had since Thursday?” she asked mildly.

  “I took Rodriguez to the house.”

  “The exorcist? I told you it wasn’t demonic.”

  “And you were right. He confirmed that it isn’t. But there is something beyond normal ghost activity happening there and I thought he might pick up on something you couldn’t.”

  “Like demons.”

  “Like the source behind whatever is drawing the ghosts. And to be clear, that is present tense. The house is still drawing new ghosts. Which is a concern in and of itself.”

  Jo snorted. “Unless Wyatt wants to hire me to live in the house and transcend them as they come. Talk about job security.”

  “I think we should avoid that option if possible,” Karma put in dryly.

  “Yeah, that’s right, you think Wyatt is the cause of all this,” Jo grumbled, letting her irritation with that conclusion show through her voice.

  “I’ve reconsidered that hypothesis,” Karma admitted. “He hasn’t been back to the house since you left.”

  It wasn’t a question, but Jo nodded to confirm that he’d been a good boy.

  “But the ghost population is still increasing. That would seem to indicate he isn’t the source.”

  “Which is exactly what I told you yesterday.”

  “I told you sos are so attractive,” Karma muttered.

  Jo just smiled angelically. She loved being right. Especially because she had royally sucked on the espionage front. It was a relief to know there hadn’t been any secret plot to uncover, since she’d uncovered jack shit.

  Karma wasn’t done with her revelations. “Rodriguez seemed to think that long-term haunting of a body would have the same effects as long-term possession.”

  Jo sat forward suddenly. “The effect of long-term possession is death.”

  “It’s just a theory,” Karma said. “But it would also seem to make the culpability less likely to fall on Mr. Haines himself. The danger of his body detaching from his soul would be a powerful incentive against this brand of mischief.”

  “You think whatever set the ghost-sucker in the house and shoved the kids into Wyatt wants to hurt him?”

  “I can’t imagine a man reaches that level of success without accumulating a few enemies,” Karma said, her tone far too calm. They were discussing murder, after all. “Has he mentioned anyone who might be trying to sabotage him, or worse?
”

  Jo shook her head, the “or worse” ringing loud in her ears. “He hasn’t said a thing. I don’t think he spends much time thinking about the little people he steps on to get where he is.”

  Karma pursed her lips. “He might have to start thinking about it. If we can figure out who or what is responsible for what’s going on with the house, we are much more likely to be able to stop it. I need you to ask him who might have a grudge against him. Particularly any mediums he might have met.”

  “Why limit it to mediums?” Jo asked. “If the house is whispering at him, that sounds like magic to me.”

  Lucy came to attention. “Witches? They almost never meddle with ghosts. The power is too different to be of any use to them,” she protested.

  Karma shook her head. “Lucy’s right. They might be capable of setting a spell or enchantment to draw ghosts, but why would they bother? There’s no purpose in it.”

  “Not even to harm Wyatt Haines?”

  “I believe the witches go by the phrase ‘Do no harm’,” Lucy reminded her.

  “Not all of them,” Karma muttered darkly, her mouth drawn into a severe line. “We won’t know anything for certain until I can get one of our witches out to check it out, but with Samhain coming up, it could be a week or more before I can get in touch with any of them.”

  Jo launched herself to her feet. “So we just wait and hope that Wyatt’s soul doesn’t give up the ghost and vacate the premises?”

  “No,” Karma countered. “You talk to Wyatt, see if you can figure out who set the enchantment and why, while I look into other possible sources.”

  “Wyatt has the supernatural sensitivity of a rock. I was throwing open portals and transcending a hundred ghosts, but all he saw was me twitching and falling over. What makes you think he would recognize a witch if he met one?”

  “Do I need to assign someone else to liaise with Mr. Haines, Jo?”

  “I’ll liaise with him,” Jo insisted, prodded by a completely irrational stab of jealousy at the thought of Wyatt liaising with anyone else. “But I don’t know how much help he’ll be. Witchcraft just adds a whole new level of suck to this mess.”

  Lucy frowned at her. “I thought you liked witches. You always seem to get along so well with Sally and Gillian.”

  “I like witches fine. I would just prefer this was strictly a medium problem, because then not only are we more likely to be able to fix it, but it narrows down the number of people who could be causing this to the two of us and about a dozen others on the entire continent. If it’s witches, any idiot with a grimoire and a thimble-full of latent talent could be stirring up this shitstorm.”

  “Unfortunately, I’m inclined to agree with Jo that if magic is involved then this is probably the work of an amateur,” Karma said. “Witchcraft is all about balance and harmony. Any adept witch would be too wary of the karmic ripples this kind of magic would cause to attempt something so potentially destructive.”

  Lucy frowned. “But nothing is being destroyed. The ghosts are being pulled and pushed around, but there is no destructive energy in that.”

  “We don’t know where the ghosts are coming from. The house might just be drawing any ghost in the vicinity, but the age of the ghosts is disturbing, as is the quantity. For all we know, the house is drawing ghosts who would have crossed over naturally and preventing them from going over. Or worse, pulling spirits who are on the verge of death, but might yet survive, and tipping the balance to draw the spirit into the ghost world. Who knows what length the enchantment will go to in order to accumulate the ghosts it needs?”

  “You think the house might actually be killing sick kids?” Lucy asked in horror.

  “Right now, I’m not ruling anything out,” Karma said somberly. “Did you learn anything from Wyatt’s ghosts? How long they were in the house or how far away they were drawn from?”

  Jo shook her head. “Names and ages, and a propensity for pranks. They couldn’t even tell us when they had died.”

  “Ghosts often struggle with the concept of time though,” Lucy commented. “I would be more surprised if they did know how long they had been dead.”

  “Well, they didn’t,” Jo said shortly. “So that closes that door.”

  “There still might be more they can tell us. If they come back again, see if you can get any more out of them,” Karma instructed.

  “Before or after their presence permanently detaches Wyatt’s soul from his body?” Jo asked sarcastically.

  Karma narrowed her eyes. “Before, preferably. Are you going to be able to handle this, Jo, or should I assign someone who doesn’t have such emotional reactions to the client?”

  If only her boss’s memory were not so accurate. If only she hadn’t caught Jo playing cowgirl on top of Wyatt.

  “I’ve got this, Karma,” Jo insisted, even though she had never felt quite so off-balance and professionally unsure in her life. “I’m a pro.”

  Wyatt took a long pull of the lukewarm beer Jake had filched out of a cooler hidden behind a tool chest in the garage and tried to pretend, just for a few minutes, that he was having a normal Saturday, hanging out, drinking beer and watching his alma mater get their asses kicked on the gridiron.

  Of course, on a normal Saturday he’d be working all day and catching his alma mater’s game on TiVo when he was too exhausted to accomplish anything else. And he’d be alone.

  For the second time in as many days, he realized how pathetic his normal life was.

  Jake shifted on the sawhorse he was using as a chair and waved with his beer toward the small, static-filled TV Mike kept in his tool area. “Their D sucks.”

  Wyatt didn’t bother to defend the defense of his team. “Their D always sucks,” he said agreeably. “But the combined IQ of the other team’s entire offensive line isn’t as high as any one of our guys. We may not be tough, but we can do our own taxes.”

  Jake snorted. “If only there were bowl games for accountants. Of course, half of them would probably get killed on the field and invade Lucy’s and my bedroom in the afterlife. Accountants are the worst.”

  Wyatt studied Jake. He looked normal enough. A tough guy who carried a sidearm under his leather jacket, but for a cop-type he was pretty everyday average. And yet he didn’t bat an eye at the ghost bullshit.

  “So you’re okay with the whole ghost thing?”

  Jake shrugged. “It’s Lucy. The ghosts are annoying as hell, particularly when they pop up in our bedroom at all hours of the night, but I’ve got Karma working on a way to block them when we want some privacy. Of course, no matter how omniscient my sister likes to pretend she is, she doesn’t know everything. She thought the horny dork contingent would stop bothering us as soon as Lucy and I got together, but that hasn’t happened. Apparently Lucy is catnip for dead dweebs.”

  “And Jo? Is there some magic recipe to make her ghosts go away?”

  Jake eyed him for a long moment before responding. “I don’t know the particulars of Jo’s situation, but a medium doesn’t stop being a medium. Lucy was supposed to get a break from horny nerds, not a break from ghosts altogether. From what I understand, Jo doesn’t draw ghosts to her the way Lucy does, but she has a greater ability to manipulate them.”

  “If she doesn’t draw them, why doesn’t she just avoid going places where they are?”

  “Guess you’d have to ask her,” Jake said unhelpfully. “Look, you seem like a decent enough guy, even if you don’t know shit about ghosts, but if you want Jo to stop being a medium, you’re asking her to stop being who she is. It’s not like quitting a job you don’t particularly like—”

  “But she doesn’t like it,” Wyatt insisted. “She goes to the office and tries to pretend she’s normal. Why would she do that if all she wanted to be was some ghost whisperer?”

  “She likes it,” Jake countered, without a shade of doubt in his voice. “What she doesn’t like is that people treat her like a leper for something she has always been good at. No one can do wha
t she does, Wyatt. She is ten times more powerful than Lucy, but until she stops repressing that side of herself, she’ll never be able to fully tap into that power. So the last thing she needs is to get mixed up with some guy who thinks she’d be better off if she were just like everyone else. She’s special and if you don’t see that, you don’t deserve her.”

  “Our relationship isn’t like that. It’s business.”

  “Uh-huh.”

  “I know she’s special,” Wyatt protested, knowing he sounded unconvincing.

  “Sure you do.” Jake turned his attention back to the TV. “Your quarterback has a good arm. Too bad he spends so much of his time on his back.”

  Wyatt didn’t respond. He turned his face toward the television, but instead of the commentators’ sympathetic groans, all he heard was Jake’s biting words about Jo.

  Chapter Twenty: Business and Pleasure

  Night two at Casa Haines proved much less eventful than the previous evening. Jo vetoed beer and TV as “too relaxing”, since she didn’t want Wyatt falling asleep on her again, which left them with leftover pizza and not much else.

  She paced the condo, growing more agitated by the second, as Wyatt watched her. She should tell him. He had a right to know that there was some whacked-out witch casting spells on his house and trying to separate his soul from his body. But he barely believed in ghosts and she wasn’t eager to push her luck on the new supernatural experiences front.

  “You should relax,” he commented, looking relaxed enough for both of them from his sprawl on the couch.

  “I can’t relax,” Jo snapped, willing to pounce on any excuse to pick a fight. At least it would keep them awake and provide some distraction from her guilt over the fact that she wasn’t being entirely honest with him. “I have to be vigilant in case the ghosts come back.”

  Wyatt just shrugged, clearly not understanding the gravity of the situation—which might have been due to the fact that Jo hadn’t been able to bring herself to confess the whole ‘you might die if we don’t get these ghosts out of you fast’ part.