The Ghost Exterminator Read online

  “She an expert? No. I didn’t think so. Let the experts work, honey.”

  “How does an expert tell?”

  She shrugged, as casually as if they were talking about the difference between deep dish and New York style pizza. “Different energy. Demons are all angry red and pulsing. Ghosts are green and glowy. You’ve got green.”

  He glared at the house. “I don’t see green.” He saw a money-sucking bastard of a house, but certainly no green.

  “That’s because you’re insensitive.”

  “Excuse me?” Now she was insulting him?

  “I’m a sensitive. You’re not. Almost all children are sensitive, but as they grow up, it’s like they stop looking. Some adults continue to see ghosts as wisps of fog and most people will feel cold or a sort of static electricity hum in the air, but to see more definition and color, it takes either a really badass ghost or a sensitive. Or a near-death situation will usually do it.” She frowned suddenly. “Although, you have some pretty badass ghosts in there by the look of it, so even you should be able to see something. You don’t see anything?”

  Even him. Charming. Wyatt glared at the bane of his existence—the inanimate one. “I see a house.”

  “That’s it? No glow? No breathing?”

  “Breathing?”

  “Yeah. Your house is breathing. Weird, huh?”

  Wyatt closed his eyes and cleared his throat repeatedly in an attempt to quell the urge to run screaming into the night. When he opened his eyes again, his personal ghost exterminator was watching him with a carefully neutral expression as if she were trying not to laugh. Wyatt was not in the habit of being laughed at, however silently. He ground his teeth together, trying to remember what patience felt like. “What happens now?”

  She smacked one fist into her opposite palm, grinning with unholy anticipation. “I go in there, kick some ass, take some names, and you wait here. Easy as cake.”

  “Pie.”

  Jo made a face. “Yeah. I can’t make pie. My cousin got all the baking genes, but if it comes out of a box and has very detailed instructions, I can make an edible cake. Cake is easy. Pie’s a bitch.”

  Since Wyatt had never stepped foot inside the kitchen in his condo other than to access the leftover pizza stashed in his fridge, he couldn’t really comment about the relative difficulties of pie versus cake. Frankly, it was not a conversation he’d ever expected to have. Certainly not with a Goth playmate who was supposedly going to rid one of his properties of a ghost infestation.

  What the hell had happened that his life had come to this?

  As if in response, a gust of wind came from the direction of the house, howling eerily. The blast of chill air plastered his suit to his skin and did very interesting things to Ms. Banks’ skimpy tank top, which Wyatt tried his hardest not to notice.

  Jo whirled into the wind and planted her hands on her hips, shouting, “Yeah, you’ll huff and you’ll puff and I’ll knock your ass down! Settle, you punks!”

  The wind died down instantly.

  Wyatt’s eyes felt tight and he closed them as he asked incredulously, “Were you just yelling at my house?”

  “You betcha. Gotta let ’em know who’s in charge.”

  Wyatt winced, the throbbing in his head redoubling. “Of course.”

  “So, you just hang here, try not to have an aneurism, and I’ll be back in a jiff.” A loud creaking noise emanated from the house. “Maybe two jiffs.”

  Wyatt pried open his eyes and straightened his shoulders. There was no way he was letting her waltz into Hell House by herself, no matter how cavalier she was about the whole thing. “I’ll go with you,” he announced. Then he turned and forced himself to start walking up the path, toward the ominous moaning of the house.

  He hadn’t lied when he said that he couldn’t see any glowing or breathing, but that didn’t mean he didn’t sense something from the house. It was as if the air around it was heavy and somehow wrong, pushing against his brain and clogging in his lungs.

  The sound of rapid footsteps behind him distracted him from such fanciful thoughts as the consultant trotted up the path.

  “Whoa, buddy! I work better alone, capisce? You should really wait out here.”

  “My house. My rules. I’m coming.”

  “Fine,” she snapped, her good cheer vanishing in another mercurial mood shift. “Just try not to get in my way, okay, buster?”

  She quickened her pace and edged past him to take the lead, muttering something about stubborn pricks with no survival instincts, which he was clearly meant to hear. Wyatt frowned at her back, but held his tongue.

  He followed her up the path, lengthening his stride to keep up. She didn’t mince or strut. There were no swiveling hips or dainty steps. Jo Banks prowled up the walk with a loose-limbed athleticism, unintentionally graceful and undeniably purposeful. The rear view had nothing on the front, but there was still something accidentally sexy in her obvious attempts to thwart her own femininity.

  The pipes rattled strangely as they stepped up onto the front porch, sounding like laughter echoing. Jo stopped suddenly and Wyatt nearly plowed into her back, stopping himself with a hand braced on her hip. She was suddenly close and warm and she smelled like—fruit? Was that peaches? Whatever it was, he breathed it in. Then Jo looked down at his hand and shifted away, easing her hip out of his grasp. Wyatt let his hand drop, still feeling the warmth of the denim against his palm and smelling that teasing hint of peach.

  She took a step forward and bent at the waist to peer closely at the etchings around the door. Wyatt didn’t bother pretending not to notice her ass extended toward him like a forties pin-up. There was definitely something to be said for the rear view.

  The pipes laughed again, higher this time, like children giggling, jarring him out of his appreciation.

  “Was this place ever an orphanage?” she asked without looking up from the doorframe.

  “No.” Wyatt usually didn’t pay much attention to the history of the places he bought—he was more interested in the future than the past—but after the Episodes started, he had done a thorough background check on the Demon House. “It was built as a private home, a vacation getaway for an oil tycoon and his family. When the tycoon died, he bequeathed it to his youngest daughter who lived here until her death two years ago, at the age of ninety-four. Nice old lady. Went to church every Sunday. Gave to charity.”

  Jo straightened, seemingly satisfied with the front door, but less than impressed with him. “Anyone can give to charity. Doesn’t make them a good person. Hitler probably gave to charity. I bet the Manson family was all about giving to the United Way.” She tried the door then jiggled it harder when it didn’t budge.

  Wyatt came up behind her and reached over her shoulder, jangling his key ring. She sidled out of the way—a waft of peach, there then gone—as he worked the ancient lock. The new, state of the art lock he’d ordered installed had jammed so often, he’d finally had to have it removed again. As soon as the old lock gave way, the door swung slowly inward, creaking dramatically.

  Jo snickered, although Wyatt couldn’t imagine what she found so damned funny. She grinned at him. “Are you sure no kids died here?”

  “Positive.”

  “Huh.” She stepped past him, into the dusty foyer. Construction dust mingled with the much older dust of the house and swirled around her feet. “They didn’t build over an old graveyard or anything? Use the house as a hospital during the war?”

  “No graveyard and what war? This house was built after the civil war.”

  “Battle site, maybe?” she asked then frowned, shaking her head before he could answer. “No. Wrong part of the country. And that still wouldn’t explain it.”

  Wyatt stepped into the foyer behind her and the door swung shut of its own volition, creaking all the way. Jo turned her head and grinned at it in a friendly way that made Wyatt almost as uncomfortable as the fact that it moved on its own. It clicked shut. He thought he heard the sni
ck of a lock, but shook away the idea. Impossible.

  “Explain what?” he asked into the echoing silence that filled the foyer.

  She tore her attention away from the door and focused on him. “Explain the ghosts.”

  “What’s to explain?” He didn’t really want to know, but if she kept talking about ghosts, he could pretend they were just having a theoretical discussion. Anything to delay the reality of the ghost extermination—surely that couldn’t be a reality.

  She looked at him with a slightly martyred expression, as if exerting a great deal of effort to be patient with an extremely stupid student. “Ghosts don’t just pop up wherever for no reason,” she explained. “Most hauntings occur where the ghost lived or died or in a place of particular importance. There are some people, mediums, to whom ghosts are naturally drawn—like my cousin Lucy—and other people, channels, like my boss, who can help direct a ghost to a specific site or person as they are first crossing over, but for the most part, ghosts are going to latch onto the familiar. So unless you had an apartment fire or something in this house, there is no reason for you to have this many ghosts. Especially since I’m fairly certain you’re being haunted by the ghosts of children.”

  “Children? Children can be ghosts?”

  Jo nodded and began moving around the room, peering into the shadows. “It’s actually fairly common. See, there are two primary reasons why a spirit will get trapped between this world and the next in the form of a ghost. Either they have unresolved issues from their mortal life that they need to face before they can enter the white light, or they just got lost or confused on the trip and sort of ended up as ghosts, stuck between here and there. Kids tend to be in the latter group.”

  She bent and peeked under an antique desk, flipping up the dust cover and then letting it flutter back down again. “Luckily, there’s an entire organization of mediums who work full time to help lost ghost kids find their way on.”

  “Is that what you do?”

  Jo made a face. “Not quite. My talents are a little less subtle.”

  “What makes you think my ghosts are kids?” Wyatt winced a little when he realized he had just used the phrase “my ghosts”, but Jo didn’t appear to notice. She was too busy crawling behind the broken door to the closet under the stairs. The same stairs that had nearly collapsed under contractor number three. “Jo? I’m not sure that staircase is stable.”

  She waved a hand at him in what she probably thought was a reassuring gesture. It just made his blood pressure spike all the higher, but then she crawled back out again, dusty but whole. “Little buggers are hiding from me.”

  “Excuse me?”

  “The ghosts. They’re hiding. When I was standing outside, I could barely look at the house, it was so full of ghosts, and now they’re all playing least in sight. Even the one who opened and shut the door managed to stay just on the edge of my vision.”

  “And that makes you think they’re children?”

  She made a humming sound in her throat and continued to prowl the room. “That and the giggling. And the pitter-patter of little feet, and the fact that you’ve had dozens of incidents, but no injuries and no sightings. Playing pranks, then hiding out to make sure your parents don’t catch you and punish you. Sound like kids to you?”

  “But they’re…”

  “Dead? Yeah. Still kids though. What’s weird is that I can’t seem to figure out why they would be here. Do you have any idea when the infestation started?”

  Before he could respond, a crash sounded from the direction of the kitchen. Jo spun toward the sound. “Sounds like someone’s getting impatient for the seeker.” She grinned with entirely too much relish for Wyatt’s peace of mind and rubbed her hands together in anticipation. “Ready or not, here I come!”

  Chapter Three: When the Ghost Exterminator Says Jump…

  Jo took two steps toward the kitchen then paused and shot Haines an exasperated glance when he fell into step behind her. “I’m fine, you know. I’m not going to trash your place and I can totally deal with this without you. You don’t have to come with me.”

  Wyatt frowned. “It’s my house.”

  Wind whistled through the eaves above them, moaning and howling in eerie cliché. Jo grinned. “You sure you want me to do this? Halloween is right around the corner and you’ve got your very own bona fide haunted house. I bet the kiddies would love it if you threw a big ole Halloween party.”

  “The dead kids or the living ones?”

  “Both.” When he just continued to frown, she sighed. “Oh fine. Be a stick in the mud. Come on, cowboy, let’s go rustle us up some ghosties.”

  Jo led the way back to where the crash had sounded with Haines so close on her heels he was practically walking on them. Irritation snaked through her as he continued to lurk over her shoulder, his hulking presence abrading every nerve she had. Did he have to walk so freaking close? Did he have to be so damned big and smell so damned good? Like aftershave and expensive leather—which made no sense whatsoever since Jo had a feeling excruciating torture would be necessary to get Mr. Big Business into some bad-boy biker leathers.

  She stopped in what must have once been a formal dining room, gritting her teeth when Haines’s momentum carried him into her—not hard enough to bump her, just enough for his front to brush against her back. A shiver tried to snake its way down her spine, but she ruthlessly suppressed it. Focus, Jo. You are not a raging hormone. You are a professional.

  Distance. She needed distance.

  She stepped out of the range of his heat and looked around the room for something to distract him, something to make him take a step back.

  Where the hell is a big, scary poltergeist when you need one?

  She glanced at him out of the corner of her eye and saw the permafrown working about a 2.6 on the Pissed-Off-CEO Richter scale. She could do better than that.

  Jo went to stand in the center of the room, spreading her arms in a very hokey, mumbo-jumbo way that would have caused her boss to smack her upside the head. With a two by four. She made a little humming noise in her throat and then whispered, “I feel a presence!”

  The frown went up to a 3.4.

  Better, but not good enough. She needed him good and pissed if he was going to stop trying to walk down the back of her spine.

  Jo closed her eyes and continued humming, knowing she sounded like an idiot. She tried to think of any other stupid cliché she could throw into the mix. She raised her hands to the sky, tipped back her face and began a sort of keening in her throat.

  Another peek showed about a 4.4.

  Jo suddenly stopped keening and dropped her arms, slumping over on herself.

  “Jo?”

  She started a low hum, then straightened, making her movements as jerky and zombie-esqe as possible.

  “Jo? Are you all right?” The frown was at a solid 5.0 and his laser-blue eyes were filled with annoyed concern.

  Tipping her head back, Jo let out a howl and then shouted, “Beetlejuice, Beetlejuice, Beetlejuice!”

  There was a beat of pure silence, then Wyatt growled wordlessly. Jo snickered.

  “Damn it, Jo! I thought something was wrong!”

  She snorted. “You thought the same thing you’ve thought since I showed up—probably since before I showed up, come to think of it—that I am a total charlatan.”

  “And that little display was supposed to convince me otherwise?”

  “That little display was supposed to show you that you don’t know shit and maybe you should take a step back and let me do my freaking job.”

  He worked his jaw for a moment, then nodded crisply and took a step back, his frown dropping down to about 3.8. “I’ll try to stay out of your way.”

  “Neato. And don’t move or talk either.”

  He made a choking noise and then cleared his throat roughly. There’s that stick again…

  “I can’t move or talk?”

  “It’s distracting,” Jo said. “If you’re g
oing to be here, then you need to be as close to invisible as possible. Even then, it probably isn’t a good idea. Are you sure I can’t convince you to leave?”

  “Do most homeowners just let you run wild in their homes, all alone with ghosts on the loose?”

  Jo shrugged. “Pretty much. That is what they pay me for.”

  Wyatt muttered something that sounded distinctly like “Cowards”, but since he was still glaring at her, she couldn’t reconcile any protective tendencies with his current irritation.

  “I don’t like this,” he growled, loud enough that she was clearly meant to respond this time.

  Jo crossed her arms over the Girls and narrowed her eyes at him. “Is this because I’m a girl?”

  His face screamed yes, but instead of admitting it, he ratcheted up the fiercest frown she’d seen from him yet and growled. “I assume your contract releases me of any liability if you die on the premises.”

  Jo fluttered her eyelashes at him. “Oh, Haines, you do say the sweetest things.”

  “If you’re determined to put yourself in danger, I just want to be sure I’m cleared of any liability.”

  “I’m a little more qualified than you are to determine whether or not I’m in danger, don’t you think, Mr. I-Don’t-Even-Believe-Ghosts-Exist? Trust me. I’m golden. This place is cake.”

  Although, there’s definitely something weird about it.

  Jo shook away that disquieting thought, shot him a brassy grin and turned back toward the source of the original crash—where now there was only silence.

  Wyatt followed—but at a distance this time—trying so hard to keep his footsteps silent that Jo imagined she could feel the effort radiating from him.

  Damn. He was still distracting. She needed to focus on the task at hand and forget he was there. It wasn’t as if she’d never performed exterminations with the clients on hand before. Hell, she’d even done a few while her clients videotaped and provided live narration. She could deal with distractions. She just had to tune them out.

  Jo closed her eyes, cleared her thoughts and stepped into the kitchen. Even before she opened up her second sight, she knew they were there. And she knew that her original estimate of thirty was nowhere near the reality. The house was crawling with ghosts, a hundred, maybe more, and every one of them was drifting in and out of the kitchen around her.