The Ghost Exterminator Read online

  Jo unfocused her eyes, letting the second sight in, and quickly scanned the room for something that could be drawing the ghosts there, something out of place that radiated the force of paranormal energy to lure and hold so many. All she saw was a kitchen that, while far from Victorian, clearly hadn’t been remodeled since the early seventies. Orange countertops, outdated appliances, garish patterned wallpaper, all of it drowning in the bright greenish energy of too many ghosts.

  It was possible all of the ghosts had just migrated there naturally—wildly improbable, but possible. She’d be more comfortable if she knew what had brought them there, but wherever they had come from, she knew where they were going.

  Jo moved to the center of the room, and dropped her goodie bag. She dug around inside for a moment, pulling out her Lucky Mojo Spiritual Cleansing incense, quickly lighting it and setting the holder at her feet. The incense wasn’t necessary to the process, but she enjoyed the ritual and it helped her focus. Focus was absolutely essential.

  She braced her feet in a wide stance and steadied her breathing. Now for the fun part.

  Jo let her second sight seep into her consciousness, soaking into her mind until she wasn’t looking at the energy in the room, but rather being the energy. The energy of the ghosts fluttered against her and through her, constantly in motion.

  So many of them. She felt a moment’s trepidation at the thought of trying to exterminate so many at once, but with them all concentrated in one place, she didn’t see another option.

  The frantic movement of the ghosts, like minnows in her mind, dizzied her, but Jo kept her breathing even and let them in and out, ruthlessly quelling all her instincts to struggle against the energy. If she fought them, even for a moment, she would lose control—and possibly her sanity, but she tried not to dwell on that little tidbit.

  Breathing through her expanded self, her energy self, Jo felt the air around her for a place where the world felt different. Thin.

  When she didn’t feel it immediately, her concentration wavered a bit and the energy of the ghosts beat at the back of her eyes like the wings of a thousand moths. It has to be here. She pushed out again, felt again, and then—there. Above the sink.

  Jo gently probed the soft spot, mentally mapping its dimensions, then took a breath and reached. A quick yank and the window between this world and the beyond snapped open, spilling bright white light to burn too brightly against her inner eye. When a ghost transcended naturally, that light would appear to be piercing them from the inside out, splitting them open until they exploded and were nothing more than the light that took them.

  If a ghost wasn’t going to transcend on its own, that was when Jo came to work. The ability to open portals at will was rare, but even more rare was the ability to continue to control other energies while they were open. It was one reason why she was the only ghost exterminator within eight hundred miles.

  As long as she didn’t look directly into the blinding light, holding the window open was easy. Forcing ghosts through it, less so. Luckily, they usually didn’t need to be forced. Most ghosts longed for the beyond, searched for it and mourned it. Ninety-nine times out of a hundred, Jo opened a window and the ghosts surged through of their own volition. Easy as cake.

  Unfortunately, this was that hundredth time.

  When Jo threw open the window, the ghosts didn’t budge. Not even a twitch in the right direction. If anything, their movements became more sluggish, reluctant. She tried guiding the ghosts in the right direction, but it was like running her fingers through smoke. They broke and melted around her, lethargic and insubstantial.

  Crap. Looks like it’s gonna be one of those nights.

  Jo narrowed her focus, keeping the window open with a corner of her mind, but using most of her attention to herd the varied energies of the ghosts. She guided them gently at first then with more force as they began to push back away from the portal she had opened.

  What the—

  Jo swayed as they shoved against her, their movements stronger and more defined. She shoved back, beginning to hear their voices, indistinct at first, then a blur of sound, like the cacophony of children on a playground, only these were not the sounds of laughter, but distress.

  I’m not hurting you, she tried to tell them, but could not split her focus any more to give voice to the words. Go. You should want this. Go on.

  The first ghost brushed the edge of the portal and disappeared through it with no sound or apparent movement—just there, then gone in an instant. Houdini on speed. The next few vanished just as easily.

  Then she felt a peculiar rumbling.

  Behind her, beneath her, where was it? The unseen force yanked back on her ghosts and Jo stumbled back a step, jerked by the ricochet of that pull. She braced her feet again, gritted her teeth, belatedly reminding herself to keep breathing, and shoved again.

  The force—what is that?—pulled back again and Jo gave a startled yelp as she staggered again.

  The room was colder now, but instead of the clean, open crispness of a brisk fall night, the air felt thick, pressurized, like a humid summer day gone wrong. Jo’s breath formed a cloud as it puffed out, then that cloud doubled back on her, wrapping around her throat. Her own breath twisted around her neck in an ethereal garrote.

  Okay, no more fun and games. She needed to end this.

  Jo gathered herself, centering and bracing. She was stronger. They had numbers, but if she timed it right, putting all of her strength into one moment, she could have the rest of the ghosts through the portal before whatever held them there had time to yank them back. And God help us if that doesn’t work.

  Breathe in, breathe out. Each breath was focus, strength. Jo forced herself to ignore the tendrils of her own exhalation that wound tightly around her throat, sinister and barely visible. Breathe in, breathe out.

  She drew in for the last push, ready, waiting for the moment when the force beneath—behind?—her would release ever so slightly, gathering itself for the next pull. She waited, braced, ready, and then she felt it, the minutest slackening.

  Jo slammed her will into the ghosts, through them, shooting them toward the portal like a hundred arrows. They flew true, fast, too fast, with too much momentum to be pulled back now, but the force that battled her had not given up. It yanked one last time, hard enough to send her crashing backwards onto the floor, crying out in surprised pain, laid out like a boxer at the end of a brutal round.

  “Jo!” Wyatt shouted her name. Just that. It was enough.

  Her concentration splintered, shattering at the last moment. Her gaze flew to where Wyatt stood in the corner, an expression of confused shock twisting his usual frown.

  The portal snapped shut, hard enough to send an echo slamming through her. A high-pitched squeal pierced her mind and then two green streams of light, so tightly intertwined that she thought for a moment they were one, slammed into Wyatt’s chest, sending him stumbling backward against the corner.

  He gave a shout of surprise, his hands reaching out automatically to brace on the walls on either side of him as the house began to tremble and roll. Jo wrapped her hands over her head and squeezed her eyes shut—as if that would save her if the ancient ceiling decided to come crashing down on top of her.

  The earthquake lasted only a moment, there then gone, like the crashing of a wave. Then all was silent and still.

  She opened her eyes, not bothering to get up from her position sprawled on the floor, and threw open her second sight.

  Nothing.

  The ghosts were gone. The air held only the natural chill of an October night. The force that had fought her for their spirits had vanished as suddenly as it had arrived.

  It was over.

  Jo rolled onto her side, the better to glare at the businessman in the corner. “Haines. Next time someone tells you not to talk or move…”

  “I’ll do it,” he responded promptly.

  Jo nodded wearily and let her head flop back down onto the floor. She
closed her eyes, exhaustion sucking at her. God, I need a vacation. Then, so softly she wondered if she had heard anything at all, there came the unmistakable whimper of a child’s cry. Coming from Wyatt’s corner.

  She opened her eyes and there it was. The faintest of ghostly green glows, inside Haines’s body, directly beneath his sternum.

  Oh, that can’t be good.

  Chapter Four: Good Karma

  Ungodly early the next morning, Jo breezed through the tasteful front office of Karmic Consultants, smiled cheerfully at the latest in a long line of confused secretarial temps who never lasted more than a week, and waltzed right into her boss’s office without so much as a courtesy knock.

  She marched up to the imposing black stone desk, full speed ahead, take no prisoners, boosting herself up to sit on the smooth, black marble and swinging her feet in a way that never failed to piss off her boss.

  Luckily, her boss wasn’t in yet.

  Karma, founder and executive dictator of Karmic Consultants, was still in the Bat Cave—as Jo had taken to thinking of the mysterious condo beneath the KC offices. As far as Jo knew, no one had ever seen inside it, save Karma herself. The only entrance was an elevator connected directly to her office and controlled by a biometric panel—which only increased Jo’s belief that Karma was leaping into black spandex and flying off to save Gotham. Seriously, who used biometric sensors besides the CIA?

  The elevator itself had been painted to resemble a Japanese screen, blending seamlessly with the subtly Asian-influenced luxury of the rest of the office.

  Jo smiled cheekily up at the most visible of the surveillance cameras that monitored Karma’s office twenty-four/seven. Somewhere, Karma was watching—if she wasn’t already on her way up to tell Jo to get the hell off her desk.

  The elevator doors opened with a barely audible shush, and Karma’s one-nine-hundred-operator voice slid sensuously into the room in front of her. “Get the hell off my desk, Jo.”

  Karma did not look like a stereotypical psychic, or a channel, or any other mumbo-jumbo magician. Her tailored grey power suit would not have looked out of place on a courtroom lawyer, and she wore it with confidence and ease. She was tall and slim, and her features possessed the same subtle Asian influence as her furnishings, but her skin was dark—more caramel than cream. Jo had never seen her black hair unconfined, but she always imagined it would be long and geisha-straight if Karma ever released it from its rigid chignon prison.

  It was a pointless fancy though—Karma did not let her hair down. Ever.

  Jo bounced off of the desk, an unrepentant grin ruining the effect of her instant obedience. “’Sup, boss?”

  “You are, apparently. Rather early for you, isn’t it, Jo?” Karma slid into the executive chair behind her desk, as elegant and collected as ever, despite the hour.

  Jo had visited Karma’s office at every possible hour of the day. If the boss wasn’t in the office when Jo arrived, she appeared within moments, always looking crisp and unflappable, whether it was two or ten, a.m. or p.m. Jo had no idea when, if ever, she slept.

  She would wonder if Karma was human, if not for the fact that the big boss’s little brother Jake had recently gotten engaged to Jo’s cousin Lucy. Jake’s existence proved that Karma had not actually sprung fully formed from the head of Zeus, but rather in the more traditional way from the loins of a retired FBI Agent and a hippie from New Mexico.

  Karma made a delicate throat-clearing sound, which immediately reminded Jo of Wyatt and his stick and the reason she was here at this dreadful hour.

  “We have a problem.” Jo flopped down onto one of the high-backed chairs facing the desk.

  “Do we?” Karma said without inflection, her voice pouring over the words like liquid.

  “My client—Wyatt Haines?—he’s haunted.”

  “Yes, dear, that’s what he hired you for.”

  “No—I mean, yes, that is what he hired me for—but, no, that’s not what I meant. His house is fine—sort of. It’s him. He’s haunted.”

  Karma blinked and slowly leaned forward in her chair. “Perhaps you’d like to explain that.”

  Jo squirmed in her seat. “So…it isn’t entirely my fault.”

  “Explanations first. Excuses later.”

  Jo wiped every trace of expression from her face, trying to mimic Karma’s blank professionalism. “The client was already on site when I arrived at the designated meeting time. Preliminary examination of premises revealed abnormally high spectral energy emanating from the structure, but no indicators of the cause for this on the grounds. Client expressed reluctance to allow me access to the premises, stating possible demonic possession as grounds. No apparent signs of demonic energy. Client insisted on accompanying me into the structure and remaining present during extermination.” And if he had just listened to me in the first place, none of this would have happened.

  “Despite overwhelmingly high original readings, no ghosts were present upon immediate entry. The client and I followed sounds of activity to the kitchen, where I found an abnormal concentration of juvenile ghosts. I opened a window to let them out, but they resisted.”

  Karma didn’t move, but Jo felt her attention sharpen to a razor’s edge at that little tidbit. Jo was tempted to add a pithy comment about how resistance was futile, just like the Borg, but she didn’t want to ruin her uber-professional recitation with too much Trekkie geekery.

  “I then attempted to push the ghosts through the portal. After an initial measure of success, a secondary force began to forcefully draw the ghosts away from the window.”

  Karma’s chair squeaked as she sat forward suddenly, but she made no move to interrupt Jo’s report.

  “I exerted more force and directed the majority of the ghosts through the portal. At this point, the client interrupted the proceedings, splitting my concentration. I allowed the portal to close, believing that all of the ghosts had been expelled. A tremor passed through the house, after which I moved to check the wellbeing of the client and discovered two distinct spectral presences residing inside his body. In his diaphragm, to be precise.”

  “I imagine he took that well,” Karma said dryly.

  Jo winced. “He ran like the hounds of hell were after him, actually. I told him it probably wasn’t wise for him to take off while his stomach was still haunted, but he didn’t exactly react favorably to that suggestion. Couldn’t get away from me fast enough.” That had stung more than she cared to admit. It wasn’t like she’d tried to haunt him.

  “I see.” Karma blinked slowly, thick black lashes sweeping down then up again with a deliberateness that spoke of patience, understanding, and contemplation. Jo’s eyelashes were never so eloquent. “Do you believe the client to be in danger?”

  Jo pulled a face. “Not in danger, per se, but it probably isn’t a good idea to let a haunted executive run around town telling everyone we put a pair of baby ghosts in him.”

  “But you do not believe the spirits to be malevolent.”

  It wasn’t a question, but Jo answered anyway. “Naw. They’re kids. Whatever else was in that house might be a badass S.O.B., but the ghosts were just pranksters. Completely harmless.”

  “I assume the presence in the house disappeared again after you closed the portal?”

  “Yeah. I think it’s what rattled the foundations, but after that the house was totally empty of paranormal energy of any kind. Not so much as an echo.”

  Karma pursed her lips speculatively. “You did a sweep of the premises anyway, of course.”

  “Yep. I snuck back in after the haunted CEO took off in his Bentley. No more ghosts, no more weird presence and no indication whatsoever as to why either had been there in the first place.”

  “How many juvenile ghosts were present initially?”

  “Over a hundred.”

  Karma’s eyes widened fractionally, but her voice remained coolly unmoved. “So you exterminated a hundred ghosts last night. Quite an accomplishment.”

  Jo s
hrugged. “Should have been one hundred and two.”

  Karma made a humming sound acknowledging that and tapped one finger on her desk phone. “I’ll contact Mr. Haines and inform him that we will exterminate the ghosts in his diaphragm. Free of charge, of course.”

  Jo stiffened, even though she’d known walking in that she was going to have to deal with Wyatt Haines again. “I don’t think he’ll be terribly receptive. He didn’t exactly believe me when I said there were spirits in his stomach.”

  “I’ll speak to him,” Karma said, as if that settled it. In a way, it did. “You will need his permission to return to the house. You can obtain it when you exterminate his ghosts.”

  “Return to the house?” Ignoring for a moment the fact that Wyatt had run from her last night like she was a leper chucking spare body parts at him, Jo focused on Karma’s second improbable request. “It’s clean.”

  “It will be clean once we’ve adequately explained the anomalies present at last night’s extermination. You will determine what happened and why. With the client’s permission and assistance. Now, go get some sleep. You look like death.”

  “I’m supposed to look like death,” Jo said cheerfully as she rose and strode toward the door. “I’m Goth now.”

  When she turned back with her hand on the knob, Karma was eyeing her sunny blonde roots.

  “Let me know how that works out for you,” her boss said dryly, already lifting the phone from the cradle to dial the haunted CEO.

  Jo left her to work her magic. Maybe Karma could convince Wyatt that he was haunted. And that he believed in ghosts. And that he was deliriously grateful to the ghost exterminator who had cleaned out his house.

  Hey, it could happen. For all Jo knew, mind control might be one of Karma’s mysterious abilities.

  Chapter Five: The Horrible Haunting of W. Haines