Ghost of a Chance (18 page)

“Four times…” Her eyebrows rose. “How old
are you?”

“Late thirties,” I said with a little
smile.

“I’m eighty-one,” my father said with pride.
“I’m told I don’t look a day older than fifty.”

I patted Savannah’s hand as she slumped back
into her chair. “Adam is over a hundred. Polters age much slower
than mortals, so it really doesn’t do to pay too much attention to
the number of years lived.”

“They’re freaks, Savannah,” her husband
yelled. “Freaks! And if you hang around with them, you’ll be a
freak, too.”

“There’s only one freak here, and he’s not a
polter,” Pixie said in a soft voice.

Meredith snarled something rude at her,
leaped up from the table, and stomped over to the fireplace. I
glanced back at Adam, who was still apparently deep in thought.

“Your family hasn’t harmed Spider in some
way, have they?” I asked him. “You know, something someone did a
while ago that would make him seek revenge on you now?”

“No. I’m sure—” Enlightenment dawned in his
eyes. “My family…”

A chill skittered down my back. My father
gasped as the thought struck him, as well.

“What is it?” Savannah asked, looking from
Adam to me.

Pixie pursed her lips. I didn’t want to go
into too much detail in front of her. She might be more worldly
than was expected in one only fifteen, but there was no need to
expose her to the dark side of human nature any more than was
necessary.

“Polters don’t live in just any house.” Even
to my ears, my voice sounded weary. “There has to be a bond with a
mortal family in order for them to move in, and once they do that,
it’s exceedingly hard to get them to leave. In the old days, they
used to act as stewards, taking care of property for owners who had
large estates. In the last hundred or so years, many polter
families were forcibly displaced when their mortal hosts downsized.
Some took over the property when the mortal line died out. But a
house that has been in the care of a polter is forever
changed.”

“Changed? Changed how?” Savannah asked,
looking around the room as if the answer would make itself
apparent.

I smiled at Adam as he tried to explain. “It
becomes kind of sacred land. There’s a Poltern word for it, but
it’s untranslatable. The closest I can come is ‘sanctuary.’ The
house in effect becomes a safe haven for Otherworld beings.”

“Oh.” Her eyes went to Amanita.

“Exactly.” Adam nodded. “Nita and the boys
were attracted to my house because of its history with my family. I
became their guardian, dedicated to preserving the house so it will
continue to provide them sanctuary from the mundane world.”

Savannah’s brow furrowed. “But what does
this have to do with Meredith’s plans for a… for a…”

“Brothel?” Adam growled.

“Yes, that. I don’t see the connection.”

Everyone was silent. Pixie looked down at
her hands, fussing with the fingerless black lace gloves she’d
pulled from her bag. My father was suddenly fascinated with a book
sitting on a table next to him. Adam watched me for a moment, one
eyebrow cocked in expectation.

I sighed. Why did these things always fall
on my shoulders? “It means that Spider and Meredith weren’t
planning just any sort of brothel. They needed a house that could
offer sanctuary, one that would be comfortable to spirits and other
beings, who would become the entertainment, assumedly in exchange
for room and board.”

“Dear goddess above,” Savannah gasped, her
face reflecting the horror in her voice. “They’d use ghosts as
whores?”

“And polters, and sprites and sylphs, and
whatever other freaks we can get, so long as they turn a profit,”
Meredith said. “Don’t make that face at me! You don’t have any idea
the amount of money we were sitting on! Otherworld brothels are a
gold mine waiting to be tapped! Spider knew that with his
connection to the polter world, he’d be able to bring in the best
sort of hookers. We’d have every freak for a hundred miles around
knocking at our door, hoping to get a chance at one of the—”

“Thank you for that confirmation,” I
interrupted, sending Pixie a warning look as she was about to make
a comment.

She scowled at me but sat back, her lips
tight.

“So you see, dear wife,” Meredith said,
strolling over to Savannah’s chair, “there’s every reason for your
new friend here to have wanted her husband dead. She must have
planned all along to knock off Spider, and set me up as the prime
murder suspect in order to take over the plans for our
brothel.”

Adam looked at me with speculation in his
eyes. I could see he was wondering if “It’ll all be mine when
you’re gone” meant I had murdered Spider for his share of the
venture.

“No,” I told him softly in Poltern. “I swear
I had no idea about any of this.”

He nodded, murmuring that he believed
me.

Savannah looked as if she was going to burst
into tears, but once again, she surprised me. She took a deep
breath, pushed back her chair, and stood to confront her husband.
“You sicken me, Meredith. It’s as if I’ve never really known who
you were, and now I see you for your true self. You are evil, truly
evil, and unless you repent, I don’t see that we have a future
together.”

“You stupid bitch!” I thought he was going
to hit Savannah, and stood up at the same time Adam did. Meredith
snarled obscenities at us as he snatched the whiskey bottle and
backed up a couple of steps. “Fine! If you’d rather stay with the
freaks, you’re welcome to them. I’m going to bed. I’ll deal with
all of you as soon as I can get out of this madhouse.”

“Happy nightmares,” Pixie called after
him.

“Hope the bedbugs bite,” my father
added.

“I told you we should get ourselves a nice
domovoi like that Sergei to be a housekeeper,” Jules said to Antony
in a loud whisper from the corner of the room. “They know about the
bugs!”

“I believe I’m fading fast,” Savannah said
in the silence that followed her husband’s dramatic exit. “If you
wouldn’t mind, I’d like to rest, as well.”

“Everyone is tired, but I’d like to get a
statement from you before you retire for the night.”

She passed a languid hand over her forehead.
“Oh, I don’t think I’m up to that, Adam. I will be happy to answer
your questions in the morning, but right now… The seance was so
draining… And all the negative energy in the house due to the
killing…”

I slid Adam a look as I put an arm around
her. “Of course, we understand. It’s been a trying night for
everyone.”

“I should be the one comforting you in your
newly widowed state,” she said as we walked toward the stairs.
Adam, correctly reading my glance, followed. “You must be beside
yourself with grief.”

“I’m still numb with shock, to be
honest.”

“Shock!” She shuddered. “I know how you
feel.

I’m in absolute shock that Meredith could be
involved in something so heinous, so reprehensible! Imagine wasting
poltergeists and spirits on a brothel, when there are so many other
uses for them.”

I paused for a second. “Other uses?”

“Of course!” She stopped at the bottom of
the stairs and turned to face us, her hands spread wide. “There is
so much we have to learn from them! From you… You know what I mean.
From beings of the Otherworld! To use them to satiate carnal
desires… well, that’s just a waste of a good resource. And so I
will point out to Meredith in the morning!”

Adam raised his eyebrows and covertly made a
note in his notebook.

“Good luck with that. Meredith doesn’t seem
to be the sort of man who would be overly welcoming to
suggestions,” I said.

“He’s not, but sometimes you can get through
to him,” she replied, slowly ascending the stairs.

“How long have you been married?”

“Nearly six months now.” She must have
sensed my surprise, because she tossed her head and laughed. “I
know, we argue like an old married couple, don’t we? That’s
Meredith’s stubbornness for you.”

“Men can be that way. He seemed awfully
tight with Spider, though. Spider’s mentioned him to me a few
times, but I had no idea that they had such grandiose plans. I
wonder if Meredith felt threatened by Spider in any way.”

“Threatened?” She paused at the top of the
stairs. “Which room might I have, Adam?”

“You can rest in mine. It’s down the hall,
last door on the right.”

“Meredith wasn’t threatened by anyone,” she
continued, not looking left or right as she marched down the
hallway. “He got along very well with your husband. I admit there
was difficulty in Meredith getting funding from him for the
electronic devices; Spider seemed to think they were a waste of
money until Meredith showed him a prototype of the diffuser. He
gave Meredith the money quick enough after that.”

We stopped in front of the door to Adam’s
bedroom. “Do you mean that you knew your husband had a machine that
would destroy spirits? And you did nothing about it?”

Her laughter spilled out into the hallway.
“Oh, Karma! I did everything but threaten to throttle the man to
get him to stop working on them, but it did no good. To be
perfectly honest, I never thought it would actually work! I would
have destroyed the horrible machine if I thought it would do what
it was intended to do, but even if I did know for a fact it was
truly dangerous, destroying it would have been difficult. Meredith
always kept them locked away at the bank.”

“
Them?”
Adam asked, opening the
door.

“I beg your pardon? Oh, what a lovely room.
I imagine it has a glorious view during the day. Is that furniture
original to the house?”

“Er…” Adam looked slightly discombobulated
as he glanced around the bedroom. “Some of it. You mentioned your
husband was working on electronic devices? Plural?”

She patted a large chest that sat at the end
of the four-poster bed. “This is lovely, just lovely. Such a
beautiful chest. Is it mahogany?”

Adam frowned. “Yes. Can you answer my
question?”

“I’m sorry; I’m just overwhelmed by this
lovely room. Did I say ‘them?’ I’m so tired, I’m not really
thinking straight. Meredith only made the one diffuser, but there
were several versions of it before he got it right, so I always
think of it as more than one device.”

“He said he had another one,” I said slowly,
watching as she flitted around the room admiring the Victorian
furniture. “Do you think that might have been the cause for an
argument between Spider and him?”

“You’d have to ask Meredith, but I doubt it.
From what I saw, they were on very good terms. Certainly nothing
that would indicate Meredith would kill Spider.”

“You didn’t see either of them after they
left the living room?” Adam asked when she opened a window and
breathed in the night air with exaggerated movements.

“I so love the smell of the sea. No, I
didn’t see them. I stayed in the living room until everyone
returned, and we decided to have the séance.”

“Everyone?” I asked, confused. “Who left the
room while I was upstairs?”

“Oh, goodness… let me see…” She sat on the
bed to take off her shoes. “Spider and Meredith went downstairs to
look for a door, as you know. Obsidian Angel said she had to use
the bathroom. Matthew said he was going to check on you, but he
didn’t come back until just before you came downstairs. And Adam
went off to…” She paused, turning to him. “Why
did
you
leave?”

“I had to check on Nita and the boys. Did
you see anyone go down to the basement?”

“I’m afraid I wasn’t looking,” she said,
scooting back on the bed. “I took a few moments to do some
communing with the house. Would you mind if I rested now? I feel
drained, absolutely drained, by the murder and Meredith and
everything.”

“Of course. Rest well,” Adam said, holding
the door open for me.

“Oh… Karma, do you have a few seconds?” she
asked.

“Sure. I’ll just be a minute, Adam.”

He inclined his head, gave Savannah a quick,
curious look, and left.

“I’m sorry to disturb you after everything
that’s happened, but I thought it would be best to do it now,”
Savannah said, twisting a bit of her dress between her hands.

“Do what now?” Why was she suddenly so
uncomfortable?

She got off the bed and took a hesitant step
toward me. “I was wondering… I thought you might not like… Oh, this
is so very awkward.”

“I don’t know what’s awkward, but you
needn’t feel concerned about discussing something unpleasant with
me. I’m stronger than I look. Is it something about Spider?”

“Yes. No. That is, I was wondering what your
plans are for this house.” The words tumbled over one another as
she sat on the end of the bed, one hand touching her amulet bag. “I
know it’s too soon after your husband’s death to have any specific
plans, but I thought I would mention that I am very, very
interested in the house, and if the unpleasant circumstances of
Spider’s death have tainted the house in any way, I would be only
too happy to buy it from you.”

“Stop,” I said, holding up a hand to
interrupt her.

“It’s Meredith, isn’t it?” she asked,
shaking her head. “You needn’t worry: I have no intentions of
allowing him to destroy this lovely old home by turning it into a
brothel. If you sell me the house, I can protect it from him. I
will continue to allow it to be a sanctuary to homeless entities
and beings. It will become the apex of paranormal study in the
Pacific Northwest. I will conduct—”

“No, seriously, you must stop,” I
interrupted again. “You misunderstand my objections. Legally this
house may have been Spider’s, and thus will probably pass to me,
but I don’t consider it morally his or mine. This is Adam’s
home.”

“But surely…” She frowned. “Surely I am
remembering correctly what I read about poltergeists: they are
guardians of the home, not actual owners?”