Ghost of a Chance (19 page)

“That’s been the traditional role throughout
history, yes. But times have changed in the last century. Many
polters now own the properties that were tended by the generations
of their families. At some point, the original family who owned
this house must have sold it to Adam.”

She was silent for a minute. “With all due
respect to Adam, don’t you think that perhaps he’s best suited for
the former role, rather than the latter? The house is in a terrible
state of disrepair; it desperately needs an owner who will care for
it.”

“He does have two jobs,” I said, feeling
rather defensive on his behalf. “And his wards seem to be very
happy and comfortable. I don’t think there’re any signs of neglect
on his part. Is that all you wanted to talk to me about?”

“Er… yes.” She didn’t look happy at my
abrupt dismissal of her attempt to buy the house, but I was not at
all comfortable discussing it with her. The house wasn’t really
mine, and I had no intention of doing anything with it but giving
the deed back to Adam.

“Get some rest. I think we can all use
it.”

Adam was waiting for me downstairs. “What
was all that about, or am I prying?”

I looked up into his pale blue eyes and
wondered what lengths he’d go to in order to protect his home and
wards. “She wanted to buy your house.”

“
What?”

I nodded. “I told her I didn’t consider it
mine to sell.”

“Ah. I see. Er… thank you.” Two faint spots
of color touched his cheeks. “I meant to talk to you about that,
but thought I’d wait until after we’re through with this mess.”

“There’s nothing to talk about,” I told him,
smiling to myself over his obvious embarrassment. Adam was clearly
one of those men who felt awkward being beholden to someone. “The
house is yours. Just as soon as the probate is worked out, I’ll
return the deed to you.”

“That’s very generous of you.” He looked
downright uncomfortable. I decided to end his misery.

“What do you think about what she said?”

“She’s nuts if she thinks she’s going to get
this house—”

“No, not that. Earlier.”

“Ah. Hmm. Interesting, that.”

I worried my lower lip as I ran over again
the brief interview with her. “She’s not telling us
everything.”

“Agreed. That bit about the devices, for
instance. What are you willing to bet that Meredith made something
else that she doesn’t want us to know about?”

“Another ghost-killing machine?”

“Perhaps. Or maybe something worse.”

“I can’t imagine what could be worse than
that horrible diffuser,” I answered, anger a bitter taste in my
mouth.

“I can.”

“Adam…” I stopped him before he could enter
the living room. “This is incredibly awkward. There’s no way I can
say this without ruffling your feathers, so I’m just going to say
it. Amanita didn’t mention you checking on her.”

His pale blue eyes held mine with apparent
frankness. “That’s correct.”

“You’re really not making this easy for me,
are you? If you weren’t checking on the spirits and Amanita, then
what were you doing?”

“I’d rather not say.” He started to walk
away.

“Adam!”

“What?” He continued to walk with
infuriating indifference.

“You know what! Is that it? That’s all the
explanation you’re giving me?”

He spun around and marched over to me until
our toes touched, his gaze boring into my head. “Do you believe I
murdered your husband?”

“I think people who don’t know you might
find the facts rather damning. You certainly had a reason to want
Spider dead. You had the ability, as well, with your polter
swiftness and strength-enhancing law-enforcement training. And now
you admit you were off doing something on your own when Spider was
killed.”

He leaned closer to me, until I could see
little flecks of silver in his pale blue eyes. “Do you think I
murdered your husband?”

I shook my head, my shoulders slumping with
weariness and capitulation. “You’re too…” I struggled to find a
word to describe him, and finally settled on “honorable.” “You’re
just too honorable to do something so reprehensible.”

“Then it doesn’t matter what I was doing,
does it?”

As he strode away, I followed slowly,
wishing I had a better grasp on the way polter minds worked.

“What the hell is going on here?” Adam
bellowed as I entered the room.

“Imp races,” my father answered from where
he squatted on the floor. Several imps, prompted by my father as he
held out bits of croissant, ran around what appeared to be a
makeshift racetrack. “Can you believe Murdered Vortex hasn’t seen
an imp race? I’ve got five bucks on the one wearing the pink.”

“It’s
not
Murdered Vortex. It was
never
Murdered Vortex. I decided Morbent Vixen was too
boring, so my name is now Misericordia.” Pixie eyed us all as if
daring us to challenge her latest choice of name.

“You’ve never seen an imp race?” Now, that
was curious. Imp races were standard fare in most polter kids’
lives.

“There will be no imp racing in my house!”
Adam yelled, glaring at me. “Those are your pests; you take care of
them!”

“I told you they were housebroken.”

“I don’t care. I don’t want them running
around, getting into trouble.”

“Yeah, you wouldn’t want anyone doing
something unauthorized, like murdering someone,” Pixie said in a
dry voice.

Adam bent a frown upon her. “I could do with
less lip from you.”

“Whatever.” She stood up and stretched.
“Since you ruined all the fun, I gotta go to the can.”

“They’re really not harmful imps,” I told
Adam. “They’re Australian. Very domesticated, not at all like the
common European variety.”

“If you don’t take care of them, I will,” he
warned.

“Imp Nazi,” my father muttered as he helped
me round up the imps and replace them into their box.

“I imagine he’s just as tired as the rest of
us.”

Pixie had donated her scarf for the imps to
curl up on. I tucked them away with her scarf before returning to
my spot at the table and flipping open my notebook. I raised my
eyebrows at Adam. “Who’s next?”

“Your father and the girl are the only ones
left. We’ll take her as soon as she comes back from the
bathroom.”

I chewed on the end of my pen. It wasn’t
surprising that he had excluded his wards from the list of possible
suspects. I had a feeling the only reason we had talked to Amanita
was that we’d caught her in the basement. “What about Jules and
Tony?”

“What about them?”

“Don’t we interview them, as well? We did
Amanita.”

Adam sat down across from me, and for a
moment, weariness showed in his face. I knew he was tired—I
certainly was, given the events of the evening and the lateness of
the hour—but polters had deep reserves of strength that should have
bolstered him. “Jules and Tony aren’t suspects.”

I hesitated, knowing I had to tread
carefully. “They aren’t to you, but can you say without a shred of
doubt that someone at the watch might not wonder if there wasn’t
some nepotism displayed on your part if everyone isn’t treated to
the same interview process?”

That brought him up short. He snorted but
seemed to consider it.

“The truth has to be faced. They can
interact in our world, they were alone at the time of the murder,
and they had good cause to fear Spider and the diffuser after
Sergei was killed, I’m sorry, Adam. That’s means, opportunity, and
motive.”

“That means nothing. You and I had all three
as well, and we both agree we didn’t do it.”

“I think it would be wise if we formally
eliminated everyone.”

Adam sighed. “Fine, but if you upset them,
there’ll be hell to pay. You have no idea what horrible sorts of
meals they can produce when they’re not happy.”

“I’ll use kid gloves, I promise,” I said,
looking through the door at the empty hallway and staircase. “What
on earth can she be doing?”

“If she’s anything like my daughter was,
she’ll be in there for hours.”

I sat back, intrigued by this unexpected
glimpse into Adam’s private life. “I didn’t realize you had a
daughter. The League files didn’t say you’d been married.”

“I haven’t, and the League doesn’t always
know everything about people. Take, for instance, the incident
concerning you. There’s remarkably little detail about it—just a
note that you were charged with the extirpation of a six-year-old
child, for which the penalty was wergeld.”

“You’re trying to distract me from the
subject of your daughter,” I said with a little smile.

“And you’re trying to avoid talking about
your past. It seems we both have things we’d like to keep
private.”

My smile faded. “True enough. I have an
admittedly annoying curiosity about people. I’m sorry if I stepped
on your toes. I was just surprised to hear you had a daughter.”

“She’s in college. I don’t see her often.”
He was silent for a moment, then leaned forward, his breath
brushing my face as he asked, “Why did you kill a six-year-old
girl?”

I glanced at my father. He was chatting with
Jules and Tony, who had come into the room to pick up coffee cups
and empty plates. I didn’t want to talk about what had happened so
many years before, but somehow, I felt that Adam might understand
what I’d gone through.

The familiar sensations of guilt and
loathing rose at the memory. My hands cramped as I twisted the lace
tablecloth tight between my fingers. I made a point of flattening
my palms against my thighs. “It was an accident. I was only six
myself, which is why the League gave me a punishment of wergeld
rather than banishment. They said I wasn’t cognizant enough to know
what I was doing.”

Adam nodded, saying nothing. I couldn’t
stand sitting still, so I grabbed a couple of tissues and started
dusting a knickknack shelf that sat behind Adam. “They were right
about one thing: I didn’t know what I was doing. Tami was my
friend. She had a cruel streak, but I was a bit of a loner, being
only half polter in a polter society. I didn’t know I had the power
to banish anyone to the Akasha, let alone destroy them. My parents
didn’t suspect anything. No one did, least of all me.”

My voice dribbled to a stop. I took a deep
breath. “One day we were playing around with Tami’s father’s
scrying bowl. She thought it would be fun to use it to light a
fire, only she wanted a live target, and decided her mother’s cat
was suitable for the experiment. I was horrified. I loved animals,
and I wanted no part of the torture of a cat. I tried to get her to
stop, but she caught the cat and hauled it and the bowl
outside.”

The tissues were dirty. I tossed them into a
waste-basket, moving it a few feet to the side. Strong emotions
always made me feel antsy, as if my skin was itching, leaving me
with the need to be doing something physical to work off the excess
energy. Adam must have known well those feelings, for he said
nothing as I flitted back and forth tidying things up, rearranging
the various bottles on the sideboard.

“I tried to take the bowl away from her, but
she just teased me that I wasn’t quick enough or strong enough to
keep up with her. She ran off with the cat and bowl, with me in hot
pursuit. I fell at one point, skinning both knees badly, but even
that didn’t stop me. When I reached her, she had the cat tied down
and was trying to position the bowl to catch the sunlight.”

The emotions I had felt thirty-odd years
before were still as fresh in my mind as when I had originally felt
them. “Anger, pain, horror… they mingled together into one terrible
moment that erupted when I managed to snatch the scrying bowl away
from Tami, my emotions focused into the bowl until they exploded
outward, knocking me back. When I shook the stars from my head and
sat up, it was to find myself alone with the cat, Tami’s terrified
howl still echoing in my ears.”

Slowly I turned to Adam. His face was blank.
I knew he was trying to encourage me to talk, much as if I was a
suspect he was interviewing. I moved a few inches to the side of
the now burnt lamp. “At first, everyone thought my inadvertent
eruption of power had banished her. Her parents got permission from
the League to search the Akasha. They looked for her for three days
before they gave up.”

If I closed my eyes, I could still see the
scene in my head: my father, newly separated from my mother, drawn
home by the tragedy. The two of them sitting side by side on our
old green couch. Me hiding in the coat closet, eavesdropping as
Tami’s parents tearfully told mine that there had been no sign she
had ever been to the Akasha. The look of horror on my mother’s face
as she realized that her daughter had destroyed another living
being… I turned away from Adam, the pain and shame of that moment
still too much to share with anyone.

“Everyone was very nice to me. They said I
wasn’t at fault; I was too young to know what I was doing, too
young to know how to harness my powers. But they worried that what
could happen once, could happen again, that I’d get angry and out
of control, and another innocent person would suffer. So the
wergeld was bound to me, and I spent the next thirteen years being
tutored in the art of transmortis anomaly extermination.”

“That’s harsh for a child,” he said softly,
his gaze holding mine. “Thank you for telling me, Karma. The
experience you went through was traumatic, but it’s clear that it
tempered you into a champion for those weaker than you, be it a cat
or a spirit. It also validates my impression that you are incapable
of truly harming anyone.”

I thought of the beings I’d cleaned and said
nothing.

“Houston, we have a problem.”

The living room was empty of everyone but
Adam when I returned to it. He looked up from making notes. “We
do?”