Ghost of a Chance (25 page)

“I’m not going to torture a confession out
of him, if that’s what you’re going to suggest next.” Adam held up
one of the jade green apports, rubbing his thumb on it.

“Rats. And here I was hoping.”

“Where did Savannah find these apports, do
you know?” he asked, showing me the stone.

“The green ones?” I frowned, sorting through
my memories until I got to the one of the discovery of Spider’s
body. Adam’s eyes were icy bright as I met his gaze solidly. “I’m
pretty sure she found them in the basement. Is it important?”

His face was an unmoving mask as he gave the
apport back. “I’m not sure.”

“We’ll have to ask her, then. And speaking
of asking… Adam, I hate to do this, but…” I tried to think of a way
to phrase the question that wouldn’t offend him. I opted for the
straightforward approach. “This is probably none of my business,
but how did you end up with this house?”

“No, it’s not any of your business. Nor is
it pertinent.”

If the closed look on his face was anything
to go by, I’d clearly stepped on his toes. But I had a feeling that
the house was important in some manner. “I’m sorry for prying, but
I’ve been wondering about it ever since Savannah spoke up. I
thought perhaps there was something in the history of the house
that would indicate why she would want it so badly as to try to get
me to sell it to her a few hours after Spider’s death.”

His eyes turned positively glacial. “Why
wouldn’t she want it? It’s a wonderful house. It’s very much in
demand; I’m always receiving offers from people who want it.”

“I’m not saying it isn’t wonderful. I just
wondered what happened to the family who owned it. Did their line
just die off? Or did they ask you to take over ownership?”

“There’s nothing in the history of the house
to interest anyone.” His tone was final, but I wasn’t one to let a
little thing like that stop me.

“Then there will be no harm in you telling
me how you got it.”

“You’re damned persistent, aren’t you?” His
jaw worked a few times before he spoke again. “The Walsh family
used to own the house, as you might have guessed from its name. It
was passed down via a Walsh daughter to the McConnaughts around the
1920s. All of that family but a son died in a car accident. The son
was an obnoxious, self-centered little prick who deluded himself
into thinking he had a great career as an actor waiting. I offered
to buy the house from him, but he… well, as I said, he was a prick.
He and I didn’t get along, and he was determined to sell the house
to someone outside of the family who wanted to raze it and
subdivide. I saw to it that he sold the house to me instead.”

“ ‘Saw to it’ being a euphemism for what?
You roughed him up? Bribed him? Something worse?” I had no problem
seeing Adam as a staunch defender of the house but couldn’t quite
picture him doing anything truly reprehensible. He was just too
honorable for that.

He cleared his throat, a look of agonizing
discomfort clearly evident on his face. “I used… er… a little
Otherworld pressure. Unfortunately, his mental state wasn’t quite
what I had guessed it was, and he went insane for a little
bit.”

My jaw dropped. “You drove the man insane to
get the house?”

“Just for a little bit!” Righteous
indignation shined in his eyes. “It’s not as if he was the most
mentally stable person in the world to begin with! I just didn’t
know that at the time, or I wouldn’t have put quite so much
pressure on him. Regardless, he got the money he wanted, and after
a few years in an asylum, he went back to Hollywood.”

“What happened to him?” I couldn’t help
asking.

Adam looked away. “I don’t know.”

“Uh-huh. Look, I may not have inherited my
father’s ability to read emotions, but I can read basic body
language, and you’re looking guilty as hell right now. What
happened to the guy?”

“I’m beginning to regret ever saying
anything,” he answered, tight-lipped with exasperation. “He died a
few years later of a drug or alcohol overdose. I don’t remember
which. The point that you seem to be missing is that there was
nothing untoward about my taking over the house, and there was
nothing in its past to work up any suspicion.”

“No, I admit, there doesn’t seem to be
anything there,” I agreed.

He picked up my notebook. “If you’re done
poking your nose into trivial matters, we need to—”

“There you two are! Come quick. Something’s
happened to Meredith,” my father said, racing into the room, then
zipping past us and out the other side before I could so much as
blink.

“Oh lord, what now?” Adam groaned, running
after Dad. I dumped the apports back into the case and tossed it
onto the table before hurrying into the hall and up the stairs.
Adam and Dad had used the back staircase and were already in
Meredith’s room by the time I got there.

Pixie and Amanita stood outside the
room.

“What’s going on?” I asked.

“It’s not my fault!” Pixie said quickly, her
frown firmly in place. “All I did was peek in to see what the noise
was all about. I
found
him like that! I didn’t do
anything
!”

It was with no little sense of foreboding
that I stepped around her and Amanita to look into Meredith’s room.
Adam and my father were blocking the view, but both moved aside as
I entered. My father had one arm around Savannah, who had a hand
over her mouth, her eyes huge with horror as she looked at her
husband.

At first glance, there didn’t appear to be
anything awry with Meredith. He stood in the middle of the room
with no wounds, nothing apparently amiss. But as I took another
step into the room, a glimmer of green shined briefly in the air
before shimmering away to nothing. Meredith glared at us all,
strangely silent and unmoving.

I pursed my lips and looked at Adam. “OK,
who drew the wards on him?”

“That is the question, isn’t it?”

We both looked at my father.

“Don’t look at me; I was with the boys,
having a little chat about the good old days.”

“The boys?” I didn’t see either Jules or
Tony present. “Where are they?”

“We’re here, just a little low on energy.”
Tony’s disembodied voice came from the direction of the closet.

“Do you want us to materialize?” Jules
asked.

“No, that’s fine.” I raised an eyebrow at
Adam. “I take it the binding ward is solid?”

“So far as I can tell, yes. Which means it
was drawn by someone who knew what they were doing.”

“It wasn’t me!” Pixie declared from the
doorway. “I don’t even know how to draw a binding ward.”

“Hmm,” I said, walking around Meredith, as
if that would give me an answer.

Adam looked at Pixie curiously. “You don’t
know how to draw a binding ward?”

She cast a distraught glance at me.

“It’s a long story. I’ll tell you later,” I
said to Adam in Poltern. “Just drop it for now, if you don’t
mind.”

“I’m not sure… a
ward
? I don’t think
I’ve ever heard…” Savannah’s voice trailed off as her hands
gestured helpless confusion.

“A ward is a sort of spell that is drawn by
the practitioner. Most are benevolent, like luck, but there are
also a number of protection wards that can be used to bind someone
to a place, or silence them, or keep them from going through a door
or window, that sort of thing.”

“All I know is a protection one,” Pixie
said, her posture still defensive.

“No one is accusing you of doing it,” I said
smoothly, leaning in to Meredith to get a closer look at the wards.
Like most of the others of their kind, these two looked like
intricate Celtic knots, doubling over in a complicated confusion of
twisted lines. “I’m no expert on wards, but these two appear to be
very efficient. I don’t suppose anyone admits to having drawn
them?”

Five pairs of eyes looked at me. No one
spoke.

I sighed and turned back to Adam. “I guess
we’re going to have to do this the hard way.”

“Looks like it. Tony and Jules are out. They
can’t draw wards.”

I nodded.

“Why is that?” Savannah asked.

“They’re spirits. Spirits can’t draw wards.
Nor can demons or anyone bound to a demon lord, but since we’re
assuming no one here is the servant of a demon lord, a Follower, or
a demon, those points are moot.” I rubbed the back of my neck and
glanced at Pixie. “You want to tell us why you decided to peek in
on Meredith?”

Her shoulders twitched. “I was going up to
the room you kept me in earlier to get my bag, and I heard some
thumping noises. I thought maybe he might have found a way out of
the house, or was having a fit, or maybe was hanging himself, so I
opened the door to see.”

I looked around the room. There were a
bureau, the bed, a small bench at the foot of the bed, a
nightstand, and nothing else other than the door leading to the
bathroom.

“Bathroom,” Adam said.

We all crammed into the doorway to peer
inside the bathroom. The door to the hallway was slightly ajar, but
the bathroom was empty. Which came as no surprise, since everyone
in the house was in Meredith’s room.

Adam closed the door, turning to Pixie. “Was
that the sound you heard?”

She scrunched up her face. “Maybe. I don’t
really remember what it sounded like. Just that there was an odd
noise.”

Adam’s frosty blue gaze touched me for a
moment. “Someone here is lying.”

I stood up a bit straighter and lifted my
chin at him.

“Oooh, this is so exciting.” Jules’ whisper
came from directly behind me. “Just like one of those murder
mysteries on BBC America. Who killed the evil Realtor? Who poisoned
the chief suspect? Who warded the same suspect so he couldn’t move…
or talk?”

Who indeed? So many secrets had been
uncovered that evening: my past, which wasn’t really a secret, at
least not to people in the Akashic League; the plans Spider had had
for the house, which he’d kept from all but Meredith; Pixie’s
origins, which left her especially vulnerable; Meredith’s
“poisoning” by my father; the truth of how Adam had acquired the
house; and whatever it was Savannah was hiding.

“That’s it,” Adam said, giving everyone a
piercing look. “I’ve had it. It’s slightly less than two hours
before the seal expires. We’re going to get to the bottom of this
before then if it kills me. And I’m a very hard man to kill.
Everyone downstairs to the living room.”

I nibbled my lower lip, indulging in a bit
of speculation about Adam. Were my instincts about him wrong?

“What do we do about him?” I asked, nodding
at Meredith as Amanita and Pixie headed out the door.

Adam marched over to the still man. “We’ll
take him with us. Matthew, get his feet.”

“This is
so
Agatha Christie,” Tony
said as Adam and my father carried Meredith out of the room.
“Gathering all the suspects together for the final denouement.
Throwing suspicion on everyone present until, finally, the real
murderer is unmasked. Followed by a brief, but in the end futile,
attempt at escape by the same. So thrilling. It’s giving me goose
bumps!”

“Should we serve coffee, do you think?”
Jules asked as the two of them wisped past me. “Or tea? What’s
appropriate at a denouement? WWHPD?”

“WWHPD?”

“What would Hercule Poirot do?”

Their voices drifted out of the room. I
stood for a minute by myself, trying to put the last few pieces of
the puzzle together. One thing stood out: someone here was a whole
lot more powerful than they were letting on.

“Oh dear, Meredith’s tipped over again. Can
someone… Thank you.”

When I entered the living room, my father
and Adam were propping Meredith up against the wall. The only
things on him that moved were his eyes, which resembled those of an
indignant elderly pug as they glared in turn at everyone in the
room.

The imps, which had followed me when I had
released them from their confinement in the downstairs bathroom,
were a bit pruny from playing in the tub so long, but fortunately
also sleepy. I herded them to their box, where they settled down
for a nap on Pixie’s scarf.

“I don’t want that back, you know,” she told
me, peering over my shoulder as I closed the lid of the box. “It’ll
have imp juice all over it.”

“Imps don’t make juice unless you use a
blender,” my father said.

“Ew!” Pixie squealed, making a face. I made
one at my father—one that told him to knock off the smart-ass
comments. He rolled his eyes in response, wandering around behind
the couch where Savannah sat.

“Everyone sit down, please,” Adam ordered,
picking up the small round table we’d used during our interviews,
and placing it in the center of the room.

Tony and Jules were just barely visible as
Tony sat in an overstuffed chair with Jules seated on the arm.
Pixie claimed the window seat, wrapping all four arms around her
knees. Amanita pulled a footstool over to a corner and perched
unhappily on it. I sat next to Savannah.

Adam placed on the table the glasses case
containing the apports Savannah had picked up, the mangled remains
of the box Spider had used to destroy Sergei, and the ipecac
bottle.

“What’s all that stuff?” Pixie asked.

“Exhibits.”

Tony gave a happy little sigh. “Exhibits!
This is so Perry Mason!”

“I thought it was all very Agatha Christie,”
Jules said to him.

“That too. Although Perry Mason was so very…
mmm… rugged and manly!”

“Hercule Poirot didn’t need to be rugged or
manly. He was sophisticated. He had the little gray cells.”

“I’ll take Perry’s savvy legal sense over
Hercule’s sophisticated gray cells any day of the week.”

“Shhh, he’s starting.”

“Matthew?” Adam cocked an inquisitive
eyebrow at my father.