Ghost of a Chance (9 page)

“You made a deal to clean my house?” Adam
asked, anger flaring to life in his beautiful light blue eyes. “How
much is he paying you?”

“He’s giving me a divorce,” I said, ignoring
the sarcastic tone. “You said you looked into my background. If so,
you’ll know I’m licensed by the League to perform exterminations
when a property’s owner requests it, so there’s no legal grounds
for you— either in the mundane world or the Otherworld—to stop the
extermination from being carried out. What I am offering you is the
best compromise possible: I will relocate your charges to the
location of your desire. Your spirits and the unicorn will be safe,
Spider will never know the difference, and you can get on with your
life.”

“No,” Adam said, shaking his head. “I won’t
allow it. They belong at Walsh House, just as I do. None of us will
be leaving.”

Outside the house, the sounds of voices and
car doors closing could be heard.

“You have about ten seconds to change your
mind,” I warned, nodding toward the window. “It sounds like the
ghost hunters are here early, and that man shouting is my
husband.”

“No one is leaving the house,” Adam
repeated, giving me a curiously unreadable look.

A man rushed through the door, but it wasn’t
who I was expecting. “Karma! Tell me you haven’t done anything
rash! Tell me it’s not too late to reason with you!”

I cast my eyes heavenward for a moment,
praying yet again for patience. “Dad, I told you not to come here.
I may be drugged up to the eyeballs, but I know I told you not to
come.”

“
Dad?”
A familiar blond woman stepped
into the house behind my father. She glanced from him to me, her
eyes growing huge with wonder and delight. “This is your father?
He… he has three arms!”

Dad gave her a haughty look. “Haven’t you
ever seen a polter before?”

I thought Savannah was going to pass out
from excitement. She positively danced in place. “Goddess above!
You’re a poltergeist? A real poltergeist? But you look so
normal!”

“My father is a real, honest-to-goodness
poltergeist, yes,” I said, rubbing my forehead. Despite the potent
migraine medicines, pain was beginning to blossom again. Not only
that, the faint buzzing noise had started up again. I wondered
vaguely if Adam had a faulty electrical connection somewhere.
“Complete with three arms, the inability to sit down for more than
five minutes, and an annoying tendency to ignore everything I
say.”

“Not everything, honey. Just the foolish
parts.”

“Then you’re a poltergeist, too? Oh,
merciful goddess!” Savannah seemed almost to clap her hands with
joy. “I never knew that poltergeists could manifest themselves to
look human, but I’m thrilled, thrilled to death! Oh, this is
perfect! Two poltergeists for our meeting!”

“Try four,” I said wearily. Pixie had
instinctively grabbed for her cape when people had rushed into the
room, but there was little reason to keep her heritage a secret
when everyone else’s was out in the open.

I thought Savannah’s eyes were going to bug
out when she saw Pixie. “This is the greatest day of my life,” she
whispered, a look of utter delight on her face. “She has four arms!
But you only have two, and your father has three? Is it a family
trait?”

Pixie rolled her eyes, turned up the volume
on her iPod, and, pulling out a book, ignored everyone.

“Um… no. It has to do with the age of the
polter. It’s kind of complicated. My father can explain it better
than I can.”

“I would very much appreciate an
explanation. I’d love to interview you both. But…” Savannah looked
around the room. Sergei had disappeared completely at their
entrance. “Where is the fourth poltergeist?”

I smiled and tipped my head toward Adam. He
shot me a look. I shot it right back at him. If I was going to be
the sacrificial lamb for the ghost-hunting group, he was going to
be the mint jelly. “I should point out I’m only half polter. My
mother is mortal.”

Savannah transferred her gawk from the
scowling Adam to me. “Four poltergeists! This is unprecedented! I
can’t wait to tell the others; they should be here soon. I came a
little early to get things set up, but I never in my wildest dreams
expected to find poltergeists here! I do hope you’ll participate in
the evening’s events.”

“There will be no events, not tonight or any
other night,” a voice said from the doorway. Spider stepped into
the room. “This house is scheduled to be cleaned tonight. Your
group will have to find somewhere else to meet.”

Adam growled something very rude and lunged
at Spider, who sidestepped nimbly away, holding up a sheaf of
stapled papers. “Need I remind you who is owner here,
Dirgesinger?”

“You bastard—”

A faint, familiar sound reached my ears. I
frowned, turning my head to try to catch it.

A tall, thin man stepped between Adam and
Spider just as Adam launched himself forward. “Now, now, there’s no
need for violence, Adam.”

“Meredith,” Adam snarled, his teeth bared.
“How much did it take to buy your favors? How much did it take to
betray me?”

The noise grew. It was high-pitched, like
the sound of distant gulls… only much more ominous.

Spider caught sight of Pixie. His eyebrows
rose; a lascivious look was in his eyes. “You took in a polter? My,
my, if you’d only told me earlier… I would have been happy to make
the young lady…
welcome
.”

My skin crawled at the tone of his voice.
Pixie evidently heard him, because she stuffed her book and her
iPod into her bag and moved over to stand behind me.

“Goodness. What’s going on here?” Savannah
leaned close to ask, her eyes on the three men standing in the
center of the room.

My father flitted around the edge of the
room, clearly so wound up that he wouldn’t be able to stand still.
I pinched the bridge of my nose, praying the pain in my head would
lessen enough to let me cope with the situation quickly spinning
out of control.

The noise outside increased. My father
listened for a moment, then turned to me with a question in his
eyes.

I sighed and braced myself for the
onslaught. “Adam is the owner of the house. Or he was until Spider
bought it. I gather that the other man is Meredith Bane. He’s the
crooked banker who helped Spider steal Adam’s house while he was
away.”

Savannah stiffened, her gaze sharp.
“Meredith happens to be my husband. He is not crooked!”

“Your husband? Oy. I’m sorry.”

“Meredith!” She dismissed me with a cool nod
and swept over to her husband, trailing a long gauze scarf that
hung down her back. “There is much discord in the house. It will
disturb the spirits greatly.”

The middle-aged, slightly balding man leaned
his head down to that of his wife, evidently cooing reassuring
words in her ear.

“That’s all well and fine,” she said,
pointing at Spider, “but that man said the house is going to be
cleaned. That’s a euphemism for exorcism! The house is of no use to
us whatsoever if the spirits are driven from it!”

“No one is going to exorcise anything,” Adam
said loudly. “Isn’t that right, Karma?”

Everyone turned to look at me. I avoided
meeting Spider’s gaze. “I have agreed to Spider’s request for me to
remove any entities in the house. I will honor that agreement.”

A wave of yellow rolled through the front
door, the high-pitched
eek-eek
causing everyone to turn and
stare as a herd of six imps—dirty, smelling to high heaven, and
clearly near exhaustion—limped over to me. The group leader stopped
in front of me, hiccupped, and, with a dramatic flair that would
have done a diva proud, staggered two steps before fainting onto my
foot.

I cleared my throat and carefully pushed the
unconscious imp to the side. “I’ll throw in imp removal for no
extra charge.”

“Goddess above. Can it be? Meredith, do you
see?”

“Yes,” he said, a nonplussed look on his
face as he watched the other five imps hug my ankle before
collapsing. “They look like little yellow rodents.”

“With six arms! Merciful heaven, they have
six arms! Do you know what they are?”

“Imps,” I answered, sighing as I gathered up
the mostly comatose creatures. “Very determined ones at that. I
have no idea how they found me, but they should be confined or
they’ll be in our way.”

Adam didn’t look any too pleased. “You
brought imps with you to my house?”

“No. I moved these guys to a farm. They
refuse to leave me. Somehow, I’m imprinted on them as their
mother.” I gestured with one of the limp imps. “Try as I might, I
just can’t seem to get rid of the little buggers.”

“I’ll get a box,” Adam said, heading for a
nearby closet.

“Will you please stick to the matter at hand
and stop waving those nasty little yellow rats around!” Spider
moved into my field of vision, his dark eyes narrowed with
suspicion. “You told me you’d clean the house.”

“And I intend to.”

“Karma, honey, don’t do it! You have a
higher authority to answer to!” my father shouted.

Spider shot him a look of loathing before
turning back to me. “You said you’d exterminate the spirits.”

“I said I would remove them from the house,
and I will do so. Thank you, Adam. Do you have a cord I can tie the
box shut with? They’ll get out otherwise.”

“There’s some in the drawer.” He nodded
toward a sideboard.

I cut off a long piece of cord and wrapped
it carefully around the box after making sure there were enough
gaps in the cardboard to allow airflow. The last thing I needed was
for the imps to add to my troubles.

“You can’t send the spirits away,” Savannah
pleaded, coming forward to take my hands after I had deposited the
imps underneath the sideboard. “You just can’t! They belong
here.”

“It is awfully mean, Karma,” Pixie said with
a look around the room. “This house is pretty cool.”

“Pixie—”

“Obsidian Angel!”

“Seen and not heard,” I told her. She
harrumphed and threw herself down onto the sofa.

“That’s right, listen to the nice blond
lady,” my father said, nodding. “She knows what she’s talking
about.”

Savannah turned to her husband. “Meredith,
tell her that she can’t do it. This house is a gold mine of
spirits! It would be a tragedy to lose them simply because that man
wants them gone!”

“You’re not going to clean the house?”
Spider asked me, his eyes glittering dangerously.

I thought carefully about what I was going
to say. It was tricky dealing with Spider at any time—doubly so
when he was in a mood. “The spirits will be removed.”

“Relocated,” my dad said, sighing in relief
as he slumped onto a nearby armchair. “She means to relocate them
rather than exterminate them. I live in fear she’ll do otherwise,
but thank the gods she has finally figured out what is right.”

“I had a feeling you would try something
like this,” Spider said, reaching into his jacket pocket.

For one brief, horrifying moment, I thought
he was going to pull out a gun and shoot me.

What he did was much, much worse. The object
he held in his hand was small, made of black plastic, bearing a
gauge on the top. It looked like a slim-line version of an
electronic tape measure or stud finder. But as he pressed a couple
of buttons on it, pain exploded in my head, sending me to my
knees.

“Karma? What is it?” my father asked,
hurrying to me. Red agony washed over me, so great it almost
blinded me, driving every thought from my head but ceaseless,
unending anguish.

Next to Spider, a figure appeared, writhing
in pain. I didn’t know how Spider was able to summon Sergei, but I
could see Sergei was suffering as much as—if not more than—I
was.

“Stop it,” I tried to shriek at my husband,
but all that came out of my mouth was a howl. “Make him stop
it.”

Adam took a step forward as Spider pointed
the little black torture device at Sergei.

“Meredith!” Savannah gasped. “Look! Ghosts!
Honest-to-goddess ghosts! Where’s my camera?”

“Let’s see if this really works as
advertised,” Spider drawled, pressing a button. Sergei’s being
exploded into a million pieces, his scream of torment hanging on
the air long seconds after he had been destroyed.

The silence that followed was filled with
horror. I was so stunned I forgot the pain for a moment to try to
grasp the fact that Spider had destroyed Sergei right before my
eyes.

“Excellent work,” Spider said, turning to
Meredith. “You were right about it being extremely efficient. We
won’t need Karma at all to clean any ghosts we don’t want. Your
little device will take care of that problem once and for all.”

I lunged at Spider, intending to do god
knows what to him, but my legs refused to cooperate. I stumbled
over my father, arms and legs tangling with his. Pixie tried to
help me up.

Savannah yelled at Meredith, hitting him
with a beaded bag while accusing him of ruining everything.

“Bunch of noise over nothing,” Spider
grunted, turning the machine on my father. “Let’s just see if the
polter setting works; then I can clean whatever else is hiding in
the house.”

“No!” I shrieked, trying to kick my feet
free so I could crawl over to Spider and stop him before he
destroyed anyone else.

“There will be no more!” Adam’s voice was so
loud it literally rattled the window. A couple of apports, shiny
white pebbles that were warm to the touch, dropped from the
ceiling.

“What on earth—” Savannah gasped, picking up
one of the pebbles.

“It’s an apport,” my dad explained to her as
I staggered to my feet, one arm around Pixie both for support and
to protect her. “In times of stress, we tend to manifest them. It’s
a little embarrassing, actually. You shouldn’t make a big deal
about it.”