mission magic 01 - the incubus job (7 page)

My chest swelled. I liked my ghosts but figured they tended to follow me because they needed my magic and they helped me for the same reason, sort of like paying rent. It was a little bit stunning to find out they actually cared about me. Respected me, even.

“Don’t hurt her,” I warned Law. I wouldn’t be able to forgive him. I couldn’t extend my shields around her. She was too far away.

“You have two ghosts,” he said slowly.

“Eighteen, actually,” I corrected.

That jolted him. He gave me a hard look and then faced Edna again.

“Mal takes stupid risks,” he told Edna. “She shouldn’t be working alone either. She needs someone to watch her back.”

“She has us.”

Another flutter and the stairwell filled with ghosts. All but Tabitha, who remained safely inside my shields, thank goodness.

Law didn’t move. He wasn’t afraid. He had no need to be. His shields would protect him from any attacks, physical or otherwise, and he could exterminate them all in a matter of seconds. I watched him carefully. At the least sign he was going to attack them, I’d have to stop him. My stomach dropped. I wasn’t sure I could.

“We had quite an audience back there,” he said to me drily, scanning the faces.

I blushed hot, despite myself. Law glanced at me and chuckled softly.

“If you’re going to keep them around, I’d appreciate it if they gave us a little privacy in the future.” He glanced at the crowd of ghosts again. “Where’s the little girl who threw the fit in the lobby?”

My blush went nova. Oh hell. I know Tabitha was really a lot older than thirteen. She’d been with me for four years, and I don’t know how long she’d been dead before that. All the same, I thought of me and Law in the office and was mortified.

“She’s keeping a low profile,” I said in a strangled voice.

He eyed me and the corners of his mouth curved as if he knew exactly what I was thinking and was enjoying it immensely.

He turned his attention back to the ghosts. “Thanks for looking out after her,” he said to them.

“She’s important,” someone said. Ramona, I think. She almost never talked. She’d come to me only about a year ago. A college student who’d been gunned down in a gang shooting in Chicago. A mutter of agreement ran through the collected dead.

“She’s special,” Tag said. One of just three male ghosts I had. He’d joined my little band a couple of years ago. I’d been on a job in Arizona, helping out on a police investigation that Ivan had an interest in. Tag had run away from home and was on his way to L.A. to break into the movies. On the way he’d been kidnapped and forced into prostitution. I’d been the one to take down the operation, but he’d been sick and half starved and had died in my arms.

The memory made my eyes burn. He’d weighed hardly anything and was covered with bruises. He’d cried and begged me never to tell his mom what had happened to him. I never did. I made up a story about how he’d died saving another boy from drowning in the river.

“That she is,” Law agreed solemnly, his hand tightening on mine.

“You know I’m standing right here,” I said.

“We won’t leave her,” Edna said determinedly, and everyone else nodded and murmured agreement.

“I agree,” Law said. “She needs you.”

I pulled my hand from his. “Don’t do that. Don’t patronize.” Anger made me launch down the steps again at full speed, my bare feet slapping on the cool concrete.

Law overtook me in just a few steps but didn’t try to stop me. The ghosts coasted behind.

“I’m not patronizing,” he said.

“Then you’re lying,” I snapped.

He grabbed my arm, twisting me around to face him. “I’m not lying. I thank God you’ve had at least someone in your corner when you go out on your jobs. That Costa Rica job with the lich and his cat? I knew you’d left the States. A month went by, and I started to get worried, but no one had heard from you. Not a peep. Another month and I was climbing walls. There was no trace of you anywhere. Three months after that, you show up again, and I had no idea what happened, except this.”

He ran his fingers over my back. His mouth twisted down bitterly. “I knew you’d gone through a shit storm, and I couldn’t do a damned thing. You sure as hell didn’t want me there. Why didn’t you call me when it got bad?”

I’d thought about it, in those few moments when I wasn’t delirious with fever. Even with the help of the ghosts, the lich magic had penetrated deep, and I almost didn’t make it. I still fall into random fevers with some interesting and scary side effects. Law had been in my head for most of my illness, especially when I didn’t think I was going to recover. I’d wanted to call him more times than I can count, if only to say good-bye, but I hadn’t been sure he’d pick up, and if he did, I wasn’t sure he wouldn’t tell me to go to hell or, worse, yawn and tell me to deal with it on my own. In the end I was too chicken to find out.

“It had been a long time,” I said. “I thought you were probably done with me, the way I left.”

“You should have called me.”

“I can’t call you whenever I stub my toe,” I said, starting down the stairs again. “I have to rely on myself.”

“And a crowd of ghosts,” he said with a snarl.

“The ghosts have been an unexpected blessing,” I said, glancing back at them. “Besides, even though you seem to think I’m an incompetent idiot, I’m pretty damned good at what I do.”

He grabbed my arm. “I don’t think you’re an incompetent idiot.”

“Oh really? Then what was all that business a minute ago about how I’m stupid and take risks?”

“I said you take stupid risks, not that you’re stupid or incompetent.”

“Newsflash. I do what’s necessary. I’m fucking good at my job. I don’t need anybody’s protection, and I sure as hell don’t need you treating me like I’m five years old.”

He sucked a breath in between clenched teeth. “If the shoe fits.” He touched the scar on my face.

I jerked away. “You know what? You can go to hell. I knew nothing good could come of seeing you again.”

He flinched. His hand clenched. “You know that I’m not going to let you just walk away from me this time, don’t you?”

I shrugged and started walking again, giving him a sideways glance. He looked as if he could rip apart steel with his teeth. “I said I wasn’t going to run. Though I don’t see how talking is going to change anything.”

“You’re wrong.”

“Of course I am,” I muttered. Along with stupid and reckless. I decided to change the subject. “How did the incubus die?”

“Messily.”

“Care to elaborate?”

“No.”

So much for conversation. I fell silent. I began to wonder who had killed the incubus and why. I didn’t know much of anything about him beyond what he looked like and that he liked fast cars and luxury, so I didn’t know if someone out of his own past had come for him or if it was about the box. If it were the latter, I wondered if the killer had taken it. If so, I’d be out the door sooner rather than later and whether or not Law and I had our little talk.

“Any evidence as to who might have done it?” I asked.

“You’ll see,” Law said cryptically.

I refused to be put off. “Did LeeAnne find the body?”

“It’s what she came to tell me in your suite, yes.”

That didn’t answer the question, but it wasn’t important. “She must be going nuts. First a poltergeist, now a murder. Whatever will the guests think?”

“She’s handling it. She’d good at her job.”

Why it bothered me that he defended her, I don’t know. I believed that he hadn’t slept with her, not that it was any of my business. Even if I wanted it to be. The bad thing was that I still ached for him. I hadn’t realized how much I’d missed him in my life. It wasn’t just the sex; it wasn’t even mostly the sex. I missed his voice and the way he argued with me and the way he always thought he was right, even when he wasn’t. A tiny part of me even liked the way he worried about me and tried to protect me, whether I needed it or not. And I liked the way he talked to the ghosts.

“I have a question for you,” Law said. “Why did the little girl ghost get so worked up that you had to push her loose?”

Another reason I loved Law. He was smart and he had a knack for pulling puzzles apart and making sense of them. Unfortunately he had aimed that sharp intellect at me.

“She thought coming to Effrayant was too dangerous.”

“Why?”

We’d never lied to each other, and I wasn’t starting now. That didn’t mean I was eager to tell him. When I didn’t answer, he stopped and faced me. We’d reached the bottom of the stairwell. I stood just above him on the last step so I was practically nose to nose with him.

“Just what aren’t you telling me, Mallory?” he asked, his eyes accusing. “What scares a poltergeist so bad, she goes on a rampage in a very public place?”

Chapter 4

Part of me wanted to blink innocently and say, “Why, sir, whatever do you mean?” in one of those syrupy Southern accents from
Gone with the Wind.
Part of me wanted to keep living.

“I don’t know what set her off.”

Law’s eyes narrowed in disbelief. “Bullshit.”

I shrugged. I don’t know that I’d have believed it either. “It’s true. This whole job, she’s been upset, but when we got to Effrayant, she lost her marbles. Didn’t want to come in.”

“Of course you didn’t listen,” he said.

“I had a job to do. Anyhow, would you rather I had?” I asked, arching my brows.

His mouth twisted. “Honestly? There’s not a lot I wouldn’t do to get you to walk through the doors.”

“And yet you did nothing to get me here.” It bothered me. Sure, I’d walked out without a word, but if he cared for me so much, why hadn’t he at least picked up the phone?

“You made your choice. I was giving you the space you wanted.”

“Very chivalrous of you.”

He looked as if he wanted to punch something.

“Has the girl ghost told you anything more?” He asked, changing the subject.

“Tabitha.”

He looked confused.

I sighed, folding my arms. “Her name is Tabitha.”

“It would be useful to know what else she can tell us.”

I shrugged. “She doesn’t talk to me. Never has.”

“You can make her talk.” It sounded more like a question than an actual suggestion.

I shook my head. “Not unless my health is at stake.”

His eyes narrowed. I could almost see him trying to fit pieces of the puzzle together. I was the puzzle. “Like in the lobby.”

“Like that.”

“What if she knows something and not telling you is a threat to your life?” Again, he sounded curious rather than accusing.

“I guess I’ll cross that bridge when I come to it. Hopefully she wouldn’t let me walk into that kind of trouble without a warning.”

I felt her flutter around me and push tight against me, almost like a hug. A thin wave of warmth ran over my skin. A ghost hug. Maybe a promise.

“Can I talk to her?”

Surprise made my mouth fall open, and Law gave me a knife-edged smile.

“Maybe I’m not the man you thought I was.”

Maybe not.

“You can try.”

“Let’s see the murder scene first. That might encourage her.”

Law put his finger on the lockpad across from the bottom of the stairs, and an oversized door slid wide. He went through first, looking up and down the corridor before he stepped out. I followed. I fed more magic into my shields as the hairs on the back of my neck prickled. I could feel the agony and fear of the incubus’s death lingering. Foreboding closed around my throat. This one was bad—really bad.

A thought struck me and I stumbled. Oh, dear lord! I hoped to hell he couldn’t become a ghost. The last thing I needed was an incubus to join my little tribe.

Law caught my arm to steady me then let me go. He had the predatory look he got when he was on the job—focused and deadly. I needed to get my head there.

Taking a breath, I forced myself to stop thinking about me and Law. I concentrated on my senses. It was quiet in this corridor. I thought we were underground in the basement, though I wasn’t sure. I could hear the muted throb of machinery running, and I felt the shuffling softness of the air conditioning across my skin. The carpet was thick green with a wide maroon border. Simple and luxurious at the same time.

Something was off. I couldn’t place it right away, but I slowed, trying to trace what I was sensing. Then I realized. It was the faintest whiff of death and magic. Law glanced at me to be sure I was catching it. He’d been here already, so this was nothing new to him.

At the end of the corridor, we went through a set of polished steel doors. The stench was strong here, and my group of ghosts condensed, one by one winking out as they returned to me. I felt Tabitha trembling.

We went down a flight of steps and through another set of doors into a wide space. Law flicked a switch on the wall, and I squinted at the sudden brilliance.

The expanse was like a giant hotel room, only it had a variety of beds in odd sizes, shapes, and heights. The ceiling was at least two stories high. All the furniture was grouped in little enclaves around the walls, and again, all of it was weirdly sized and shaped. The smell was almost overpowering here. It wasn’t just smell, I realized; it was tangible fear and a sickening sort of ecstasy. The feeling slicked over my skin and hair. I wanted to rub it away. It took most of my self-control not to try.

“What is this place?” I asked.

“Guest quarters for those who need unusual accommodations.”

I nodded, noticing a massive pool of water at the far end of the room. Trees grew along the edge in concrete trenches of dirt, and jungle greenery clustered around it. Lilies floated in the middle. I wondered how else Effrayant catered to the wealthy of the supernatural community.

“Was the incubus staying down here? Is anyone staying down here?” I asked, not seeing any evidence of current habitation.

“No to both questions. I don’t suppose you have any idea why the incubus might have been down here? How long had you been following him?”

“Almost three weeks. He stole the box in Texas. I picked up his trail in Vegas. He accidentally killed one of his lovers there.”