The Trouble with Ghosts (Here Witchy Witchy Book 3) Read online

  I tried to protest, but a drawer flew out of the counter and slammed into my side, almost knocking me off my feet. I stumbled as I ran towards the exit, trusting Nicks words. Furniture slid in front of me. I flung myself over the couch as it cut me off, only to find a bookshelf falling away from the wall and crashing to the ground. I dodged to the side, the wood shattering right next to my feet, and I dove out the front door.

  The havoc inside quieted down the moment my feet crossed the threshold. I turned around on the porch and stared into the living room. Whatever Nick had felt that I hadn’t manifested as soon as that door had crashed down. I wasn’t an expert in ghosts, but I felt that maybe we were dealing with a poltergeist and it had something against me.

  I rubbed my side where the drawer had hit and knew that there would be a bruise there. My heart pounded in my chest as I tried to breathe past the adrenaline that pulsed through me. I hadn’t been running in a few days, but a quick sprint like that made it feel like I hadn’t been running in a year. I closed my eyes and focused on forcing the air in and out of my lungs as I leaned against the car.

  Nick came out a few minutes later. “You’re not welcome in the house.”

  “No shit.” I raised a brow. “But why me and not you?”

  Nick toed the ground and didn’t meet my gaze.

  I put all his odd comments together. “You can see them!” I shoved away from the car. “You can see the ghost!”

  “Ghosts, actually, and at least one of them is a poltergeist.” He motioned to me. “One who doesn’t like you.”

  Poltergeists were able to interact with the physical world, where a typical ghost couldn’t. “Why? I’m here to help them.”

  “They know you’re in contact with the vampires. He doesn’t like you.”

  He? “So it’s not the girl from the article?” I stepped closer to him. “I would have thought it was her.”

  “No, she’s around, but she’s much quieter, I think this guy and the others scare her.”

  “Like, ghost bullies?” I shook my head. “What about the runes?”

  “They were keeping this guy in. I wasn’t welcome in the room, so I couldn’t tell you much other than that. Even after he was free, the magic in the room pushed against me and I thought it best I not force it.”

  The words ‘in case it exploded’ hung in the air. “Interesting, I walked in without an issue.”

  “They knew you’d be coming then.” He shook his head. “Now you can’t go in the house, because of him.”

  If the Cult knew I was coming they would set the runes to accept me, but they probably weren’t expecting Nick. “Because we set him free.”

  “No, because the door crumbled and the trigger rune was on that.” Nick growled. “I think they were trying to lure you in.”

  I laughed. “Remember a few months ago you called me paranoid?”

  “It was when you drew the gun on me.” He smirked. “I could go in and ask the ghost.”

  “By all means, go talk to the ghosty, and while you’re at it, ask him about how he was killed.” I smiled sweetly and opened the door to the car. “I’ll wait here and Google some things on my phone.”

  He rolled his eyes and went back towards the house. I sat with my legs sticking out of the car and pulled my phone out. There wasn’t much more the Internet was going to tell me, but it was at least going to give me something to do. I looked up when he walked into the house. I gave it a moment to see if he came running out screaming. Nothing happened.

  I looked down at the screen of my phone, scrolling through social media to distract myself from why a ghost may or may not like me. Had I known the victim? Had Levi? How did he know that I was involved with the vampire world? There were no answers for me, but maybe Nick was having some luck.

  “Abigail…” The voice whispered across the wind.

  Dust and dirt kicked up with the wind, pelting my pants. Had I been wearing shorts, it might have hurt. My name came again with the gust and I stood up out of the car. I wasn’t like Nick, I didn’t have his ability to talk to ghosts or see them, but I was smart enough to follow if something felt right. The wind pushed me away from the house and car towards the field behind.

  My steps crushed over the dead plants that covered the ground. A small gray mound, just a bit bigger than my palm, stuck out of the dirt. I bent down and my heart pounded. I knew that shape, I knew the marks and cracks on it despite a chunk missing from the side. I unburied part of it with my hand, being gentle as I dusted dirt off with my fingertips.

  I held my breath as I uncovered the eye sockets and nose. The corpse was old enough to be clean of skin which made me wonder if we had more unsolved murders connected to this house.

  “Abby?” Nick’s voice called over the property.

  “Out back.” I yelled and continued to slowly work the skull from the ground. “We need a forensic team out here.”

  I heard his feet come up behind me and slow. “What did you find?”

  “A skull at the very least.” I glanced at him. “Make the call?”

  He nodded and pulled out his phone.

  “What did you learn from our ghosts?” I blew some dirt away from the bone and frowned. I didn’t know much about bone structure and I’d have to wait until someone from the lab or the medical examiner got back to me to even find out if the person was male or female.

  Nick didn’t answer me, but I heard him telling someone to get the forensic team out here again. I pulled out my phone and shot Detective Mason a quick text on what was going on.

  “I didn’t find out much, he didn’t know the person who murdered him, he doesn’t remember anything from that night. As it tends to go with the undead. He has no idea who it was from the Cult that sealed him up.” He shoved his hands in his pockets. “Violent deaths scar people in the afterworld.”

  I stood up and dusted my hands off. “Well, I wouldn’t know, my only undead encounters are with zombies and vampires.”

  We both went quiet at the thought of zombies and I forced a chuckle out. “It’s a good thing that’s over with, huh?”

  “Yeah, but we’ve moved from zombies to ghosts. I don’t know how much improvement that actually is.” He shoved his hands in his pockets.

  “When were you going to tell me about having the sixth sense?” I met his green gaze.

  He shook his head. “You know, we all have at least one ability we’re not proud of or don’t want people to know about.”

  I thought about protesting, but he was right. Mine was the elemental ability, bad things tended to happen to those who could control elements. “Well, I’m glad it’ll come in handy in this case.”

  By the time forensics had shown up, Nick and I had several theories about the skull, ranging from the obscure to the logical.

  “Abby, leave it to you to find a skull.” Jason, the medical examiner for our area, laughed and I spun around to greet him.

  “Not a full skeleton, just a skull.” We clasped hands and shook, he bowed his head to Nick.

  “Agent Averin.”

  “Jason, always a pleasure to see you.”

  I stepped away from the skull. “We’ll leave your team to work.” I looked at my phone for the time. “We’re going to head back into town, I want to do some more research on this house. Let us know what you find.”

  “It could be a couple days. We’ll have to canvas the area to see if there are any more parts.” Jason’s eyes swept over the property. “Any idea what my team might find out here?”

  “None.” I didn’t want to bring up the possibility of vampire victims. I turned to go back to Nick’s car. He said a few quick words to Jason before running to catch up to me.

  “What else do you want to look into about this house?”

  “I’m hoping I can find that basement. I also have some witchy business to take care of tonight.” I got in the car and leaned back in the passenger seat. Would forensics find ten skulls out there to match to our victims? The woman’s body had be
en recovered years ago, but that didn’t mean the vampire didn’t have other victims that hadn’t been discovered.

  “Are you going to go talk to Levi tonight as well?” Nick slammed his door shut.

  “I’ll probably call him. That’s a long drive for me, and if he thinks it’s important he’ll come to me.” I buckled myself in and started flipping through the folder again. “Like I said, he may not have any information on it.”

  “You don’t know how long he’s been in the territory? I find it hard to believe that you never asked.” He glanced at me as he pulled out of the driveway.

  I shook my head. “He’s told me before, but that doesn’t mean I remember. It was when I was young and could hardly see past Friday night. It never really seemed that important to me.” I shrugged.

  “You know less about the man who raised you than he knows about everyone in this damn city. That should alarm you.” Nick gunned the engine and merged onto the highway.

  I closed my eyes as the momentum in the car shifted. Nick’s words were mere assumptions, I doubted that Levi kept tabs on everyone in the city. All the vampires, yes, but not the humans and other creatures. He did have some sort of alliance with the wolves, but again, I didn’t think that meant he kept track of them. “Not much alarms me anymore, Nick. This last year has been kind of hellish.”

  “No kidding. All you’ve done since I’ve gotten here is attract trouble.” He laughed.

  I opened my eyes and glanced at him. “Maybe you’ve been attracting the trouble.”

  “Doubt it, I think it was just a matter of time.” He navigated through the traffic. “What do you make of the skull?”

  The sudden shift in conversation killed the lighter mood. “I don’t know. I’m hoping it belongs to one of our thumbs and we don’t have either another unrelated murder to solve or another vampire victim.”

  “You’d think the vampire would have known to bury the person deeper.”

  “Land shifts, erosion wears down the ground, they could have been six feet under and everything worked them back up to the surface. We’ll know more when forensics can tell us how old the bones are and if they find anymore.” I looked at the photo of the vampire victim. “Until then, we focus on one crime at a time.”

  “Which one do we have more information on?”

  That was a good question. “I think it’s about even. We have a name for the vampire victim, and her body was recovered. It’ll be an old file, but we might be able to find more information on her. The other one we have thumbs, but no identification yet. The regular systems showed nothing and PIB systems are backlogged thanks to the computer crash. And we have a ghost who’s pissed off, but can’t tell us anything.”

  “Sounds like we’re in a bad mystery novel.”

  “No kidding.” I closed the file. “I’ll let you know if Jason calls me with anything tonight.”

  “Why won’t he call me?”

  I smirked. “He likes me better.”

  “Well, if the first time I’d met you I’d been wearing a fancy dress, I’d like you better too.”

  “Not my fault I was on a date when more bodies were discovered.” I shook my head. “And if you recall, I ended the night barefooted and in scrubs, dealing with blood-starved vampires.”

  “And caught without your gun.” Nick clicked his tongue. “Not a very good way to be caught, Agent A.”

  “And you, Agent N? Maybe you should go out more.”

  “I went out to get groceries one night… you saw how that ended.” There was still a joke to his voice, but we both knew it had been a long night.

  “You’re right, might be better to start staying home.” I glanced at my phone for the time. What I needed to do today was something I was dreading. I needed to check on the wards I had placed on Simon’s bar. Since he’d taken up the alpha spot in the pack, I knew he wouldn’t be there and one of his wolves would be watching over it. But it’d be the first time I’d be stepping foot on pack ground since Simon and I broke up, and since I’d gotten the alpha killed.

  We took the rest of the drive in silence. I didn’t bother going inside the office, I was going to go to the bar and then see if I could find some old case files on the vampire victim. I climbed into my car and took a deep breath before heading out.

  I walked into the bar and let out a sigh of relief to find it empty. My wards hid the bar from human sight so that it was available to supernatural clientele only. The act of using magic for that purpose was slightly illegal, but it wasn’t something I was going to push. I understood what it was like to want a place where I could be myself. “Hello?”

  “Welcome to…” The words died on the woman’s lips as she came from the back room and saw me. “Who are you, witch?”

  Wasn’t exactly the greeting I was expecting, but I kept my face blank. “I’m Abigail Collins, I’m the witch Simon hired to put the wards on the bar. It’s been a year since I’ve last checked them. I wanted to make sure everything was good.”

  “Hey Travis, there’s a witch here saying Simon hired her.” She called over her shoulder, her eyes still glued to me. I stood there trying to look harmless, which was hard when I was tall and had my gun on my hip. I’d luckily had the foresight to hide my PIB badge before walking in. “I just need to walk around to make sure—“

  “No.” A gruff voice came from the back room and I tried to decide if I was going to leave it at that or not. I could have turned around and went right back to my day job, but I couldn’t in good conscience not check on the wards. If something was to happen and the bar was caught hiding, it could be trouble for the pack.

  “No?” I asked and put my hands on my hips. “My wards have been protecting this bar for over three years.”

  The woman moved out of the way and the wolf came from behind her and filled the doorway. I hadn’t seen him before. His bleached white hair and brown eyes would have been something I remembered, not to mention the sheer size of him. It was rare I met someone that made me feel short, but he towered over me with his solid muscular frame. I pressed my lips together as I met his gaze. “You must be Simon’s assistant manager; he’d mentioned he was leaving you in charge for a bit.”

  “I’m not only his assistant manager, but second in the pack.” He crossed his arms and the veins in his arms bulged.

  I raised a brow. “I don’t remember seeing you at the fight against Mina.” Mina was a witch that had tried to take over the pack. It hadn’t worked out well for her.

  “You were too busy playing with the witch and getting our alpha killed.” He took another step towards me. “You aren’t welcome here.”

  “My wards protect this place. You kick me out, I take them down and you’re exposed. Good luck finding another witch willing to do the wards and has the connections that I do.” I spat the words out as my heart jumped. I didn’t want him much closer to me than he was. I could take him down with magic, but if he moved too fast he could take me out with just brute force before I could mutter a spell.

  “I have another witch coming to replace them.”

  I couldn’t tell if he was bluffing or not. Many witches would walk away from the job. I didn’t because I liked to help the pack, normally in return they’d help me if need be. Of course, they were also usually a little friendlier toward me as well. “With Simon’s approval?” I felt like Simon would have given me a heads up, he knew I would have been stopping by.

  “I don’t need his approval. Now leave, or I’ll tear you apart limb from limb.” He snarled and his eyes flashed to the yellow of his wolf’s for a moment.

  I put a hand on the butt of my gun. “I don’t take kindly to threats, wolf. I was doing the pack a favor, if my services are no longer needed, fine. But I’d rather it came from the alpha, not his hot-headed second.”

  He rushed me and slammed me into the wall, one hand pinned my throat against the wood paneling and the other wrapped around my wrist. He pressed his entire body against me to keep me from wriggling out of his grip. “My
word is just as good as Simon’s.” He snarled in my face. “You set foot in here again, I will make good on my threat. Simon’s ex or not.”

  His nails bit into my skin and fed my anger. I tried to take a breath but found my air restricted. I did the only thing I could think to do. I flatted my palm against the wall and felt for my magic of the wards. I pulled on it and called it back to me. I felt the final snap of it hit me and smirked at the brute in front of me. “Let go of me and I’ll leave.”

  He dropped me and I rubbed my neck and glanced up at him. “You didn’t feel it because you’re a werewolf, but I called my magic back. This place is no longer protected by my wards. Good luck.” I spun on my heels and left. My heart still hammered in my chest. A dull ache settled in my wrist as I unlocked my car. I debated on texting Simon to ask him what the hell was up with his crazy second, but I let it go. He made it clear he would contact me when he was able to. He had his hands full with the pack and didn’t need me or a relationship to distract him. I started the car and leaned my head against the seat. Maybe it was me who wanted the distraction.

  I parked in front of the PIB records office and got out. Glancing at my watch, I made sure that I’d have time to get in and check the files out. I’d called ahead and the receptionist said that she’d have them pulled for me. I walked in and an older woman with gold rimmed glasses looked up at me the moment the door opened.

  “You must be Abigail.” She smiled at me and shuffled some papers around and then pulled out a folder. “I just need your ID to sign you in. I can’t let you leave the premises with these files since it’s a cold case.”

  “That’s fine, what I’m looking for won’t take long.” I handed her my badge and opened the folder while she signed me in. “I’m glad you guys still had these.” I looked at the faded pictures, I was paying more attention to background than anything else. The woman’s body was photographed in a room that I hadn’t seen in the house. Concrete walls and a tiny window told me that it was a basement.