The Ghost Exterminator (14 page)

“Forget it, Wyatt. Nothing was going to happen between us anyway, right? Why should it matter whether it’s because of little ghosties or your
image
?”

“Jo…”

“This is when it’s best to just stop talking, Wyatt.”

“Fine.” He held up his hands to call for a truce. “So now that we’ve ruled out TV, beer, sex, and talking, what do you want to do?”

Jo knew exactly what she wanted to do. She also knew it was a bad idea. She knew that Karma would have her ass if she ever found out. And she knew that she would never be able to get to sleep until she did.

“Well, hell. It’s almost Halloween. Let’s go check out a haunted house.”

Chapter Twenty-One: Haunt Me, Baby, One More Time

The Victorian looked exactly as it had when she first laid eyes on it two days ago.
My God, was that only two days?
The moonlight cast a faintly bluish tinge across everything it touched, but the house glowed distinctly green under the heavy moon. This time, the house wasn’t just breathing, it was practically panting. There were well over two hundred ghosts in there now.

“Time for some house cleaning,” Jo muttered to herself as Wyatt rounded the Bentley’s hood and came to stand beside her.

“So, what are we going to do?”

“
We
aren’t going to do anything.
You
are going to hang out here while I go in and check things out.”

“If you wanted to leave me behind, you shouldn’t have let me drive. I’m going in with you.”

“My Harley is still parked at your office,” Jo grumbled. “I didn’t have much of a choice but to let you drive when you wouldn’t let me have the keys to your damn car.”

“Yeah, I’m a heartless prick. But I believe we’ve covered that already. Shall we go in?”

“You’re a masochist, you know that? Don’t you remember what happened to you last time you went in there?”

“I fell on you. I can think of worse ways to end the day.” He waggled his eyebrows lecherously and she smacked him.

Jo tried to hang onto her earlier irritation. She reminded herself that no man who wasn’t willing to be seen in public with her could be attractive. No matter how engaging he might seem to be.

She planted her hands on her hips. “What about the time before that? You want to end up even more haunted than you are? Bodies aren’t meant to hold more than one spirit, Wyatt.”

“What happened to the ‘house will suck the ghosts right out of me’ theory?”

“You have the self-preservation instincts of a cliff-diving lemming, you know that?”

“Hey, I’ll be better this time. When the ghost exterminator says jump, I ask how high.”

“Just jump. I don’t think there will be time for questions if it gets hairy.” She studied him, looking for chinks in his armor, but the bastard was even more stubborn than she was. “Fine, you can come. Just don’t do anything stupid.” Stupid, like getting emotionally involved with a man who didn’t think she was good enough to be seen at the supermarket with, let alone take home to mother.

Wyatt saluted and took her arm, a true gentleman. Asshole. They strolled up the walk like a couple on a Sunday promenade instead of a pair of clueless ghost hunters on a Saturday night. The house creaked and rattled. Wind rustled through the eaves, even though, beyond the house, the night was perfectly still.

Jo knew it was dumb to come back to the scene of the crime when they still had no idea what the hell was causing all of the anomalies, but she hadn’t been able to stay away. Somewhere inside this house were the clues she needed to get the ghosts out of Wyatt and save him from possibly having his soul ripped out of his body by overzealous ghosts. Not to mention finding the source behind all of this and getting her mojo back, once and for all.

Wyatt, for all his control freak ways, had become remarkably easy-going about the whole ghost phenomenon, content to follow her along and do what she said. It was that, possibly more than any other factor, which had made her desperate to come here tonight.

He trusted her to find a solution. The man who hadn’t believed in ghosts two days ago was putting all of his faith in her. She still wasn’t entirely convinced that he really believed in ghosts, but he believed that she would fix it. Wyatt wasn’t overtly worried. He had confidence in her. He may not have noticed he had confidence in the freaky ghost girl, but Jo noticed, and it scared the shit out of her. For the first time since she was in grade school, she was out of her depth with ghosts. Just when she needed her spooky ghost knowledge the most.

They stepped up onto the front porch and Wyatt stumbled, his grip on her arm tightening as he tried to find his balance.

“Wyatt?”

He had gone pale and inside him the glowing marbles that were Teddy and Angelica zipped around his body in a chaotic whirl.

“That’s it. I’m taking you back to the car.”

But when she grabbed his shoulders to turn him, Wyatt shook her off. “No, I’m good,” he protested, straightening. He shook his head as if trying to clear it and gave her a pathetic excuse for a smile. “I was just a little disoriented for a second. Let’s keep going.”

“That is such an obvious lie,” Jo snapped. “You are not fine and we are not moving one more step until you tell me what you felt.”

Wyatt eyed her, but apparently realized he wasn’t getting around her stubbornness this time. “I heard the voice again,” he admitted. “The whispery one.”

“Could you tell what it was saying?” Jo asked, urgency gripping her as she clutched his arm. “Or where it was coming from?”

Wyatt nodded toward the house. “The kitchen, maybe? But there were still no real words.”

Jo turned to face the front door head-on. “I am getting sick and tired of this house messing with us,” she growled. “I think it’s time to show this hunk of plywood what we’re made of.”

“What are we made of?”

“Well, what
I’m
made of at least. You sure you won’t wait here?”

“I’m sure. Let’s do this,” he declared firmly then ruined it by muttering, “Whatever it is that we’re doing.”

Wyatt unlocked the front door and Jo marched through.

I am more badass than anything in here,
she told herself as she stalked toward the kitchen. Ghosts whipped around her, chilled breezes and eerie moans marking their passing as they swirled through the house. Jo didn’t so much as pause. “Ready or not, here I come,” she growled to the Big Bad waiting in the kitchen.

She felt the pulse of energy, as if there was too much to be contained within the room, when she was still halfway across the dining room.

“There are more than last time,” she muttered. Wyatt didn’t respond, though he stayed close on her heels as they approached the swinging door to the kitchen, which was swinging merrily back and forth, caught in the ghostly breeze. Jo caught the edge of the door, stopping its movement, and Wyatt handed her a chair to prop it open all the way.

The pulse of energy was stronger here, humming against her senses. Jo closed her eyes and listened to the hum, straining to hear beneath the static of so many ghosts crammed together in one place.

There it was, barely audible, a soft, sibilant voice whispering words too fast and slurred to make out. The words of a spell.

“Shit,” Jo muttered. “It
is
magic.” Even knowing it was the most likely explanation, Jo had been hoping for another cause. Just about
any
other cause.

“Magic?” Wyatt whispered, keeping his voice low so as not to disturb her concentration. Jo wasn’t actually concentrating at the moment, so she didn’t bother pointing out how distracting his attempt not to distract her was.

“There’s some kind of spell at work here. That’s the voice you keep hearing. I’m betting you only hear it because the ghosts inside you are so strongly affected by it. Just like these ghosts are.” She gestured toward the kitchen where a dense stew of green specters spun. “Take a few steps back. I’m going to go in there and release as many of them as I can.”

“Release?” he asked, already stepping back as she requested.

“Transcend.” Jo waved a hand. “The whole white light thing. Just, if you see a bright light, don’t go into it, okay?”

“No problem.”

Hopefully, it wouldn’t be.

Jo stepped into the kitchen and was immediately swallowed up by sensation. She tried to sort through the myriad energies, tried to see through the energy haze to identify a spot where the ghostly presences were more thickly concentrated, but they never seemed to stop moving and her senses were overwhelmed by the presence of so many. Even as she blocked out the individual imprints of the ghosts—the names and voices—she was still swamped by the force of their residual presence.

This is a bad idea.

Jo squashed the creeping doubts. She couldn’t doubt herself now. She needed concentration and confidence. The latter had never been a problem for her before, but she’d never questioned her mojo before either.

She closed her eyes, focused, and shoved back, raising her hands and pushing them away from her, the physical gesture helping her to clear the mental space around her.

Jo opened her eyes and searched the room for a thin spot she could open into a portal, simultaneously scanning for any sign of witchcraft bending the ghosts to a foreign will. There was no sign of either, just a constantly swirling vortex of ghost energy.

Jo stepped farther into the room, until she was standing dead center. It was quieter here, like the eye of a storm. She looked down, searching the tiles beneath her feet for a pattern—a pentagram or some other occult symbol laid into the ground, but there was nothing.

The ghosts were encroaching, so she pushed out again, clearing the space around her and scanned again for a thin spot in the air. She almost missed it, because this time it was directly above her. When she took a step back, the air seemed to thicken, so, frowning, she stood directly beneath her portal. She reached, yanked, and it popped open.

Just like the last time, the ghosts shied back away from it. And just like last time, Jo frowned at the uncharacteristic behavior.

She didn’t have the patience for delicacy tonight. Jo gritted her teeth and shoved as many ghosts toward the portal as she could. As soon as they brushed its edges, they vanished through it, but as soon as she had cleared one corner of the room, it filled again as ghosts were sucked into the empty space from other parts of the house.

She hurriedly shoved more through, trying to empty the steadily refilling room, but it was like trying to move a desert one handful of sand at a time.

Jo felt like she had been working for ages, focusing intently on forcing the ghosts to the portal, but in reality it couldn’t have been anything more than a few seconds, when the other presence in the house woke up.

The first yank back against the ghosts was so fast and unexpected Jo was thrown to the ground, slammed into the hard tile before she realized what was happening. She kept the portal open by instinct alone, but with the break in her focus, she lost the ability to block the ghosts and the sudden cacophony of hundreds of children’s voices nearly deafened her.

Jo flinched and raised her hands up in defensive reflex to cover her ears, but the noise wasn’t coming from outside. It echoed inside her brain. She struggled to block them, fighting for a second of calm, but there were too many and they were too forceful.

She grabbed at the nearest voice, the plaintive wail of a small child, and yanked that one presence toward the portal. The child zipped through into the light, but Jo couldn’t thrill in the small victory. She was drowning in voices. She couldn’t hope to put them through one by one, especially not if she had to fight that other force along the way.

As if called by her thoughts, the other presence crashed against her, battering her through the ghosts that connected them. The voice, the whispering rush of the spell, grew deafening, blending with the screams of the ghosts and pounding in her brain. Jo writhed on the floor. She couldn’t find the source and fight back. It pushed at her from the inside out, simultaneously pressing in on her from all sides.

“Jo!”

Wyatt’s hands found her in the middle of the maelstrom. He swung her up against his chest, his body curled protectively over hers as he ran from the room. Jo let the portal snap shut and clung to him, but the ghostly hysteria that battered her didn’t ease until he stumbled and fell to his knees on the front lawn, still holding her cradled against him.

“Are you okay?”

“I’m fine.” Her voice didn’t come out right, so she tried again, putting more strength behind the words. “I’m fine now.”

“You’re shaking,” he murmured, tucking her even more tightly against him as he shoved to his feet and continued toward the relative safety of the car.

Only then did Jo notice the shudders wracking her body. She tried to breathe, tried to calm the adrenaline flood rushing through her veins, but all she could do was hang onto Wyatt. “I’m okay,” she tried to reassure him, but even her voice shook and it was hard to talk through chattering teeth. “You got me out.”

Wyatt Haines, anal CEO, had saved her. His very insensitivity to ghosts had protected him from the battering she had taken. Her mojo had failed her, but Wyatt had been there. Thank God.

She looked at her unexpected savior and saw the glimmering shapes of Angelica and Teddy still buzzing in his chest. The spell hadn’t pulled them out of Wyatt’s body as she’d hoped after all.

They reached the car, but he didn’t immediately put her down. His arms stayed locked around her as he leaned against the Bentley. His face was lined with strain and there was the afterimage of fear in those intense blue eyes. For some reason, that fear kicked Jo right in the stomach. He had been afraid for
her
.

He forced a weak smile, gently setting her on her own feet. “Let’s not do that again.”

Jo smiled back, just as shakily. “Deal.”