The Ghost Exterminator (3 page)

“But they’re…”

“Dead? Yeah. Still kids though. What’s weird is that I can’t seem to figure out why they would be here. Do you have any idea when the infestation started?”

Before he could respond, a crash sounded from the direction of the kitchen. Jo spun toward the sound. “Sounds like someone’s getting impatient for the seeker.” She grinned with entirely too much relish for Wyatt’s peace of mind and rubbed her hands together in anticipation. “Ready or not, here I come!”

Chapter Three: When the Ghost Exterminator Says Jump…

Jo took two steps toward the kitchen then paused and shot Haines an exasperated glance when he fell into step behind her. “I’m fine, you know. I’m not going to trash your place and I can totally deal with this without you. You don’t have to come with me.”

Wyatt frowned. “It’s my house.”

Wind whistled through the eaves above them, moaning and howling in eerie cliché. Jo grinned. “You sure you want me to do this? Halloween is right around the corner and you’ve got your very own bona fide haunted house. I bet the kiddies would love it if you threw a big ole Halloween party.”

“The dead kids or the living ones?”

“Both.” When he just continued to frown, she sighed. “Oh fine. Be a stick in the mud. Come on, cowboy, let’s go rustle us up some ghosties.”

Jo led the way back to where the crash had sounded with Haines so close on her heels he was practically walking on them. Irritation snaked through her as he continued to lurk over her shoulder, his hulking presence abrading every nerve she had. Did he have to walk so freaking close? Did he have to be so damned big and smell so damned good? Like aftershave and expensive leather—which made no sense whatsoever since Jo had a feeling excruciating torture would be necessary to get Mr. Big Business into some bad-boy biker leathers.

She stopped in what must have once been a formal dining room, gritting her teeth when Haines’s momentum carried him into her—not hard enough to bump her, just enough for his front to brush against her back. A shiver tried to snake its way down her spine, but she ruthlessly suppressed it.
Focus, Jo. You are not a raging hormone. You are a professional.

Distance. She needed distance.

She stepped out of the range of his heat and looked around the room for something to distract him, something to make him take a step back.

Where the hell is a big, scary poltergeist when you need one?

She glanced at him out of the corner of her eye and saw the permafrown working about a 2.6 on the Pissed-Off-CEO Richter scale. She could do better than that.

Jo went to stand in the center of the room, spreading her arms in a very hokey, mumbo-jumbo way that would have caused her boss to smack her upside the head. With a two by four. She made a little humming noise in her throat and then whispered, “I feel a presence!”

The frown went up to a 3.4.

Better, but not good enough. She needed him good and pissed if he was going to stop trying to walk down the back of her spine.

Jo closed her eyes and continued humming, knowing she sounded like an idiot. She tried to think of any other stupid cliché she could throw into the mix. She raised her hands to the sky, tipped back her face and began a sort of keening in her throat.

Another peek showed about a 4.4.

Jo suddenly stopped keening and dropped her arms, slumping over on herself.

“Jo?”

She started a low hum, then straightened, making her movements as jerky and zombie-esqe as possible.

“Jo? Are you all right?” The frown was at a solid 5.0 and his laser-blue eyes were filled with annoyed concern.

Tipping her head back, Jo let out a howl and then shouted, “Beetlejuice, Beetlejuice, Beetlejuice!”

There was a beat of pure silence, then Wyatt growled wordlessly. Jo snickered.

“Damn it, Jo! I thought something was wrong!”

She snorted. “You thought the same thing you’ve thought since I showed up—probably since before I showed up, come to think of it—that I am a total charlatan.”

“And that little display was supposed to convince me otherwise?”

“That little display was supposed to show you that you don’t know shit and maybe you should take a step back and let me do my freaking job.”

He worked his jaw for a moment, then nodded crisply and took a step back, his frown dropping down to about 3.8. “I’ll try to stay out of your way.”

“Neato. And don’t move or talk either.”

He made a choking noise and then cleared his throat roughly.
There’s that stick again…

“I can’t move or talk?”

“It’s distracting,” Jo said. “If you’re going to be here, then you need to be as close to invisible as possible. Even then, it probably isn’t a good idea. Are you sure I can’t convince you to leave?”

“Do most homeowners just let you run wild in their homes, all alone with ghosts on the loose?”

Jo shrugged. “Pretty much. That is what they pay me for.”

Wyatt muttered something that sounded distinctly like “Cowards”, but since he was still glaring at her, she couldn’t reconcile any protective tendencies with his current irritation.

“I don’t like this,” he growled, loud enough that she was clearly meant to respond this time.

Jo crossed her arms over the Girls and narrowed her eyes at him. “Is this because I’m a girl?”

His face screamed
yes
, but instead of admitting it, he ratcheted up the fiercest frown she’d seen from him yet and growled. “I assume your contract releases me of any liability if you die on the premises.”

Jo fluttered her eyelashes at him. “Oh, Haines, you do say the sweetest things.”

“If you’re determined to put yourself in danger, I just want to be sure I’m cleared of any liability.”

“I’m a little more qualified than you are to determine whether or not I’m in danger, don’t you think, Mr. I-Don’t-Even-Believe-Ghosts-Exist? Trust me. I’m golden. This place is cake.”

Although, there’s definitely something weird about it
.

Jo shook away that disquieting thought, shot him a brassy grin and turned back toward the source of the original crash—where now there was only silence.

Wyatt followed—but at a distance this time—trying so hard to keep his footsteps silent that Jo imagined she could feel the effort radiating from him.

Damn. He was
still
distracting. She needed to focus on the task at hand and forget he was there. It wasn’t as if she’d never performed exterminations with the clients on hand before. Hell, she’d even done a few while her clients videotaped and provided live narration. She could deal with distractions. She just had to tune them out.

Jo closed her eyes, cleared her thoughts and stepped into the kitchen. Even before she opened up her second sight, she knew they were there. And she knew that her original estimate of thirty was nowhere near the reality. The house was
crawling
with ghosts, a hundred, maybe more, and every one of them was drifting in and out of the kitchen around her.

Jo unfocused her eyes, letting the second sight in, and quickly scanned the room for something that could be drawing the ghosts there, something out of place that radiated the force of paranormal energy to lure and hold so many. All she saw was a kitchen that, while far from Victorian, clearly hadn’t been remodeled since the early seventies. Orange countertops, outdated appliances, garish patterned wallpaper, all of it drowning in the bright greenish energy of too many ghosts.

It was
possible
all of the ghosts had just migrated there naturally—wildly improbable, but possible. She’d be more comfortable if she knew what had brought them there, but wherever they had come from, she knew where they were going.

Jo moved to the center of the room, and dropped her goodie bag. She dug around inside for a moment, pulling out her Lucky Mojo Spiritual Cleansing incense, quickly lighting it and setting the holder at her feet. The incense wasn’t necessary to the process, but she enjoyed the ritual and it helped her focus. Focus was absolutely essential.

She braced her feet in a wide stance and steadied her breathing. Now for the fun part.

Jo let her second sight seep into her consciousness, soaking into her mind until she wasn’t looking at the energy in the room, but rather
being
the energy. The energy of the ghosts fluttered against her and through her, constantly in motion.

So many of them
. She felt a moment’s trepidation at the thought of trying to exterminate so many at once, but with them all concentrated in one place, she didn’t see another option.

The frantic movement of the ghosts, like minnows in her mind, dizzied her, but Jo kept her breathing even and let them in and out, ruthlessly quelling all her instincts to struggle against the energy. If she fought them, even for a moment, she would lose control—and possibly her sanity, but she tried not to dwell on that little tidbit.

Breathing through her expanded self, her energy self, Jo felt the air around her for a place where the world felt different. Thin.

When she didn’t feel it immediately, her concentration wavered a bit and the energy of the ghosts beat at the back of her eyes like the wings of a thousand moths.
It has to be here
. She pushed out again, felt again, and then—
there
. Above the sink.

Jo gently probed the soft spot, mentally mapping its dimensions, then took a breath and
reached
. A quick yank and the window between this world and the beyond snapped open, spilling bright white light to burn too brightly against her inner eye. When a ghost transcended naturally, that light would appear to be piercing them from the inside out, splitting them open until they exploded and were nothing more than the light that took them.

If a ghost wasn’t going to transcend on its own, that was when Jo came to work. The ability to open portals at will was rare, but even more rare was the ability to continue to control other energies while they were open. It was one reason why she was the only ghost exterminator within eight hundred miles.

As long as she didn’t look directly into the blinding light, holding the window open was easy. Forcing ghosts through it, less so. Luckily, they usually didn’t need to be forced. Most ghosts longed for the beyond, searched for it and mourned it. Ninety-nine times out of a hundred, Jo opened a window and the ghosts surged through of their own volition. Easy as cake.

Unfortunately, this was that hundredth time.

When Jo threw open the window, the ghosts didn’t budge. Not even a twitch in the right direction. If anything, their movements became more sluggish, reluctant. She tried guiding the ghosts in the right direction, but it was like running her fingers through smoke. They broke and melted around her, lethargic and insubstantial.

Crap. Looks like it’s gonna be one of those nights
.

Jo narrowed her focus, keeping the window open with a corner of her mind, but using most of her attention to herd the varied energies of the ghosts. She guided them gently at first then with more force as they began to push back away from the portal she had opened.

What the—

Jo swayed as they shoved against her, their movements stronger and more defined. She shoved back, beginning to hear their voices, indistinct at first, then a blur of sound, like the cacophony of children on a playground, only these were not the sounds of laughter, but distress.

I’m not hurting you
, she tried to tell them, but could not split her focus any more to give voice to the words.
Go. You should want this. Go on.

The first ghost brushed the edge of the portal and disappeared through it with no sound or apparent movement—just there, then gone in an instant. Houdini on speed. The next few vanished just as easily.

Then she felt a peculiar rumbling.

Behind her, beneath her,
where was it?
The unseen force yanked back on her ghosts and Jo stumbled back a step, jerked by the ricochet of that pull. She braced her feet again, gritted her teeth, belatedly reminding herself to keep breathing, and shoved again.

The force—
what
is
that?
—pulled back again and Jo gave a startled yelp as she staggered again.

The room was colder now, but instead of the clean, open crispness of a brisk fall night, the air felt thick, pressurized, like a humid summer day gone wrong. Jo’s breath formed a cloud as it puffed out, then that cloud doubled back on her, wrapping around her throat. Her own breath twisted around her neck in an ethereal garrote.

Okay, no more fun and games.
She needed to end this.

Jo gathered herself, centering and bracing. She was stronger. They had numbers, but if she timed it right, putting all of her strength into one moment, she could have the rest of the ghosts through the portal before whatever held them there had time to yank them back.
And God help us if that doesn’t work.

Breathe in, breathe out.
Each breath was focus, strength. Jo forced herself to ignore the tendrils of her own exhalation that wound tightly around her throat, sinister and barely visible.
Breathe in, breathe out.

She drew in for the last push, ready, waiting for the moment when the force beneath—behind?—her would release ever so slightly, gathering itself for the next pull. She waited, braced, ready, and then she felt it, the minutest slackening.

Jo slammed her will into the ghosts, through them, shooting them toward the portal like a hundred arrows. They flew true, fast, too fast, with too much momentum to be pulled back now, but the force that battled her had not given up. It yanked one last time, hard enough to send her crashing backwards onto the floor, crying out in surprised pain, laid out like a boxer at the end of a brutal round.