Her face went from pale to white. "What is it?"
"We're not quite sure. We'd like to do some research and return here tomorrow night. Would that be all right?" Ian requested.
She nodded so fast I thought her head would fly off, and I'd had enough of terrifying experiences for one night. "Yes, of course. What time would you like?"
"An hour after sunset, so about six. I'd also like for you to not be present. It could be dangerous," he warned her.
She stiffened and studied all our faces. "Dangerous? How dangerous?" she asked him.
"We're not sure yet, and that's why I'd like for you to leave after you've allowed us inside," Ian persisted. "Will that be possible?"
"If you think it's necessary-"
"Very much so," he assured her.
"Then yes, I can leave, but I'd rather not leave a key with you so I'll have to lock the door," she warned us. "You can leave, but you couldn't get back inside without someone letting you in."
Ian smiled and bowed his head. "That won't be a problem."
"What about before sunset? Will I. . .will this thing hurt anyone?" Miss Hana wondered.
Ian shook his head. "No. Most spirits have very little strength during the day so you should be safe."
"And if I'm not?" she persisted.
Ian pulled out a card and handed it to her. "Then feel free to call me at this number, and we'll be right down."
Miss Hana clasped the card between her hands and her shoulders relaxed. "Thank you so much for your help. I don't know how I can repay you."
Ian clasped her hands and smiled into her bright eyes. "Goodness is its own reward. Goodnight, Miss Hana."
A faint blush came over her cheeks and she pulled her hands free from his. "G-goodnight," she returned.
The two lovers broke apart and Ian led us to the car. We slid in and he started the engine. I leaned forward between the seats and looked at him with a raised eyebrow.
"Don't you think you were milking it a little bit back there?" I asked him.
He cast a side-glance in my direction and grinned at me. "Jealous?" he returned.
I frowned and whipped my head away. "N-no, I just thought you two could get a room."
The humor slid off his face as he gazed ahead. "I'm afraid she might need our help more than I put on."
"For a poltergeist? I thought those things just threw around furniture and pinched you," I commented.
Ian shook his head. "Those are just the low-level poltergeists. Any paranormal creature that can hide itself from a Healer, even an inexperienced one, must have a great deal of power."
"But those phantoms couldn't hide from me. I sensed that one following me home," I pointed out.
"The phantom probably got cocky and let slip its cover," he guessed.
I frowned. "Phantoms get cocky? I thought they were just shadows controlled by the Whisperer."
"She's too ignorant to teach," Cronus spoke up. He looked across the divide to Ian. "She might have been seriously hurt this evening but for my interference. She needs to leave."
Ian raised an eyebrow. "And go where? Seriously, Cronus, I'm all ears to hear how any place other than with us would be a safer spot."
Cronus pursed his lips and turned away. Ian sighed and readjusted his hands on the steering wheel. "We're stuck with her and she's stuck with us. Besides, I think I've got a way of fixing her incompetency problem."
I waved my hand over my head. "Um, hello, I'm right here," I spoke up, and was roundly ignored.
Cronus raised an eyebrow. "How?"
"I'm going to take her to her," Ian replied.
"Who's her?" I asked him.
Cronus frowned. "She doesn't have the type of experience this girl needs."
"Seriously, just right here," I persisted.
"So are you volunteering to teach her?" Ian retorted. Cronus' eyebrows crashed down and he turned away. "Then we don't have much of a choice, do we?"
"Do I get a choice?" I wondered.
"No," the men answered in unison.
I fell back into my seat and glared at both of them. "Thanks."
Ian drove us back to the house, but he parked out front and kept the engine running. Cronus stepped out and shut the door behind him. Ian leaned across the seat to look through the passenger window.
"We should be back before sunset," he told his assistant.
Cronus turned away and marched into the house. Ian pursed his lips and pulled back onto the road. I leaned forward between the seats.
"So what now?" I asked him.
"Now I feel like ripping into something dead," he told me.
I cringed. "If you have to hunt first then count me out."
He chuckled. "No. I prefer slower food."
Ian drove us to a neighborhood on the outskirts of the commercial district. Most of the apartment buildings there had ground-floor restaurants that catered to the workers that filled the skyscrapers in the distance. The restaurants were filled with everything from hamburgers and French fries to ethnic Chinese and Vietnamese. A steady flow of party-goers and after-hours workers flowed through the streets on either side of the road. The multi-colored lights and smells from the restaurants attracted them to the open-front food places and led to a lively atmosphere of loud talking and laughs.
One of the less-occupied Mexican restaurants was set back from the road and had picnic tables on the sidewalk. Ian parked us in front of the restaurant and led me over to the tall counter. The counter ran along the entire fifteen foot front of the restaurant, and the kitchen was clearly visible behind the mustachioed middle-aged man who manned the front.
"What can I get for you?" he asked us.
"The usual, Jose, and make it double," Ian requested.
Jose's gaze fell on me and a smile graced the lips beneath his thick black mustache. "You bring a lady friend with you this trip, my friend?"
"I'm more like an assistant," I assured him.
"I'm working on her," Ian told the proprietor.
Jose chuckled and pushed off from the counter. "Then you have a long road ahead of you, my friend." He half-turned to the kitchen where a middle-aged woman in a hair net stood over the grill. "Two murders, mi amor."
I whipped my head to Ian. "Murders?"
He chuckled. "That's the name of the plate. It's a special one I made up myself."
"Can a normal human eat it?" I asked him.
Ian leaned his back against the front of the restaurant and studied me with a sly grin on his lips. "Perhaps, but I wouldn't call either of us normal."
I crossed my arms over my chest and frowned at him. "I don't feel any different."
"You might after tonight," he warned me.
I raised an eyebrow. "What's that supposed to mean?"
"Food's up!" Jose yelled. He spun around to face us and dropped two large red plastic baskets of burritos onto the counter. "That'll be forty bucks."
Ian frowned, but handed over the bill in cash. "It was just thirty-five last week."
Jose took the money and shrugged. "Food's not cheap no more, and the rent's getting higher all the time."
Ian took our baskets and led me over to one of the picnic tables. We sat opposite each other and he slid mine over to me.
"Eat up before it slithers out," he advised me.
I looked down at the grease-slicked burritos and cringed. "This isn't werewolf food, is it?"
Ian picked up a large burrito and scarfed down half the contents. His mouth was full when he talked, and bits of meat covered the table. "What do you think werewolves eat? Roadkill?"
I picked up a burrito by one end and watched the contents slide back into the basket. "This is pretty close." I dropped the burrito and looked him over. "But you still didn't answer my question."
"What was it again?" he asked me.
"You said I might feel different after tonight. How?" I questioned him.
He winked at me and took another mouthful of food. "That's a surprise."
I growled and
took a bite of one of the burritos. I had to admit the filling was really good. "So could you at least tell me what this Purgatory stuff about?"
Ian took a big gulp of his food and washed it down with a coke we'd gotten with our orders. "Cronus knows more about it than I do, but what I can get out of him is it's a place where the restless spirits go to escape the daylight hours or a risky situation against Cronus. They recharge their batteries for a while and come back ready to make trouble."
"So this one isn't a go-to-the-light kind of ghosts, is it?" I asked him.
"In this case I think this one's going to come back," he agreed.
"So this friend of yours will help us find this poltergeist before it finds us?" I guessed.
"Exactly." He pushed his empty basket away and looked down at my nearly-full one. "You feeling okay? You haven't touched your food much."
"How can you tell when the grease keeps sliding back into itself?" I quipped. I dropped the bit of burrito in my hand and leaned back. "Hell, how can you eat after seeing that. . .that thing that tried to get me?"
"It comes with the territory," he reminded me.
"And you actually want to claim this territory as a job?" I wondered.
He stared down at the worn wooden table with its carved names and furrowed his brow. "I could say it's because of Tiffany and my partner's deaths, but those are only a part of the reason. I made myself sound like I was a hero in my story, but the truth is I was a crooked cop. Sometimes I stole marijuana from the evidence room, and sometimes I looked the other way when I saw someone I knew doing something that wasn't exactly legal."
"Like what?" I asked him.
He closed his eyes and shook his head. "Some bad things. Anyway, I just figured what I went through was a wake-up call, a chance to make things right by helping people out who didn't have anywhere else to turn."
"By being their guardian angel?" I guessed.
He opened his eyes and chuckled. "I suppose so. Besides, the pay's not so bad for some of the more desperate and rich clients."
I pursed my lips and leaned forward over the table. "Speaking of clients, I'm still one, aren't I?"
"I haven't solved your problem, have I?" he pointed out.
"No, but you're not exactly on the ball with dealing with it," I argued.
He smiled and stood. "How about we go for a walk?" he suggested.
"Now?" I wondered.
"Why not?" he countered.
"What about Cronus? You told him you were going to take me to see someone," I reminded him.
"If he needs us he'll find us. He always does," he returned. He walked around the table and held out his hand to me. "Besides, the someone I want you to see is just around the corner."
I frowned, but took his hand and let him pull me off the seat. He practically lifted me off the bench. "Fine, but it better not be another poltergeist."
CHAPTER 6
"Cross my heart and hope to die," he teased as he led me down the sidewalk.
"Not until you figure out why that Whisperer creep was after me," I insisted.
Ian furrowed his brow and stuck one hand in his pocket. The other hand slithered around my waist and snatched a hold onto my hip so I was pressed against him as we walked.
"That is a bit of a mystery. I've never heard of a Phantom Whisperer caring about kidnapping a novice mystic," he commented.
"Um, do you mind?" I asked him.
He looked down at me and blinked. "Pardon?"
I pointed down at his hand on my hip. "That."
He shook his head. "No, I don't mind."
I rolled my eyes and tried to pry his fingers loose, but they stuck there. "We're in a working relationship, remember?"
"Well, I'm working on trying to get you warmed up to my proposition of being my girlfriend," he argued.
I turned and glared at him. "Do you ever listen to yourself?"
"Only when I don't have the company of a beautiful young woman to listen to me," he replied.
I stopped my chiseling away at his invasive hand and threw my hands up. "I give up. You're impossible."
"But not undate-able," he reminded me.
"Where are you taking me, anyway?" I asked him.
We'd left the road of restaurants far behind us. The street we traveled down was in a tenement part of town with eighty year old, ten-floor apartment buildings with tall stoops. The alleys were filled with boxes and trashcans, and large trees lined up in rows down the sidewalk. Their roots uprooted the sidewalk decades ago and I tripped over several of the broken slabs. Ian always caught me.
"Like I said, there's someone down here I want you to meet," he repeated.
"He better not be another pervert like you," I insisted.
He chuckled. "He's nothing of the sort, and he's not a he, he's a she," he corrected me.
We stopped at the stoop of one of the buildings and Ian directed me up its steps.
"Any reason why I should see this woman?" I wondered.
Ian pressed a button on the panel indicating the apartments and grinned. "She's not a woman, either," he told me.
"Hello?" a girl child's voice replied.
"Child Protective Services. We were told there was a child living alone in the apartment," Ian replied.
I whipped my head to him and glared at him. "We're not-" He pressed his hand over my mouth.
The voice on the intercom sounded both amused and annoyed. "Very funny, Mr. Ian, but I think I'll bid you goodnight."
Ian winced and pressed the button. "Wait a sec, Cecilia. I've got somebody I want you to meet."
"It better not be another girlfriend," the child scolded him.
"No, she refuses," he replied.
"Then she's got good taste. I'll meet her," the child agreed.
The door buzzed and Ian opened it for me. "Ladies first," he offered.
I slipped inside and Ian followed. The lobby was a small square with two rooms on either side used to greet guests. There was a set of stairs on the right, and an elevator directly ahead of us. Ian ushered me into the elevator where he had to close first the door and then the grate. He pressed a button for the top floor and the elevator shook at the start before it bumped us up.
"So is there really just a kid living there?" I asked him.
He looked up at the numbers above the door and nodded. "Yep, but don't feel sorry for her. She's had it worse. Living on the streets, living in foster homes where the people beat her. That kind of stuff. Now she's got a pretty nice apartment where she runs her business."
"Business?" I repeated as the door swung open.
He stepped out and I followed. The hallway was carpeted in the center above the old wood floor, and there were room doors spaced thirty feet apart. The room numbers were on plates nailed to the doors.
Ian led me down the hall to the left wing. "Yep. She's a mystic like you, but she's got more natural talent."
I glared at him. "I'm trying."
Ian chuckled. "Don't feel too bad. Everybody starts where you're at, some just start sooner. Cecilia's one of those sooner people, but she might be able to help you."
"Like train me?" I guessed.
"Pretty much."
We stopped at room forty-two and Ian raised his hand to knock.
"It's open," the child's voice called to us.
Ian turned to me with a smile. "Just like her to ruin a surprise," he whispered to me.
Ian pushed open the door. The portal swung open and we were presented with a girl of ten who stood just on the other side of the entrance. The girl wore a t-shirt and jeans with white socks. Her long brown hair was wrapped in a ponytail that trailed down her back. She had her arms crossed over her chest, and she glared at Ian.
"I have ears, as well," she reminded him.
Ian grinned and gestured to me. "Cecilia, I'd like you to meet Miss Enid Runa. Enid, Cecilia."
The girl's eyes swept over me before they whipped back to Ian. I noticed there was a strange lack of color in them, but they held a b
rightness in their depths that made up for the hue deficiency. "If she's not your girlfriend then why did she let you bite her?"
Ian frowned. "I haven't bit her."
"And he'd better not," I chimed in.
Cecilia raised an eyebrow and stepped aside. "Then you two better get in here and explain a few things to me."
We stepped inside, and I noticed there was a distinct lack of furniture and wall coverings. No side tables, no posters, no rugs. There wasn't even a TV in the living room. The layout of the apartment was basic. There was the living room at the front followed by the dining room, kitchen, and to the left side were doors into the two bedrooms and a central bathroom. Pretty big for a little girl.
Cecilia led us over to the spare living room furniture which consisted of a couple of chairs and a long leather couch. She took a chair and Ian guided me to the couch where we each took a cushion. I sat closest to Cecilia and within three feet of her so I got a closer look at her strange eyes. She stared at me, but not directly at me. It was more like through me.
My eyes widened and I whipped my head to Ian. "Is she-"
"-blind? Yep," Cecilia answered for him. "Been that way since birth. It's probably why my folks abandoned me."
"If you're blind then how come you looked at me while we stood in the doorway?" I challenged her.
Cecilia frowned and looked past me to Ian. "How much did you tell her about me?"
He sheepishly grinned and shrugged. "Only that you were a person to meet."
Cecilia leaned back in her chair and crossed her arms. "You're such an ass sometimes."
"I prefer the term 'often,' but 'sometimes' will work," he replied.
I held up my hands and dropped them when I remembered the sight deficiency of our hostess. "Could somebody clue me in on how a blind mystic is going to help me?"
Cecilia raised an eyebrow. "So you're just a mystic? Not a werewolf?" she wondered.
"Do I look-um, smell like a werewolf?" I countered.
She rolled her sightless eyes. "It's not the smell I notice, it's your aura."
I blinked at her. "My what?"
"Aura. Your soul," she rephrased. She threw up her arms and slunk down the cushion of her leather chair. "Geez, Mr. Ian, didn't you teach her anything?"
"I've kept her alive so you can teach her," he told her.
Cecilia frowned. "What's in it for me?"
"A part of the profits from my business, and a couple of favors," he offered.
She snorted. "No deal. I know you do mostly charity work, and you owe me the favors, remember?"