A Ghoul's Guide to Love and Murder

  I let out the breath I’d been holding. “Thanks, Gil,” I said.

  He scowled irritably at me but picked up his laptop again and began to write the post I’d mentioned to our fan page. “If that kid turns out to be a boy, or if you ever have a boy, you’d better name him after me,” he grumbled.

  “That goes without saying,” I said, ignoring the sharp look I got from Heath. Our children could have more than one middle name.

  At last I turned to Heath. There was no question that he’d join us, but I did wonder if he’d put up a fight to exclude me in the brawl with the spooks. I gave him a few moments to think about it before I said, “You can’t do this without me, and I wouldn’t let you even if you could. We either use everything we’ve got to get the dagger back and put Bernie behind bars, or we’re chased by these spooks for the rest of our lives.”

  Heath sighed. “For the record, I wasn’t going to try to talk you out of it. I just want us to use every available precaution, and I’m worried about the timing.”

  “What do you mean you’re worried about the timing?” Chris asked.

  “We barely have time to prep, let alone set a trap.”

  Gilley finished typing, then leaned forward with interest. “Trap?”

  Heath nodded. “You don’t think I’d let us walk in there without orchestrating how it’s gonna go down, do you?”

  I smiled. “I’ll get some paper and a pen. Let’s map this puppy out.”

  • • •

  Several hours later, we were huddled in my kitchen, going over the plan from start to finish. It’d been a herculean effort to bring it together. Gilley especially had really come through for us, and he’d so cleverly thought of a way to hide the trap that I felt less trepidation than I probably should’ve about how things would unfold.

  Olivera had left us only to go home and grab some extra clothes. She was dressed in them now—and they covered her thin form rather well. She wore a baseball cap with the brim pulled low and an oversized Windbreaker that hid her Kevlar vest.

  She was wearing the bulletproof stuff for a reason, and that was that she’d insisted on bringing her gun. “Bernard’s got a knife,” she told us. “You don’t bring a spike to a knife fight if you want to win. You bring a big black gun.”

  I had to give her points for coming up with that argument. Also for the fact that she was probably right: If we spotted Bernard, he’d be dangerous. The spirit of Oruç could take hold of him in a heartbeat, and the Turkish warlord wasn’t going to give a crap if Bernie lost his life. He’d find some other hapless person to possess and do his bidding.

  Still, I’d insisted that Chris pack some extra magnets inside her vest and her boots. Oruç could as easily possess Chris as he could Bernard, and the last thing I needed was for the lone person with a gun to become possessed by a murderous, psychopathic ghost.

  As for Oruç’s demon and his merry crew of spooks of Christmas past, Gilley had spent the entire evening crafting a weapon that we hoped would level our playing field.

  The idea actually came from Chris’s argument that you don’t bring a spike to a dagger fight. You bring a gun. That sparked a very creative idea for Gilley, who began to draft a design on paper, and then spent the next few hours tinkering.

  In the end we all marveled at his genius. “It’s perfect,” I said, hugging his arm.

  “It’s not,” he insisted, that worry line in his forehead creasing deeply. “If all the batteries drain, we’re dead in the water.”

  “Then we should house them in magnets,” I said. “And, we’ll have to hope that luck is on our side.”

  Chris picked up the movie camera—which was actually a fake. The outside was simply a housing for a large magnetizer locked away inside. “How is this gonna work, exactly?”

  “Like a gun,” Gil said. “If you point it at something made of metal, it’ll magnetize the crap out of it.”

  As a demonstration, Gilley took the camera from her and pointed it at my utensil drawer. He then pulled the trigger on the handle of the movie camera. A moment later we all heard a series of clinks. I opened the drawer and took out several forks, which were stuck together. “You are so freaking cool!” I said to Gil.

  He beamed and returned the camera back to Chris. Using air quotes, he said, “You’re going to be our ‘cameraperson,’ so you’ve gotta make it look like you’re recording M.J., Heath, and me. If M.J.’s right, and Bernard shows up with the dagger, he’ll unleash the demons first, but he shouldn’t be too far away. While we’re all dealing with the monsters, you’ve gotta track down Bernard and fire that thing straight at him.”

  “Will it take him out?” she asked.

  Gilley snorted. “Not hardly. It won’t have any effect on him. But if you keep your finger on the trigger, it should neutralize or even kill the portal housed in Oruç’s dagger. What I’m banking on is that his demagnetizer will have required a really big charge to open the portal and supply the spooks coming through it with lots of wattage. That takes away from his gadget’s ability to keep the dagger demagnetized, and as my gizmo is only focused on magnetizing the dagger, he’ll run out of juice long before we will. Once that portal is shut down, the spooks won’t be able to draw power from it, and they can be neutralized. We’ve got enough magnets and spikes to do that.”

  I nodded as Gilley spoke. I liked our chances, but Heath didn’t seem nearly as enthused as I felt. “What?” I asked him quietly.

  He shook his head. “Everything depends on Chris finding Bernard in time,” he said. “And we haven’t even accounted for Angelica. What if she’s going to provide him with backup?”

  “Is there another way?” I asked him. “I mean, because if you can think of something better, honey, I swear I’m all ears.”

  Heath pressed his lips together and shook his head. “I can’t think of one, and I’ve been trying to all night.”

  “Then we just go in there with all we’ve got and keep our fingers crossed, okay?” Heath gave a reluctant nod and I turned my attention back to Gilley, who was speaking.

  “. . . should split up the backup batteries for the camera. We can’t have Chris carry all of them.”

  “Why not?” she asked.

  I said, “Because if you get zapped with a power drain, or if the magnets protecting the batteries get demagnetized before you get to Bernard, and a spook then drains all of them, then we’re totally screwed. Everything depends on Gilley’s gizmo. And it takes a big charge. If we don’t have power to feed it, we’ve got no hope.”

  Chris turned a little pale. “No hope of what? Overcoming Bernard? Taking out the spooks? Making it out alive?”

  “All of the above,” I told her, and there was no humor in my voice. I was dead serious.

  “Great,” she said, tucking the tightly packed batteries into the top of her vest. “No pressure on me to get the batteries switched out fast or anything either.”

  “Practice,” Heath told her firmly. “On the way to the Commons. You have to be fast, Chris, and you can’t mess up.”

  She glared at him a little. “Like I said, thanks for not putting pressure on my role in this thing.”

  “You volunteered,” Gilley said drolly.

  I thought we might be ganging up a little too much on Chris, so before she could snap at him, I said, “You’ll do great, Chris. You will. I have total faith in you.”

  She attempted a smile, and it was almost convincing.

  Taking a deep breath, I pointed to the clock. “It’s nearly midnight. We gotta go.”

  Grabbing our gear, which was no small feat, as we were bringing as much as we could carry, we headed down the stairs single file and without a word. It was like that on the drive over to Ashworth Commons too, except about ten minutes into the drive, Heath, who was at the wheel, said, “Someone’s following us.”

  I almost turned to look over
my shoulder, but Heath reached for my hand and said, “Don’t. They’ll know we know.”

  “It’s gotta be Bernard,” Gil said from his spot in the backseat. He was still fidgeting with the giant spikes he was bringing along.

  “Good,” I said. “Let him come to us.” After another slight pause I added, “Chris, when you get out of the car, make a big show with the camera. Pretend you’re filming the building so that Bernard can see we’ve come to record.

  She said, “I could make a call and have him pulled over in less than three minutes.”

  “No!” the three of us said at once. I explained, “If you have a couple of beat cops pull him over, one of two or both of these scenarios is likely to go down: Bernard unleashes the demon from Oruç’s dagger and you have a couple of filleted cops, and/or he unleashes the demon and he lets Oruç take possession of him, and you have a filleted cop and a stabbing victim.”

  “He could also let Oruç take possession of one of the beat cops,” Gilley said. “He could save the demon for us and turn one cop against the other.”

  I shuddered and snuck a peek over my shoulder at Chris. She was mimicking my body language. “Sweet Jesus,” I heard her whisper. “Fine, no extra manpower.”

  About ten minutes later we pulled up in front of Ashworth Commons. The rain hadn’t let up all day, which made the atmosphere perfect for taking out some spooks.

  When we got out, Chris did a great job of pretending to film the exterior of the building while we grabbed our gear and made our way to the side entrance. Heath led the way and held the door for us as we all filed in.

  Once inside he pointed to the stairwell. “We need to take the high ground. Fourth floor, you guys.”

  “What about Gertie?” I asked.

  “She’ll have to hide in one of her apartments. We can’t worry about placating her tonight. We gotta keep the top floor so Bernard and Angelica can’t get above us and trap us between two sets of demons.”

  “Okay,” I said, falling into line to head up the stairs.

  “Where do you want me?” Chris asked as she brought up the line.

  Heath said, “Stick behind me until I clear a path for you through whatever’s gonna come up those stairs. Once I do that, you head down and start clearing floors, looking for Bernard. Once you find him, point that camera at him and don’t stop firing until you run completely out of juice.”

  “What about the backup battery that M.J. has?” Chris asked.

  I patted my right chest pocket subconsciously. The battery was safely tucked into my vest and was itself covered in magnets.

  “If you need it, send up a war cry before you have to use your last battery,” I told her with a slight grin at Heath. “I’ll come find you. Don’t you worry about it.”

  “Where am I?” Gilley asked as we crested the second-floor landing.

  “You’ll be behind M.J., supporting her with that bag of tricks, buddy,” Heath said. “If she gets in trouble, you get her out of it, you get me?”

  Heath had said that a little forcefully, and Gilley and I exchanged a look of surprise. I’d almost always been the one to protect Gil, not the other way around, but then I realized that Heath was asking Gilley to step up more than he ever had. Gil didn’t get it, though, and he said, “I have to bail her out of trouble?”

  Heath paused and rounded on Gilley. Poking him in the chest, he said, “Gillespie, you’re braver and stronger than you think, man. Don’t you remember earlier today when you fended off the Grim Widow? You always sell yourself short, and I’m sick of it. And what’s more, we don’t have time for it. You gotta step it up, dude. That’s my wife,” he added, pointing to me. “And she’s carrying my kid, and if anything happens to her or the baby, I will never, ever, ever forgive myself. So I’m counting on you to come through for me just like you did today. Understand?”

  Gilley stood there blinking for a good ten seconds. At last he said, “Okay, okay. I hear ya. I’ve got her back, Heath.”

  Heath turned again toward the stairs and marched up past me. I looked back down at Gilley, who seemed a little rattled, and when he caught my eyes, I mouthed, Wowsa!

  That got him to grin, and I was relieved. Gilley was a certified genius, like, Mensa smart, but when he got rattled or really scared, he mentally shut down. That was the last thing we needed tonight.

  We reached the top floor and Heath and I felt out the space. Gertie poked her head out of Apartment 4C and glared at us. “Gertie, you’d best head back into that apartment and stay there,” I told her. “We’ll be making some noise out here, and I’m sorry for that, but we mean you no harm and we’ll leave your floor alone after tonight. Deal?”

  She seemed to consider that, and then the head sticking right out of the door faded in front of our eyes. “Sweet Jesus,” Chris repeated from behind me. “How the hell do you guys ever get used to that?”

  I shrugged and set my duffel on the floor. “We’ve seen a whole lot worse. Enough exposure to the nastier spooks and not a lot of the milder ones freak you out anymore.”

  Chris shuddered. “What do you think is going to come at us tonight?” she asked.

  Heath and I exchanged a look. We’d purposely avoided talking about that because we hadn’t wanted to freak out either Chris or Gilley.

  But then I considered that there wasn’t a point to keeping it from them any longer. What would come, would come, and we were here, so they might as well be prepared for the worst. “Heath and I think that our main threats will be Hatchet Jack, Oruç’s demon, Sy the Slayer—whom you haven’t met yet, Chris—and we’re hoping that’s it.”

  Chris gulped. “Who else could come, though?” she asked with a quaver in her voice.

  I sighed. “We dealt with a spook in Santa Fe that made Oruç’s demon look like a cute, cuddly puppy. And a guardian shadow spirit in Ireland that, if he showed, alone would have the power to take us all out. Quick.”

  “What about the witches?” Gil asked, referring to some determined and deadly ghosts from Scotland we’d dealt with a few years back.

  I shook my head. “Nope. They at least won’t show. That I know.”

  “The Grim Widow again?” he asked, and he shivered at the mention of her name.

  “God, I hope not,” I said. “Heath and his ancestors took a lot of her firepower out today on the stairs, so we’ll see. I’m hoping she sits this one out, because even weakened she’s a freaking nightmare to deal with.”

  “The . . . the Sandman?” Gil said with a gulp.

  I shuddered involuntarily. “God, I hope not, Gil.”

  “How long?” Chris asked next. I noticed that she’d lowered her voice to barely above a whisper. The anticipation and the anxiety were both building for her. For all of us, really.

  “Could be awhile. Could be any minute,” I said, setting down several canisters of metallic dust. Another one of Gilley’s ideas, and we’d barely managed to find a source before the stores all closed, but we now had a dozen small canisters of the stuff, and the dust carried a lovely magnetic charge. I passed two each to Gilley and Chris, then instructed Chris in how to use them. “These are your last resort, Chris,” I said. “They’re like a grenade. You set one off, it’ll buy you some time to get the hell out of the building. One is to get you to the ground floor. The other is to get you through the door and outside, where you will run as fast as you can until you can’t run anymore.”

  She considered the canisters gravely. “What do I do with them? Just toss one and bolt?”

  I pulled up on the top and showed her the insides. “Flip the top, toss the contents directly at the demon or spook that’s coming for you, and run like hell.”

  “Why are these a last resort?” she asked me next, taking the lid from me and putting it back on the canister.

  “Because they may or may not stick to the spook. We’ve never tested them before, so we don
’t know. Worst-case scenario, they’ll simply create a magnetic cloud that the spook will have to pass through on its way to you, and that’s not going to be anything a ghost or even a demon will want to do. It’ll wait for the dust to settle, so to speak, before giving chase.”

  “Can’t it just chase me outside?”

  I pressed my lips together. She’d asked me the one question I hadn’t wanted her to. “Yes. But we’re hoping it won’t.”

  She palmed the canister and studied it for a long moment. “I hate that plan,” she said at last. “Let’s make sure we don’t have to use it.”

  “I hear ya.”

  We took the next several minutes to get set up, and then we heard something downstairs. The four of us stood straight and rigid . . . listening.

  No other sound came to our ears, but I pointed to Heath and mouthed, Action!

  “So, what I’m thinking,” Heath said in a loud voice, “is that M.J. can sort of kick the door closed, and if it’s dark enough, then we can film it so that the audience thinks there’s a ghost behind the door. I’ll jump a little when it happens, but make sure that the angle doesn’t get her in the shot so the audience won’t suspect anything.”

  “Got it,” Chris said, also in a loud voice.

  Gilley had written us out a script to help egg Bernard on. He figured that if Bernie suspected that we were big fat fakers, he’d feed that by having us pretend to stage a ghost shoot.

  Again there was a sound from downstairs, and Heath rolled with it. “Hey, maybe you can capture some of the sounds from this old building, and we’ll tell the audience that the spooks are letting us know they’re around. We can turn up the volume when we edit so that it looks to the audience like the sound was much louder.”

  “They’ll believe anything you tell them,” I said with a laugh.

  “Right?” Heath agreed. “Suckers!”

  We each made a show of giggling, but it was all fake. I knew that my friends were just as nervous and scared about what was coming as I was, but it was important to set the stage.