“Murder?”
She cast me an irritated glance. “Look at her.”
My gaze went to the standing woman, but contrary to most movies about them, ghosts don’t walk around with the wound that killed them evident on their spectral bodies. No gaping brains. No holes in their heads, their chests, or anywhere else there shouldn’t be. Even the massive amounts of blood on the reclining figure was nowhere in evidence upon the spectral one.
Jenn snapped her fingers in front of my face. “Not there.” She pointed slightly to the left of the ghost. “There.” She transferred her pointy nail south until it indicated the dead woman.
One of her arms was missing—that wasn’t easy to do—and her body, from t
he chest down, was blackened. The scent of charred flesh reached us on a frigid breeze. Weird. When I’d left my apartment, I could have sworn it was Indian summer.
Jenn clapped a palm over her nose and fled, her itty-bitty Barbie feet and short legs moving so fast they appeared to blur. Jenn could move when she wanted to.
Chief Johnson stood next to the body, wringing his hands. He’d been the police chief since the last chief—his father, Chief Johnson—had keeled over in his lutefisk.
I had to agree with him. I’d rather die than eat it too.
However, as long as the present Chief Johnson had been in charge, there hadn’t been a murder in New Bergin. Had there ever been?
The funeral director was our medical examiner. The extent of our CSI was probably to put up yellow tape and hope for the best. It appeared that Chief Johnson had managed the first and was hip deep in the second.
Though I wanted to stay, I needed to get to school. If I weren’t in class when the bell rang it wouldn’t be pretty. You think kindergartners are delightful? They are. But I learned not to turn my back on them. Or leave them alone long enough to trash the place.
I planned to cut through the alley between B and C—my shoes would get indescribable gunk on them, but I didn’t have the time to care—and the ghost poured from the air, filling the space right in front of me. Her eyes were solid black. No whites left at all. I’d never seen anything like it before. I never wanted to again.
She had a burn, make that a brand, of a snarling wolf on her neck. I glanced at the body. Sure enough, there was the brand, though it was impossible to tell from here if it was a wolf. I probably wouldn’t have seen it at all, beneath so much blood, unless I’d known where to look.
That I knew confused me. The wounds on the living did not transfer to the dead. Why had that one?
She grabbed my arm. I bit my lip to keep from screaming. Her fingers were fire and ice. Smoke poured from her mouth. In the center of her too-black eyes, a flame flickered. “He will burn us all.”
Then she was gone. If it hadn’t been for the trailing whiff of brimstone, and the blue-black imprint of her fingers just above my wrist, I’d have thought I imagined her.
“What the fuck?” I muttered, earning a glare from Mrs. Knudson, who stood in the doorway of her yarn shop, Knit Wits, contemplating the most excitement to hit New Bergin in a lifetime.
“I certainly hope you don’t speak like that in front of the children.”
“Children!” I resisted the urge to use the F-word again and ran, skidding through Lord knows what in the alley, then bursting out the other side, trailing the mystery muck behind me.
* * * * * *