Haunted (Otherworld 5)

"Where you think you're going, boy?" he rumbled.

As I lifted my head, he blinked, realizing his gender blunder. "Look, lady, this is private property. You wanna join, you gotta talk to Ted."

I looked him full in the eyes, and switched on my blinding power.

"You deaf or something, hon?" he said. "I know I'm good-looking, but you ain't my type. Stop staring and start walking or I'm going to introduce my boot to your pretty butt."

As quick as I am to correct an insult, I'm just as quick to recognize an obstacle when I see one. Sure, I could probably just kick his ass the old-fashioned way, but that might tip off my quarry. So I murmured an insincere apology and trekked back down to the end of the laneway.

As a kid, when my mother had harangued me to get involved in extracurricular activities, I'd signed up for track-and-field. Was pretty damned good at it, too. Got to the city finals. I can still remember that moment, poised at the starting gate, before a crowd that had included my mother and all the Coven Elders. I crouched, waiting for the starter pistol, then leapt forward...and snagged my shoelace in the gate. Fell flat on my face. And that was pretty much how I felt now. My first job in the ghost world, and I was sucking dust at the starting line.

The worst of it was that, like forgetting to tie my shoe, my mistake was inexcusable. That earth-spook bouncer had clearly known I was a ghost--that's why he'd stepped into my path. How had he known? I'd been careful not to walk through anything. And why hadn't I recognized what he was? Basic afterlife skills. Time to admit I needed help.

My house was in Savannah's historic district. Before my daughter had been born, I'd scoured the supernatural world for greater sources of power, and a few of those stops had been in Savannah. I'd loved the place. I don't know why. Savannah was the epitome of genteel Southern charm, and there wasn't an ounce of gentility or charm in my body, nor did I want there to be. Yet something about the city struck a chord in me, so much so that I'd named my daughter after it. After I died, and had my pick of places to live, I'd chosen Savannah.

My house was a two-story antebellum manor, both levels decked out with verandahs and thin columns looped with ivy. A squat wrought-iron fence fronted the tiny yard, which was filled with so many palms, ferns, and rhododendrons that I had yet to see a blade of grass.

Kristof calls this my "Southern Belle" house, and laughs each time he says it. When he teases me, I remind him of where he's ended up. This is a man who has spent his life in ten-thousand-square-foot penthouses, with every possible modern convenience at his fingertips and a full staff ready to operate those conveniences for him, should he not wish to strain said fingertips. And where had he chosen to live in the afterlife? On a boat. Not a hundred-foot luxury yacht, but a tiny houseboat that creaks as if it's about to crack in half.

Kris wouldn't be at his houseboat now. He'd be in the same place he'd spent almost every evening for the past two and a half years. At my house. He'd started coming by as soon as he'd realized we shared the same ghost dimension. Less than a week after his death, he'd showed up at my door, walked in, and made himself comfortable, just as he used to do in my apartment thirteen years before.

At first, I hadn't known what to make of it, chalked it up to death shock, and told him, very nicely, that I didn't think this was a good idea. He ignored me. Kept ignoring me, even when I moved on to less polite forms of rejection. After a year, I couldn't be bothered objecting with anything stronger than a deep sigh, and he knew he'd won. Now I expected to see him there, even looked forward to it.

So when I peered through the front window, for a second, I saw exactly what I expected to see: Kristof sitting in his usual armchair before a crackling fire, enjoying a single-malt Scotch and his evening reading material--a comic book or a back issue of Mad magazine. Then the image vanished and, instead, I saw an empty fireplace, an empty chair, and a stoppered decanter.

I blinked back a dart of panic. Kristof was always here, as reliable as the tides. Well, except on Thursdays, but that's because on Thursdays we--Shit! It was Thursday, wasn't it?

I raced through a travel incantation, and my house disappeared.

A blast of cold air hit me. The bone-chilling cold of the cement floors seeped through the soles of my sneakers. In front of me was a scarred slab of Plexiglas, so crisscrossed with scratches I'd need my Aspicio powers to see what lay on the other side. To my right rose a wave of bleachers, wooden planks so worn that I couldn't guess what their original color had been.

I moved past the Plexiglas to an open section of the boards. Two teams of ghosts ripped around the ice, skates flying, their shouts and laughter mingling with those from the stands. I scanned the ice for Kris's blond head. The first place I looked, I found him: the penalty box.

Hockey had always been Kris's secret passion. Secret because it wasn't a proper hobby for a Nast, especially a Nast heir. There were two sports a Cabal son was expected to play. Golf, because so many deals were brokered on the greens, and racquetball, because there was nothing like a kick-ass game to show your VPs why they should never cross you in the boardroom. Baseball and basketball were good spectator sports for impressing prospective partners with skybox and courtside seats. But hockey? That was little better than all-star wrestling. Nasts did not attend hockey games, and they sure as hell didn't play them.

As a child, Kristof had never so much as strapped on a pair of skates. Not surprising for a native Californian. At Harvard, he'd had a roommate on the hockey team. Get Kristof close to anything that sounds like fun, and he has to give it a shot. Once back in L.A., he'd joined a league, using a false name so his father wouldn't find out.

When we'd been together, I'd gone to all of his games. Yet I'd waffled about it every week, telling him maybe I'd show up, if I had

the time, but don't count on it. Of course, I'd never missed a game. I couldn't resist watching him play, beaming behind his face mask as he whipped around the ice, grinning whether he scored, missed, or got knocked flat on his ass. Even sitting in the penalty box, he could barely manage to keep a straight face. How could I miss out on that?

He'd joined this ghost-world team about six months ago, and by then, we'd been close enough that I'd made sure I was always in the stands to watch.

I checked the scoreboard and wondered whether I should wait for the period break or head back to the hospital and try to muddle through on my own. I was about to teleport back to the return marker I'd laid, when Kristof hit the boards beside me, hard enough to make me jump.

"Hello, gorgeous," he said.

He pulled up to the side and grinned, his smile so wide it made my heart do a double-flip. Impossible for a ghost, I know, but I swear I still felt it flip, as it had since the first time I'd seen that grin; the gateway to "my" Kris, the one he kept hidden from everyone else.

As he planted his forearms on the boards and leaned over, a shock of hair flipped up from the back, mussed out of place by his slam into the boards. I resisted the urge to reach out and smooth it down, but let myself move a step closer, within touching distance.

"I thought you were in the box," I said.

"They let me out every once in a while."

"Silly them."

Our eyes met and his grin stretched another quarter-inch. Another schoolgirl flip--followed by a very un-schoolgirl wave of heat. He leaned even farther over the boards, lips parting to say something.