Haunted (Otherworld 5)

When she was gone, applause erupted behind me. I spun to see Kristof, leaning back against a tombstone.

"Now, that was a performance," he said. "Lying about his wife still being alive was good. But the life insurance bit? Truly inspired."

"A bit cliched, don't you think?"

"It worked, didn't it? Added a few extra logs to his hellfire." He backed onto the double gravestone and motioned for me to sit beside him. "So your Nix was giving Cheri both a role model and a road map."

"A road map unrelated to the role model, which seems strange." I leaned back and watched the moon duck behind a cloud. "Maybe that's the point. Repetition without duplication."

Kristof nodded. "Another young couple killing kids, but with enough differences to keep things interesting for the Nix."

"Interesting, yes. But maybe more than that. Not just changing the routine but improving on it. Cheri said things went wrong with Suzanne Simmons, but the problems had been fixed."

"Refining her method. So she goes from Simmons to Cheri MacKenzie to Amanda Sullivan, presumably with a few in between."

"Sullivan is a pinch-hitter," I said. "The Nix only stayed with her long enough to help her kill her children, then made sure she got caught. For chaos, comparing Cheri MacKenzie to Amanda Sullivan is like comparing a steak dinner to a Quarter Pounder."

"Fast-food murder."

I straightened. "That's it! When you're starving, you grab what's available, no matter how bad it tastes. The Nix doesn't just want chaos, she needs it. Otherwise, why--"

A bluish fog floated past. Before I could brace myself, the Searchers sucked me under again.

18

I STOOD IN FRONT OF A PLAIN NARROW RECTANGLE OF a two-story house, white-sided with dark shutters.

"Doesn't look like the throne room," I muttered.

"Definitely not."

I started, and saw Kristof beside me.

"What am I doing here?" He shrugged. "My guess is as good as yours. Either the Searchers accidentally sucked me in along with you or the Fates want me to start pitching in."

We looked around. The sun had barely crested the horizon, but Mother Nature had turned the dial onto full this morning, and it blazed down, promising tropical conditions by noon. I glanced at the house. Every window was closed despite the heat. Air-conditioning? A horse and buggy trotted past behind me. Okay, probably not air-conditioning.

"Colonial America," Kris said. "Does that sound like any ghost-world regions you know?"

"Boston...but this doesn't look like Boston. And the ghost world is never this warm."

A door opened across the road and a man dressed in trousers and a long-sleeved white shirt hurried out, carrying a hat and a black bag. He had salt-and-pepper hair, a high forehead, and thin whiskers that joined his mustache to his sideburns.

He hurried to the street and, without so much as a glance either way, crossed...and walked right through me.

"Okay," I said. "If he's a ghost, too, how did he do that?"

The man pushed open the gate of the house I stood in front of, and strode through. He climbed the few steps to the front door and rapped. A man opened the door. He was tall and thin, with white hair and a beard. Despite the heat, he was dressed in a black suit, with his jacket buttoned. He grunted a surly hello at the younger man.

"Just stopped by to see if you folks are feeling any better," the neighbor said.

"Feeling better?"

"Yes, your wife came over this morning, said you'd both been up all night with stomach complaints. She thought someone might have put something in your food--"

"In our food? That's preposterous. Abby would never say--"

"Oh, you know how womenfolk are. They get to worrying sometimes. She seemed fine to me--"