Page 19 of Want Me, Take Me, Haunt Me, Make Me

He’d seen the Lewis woman’s reaction for only a moment before he’d vanished back into the trees and the deeper ethereal. Her fear had been obvious, and her move to protect herself had been swift and decisive, but a shape at the window might have alarmed any former city resident, and even a purely human face would have been a threat.

Ligat had spent a few hours considering just such possibilities before reporting to Perthrux. He’d left out the thrill that had shot through him in the split second that he’d met the medium’s eyes, aswell as the temptation he’d felt to linger and find out just what shehadseen and what she intended to do about it. Clearly his time in the demon’s service had left him craving excitement, even a foolish sort.

Perthrux stayed silent. Ligat judged that silence with some confidence, borne of long practice, but no more certainty than he ever allowed himself. “Andifshe knew,” he went on with a shrug and a hastily suppressed wince, “she’d only be frightened, which could serve your purposes perfectly well, you know.”

“It could,” said Perthrux. It leaned forward, and Ligat could feel its eyes trace the lines of his body, piercing through cloak and skin alike. “You want to stay.”

Ligat didn’t shift his weight, didn’t swallow, almost didn’t let himself blink, but he felt the narrow path beneath his feet all the same. The demon didn’t grant favors. It made very unfair exchanges, and if it asked one’s preferences, that was always for its own agenda and frequently its amusement. He touched his wounded shoulder lightly. “I wouldn’t mind the chance to repay a debt, my lord.”

The demon’s headless body shook with laughter. “Oh, you did take it hard.” One of its arms unfolded. Taloned fingers stretched out, grasping Ligat’s chin and turning his face toward the couch where Perthrux’s attenuated form lay. “Do you think you can keep your mind clear if you want revenge?”

Quickly, Ligat let his eyes unfocus. “I’m sure of it. In fact, it’ll keep me keen.” He tried to sound jaunty but not eager, uninvested but not careless. It never did to seem careless about Perthrux’s errands, not for a second. He’d only needed to learn that once. “And of all your current servants, my lord, I’m best equipped for the job. The others can’t interpret what they see nearly as well.”

Perthrux ran its tongue around its lipless first mouth, a sign of amusement. Its grasp would have been gentle except for the points of its talons. “No?”

“They were never mortal.”

Chapter 10

Hazel thought that she was coping pretty well, considering the situation, until the phone rang.

She’d successfully lined up a bunch of numbers for Tiffany and made them march in a decently coherent direction—her laptop hadn’t shown any signs of trouble yet—and had decided to give her eyes a break by stripping wallpaper for an hour. The previous owner’s choice of a busy yellow-and-gray print kind of thwarted the benefit for her eyes, but she was enjoying the destruction anyhow, kneeling on the floor and ripping off huge swaths of abstract maybe-vases. Any conscious thoughts she had centered mostly around the horror of nineties decorating and a little around lunch.

Then the phone went off, three high shrill tones, and she froze with her heart pounding in her throat and her hands icy by her sides.

Oh, for God’s sake, she scolded herself, her inner voice only a shade or two from her mother’s.You’ll never get through a week acting like this, let alone—

Hazel grabbed her phone as much to cut off that voice as to talk to the caller—or, really, to escape the moment when even her internal critic stumbled, because the heckler had no more idea than she did when the situation would change.

If.

The number was unknown, which probably meant a scammer, but Hazel stabbed at the green icon anyhow. “Hazel Lewis.”

She tried to sound normal, but probably failed, because the first thing the caller said was “I’m so sorry, I should’ve emailed or, or texted, I just didn’t—it seemed too immediate—this is Stephanie, by the way. Stephanie Chapman.”

“Oh,” said Hazel, blinking at the bare patch she’d created on the wall. She’d thought the voice sounded familiar. “That’s okay. Are you all right?”

It was only a polite, automatic question. The Chapmans had paid promptly and by electronic transfer, with no additional comment, and Hazel hadn’t expected to hear from them again. A call meant trouble; Hazel would have known that even if Stephanie had been less audibly flustered.

“Yes,” said Stephanie, to Hazel’s surprise. “Well, mostly. Physically fine, and no, um, hauntings. But people were clearing out Clarence’s house, and I thought you should know—”

Nothing good started that way. Hazel waited, listening to a bird of some description getting angry in the nearby trees.

“They foundbodies. In the basement. Sort of.”

Hazel didn’t bother to find a chair before she sat down.

“Sort of in the basement,” she asked as Stephanie fell silent, “or sort of bodies?”

“Yes,” Stephanie said again, and her laugh sounded like a dropped glass. They sure did make a pair, Hazel thought, remembering her earlier reaction to the phone: the Roxy Hart and Velma Kelly of incipient nervous breakdowns.

She took in the bare living room, packed with boxes and strewn with salt. Hazel’s strength had run out after protecting the bedroom and bathroom, and she’d decided it was better to rest than to risk making mistakes when she was tired, which still seemed like a good choice but definitely complicated matters now. If the face at her window didn’t count, she hadn’t had any attacks from the ethereal in a few days.

“I’d offer to meet up,” she said, touching the charm around her neck, the rock soothingly smooth beneath her fingertips, “but that’s complicated right now. Why don’t you put me on speaker and get a drink, though? There’s no hurry.”

Hazel herself went to her bedroom before Stephanie continued the story, both because occult protections seemed important and because she wanted an actual chair and a Diet Coke from her minifridge.Bodies in the basementwasn’t the sort of topic that lent itself to short conversations.

The salvage crew, Stephanie explained, had been cleaning up the wreckage of Chapman’s house when one of them had noticed a hole in the guest room floor with more space under it than should have been there. Everyone had noticed the odor, even through the masks they wore to keep from inhaling too much plaster dust. “Theythoughtit was probably just a possum or a raccoon that had gotten, you know, stuck,” said Stephanie.