Page 27 of Want Me, Take Me, Haunt Me, Make Me

It tasted much better than she’d expected, warm on her tongue and with an edge of both fruit and iron that Hazel was pretty sure would have been absent if she’d just put it on her toast that morning. The creature stayed just long enough to observe that she swallowed, then went back into the forest, moving without any apparent hurry but disappearing in almost an instant.

Chapter 14

When it came to healing herself, or at least to stopping the bite from making her completely a portal to the ethereal, Hazel had started with the basics. Every night she took a bath, mixing the water with salt and every purifying herb she could think of. She focused her daily meditations on the physical world and her place in it. Summer’s charm never left her neck.

By her second week at the cottage, she still had no idea whether any or all of those approaches had helped. The wound didn’t look any worse, but there was no expected prognosis to tell her whether that was normal or whether she’d have exploded with eldritch light already if not for the charm and the baths, and the biggest actual change Hazel noticed was that she pretty much always smelled faintly like lemongrass and pine.

Summer’s emails said he hadn’t been able to find any clues. Mrs. Trenton’s letter from Maine said her research had turned up short. That left Hazel staring at badly formatted occult websites, always limiting her time so that her ethereal leakage didn’t break her laptop, and digging through books. She was glaring down at a paragraph about blood—she didn’t object in theory, but the writer was using such florid prose to justify the concept that Hazel couldn’t tell how much they meant and from what—when the car pulled up to her driveway.

It didn’t turn down the drive, which raised Hazel’s hackles right off. Somebody who thought they had the right to be there would have driven up to the door. Parking just on the side of the road said the occupant was trying very hard to be on the right side of trespassing laws.

She closed her book, since she clearly wasn’t going to get more research done any time soon, and watched out the window as a skinny young person with a bad soul patch and a shaved head got out of the black Honda. They didn’t have any obvious cameras, but they held up their cell phone and took a picture of the house.

Oh, goody.

“Hazel Lewis?” the new arrival called, startling several sparrows into flying up from the lawn. “Haaaazel Lewis?”

They sounded confident, though Hazel noticed that they hadn’t come up to her door. She suspected shotguns and dogs had crossed their mind. On her own land, she could probably have gotten away with using either, at least as a threat. She’d never been a big fan of guns, but the idea had a certain appeal.

The person with the camera was too savvy to open themselves up to that kind of risk, though. They simply stood by their car and started narrating, loudly, into their phone. “Albert Gordon here, viewers. I’m standing by the house where so-called medium Hazel Lewis has retreated after holding a ‘séance’ with serial killer—”

“Afternoon,” Hazel said, stepping out of the house and starting to walk up the driveway. “I don’t believe I agreed to let you film my property.”

“I’m not on your property,” said Albert, not bothering to conceal his smugness, “and if your house is visible from the road, I have the right to film it. Are you Hazel Lewis?”

Hazel wasn’t sure whether he knew what he was talking about or was just bluffing her. She didn’t really want to test local law enforcement to find out. “You’re creating a disturbance, anyhow.”

“I wouldn’t need to if you’d answer a few simple questions. Assuming you’re Ms. Lewis, I mean.”

She hated giving in to this sleazy little twerp, even a little, but practicality won the day. “I am. And I’ll give you five minutes.”

Albert had a very punchable smile. “You call yourself a medium, don’t you?”

“In one of my professional capacities, yes. In my other, I call myself an accountant.”

“But you claim that you can talk to the dead.” The reporter emphasized the last four words, staring at her like she was a fake mermaid in a freak show.

Hazel folded her arms across her chest and stared right back. “Yes, under some circumstances.”

“What circumstances are those?”

“If they’re around. And if they want to talk. It’s a lot harder to stand intheirdriveways and scream for attention.”

Albert frowned. “I’m just doing my job, Ms. Lewis.”

“Oh, did your editor send you out to cover this angle of the case?”

“I don’t—I’m an independent investigator. People deserve the truth,” he added, spacing each word just a bit too far apart.

“And you deserve ad revenue.”

“What do your clients do if the dead don’t feel chatty?” Albert leaned forward. “They still pay you to hear that, right?”

“I ask compensation for time and travel expenses, like any other consultant. If a case doesn’t turn up any paranormal activity, it’s within about an hour’s drive, and it’s not particularly complicated, the client might be out twenty dollars. My hourly fee is on my website.”

“Did Clarence Chapman employ you as a medium?”

“He did.”