Page 68 of Want Me, Take Me, Haunt Me, Make Me

“Are you the Grim Reaper?” the new arrival asked, popping up at his elbow.

“I suppose it’s a reasonable mistake,” said Ligat, after a moment’s confusion. He touched the top of his hood absently. “But no. I have nothing to do with your soul or its final dispensation.”

The ghost sighed. “Well,thatfigures. I’m Albert Gordon. A journalist.” He stuck out a hand, clearly working from ingrained habits, then quickly retracted it. “What are you?”

“An observer.”

“Iknewshe was keeping secrets,” said Albert, glaring in Hazel’s direction. “And this is the thanks I get for trying to inform the public.”

The situation hadn’t really sunk in for him. Some ghosts took death that way—some for years. A good layer of fear lay beneath the petty anger in Albert’s speech, but that wasn’t Ligat’s concern. “What happened?”

Albert snorted. “Okay, like I said, Iknewshe was hiding something. Said she was a medium, went to do a—ha, I guess maybe itwasa séance—on a guy who died and then turned out to be a serial killer, then vanished. I figured I could get a story, but go figure, she wouldn’t play ball. Then this weird Brit comes along and helps chase me off so he can get in her pants.”

“Frustrating, I’d imagine,” said Ligat, a band of iron around all his emotions.

“Yeah. She probably thought she’d gotten rid of me for good, her and her simp friend, but I figured nobody’s that cagey unless they’ve got a few skeletons in their closet. So I waited a couple weeks, then I parked over on a turnoff and walked down here atnight.” Albert swallowed. “And then there’s this…thing. I don’t want to talk about it. I tried to run. I think I’d maybe gotten twenty feet.” Fear, or the memory of fear, did overpower his anger then, and he fell silent.

“An ugly death. Not one anybody deserves.” It was as close as Ligat would come to offering this unpleasant young man sympathy, but he couldn’t dismiss the basic physical empathy that made him wince at the disarticulated body. “But she didn’t summon your killer. It would’ve done the same to her if it had the chance.”

“And if she’d just given me half an hour of her time, I wouldn’t have had to come back.”

Of all the answers Ligat could have given the new ghost, he didn’t think any would have made much of an impression. He turned his attention back to Hazel and the police instead. The constable seemed to have finished with their plastic bags, which helped the yard’s appearance somewhat, though the blood remained and so did the flies it had drawn. Hazel was shaking her head.

The policeman frowned. “…not safe out here,” he said, and concern made his voice loud enough for Ligat to hear even from his distance. “Besides, it’s a crime scene.”

“What crime?” asked the man by Hazel.

Ligat gave him a more thorough examination. He was a tall, rangy sort of chap, with a very sharp, short haircut and a suit far too nice for the dirt and blood around him. “That’s her lawyer,” said Albert, noticing the direction of Ligat’s gaze. “She’ll probably get famous off this—go on all the talk shows and yak about how she had to hide in her house from an alien, you know?”

That sounded more like envy than condemnation to Ligat, but he had no desire to argue the point and miss further developments. He waved a hand dismissively at Albert and took a small step closer as the lawyer continued.

“Neither my client nor I want to cause you problems, Officer,” said the man in the suit. “But as I understand it, the general consensusis that we’re seeing the aftermath of a bear attack. I’m not sure how much more you can learn from the scene itself.”

“We’re notsureabout that,” said the policeman, but not very forcefully.

Ligat, who had no mental powers, could read his mind nonetheless: Even a bear probably wouldn’t have done the sort of damage on display, but simple biology if not physics would make a human attacker even less likely, especially one of Hazel’s size.

“As for safety,” said Hazel, “I have a shotgun, and that drove the bear off last night. I don’t intend to take any chances—I’ll stay inside my house until you’ve had a chance to search the area—but Idointend to stay here.”

A bit more back-and-forth followed, but Ligat was never in any doubt of the outcome. Hazel’s will was equal to Perthrux’s attacks and Chapman’s attempts at manipulation. A local policeman wasn’t likely to have much luck, especially since Ligat suspected Hazel hadn’t told him about the prowler.

Sudden suspicion had him turning back to Albert. “Was last night the first time you came out here without her knowledge?”

Either Ligat failed to sound as mild as he’d intended—not particularly surprising, if so—or Albert simply had a bad poker face. The young man flinched, then offered another defensive shrug. “I might have done some preliminary investigation. Trying to figure out what she was doing. I owed it to my audience.”

“You weren’t nearly as stealthy as you might have imagined.” At least that meant one less mystery, although Ligat suspected Hazel wouldn’t find it much comfort. God knew he didn’t.

The police, having lost the argument, started getting back into their cars. Hazel watched them go. Her lawyer watched her. Ligat couldn’t read the man’s expression, and he had only a superficial understanding of relationships in the twenty-first century, but he thought the lawyer stood a little close for a strictly professional association.

“Bet she’s not just paying him from her bank account,” said Albert helpfully.

Ligat sighed. “I mentioned that I had nothing to do with the fate of your soul, didn’t I?”

“Ye-es?”

“I can change that if you don’t make yourself scarce for a while.”

* * *