Mack harrumphed.
I heard the back door open again as Adelle reentered the house. I waited until Adelle skipped back into her room before hitting the light switch. Her eyes lit up with it, staring like I’d hung the moon there.
“Now, you’ve got a remote with this fan,” I instructed her, handing her the small white remote. “Six speeds, and the remote’s the only way to change them, so don’t lose it. There’s a bracket it can sit in. Where do you want me to put that?”
“Next to the light switch,” she instructed, still mesmerized by the fan. “Listen, oh listen. It’s so silent. I don’t hear more than a whisper.”
“Good fans you don’t hear.” The last one was probably like Bob Marley—all it did was shake, rattle, and moan.
She hugged me again, suddenly, arms threatening to cut off all circulation around my waist. “Merci, Brandon, merci.”
“You’re welcome.” I honestly wished I had time to do more. To fix every issue in this house. This beautiful, wonderful woman deserved that. I might be able to squeeze in something else, but I hesitated to tackle the bigger projects for fear of leaving it half-done and burdening her with it.
She turned and hugged Mack just as hard. “You spent too much money on me, mon angé.”
He harrumphed again, arms tight around her shoulders. “No such thing, Maman.” Meeting my eyes over her head, he mouthed, Merci, cher.
I winked at him. “I’ll clean the trash out and get things back in order here. Mama Adelle, how about we celebrate by eating out?”
“No such thing, I’ll cook for you.” She pulled back, looking at the fan again in wonder. “Thirty years I was looking at that eyesore and now it’s gone. Gets me in a renovating mood, it really does. What do you boys want for dinner?”
“Yes,” I told her firmly.
Mack laughed outright. “Don’t ask him that question. He’s never helpful with the answer. Come on, Mama, I bought a lot of groceries to work with. How about shrimp?”
I watched them go, linking arms and chatting happily about the possibilities. Mack was right. She was too thin. And I didn’t like that she had a car that wanted to break down on her.
Mack and I would need to step in, it seemed, and take better care of her.
7
The ghost at Edmée’s house wasn’t willing to say boo to me. No matter what kind of lure I tried, or how much space I gave it, it would only linger just out of sight. I could see the trails of energy it left behind, I knew that it was here, but I couldn’t lay hands on it. We spent the whole night in a waiting game that proved useless.
I didn’t have the time or patience to wait on it to come out on its own. It was time to go in after it. I went with the easier way to start matters and looked through the attic, but didn’t see anything other than insulation and mice droppings. If I couldn’t find a clue above, I’d have to go below.
I’d bought some painter’s coveralls to wear over my good clothes, so I slipped into them and grabbed a flashlight. Edmée’s house sat up on bricks, giving it a very narrow crawlspace underneath. I wanted to take a look under the house, and into the ducts a bit, see if something had been stashed in there.
Brandon didn’t like this plan one iota and hovered near the access door, shining a light inside. He was on his knees, heedless of the damp grass against his cargo pants, hunched over like he was two seconds from ready to follow me in. “I really think I need to go in there.”
“Listen, Mr. Shoulders,” I retorted, grunting as I army crawled along the dirt, “you won’t fit. I barely fit. And I’m better equipped to deal with it if the ghost finally does make an appearance.”
He grunted sourly. “I really hate being so big sometimes. Damn inconvenient in cases like this.”
“Don’t you be huffing about your height. I like you big.” I paused to give him a saucy grin over my shoulder. “Especially when you’re pinning me in the shower and giving me a good seeing to.”
As expected, he grinned back, teeth flashing white in the fading light. “I do enjoy doing that, true. Anything yet?”
“Bunch of cobwebs.” I dragged myself further along, trying to estimate where Cali’s room would be overhead. When you were underneath like this, there was nothing to be used as a landmark. So far all I saw were pipes, framing, and traces of black tarp. It was musky and damp, especially damp after the rainfall last night. I smelled mildew and was in a hurry to get out of here before I breathed too much in.
I searched as carefully as I could, using the flashlight to see from every angle, but there was nothing under this house that shouldn’t be there. I finally gave up, as I’d covered the area thoroughly and nothing had pinged on my senses. “No, cher, it’s not underneath.”
“Alright, come out, then. We already checked the attic space, maybe ducts next?”
“Yeah, let’s do that. We might get lucky.” I had a suspicion the mysterious object was in the walls themselves, though. Or right under the floorboards somehow. Not that I knew precisely what I was looking for. It was more of a hunch. A hunch based on experience.
I started army crawling back out.
Something like glass shattered above my head and twin female screams rang out. Brandon was off like a shot—seriously, I didn’t know a man that big could move that fast—and it left me struggling to quickly get free of the crawlspace. A bad feeling twisted and churned in my gut, and haste made me clumsy as I fought my way out from underneath the house.
By the time I’d made it out of the crawlspace, both Edmée and Cali stood out front, my young cousin sobbing and burrowing into her mother’s arms. Edmée just looked grim. Spooked, but grim. Catching my eye, she pointed inside. “He went in.”
“Merci.” I darted through the open door after my partner. I barely had my head in when I heard two shots ring out.
“Damn you, come out,” Brandon snarled. “It’s easy enough to frighten a child, but not me, eh? MACK!”
“I’m here, I’m here,” I assured him, running for the hallway. I looked around anxiously, trying to catch any hint, and there was a trail of spectral energy already dissipating. Brandon stood planted in the middle of the hallway, gun still held at the ready. I couldn’t see the area he’d shot at. “Did you see him?”
“More like I saw the trace of him,” Brandon explained, nodding toward the floor.
I saw what he meant in an instant. One of the flower pots had been broken in multiple pieces, dirt now strewn along the floor. A neat set of footprints tracked through it. No wonder he’d had an idea of where to shoot.
I don’t know how the rest of the world perceives ghosts, but a medium’s eyes have a different spectrum. I’ve never seen pure light and darkness. I see the twilight in between. Especially then, when I focused on the spectral energy trailing through the hallway. I followed the trace of wispy, white ethereal fog drifting through the area. The ghost had retreated from the hallway and back into Cali’s room, and he’d been agitated doing it. Like a whirling dervish, he’d torn through her bedroom, upsetting everything and turning it upside down, before puffing out of the visible spectrum. I tracked him straight into a wall and then stopped in sheer frustration.