Coffee and Ghosts: The Complete First Season (Coffee and Ghosts: The Complete Seasons Book 1) (7 page)

And then he is silent. We’ve grown used to this, having him quiet, his gaze somewhere in the middle distance. I don’t ask him what he sees. I know he will tell us when he’s ready.

In the meantime, Malcolm and I have an incident at the local law firm.

“Your grandmother can’t keep doing this,” he says. “Someone will figure it out.”

“You didn’t.” I have graduated back into jeans, my thighs healed, or mostly so. I’ve added a plaid blazer, but still feel underdressed for the gauntlet of lawyers we will need to pass.

“How about this,” he counters. “She needs to be careful.” He stops our trek down the sidewalk. “You need to be careful, Katy. That thing—”

“Is gone.”

He stands firm in the center of the sidewalk so a mother with a stroller must scoot past us.

“I can’t get that word out of my head,” he says once she passes. “Vendetta. It wasn’t about Nigel, and I don’t think it was about me. That leaves you.”

“That thing is gone,” I say again.

“For now.”

“Yes, exactly. And in the meantime, we have a job to do.”

“But—”

I press my finger against his lips, a quick touch, there and gone. This close, he is all Ivory soap and nutmeg. “Let’s go catch a ghost.”

To my surprise, Malcolm doesn’t protest. He merely takes my hand and starts walking.

To my surprise, I don’t mind. Not at all.

AS FAR AS GHOST ERADICATIONS GO, clearing sprites from Sadie Lancaster’s house almost never varies. I suspect they are the same two sprites, although with sprites, it’s hard to tell. I suspect they hold a certain amount of affection for Sadie since they always return. They don’t mind my efforts to catch them. At least, they don’t mind the coffee I use to do so. All in all, clearing Sadie’s house of sprites guarantees a certain amount of cash flow each month.

K&M Ghost Eradication Specialists
appreciates and counts on that certain amount of cash flow.

“You know, Katy,” Sadie says to me, hands fluttering. “I’ve been talking to someone who says I should embrace my sprites.”

“You could,” I say, mentally weighing cash flow against honesty. In my hands, I cradle a cup of coffee, one I plan to place in the master bath. Ghosts of all varieties love toilet humor. You really don’t want one in your bathroom. The mug stings my fingertips and steam rises from the coffee’s surface. In that steam, something glimmers. I may have my first catch already.

“She says they won’t hurt me,” Sadie adds.

“They won’t,” I say. “But they will play pranks.”

Sadie gives her head an emphatic shake. “They’re only trying to communicate. You should know that, Katy.”

Well, no, they’re not. And no, I don’t know any such thing. True, ghosts have desires, but not in the way most people think they do. None of them want to sit down for a chat. They don’t want to unburden themselves, no matter what you see on television. Like most things supernatural, information on ghosts is very misleading.

“Anyway,” Sadie is saying. “Mistress Armand—”

“Wait. Mistress
Armand
?” My partner—the M in K&M—is Malcolm Armand.

“Well, yes. I just assumed she’s a sister, or an aunt. Same beautiful black hair and all.” Sadie waves a hand, dismissing my question.

Aunt. Sister. Imposter? My hands tremble at the thought. Coffee sloshes over the rim. My skin smarts. I swallow back the pain. When I reach the bathroom, I’ll run some cold water over the burn. Now? Now I want to know more about this Mistress Armand.

Sadie clutches her hands beneath her chin. “She did a reading, right here in the living room.” Her eyes glow. “She knows everything, about Harold, how even though he cheated, he still loved me ...”

What else would you say to a widow, especially one both grieving and wronged? I sigh, my breath chasing steam from the top of the cup. The sprite is there, waiting to be caught. This one is a tease.

“Cold reading,” I murmur to myself.

“Pardon, dear?”

“I said, the coffee is getting cold. I need to take it to the bathroom.”

What I need to do is think, and possibly call Malcolm, and catch a ghost. I can do all three in the bathroom.

I set the cup on the vanity, then return with a Tupperware container. I hold it open next to the rising steam. The coffee is cooling, and the sprite has had its fill.

“In you go.”

I don’t even need to scoop up the tiny thing. It floats compliantly into the container, settles at the bottom, and makes no protest when I snap on the lid. I hold the container at eye level and stare through the opaque plastic.

“We’ve met before.”

In response, the sprite thumps the Tupperware’s side.

Sprite secured, I text Malcolm. Nothing. I call Malcolm. Still nothing. As a last resort, I try the main number of the Springside Long-term Care Facility.

“Oh, hello, Katy,” the manager says, her voice clear and light and full of humor. “Yes, Malcolm is here.”

The fact I’m speaking with the manager—and she sounds so happy—can mean only one thing: Malcolm is holding court. The Springside staff and residents love him. Or rather, most of the
female
staff and residents love him. For a man so obsessed with our cash flow, he certainly doesn’t mind spending hours at one of our few gratis accounts.

In the background, a cry goes up, a gasp as if a magician has pulled a bouquet of flowers from a hat and presented them to someone in the audience.

The manager laughs. “Oh, his visits brighten everyone’s day ... yours do too, Katy, I didn’t mean—”

Whenever I visit, I only manage to mess up everyone’s bridge game. So no, I doubt I’m a day-brightener.

“It’s kind of important,” I say. “Could you put him on the line?”

The manager sets the phone down. Sounds filter through the receiver, chatter and laughter. Someone squeals. When Malcolm picks up the phone, his voice is tinged with warmth.

“Malcolm Armand.”

“It’s Katy.”

There’s a pause in which I hear him mentally berating me. Yes, I know. I’m interrupting the Malcolm Armand variety hour and all his fun.

“Do you have a sister?” I ask.

This is a fair question—and not out of the blue as you might suspect. Up until a few weeks ago, I never knew Malcolm had a brother, one who swallows ghosts. It’s entirely possible his family tree includes a medium.

“No.”

“An aunt, then? Or a female cousin?”

“Maybe a second cousin. Or is that first cousin, once removed? I can never remember.”

“How about a mistress? Do you have one of those?”

“Katy, what the hell is this about?”

“Someone is in town. She claims to be—” I pause and glance at Sadie, eyebrow raised in question.

“A medium between this world and the next,” Sadie rattles off. She sounds like she’s parroting an infomercial.

“A medium. She’s been advising Sadie.” Possibly for a great deal of cash, but I’ll investigate that later. “And she calls herself Mistress Armand.”

“Seriously, Katy,” Malcolm says. “Assuming I had a mistress, which I don’t, would she really go around calling herself Mistress Armand?”

“No .... I was just trying to get your attention.”

The line goes silent, and then his laugh fills my ear. It’s a rich sort of laughter that—if you could brew it and pour it into a cup—would taste like a sweet, dark roast.

“You’ve got it,” he says, humor returning to his voice. “You always do.”

My throat tightens. I’m not entirely certain what he means by this. However, I am certain I won’t ask. Or at least, I can’t ask. My throat won’t let me. Through the receiver I hear the volume of the chatter in the facility drop, a collective hush that sounds like the rushing of air. Malcolm sucks in his breath.

“Uh, Katy, do you know what Mistress Armand looks like?”

I repeat the question and it’s barely out of my mouth when Sadie hands me a trifold brochure. “Long, dark hair,” I say.

“Check.”

“Could be anywhere between twenty-nine and forty-nine.”

“Check.”

“Long, flowing robe-like thing?” I add.

“I think they’re called kaftans.”

Yes. Leave it to Malcolm to know the correct term.

“Whatever,” I say. “She’s wearing a pink and yellow one in her photo. It’s fancy.”

“Blue and green. But yes, and it looks expensive, like it’s made out of silk.”

“It is made out of silk.”

I jerk around because the lilting female voice seems to come from both the phone and the air around me.

“Speaker,” Malcolm murmurs.

I mute my own phone and then press it close to my ear, unwilling to miss a single word of this exchange.

“I hear we share an interest in the supernatural and a surname,” that same lilting voice says. “I am Mistress Armand.”

“Malcolm Armand.”

He sounds impressed, or like he’s trying to impress. From the brochure, her image stares up at me. I assumed Photoshop. Perhaps I assumed wrong. My throat clogs again, the taste of it thick and salty.
Don’t be stupid. Malcolm is your business partner. He’s free to impress anyone he likes.

If only I weren’t so impressed.

“We need to embrace our otherworldly friends,” Mistress Armand is saying. Her voice wavers in and out, like she’s turning as she speaks.

“Physically speaking,” he says, “that’s not possible.”

Her laugh tinkles as if he’s uttered the funniest thing ever.

“But you do catch them, don’t you?” she says. “They must have some substance.”

Well, yes, but not enough for a hug.

“And then you just set them free?” she asks.

“Of course.” Malcolm’s voice is sturdy and sure. “We are strictly a catch and release operation. No extermination.”

“But, in some ways, isn’t that just as cruel?”

Cruel? My ears strain to hear what Malcolm says, what she will say.

“I don’t see how,” he says. “We set them free.”

“Unmoored, unprotected, lost, in all that air? It’s like releasing a laboratory animal or a house pet into the wild. Without their familiar surroundings, they’re unable to survive.”

Worry pings inside me. I’d never thought of what we do as deliberately cruel. It’s a service, really, for both humans and ghosts. Most ghosts are more than willing to be caught. Many, like Sadie’s sprites, find their way back to haunt yet again. My grandmother—who taught me everything I know about ghosts and ghost hunting—always said we were doing everyone involved a favor.

“I don’t think that’s true,” Malcolm says, but the conviction in his voice bears cracks. At least, I can hear them even if no one else can.

“Here.” Something rattles, something that sounds like paper, quite possibly a replica of the brochure Sadie handed me earlier. “I’m holding a séance tonight. Bring your little partner.”

Little partner?

“Cups of coffee and Tupperware?” She snorts a laugh, one that does not tinkle, thank goodness. “Come tonight and watch how a real ghost whisperer does it.”

* * *

Malcolm is not at our office by the time I arrive there, but his brother Nigel is. Nigel, who is also an Armand. Nigel, who knows a thing or two about ghosts, even if those things came from swallowing them. He’s recently recovered from his addiction to that. Although sometimes his eyes glimmer, like he’s contemplating a tasty sprite. He is also our resident computer expert. I hand him Mistress Armand’s brochure.

“Whoa.” Nigel runs a hand through his pure white hair. “She’s … intense.”

“A relation?”

“Not that I know of, but—” He shrugs. “The Armand family tree is kind of scattered.”

He studies the brochure for a moment, then glances up, dazzling me with a rare smile. “She has a domain name. Where there’s a domain, there’s a trail. Let’s follow it.”

His hands fly over the keyboard while I pull up a chair to watch.

“Here we go,” he says. “Looks like she maintains a static webpage. Not much here.”