Ghost Layer (The Ghost Seer Series Book 2) (32 page)

“Well. I
do
see ghosts, though usually not old, old ones like this one. And I don’t see this one as much as feel it, and it feels really awful. As if it has teeth, crunch, crunch, crunch, and wants to eat me. My bones, crunch, crunch, crunch. And my, my . . . the rest of me.”

“All right, Caden–” Mrs. Flinton began to soothe.

“Caden?” called a young woman’s voice.

“Gram, Mommy and Daddy don’t believe me.” Tears began to trickle down his face. “It comes most at night. I’m afraid to sleep. Come help me, Gram.”

“Caden, where are you and what are you doing?” called the younger woman.

The screen went black. Clare glanced up to see Mrs. Flinton’s shoulders hunched and shaking as she wept into her handkerchief.

Zach cleared his throat. “When did this come in?”

Mrs. Flinton wiped her eyes and blew her nose and straightened. “This morning. I checked with my granddaughter, Caden’s fine and at school.” Her breath rasped in and out. “I knew I could count on you, Zach, and on Clare,” Mrs. Flinton sent her a look of appeal, “to help me. So I waited for you. As long as I could. I have a favor to ask you—” Mrs. Flinton began in a shaky voice.

The door to the mansion was kicked open and Tony Rickman, Zach’s boss at Rickman Security and Investigations, walked in carrying a large tray holding covered dishes. Clare smelled bacon and eggs.

“I’ll take care of this, Godmama Barbara,” Mr. Rickman said, striding the few paces to the coffee table and lowering the tray. “I have a case for you, Zach and Clare,” Tony said.

“What are you doing here mid-morning on Monday?” Mrs. Flinton questioned with starch in her tone.

Mr. Rickman went over and kissed her cheek. “Taking care of my Godmama.” His mouth flattened. “And young Caden. We don’t know all the particulars,” Mr. Rickman stated flatly. “This case could include physical danger as well as . . . ah . . . non-physical.”

Zach raised his brows at Clare. She’d always been wishy-washy about “consulting” for Rickman Security and Investigations. “Yes?” he mouthed.

She shrugged, then said, “You don’t have to pay us—me—Mrs. Flinton,” Clare said. “You saved my life . . . or at least my sanity.”

“I agree,” Zach said.

“You work for me, you get paid,” Mr. Rickman said. “And you will both work for me on this.”

Zach leaned down to whisper to Clare, “He’s a control freak.”

“We need you to go to Creede, Colorado, today,” Mr. Rickman said.

“Is that where Caden is?” Clare asked.

“Yes,” both Mrs. Flinton and Mr. Rickman said in unison.

Mrs. Flinton sniffled.

Mr. Rickman pulled out a big, square handkerchief from his trousers pocket and handed it to her, shot a glance at Clare and Zach. “Eat,” he said.

Zach leaned over and took off the silver domes. Sure enough thick bacon, soft scrambled cheesy eggs, and buttered English muffins filled the plates. Zach lifted a plate and began shoveling in eggs.

That was a man of action for you, ready to fuel up at a moment’s notice while her throat was still dry and closed from dread. Clare savored her coffee.

Tony Rickman arranged his big body in the chair near them.

Mrs. Flinton said, “My daughter, Patricia, has no special gift, but she grew up with me. She
believes.
” Mrs. Flinton sighed. “Patricia is out of the country.” The older woman’s lips pursed, showing fine lines. “I told her to stay away. I called my granddaughter and asked if Caden could spend some time with me, get him out of the town, and was politely told to keep my nose out of their business.” She swallowed more tea. “And they wouldn’t welcome me.” Her lips pressed together and she shook her head as she gazed at Clare. “I’m not strong enough in that one power to help.”

Tony Rickman grunted, “Good.”

Placing her teacup on the side table, Mrs. Flinton said, “Caden is right.” She sighed. “His parents won’t believe him. I do. Do you?”

“Yes,” Clare and Zach said at the same time.

Yes!
Enzo hopped to his feet, paced and circled the room, tail thwapping the air, sending a chilly draft through the room. Mrs. Flinton and Clare watched him, Zach ate, and Tony Rickman crossed his arms over his chest and studiously avoided looking at the spectral Labrador.

Enzo came back and sat near Clare’s feet, mostly in the coffee table, looked sorrowfully at the food, then back at her.
This is dangerous, Clare. Every spirit the bad ghost eats makes it bigger and eviler. I don’t want it to eat a boy.

“I don’t want it to eat a boy, either,” Clare said.

Zach crunched down his bacon. “We won’t let that happen,” he said with complete assurance.

“Creede is a four and a half hour drive. If you leave now, you could reach it before dark.” Mrs. Flinton’s chin set. “That’s important. I want Caden protected, and they won’t let me take him, and they won’t come visit me as a family. My granddaughter and grandson-in-law have a motel outside town, and they live on the premises. This is a busy time of year for them.”

“Hunting season,” Zach said.

“Yes. And Michael also has a business for processing game. They make a good bit of money this time of year.”

“And not so much during the winter,” Clare said.

“No. They are stubborn about self-sufficiency, among other things.”

“Self-sufficiency is important. Even for those who have family money or trust funds.”

“They love their life,” Mrs. Flinton said.

Lucky them.

Rickman stretched his big body and stood and Zach rose a millisecond after his boss, still holding his coffee mug. “We’ll get right on this,” Zach said.

Clare got to her feet, too. “I need to go home and pack.”

Mrs. Flinton pressed her hands together. “How long do you think it will take for you to . . . move this thing on?”

Destroy it,
Enzo said.

“Destroy it,” Clare muttered, tensing all over again. “I don’t know. You know I have very limited experience.”

“This is probably affecting the whole town, Clare. Horrible,” Mrs. Flinton said.

Mr. Rickman rolled his hand. “Give me a shot at a time period, Clare.”

“It shouldn’t take more than,” she looked at Enzo, “two weeks.”

The dog’s forehead wrinkled but he didn’t contradict her.

Clearing his throat, and looking out a window, Mr. Rickman said, “There’s a big tourist event, car show—Cruisin’ the Canyon—Saturday and Sunday in Creede.” He rolled a shoulder. “I have a classic car, thought about attending.”

All the blood drained from Clare’s face, she felt it going, along with her knees that wobbled, then gave out so she plunked back down on the couch.

Zach lowered his coffee mug. “If a supernatural murderer is anything like a regular one and looking for a big score–” He shrugged.

“A lot of deaths to feed him,” Clare whispered.

This is SO not good.
Enzo hopped up and down.

“How soon can you leave?” Rickman repeated. “Or do you want us to charter a flight, arrange a car?”

“I can do that,” Mrs. Flinton’s chin lifted. “Money can’t buy everything, but it can make things a whole lot easier. And it sounds like every hour might count.”

Mr. Rickman grunted, looked at his highly engineered watch. “It will take a little time to set everything up, make all your travel arrangements.”

“Creede has an airport?” Zach asked.

“Yeah,” Mr. Rickman said.

Zach narrowed his eyes. “How populous is the town?”

“About four hundred full time residents,” Mrs. Flinton said.

Angling his head at his boss, Zach said, “A private charter arriving and the people on it would be news for a small town.” He looked at Mrs. Flinton, “Would reach the ears of your granddaughter and grandson-in-law. Would let them know we’re coming and piss them off. Better if we went undercover, at least at first while we get the lay of the land.”

“You’re right,” Tony Rickman said. His jaw muscles flexed. “Alamosa is about an hour and a half drive from Creede. We can fly you into Alamosa and rent you a car there.”

“Sounds good,” Zach said.

Mr. Rickman turned on his heel. “I’ll have my secretary set it up: the flight, the car, the stay at the motel. Hopefully they aren’t booked for the weekend.”

“I must finish this by the weekend,” Clare said through cold lips. All of her was cold. Again. As usual. She’d had eight days to help her first ghost transition . . . on. Then had helped her second in five days. Yes. She’d kept track. Four full days to destroy a ghost-seer-eating ghost. The process of which, the whys and wherefores, the
hows
she knew nothing about.

“Clare, how soon can you leave?” Mr. Rickman asked.

Clare jerked from her dread-filled thoughts. She blinked and shrugged, looked at Zach. “An hour?”

He conveyed negative in a quick flick of his eyes that she thought Mr. Rickman and Mrs. Flinton missed. Since he didn’t want to speak up, she trusted him and amended her answer. “Sorry, more like two.”

“Right. We’ll send a car to pick you up at your place in, say, two and a half hours.”

“All right.”

Mr. Rickman’s hand went to his inside suit jacket pocket and he pulled out a wallet and a platinum credit card, offered it to Zach.

Who put both of his hands on the curved handle of his old-fashioned wooden cane. “Sorry, can’t take that.”

“It’s a business card for you and your expenses,” Rickman bit off.

“So it has ‘Rickman Security and Investigations’ on it,” Zach pointed out. “Which the family—what’s their names?—would recognize. All the locals might.”

“All right.” The card went back into wallet and pocket. “The family is—”

“Jessica and Michael Velick,” Mrs. Flinton said as she rose, and moved toward them with her walker. Now she appeared calmer, close to her old sprightliness. She angled her head at Tony for a kiss on the cheek. He bent and complied, put an arm around her thin shoulders and squeezed. “We’ll handle this,” he said in a grim tone, meeting Zach’s gaze.

It occurred to Clare that that male look might mean sending out his security force. Zach had told her most of Rickman’s employees were ex-military special operations kind of men. She wondered what they thought they could do about a soul-eating ghost. She had no illusions whatsoever that
she
would be on the front line of this battle. She took her tepid coffee and drank it down.

Mrs. Flinton said, “Thank you, Clare. I have full faith that you can . . . destroy this evil revenant.”

Great. Clare put her empty cup on the coffee table, stood and kissed the woman’s cheek. “I will do my best.” She said it quietly, but it was a vow. Zach moved around her and kissed Mrs. Flinton, too. “We’ll do our best and we’ll save Caden.”

“And Creede,” Tony Rickman said, putting on his sunglasses. “My take on evil is that it doesn’t like to limit itself to one person or one town or one valley, even.”

Zach smiled and put his arm around Clare’s shoulders. “Clare saves the world.” He sounded completely confident she could do it.

She thought she’d be eaten by a ghost.