Page 5 of Real Fake Hauntings

Soon, we were speeding through the streets of Olmeda, already bustling even this early in the morning. Cars and delivery trucks honked at each other, and Sonia stared ahead with a slightly deranged upward curve of her mouth that made me reach for the grab handle.

All around us, the city was in full Halloween fervor. Windows showed all types of decorations, and banners claiming this would be the most haunted Halloween ever hung from building to building in the narrower streets. We passed some of the grand Victorians, their small front yards filled with tombstones, spiderwebs, and the occasional animatronic zombie or skeleton.

Sonia’s expression became downright bloodthirsty as she eyed a delivery guy on a bike trying to sneak through the traffic, and forcing everyone to stomp on their brakes.

“Where are we going first?” I asked to distract Sonia. I sure hoped that guy wasn’t part of the PBOA or he was fried.

“Bosko’s.”

I let out a low whistle. Bosko had as much of a bite as he had bark. Not someone you wanted to mess with.

Bringing out my phone, I sent Key a fast text. This pentagram issue would be great for her training as a bounty hunter-to-be.

Then I allowed my thumbs to move down to my texts with Ian. He had answered my daily good morning! text with a picture of Fluffy, Ian’s small dog, trying to eat the much bigger Rufus’s breakfast. Adorable. He’d also added a Hope you have a good day. Come visit later.

No need to ask me twice.

Hiding my grin, I forced myself to refocus on the reason for Sonia’s visit.

“How did you learn about the pentagrams?” I asked.

“People affected called Officer Brooks. She called me.”

I tensed at the mention of Officer Brooks. She was one of our—the paranormals’—contacts in the Olmeda police force. I had met her on my second week of opening the shop, and we hadn’t exactly gotten off to a great start thanks to the then-disappearing ghost in my bathtub.

“Officer Brooks is at Bosko’s?” I ventured, wishing very hard she wouldn’t be.

“She has better things to do than investigate paintings on the wall. That’s your job.”

Look at that—manifesting worked.

“If it turns out to be serious, we’ll involve her,” Sonia continued as another biker zoomed right in front of us. Her gaze followed them, and she licked her lips. Neither Dru nor I knew what kind of paranormal Sonia was, but I really hoped she wasn’t a witch because if she were, half the bike owners in Olmeda were in for a rough time. “Until then, it’s up to you.”

Normally, if a paranormal was up to no good, it would be a case for the bounty hunters and their jails, but sometimes the human police got involved if the crime had nothing to do with magic. If the case was serious enough, the paranormal police contact got involved along with the bounty hunters to smooth things over with the human side of justice.

In most cases, though, the paranormal community took care of their criminals.

Sonia parked a few blocks away from Bosko’s garish souvenir apparel shop, and we made our way through the heart of Old Olmeda. A few people were already out in spooky costumes, and we exchanged winks of understanding as we passed each other. A couple of kids pointed at my hat and talked to the adults next to them, and I was tempted to tell them about Sonia’s shop to earn myself extra brownie points. Ultimately, I erred on the side of caution. This was an official trip, after all. Sonia would probably disapprove of mixing business and witch-hunting.

Instead of going to the front of Bosko’s shop, Sonia took me to a narrow alley running down the back of the block of buildings. Bosko’s daughter, Lydia, was waiting for us there, a ferocious scowl scrunching her forehead. Her gaze fell on my hat and my glittering green cheeks, and her scowl deepened.

“You have to be kidding me,” she said.

“Not in the least,” I said cheerfully. “Hope Avery, at your service.” I would’ve extended my hand, but paranormals weren’t into shaking hands. “Where’s the pentagram?”

She pointed to the side. A large, rust-red pentagram had been painted on the brick wall by the back door of the shop. The brush strokes were straight with slight dripping at the beginnings and the ends, as if someone had used a can of paint and an old-fashioned brush rather than a spray can.

In addition to the paint, a series of rune-like markings had been written along some of the lines and in the middle of the pentagram. Some of the symbols were familiar, although they weren’t anything that you’d draw on a pentagram for the sake of enhancing a spell, and the rest made no sense. They looked like gibberish to me, but witches sometimes used obscure or family-created symbols as a sort of shorthand. Just because I didn’t recognize these, it didn’t mean they weren’t real.

Taking out my phone, I began taking photos.

“When did you notice the pentagram?” I asked.

“About an hour and a half ago when I came to open the shop.”

“You reported it to Officer Brooks right away?”

Lydia huffed. “We have a few incidents like this every year. We usually clean it up, but this seemed more real than usual.”

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