Page 2 of Girl, Haunted

'Get a grip, Langston,' she told herself. It was her overactive imagination, or not enough sleep. She always thought that hanging out with dismembered body parts for a living would harden her to real-life terror, but she'd never really had to put it into practice.

But she couldn’t focus. Not until she’d swept this entire place room by room.

So, hammer in hand, Natasha edged out of the Omen room, into the Undead Cave. Plastic stalactites loomed overhead and animatronic zombies stood frozen mid-lurch. Nothing out of place. Next, she moved into the Clown Carousel, the one room that actually gave her the creeps. She looked from prop to prop and found only painted faces smiling at her with their giant red mouths. These things were the stuff of nightmares. Her nightmares, specifically. She'd designed them that way.

Room after room, Natasha found nothing out of place. No fallen props, no signs of intruders. Just the same carefully crafted chaos she'd left behind. By the time she circled back to Granny's Parlor, irritation had begun to overtake her fear.

‘Nothing here,’ she said to Mildred. ‘Great, now I’m talking to puppets.’

And then she was back where she started, in the Chamber of Reflections. Natasha let out a shaky breath. She turned back to the control panel, determined to finish her last task and get the hell out of here. All she had to do was test the projections, make sure the ghostly apparitions appeared in the mirrors as planned. Then she could go home, pour herself a stiff drink and sleep until tomorrow afternoon.

‘Right then.’ She steeled herself, reached for the room’s light switch and plunged the chamber into darkness, then she switched on the show lights. Her reflection fractured and multiplied a hundredfold in the mirrored walls. A hundred Natashas. Imagine how much work she could get done, she idly thought.

‘Okay, now just the…’ Natasha reached for the projector, then stopped.

Because she caught something in one of the mirrors.

Natasha's heart stopped. She hadn't turned on the projectors yet. There should be nothing in those mirrors but her own stupid face.

She squinted to adjust her eyes to the darkness.

Stepped closer to the mirror.

Maybe an image had been burned onto the projector lens. Or there was a ghost in the machine. Perhaps she’d overlooked something.

Natasha didn't turn around. She knew, with a bone-deep certainty that chilled her to her core, that if she did, she'd findnothing. The presence was only visible in the mirror, a reflection of something that shouldn't – couldn't – exist.

No.

Something was there.

Natasha's hands began to shake. Only now did she realize she was still gripping the hammer. She raised it to her chest, not daring to take a step in any direction, unsure if she still had full control of her limbs.

Because then she saw it.

The unmistakable outline of a human figure.

Not a trick of the light, not a glitch in the projector system.

Real.

A scream built in Natasha's throat, but before she could release it, the figure moved. Faster than her eyes could track, faster than should be possible. Icy fingers closed around her throat, cutting off her air. Natasha choked, clawing at the inexorable grip. The figure lifted her off her feet as easily as a child lifting a doll and sent her sprawling into the mirror behind her.

A crystalline explosion rained down razor-sharp shards. Pain blossomed across Natasha's back, her arms, her face. She hit the ground hard, the impact driving what little air remained from her lungs.

And then the ghost’s hands were around her throat again.

The last thing Natasha saw before the darkness claimed her was her own reflection in the mirrored ceiling.

CHAPTER ONE

Despite being in law enforcement for twelve years, Ella Dark had only been in a courtroom once before.

Today was the second time.

She was in New Orleans, Louisiana, and the courtroom was a pressure cooker of suits, ties and rolling TV cameras. The only splash of color in the room was the orange jumpsuit on the man three rows ahead. Ella had last seen this man eighteen months ago, and back then, he hadn’t looked quite so timid.

His name was Austin Creed, more widely known as the Mimicker. But Ella remembered him as the first serial killer she’d ever apprehended, back when she was a rookie and was yet to sprout a single gray hair. Creed’s time incounty lockup had clearly taken its toll, but Ella felt no pity. This was the man who had turned the bayou into his personal hunting ground and had snuffed out four lives in homage to his serial killer idols.

---