Page 1 of Down and Dirty

Chapter 1

It wasn’t always easy having ghostly apparitions follow me around like toddlers who think I’m hoarding candy. Some things should be private. Bathroom time, most definitely. Intimate moments with a guy, absolutely. But it was the times like this that I’d forgotten to draw the line.

Times like now when trying to conjure a specific dead person.

My crazy sisters meant well, but I couldn’t have talked them out of wasting their time if I’d offered access to my favorite chocolate, which I had flown in just for stressful days.

Our kind of crazy was genetic and inevitable; no amount of sweets could fix us.

Light from the moon glistened through the cracks in the curtains in my sister, Cassie’s dining room, reminding me I’d forgotten to eat dinner.

My ghostly houseguests had followed me here. Probably to make fun of my sisters and me.

“It’s time to come clean and make them believe that Talia really did die when you were a kid,” Veronica Winters said from across the room.

Even in her spirit form, she wore the badge that reflected she’d sworn to serve and protect. She’d been a hard-nosed cop in her heyday. When most women were burning their bras and spreading the message of peace, not war, Veronica was earning promotions on the force for taking down the drug dealers intent on keeping those hippies high.

“Stay out of this,” I whispered back.

My sister, Gwen turned to stare at me. She raised a single brow. “Faith, is there something you care to share?”

“My ghostly roommate was just reminding me that Talia died when we were children. So, explain again why we’re doing this?” My flat voice remained calm and stoic without pressing my sister’s pressure points. Gwen loved to fight. It was part of her DNA. She also had this unshakable need to be right.

But she was wrong tonight.

Getting her to admit the truth was going to be a challenge.

“You know why,” she said and stabbed the air toward the pictures on the table.

“Just because the FBI believes that girl in the picture is Talia doesn’t make it true.” I shot back, even I could hear the hard edge of frustration in my voice.

The FBI agent in question had known exactly what buttons to push to get Gwen to jump on this crazy train, but I wasn’t ready to retake that trip down memory lane.

“You have to admit that the picture Fillpot gave us and the aged computer rendering of one of Talia’s school pictures are remarkably similar,” Cassie said.

Cassie was a finder of lost things. That was her gift. That was the reason we were here. She was hoping to lock on to the sister we’d believed had been dead for twenty years.

I rubbed at the pinpricks forming in my head. The headache had almost reached behind my eyes.

Like Gwen, Cassie wanted to believe. Our other four sisters, who were conveniently too busy to participate, weren’t here for this little test. They, too, had reservations.

“I just want to go on record as saying Talia’s dead. Even if I haven’t seen her ghost, Grams wouldn’t deceive us about something like this. So, don’t get your hopes up. We shouldn’t have to mourn Talia twice.”

I crossed my arms over my chest and turned my attention to my other ghostly tagalong. Jared had been only a seven-year-old kid when he had died. He still wouldn’t tell me about his passing, no matter how hard I tried to get him to open up and move on, and right now, he was snooping through Cassie’s drawers.

My baby sister, Talia, was as dead as Veronica and Jared. Not that she’d ever come to haunt me.

The pain in my head intensified, morphing into hot sharp needles, causing me to rub my forehead. The air in Cassie’s dining room was chilled due to the ghostly presences. Candlelight flickered on the walls. The scent of apple pie wafting around the room made my stomach growl. “Can we get on with this? I’m starving.”

Cassie dangled her crystal over the map laying open on the dining room table. This was where she worked in her day job helping people find lost things.

I stood at the table, sober, calm, and composed, unlike my other two sisters in attendance.

The worn blue and red threads from Talia’s friendship bracelet were tied onto Cassie's wrist as a good luck charm. The frayed edges indicated that she’d tried this search throughout the years.

I turned my gaze away, letting it roam around the room, unwilling to watch my sister fail and get disappointed again.

The plaster cast of three small hands our Bennett cousins had delivered was sitting on the sideboard against the wall. We’d all been searching unsuccessfully for the owner of the smallest hand. The plastered handprint were the only clue to suggest there had been another Bennett line unaccounted for.

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