Page 4 of Ghosted AF
In my experience, clients were usually standing just inside the premises, peeking through the windows and waiting to pounce the moment I arrived. Sometimes, I found them pacing outside on the lawn.
I knocked again.
The door didn’t open, but as the echo faded, I heard a loud clang, followed by a high-pitched scream. In that moment, everything changed.
Worried that my client might not beableto answer my summons, I took a step back and kicked out with my right leg, planting my booted foot just below the knob. The frame exploded, showering the ground in wooden splinters, and the door flew open with a loud screech from the damaged hinges.
Dropping my duffle bag in the entryway, I rushed into the main part of the unit, coming to an abrupt halt at the edge of the kitchen. I had been doing this job for a long time, but it took me a minute to understand what I was seeing.
The light pulsed, dimming to almost complete darkness, then surging so that I had to squint against the brightness. Debris—papers, napkins, clothes—tumbled over in the air, and the windowpanes rattled intermittently in their frames.
In the kitchen, a young male, maybe early twenties, wielded a frying pan like a weapon, swinging it around wildly. Most likely the cause of the clang I had heard. His platinum hair plastered to his head like a helmet, and water droplets glistened over his pale skin.
I might have thought he’d just stepped out of the shower if not for the sodden T-shirt that clung to his chest. Even as I thought it, the spray nozzle connected to the sink activated on its own, sending a stream of water directly into his face.
“Damn it!” he shouted. “Stop that!”
Then he slammed the pan down on the side of the counter, causing another horrible clang that reverberated throughout the apartment.
“Rylee Burke?” I asked, raising my voice to be heard over the cacophony.
His head snapped up, his brilliant blue eyes widening with a mixture of shock and relief when they landed on me. Dropping the skillet, he grabbed a metal spatula off a wire rack and hurried over to duck behind me.
I thought he had only meant to hide, but the frantic human gripped onto my shoulders and climbed my back like a jungle gym.
“What the hell are you doing?” I demanded, spreading my wings to relieve the discomfort of his weight.
“Yeah!” he yelled, his voice ringing right next to my ear. “You see this, Mykal? I’ve got back up!” With a near stranglehold on my neck, he shoved his other arm forward over my shoulder, waving the spatula around wildly. “He’s totally going to kick your ghost ass!”
“Get off me.” I punctuated the command with a growl, but he either didn’t hear it or didn’t care.
“Go. Do your thing.”
Then he squeezed my sides with his knees like I was a fucking horse he had chosen to ride into battle. I had been inside the place for all of thirty seconds, and this tiny monster was already shaping up to be a bigger problem than the supposed ghost.
As for the haunting, I had my doubts. Rylee definitely had something supernatural going on, but the energy felt all wrong for a spirit. Distracted by the Chaos in Chief, however, I couldn’t identify the actual signature.
“Enough!” I bellowed, sending out a blast of magic that bathed the walls in golden light.
The madness instantly quieted. The gust of wind that swirled throughout the unit stilled. The items that spun through the air stopped mid-glide and fell to the living room floor. The lights and appliances returned to normal, and no more waterspouts erupted from the kitchen.
Now, I just had to deal with Rylee Burke.
Before I could reissue the demand to get the hell off me, he thankfully slithered down my back, falling to the floor with a muffled thud, and came to stand beside me. He still held thespatula out in front of him, more like a shield than a sword, as if he didn’t quite trust the calm.
And he shouldn’t. I hadn’t eradicated the problem. I had simply neutralized it for the time being.
“Is it gone? Did you kill it?” He stared straight ahead, not looking at me, his eyes scanning the living room as if waiting for a jump-scare from behind the sofa.
“First off,” I answered with as much restraint as I could muster. “I don’t even know what ‘it’ is.”
“It’s a ghost. Obviously.”
It really wasn’t. “And exactly how do you expect me to kill a ghost?”
He finally lowered the utensil and turned his head to stare up at me. “You’re asking me? Isn’t that your job?” Straightening, he angled to the side, looking more confused than angry. “I mean, that’s why I emptied my savings account to hire you.”
He folded his arms, wrapping them around his torso, and his bottom lip puffed out in a legitimate pout.
