The Mammoth Book of Ghost Stories by Women (Mammoth Books)

“I keep telling you, he’s a sorcerer. Use that great big egg brain of yours, Parkes.” She half-turned, staring at the window for once instead of at me. “I helped him get filthy rich, too. The Seal only picks women. Or at least, that’s what Grams told me. Ryan was studying it for aeons. He figured out he couldn’t hold it, so when Grams died he waited until he knew who it had settled with and swooped down on me. Wined and dined me, and I was stupid enough to fall for it.”

“You always did like attention.” It was snide, yeah. But I figured I’d earned some snide.

She didn’t even register the hit. Just considered it, head cocked sideways and a bead of water trickling down one cheek. “I did, didn’t I? Anyway, he was pretty wealthy, but he wanted more. Lots more. He knew about how to use the Seal. Called it a Grand Talisman. There’s major and minor ones, all tumbling around the world, but the Seal is one of the big players. Gram said it was only for the dead, but there are plenty of . . . other uses. Anyway . . . first we got Ryan filthy stinking rich, then that wasn’t good enough. I wasn’t good enough. He wanted the Seal himself. Only he couldn’t get it off me, so . . . do you know what it’s like to have a sorcerer on you all the time?” A delicate little shudder. Her tone was still flat, uninflected, and completely eerie. “I wouldn’t let him divorce me for a trophy, and he wouldn’t divorce me anyway because I had the Seal and he wanted more. That’s the thing about sorcerers. Greedy fucks.”

It’s not just sorcerers, honey. I bet I can find a lawyer who’s worse. “You read entirely too much sci-fi growing up.”

“Some fantasy novels get it right. Anyway, I started thinking about you. The Seal intimated that it wouldn’t mind you, if I really wanted to give it up. So I found you. You didn’t move very far.”

How could I move? I barely had enough energy to tread water. “Neither did you.” I scrunched back into the couch, the blanket wrapped securely around me, and I was still freezing. It wasn’t an external thing – the cold was way down deep. The pendant warmed, reassuringly, and I forced my fingers away from it with an effort. “So, what is it you want me to do exactly, Moira? It’s late and I need my beauty z’s.”

“Go to bed and get them, then. Now we wait.” Her slow smile was all the more chilling because I recognized it. It was the same grin she used to use when contemplating a nasty prank to play on her helpless flavour-of-the- week boytoy. “Ryan will come to you. I’d bet my afterlife on it.”

The most disconcerting thing about taking a ghost to work was other people walking through her. Moira grimaced each time, rippling, and I flinched because the pendant would twitch against my skin. Like a little live thing.

Another disconcerting thing? The world was brighter. Literally. I blinked and squinted my way through that first day, and everyone from Emily to Gene to Anderson told me how nice I looked but asked me if there was something wrong, since my eyes kept watering. It took a little time to adjust. Plus, the pendant kept twitching. Like an insect, or a little animal settling into a new burrow. And it really did go with nothing in my closet, but nobody noticed it.

Their gazes just slid right over it.

Moira’s running commentary on my day was hysterical. Or it would’ve been, if I could have talked back.

“Jesus Christ,” she noted when Anderson leaned over the back of my chair in the meeting room, “looking” at the paperwork in front of me but certainly taking the opportunity to rub against my shoulder. “Please tell me you didn’t sleep with this guy? He reeks of Vitalis. Oh, and chlamydia.”

I hadn’t, and I almost opened my mouth to say so. I settled for giving her a filthy look and she laughed, the blood dripping off her hands snapping out of existence with sharp lightning crackles. A naked woman in a lawyer’s office is a distraction and a half. Especially when she’s corpse-livid and the discolourations keep spreading through her flesh. Not-flesh. Unflesh. Whatever.

It didn’t take long. She died on Tuesday. On Friday I came in to find a blue message slip on my desk, Sharon the receptionist’s angry scrawl as familiar as my own handwriting by now.

Ryan Hannigan had called.

“Meet in a neutral place,” Moira insisted. So it was the Metropole Hotel, because they had a restaurant and if he was picking up the tab – which I was fairly certain he would – I could do with a steak.

I was seeing my dead college room mate. Cholesterol was the least of my goddamn worries.

Ryan Hannigan certainly didn’t disappoint. Trim, tanned, wide-shouldered, in a suit that would have cost me a month’s pay (if I’d ever wear black worsted) and dark-eyed, he rose as soon as I approached the table and offered his hand. “Miss Parkes.”

“Mr Hannigan.” I shook it once, wearing my “pleasant-but-noncommittal” smile. Took my hand back decisively. “I’m a bit surprised by this.”

“Yes . . . I’m sorry.” He was fetchingly awkward, running his hand back through a shelf of dark hair. “I just . . . Moira. It was a shock.”

I sank down, the bald maitre d’ hovering long enough to drop a napkin in my lap and bustling off. “Thank you for telling me about the memorial service.” I tried not to look at Moira, who hovered behind him as he settled in his own chair. Instead of flat disinterest, her entire face had turned predatory, her discoloured eyes suddenly piercing, red sparks burning in their depths. At least she was quiet, for once. “I feel bad,” I said, all in a rush. “She . . . it was so sudden, and I hadn’t seen her for years—”

“She was good at keeping secrets.” He cocked his dark head, and I had the sudden vivid mental image of a shark smiling before it opened wide. “She’s standing right behind me, isn’t she?”

I swallowed hard. The pendant twitched again, decisively.

“For Christ’s sake.” His faint smile didn’t alter. “You’re wearing the Seal. You keep looking up over my head, right where she’d be standing if she wanted to slip a knife between my ribs. Which she’d probably love to do. The dead lie, Miss Parkes. Did she tell you that?”

“Never,” Moira whispered, leaning over him. “We never lie. Don’t take the bait, Georgie.”

Another hard swallow, my throat dry and slick as a summer windshield. “Mr Hannigan—”

“Ryan. We’re past formality, Georgia, wouldn’t you say? Do you know you can shut her off? Now that you’re wearing the Seal, you can tell her to go away so we can have a leisurely chat over dinner. Just concentrate on making her fade.”

Moira leaned forward, taut, the blood crackling as it dripped off her hands. “Georgie—” Another real emotion instead of just flatline.

Fear.

Her eyes bugged, the whites turning even more jaundiced. She faded, static buzzing and blurring her sharp outlines. I stared over Ryan Hannigan’s shoulder, letting out a slow whistling breath, my eyebrows coming together.

“Isn’t that better?” Ryan leaned back in his chair as a slim Hispanic boy filled our crystal water goblets. A paper-thin slice of lemon floated in mine, twisting as it settled. Like a yellow scarf, or a grimacing mouth.

Moira winked out of existence. The pendant twitched again, and the new sharp colour and clarity in the world intensified. Like I’d been seeing through gauze before putting the necklace on, thinking I had 20/20 because I didn’t know any better.

My heart leaped, pounded thinly in my wrists and throat.

“Now.” He settled back, watching me with bright, reined interest. “Let’s get to know each other a little. I can’t use the Seal, but I can teach you how to use it. And we can make each other very happy.”

She materialized in the middle of my living room, her face squinching up into a twisted, plummy root-shape. She didn’t even have to take a breath before starting in on me. “Do you have any idea how uncomfortable that is? What did he say to you? What did you do? He’s dangerous, Georgie. You have no idea how dangerous, and you just threw me under the bus, goddammit—”

I dropped my purse, stalked into the kitchen. Put the paper box of leftovers in the fridge. When I closed the door she was right there, and still going.

“—and we can’t lie as long as you’re wearing the Seal. Jesus Christ, Georgie, when did you start listening to anything a man says? Especially a man like that! He killed me, Georgie! Why aren’t you listening to me?”

It took her a good ten minutes to wind down. She trailed me while I undid my hair and stepped out of my