The Cold Kiss of Death

The ghosts were all following the same pattern, each one appearing so many minutes after the previous and almost at the same moment in every hour. So far all the ones we’d surveyed appeared to be turning up on cue. Of course, the place was a quiet as the proverbial grave just now.

‘How does he know they’re taking off for wherever anyway? ’ I dug the heels of my boots into the dirt. ‘I mean, all the workers are human, aren’t they? So they can’t see ghosts.’

‘He says the builders have noticed a difference—a change in the atmosphere, fewer of the usual chills that humans get when they’re around ghosts.’

‘Maybe it’s the builders themselves who are causing all the problems.’ I drew a hammer hitting the top of the Scream-face’s head.

Finn mumbled something unintelligible and turned another page.

I subsided into silence, frowning at him from under my lashes. Definitely something not right, but what? I looked, but other than the circle—now faintly glimmering with green and gold—and a vague ash-like haze over the pile of old bones near the blocked-off wall, that wasn’t so much magic as maybe the remnants of a ghost, there was nothing. I couldn’t even see Finn’s Glamour, but then he’d obviously worn it long enough it was part of him now. I doodled, plucking at my T-shirt where it was sticking to me with the heat, as I tried to pinpoint my unease.

Finn flicked his fingers and a bottle of water appeared in his hand. He held it out to me. ‘Want some?’

‘Thanks,’ I said as I took it, careful not to let our fingers touch; the bottle was ice-cold, straight out of his fridge at home. Brownie magic’s a wonderful thing, if you’re able to use it, which unfortunately I’m not. I took a grateful, cooling drink as he flicked his fingers again to call another bottle for himself.

‘Here comes another one,’ he said, pointing with the bottle. ‘Lamp Lady.’

Goosebumps pricking my skin, I watched from the corner of my eye as she came into view and slunk past, hugging the wall, her shawl pulled tight over her head, the full skirts of her blood-splattered gown dragging a wide swathe in the dusty floor. As she passed each hanging light, it flickered and hissed out, then sparked back to life as soon as she reached the next. It’d been the same routine every time she’d appeared.

I put the water down, and tapped away at the laptop, then backed up her details on the pad, frowning as my doubts about the job started to click together in my mind. I stared at the little figures I’d been drawing. A horned man on a horse—okay, so it looked more like a monkey riding a pot-bellied pig—but I finally realised what my subconscious was trying to tell me, where my unease was coming from. It wasn’t so much the job, but Finn and his attitude. He was doing his usual white knight act again. Damn, I was usually quicker than this at catching on.

‘Y’know,’ I said thoughtfully once Lamp Lady was out of sight, ‘I think this job is one of those wild goose chase things.’

Finn didn’t look up, which sort of confirmed my suspicions. ‘How do you work that one out?’

‘Well, the ghosts have all been down here for so long, they’re stuck. They’re all following exactly the same pattern, right down to the exact second they appear, one after the other.’ I tapped my pencil. ‘They’re used to the place being creepy, and even bumping into the circle, Scarface still keeps to his routine. So I don’t see how there’s anything that would disturb them.’

‘Gen, we’re being paid to do the job, and at night rates too.’ He said that as if it should have been enough of an answer.

‘Uh-huh. So why doesn’t Developer Guy want anyone here during the day time?’

‘Because he wants it all done on the quiet.’ He turned another page. ‘Doesn’t want any bad publicity.’

‘Bad publicity!’ I snorted. ‘A tale of ghosts disappearing wouldn’t be bad publicity; it would be a whole lot of great free publicity.’

He didn’t answer me, just unscrewed his water bottle and tipped it up. I waited until he’d finished, trying not to stare at the way his throat worked as he swallowed, then said, ‘C’mon, Finn, what’s this job really all about? Because no way does it look like any of the ghosts are dong the vanishing act.’

He sighed in resignation and closed his book. ‘The job’s as described, Gen. I even talked to a couple of the workers. It all sounds like a normal run-of-the-mill haunting. You know, chill spots, figures seen out of the corner of the eye, invisible touches, the odd smells—’

‘Hah, putrefying flesh, right?’ I gave him a told-you-so look.

‘Yeah well’—he half smiled—‘the ghosts disappearing is probably just the builders getting used to them, sort of like white noise. And I told him that, suggested he didn’t waste his money, but he insisted he wanted it all checked out.’ He shrugged, aiming for nonchalance and not quite managing it. ‘Once I give him the results, that’ll be the end of it.’

‘And that’s it, nothing else?’ I asked.

‘I know you’re nervous about the ghosts, Gen, but there’s nothing to worry about, really.’

‘Then why are you being evasive?’

‘Leave it, Gen.’ He gave me an unhappy look. ‘It’s not important, okay?’

‘Fine, so I’ll tell you then. Mr Developer asked for me to do the job. He probably got snippy when you said I couldn’t do it on my own and offered to provide his own security or something. Probably even said he’d supervise it himself, didn’t he?’

‘Something like that,’ Finn muttered, flicking his fingers and making his empty bottle disappear.

‘Damn, I should’ve known. It’s one of those pseudo-job things. The guy’s got all curious about the sidhe sex myth, how we’re all supposed to be gagging for it.’ The jobs had got more frequent since the internet video of me kissing a vampire had surfaced; the girl-on-girl aspect of it seemed to be adding fuel to the fantasies. Of course, if any of those oh-so-curious humans had bothered to read up on the myth they might not be quite so enthusiastic. The myth had survived from back when the world was closer to nature. The fae held the fertility rites to replenish the land and encourage its fecundity. And yes, there was a lot of sex involved, but it was only on specific dates, not a free-for-all thing as most of them seemed to imagine.

‘You should have told me, Finn,’ I carried on. ‘You can’t keep doing your usual and trying to protect me. I can look after myself, you know. I’ve been doing it for long enough.’

‘Gen, I’m your boss, and I wouldn’t be a very good one if I let you walk into a situation where I knew you’d be at risk.’ He leaned towards me, forearms resting on his thighs, earnest. ‘All it needs is one human to get angry at being disappointed and then complain to the police that you tried to Glamour him. You’d end up being arrested and maybe even convicted. Is that what you want?’

Not when conviction meant the guillotine, fuck no! But—‘That’s not what I mean, Finn. It’s not that I don’t appreciate the back-up, or the thought. But if I know a job’s iffy, I can deal with it. It’s you keeping me in the dark that gets me all annoyed.’

He snorted. ‘Well that’s the pot calling the kettle black, isn’t it?’

‘And what the hell is that supposed to mean?’ I snapped.

‘C’mon, Gen, the suckers are sending you sackloads of mail, one of your neighbours is trying to evict you. And now I’ve heard you’ve got a ghost a-haunting you. But whenever I ask you if everything is okay, you nod and say yes, everything’s fine.’

‘That’s because they’re not work problems, Finn, they’re my personal life.’

‘Hell’s thorns! What, so now I’m your boss I’m not supposed to care about what goes on in your life?’ Angry emerald chips glinted in his eyes. ‘I want to help you, only you won’t let me!’

‘Why, Finn?’ I said, confused at his anger. ‘Why do you want to help me?’

‘Because we’re friends, Gen, and that’s what friends do.’

I dropped my pencil and slapped my hands round his; sparks exploded again as the magic reacted. ‘If we’re friends, Finn, why are you ignoring this, why are you pretending there’s nothing going on between us? Until everything happened you were keen enough to explore it—’

‘This isn’t about that, Gen.’ He pulled his hands away, frustration and some other emotion I didn’t recognise darkening his eyes. ‘You need to stay away from the suckers, and the invitations need to stop. At least that way, there’ll be less for the witches to complain about and the Council won’t agree to the eviction request’—he paused, a muscle twitching along his jaw—‘or anything else.’

Ignoring the shiver of hurt that he’d brushed aside my questions, I said slowly, ‘Anything else means my job, doesn’t it?’