Queen of the Dead

bat.

Oh, crap. Another downside of the giving-physicality-to-ghosts element of my gift was that the pissed off ones could use it to try to kill me.

I backed up slowly. “Alona?”

From the corner of my eye, I saw her look up sharply, registering the note of barely repressed panic in my voice.

She sighed and started toward Mrs. Ruiz, stepping over and around the missing floorboards with a grace that made it look like she did it every day. “Okay, look, I know he can be annoying, but he doesn’t steal stuff. Believe me.”

She gave me an exasperated look. Evidently, she was still irritated that I’d refused to take part in her elaborate plan to get her hands on an iPad. She’d been convinced the touch screen would be sensitive enough for her to use it even when I wasn’t around to give her the physicality to do so. Blogging, Twittering, and a Facebook page — all for a dead girl. I don’t think so.

“So, there’s no need to go crazy,” Alona continued. “He didn’t take your…whatever. Besides, you need to go through me—”

To get to him. Those words had some kind of ritual-like effect, temporarily freezing ghosts who intended me harm. But before Alona could speak, Mrs. Ruiz lashed out with a meaty fist and connected solidly with Alona’s face.

Alona is not a tiny, fragile girl. She is athletic, toned, and muscled from years of tough cheerleading workouts and the relentless pursuit of cellulite extinction. But she was no match for Mrs. Ruiz and the power behind that blow.

She flew backward, striking the wall behind her before sliding down into an unconscious heap on the floor.

“Alona!” I lunged for her, Mrs. Ruiz temporarily forgotten. Yes, Alona was, in theory, already dead, but you don’t spend eighteen years as a ghost-talker without realizing there are all kinds of dead, and some kinds are preferable to others.

I dropped to my knees in front of her, but before I could touch her, she flickered and vanished.

I pulled back. She’d exhausted her energy on this plane of existence. Alona rarely disappeared completely anymore, having gotten the hang of the positive-energy thing. But every time it happened might be the last, meaning she might not be able to come back.

It would happen someday. It was unavoidable. Alona would be gone, either because she’d disappeared one too many times or the light had returned to get her. The question was, would it be today? I felt sick just thinking about it. I didn’t want it to happen like this, Alona sacrificing herself to save me.

The air whistled above my head in a split-second warning, and I threw myself backward as the shovel cracked down where I’d been kneeling. I landed hard on my back, and splinters gouged through my shirt and into my skin. The other immediate question was, without Alona, could I survive Mrs. Ruiz?

I gritted my teeth and forced myself up even as Mrs. Ruiz brought the shovel to her shoulder again. I scrambled for the door, my back protesting and trickles of blood rolling down my skin.

I fell more than stepped into the hallway, just grateful to be out. Then I heard Mrs. Ruiz’s heavy step behind me. I pushed myself up to my feet, expecting the crack of the shovel again at any second, this time maybe against my head.

Instead, the doors on either side of me slammed closed, followed by the next two, all the way down the hall.

She was closing me in. Damn, she had to have some serious energy to be shutting doors without touching them. Speed wasn’t her strength; strength was. If I didn’t make it to the front door fast, she might be able to slam that one shut on me, too, and then I’d be stuck. I might be able to kick out the plywood covering one of the windows, but I wasn’t sure I could do that before Mrs. Ruiz caught up to me with her shovel.

Panting and gritting my teeth against all my various aches and pains, I hobbled for the stairs as quickly as I could.

At the top of the stairs, the edge of my shoe caught on the rotting remains of the stair runner, and I slipped down the first few steps. I reached for the railing to pull myself up, and Mrs. Ruiz’s shovel slammed into the wood, just missing my fingers. Loose spindles rained down on the floor below.

I yanked my hand back with a yelp. “I was just trying to help you, okay? I didn’t take your stuff!” I shouted at her.

“I did.” A new voice spoke up from below.

I risked taking my gaze off Mrs. Ruiz to aim the flashlight, which I’d somehow managed to hang on to, past the curve in the staircase. A girl I’d never seen before stood at the foot of the stairs, her face pale in the light. Long, dark curly hair floated in a cloud around her head, like it had a life of its own. She was dressed all in black, which helped her blend into the surrounding dimness. Another ghost? Great.

But then I saw she held what appeared to be a flashlight, aimed at the stairs, but it wasn’t on, for some reason. In her other hand, she had a dirty old pillowcase, stuffed full of something with hard edges and with considerable weight. The case looked ready to split open.

So, not a ghost then. A thrill seeker? A looter?

The girl shook the pillowcase, and it made a heavy jangling sound, like coins but louder. “Looking for this?” she asked.

“No,” I said slowly, but she wasn’t looking at me. She was staring at something or someone above my head.

Mrs. Ruiz grunted, and I felt the staircase shake as she started down.

I pulled myself up to my feet and stumbled down the rest of the stairs. I didn’t want to be in her way.

When I reached the bottom, the girl’s gaze flicked to me for split second before returning to monitor Mrs. Ruiz’s lumbering descent. And a delayed realization finally clicked in. This girl knew someone else was there. She could see or hear — maybe both — Mrs. Ruiz.

She was a ghost-talker. A real one. Like me.

Holy shit.

“Silver spoons?” The girl shook the bag again. “Really? They left you their mansion and you stole all their good spoons? From more than one set, too.”

Still reeling from my discovery about this mystery girl, I forced myself to focus on the conversation going on. That’s what this was about? Flatware?

“This place was not a gift!” Mrs. Ruiz shouted. “It was a prison, one I would have escaped when the old woman finally died, but she made me tenant of this place instead of giving me the severance she had promised. I did not own it. I could not sell it. After years of devoting myself to her every need, I still could not leave.” Apparently, seeing her recovered hoard had loosened up her vocal cords. Alona would have been impressed.

Mrs. Ruiz slammed her shovel into the banister, like an All-Star player on steroids. The old wood fractured and collapsed. Bits of it sprayed in all directions. She grinned, a horrible, dark expression. She hadn’t been protecting the house from unworthy people, as we’d thought. She’d been protecting her stash, her self-awarded reward that she’d never gotten a chance to cash in.

“That must have really pissed you off.” The girl gave the pillowcase another heavy shake and began backing up, past the still partially open front door, to the study/parlor room.

The place where Alona had found all that strange equipment.

Suddenly, pieces of this puzzle were falling into place. Whatever that stuff was, Alona had been right. It had nothing to do with the demolition. It belonged to this girl and whatever she had planned for Mrs. Ruiz. We’d obviously interrupted her…what? Investigation? Exorcism?

Mrs. Ruiz, her gaze fixed on the pillowcase in the girl’s hand, was following her into the room, like a dog fixated on a liver treat. A sterling silver liver treat.

As the former housekeeper passed me, I moved to follow, even as aching and bloody as I was. I had to see what was going to happen next, once the girl got her into that room.

That was a mistake.

Mrs. Ruiz, evidently deciding that the girl and I were in on this together or that my continued existence was