Suzanne McLeod - The Cold Kiss of Death

‘Hell’s thorns, Gen, the circle’s fine,’ he said, pushing a hand through his dark blond hair and scratching behind his left horn in faint exasperation. ‘It’ll take more than a couple of knocks from a ghost to break.’

‘Yeah, I know.’ I lifted up the laptop to give my jeans a chance to cool down and balanced it on the chair’s frame. It wasn’t just the circle, though; I felt like I wanted to warn Scarface or something, tell him to walk round the side.

Finn gave me a reassuring smile, teeth white against his tanned skin. ‘I know you’re worried, but just try and relax, okay?’

‘Sure,’ I agreed, and he went back to his reading.

Except relaxing wasn’t an option, not with the sweat still itching down my spine. So instead I stared down the brightly lit tunnels, watching for the next ghostly spectre, telling myself yet again it was irrational to be scared. Scarface was just a soul-memory trapped by a traumatic death, stuck on replay like a faulty DVD, nothing more. If he’d ever felt anything like fear or panic, or wanted anything from the living, those feelings were long gone. I flashed back to Cosette waiting for me in the rain. Despite her wounds, she was angry, not frightened or distressed. Damn, I really needed to find out what she wanted. My phone call to Constable Taegrin had been a part success; he’d been happy to chat to Mr Travers about polishing tips, but his voice had turned disapproving when I’d mentioned my ghost problem and asked about necromancers. He’d not refused outright, but I wasn’t pinning my hopes on him. I thought about asking Finn if he knew any necros, then decided against it. Cosette wasn’t work, and Finn was snowed under seeing as he’d only recently taken over the franchise and become the boss for real. The laptop flipped over to the screensaver— Spellcrackers.com~ Making Magic Safe— and tired of balancing it on the chair, I leaned over to settle it on my backpack.

‘Here, let me.’ Finn reached out to help and his fingers touched mine. Green and gold magic—his and mine—flashed where our skin met like excited sparklers going off.

I froze. The magic was doing its usual, urging us to get together like we were the last two fae in the world. And even though I knew it wasn’t going to happen ... a foolish hope still surfaced that this time he might say something, anything other than—

‘Sorry,’ he murmured, carefully removing his hands from mine and letting go of the laptop.

The magic fizzled away into nothing.

‘No probs,’ I said readily, making sure I kept the disappointment out of my voice and carefully placing the laptop on my backpack.

He settled back in his chair and concentrated on his book.

I tried to settle back in mine, and decided that focusing on the ghosts was marginally better than angsting over might-have-beens, so I checked out the spreadsheet for who was next. Posy. Right on time, the hairs on the back of my neck rose and Posy—a dirty bandage hiding most of her face, the hem of her skirt in rags—ambled by clutching a withered bunch of flowers. I marked her details on the pad and tapped them into the laptop, fingers trembling slightly. Something about this ghost job had me spooked—even without the bad pun—and not just because of my phobia. But when I’d mentioned my vague suspicions to Finn, he’d dismissed them.

Chewing the end of my pencil, I scanned the underground site again. Bare bulbs in their yellow hanging cages lit the place brighter than the midday sun, even though it was past midnight. The bright lights didn’t make me feel any better: they cast weird shadows over the abandoned builders’ tools, turning them into hiding places full of staring eyes, watching. Thick cobwebs stretched across the arched brick roof and damp stained the walls with algae-slimed patches. And it smelled old and musty, with an underlying whiff of putrefying flesh—a smell Finn had assured me existed only in my overactive imagination, not that his assurances made the smell go away. The place was creepy enough even without the steady stream of ghosts drifting by. Finally my gaze skittered over the more modern breezeblock wall blocking the River Thames end of the tunnel and landed on the cordoned-off area in one corner. An avalanche of grey human bones spilled out over the floor. The very bones I’d been trying to ignore all night, especially as I had an odd notion that they kept whispering my name.

‘Tell me why we’re here again?’ I asked, more to shut the whispers out than anything else.

Finn briefly looked up, a flash of irritation crossing his face. Hell, irritated was better than half-heard whispers, so I prodded a bit more. ‘I mean, they’re developing this as part of the tourist attraction and they want the ghosts to hang around to add to the spooky ambience, but apparently something is frightening them off.’ I could sympathise with how they felt right now even if I didn’t like them. ‘What I don’t understand is, why hire Spellcrackers? I mean, we find magic and break or neutralise spells, right? And ghosts are nothing to do with magic, so why doesn’t Mr Developer just get a medium down here to check them out?’

‘I told you, he doesn’t want that, Gen,’ Finn said, smoothing out a page. ‘He’s worried that any contact might disturb the ghosts even more. He just wants them watched, to see if we can discover why they’re disappearing.’

Happy Head limped past, half his skull missing, a vacant smile on his face, his body transparent as a reflection in a glass window. Suppressing another shudder, I leaned over, tapped the laptop and keyed in his info. 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.