Carrie Vaughn - Kitty Raises Hell

“You guys do séances, right?” I said. “I was just thinking about the Harry Houdini episode you did. Trying to contact him.”

The three exchanged glances, sharing an inside joke shorthand like I’d seen them do before. Brows raised, I waited for an explanation.

Gary said, “We don’t do traditional séances—”

“Depends on what you call traditional séances, there, mate,” Jules said.

“What if I want to talk to a specific dead person?” I said.

“Because you saw how well the Houdini episode worked out,” Tina said.

Jules leaned forward and pointed his hand like he was going to start an argument with Tina, who had a “bring it on” look in her eyes, but Gary gestured and they both calmed down.

“While there’ve been lots of documented incidents that suggest communication with the Other Side”—he really did say it like it had capital letters—“is possible, it’s not as simple as making a phone call.”

I said, “Oh, I don’t want to make a phone call, I just want—”

“Did you hear that?” Tina said, straightening, her eyes growing round.

We went silent, and a beat later, a noise came over the speakers, a series of thumps like a body rolling down the stairs. Everyone leaned toward the monitors. Jules cranked up the volume on a piece of equipment.

But I watched Tina. Because none of us had heard anything before she asked the question. There hadn’t been anything. So—had she heard it before it happened?

Matt came over my own headset, his voice tense, hushed. Scared, even. “That came through on the broadcast, Kitty. Everyone heard it.”

Okay. Cool. I didn’t say anything. I cringed inwardly at the silence, anathema on the radio. But this wasn’t a talk show anymore, this was drama, and we all waited to see what would happen next.

After a tense moment, the talking started.

“You recorded it?” Gary said.

Jules flipped a couple of switches, peering at the equipment through his glasses. “Yeah, of course.”

“There’s nothing on the cameras,” Tina said, checking all the monitors. “I was looking right at the staircase, there was nothing.”

“So nothing fell. Nothing’s out of place.” Another manic search of all the screens.

I asked Tina, “What did you hear?”

“What do you mean, what did I hear?” She pointed at the speaker. “That thudding. Like something falling over on the stairs. You all heard it.”

“No, I mean before you said anything. What did you hear that made you ask if we’d heard it? Because I know I have better hearing than anyone here, and I didn’t hear anything before you spoke.”

Now everyone was looking at her.

“Tina has good hearing,” Gary said after a moment.

“Not as good as mine,” I said, my smile a bit toothy. A bit lupine. “She’s not a werewolf.”

Gary said, “Tina? Did you actually hear it before it happened?”

The ratings hound in me was jumping up and down. Had I scooped a story here? Was I about to expose one of the Paradox PI crew as actually being paranormal herself? Clairvoyant or something? How cool would that be? I still needed to ask her about what she saw when she looked at me, at Ben.

But Tina was stricken, looking back and forth between her colleagues and shrinking as far as she could against the wall of the van.

“I don’t know,” she said. “Maybe I saw something on the monitors. Whatever made the noise, I must have seen it. We’ll go over the footage later. It’ll be there.”

But we’d all been looking at the monitors. Nobody saw anything.

“Can we talk about this later?” she said, almost shrill.

Another thumping came over the speakers, drawing us back to the task at hand. It sounded like the first noise, a rapid, arrhythmic series of hollow thumps, like something falling, or like a herd of children running downstairs.

“Shit,” Jules murmured. The hairs on the back of my head stood up. I quelled an instinct to run.

“Do random, unidentifiable noises like this happen often?” I whispered to Gary.

Slowly, he shook his head. “It never happens like this.”

It came louder, and closer, if that was possible, rattling the speakers. Still, nothing appeared on the monitors. No visible source in the house was producing the noises. In defiance of the laws of physics, these noises seemed to come from nowhere.

The thudding grew louder again, until the van started vibrating, like now the children were running on our roof. I could feel it in my bones.

“Is it an earthquake?” Jules said. “Maybe it’s not the house at all.”

“Does Colorado get earthquakes?” Gary asked. His voice was taut, anxious.

“Sort of,” I said. “Little tiny ones. You can’t actually feel them.”

“I’ve lived in LA for ten years,” Tina said. “This isn’t an earthquake.”

Something odd occurred to me. “What if it’s just the speakers?”

“What?” Jules said.

“The speakers. Unplug the speakers.”

Jules and Tina were still gawking at me like I’d sprouted a second head, so I lunged over them and pulled at the speaker units mounted above the bank of monitors. Custom jobbies, wires looped into the back of them.

Of course, either way, pulling the wires would stop the noise. Right?

We still didn’t see anything on the monitors, which were bouncing on their shelves now. The noise had changed to a steady pounding, like someone was beating on the van. This wasn’t happening on the house—this was happening right here.

I almost had to shout. “The other option is to go into the house and see if this is going on in there, too,” I said, growing exasperated. I was ready to pile out of the van myself, one way or the other.

When no one said anything, I yanked the wires.

The beating, pounding, thudding noise stopped.

We all held our breaths, waiting for it to start again.

Jules’s shoulders slumped. He grabbed the speaker out of my hand. “Don’t tell me that was an equipment malfunction? Christ.”

In the midst of grumbling, I paused, nostrils flaring. I smelled something. It pinged a memory, but I couldn’t quite catch it. Something recent. Something bad, dangerous—

Sulfur and fire. Brimstone. Attack in the forest. In the back of my brain, Wolf howled.

I bit back a growl and lunged for the door.

“Hey—”

The van tipped over.

Chaos rocked us, objects falling, monitors smashing, bodies tumbling. People shouted, cried out with surprise. I wrapped my arms around my head, over the headset I was still wearing. Then movement stopped. We ended up sprawled on the van’s side, picking ourselves out of the mess of shelving and gear that had been stored there.

I didn’t wait. I could move, I didn’t hurt, except for the panic and anger burning in my gut. I lunged for the back door, shoved it open, and spilled out.

The van was on its side, in the middle of the street. The windshield had smashed, spreading sparkling pebbles of glass across the asphalt. The metal side looked slightly crumpled, as if there’d been a collision. One of the tires was spinning slowly.

Matt and Ben were jumping out of the KNOB van and sprinting toward me. Something in me identified them as friend, so I ignored them. Shoulders tight, hackles stiff, I circled, looking for the enemy, waiting for the thing to attack again.

“Kitty?” Ben caught my body language and looked around with me, searching.

It was here, I knew it was, I could smell it. Any minute it would pounce. I couldn’t talk. All I had in my throat were growls. Wolf stared out of my eyes.

Ben held my arm, took a scent. His grip tightened. “You smell that?”

“Yeah,” I said.

The three investigators had picked themselves out of the van, brushed themselves off, and looked each other over, cursing.