Ghost Of A Chance Part 14

She fussed for a moment about Adam's order. "Oh, I wish I'd thought to bring the digital camcorder in with me. Couldn't I please run out to the car and get it? I swear I'll be right back, and won't talk to anyone."

Adam shook his head. "The seal can't be broken for another ten hours.

No one goes in or out until I'm satisfied."

"But this is a highly important historic moment!" she said, waving her hand toward Jules and Tony, who were serving coffee and almond cake. My father sat next to Amanita, while Pixie was curled up in a window seat with her iPod, clearly distancing herself from everyone else in the room. "Two, two genuine spirits are present, along with you poltergeists, and a ..."

She stopped, her face screwed up.

I watched her carefully before smiling. "Finding it overwhelming?''

"Well, yes! I mean, who wouldn't!"

Who indeed? I wondered if she really was hiding knowledge of the Otherworld from us, or if she'd just happened to make a couple of lucky guesses. The best way to find out would be to give her enough rope, I decided.

If she wanted an audience, I'd play along, so I continued to nod as she went on.

"I'm still not sure...That woman there, she's a unicorn? How is that possible? Shouldn't she look like a white horse with a horn or something similar?"

"Unicorns have the ability to shape-shift. They prefer the human form because it's much easier in today's world to be human than it would be to be a four-footed, supposedly legendary beast. I've never met one before to really discuss the issue, but it makes sense to me."

"I suppose so." She cast a doubtful glance at Amanita, took a quick picture of her, then tucked the camera back into her bag.

Adam cleared his throat. "As you all know, I am a member of the watch of the Akashic League. I have been asked to investigate the death of Spider Marx before turning it over to the mundane police."

"Mundane?" Savannah turned to my father.

Dad shot me a quick glance before answering. "He means non-Otherworldian. Mortal-world police, in other words."

"Oh." Savannah nodded for Adam to continue.

He stood silent, his pale blue gaze moving quickly from person to person.

"Karma is also a member of the League and, as such, has been deputized to a.s.sist me with investigating. We will interview you all, one at a time."

"I'm not a part of your underworld," Meredith drawled from the room's most comfortable chair. I noted he had managed to possess himself of yet another gla.s.s of whiskey. "I don't have to answer any of your questions. You have no right to interfere with Savannah or me, not to mention it's illegal to interview us without our lawyer present."

"It's 'Otherworld,' not 'underworld,'" Dad corrected, not looking at Meredith, "which you very well know."

Meredith shot Dad a look that I found impossible to interpret. I made a mental note to have another talk with my father at the first opportunity.

"If this murder had taken place with only mortal people, in a mortal household, then yes, I would have to abide by mundane laws." Adam leaned down over Meredith, forcing the latter back in his chair. "But you are in my house, and there are no lawyers in the Otherworld. We're going to do things my way. Got it?"

I looked at the clock on the table. Ten hours to go. Time was slipping by.

12.

"I don't care about your Otherworld laws. We don't have to say anything to you without our lawyer present," Meredith muttered stubbornly, his eyes narrow and hard.

"I don't mind talking to you," Savannah said quickly. "So long as you agree to answer a few of my own questions about poltergeists, and this Otherworld place that keeps being mentioned."

"You will not talk to him without a lawyer," Meredith snapped, glaring at his wife.

"Please don't use that tone with me," she said, to my surprise. The Savannah who had been so fl.u.s.tered by everything hadn't struck me as a particularly self-confident sort of woman. "I don't like it, and it's not necessary.

If I want to talk to Adam and Karma, I will."

"You will not! Dammit, woman, I forbid you to speak to them!"

Adam held up a hand to stop the bickering, addressing Meredith with a stern eye. "As I said, I am invoking the right of the watch to interrogate any possible suspects by whatever means is necessary. And I stress by whatever means. End of discussion."

Savannah gasped at the threat in his voice. Meredith scowled, his eyes shifty. I knew he was planning something, but whether it was just a response to Adam's admittedly high-handed manner of dealing with the situation or it was driven by guilt was not clear to me. For the first time in my life, I wished I was a full-blooded polter. I would have given anything to be able to go into unbridled scary poltergeist mode and frighten the truth out of him. I looked with speculation at my father.

He raised an eyebrow at me, evidently aware of what it was I was thinking. "It wouldn't do any good to have me fly at him," he said in Poltern.

"He's not afraid of me. You could do it, though."

Savannah leaped off the couch and gawked at my father in a very fine impression of someone nearly startled out of her skin. "What on earth was that noise? Merciful G.o.ddess, are there more ent.i.ties here?"

"Oh, that. That's just poltergeist-speak," Tony said as he whisked out from the kitchen with a tray. "It's how they talk to one another, although honestly, how anyone is supposed to understand a bunch of raps and clicks is beyond me. Who's for fresh-baked cinnamon-almond croissants? Jules has coffee, as well."

"That implies that Meredith is frightened of me," I said slowly in Poltern, my toe cracking barely audible. "Adam, yes. Adam is a figure of authority. But I certainly don't represent anything that would worry Meredith."

Adam said nothing, but his eyes were full of questions as he watched Meredith select two croissants from the plate Tony offered.

Savannah spread a look amongst us, rubbing her arms. Her body language read true. Maybe I was imagining my sense that she was hiding something....

The evening had certainly been disquieting enough to skew my ability to evaluate people.

"Can't you smell the fear on him?" Dad sniffed the air. "Every time he looks at you, it grows stronger."

I did the same. "No. The only thing I can smell is croissant."

"If only I'd not fallen in love with your mother...you would have been a full-blooded polter, and would be able to sense the things we can." He shook his head sadly, his face clearing when Tony offered him a powdered-sugar-dusted almond croissant.

"This is so ... strange. Different. Indefinable," Savannah said, gesturing vaguely. "I had no idea that a language could consist of clicks and knocks.

Might I ask what it is you're saying to each other?"

Adam shook his head when Tony offered him a plate, and clamped a hand on Meredith's shoulder instead. "Nothing important. Since you object the most to being interviewed, why don't we get it over with?"

Meredith muttered some pretty rude things under his breath, but he evidently decided that resistance wasn't going to do him any good against Adam. I thanked Tony as I took a still-warm croissant and a cup of coffee, following the two men to our little interview cubbyhole.

"Well! While Adam and Karma are busy with the interviews, why don't the rest of us do our part to discover the truth of what happened to Spider?"

Savannah said in a bright, cheerful voice that clashed severely with the darkness outside, the late hour, and the dead man in the bas.e.m.e.nt.

I stopped, slowly turning to face her.

My rather made a wry face. "The truth is your husband killed him."

"He did not!" She glared at him for a moment before her naturally perky nature took over. "I realize things look bad for Meredith, but you have to trust me when I say that he would never do anything so heinous. And I can prove he didn't do it!"

"How?" I asked, my suspicions fired up again.

She flashed a smile. "It's simple. We'll ask Spider himself."

"Oh, for G.o.d's sake, you're not going to have one of your idiotic seances now, are you?" Meredith called from the other side of the room.

"Seance?" Pixie asked, pulling out her iPod's ear-buds. "We're going to have a seance? Since I can't have a ghoul, can I summon a demon?"

Adam gave her a curious look before turning back to Meredith. I was going to say something, but figured I'd wait until I was alone with Pixie.

Instead, I addressed Savannah. "I appreciate your desire to clear your husband's name, but I'm not sure a seance is the best thing to do right now."

"Really?" She tipped her head to the side. "I don't see why not. If anyone can tell us what happened to him, it's Spider."

I hesitated, weighing my need to have Meredith pay for his crime and my reluctance to get involved in something so potentially volatile as a seance. It was impossible to judge whether Savannah possessed the mediumistic powers needed to summon a deceased person, let alone control him or her. "Have you ever conducted a seance before?"

"Oh yes, several times."

"Have you ..." I was tired, so I stopped to think about how best to ask the question without offending her. "Have you ever successfully contacted a spirit?"

"Well...not per se. But at one of my seances, the temperature in the room dropped a full seven degrees, and everyone there said they felt the presence of something unseen in the room."

I relaxed a smidgen despite being the subject of everyone's close observation, which left me feeling slightly itchy and uncomfortable. "I'm sure it was very exciting, but you know, Savannah, just because Spider's soul has not been released yet doesn't mean his spirit will be willing or even able to talk to you."

"But with him so recently deceased...wouldn't it be more likely that he will talk to us than if we waited until after the circ.u.mambulation?"

My father snorted and muttered something about the path to h.e.l.l being a quick one.

"Not necessarily. Just because his soul is bound to his body doesn't mean he will talk to you."

"It behooves us to try to contact him," Savannah said firmly.

"You certainly can try, but you should be aware that even if you did manage to contact him, he may not yet realize that he's really dead. Or he may be confused by the transition from living to dead. Or he could be..."I stopped for a minute, not wanting to speak ill of the dead any more than I had.

"Or he could be just as big a liar dead as he was alive," my father finished for me.

I cleared my throat, unwilling to say any more.

"Well, we won't know until we talk to him, will we?" Savannah said, taking a seat at the large round table. "Everyone, please sit down and join hands."

My gaze met my father's. He pursed his lips as he eyed Savannah for a moment, clearly trying to judge her abilities. He shook his head slightly before taking a seat at the table.

Reluctantly, I returned to the cubbyhole, where Adam was sitting with Meredith. Adam frowned at the food in my hand.

"Sorry, I haven't eaten all day. My headache made sure of that. And speaking of my headaches ..." I set down my coffee and plate, dusted the powdered sugar from my fingers, and picked up my notebook, fixing Meredith with a stern eye. "Would you mind telling me a little bit about that machine you gave Spider? Ever since Adam broke it, my head has been remarkably pain free."

"You can't seriously believe I will tell you anything about a machine that will make me millions," he said, his lips curling with derision.

"I seriously believe you will answer any and all questions put to you,"

Adam growled.

"You think you can get away with bullying me here, but there is going to be h.e.l.l to pay once the real police come," Meredith snarled.

Adam smiled. It wasn't a pleasant smile, but it fulfilled its purpose.

Meredith's eyes dilated slightly as Adam leaned forward and said in a soft voice, "I can arrange it so that you never see the mortal police, you know. The watch would be quite happy to deal with a man who has created a machine to destroy members of the Otherworld."

"That's ... He can't do that, can he?" Meredith asked me.

"Sure, he can."

"But...I'm human! Your laws don't apply to me."

I smiled. "They do when they affect members of the League. Adam is quite within his rights to detain you for the watch if he believes there's enough evidence to justify such an act. If they find you guilty, you'll be duly punished, and I can a.s.sure you, the League takes a dim view of anyone who harms one of their members."

Meredith's eyes narrowed on me. "I should have known better than to ask you. You're probably s.c.r.e.w.i.n.g him every chance you get."

"Insulting Karma isn't going to help," Adam said calmly. "Answer the question."

Meredith made a big production about it, but finally he settled down and started giving us some answers. "Spider wanted a way to get rid of ghosts and such without having to rely on you," he said, giving me a nasty glare. "He said it was getting harder and harder to make you do your job, and he knew the end was coming. Once we made plans for the Fun House, he had me put together the anomaly diffuser. It did your job without any of the ha.s.sle you were sure to give us."

"Fun House?" It was difficult to reconcile the images of Spider and an amus.e.m.e.nt park.

"Every ride a guaranteed ballbuster," he said, leering in response. "Spider wanted to try the diffuser out on this house. He said that you'd been defying him and not destroying the spirits like you'd been ordered to do, and he wanted to make sure the job was done properly."

A little stab of pain pierced my heart at the thought of Sergei being destroyed so callously.

"What does the diffuser do, exactly? Does it send the target to the Akashic Plain?"

"I don't have those weirdo powers you have," he said, waving away the question. "It disrupts the pattern of the anomaly. Permanently. One blast and it's bye-bye ghost."

I wanted to ask more about how the machine worked. If such a horrible thing were made freely available, it could have terrible ramifications for the Otherworld.

Adam, however, decided we'd strayed from the point long enough. "Tell me what happened after you left this room with Spider."

"I already told you! We went down to find a door, someone hit me on the back of the head, and when I woke up, you guys were there and Spider was dead."

"Let's go through it step by step."