Shifting Shadows: Stories from the World of Mercy Thompson Read online

  “Sorry,” he said. “I’m training horses. Right now I’m on a two-year-old who objected to my cell phone’s ringing.”

  My brother had left the state of Washington with prejudice. He’d found a job at a horse ranch in Montana where they raised quarter horses, a few Appaloosas, and cattle.

  “Isn’t two a little young?” I asked. I didn’t know a lot about horses, but I’d grown up around people who did.

  “Yep,” he agreed. “This one will be three next week, but still young. Driven by the market, Mercy. There isn’t a lot of profit in breeding horses anymore, and the ranch has no choice but to listen to market forces if they want to survive. It’s not like we take them out for fifty-mile trips.” Then, presumably to the horse, “You can just settle your butt down, sweetheart. Get used to it now, my friend. Life for you is going to be all about hurry up and wait.”

  “I need to know how to exorcise a ghost,” I said to Gary.

  Lisa abruptly looked a lot less confident in me. I hadn’t told her why I was calling Gary. I held up one finger when it looked like she was going to speak. My brother has good ears; he didn’t need to get distracted by a pretty voice.

  “You just tell them to move on,” he said.

  “Just tell them?” I was doubtful, and I let him hear it. When I was a kid, I’d screamed “go away” at a lot of ghosts to not much effect.

  “Tell them,” he said with exaggerated patience, “the way your Alpha werewolf husband would tell one of his wolves when they get pushy.”

  “Okay,” I said. I almost thanked him and hung up—but there was something in his voice. He was a son of Coyote, as much as he hated it. And that made him a little tricksy. “Where do they go?”

  He laughed, and I knew I’d been right. “Somewhere else. Usually not too far away. One of our distant nephews, back in the Victorian Age, had a grand con. He found a haunted house and drove the ghost—a nasty moaning type—out. They paid him for it, then he waited a week and went to the house next door and did the same. If he’d stopped at the fifth house, he’d have made a tidy profit. But he’d forgotten that neighbors talk to each other. He knocked on the door of the sixth, and the man of the house tried to hold him for the authorities. Sadly for both of them, the young entrepreneur was killed in the struggle.”

  I waited, but he wasn’t going to continue until I asked. “Why for both of them?”

  “Because when our budding con artist nephew died, the man in the sixth house was left with a very nasty ghost that no one could send on. I hear that it is still there today.”

  “Why couldn’t someone else send it on?” I asked.

  “Didn’t they teach you anything?” Gary exclaimed, then in a softer voice, he said, “No, I suppose not. The werewolves wouldn’t know, and our dear papa couldn’t be bothered. A ghost, my dear sister, gains power when it is seen. When it is recognized by one of our kind, it gains a firmer hold on the world. There is a reason you shouldn’t speak the name of the dead.”

  “I see,” I said. “So how do I get rid of a ghost permanently?”

  He sighed. “You don’t read ghost stories, either, do you? You have to find out why it is lingering—confront it and take away its reason for being there. That only works with the ones who are intelligent, though. Convincing them that they really are dead is also supposed to be useful. Most ghosts usually fade away, given time. Why are you asking me about ghosts?”

  “Because someone came to me for help.” And I explained the situation to him in a somewhat more condensed version

  There was a little pause. “Well, good luck with that, then,” he said doubtfully. “Call me if you get into trouble. Not that I can help you, but maybe I can learn something to pass on to the next walker who calls to ask me for help.”

  I think he was teasing, but I wasn’t sure enough to call him on it. “Will do,” I said instead. “It has always been an ambition of mine to serve as an object lesson for others.”

  “Nice to have ambitions,” he said. “A ghost that has been following a person around for fourteen years . . . that’s not normal.”

  “I do know that,” I told him.

  “Might not be a ghost at all,” he said as if thinking aloud. “A witch could do something similar.”

  “I’ve thought about that,” I told him. The gruesome talking head was very Hollywood, I thought. Not something I’d ever seen a ghost do. Not that it wasn’t possible, just that I’d never seen it.

  “Take backup,” he told me.

  “I love you, too,” I told him, and hung up.

  As soon as I was off the phone, Lisa asked, “You don’t know how to exorcise a ghost?”

  I shrugged. “I’ve never tried it. Most ghosts are harmless, or nearly so. My brother has more experience with that kind of thing.” Like several hundred years more experience. “I thought it was worth a shot.”

  “Maybe he could exorcise Rick’s ghost?”

  I shook my head regretfully. “He lives three hundred miles away and his job doesn’t let him travel.” Not to Washington, anyway. Not until they quit looking for him as an escaped prisoner.

  “Maybe I should look for someone else with more experience,” she said.

  “Okay,” I agreed.

  “Okay?”

  “I’m not a ghost hunter,” I told her. “You could probably do an Internet search and find a group nearby. If they don’t know how to get rid of a ghost, maybe they’ll know someone who does.”

  “Think of the publicity,” murmured Zack. “Ghost hunters investigate famous recluse’s house.”

  I stepped on his toe. I feel some obligation to help when people ask me for it—I’m not sure why. But only a little obligation in this case because I didn’t know either of the people involved. If she thought someone else would be better, I wasn’t going to argue with her—especially since she was probably right.

  “Do you mind coming out and taking a look?” she said. “I think Rick has probably had enough publicity for a lifetime. If you can’t do anything, maybe we’ll try someone else.”

  I looked at my garage. “It doesn’t appear as though I have anything better to do.”

  I called Adam to let him know what we were doing, but his phone bumped me to another one.

  “Hauptman Security,” said one of Adam’s minions.

  “This is Mercy,” I said.

  He cleared his throat. “Okay. Okay. I have a message for you if you called. Here it is: ‘Duty calls. Someone broke into a warehouse we have under contract. Cops came but it looks like burglar has a hostage. They need someone familiar with the layout, so I’m headed out. Call you when it’s over. Not dangerous.’”

  I waited, but apparently that was it. “Okay,” I said. “Tell Adam I’ve gone ghost hunting. I’m taking Zack, and we’ll be back tonight. Not dangerous.” I hesitated. “Okay. Probably not dangerous, but he knows how these things go with me.”

  “Address? Boss will want an address.”

  I looked at Lisa. “Where are we going?”

  Her lips thinned.

  “My husband runs a security firm. They can keep secrets.”

  “Your husband the werewolf.”

  “That’s the one.”

  She gave me the address. I told Adam’s man what it was and we all headed out: Lisa in her Tahoe and Zack and I in my Vanagon.

  • • •

  Prosser, like the Tri-Cities, is in a region of wine country that started out as orchard country. We took the highway on the north side of the Yakima River instead of the interstate on the south and it weaved along the river’s path through hobby farms and ranches that increased for a minute in density to become the town of Whitstran before thinning out again into countryside.

  Zack didn’t talk as we drove. He turned his baseball cap around and covered his eyes. Someone else might have thought he was sleeping, but I could
smell his alertness. He was just conserving his strength. I couldn’t tell what he thought about going ghost hunting with me beyond that.

  The whole drive between my garage in east Kennewick to Prosser is usually about forty-five minutes on the interstate. The Old Inland Empire Highway was twistier and slower, so we’d been driving about an hour when Lisa turned toward the river.

  The road was one of those sneaky dirt roads hidden in the narrow gap between fences. The highway had turned away from the river, and we drove maybe a quarter of a mile when the dirt road dropped and twisted, revealing a hidden Garden of Eden tucked into a flattish fifteen- or twenty-acre parcel between the river and a bench of basalt.

  On the side of the road was a tall signpost with a large mailbox beside it. The top and biggest sign said THE HOLLOW. Below it on smaller, hand-painted signs were NO HUNTING, NO TRESPASSING, GO AWAY, and YES, THIS MEANS YOU.

  We passed a barn, a smaller stable, then wound around to stop in front of a house that was maybe twice the size of the one I lived in with Adam. Since Adam’s house had been built with the idea that it would serve as a meetinghouse and safe house for Adam’s werewolf pack, our house was huge.

  We parked in front of the house and followed Lisa to the door. She gave me a nervous glance.

  “I didn’t tell him I was bringing you,” she said.

  “A little late to mention it now,” I told her. “Are we going to stand on the porch until he notices us, or are you going to ring the bell?”

  She hit the bell, and I could hear it echo—Rick must have had it piped in several places throughout the house. We waited long enough that Lisa was getting nervous before Rick Albright opened the door.

  He was not as impressive as I had expected. The werewolves have given me a skewed view on the world. Important werewolves drip authority and (usually) dignity. Dignity, at least, wasn’t apparently important to Richard Albright.

  It would have helped if his glasses had not been held together with green duct tape. It would have helped if his shirt hadn’t had a hole in the shoulder—helped more if there weren’t little toy boats sailing across it. But I don’t think I would have liked him as quickly if it hadn’t been for the toy boats. The only person I’d ever had that instant like for was Anna Cornick, the only Omega werewolf I’ve ever met.

  However, Rick stepped out on the porch, shut the door behind him, folded his arms, and narrowed his eyes. Despite being the shortest person on the porch, he had enough authority to make Zack drop his gaze and step back.

  “Lisa?” Rick’s voice was soft. And hostile. “To what do I owe the pleasure?”

  I expected, somehow, for her to drop back to babbling, as she had with me. Instead, she said, with a bit of defiance, “That thing has been following you around for more than a decade. So I made some calls, and they sent me to Mercy Hauptman here.”

  He looked at her—and the connection between them was bright and clear to my coyote nose. She might not have told him that she wanted him. And from what she’d told me, he’d never told her he wanted her, either, but I could have cut the sexual tension in that exchange of looks with a knife.

  Zack tucked his head and covered his smile with a hand.

  Rick’s eyes focused on me, and all that heat turned to ice. “I have no intention of paying you anything.”

  “You have a VW around here that needs work?” I asked casually, glancing around. The only cars I could see were ours.

  He frowned, and the intensity of his gaze picked up. “No.”

  “That’s the only thing I charge for,” I told him. “I’m a mechanic by trade. This ghost thing is not my chosen profession. And before you invite me in, you ought to know that the last time someone talked me into checking out a ghost, it turned out to be something a lot more dangerous. The woman who invited me to her house ended up dead.”

  He pushed his glasses up his nose. “How did she die? Did the ghost kill her? Did you?”

  “No. And no. But I couldn’t save her, either,” I told him.

  He asked Lisa, “Who sent you to her?”

  “Kiri’s husband.”

  He took a breath, nodded abruptly, and opened the door to his house. “I suppose you’d better come inside, then.”

  A curious thing happened as we entered the house. I shot a quick glance at Zack, who frowned at me and tilted his head. He’d smelled it, too.

  Emotions have a scent—more of a feel, I guess, a combination of the sound of breath, heartbeat, and body secretions. Nervous sweat, aroused sweat, and exercise sweat are composed of different substances. They have an intensity, too. Outside on the porch, Rick had been aroused by Lisa and angry at our intrusion—and a variety of other things. He’d been intense. As soon as we came inside the house, everything muted. It might have been some effect of being safely in his own home—the force of emotions quite often is ameliorated by a safe haven. But this was a much stronger drop than I’d ever seen before—and Lisa’s emotions did exactly the same thing. As soon as she stepped across the threshold.

  The effect was momentary, like what sound does just before your ears repressurize after an airplane flight or driving down out of the mountains. We followed Rick, and by the time he’d led us across the entrance hall into a room that felt mostly unused, his emotions—and Lisa’s—were normal. If Zack hadn’t noticed it, too, I’d have thought I had imagined it.

  The room was . . . empty of smells. No one spent enough time here to leave a mark. Couches placed just so were without the normal scuffs and worn edges that such things acquire in daily living. Rick gestured us forward, but he, himself, stopped at a discreet half bar.

  “Can I get you anything?” he asked, opening a sliding cabinet door I could hear even though I couldn’t see it. He pulled four glasses out and set them down.

  “Not me,” said Zack.

  “No.” Lisa had walked across the room to look out the window at the river.

  “No, thank you.” The lack of other scents made some things very interesting. I stepped closer to Rick and took a deep breath. “Are you fae?”

  His hand stilled where he had half lifted a bottle of soda water over a glass.

  “My grandfather,” he told me. “My mother’s father. He abandoned his wife and my mother. I don’t know exactly what he was. He left me with a bit of intuition about people—and that’s it.” He finished pouring. “I tell you this because you’re married to a werewolf—I may be isolated, but I do read local newspapers. Hauptman is a name that comes up as often as the reporters can figure out how to slide it in. The Tri-Cities’ most famous person, the handsome face of werewolves everywhere.”

  I smiled at his sarcasm. “I think he’s pretty, too. Truthfully, his good looks annoy him, though he’s not above using them when he needs to.”

  “I will answer your questions, mostly, because my fae-born intuition”—he smiled wryly—“for what it is worth—tells me that you are exactly what you say you are. And that you just might be able to help. I am not in the habit of sharing my family secrets with everyone.” He grimaced. “If you really wanted to know, you could just read any of the true-crime novels written about my wife’s murder, anyway.”

  “All right.” I felt bad intruding on his privacy even if it might be for his own good. I met his eyes. “You should know that I’m not fae or werewolf, but I am something. That’s how I knew you were fae—and that’s why I might be able to do something about your ghost. I’m giving you my secret because I stole one from you—and I’ll be asking you for more. You should have at least one of mine in return.”

  Rick looked at me, then nodded. He glanced at Zack. “Our introductions were truncated. I’m Rick Albright. Lisa, you’ve obviously met, and I’ve met Ms. Hauptman.”

  “Zack Drummond,” Zack introduced himself.

  Rick nodded. “All right.” He looked at me. “You’re in charge.”

  “Lis
a said your wife has been haunting you since her death,” I told him.

  He nodded. “I thought ghosts were supposed to be attached to the place they died, or at least someplace important to them. But it doesn’t matter where I am. In airports. Business meetings.” He blanched, drank the soda water in one smooth gulp. “Sometimes she looks alive. I’ll look over, and she’s eating at the table next to me.” He looked away from us and kept talking more and more quietly. As if noise would make the images more real. “Or walking down the road. Sometimes she’s . . . in pieces. Just like when I came in from a night of drinking and found her body cut up in our kitchen. Some of her was in the sink, some of her was . . .” He stopped speaking. “Excuse me,” he said, and walked rapidly out of the room.

  Zack and I could hear him vomiting. We waited for him, Lisa visibly torn because she wanted to follow him.

  “Sorry,” he apologized as he returned.

  “Why don’t you show us around the house,” I said. “Tell me if you see her, and I’ll tell you if—”

  And standing behind him was a woman who was almost six feet tall, a stunning redhead with bright blue eyes and a sad mouth. She reached out and ran a hand over his shoulder.

  “Well,” I said. “I don’t think that will be necessary. What was your wife’s name?”

  “Nicole,” he stared at me, then looked behind him. “You see her? She’s not there.”

  “She’s wearing a camisole,” I said. “Blue with embroidered black flowers and a pair of black yoga pants.”

  “That’s what she was wearing when she was killed,” he said. “All the newspapers reported it.” His eyes narrowed at me in sudden suspicion. He turned all the way around, looking through the ghost I saw as if she weren’t there. When he faced me again, he said in a low voice, “There were photos of her clothing in one of the books.”

  “What about your intuition?” asked Lisa in a small voice. She was responsible for bringing me here.

  His mouth softened.