Ghost of a Chance (Providence Paranormal College Book 8) Read online

  “Well, that’s lucky,” I explained Horace’s taunt and his answer to Maddie, then turned back to my partner. “Don’t do something that risky again, especially not after something strenuous like opening a door.” Horace nodded. Maddie didn’t.

  “How can a ghost do something risky?” Her brow furrowed. “They’re already dead, right?”

  “Do you know where wraiths come from, Maddie?” I adjusted my grip on the trunk’s handle.

  “I bet it’s not something that happens when a mommy wraith and a daddy wraith love each other very much, huh?” Maddie chewed on her bottom lip.

  “No.” I shook my head, then looked Horace right in the eyes. “It’s when a ghost gets so drained, he forgets himself.”

  “Oh.” Maddie narrowed her eyes, footsteps stamping more stompily than usual. “Don’t you ever do that kind of thing again, Horace. Taunting a wraith is serious business,” she said to thin air. I appreciated her sentiment and effort, even if her aim was off.

  My phone beeped. I pulled it from my pocket one-handed to find a text from Tony. Where are we bringing the unmatched luggage?

  Dennison place. Blaine, Al, and Ismail all have to check it out before opening.

  “See you later, then.” Tony tapped his Bluetooth earphone. He turned the corner into an alley. No matter how much I peered and squinted after him, there was no trace of the cat shifter. But cat shifters couldn’t do magic. So how did he vanish?

  “I really wish he and Blaine would just bite the bullet and get along already.” Maddie sighed, yanking on a curl with her thumb and forefinger and letting it spring free. “It really makes everything we have to do ten times harder.”

  “I might have missed something, but why do the two of them refuse to occupy the same building?” Blaine had always mostly ignored Tony up until after Spring Break.

  “I don’t even know, really.” Maddie shrugged. “I wish someone had the answer to that question besides Blaine himself.”

  “That’s simple.” I blinked as the ghost of Wilfred Harcourt began pacing me. “Blaine blames Tony for my death, of course.” I translated for Maddie.

  “Well, crap.” Before we could discuss further, we reached the side street where the sedan our dragon shifter friend had provided, idled, waiting for us. “We’ll have to talk about this later.”

  We never got the chance.

  Chapter Five

  Horace

  “Insulin, kid.” I pointed at Bianca’s satchel.

  “I know.” She yawned.

  “What did he say?” Maddie sat in the seat across from her, peering all around Bianca.

  “He reminded me that I need to take my medicine.” Bianca pulled the seatbelt across her body and fastened it with a click.

  “Oh yeah. For your diabetes?” Maddie side-eyed the safety strap like it was an annoying little brother, then shrugged and put her seatbelt on, too.

  “I’ve got type one.” She rummaged in her bag, producing the small, zippered case she kept her medicine in.

  Maddie smirked at the cover. Bianca had dropped some extra money to get one with a fancy art print on the outside.

  “Hey, is that Son of Man by Magritte?” Maddie leaned forward to get a better look.

  “No, Son of Man’s the one with the apple under the hat.” Bianca pulled an insulin syringe out of the case, then passed it to Maddie. “It’s still Magritte, but this is Man in a Bowler Hat. You can tell because this one has a dove. He painted this twenty years after the other.”

  “You have a thing for bowler hats or just fine art?” Maddie smiled, handing back the case.

  “Neither.” Bianca chuckled. She set the case on the seat beside her, then reached under her shirt with the syringe. After making the little squeak she nearly always did when injecting, she pulled her hands out from under and tucked the now empty syringe away. “I got it because that painting always reminds me of Horace, who makes sure I take my insulin.”

  “Is it the hat or the dove?” Maddie leaned back, fiddling with her seatbelt.

  “A little of both.” Bianca’s smile was wearier than I liked, even though her words made me remember what it was like to get butterflies in the stomach.

  I stuck my head through the divider to check the digital clock in the middle of the dashboard up front. Eight-thirty. I went back again, but before I could do more than open my mouth, Bianca spoke.

  “He’s going to tell me I’m late for dinner.” Bianca leaned back against the cushioned leather seat.

  “I’ll take care of that.” Maddie pulled out her phone and started tapping.

  I floated around and looked over the Magus’ shoulder, then relaxed as I saw who and what she texted. I know it seems odd, the idea that a ghost could be tense or relaxed, but our bodies are subject to our will, which comes from what and who we care about most. For me, that was Bianca Brighton.

  When the Psychics who kept us in contact with the living world didn’t look after themselves properly, ghosts could make a serious ruckus. Unlike moving something on purpose, random acts of ghostly chaos come naturally. They’re reflexive, like our incorporeal selves following the laws of physics while riding in a car or not falling through a chair while sitting on it. Those things were so ingrained in the human experience that they came as second nature.

  The car slowed, turning as it headed up the Dennison driveway. I concentrated and unhinged myself from the car’s momentum, rushing ahead and into the lower level of the rambling house. That renovated basement was where the Tinfoil Hatters met to discuss Extramagus concerns while off-campus. It made sense. Josh the werewolf was Alpha of that motley pack. It didn’t hurt that his mother headed the Extrahuman Crime Unit for the Providence Police Department and his dad was head of PPC’s Campus Security.

  Like typical young adults, the pack didn’t often ask for help from their parents and Professors. The older set knew about the situation. Maybe they already had some kind of plan to act out. If so, they hadn’t found success so far. But, being a ghost, I had a different perspective. I’d come to suspect that the older generation had been the ones to mess things up in the first place. That'd explain their inaction.

  There was a sort of karma to magic and the people who lived in and around it: coincidence. Extrahumans tended to fall into patterns of success or failure. They could only nudge the direction of the world in small ways. Once they drifted to one side, getting back across to the other approached impossibility. The pack’s parents, aunts, and uncles were stuck on the sides they’d chosen decades ago. Some of those were obvious, like Josh’s parents. Others, like Blaine’s mother Hertha, not so much.

  At any rate, the Dennison place was about as secure as it could get, even more so than the Harcourt mansion over in Newport. Neither were warded against ghosts, though. I glanced over my shoulder as I barreled through the wall. Blaine’s two dads were in mostly invisible attendance right along with me.

  “Um, Horace?” Wilfred’s ghost reached out as he tried to stop me as I passed by. It didn’t work. I may not have been dead as long as Rob was, but I had ten years of incorporeal experience on the ghost formerly known as a dragon.

  “Not now.” I waved my hand at Wilfred like he was a fly instead of an ex-dragon and watched the only garden-variety human in the place put away her phone.

  Lynn stood up, cracking her knuckles. She headed to the door with her mate Bobby. I heard them murmuring about testing Bianca’s blood sugar before she even walked through the door. Those Tinfoil Hatters took care of each other. It’s one of the reasons I liked them all so much.

  I headed back toward the Dragon Family. “Okay, Wil. What’s up?”

  “Stop calling me that.” Wilfred rolled his eyes. I peered through him, trying not to smirk as I watched Blaine make almost the same face while talking to the Psychic vampire, Henry Baxter.

  “Fine. Wilfred.” I nodded, unable to ultimately chase the ghost of a grin from my not-all-there features. “What’s up?”

  “I want to know how long it
might take me to move on.”

  Ignacius’ peal of laughter had us both turning our heads.

  “What’s so funny?” Wilfred’s fists went through his hips instead of on them as he’d clearly intended. He barely noticed.

  “Dragon business has a way of sticking around.” Ignacius jerked his chin at Blaine, who resembled his step-dad Wilfred in mannerism and his biological father in form and feature. The fire dragon’s ghost met my gaze with a piercing glare. “You tell him how it is, Horace. You’ve avoided it for too long.”

  “Fine.” I turned to Wilfred. “Some ghosts stick around for five minutes. Others, more like fifty years.” I held up one finger. “That’s because if you started something, you stick around to see the end of it.” I held up another finger. “You might not go anywhere until your kid hatches, possibly longer.” The door opening distracted me.

  Maddie escorted a yawning Bianca over to one of the stools by the bar. True to her word, Lynn brandished a glucometer with all the trimmings at Bianca, who held out her hand like a good sport. I watched my medium sit down before turning my attention back to Wilfred.

  “But if that’s the case, how come there are ghosts who never had kids when they were alive?” Wilfred tilted his head. “That little old lady ghost I met right after I died said she was a spinster. So, what kept her from moving on?”

  “Two things might have a hold on someone like her. One of them is contracts. If we make them, we don’t move on until we honor them.” I glanced from Wilfred to Ignacius and back again, figuring number four had something to do with why at least two of us were still here. “And then there’s the mushy stuff. True love, destiny, all that jazz. Sometimes, we stay put because coincidence makes us wait for who and what our hearts need. That goes quadruple for you dragons, who get hitched to make the strongest offspring and not like those two.” I waved a hand at where Josh leaned against the wall, on one arm, nose to nose with Nox Phillips, his mate.

  At the bar, Bianca sipped soda from a glass, then leaned one side of her face heavily on one of her hands. She didn’t look as relaxed or alert as I would have liked, but some color had come back to her cheeks. Corners of stray papers stopped fluttering as her improving condition calmed me.

  “So, I can’t move on and get away from this dumpster fire until my egg hatches, or I find true love?” Wilfred didn’t stare daggers at Ignacius, he glared claymores.

  “You’re stuck playing second fiddle here, too, airbag.” Until Ignacius snorted, I hadn’t thought it was possible for a fire dragon’s ghost to make smoke rings. Something must have given his energy a boost, but I couldn’t figure out what.

  “Second fiddle?” Wilfred rolled his eyes again. “That’s rich. How long did it take you to even consummate your marriage with Hertha?”

  “My sex life is none of your business!” Ignacius exuded more ersatz smoke than I thought possible. Not Blaine, then. Something else that had to do with mating.

  “More like boring. Ancient history.” Wilfred snorted. “What did it take, a hundred years for you two to make Blaine’s egg?”

  “Can you two please settle down?” Bianca’s face paled again as she poked it between the two arguing ghosts. “A little peace and quiet would rock right about now.” Her eyelashes fluttered above the circles under her eyes, which were just a shade darker than her lavender hair.

  “We need to have this out sooner or later, Miss Brighton.” Wilfred put his hands on his hips again.

  “The lady asked for a break.” I got in his face, literally. “Go blow off steam somewhere else, Willie.”

  As I leaned back, I peered at Wilfred. He gaped and blinked more like a fish out of water than a guy who used to turn into a football-field-sized dragon.

  “You heard the man.” Ignacius’ smug tone made my eyes go from wide to narrow in under sixty nanoseconds.

  “Cool your jets, Iggy.” I glared at each of them in turn. “I’m the ghost with the most here, and this isn’t the time or place for your dramafest.”

  “Well, Wilfred’s right. There should be one eventually.” I sighed.

  Bianca put one hand out, brushing lightly against the closest approximation to my forearm. It tingled. I expected that; we were both Mediums, after all. It didn’t lessen the impact of the gesture or the exertion of her Psychic ability to interact with me by touch. Even exhausted, she cared enough to comfort me.

  “Right.” Bianca nodded. “So some other time, you two need to have a talk. I’ll help if you want.”

  “Hoo, boy.” Olivia peered over Bianca’s shoulder, shaking her head. “Ghostly misbehavior again? Too distracting for what we’ve got to do.” The owl shifter jerked her chin at Maddie, who stood next to the box we’d liberated from the Gatto safehouse like a dusky-skinned Goth Vanna White.

  “Fine.” Wilfred gave Bianca a nod. “I’ll head out, do some work at the Nocturnal Lounge.”

  My respect for Wilfred grew even after the condescending little golf wave he flapped in Ignacius’ general direction. Whatever beef the two dragon ghosts had with each other, Olivia was right. It was too distracting. My eyebrows scrunched together, and I opened my mouth, about to ask Bianca why an owl shifter in human form seemed to know what was going on with the no-body crew. But Lane Meyer and his literal band of vampires opened the door, bearing a big bag of takeout from the Moon Star Chinese restaurant. I let Bianca eat her lo mein in peace.

  “So, can we open the box?” Kimiko Ichiro was probably the most curious member of Tinfoil Hat. Tanuki were like that.

  “After I eat, silly.” Bianca twirled noodles around her fork and ate them, chewing thoughtfully.

  “And you really have no idea at all what’s in it?” Blaine crossed his arms over his chest, raising an eyebrow.

  “Nope.” Maddie shrugged. “We’ll find out soon enough.”

  “But can’t one of the ghosts just stick his head in and check?” Lane pulled a bag of blood from the fridge behind the bar, popped the top, and poured it into a red plastic party cup.

  “No.” Bianca shook her head. “Well, technically, Horace can. But it’s not a good idea.” I watched her eyes move from one face to the next. The left corner of her mouth tilted, making the faint scar at the temple on that side come out of hiding. “The box might be booby-trapped against ghosts. The only one we saw in the Olneyville house was a wraith. I have no idea how the poor thing got that way. But a trap on this box could explain it.”

  “Yeah, now I remember.” Olivia cradled a cup of tea between her hands. “Certain magic or Psychic energies can harm incorporeal people. Wraiths are damaged ghosts.” Olivia shivered. “You really saw one in there?”

  Bianca just nodded, shutting her eyes as she chewed another mouthful of thin, yellow noodles. I didn’t blame her. That wraith had been a total wreck, pitiable.

  Bianca set down her fork, wiped her hands, then knelt on the floor next to the box. She took five deep breaths, and I counted five seconds on each inhale and exhale. When she pressed her palms together, I watched, waiting for the flash that always came when she focused her Psychic energy on an item. A stream of lavender light flowed from her fingertips to the seam around the trunk’s lid.

  Blaine squinted, his pupils going vertical and reptilian. Henry nodded. Bobby stepped in front of Lynn while Nox did the same for Josh. Lane put one hand over his mouth while his bandmates looked on. Olivia blinked. And the box clicked, then rusty ingots creaked as the lid reared up on its hinges all by itself.

  I rushed upward so I could peer down at the flat, beige rectangle at the bottom of the box. Bianca looked up, meeting my translucent gaze with her solid one. I nodded, and she reached out with both hands, scooping up the manila envelope between them. Turning it over, she unwrapped the red string from the two tan discs holding the whole thing closed. Once unfastened, she reached inside and pulled out an unfolded sheet of paper, eight by ten.

  “Encoded.” Bianca shook her head, then turned the paper around so everyone could see the characters in neat block
lettering filling it from edge to edge. She handed the paper over to Kimiko, then shuffled back to her seat at the bar and the half-finished plate of lo mein.

  “Is that Latin?” Lynn’s eyebrows could have shaken hands. “It almost looks like Latin.”

  “Italian mixed with something else, actually.” Kimiko shook her head. “Some other things, I should say. I’m not sure what, either.”

  “Let me see.” Blaine peered over his mate’s shoulder. “Hebrew, maybe? No. I’m stumped. And there are numerals.” He sighed. “Do you guys want the good news or the bad news?”

  “Hit us with the bad first, Trogdor.” Josh had moved to the other side of the billiards table. Nox peered over his shoulder, staring at the paper. Her eyes crossed slightly, and she looked away.

  “Well, it’s definitely a doozie of an encryption. Probably made by more than one person, too, which fits with the theory that the Watkins brothers know something.” Blaine cleared his throat. “I can’t crack this at all. It’s got magic and psychic on it, too, so I can’t hack it with my energy alone.”

  “Okay.” Josh gave Blaine one sharp nod. “Good news time.”

  “I think Kim can crack it. Translation-wise, I mean.”

  “Woah, dude.” Kimiko shook her head. “Not alone, I can’t. I don’t know enough Italian. I’m going to have to work with Tony on this.”

  “Fewmets!” One of Blaine’s fists crashed into the palm of his other hand. “No such thing as good news.” Smoke drifted up from the dragon shifter’s nose.

  “We all know how you feel about the cat-man.” Josh shook his head. “If our code guru says she needs his help, you’ll have to deal with it. Maybe it’s time for you two to bury the hatchet.”

  “Whatever.” Blaine collected his jacket from the coat rack, then headed for the door.

  “This could take weeks,” Kimiko called after him. The door slammed. “Blaine’s going to have to get along with Tony, eventually.”