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

  “Woah, nice combo.” Horace nodded his head, talking like the others could actually hear him. It was a habit he’d started picking up over spring semester around the Tinfoil Hat folks. “They could see just about anything coming and deal with it by making people forget everything.”

  “Ooh! Now I know where I remember the name Joyce from.” Kimiko clapped her hands. “She was the Psychic who witnessed my betrothal.” She tried explaining a complicated arranged marriage custom for dragon shifters, but I couldn’t follow it except for the part where the kids had got checked by a Precognitive Psychic to see how powerful their offspring would be.

  “Well, if this paper has something to do with Edgar and Joyce, it might help Professor Watkins.” Olivia leaned in the doorway, gazing at the last empty seat next to me. “I think everyone knows this, but Edgar’s his brother.”

  “Glad you’re back, Olivia.” I gestured at the seat. “Maybe we can fill you in on what happened earlier. Speaking of the professor, I have to look in these books to find out what that weird blue light around him was. It might be the reason he can’t get back into his body.”

  “Woah, that’s no ordinary coma! Watkins has been locked out of his body all this time?” Lynn snagged a chair from another table and crammed it near mine at a weird angle. “Let me help. He’s only the best teacher in of the history of the known universe.”

  “Okay.” I handed her half the books from the stack in front of me. She reached out and took two more.

  “I speed-read.” Lynn winked. I remembered how she'd solved Bobby's hibernation problem in only a few days.

  “You rule.” I smiled, then bent my head over the book I’d cracked earlier.

  “I rule more.” Horace stuck his hand through the book in line after my current one. His eyes went white.

  “Creepazoid.” I shook my head, then looked back down at the book. “Gross, Horace.” After that I stuck my tongue out, so he'd know I didn't actually think he was gross.

  “You talking about a wibbly-wobbly ghosty-wosty thing?” Lynn didn’t even look up from her reading to ask.

  “Talking to him about one, yeah.” I wrinkled my nose. “Horace thinks he can read faster than you by some kind of incorporeal osmosis.”

  “Oh, no, he didn’t.” Lynn’s eyes moved faster. Her fingers turned pages so quickly I wondered whether she had calluses like a guitar player’s, except caused by paper cuts instead of metal strings.

  Horace didn’t bother with trash talk. Maybe he couldn’t. His white-out eyes had gray streaks. At least, that’s what I thought at first. I realized they were words, lines of text.

  Not wanting to get left behind, I flipped to the table of contents of the book in my hands. It wasn’t a dry research tome or even an old textbook. Instead, it was a series of curious cases presented in engaging prose.

  “Try this one.” The slender finger pressed against the page left behind a frosty print. I looked up into the creased brown face of Mr. Waban.

  “Really?” I blinked, then glanced back down at the chapter title and read it aloud. “The Curious Case of the Sleeping Beauty?”

  “Yes.” He nodded. “Professor Watkins told me he’d found it most instructive during his undergraduate studies.”

  I pictured Nathaniel Watkins as a young student in this very library. But dragons like Taki Waban hadn’t even been able to set foot on the PPC campus back in those days, so Nate Watkins must have borrowed it from the ice dragon’s personal collection at that time. I didn’t have time for further flights of fancy, or to ask Horace whether my mental image was correct. Instead, I turned my attention to the tale.

  It wasn’t much different from a traditional fairy tale as far as the plot went. Slighted Godmother, decade-plus vendetta, magical spindle. The differences were in the details. My eyes went wider than those of a kid walking into her surprise birthday party.

  “Guys, I think the professor’s problem is a soul spindle.” I could barely believe I’d gotten the answer already, even before the brainiac. Had coincidence struck thrice in one night?

  “What’s a soul spindle?” Again, Lynn didn’t look up. Her right hand scrawled notes on a sheet of paper beside her.

  “It’s an amalgamated magipsychic device that keeps Astral Psychics from leaving their bodies.” Maddie peered over my shoulder. “I read about them last semester, but there’s not much in Magus coursework about them because while we can help make them, we can’t use them.”

  “But why would a device meant to keep a Psychic in his body make trouble for a dude who’s been knocked out of it like Professor Watkins?” Everyone blinked as the Dean’s Listers wrestled with the fact that Lane Meyer, C student, had asked the million-dollar question. I silently cheered the green-haired academic underdog.

  “Because someone activated one on his body after he left it.” Horace’s eyes were still all white when he gave me the answer. I repeated his theory.

  “Who’d do a thing like that?” Kimiko looked disgusted, with good reason. Her face mirrored how I felt about the whole idea. “I can’t even or odd right now.”

  “Hairballs like Richard Hopewell, that’s who.” Tony folded his hands together, the pop of knuckles cracking reminding me of gunshots. “He’d better damn well hope that I never get my claws on him.”

  “He’s definitely a hairball or worse, but he’s still just a souped-up Magus,” Margot said. “They can’t use a magipsychic device for Psychic purposes.”

  “So, he had a Psychic’s help at some point while Professor Watkins was unconscious last spring.” Kimiko rubbed her upper arms like she was trying to get warm. “That’d be back during the fancy-dress ball last semester in Water Place Park. We already know he used mind magic to control Professor Brodsky last winter, so he could have whammied a vulnerable-enough Psychic while that creature attacked us.”

  “Allegedly mind-controlled Brodsky,” Olivia corrected. “Well, I mean, we all know he did it, but that’s how I have to talk about it until the trial. Anyway, there were definitely Psychics there. Elderly ones, maybe on medication. I’ll call Jeannie and get a list.” She got up and pulled out her phone, heading toward the not-exactly-empty old phone booth I’d passed on the way inside.

  “Registration for soul spindles is a giant pain in the rear.” Henry leaned back in his seat. “There hasn’t been one on the books for maybe thirty years.”

  “That don’t mean nothing.” Tony snorted. “You think there ain’t a black market for devices like that? Now it’s my turn to make a phone call.” He headed off in a different direction than Olivia though the cat shifter took one long look over his shoulder as he went.

  “Hey, I found something else here about soul spindles.” Lynn looked up this time, meeting my eyes through Horace’s translucent form. “And it’s nothing nice.”

  “What is it?” I clutched the curious case book like it was a lifeline and I was drowning in the Bay.

  “If Professor Watkins got hit by that soul spindle whammy at the Water Place Park event, we’re running out of time. If we don’t get him back in his body by the end of the month, he’ll never get back in.”

  “Okay, so how do we do that? Get him back in his body, I mean.” Lane leaned on his elbows and peered at Lynn, but she shook her head.

  “We don’t. But there are three ways for someone else to do it.” Lynn tapped a line she’d scribbled on the notebook. “The Psychic who activated it could voluntarily deactivate the spindle or cancel it by dying, but that’s not likely. Plan B is, his destined love could break the thing’s hold on him.”

  “No way he’s got one of those.” Margot shook her head. “Nate Watkins isn’t the type.”

  “Anyone can fall in love.” Kimiko shook her head. “Why not him?”

  “Hmm, no. Not really. Nate Watkins is a confirmed bachelor. He’s disinterested in romance of any sort.” Mr. Waban closed his eyes and snapped his fingers a few times. “Your generation uses the terms a-romantic and asexual if I’m not mistaken?”


  “Yeah, they’re the A in LGBTQIA.” Lane nodded. “So it wouldn’t matter if someone else loves him all unrequited-like. Coincidence doesn’t let true love play on a one-way street.”

  “Well, scratch Plan B, then. The other way is for a powerful-enough incorporeal to tie themselves to the soul spindle.” Lynn closed her eyes. “That might push his energy out of the thing and let him get back in his body.”

  “Finally!” Horace clapped his hands but only I heard it. “Something I can do! Ask that brainiac how, Bianca. I bet it’s easy-peasy lemon-squeezy.”

  I asked. Lynn shut her eyes, and her lips pressed into a thin, flat line. It got silent, even for a library. After almost half a minute, she spoke.

  “Ghosts don’t get attached to soul spindles. Well, they do, technically, but they turn into wraiths and then the spindle tears them apart.” Lynn looked at the stack of books Horace had been perusing. I guessed she was trying to catch his eye. “We need another Astral Projection Psychic still in their body. One of those could use it on themselves. That’d knock the professor out of its clutches.”

  “So, let’s find ourselves a Projection Psychic, then.” Kimiko smiled, then turned toward her tablet. “LORA, compile a list of Psychics who do astral projection within a hundred-mile radius of Providence.”

  But projection psychics were rare. It took LORA a week to come up with nothing within a hundred miles, nothing within five hundred, and nothing within a thousand. By then, it was too late.

  Chapter Nine

  Horace

  I floated down the street behind Bianca, Lynn, and Blaine Harcourt. I wasn’t exactly sure why the dragon shifter had insisted on tagging along, but it meant I had to endure hanging around with his two dads yet again. At least they kept their traps shut most of the way this time.

  “So, her last name is Spanos.” Blaine had both his hands in his jacket pockets. “Interesting.”

  “Ew.” Lynn wrinkled her nose. “What are you going to bribe me with, Trogdor? You know, so I don’t tell Kimiko you came with us just to check in on an old lady friend.” Lynn’s smirk might have seemed mean-spirited instead of sarcastic if she hadn’t dropped Blaine a wink at the same time.

  “I’m just connecting dots here, not revisiting an old love connection, which she wasn’t by the way.” A thin trail of smoke wafted out behind Blaine. “Spanos is Greek, and it means hairless.”

  “Well, she’s not.” Bianca shook her head. “Hairless, that is. Cassandra's definitely Greek, though. Her grandparents immigrated back in the day.”

  “I wasn’t thinking along literal lines.” The smoke ring Blaine blew pulled into a long oval shape as it went past my left ear.

  “Me neither.” Lynn sighed. “I only met Cassandra one time, at the Homecoming Festival last year. She’s the person who gave me this Psychic weather app.” The human girl tapped her phone, then passed it to Bianca. Blaine pouted. “You’ve already seen it, dragon man.”

  “Anyway,” Blaine went on, “in ancient Etruscan cultures, oracles shaved their heads so they could reduce interference on their connection to the Fates or whatever other powers that be they turned to. So, my bet is that the Spanos family has had their Psychic ability from ancient days.”

  “Why is that important?” Lynn shrugged. “Either Cassandra will be at home or not.”

  “Well, it means that maybe she’s got a family member who knows more. Maybe even one who can find us an Astral Projection Psychic. And if she’s gone missing, perhaps someone in her family will want to help us with our Extramagus problem.”

  “The boy gets his brains from me.” Ignacius’ voice rumbled behind me.

  “His mother, you mean.” Wilfred snorted. “And I’m the one who taught him all those good study habits.”

  “Quit it, or I’ll make wraith-meat out of the both of you.” I held up a fist. Silence reigned behind me.

  “Or maybe not.” Bianca shook her head, possibly to empty her ears of ghostly dragon arguments so she could focus on corporeal dragon ideas. "I remember when she started working on this app. A year before you started here, Lynn."

  “How’s that?” Lynn took the phone back from Bianca.

  “That app is more Precognitive than anything else, but the weather detection has a thread of some other energy.” Bianca shivered, pulling her jacket tighter around her.

  “Yeah.” Blaine nodded. “It had some Air and Water Magic if I remember correctly.”

  “What if that came from Richard Hopewell?” Bianca shook her head. “If he’s got Cassandra somewhere, then her family might not be able to help us without risking her safety.”

  “Let me see that again.” Blaine reached for the phone, and Lynn handed it over. “Oh, yeah, definitely magic. Three threads, actually: Water, Air, and Ice. The same magic energy types as in the storms last winter, Lynn. But I have no way of knowing who the magic came from. I won't jump to conclusions about it because all three of those elemental types are in the PPC faculty and the student body. You need to bring this to a magic CSI lab to figure that out.”

  “Look, here we are.” Bianca pointed at the weathered shingle sided building, peering up at its eaves and gables. The Spanos house was over near Gano Street, in a recently trendy neighborhood. There were ghosts everywhere, though. Lots of them came from a hundred or more years back. Some things can’t be renovated, and the incorporeal population of a place was one of them.

  Lots of people who don’t know better think ghosts are static, that we’re echoes of the people we were while solid. We don’t have to be. Corporeals are solid for a reason, even though us ghosts don’t know what that is, and we’re not like them after we die. We’re fluid once we’ve shuffled off the mortal coil; malleable. We can look any way we want, change our clothes, our hair, or even our shapes on a whim, as long as we stay humanoid. All we have to do is free our minds. Like the song goes, the rest follows.

  But as the other song goes, freedom is just another word for nothing left to lose. Some ghosts, especially the ones who stuck around under duress, commanded by opportunistic mediums for parlor tricks and financial gain, got a raw deal. Their contracts shackled them into a form of perpetually slavery most people couldn't see. The Reveal changed all that for us.

  Laws and regulations hobbling Psychic and Magic practitioners set us free. Ghosts made only the contracts they wanted now, with required provisions for solids to stick to in the document. Psychic mediums could no longer lie about us moving on, so family members left us at their mercy. No more ordering us to make fake hauntings so they could turn a profit. We got to seek out what we hadn’t been able to in life. If I wanted to run around looking like a Tolkien elf, I could do that. But all I wanted was my bowler hat and the long brown coat from a time long before my solid body had been born. And to help Bianca, always that.

  “I wonder how they manage paying the taxes on this place.” Blaine blew a few smoke rings. “All the property values went way up, but the house looks like it needs work that'd been put off.”

  “I think I know how they keep it.” I pointed at a potted gardenia on the stoop by the side door. Along with the flowering plant was an herb.

  “You guys?” Bianca nudged Lynn and jerked her chin at the flower pot. “What’s in there besides the little red flowers?”

  “That’s catnip.” Lynn wrinkled her nose.

  “Well, what’s it mean?” Leave it to Bianca to ask. She believed the old adage that there was no such thing as a stupid question.

  “Gattos. The people in this house are theirs.” Blaine’s smoke lost its ring shapes, increasing in volume until I wondered whether his nose hairs had caught fire. “The Spanos family is either on the Gitano payroll or under their so-called protection. I am. Sick. To death. Of fracking cat-men.”

  “Oh, please. No need to get all Shatner when you talk.” Lynn rolled her eyes and snatched her phone away from the angry dragon. “I know the shifter Mafia took potshots at you, Trogdor, but you really need to chill out and stop generalizing alread
y.”

  “I need no such thing.” Blaine put his hands on his hips. The two of them facing off reminded me of Lisa and Bart Simpson.

  “Well, the rest of us do. For all the research we gotta get done, anyway.” Lynn punched the dragon shifter in the shoulder. “We could have used your help last night, but you refused to even be in the same room as Tony. You’re cramping our study time.”

  “Shh!” The hissed command came from a tiny rectangular window near the ground. I looked down to see a shock of gray hair, a forehead, and a pair of eyes peeking out from behind a dingy pane of glass.

  “Huh?” Bianca kept her voice low.

  “If you’re friends with Tony, get lost.”

  “You don’t understand.” Lynn shook her head. “Tony’s not like his dad’s—”

  “I do understand, and they’ll end him if they think he’s not loyal. They’ll do the same to us. The bonds between our families are new.” The head turned, and I noticed that the profile matched what I remembered of Cassandra's. This had to be an older relative of hers. “Go to the senior center. Talk to Donato. And don’t come back, ‘specially if you’re gonna argue like that about the boy.”

  “But—” Lynn’s protest got cut off by Blaine’s hand over her mouth. She was the most book-smart person I’d ever seen, but her street smarts were chronically absent.

  The dragon shifter nodded and turned around, Lynn and all. He walked back down the street the way we had come , Bianca trotting to catch up with them. I followed along with the pair of shocked dragon dads in tow.

  The senior center was the last place any self-respecting ghost wanted to go. The death energy around places like that without the balance of healing and life present at places like hospitals makes us uneasy. But if Bianca had to be there, I’d deal with it. I glanced over my left shoulder, then my right. It seemed like Ignacius and Wilfred had similar sentiments about Blaine. I wouldn’t be alone, at least.