Terminal (Ellie Jordan, Ghost Trapper Book 4) Read online

  “Stacey, who’s at the front door?” I whispered.

  “Front door? Let me climb up and look out the windshield...”

  I stepped into the foyer, tactical flashlight in hand. The rattling had stopped for the moment, but I kept my eyes on the doorknob.

  “Ellie, there’s nobody there,” Stacey said.

  “Are you sure?” I looked out the window, but the front porch area was empty. So was the lawn below. Our blue van was in the driveway, pointed right at the front door. With the long flight of stairs from the elevated front porch to the ground, it would have been nearly impossible for anyone to slip away without Stacey or me noticing.

  “Want me to hop out and look around?” Stacey asked.

  “Not really,” I said, thinking of the large, dangerous-looking entity I’d pursued the night before. “I’d rather you stay in the van. And lock the doors.”

  “Okay...” Over the headset, I heard the clunking of the van’s locks falling into place.

  “I’m going to stay with Ember. Keep an eye out for...anything.” I made sure the front door was locked, then the back door, which led out to an elevated porch overlooking the back yard. “Watch the basement, especially,” I added, while closing the door to the basement stairs. Unfortunately, it had no lock.

  Ember lay on the couch, deep asleep now, not even stirring. I checked her with my thermals again. The layer of cold blue had vanished completely, as if the ghost had given up, or something had chased it away, leaving her in peace for the night.

  Chapter Six

  I tried to tiptoe out of the living room right at the break of dawn, but Ember woke up, groggy and blinking.

  “How did I get down here?” she asked.

  “Don’t you remember last night?” I hesitated at the living room doorway.

  “Ugh.” Ember remained where she was, lying on the couch, looking up at the ceiling. “Last night. I...woke up. She was crying again, down in the basement. I could hear her all the way upstairs. The poor thing, I thought. What if it was my child, alone and in the dark like that, scared and sad like that? I wanted to go help her.”

  I’d warned her and Tom to avoid the ghost, not engage with it, but I didn’t pick this moment to remind her of that. She’d already learned the hard way.

  “So I...went down,” she continued. “Down to the basement.” She blinked.

  “Then what?” I asked.

  “That’s it.” Ember shook her head. “I had some bad dreams, something about a train at night, taking me somewhere I didn’t want to go...and that’s all I remember.”

  “Can you tell me about the dream?” I sat down in an armchair, facing her. I drew my notepad from my jacket pocket. It felt like the classic cartoon-psychiatric scenario, with her lying on the couch and me sitting nearby, asking questions and taking notes.

  “It was dark,” she said. “Like I was traveling at night. I just remember the train was hellish, all black iron and smoke, you could smell burning everywhere. I was scared and alone, walking through the train. Trying to escape. There was no way out. I had to escape, and then I had to pee. Really urgently. But I couldn’t find a bathroom. Actually, I really do need to pee, right now.” She pushed herself up to a sitting position, and I hurried over and helped her stand.

  “Sorry.” Ember gave me a tired smile. “I’m really not an invalid. I just feel drained right now.”

  “That’s because the ghost was feeding on you.”

  Her mouth twisted downward in a look of horror. “What?”

  “You don’t remember that, either?”

  “I’ll be right back.” She closed the bathroom door.

  “Stacey?” I asked.

  “What’s the plan?” Stacey asked over my headset. “Do we take Hunter home now, then get breakfast? Or get breakfast somewhere outdoors so we can bring the dog? I vote eat outdoors, because I’m starving—”

  “No breakfast yet,” I said. “I have to speak with Ember for a minute.”

  “Well, Hunter’s very disappointed to hear that. His face is all saggy and droopy.”

  “His face is always saggy and droopy.”

  “I promised him eggs and ham.”

  “You may have promised too much.”

  Ember stepped out of the bathroom. “Do you have time for breakfast?”

  “That would be great! Thanks!” I replied.

  “And I want to hear that recording of the ghost’s voice,” Ember said, leading the way to the kitchen. “Even if Tom doesn’t.”

  “Can we leave Hunter in your back yard?” The sun was beginning to rise and I didn’t want the dog overheating while he waited.

  “Of course.” She opened the refrigerator and sighed. “Do you mind handing me the milk? Sorry, I can’t reach the bottom shelf anymore.”

  “Stacey, bring your tablet up here,” I said. “Put Hunter in the fence.”

  “Sounds like it’s going to take a while.” She sighed. “My stomach is seriously rumbling, Ellie.”

  “Sorry.” I muted my microphone and handed Ember ingredients as she requested them. By the time Stacey arrived, Ember was slicing cantaloupes while six little polka-dotted puddles that would soon be blueberry pancakes heated on the griddle.

  “Breakfast!” Stacey said, her eyes wide. “Why didn’t you tell me?”

  “I thought you’d enjoy the surprise,” I said. “Ember wants to hear the banshee.”

  “Anything for blueberry pancakes.” Stacey sat down at the kitchen table and pulled up the files on her tablet.

  “I hope you like them,” Ember said.

  “She likes everything,” I told her. “Except craisins.”

  “Ugh, craisins.” Stacey made a sour face, then played the audio of me asking the ghost why it was there, and the two answers it had given at different times:

  “Hiding.”

  “They died.”

  The ghost’s voice was a low, distant whisper, the intonation flat.

  “That just made all my hair stand up,” Ember said, staring at the tablet from where she stood at the counter. “It sounds like a woman talking.”

  “Can you remember anything else about your encounter last night?” I asked.

  Ember shook her head. “I just remember feeling sad and alone.”

  “Did anything else happen on the train?” I asked, and Stacey’s head perked up like a cat that just heard the can opener. “Was anyone else there?”

  “The people didn’t seem friendly. They gave me dirty looks or pretended I wasn’t there at all.”

  “How were they dressed?”

  “Oh, the women had these long, old-fashioned dresses, puffy lace around the sleeves...big hats with feathers and flowers. The men had those old bowler hats, dark suits, ties.”

  “It sounds like you were in another era,” I said. By the description, I was thinking the Victorian years, somewhere around the border between the nineteenth and twentieth centuries.

  “It was,” she agreed. “Do you like maple syrup or honey? I’ll just put both on the table.”

  “Ember!” Tom shouted, his feet banging their way down the stairs at high speed. “Ember, where are you?”

  “I’m at Six Flags, riding all the roller coasters,” Ember said as he walked into the room, dressed in gray pajamas. “Where do you think I am?”

  “You weren’t there when I woke up.” He glanced at Stacey and me, seeming annoyed by our presence.

  “Have some breakfast,” she said. “There might be a pancake left.”

  “I’m going to be late for work. Did we get rid of the ghost yet?”

  “We’re still turning up lots of background information that should help us identify the entity,” I said.

  He shook his head and left the room. Sometimes people expect us to find, trap, and remove a ghost within a day or so. I wish we could. Dividing our fees by the number of actual hours I put into a case makes for a fairly sad wage. It wasn’t as if I was hanging around just for the pancakes.

  Then again, once I
actually took a bite of mine, I thought the breakfast alone might be worth the long and difficult night. I could see why her friends had wanted to start a sweets shop with her.

  “Wait a minute.” Stacey looked at Ember. “Is that...brown sugar?”

  “Just...” Ember pinched her fingers tightly together. “If you can taste it, it’s too much.”

  “It’s perfect,” Stacey said. “These are like ten times better than...um...”

  “Which fine establishment were you going to name?” I asked. “The Country Barn?”

  “Maybe.” Stacey narrowed her eyes just slightly at me. She didn’t like me bringing up that particular ultra-kitschy chain of restaurants.

  “Listen,” Ember said, finally joining us at the table, her plate stacked with two big blueberry pancakes and half a cantaloupe. “I’d rather you didn’t tell Tom what happened last night. He already worries over every second of my day anyway.”

  “As long as you promise me you’ll avoid the ghost from now on,” I said. “No more going down to the basement to comfort it. Remember, this thing uses sadness as a weapon. It can hook you in with pity. It’s going to treat your compassion as a weakness.”

  “Okay,” Ember nodded.

  “You promise?”

  “Sure. Of course.”

  “What are we promising?” Tom, having accomplished the bizarre male feat of showering and dressing in fifteen minutes, stepped into the kitchen for a slice of toast. He wore a black tie dotted with little cartoon teeth, each one of which had a big smile, wore a pair of sunglasses, and a carried a toothbrush in one hand.

  “Hey, I love that tie,” Stacey said, accompanying the comment with her most charming smile. “I like how the little tooth guys have teeth of their own.”

  “Ember bought me this.” He looked down at it. “The Cherrier kid’s coming in for three fillings this morning. If that kid’s parents don’t cut off his grape soda supply, his mouth’s going to turn into a real gold mine. A sticky blue gold mine. I thought the kid would get a kick out of the tie.”

  “I bet he will!” Stacey said. “It must be such interesting work, being a dentist.”

  “It’s not,” Tom said. He kissed his wife. “Are you okay? Do you need anything?”

  “I’m fine.”

  “You shouldn’t be cooking. You need to rest.”

  “I’ll just order pizza for breakfast from now on,” she said.

  “Sounds great. Make sure there’s pepperoni.” He walked out of the kitchen.

  “Love you,” she said, while the front door closed. The doorknob rattled as he locked it behind him, reminding me of the entity who’d tried to come inside last night.

  “We have a lot to do,” I said. “Ember, can you put us in touch with the neighborhood watch guy Tom mentioned?”

  “Sure, Mr. Nobson. He’s the watch chief, plus president and treasurer of the neighborhood association, chair of the Adherence Committee...they thought a lot more people would be living here when they created the homeowner’s association, so there are all these offices. Mr. Nobson’s the only one who really wants them. He’s retired.”

  “What’s the Adherence Committee?” I asked.

  “Making sure everyone’s house and lawn conform to the association rules,” Ember said. “No weeds, no boats parked in the driveway, only the approved colors if you paint your house. Mr. Nobson patrols in his golf cart for violations.”

  “Sounds like a fun guy,” Stacey said.

  “I’d also like to speak to the original developer,” I said. “The people who printed those brochures. New Vision Properties.”

  “I think they went bankrupt,” Ember said. “The bank owns the whole place now. But I’m sure Mr. Nobson can put you in touch. He’s lived here since the beginning, when the buyers thought they were getting a lot more for their money. I think he’s a little bitter about it.”

  “When do you think he could speak with us?”

  “I’ll call him, but if it’s about official homeowner’s association business, he’ll probably be ready to meet anytime. The HOA is his life.”

  “Okay...It looks like we need to dig into the history of the railroad that ran through here, as well as the old farm.” I quickly explained what we’d seen—the strange light by the tracks and the powerful gust of wind that blew along them. “We have a former client who was actually haunted by an owner of that railroad. She had some of his old paperwork in her attic. I’ll give her a call.”

  “What about Jacob?” Stacey asked.

  “That’s our psychic consultant,” I told Ember. “I’ll bring him in eventually, once we have a better idea of what we’re looking for. Stacey, let him know we’re going to need him.”

  “And don’t forget to call Michael,” Stacey said.

  “Why?”

  “You forgot to call him back last night.”

  “Okay, I’ll take care of that.”

  “You really should,” Stacey said. She looked at Ember. “Ellie went on one date with this awesome cute fireman guy, and she can’t find anything wrong with him, and she won’t call him back--”

  “Stacey!” I said. “We’re not going to bother her with that.”

  “I’m just saying--”

  “Why don’t you call him?” Ember asked. “He sounds nice.”

  “Anyway, back to things that are actually relevant to the case,” I said, with a quick glare for Stacey. She was really getting on my nerves with that subject. Why couldn’t she let me deal with my issues myself? “After what we saw last night, we might be looking for a train wreck, something that would have led to a possible ghost train, if that’s what we saw. The good news is that events like that should stick out in the historical records, so we should be able to find it pretty quickly. We also need to set up cameras at some of the active hauntspots we found last night.”

  “Well, it sounds like you know what you’re doing,” Ember said. “I just hope it’s over quickly.”

  “I was sorry to hear about your mother,” I said.

  “What about my mom?” Ember looked alarmed.

  “Last night, you said she’d passed away recently. That she’d been sick.”

  “Sick?” Ember snickered. “My mom’s running a marathon in Indiana tomorrow. She’s never sick. Her work even gave her an award for perfect attendance.”

  “Oh. Good. Did you have a bad dream about her or something?”

  “Not that I remember. Maybe I should call and make sure she’s okay.”

  We finished breakfast, and Ember insisted that we take some praline pecans she’d made. Stacey and I collected Hunter and returned to the van.

  “I wish you hadn’t done that,” I said to Stacey as I drove away.

  “Which part?”

  “Trying to pressure me about Michael while the client was there. It’s not professional, or appropriate, or anywhere close.”

  “Okay, you’re right. I’ll never do it again. In front of a client.” Then she grabbed my phone from the dashboard charger.

  “What are you doing?”

  “There’s no client here now.” She gave me a wicked grin as she flipped through my contact list.

  “Stacey!”

  “M...where’s M...wow, you don’t have tons of contacts.” Stacey held the phone to her ear, and I heard it ringing.

  “Stop it! That’s not funny.”

  “Hey, Mikey!” Stacey said into the phone. “Um, no, this is Stacey. Ellie’s driving right now. But she wanted to call you and make dinner plans. Here you go.” She held the phone up to my ear, waggling her eyebrows and giving me a thumbs up.

  “Uh, hey,” I said, snatching the phone from her fingers. I was so flustered I almost ran a stop sign, and I shouted a little as I slammed the brakes at the last second. An old man in a Chevy Nova blared his horn as he passed through the intersection, giving me a rude gesture.

  “Sorry!” I shouted out the open window.

  “Ellie?” Michael asked.

  “Yeah, sorry, uh...what were you
saying?” I asked.

  “You called me,” he said. “I mean your assistant did. How’s Friday?”

  “I have to work on this case every night,” I said. “I don’t know when I’ll have a free one.”

  “So...why the invite?”

  “I...” I couldn’t think of a way to get out of it. I scowled at Stacey for forcing the situation. “I mean I eat my dinner at breakfast time, you know, so...want to have breakfast?”

  “It’s the most important meal of the day,” he said. “I’m not working Saturday. Should we meet Saturday morning?”

  “Sure, Saturday...Hey, and we’ll have Stacey and Jacob along, too,” I said.

  Stacey furrowed her brow and shook her head.

  “Jacob’s the psychic guy, right?” Michael asked.

  “Yep, Jacob the psychic,” I said. “We’ll all meet at The Country Barn.”

  Stacey gasped and punched me in the arm.

  “Okay, interesting choice. Which one?”

  “The one out on 516,” I said. “Thanks, Michael. This will be...good.” That sounded stupid. I was all mixed up from being pushed by Stacey but suddenly excited to see Michael again, despite my reservations about getting into any deep relationships at this point in my life.

  “I’m going to kill you,” Stacey said after I hung up.

  “Never kill a ghost hunter. We make very dangerous ghosts. We know all the tricks.”

  “You’re evil.”

  “We’re both evil,” I said, and then I called Jacob.

  Chapter Seven

  I dropped Stacey off and headed home to my narrow little brick loft. I fed my cat, Bandit, and then I was ready for sleep, but I had to make a couple of phone calls.

  First I got in touch with my old client, Toolie Paulding, who was working her job as a manager for the Sir Sleepmore Mattresses outlet by the mall.

  “Oh, Ellie!” Toolie said, after I identified myself. “How are you? And how’s Stacey?”

  “Everybody’s fine,” I told her. “How have things been with your family the last couple of months? Any disturbances?”