Page 27

She headed into her office and woke up her iMac, then checked the address against the MLS database.

Yes, the property was currently in escrow and was repped by an agent Delia had worked with in the past, Jackie Villanueva.

Since Jackie knew exactly what Delia could do with haunted properties, it seemed odd that she hadn’t sent her client over much earlier in the process, before any money had exchanged hands.

Then again, she had no real idea what might have happened. For all she knew, the spirit had been quiescent as long as it knew the house was standing empty, but now that it had realized someone would be moving in soon, it had decided to make its presence known.

Whatever was going on, she supposed she’d find out soon enough.

So far, Caleb’s internet sleuthing had turned up a big, fat zero. No, he hadn’t thought that any of the people he was investigating would have a flashing red “demon” on their driver’s licenses or something, but he’d at least hoped to find something slightly anomalous.

But he hadn’t seen anything to make him think that Paul Reeves or Ty Carter were anything out of the ordinary.

Maybe if he had access to the sorts of databases that Prudence did, he’d be able to locate something incriminating.

Right now, though, those men looked like a couple of upstanding citizens and nothing more.

Paul Reeves owned a carpet cleaning business based in Summerlin, and Ty Carter was a tennis pro at DragonRidge Country Club, a very high-end establishment.

No doubt all those bored, Botoxed rich men’s wives were lined up to get lessons from the guy.

Caleb still didn’t like the vibe he’d gotten from the man — or at least, it had managed to somehow disturb him without actually feeling sinister — but bad vibes weren’t a crime, or even an indication that someone might be a demon.

That didn’t mean he was about to give up. After all, he knew better than anyone else that demons were awfully good at coming up with fake mortal identities when necessary, so this surface-level stuff wasn’t anything close to conclusive.

Except that there wasn’t much else he could do, not without outside help.

He supposed he could have looked up Prudence Nelson online — the woman was a P.I.

, after all, and must have some kind of website — but for some reason, that felt like horning in on Delia’s territory.

He thought it better to talk to her first before he hired Pru to investigate those two men.

Especially when it seemed as if there might not be a whole lot to find.

Annoyed, Caleb closed his laptop. He knew part of his current irritation stemmed from feeling utterly at loose ends, but he figured he could cure that easily enough.

It was still early, but in a town where the casinos ran 24/7, that wasn’t much of an impediment.

He grabbed his keys and headed out.

The house looked just about the way it had online — a pretty Mediterranean-style two-story that had been built in the early 1990s but had been subtly updated on the outside, just enough to show that the interior had also been renovated and wouldn’t be a ’90s flashback of white tile countertops and popcorn ceilings.

A sleek black motorcycle — a Ducati, she noted as she passed it by — was parked in the driveway, so Delia assumed her new client, whoever he was, waited for her inside.

Or at least, she thought it was probably a he. Sure, there was no reason to believe that a woman might not ride a sporty bike like the Ducati, but the vibe she was getting didn’t come across that way.

The front door was unlocked, so she let herself in. Standing in the empty living room was a man she thought she recognized.

Ty Carter, one of Caleb’s erstwhile competitors…and an individual who’d definitely pinged his demonic radar.

“Mr. Carter?” she blurted in shock, then realized she probably shouldn’t have let it slip that she already knew who he was.

However, he only smiled, as if summoning her like this was the most ordinary thing in the world. “You can call me Ty,” he said. “No need to stand on formality.”

He looked like he was probably a few years older than Caleb, so in his mid-thirties.

His dark hair was pulled back into a ponytail, and she guessed it would be a bit longer than his shoulders if he let it fall free.

In contrast to his near-black tresses, his eyes were a bright blue, clear as desert skies at the peak of summer.

If she hadn’t been so preoccupied with more important matters, she might have thought Ty Carter was pretty spectacular. As it was, she could only stare at him in consternation.

“Why did you call me here?”

“To look at the house, of course,” he said imperturbably.

“You bought this house?” she returned, not sure whether he was joking.

“Not exactly.”

His expression remained utterly calm, so Delia had no idea what might be going through his head.

“If you didn’t ‘exactly’ buy it, then what are you doing here?”

“It’s haunted,” he said. “The buyers don’t know that, of course, but this place does have a resident spirit.” Ty paused there, those sky-colored eyes fixed on her face, as if to gauge her reaction. “I wanted to see how you work.”

This was insane. “If you’re not the buyer, then we’re trespassing.”

He shrugged. “There was still a lockbox on the door. I suppose the listing agent wanted to keep all her options open until escrow closed.”

Delia had to admit that sounded like something Jackie Villanueva would do. And since the house had a lockbox, that meant a licensed realtor could come in without any repercussions.

“So…you have a real estate license?” she asked next. “Because otherwise, how did you get the code to the lockbox?”

His expression remained neutral. Caleb hadn’t gone into details about how Ty Carter had lost in the qualifying rounds, but she guessed it hadn’t been due to his lack of a good poker face.

For some reason, that annoyed her, probably because she would know better how to react if she could get even some sort of read of his emotions.

“It’s not so difficult to get that information if you know where to look,” he replied. “Anyway, I wanted to know if you could sense the ghost here.”

Delia planted her hands on her hips. “Not so far,” she said. “But the vibes in this room might be interfering with my ability to tell if there’s a ghost in the house or not.”

Maybe his lips quirked ever so slightly. “I’m sorry about the vibes, then. I’ll wait here in the living room while you explore.”

This was insane. Part of her wanted to turn around and walk right out of the house…but a bigger part wanted to see if there really was a ghost, or whether this was just some elaborate joke on Ty Carter’s part.

Except…why would he even do such a thing? He didn’t know her from Eve, so what was the point?

To put Caleb off-balance, she thought then, although that theory didn’t feel quite right, either. It would be one thing if Ty was still in the tournament, but he’d dropped out the first day. There wouldn’t be much point in making Caleb lose when there was no chance in the world that Ty could win.

Then again, maybe this was just some sort of petty revenge. If Ty couldn’t win, then possibly he thought that playing head games with Caleb was one way to make sure his former opponent didn’t get any farther than the quarterfinals.

She didn’t see that happening, though. For all his mercurial nature, Caleb Lockwood could be very focused when he needed to.

So she gave a very visible shrug, then walked out of the living room toward the back of the house, where the kitchen and attached family room were located.

Homes had been a lot more compartmentalized back when this place was built, and clearly, whoever had spent money on upgrading the flooring and the lighting hadn’t wanted to pop for the expensive beams required to tear out walls and still keep the structure from collapsing in on itself.

More signs of updating here, from the quartz countertops and backsplash to the smoothly plastered fireplace. However, she wasn’t here to look at the improvements…even though her real estate agent’s eye went unerringly to those very details.

No, she needed to see if this house truly was haunted.

So far, she hadn’t felt a single thing. But she’d been focused on Ty Carter for the past couple of minutes, which could explain why she hadn’t sensed any ghostly vibes in the house.

There, out of the corner of her eye. Just the faintest hint of movement, something that disappeared just as soon as she tried to turn and see what was there.

At the same time, though, an icy little chill ran down her spine, and she knew she wasn’t alone back here. Ty had remained in the front room, and Delia hadn’t heard a peep from over there, so she knew that odd little blip at the edge of her vision hadn’t been him.

“I’m here,” she said quietly. The entity she’d just barely sensed already knew that, of course, but sometimes it was better to open these dialogues with something neutral, something a spirit wouldn’t see as threatening.

Now she knew she wasn’t imagining things, since that odd little shimmer of movement became more solid, resolving itself into the form of a girl who looked like she’d probably been in her early teens when she died.

Judging by the shirt slipping off one shoulder and the baggy rolled-up jeans, she must have left this plane soon after the house was built.

That outfit just screamed early nineties.

What had happened? The girl looked healthy and whole — well, for someone who was halfway transparent.

Then again, not all ghosts manifested the cause of their deaths, unlike the people who walked the afterlife in the Beetlejuice movies…

the same movies that had provided the inspiration for Delia’s name.

“Was this your home?” she asked next.