Page 2 of Ghosted AF (At First #4)

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~ Caius ~

W orking for MNSTR’s Crisis Containment unit, I never knew what I would be walking into, which meant being prepared for anything.

Unlike other task requests that required detailed forms and waiting periods, Crisis Containment acted more like a paranormal emergency service. As such, users needed only to select a category, enter their location, and make a payment.

The Magical Network of Specialized Task Resources did have safeguards in place to ensure users didn’t make the selection lightly. First off, the service came with a hefty price tag that discouraged most people from choosing it by accident.

The categories also helped weed out non-urgent requests. The onboard AI gathered minimal information with yes and no questions, and at least three notifications asked if clients really wanted to proceed with the request.

Still, the rare misuse case did slip through. Like the teenage girl who had used her parents’ credit card to hire a Crisis Containment agent after she hadn’t been selected as captain of her school’s cheer team.

Lights burned in the majority of the windows as I navigated the pockmarked streets of the ungated apartment complex.

Empty bottles and wrappers littered the grassy areas, and only half of the security lamps seemed operable.

Many of the cars parked in the lots appeared older, some decades past their prime.

I noted these things, not to judge, but rather to get a better idea of the situation. Having lived in places like this myself, I knew most residents didn’t have the kind of disposable income necessary to drop on a Level 4 Haunting Extermination.

That alone told me I had a serious situation on my hands. Whether for me or the client, however, remained to be seen.

Pulling into an empty space in front of the corner building at the back of the complex, I grabbed a black duffle bag from the passenger seat and exited my pickup.

The ambient noise immediately assaulted me—blaring music, barking dogs, and crying babies.

A couple on the second floor seemed to be having a loud disagreement about the thermostat.

I scanned the immediate area, then shifted my gaze to the third-floor landing. Apartment 3C. Rylee Burke. He claimed to have a poltergeist situation on his hands, but beyond that, I had no other information.

As I started up the concrete steps, I rolled my shoulders, settling my wings more securely against my back to ensure no one could grab onto them.

Despite what fiction claimed, I couldn’t just hide the appendages when I wasn’t using them.

They didn’t retract into my body, then burst from my skin only when I needed them.

Biology didn’t work that way.

Instead, they simply existed, always visible, equally an asset and a liability, depending on the situation. And it made finding tops that fit virtually impossible.

Back in the day, winged shadelings had no choice but to go shirtless, or hide their “deformities” under heavy fabrics. Now, most of us turned to designers who used enchanted materials with openings that stretched to allow our wings to fit through, then contracted around the base.

The humid night air clung to my skin as I climbed, and I grimaced when a bead of sweat trickled down my spine, my wings like a down blanket pressed against my back. The scent of distant rain carried on the warm breeze, barely detectable beneath the stench of garbage and musty concrete.

In the breezeway on the top floor, I stepped over a plastic tricycle and dodged a shiny brown beetle as it skittered across the ground. Somewhere in the shadows, a lone cricket chirped, the sound piercing as I strained to hear what was going on inside unit 3C.

Honestly, it sounded pretty quiet. No loud thumps or bangs. No wailing or screeching. Just some shuffling and the low hum of electricity.

I stepped onto the welcome mat and rapped my knuckles against the door.

Nothing happened.

In my experience, clients were usually standing just inside the premises, peeking through the windows and waiting to pounce the moment I arrived. Sometimes, I found them pacing outside on the lawn.

I knocked again.

The door didn’t open, but as the echo faded, I heard a loud clang, followed by a high-pitched scream. In that moment, everything changed.

Worried that my client might not be able to answer my summons, I took a step back and kicked out with my right leg, planting my booted foot just below the knob. The frame exploded, showering the ground in wooden splinters, and the door flew open with a loud screech from the damaged hinges.

Dropping my duffle bag in the entryway, I rushed into the main part of the unit, coming to an abrupt halt at the edge of the kitchen. I had been doing this job for a long time, but it took me a minute to understand what I was seeing.

The light pulsed, dimming to almost complete darkness, then surging so that I had to squint against the brightness. Debris—papers, napkins, clothes—tumbled over in the air, and the windowpanes rattled intermittently in their frames.

In the kitchen, a young male, maybe early twenties, wielded a frying pan like a weapon, swinging it around wildly. Most likely the cause of the clang I had heard. His platinum hair plastered to his head like a helmet, and water droplets glistened over his pale skin.

I might have thought he’d just stepped out of the shower if not for the sodden T-shirt that clung to his chest. Even as I thought it, the spray nozzle connected to the sink activated on its own, sending a stream of water directly into his face.

“Damn it!” he shouted. “Stop that!”

Then he slammed the pan down on the side of the counter, causing another horrible clang that reverberated throughout the apartment.

“Rylee Burke?” I asked, raising my voice to be heard over the cacophony.

His head snapped up, his brilliant blue eyes widening with a mixture of shock and relief when they landed on me. Dropping the skillet, he grabbed a metal spatula off a wire rack and hurried over to duck behind me.

I thought he had only meant to hide, but the frantic human gripped onto my shoulders and climbed my back like a jungle gym.

“What the hell are you doing?” I demanded, spreading my wings to relieve the discomfort of his weight.

“Yeah!” he yelled, his voice ringing right next to my ear. “You see this, Mykal? I’ve got back up!” With a near stranglehold on my neck, he shoved his other arm forward over my shoulder, waving the spatula around wildly. “He’s totally going to kick your ghost ass!”

“Get off me.” I punctuated the command with a growl, but he either didn’t hear it or didn’t care.

“Go. Do your thing.”

Then he squeezed my sides with his knees like I was a fucking horse he had chosen to ride into battle. I had been inside the place for all of thirty seconds, and this tiny monster was already shaping up to be a bigger problem than the supposed ghost.

As for the haunting, I had my doubts. Rylee definitely had something supernatural going on, but the energy felt all wrong for a spirit. Distracted by the Chaos in Chief, however, I couldn’t identify the actual signature.

“Enough!” I bellowed, sending out a blast of magic that bathed the walls in golden light.

The madness instantly quieted. The gust of wind that swirled throughout the unit stilled. The items that spun through the air stopped mid-glide and fell to the living room floor. The lights and appliances returned to normal, and no more waterspouts erupted from the kitchen.

Now, I just had to deal with Rylee Burke.

Before I could reissue the demand to get the hell off me, he thankfully slithered down my back, falling to the floor with a muffled thud, and came to stand beside me. He still held the spatula out in front of him, more like a shield than a sword, as if he didn’t quite trust the calm.

And he shouldn’t. I hadn’t eradicated the problem. I had simply neutralized it for the time being.

“Is it gone? Did you kill it?” He stared straight ahead, not looking at me, his eyes scanning the living room as if waiting for a jump-scare from behind the sofa.

“First off,” I answered with as much restraint as I could muster. “I don’t even know what ‘it’ is.”

“It’s a ghost. Obviously.”

It really wasn’t. “And exactly how do you expect me to kill a ghost?”

He finally lowered the utensil and turned his head to stare up at me. “You’re asking me? Isn’t that your job?” Straightening, he angled to the side, looking more confused than angry. “I mean, that’s why I emptied my savings account to hire you.”

He folded his arms, wrapping them around his torso, and his bottom lip puffed out in a legitimate pout.

Despite his bravado, fear and anxiety poured off him in concentrated waves, the scent stinging my nose and eyes. A visible tremble vibrated his small frame from the tips of his soggy hair to the soles of his bare feet, making me think his spatula waving had been purely reactionary.

Honestly, he looked like a drenched puppy—a little sad, kind of pathetic, but still pretty cute—and some of my previous irritation faded.

“Maybe we should start at the beginning,” I suggested, motioning toward the living room. “Why don’t we sit down, and you can tell me what happened?”

He considered me for a moment before bobbing his head. “Yeah, okay, but if things start flying around the room again—”

“I’ll take care of it.”

“Fine.” He led the way to the living room but paused next to the sagging sofa, seemingly confused about what to do next. “I’m wet.”

I had the most insane urge to laugh, but I bit back the impulse and gentled my tone. “You should probably change into some dry clothes before we talk.”

“That makes sense.” His tone suggested the idea hadn’t crossed his mind, and he still didn’t move.

“Rylee,” I said, letting a hint of authority seep into my voice. “Go change.”

Some people responded well to clear orders, while others bristled at being told what to do. Thankfully, Rylee seemed to fall into the former category. With a confused little jerk of his head, he turned and disappeared down the shadowed hallway without a word.

While I waited, I settled down in the middle of the sofa and observed the room. An odd assortment of trinkets littered the floor, having likely fallen from the shelves on either side of the television. A couple articles of clothing from a nearby hamper had been strewn about the room.

There was a red splatter on the far wall, tomato sauce from the uneaten lasagna on the coffee table if I had to guess. The tarnished fork on the carpet beneath the stain also supported that theory.

My eyes strayed to the new smoke detector next to the pasta, then flickered to the canvas tool bag on the floor. The name embroidered on the front matched the one Rylee had shouted at what he believed to be a ghost.

Some of the puzzle pieces started to click into place.

A few minutes later, Rylee shuffled back into the living room, dressed in a pair of royal blue basketball shorts and a faded gray tee. It appeared he had at least tried to run a towel over his hair, causing the strands to stick out in soft spikes all over his head.

When he came to join me on the sofa, I moved to the end to give him some space, but he plopped down in my vacated seat, so close his arm brushed against mine.

“Who is Mykal?” I asked, gesturing toward the tool bag.

“The maintenance guy.”

“You said his name earlier,” I prodded when he didn’t continue.

“Yes.”

I gritted my teeth and breathed through my impatience. “You think Mykal is the one causing the disturbance?”

“I don’t know,” he admitted. “It makes sense, though.”

For the love of everything dark and unholy, trying to get anything out of the guy was like pulling teeth. “What makes you think that?”

In answer, he just dipped his head toward the bag on the floor as he waved a hand around in a sort of vague indication of the room.

I was going to throttle him.

“When did the disturbance start?”

“Not long after I got home. I was sitting down to eat, and the television just spazzed out for no reason.”

Okay, now we might be getting somewhere.

“Walk me through what happened after you got home.”

Brow furrowed, eyes unfocused, he chewed the corner of his bottom lip as he thought about it.

“Well, there was a note on my door when I got home about the smoke detector, which I thought meant someone had already installed it.” He pointed to the device as he spoke.

“When I came in, though, I found it sitting right there, and Mykal’s bag was on the floor. ”

“But he wasn’t here?”

“Right. I looked around the apartment to be sure, but he definitely wasn’t here.”

“Okay, what did you do after that?”

“I went to the kitchen to make something to eat. I figured Mykal had an emergency or something, and maybe he would be back tomorrow to finish the job. If not, I planned to call the office in the morning to let them know what happened.”

“That’s smart,” I praised, uncomfortable with the way my stomach fluttered when he responded with a brilliant smile. “So, when everything started to go sideways, you thought…what?”

“Well, that Mykal had died and was haunting me, of course.”

Of course. I tried to work out his logic, but I just couldn’t see it. “But there’s no body.”

“Mykal was a shadeling.”

He said it with such confidence I found myself nodding along until the words finally registered. Then I could only blink at him.

Did he seriously think shadelings just evaporated when they died?

“Why didn’t you leave?” I asked, careful to keep any judgment from my tone.

“I tried, but the door wouldn’t open.”

So far, we had a missing shadeling that may or may not be important. An energy too weak for me to get a read on, but that most certainly did not come from a disembodied specter.

And pretty much nothing else.

“You never answered me,” Rylee blurted a moment later. “Is it gone?”

“For now.” Whatever it was, I could still feel it. Just fainter, quieter.

He wrung his hands together in his lap, the skin turning a delicate pink. “So, it’s going to come back?”

I dipped my head.

“You can’t leave.” Rylee grabbed my hand, clutching it tightly between his own. “I ordered Crisis Containment, and I am still very much in crisis. You have to help me.”

My fingers curled reflexively when a zing shot through my hand and up my arm from the point of contact, but I didn’t try to pull away. Beneath the bitterness of anxiety, the scent of lavender and sage—earthy, herbal—pushed at me, invading my senses and making my head spin.

“That’s the plan,” I assured him, my voice thick and coarse.

Without knowing the source of the disturbance, I could contain it, but I couldn’t remove it. I needed more information, and to get it, I’d have to stay in the apartment.

Fuck, I already hated this case.