Page 3

chapter two

In the bedroom, Meredith looked at the towers of stuff surrounding the twin air mattress on the floor and sighed.

They couldn’t close the door, but then again, they couldn’t close any doors—still too much debris for that.

The Shatner brothers were camped out in the living room on a queen-size air mattress, since they weren’t able to get much more space cleared than that, and Bodie was in the bedroom on the other side of the house, so they did their best to give her what privacy they could.

Not that it stopped creatures— probably just rodents?— from skittering around in the piles going about their nightly business. She could hear them moving, and just the sound made her skin crawl, despite her buzz.

Sighing heavily, she realized if she simply magicked the room clean overnight, the guys would for sure think something was fishy, not to mention the fact they said they had cameras installed in the bedroom.

She peered around the room again, not sure how they would have gotten in to install anything.

Regardless, she was still stuck with non-magical cleaning only, but there was no way she could sleep on that mattress without something keeping an eye on her.

She called her familiar, warning him to sneak into the house and make his way to the bedroom rather than simply teleporting into the room—that way, if there were cameras, some would catch his movement through the house, and Meredith could just explain it away as a friendly stray she decided to take in for the remainder of the contest.

After all, she thought smugly, they didn’t have any rules against calling familiars or other uses of magical gifts—part of the reason she entered the contest, actually, since it meant she could sneak under their radar. Meredith wasn’t against cheating…

Especially not when it worked. Gary, her black cat familiar, made his way into the bedroom then stared at her with large, green baleful eyes. “It stinks,” he proclaimed in greeting.

“I noticed,” Meredith said, scrunching her nose. “But I can’t think of a good way to spell it away without someone noticing.”

“Could you at least make us unable to smell it?” the cat asked, holding a paw over his nose as he curled up on her pillow on the air mattress.

“If you poke holes in that bed, I will shave you bald,” Meredith threatened.

“Get with the magic and hush,” demanded the cat.

Sneaking her wand out of her pants pocket, she extended it like an antenna. With a little wiggle and chant, “We don’t want to smell this mess, give us just one less sense!” she ensured Gary and her at least would not suffer the smells of the odious house.

“By the way,” Meredith added, as the cat uncovered his nose and inhaled gratefully. “There’s ghosts, too.”

“Of course there are,” said Gary with a very un-cat-like eye roll.

The music started around two a.m., and at first, Meredith thought Bodie was the one singing off-key and causing the racket.

When she stumbled out of her bedroom holding Gary, though, she saw him come blinking out of his bedroom as the brothers got up from the bed in the living room.

“What is that noise?” Bodie asked, covering his ears. “I drank too much for this.”

To be entirely honest, so did Meredith, hoping the alcohol would further dull her senses and help her sleep.

The caterwauling continued, though, and they followed another path through the debris to another opened door—open only because the stacks nearest it refused to allow it to close, like most of the other doors.

“Is that the basement?” she asked, peering down the stairs.

“Gotta be,” said one of the Jimbobs. She really needed to remember their actual names.

“Where did you get a cat?” asked the other Jimbob, so she scowled at him.

“Do you want to go first?” she replied, answering his question with a question.

Since he backed up a step in response, Meredith realized she might be the bravest of their group— or at least the most likely to be able to magic my way out of whatever might be in the basement .

It is probably just a raccoon or a skunk , she told herself, meaning I won’t even smell it if the skunk sprays me before I spot it and can magic it to the forest. A camera won’t even notice it .

Meredith tucked the cat closer to her chest and stepped in front of Bodie.

“Ladies first,” she proclaimed, and headed down the stairs.

Only a narrow path remained on the steps, stuff stacked to either side ranging from canning jars to what looked like a box of taxes and bills from 1987.

Gripping Gary with one arm, she used the other to wave in front of her to get the cobwebs as she headed toward the dim light coming from a bulb somewhere in the mysterious stacks below.

A camera person appeared at the top of the stairs right about when they all made it onto the steps but not to the basement floor yet—they kept the group tight. A girl camera person, Meredith noted, thinking it very fair , even if I am the only female in the competition.

“Hey, all, I’m Carmen Singleton, and if I’m totally honest, I didn’t think you would be up to much tonight. You all seemed pretty tired.”

The camerawoman held out a hand to introduce herself as the distant singer sang loudly, “I heard his fiancée got a letter…it told how Billy died that day. The letter said he was a hero. She should be proud, cuz he died that way. I heard she threw the letter awa-a-ay.”

“Who is that?” she asked, shaking Bodie’s hand, since he was closest to her as she propped the camera against her shoulder.

“Great question,” replied Bodie. He circled his thumb around at their group. “We’re all here and accounted for, which means that is?—”

“Are you serious?” asked Carmen, dropping the camera to her hip to gape at him. “We had decent security on this place, and if you even knew how many camera angles…” She rolled her eyes. “Just know it’s all very big brother , other than when you’re in the shitter.”

“Good to know,” said one of the Jimbobs.

Meredith blew out a breath, silently chastising herself again for using the nickname and reminding herself she should figure out some other distinguishing factor between the brothers.

Then she clutched her cat familiar a bit harder against her chest, as if squeezing him would be like launching a spell cannon or something, and headed down the stairs while they got to know one another.

Two more steps, and she would be at the bottom, possibly able to see around the corner.

“Unless it is another ghost,” replied the other Jimbob, his tone ominous and intoning.

“Ohhh!” squealed Carmen before she held the camera up again. “Say that again, exact same tone, please. Let me get it on camera.”

“Money shot,” joked one of the Jimbobs, and Meredith shot a grin back at him.

At the bottom of the stairs, she realized she couldn’t see around the corner, since another ceiling-tall toppling maze of paths waited at the bottom. “Great,” she muttered. “I’ll go straight.”

“I’ve got left,” Bodie replied automatically, shifting to follow that path.

“Wait!” Carmen yelped. “Who should I follow?”

“Meredith has a better butt,” suggested one of the Jimbobs, and Meredith felt heat flood her cheeks as she headed down the straightest path from the bottom of the stairs. “She’s also the only woman, so…” He shrugged.

Not sure whether or not to feel complimented, Meredith didn’t have long to puzzle over the entire exchange.

In just a few steps, she saw light slicing into the room in a rectangle— must be the garage light beaming through a rectangular basement window, she realized.

A small clearing spilled around a man wearing no pants, one sock, and with an American flag tied to his forehead like a bandana.

“Who the fuck are you?” he demanded, but he swayed on his feet when he tried to square off with Meredith.

She could tell he was either really drunk or on a ton of drugs— possibly both —from the way he couldn’t seem to focus his gaze and his slurred speech.

“The better question is who the fuck are you?” replied Meredith, petting her cat with genuine curiosity. She wasn’t afraid of some doped-up guy, especially since she could freeze him with a paralyzed spell in seconds if he came after her.

“This is my fucking house!” screamed the man, stomping his foot.

“Mom!” he yelled. Then his eyes went wide, his fingers rising to his cheeks like someone about to gouge out their own eyes.

“Oh, fuck, I killed her, didn’t I? I killed her, and I shot her dead.

Did I do it? Did I finally do it? Then why am I still here ? ”

He scrambled around, searched through the piles of debris, as if he might find the answer before he faded to nothing and the piles went still.

For a few long seconds, even Meredith breathed in through her nose because, yes, that was scary as shit . Despite it being terrifying, she knew better than to be afraid of a little haunting. She wasn’t, however, above using any ghosts to scare off her competition.

“That was totally a ghost,” she pointed out the obvious, in case any of them missed it.

Bodie blew out a breath. “Nothing in the contract covered ghost hunting bonuses.”

Carmen paused the camera, leaning back against the corner where she stopped to film the whole exchange. “Holy shit. Like…holy shit. I gotta check and see if I got that on film.”

They all gathered as close as they could within the confines of the hoarder house mess and stared as she rewound the video then played back the ghost—because even on the video, it seemed obvious you could see through the guy.

“Do we get a bonus for that?” Meredith asked, genuinely interested. If she could win a house and a lump sum of money in ghost hunting bonuses, she would be set for a while.