Ghost Magnet: A Haunting Urban Fantasy Read online

  Ghost Magnet

  Lori Drake

  Also by Lori Drake

  Grant Wolves Series

  Early Grave

  Shallow Grave

  Grave Threat

  Grave Legacy

  Grave Origins

  Secondhand Magic Series

  Null Witch

  Anthologies

  Undead Tales

  Dark Shadows 2

  Before, During, and After

  Published by Clockwork Cactus Press

  651 N US Highway 183 Ste 335 #107

  Leander, TX 78641 USA

  GHOST MAGNET

  Copyright © 2020 by Lori Drake

  All rights reserved.

  No part of this book may be reproduced in any form or by any electronic or mechanical means, including information storage and retrieval systems, without written permission from the author, except for the use of brief quotations in a book review.

  This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, businesses, events, and incidents are the products of the author’s imagination. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, or actual events is purely coincidental.

  Cover by Christian Bentulan

  Edited by Rebecca Hodgkins

  Proofread by Amy McKenna

  For my readers.

  Contents

  Chapter 1

  Chapter 2

  Chapter 3

  Chapter 4

  Chapter 5

  Chapter 6

  Chapter 7

  Chapter 8

  Chapter 9

  Chapter 10

  Chapter 11

  Chapter 12

  Chapter 13

  Chapter 14

  Chapter 15

  Chapter 16

  Chapter 17

  Chapter 18

  Chapter 19

  Chapter 20

  Chapter 21

  Chapter 22

  Chapter 23

  Chapter 24

  Chapter 25

  Chapter 26

  Want More?

  About the Author

  1

  The explosion rattled the plate in front of me on the counter. Of course, I didn’t know why the plate—along with everything else on the counter—had rattled. But whatever it was, it couldn’t have been good. I looked up from my lunch, glanced around the busy downtown Seattle eatery, and found others doing the same. There was a momentary pause in the hum of conversation before the murmuring began.

  “What was that?” The blond woman perched on the stool next to mine caught her lip between her teeth, worried eyes cast toward the front of the restaurant. She wasn’t speaking to me, but rather to her companion.

  “A transformer, maybe. Nothing to worry about,” he said.

  I knew better. The patrons seated at tables by the windows were craning their necks to peer out and up through the glass, pointing and gesticulating in an alarmed manner. I dropped a twenty on the counter beside my barely-touched BLT and headed for the door.

  Curiosity is a fault of mine. I shouldn’t indulge it as much as I do, but every now and then it leads to something good. This wasn’t one of those times. Outside, pedestrians gaped and pointed. I looked up, up, up to the seventh floor of the brownstone across the street. Smoke poured from damn near every window on that floor. Only one of them was miraculously intact.

  A honking horn drew my attention back to street level. A taxi had stopped, blocking traffic. Actually, several cars had stopped. Their passengers took to the street and stared upward with phones either pressed to their ears or poised to snap photos. I rubbed my temples and reached for my own phone. Sure, it was likely that the people who weren’t live-streaming the terrible event were either calling or had already called 9-1-1, but my dearly departed mother’s voice echoed in my head, asking me what would happen if everyone assumed someone else had reported it—figuratively speaking, that is. I’m pretty sure my mother is keeping Leti—my dearly departed wife—company on the other side. I haven’t seen any evidence to the contrary.

  Before I could dial, a hand grabbed my arm. “Please, you have to help me.”

  The stench hit me before I looked over, but she didn’t look any better than she smelled. Her face was half melted off, for one, an eyeball dangling out of its socket. Her clothing hung in tatters, bits of it cooked into her burnt flesh. She was still smoking, for Christ’s sake. I recoiled, bumping into a gawker standing beside me. He shot me a glare, and I mumbled a half-hearted apology as I tugged my arm away from the dead woman. I hate it when ghosts get clingy. Fortunately, it’s mostly the fresh ones that reach out and touch you. Once they figure out they’re dead, they tend to forget how.

  “Please!” She stepped closer. The few bites of my lunch that I’d managed to swallow threatened to come back up.

  I held up my hands to ward her off, no matter how strange it must’ve looked to passersby. Except there were no passersby. Everyone’s attention was nicely diverted to the disaster across the street. Even the guy who’d given me the hairy eyeball was busy talking on his phone—to a dispatch operator, from the sound of it. I filed that away, no longer feeling the urgency to make a call of my own. Which was well and good, since I had a freshly deceased Seattleite on my hands.

  “I can’t do anything about… that.” I motioned across the street and focused on breathing through my mouth.

  Her good eye glistened, pale blue in the afternoon sun as she pleaded with me. “You have to help her! My little girl!”

  Shitballs. I looked at the building again. Smoke continued pouring out of the broken windows, but where there was smoke, there was fire. Right? The fire department would be here soon, even if I hadn’t yet heard any sirens in the distance. They were trained for this sort of thing, had oxygen tanks and protective gear… but what if they didn’t make it in time?

  Shards of broken glass crunched under my boots as I crossed the street before I’d even finished running the odds. Another fault of mine? I can’t turn down a damsel in distress. Some might consider that an admirable quality. Chivalrous, even. It gets me in trouble more often than not, but I can’t help it. I was raised by a single mother who spent my formative years drilling respect for women into my thick skull. I’ve learned since then that not all women want to be rescued, and I’ve dated a few that I knew better than to so much as hold open a door for them. But the impulse is still there, simmering beneath the surface. And when they turn pleading eyes on me, well, that protective instinct rises up, and I’m a goner.

  That was how I ended up pushing my way into a burning building that everyone with a damn lick of common sense was rushing out of.

  I took the stairs two at a time. People looked at me like I was crazy. They were right.

  The ghost was always one landing ahead of me, practically tapping her foot over my mortal slowness. I didn’t waste time asking where I was going, just let her lead the way. The crowd in the stairwell got thinner the higher I went, and by the time I got to the sixth floor I was the only one there. I was also starting to smell smoke, and it wasn’t wafting from my spectral companion. I pulled a rag from my coat pocket and pressed it to my nose. It smelled like motor oil. I’d used it to check the level on my bike earlier. I wasn’t sure if oil fumes were better for me than the smoke, but I was willing to take the chance.

  When I reached the seventh-floor stairwell, the ghost vanished through the door rather than jumping to the next landing. I touched the door handle. It wasn’t hot, so I pulled it open. Smoke poured into the stairwell, rolling upward. It remained thick in the hallway beyond, and after I’d taken a few blind steps, I dropped to my knees and did a three-legged crawl down the hall to the door the ghost had stopped
in front of.

  “Hold on, Sadie! Mommy’s coming!” the ghost yelled.

  I touched the handle and yanked my hand back. This one was hot. Eyes watering from the stinging smoke, I glanced up and down the hall, considering my options. I hadn’t seen any actual fire yet, but I was pretty damn sure there was some behind that door.

  “What are you waiting for?” Spirits aren’t known for their patience, but I couldn’t exactly blame her under the circumstances.

  “Give me a minute! I’m thinking.”

  “She’s in there all alone! Please help my baby!”

  The distant wail of a siren was a welcome sound. Maybe the firefighters could rescue us both. I sighed and grabbed the door handle with the rag as a buffer, but the door didn’t budge when I twisted and pushed. Locked, of course. Probably double-bolted, too. The spirit continued to wail pleas, her voice growing more and more shrill. I pressed the rag to my nose and took a deep breath, then stood.

  Contrary to what TV would have you believe, kicking a door in is no small feat. It took me three solid kicks, and by the time the doorframe splintered, my lungs were burning from lack of oxygen.

  The door flew open. A blast of heat and flame knocked me backward. I hit the wall on the other side of the hallway with a curse and a thud and slid down to get under the smoke again.

  “Sadie!” the spirit wailed and rushed into the room.

  I followed her, crawling along the floor, squinting through the smoke and doing my level best to ignore the flames licking up the walls and blazing along the ceiling overhead. It was like a goddamn oven in there.

  “Sadie!” I called, since the kid wouldn’t be able to hear her mother. “Sadie, are you there?”

  Worst case scenarios ran through my mind as I went. Finding the child as cooked as her mother, clutching a smoldering teddy bear. The ceiling collapsing and pinning me beneath the wreckage. I have a vivid imagination, and the way the fire roared in my ears didn’t help me dismiss any grim scenarios. A noisy pop—or crack—sounded overhead, and my eyes darted upward briefly. The intense heat made me look away before all the moisture was boiled out of my eye sockets. It was just long enough of a distraction for me to fail to notice the body in my path. I set my hand down on something wet and squishy and recoiled. The woman’s corpse was as hideous in real life as her ghostly appearance. I shuddered and detoured around her.

  “In here! She’s in here!” The spirit stood in a doorway ahead.

  I redoubled my efforts, crawling faster than I would have thought possible on two knees and one hand. It was a bedroom but not a child’s bedroom as I’d expected. I opened my mouth to call the girl’s name again but had to cough first.

  “Sadie!” I scanned the room, crawling in a bit farther. The flames weren’t as intense in there as they were in the living room, but the air was still thick with smoke. I was able to make out the hulking shapes of furniture but not much more.

  The spirit was on her knees at the foot of the bed. “Here, she’s under here!”

  I crawled over and leaned down to peer into the shadows under the bed. “Sadie? It’s okay, I’m here to— Oh, for fuck’s sake!” Lifting my head, I shot the ghost a glare. “That’s not a child, that’s a dog!”

  The canine in question emitted a low-pitched whine. The ghost blinked at me like she didn’t understand the difference. I spared a few precious seconds to slap my palm against my forehead, then proceeded to lure the dog out from under the bed. I caught her collar and pulled her the rest out of the way out once she got close enough. She was small and fluffy, and licked my face when I gathered her against my chest.

  You’d think exiting a burning building with a dog in your arms might earn you an award or something, but by the time I reached street level, the firefighters were rushing in, and no one knew me from any other resident of the building that had narrowly escaped an untimely death. I let someone lead me to an ambulance for oxygen. My lungs were on fire by then, wracked by coughing spasms that made my stinging eyes water. They even put a tiny oxygen mask on Sadie, whom I held in my lap while I glared at the disfigured ghost standing in front of me.

  “Thank you,” she said, her horrifying visage made no less horrifying by her contorted smile. I couldn’t manage more than a grunt and a nod. Before my eyes, a warm glow rose, enveloping her in golden light. The air around her shimmered, and then she was gone. Crossed over, or whatever.

  In the spirit’s place stood another spirit, a more familiar and friendlier-on-the-eyes one with long dark hair, olive skin, and legs that didn’t quit. She planted her fists on her hips and arched a brow.

  Despite my better judgement, I lifted my oxygen mask long enough to croak, “What’s wrong, Trish, haven’t you ever seen someone run into a burning building to save a puppy before?”

  The shade smirked at me and rattled her tongue piercing against her teeth. “You’re an idiot, Torres.”

  I let the mask snap back in place and sighed.

  Never argue with a woman—dead or alive—when she’s right.

  2

  I didn’t know what to do with Sadie, so I took her home. If she hadn’t been small enough to zip up inside my leather jacket, I wouldn’t have been able to pull it off. As it was, I got a few strange looks at stoplights as I sat atop my Harley with the little mutt’s head sticking out of my collar. Then again, covered in soot, I probably looked like one of the chimney sweeps out of Mary Poppins. Maybe the dog was just icing on the cake.

  I’d only been living in the Seattle area for a few weeks at the time. Home was a rented room in a run-down lakeside house about forty-five minutes northeast of the city. I’m a city guy at heart, so it wouldn’t have been my first choice, but the price was hard to beat. My income as a Spiritual Consultant—that’s what it said on my business cards—was far from steady. I worked on a sliding scale, and sometimes that meant not getting paid at all. I’d learned to live frugally in the three years and change since the near-death experience that left me with one foot on the other side.

  The house on the outskirts of Granite Falls—a not-so-booming metropolis with a population of less than 3,000—had good bones, but it’d fallen into disrepair over the years. Its owner was renovating it, and my rental agreement involved helping out with those renovations in exchange for a bargain basement rent of two hundred bucks a month. I didn’t mind. I liked working with my hands. It gave me something to do that grounded me firmly in the world of the living, looking forward instead of backward. Plus, I had enough in my savings at the time that I could sustain two hundred a month for quite a while. It was an easy choice to make.

  The big house may have been in bad shape, but it was a step up from the dingy studio apartment over a bus station I’d had before that. I had to deal with a few roommates, but they were all pretty good people. As Sadie and I rode up the front drive, I found several of those roommates relaxing in lawn chairs on the front portion of the house’s wrap-around deck. It wasn’t an unusual state of affairs. I learned quickly after arriving in Seattle to take advantage of the sunny days when they come along. The city’s rainy reputation is well-deserved, especially in the winter and spring months.

  I waved to the trio on the porch as I went up the steps.

  “Ohmygod. Is that a dog?” Blue-haired Lucy popped up out of her chair, squealing with childlike glee.

  I glanced down, as if to make sure. “Seems to be.”

  Lucy passed her beer off to her twin, Adam, and sprung forward to fawn over the creature. “Aw, she’s so cute! What’s her name? Where’d you get her?”

  Beneath my jacket, Sadie trembled and a low growl rumbled from her. I took a step back, putting a little distance between her and Lucy. “Give her a little room, okay?”

  Lucy pouted but held back. She offered Sadie a hand to sniff, and the little dog obliged. I unzipped my jacket to give the pup some air but held her against my chest and gave her a soothing stroke.

  “What the hell happened to you?” The third person on the porch spoke u
p, meeting my eyes when I glanced her way. She was sprawled casually, one leg thrown over the arm of her lawn chair as she studied me with open curiosity.

  “Nice to see you too, Jess.” I smirked, passing Sadie to Lucy once the dog seemed okay with her. Jessica was good at sticking her nose in everyone’s business, but it was mostly because she cared. “Did you hear about that big fire downtown?”

  “Oh shit,” Adam said, straightening in his chair. “Yeah, it was all over the police scanner.”

  Jessica frowned and cut him a disapproving glance. “I thought the boss told you to knock that off.”

  Adam lowered his eyes, shoulders slumping.

  “Don’t be a bitch, Jess.” Lucy held Sadie aloft and giggled as the pup licked her nose.

  “Just because he’s an easy-going Alpha doesn’t mean you can pick and choose which of his commands to obey,” Jessica said.

  Did I mention that my roommates were werewolves?

  Adam seemed to shrink even more. I’m pretty sure if he were capable of folding in on himself and disappearing, he would have.

  “I bumped into a ghost, one of the victims of the fire,” I said, hoping to distract Jessica. The memory of Sadie’s owner’s ghastly appearance flickered through my mind, producing a shiver.

  Jessica sat up, suddenly alert and focused on me. Mission accomplished. “Oh? What happened?”