There are only three rules in Darby Adler’s life.One: Don’t talk to the dead in front of the living.Two: Stay off the Arcane Bureau of Investigation’s radar.Three: Don’t forget rules one and two.With a murderer desperate for Darby’s attention and an ABI agent in town, things are about to get mighty interesting in Haunted Peak, TN.
It was not a good feeling to have a homicide less than a block from my house. The last thing I needed in my general vicinity was more ghosts.
And only J would think we didn’t need to drive the half-mile up the steep incline. Haunted Peak was at the base of a mountain, and J and I lived in a newer development in one of the foothills. As fit as I was, I still wasn’t hiking up that hill if I didn’t have to.
“You want to be sweaty and slow, be my guest. I’m driving.”
I needed to get there before whatever idiot the FBI sent tramped all over my crime scene or scared off my source. And by source, I meant the deceased. It was always tough when they were new. Their deaths were so fresh, they were still reeling from the transition. Hell, most of them didn’t even know they were dead.
I didn’t blame them for being out of sorts. If I’d been killed in a super-weird way, I’d probably be a little messed up, too. But explaining that no one could see them but me, and they were dead? Ugh. Not my favorite way to spend a morning.
Plus, if J and I were being called in, the case was not just weird. It was weird.
Those were the only cases we got nowadays. Add in Hildy’s description of being carved up and well… I already knew I was about to have a rough one.
Climbing into my Jeep, I waited the three-point-five seconds for J to get his ass in gear before cranking the engine. He slid into the seat beside me just as I threw it in reverse, barely managing to close his door before I peeled out of the driveway. The trip took less than a minute, but that was still far too long for me. Had J told me there was a Fed on my scene before I wasted time getting dressed, we’d have been there already—bad breath, pajamas, and all.
“What do you know? What am I walking into?”
J ran a hand down his face as he let loose the mother of all sighs. “It’s bad, D. It makes those fake Satanists we busted last year look like fluffy bunnies and rainbows.”
Those “Satanists” we’d busted last October weren’t Satanists at all. They were a bunch of fledgling witches with an ax to grind against their coven leader. I’d seen many a witch and warlock in my day that weren’t even the least bit homicidal. Those chicks were straight-up lethal and aching to get into the dark stuff. It’d taken a boatload of legwork, a promise to the new coven leader that I wouldn’t be dragging the whole coven into it, and a binding spell the size of Texas to get those girls cornered.
Not that J knew that.
He’d lost his mind when he’d learned my secret. I couldn’t blow up his narrow world view any more than I already had. What was I gonna say? I know you don’t like to think about the ghosts that are crawling all over the planet, but you might want to start worrying about the shit that’s actually alive. AKA, the shit that can kill you.
Yeah, I didn’t see that going too well. It would make his fool brain explode, and then I’d be out a best friend.
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