Ghost Maker Read online

  Hey, Clare! Enzo bounded in, tongue lolling. When are we going to the new place? Today, Clare? Huh, huh? When? A WHOLE TOWN FULL of our kind of ghosts. We will have FUN for SURE!

  Clare didn’t know how time passed for Enzo. Bracing herself, she leaned down and petted him, like plunging her fingers into ice water. The cold was always worse when she initiated contact, as opposed to Enzo running through her legs and chilling them, like now. “In a couple of hours, Enzo.”

  Oh. He drooped. His forehead wrinkled and ears lifted a bit. No client this morning?

  “No, and I’m glad of it.” As she puttered in the kitchen, she recalled that she’d wanted some breathing room. Now she had it and she’d definitely appreciate it! Especially since the temps had bounced back up and it would be in the low eighties today. Cooler in Manitou Springs, of course, but she could wear a cotton blouse instead of even a tissue-thin cashmere sweater. That reminded her that she needed to plot a route through the town.

  “I’m heading into my office,” she told the Lab.

  I will help! Enzo jumped up on her, and his paw went right through the spectral wound. Clare gasped from the pain, panted through it, but at least the injury didn’t feel as if it had torn more. It had been better since her deep sleep the morning before.

  Sorry, Clare! So, so, so sorry!

  “I understand, Enzo.” She sipped breaths, moved to the counter and leaned on it. When her hands felt steady, she poured herself another cup of coffee. And she and Enzo took the elevator upstairs.

  No, time wasn’t healing this wound as much as it should. She was scared.

  So she would focus on her responsibilities, that would mitigate the fear. After those duties she would concentrate on herself, much as she’d rather not accept that she was her own customer.

  First, she had to write up her latest report, give her clients as much detail as possible with regard to Miranda Stinton, including whatever historical facts she could confirm outside her contact with the spirit. She’d found out that patrons liked long reports with significant data. Clare had been cultivating different historical societies throughout the area just as Zach was making contacts with law enforcement agencies in his new job as a private investigator.

  Yes, she’d compose a good story for her latest clients, all truth and every particular she sensed from Miranda and her father. A report in a style a great deal different than those dry, factual ones featuring many figures that she’d done in her previous career as an accountant. The large firm she’d worked for had various templates she filled in, and those patrons were more focused on the numbers and the bottom line than any wordage.

  She secretly enjoyed being more creative with her stories—not that she made anything up. No, she prided herself on being precise and accurate. Realistic.

  She believed her clients would be satisfied with the report.

  Then she’d have to contact the next few people on her list for ghost transitioning and put them off for . . . Clare sighed. She didn’t know how long it would take to . . . fix her problem. Heal her wound. If that could happen.

  But she wouldn’t be negative and pessimistic. This new career demanded that she be more creative, trusting her senses and intuition and feelings more. With that, she had to be more positive if she wanted to do well. And she always wanted to do well, be the best that she could be.

  She wished to be as well respected as her great-aunt Sandra, the previous holder of the Cermak psychic “gift.” Clare hadn’t spent as much time with Sandra as the older woman had wanted. So Clare hadn’t gotten as much training . . . hadn’t even known the psychic talent would devolve on her. She’d ignored her great-aunt. One regret with which she’d always live.

  So she melded the few facts the historical society and land records had provided, then listened to her notes. Finally, she closed her eyes and brought back the entire experience as well as she could. With practice, and living with Zach, who observed all the time and missed very little, she thought she’d get very good at this. She did try to soften Miranda’s venality, mostly because of the teenaged girls living in the house . . . and because Clare did try to think of the good in people . . . and because, after all, the woman was dead and had suffered, being trapped in the gray dimension between life and death.

  At the end, Clare had a very respectable five single-spaced pages.

  There’d been no photograph of Miranda Stinton, and Clare played with the idea of hiring an artist, but she wouldn’t want one with New Age sensibilities and babble, and anyone else would look at her askance if she said she wanted them to draw a portrait of a phantom she saw.

  She ended the account: I believe the Denver Parapsychological and Psychic Association will be sending you all the readings and various materials of the manifestation. She’d get her copies, too, electronically, though it usually distressed her to watch herself pale and shiver and talk to herself . . .

  She printed the pages and sent the report by e-mail and snail mail. When she returned to her office with a cup of herbal tea, she found Enzo snoozing under her chair. The neatly typed list of parties interested in her services lay alone in the center of her elegant cherrywood desk, a new-to-her antique. Enzo had moved that from the top of the stack of to-do items.

  Instead of going all the way into her office, she leaned on the doorjamb and sipped her tea. Since she’d fully accepted that she’d be doing business as a ghost seer, she’d moved from a small office that she dreaded going into to a larger one where she could spread out with research materials. Though the newly painted cream-colored walls looked fresh, she’d begun covering them with maps. On the modern Denver map, she’d delineated in red the ghost-laden areas of LoDo, lower downtown, the oldest section of Denver. Where she could barely walk without an escort. And all the areas where she couldn’t drive due to ghosts distracting her. When one manifested between her and the steering wheel, demanding her attention, the results were not good.

  Staring at the list of client names, her mouth dried. Since she’d gotten them five days ago, she’d already helped two ghosts transition and told two clients that the time wasn’t right for the specters haunting them to move on. In those cases, she had spoken with the phantoms and determined what kept them stuck in the dimension between death and the next world—and scheduled appointments to free them from the flat, gray, emotionless place. Both ghosts and clients throbbed with anticipation. One of those sessions came up in ten days.

  Now she had to call three other patrons and postpone their initial interviews. Rolling her shoulders, she looked at the calendars, also posted on the wall. The current one of September—today was the last day—and the past August. That month when she’d wrapped up her great-aunt Sandra’s estate, then had begun to see ghosts, in Chicago, then Denver. On the calendar she’d blocked out the beginning and end of her first major phantom, the notorious Jack Slade whom Mark Twain had written of. The project had taken eight days to finish.

  She’d had a little break then, thirteen days. A hiatus longer than any since, and she wished she’d relaxed more at the time.

  Her next few projects of the transitioning of major ghosts cost her no less than four days and no more than eight.

  She didn’t know how long it would take to heal her spectral wound, when she would be able to meet with other clients.

  When the universe, the Powers That Be, would insist on another instance of helping a significant phantom pass from the gray dimension to whatever came next.

  And she didn’t know when she would have another solid schedule again.

  Time, once again, slipped through her hands like the finest grains of sand.

  She hated that.

  She was learning to be more flexible, but she wished she had some solid points— Wait. She did. She had the blessing of her life, Jackson Zachary Slade, and he was flexible when she couldn’t manage. Loyal and honorable. Qualities not often thought of or prized
in the contemporary world, but characteristics that those spirits she worked with in the nineteenth century spoke of and valued.

  Enzo barked, sat straight up into her chair. Wagging his tail, he opened his mouth in a dog grin and let his tongue loll. You have me, Clare. We are a team. I love you, Clare.

  “I love you, too, Enzo,” she replied automatically, then decided he deserved better. “I do love you, and I have you to help.”

  We can do it, Clare. He grinned wider, now more minor spirit than ghost Labrador. We always have.

  True, they hadn’t failed too badly yet. All the ghosts she was able to help had progressed to their next level of existence.

  Except that she’d been bitten by an evil ghost and had a wound in her spirit draining her, and she could die soon.

  Chapter 11

  On his way to the Denver Police Department for a couple of informal meetings, Zach checked for any info coming in from the shelters—nada. Then he met with one of his DPD contacts who wanted more info about the case and who referred him to the cop who’d interacted most with the late George Utzig. He also had a casual interview with his contact who knew the most about the homeless. He gave her what he could, reiterated that he’d like to talk with a currently placed undercover operative. She said she’d recommend Zach to the individual and try to set up a meeting in the next day or so.

  He wrote and e-mailed an update to Rickman, letting that guy decide whether he wanted to forward the summary to his clients or not.

  With a glance at his watch, he saw that morning rush hour should be subsiding and he headed home. On the way he thought long and hard about Clare, her injury, and a historic Old West town that was no doubt full of equally historic Old West spooks.

  And he planned.

  * * *

  After a late breakfast, Clare had grabbed some time for a superficial study of Colorado Springs and Manitou Springs. She marked websites, downloaded a couple of e-books, typed in preliminary ideas and notes she thought might be relevant. As with Denver, the earliest founded part of Colorado Springs would be off-limits for her, teeming with ghosts of her time period—people who died from 1850 through 1899. She didn’t look forward to that. She’d gotten accustomed to the downtown Denver ghosts, and didn’t head into LoDo, with the worst haunts by herself. And she wouldn’t dare drive in Manitou Springs, too many phantoms to distract her. Which meant a car service or Zach going with her.

  Zach stopped by to pick her up—with no chance of morning sex, darn it—and they joined the stream of traffic south between Denver and Colorado Springs. Manitou Springs was west of Colorado Springs past the Garden of the Gods park and natural landmark.

  “Okay, Clare.” Zach shifted his shoulders, “Lay the info on me.”

  She kept her phone opened to the project folder and notes. She refused, right now, to consider that she herself was the client.

  “Both Colorado Springs and Manitou Springs were well known as places to go if you suffered from tuberculosis. Hundreds did.”

  Zach grunted. “I think I’d heard that. So we’re probably looking for a doctor ghost.” His family came from Colorado, and he’d spent some time in the state as a child before the military started moving his father around.

  “Yes, both were health resort towns, and Manitou Springs catered to tourists as early as the eighteen seventies. It’s close to the Garden of the Gods rock formations. We could drive through those on the way if you want.”

  His eyes slid her way. “Nope. I don’t think the ghost healer, doctor, we want will be hanging around a bunch of red sandstone rocks. ‘Manitou’ is a Native American word that means ‘Great Spirit.’ right?”

  “That’s one meaning, or just ‘spirit.’ Originally they’d named the town La Font, but the founders decided later to use ‘manitou’ from the poem The Song of Hiawatha as a marketing deal.”

  “Seriously?”

  “Yes. As for the Native Americans, the Ute and the Cheyenne considered the area sacred for its many artesian healing springs. That means they bubble up—”

  “I know what ‘artesian’ means, Clare.”

  “Okay, naturally carbonated water, according to the Native Americans, breath of the gods.” She paused, then said, “Everyone considers the springs to have medical value, and currently nine springs are open and public. I think that might be the best procedure to, ah, find my healing ghost, to visit each of the nine springs. Even if they were drilled a little later than my time period, they might, ah, gather energy around them or some such. Specters might be drawn to the springs and hang out.” She waved the hand not holding her phone. “The springs are free. I have some empty bottles to fill, if we like the taste of the water. I programmed your truck nav and I have a map as backup.”

  “Of course you do.” Zach nodded. “All right, then, I’ll take your instinct with this, though I wonder if Enzo might have any ideas.”

  “You think he might feel spiritual energy? Wait, do you think he could sniff out the healing ghost, like a bloodhound?”

  Zach spared her a glance. “Hadn’t thought of that. Good idea. Why don’t we ask him?”

  “Sure, I’ll call him. Enzo!” she said, both mentally and aloud, then continued, “I’ve been wondering about his range, whether he’s tethered much to me or not.”

  “Huh,” Zach said. He chuckled. “I know he’s been sniffing around that female ghost dog with young Caden in Creede.”

  “She must be a minor spirit, too.”

  “Uh-huh. He moves fast.”

  She lifted her brows. “I don’t know about that—”

  Zach huffed a laugh. “I didn’t mean dating-wise. I meant from Creede, Colorado, to Denver is five hours away by automobile, but he can show up saying he’s just been there in, what? Five minutes or so?”

  Clare frowned. “You’re right. But I don’t think he actually covers the distance between there and here, just, ah, pops into the gray dimension between life and death there and pops out here. I’m also thinking that Enzo might be able to proceed on his own to places where we’ve been or worked—”

  “Like Lookout Mountain, or Leadville, or Virginia Dale—”

  “Or Torrington, Wyoming, but he can’t necessarily go to new places without me—us.”

  Zach sent her an approving smile. “Good work, Clare.”

  “Thanks.” She set her chin. “I’m getting my feet under me. My records on all my cases are complete and cross-referenced.”

  “Good job,” Zach said again, more softly and with a note of admiration in his tone that pleased her.

  A bark came along with the cold semisolid form that was the phantom dog, insinuating himself between Zach and her. Semisolid to Clare; Zach told her he only felt a cool presence. Hi, Clare. Hi, Zach. We’re going to a new place!

  “Yes,” Clare stated. “We talked about that this morning and last night at the gathering.”

  Last night I smelled all the good odorous people, Enzo said.

  Zach laughed, then said, “Hey, Enzo, do you think you could be bloodhound-like and follow your nose to this doctor ghost?”

  Enzo sat straight up, and shook his head, which Clare thought Zach saw from the corner of his eyes. Her lover had become sensitive to ghosts, and especially to Enzo.

  I’m afraid not. I am not old enough to separate all the different smells of different ghosts.

  “What do you mean?” asked Zach.

  I don’t know the real early ones in our stretch of time from the later ones, and sometimes I can smell and feel ghosts of other time periods and sometimes not. I am gaining focus as a spirit, and working with Clare. I am growing and maturing! He sounded thrilled.

  Zach grunted. “Bottom line is you don’t think you could find the right ghost.”

  Enzo’s icy tail thumped through her, and she gritted her teeth against the chill.

  I am sorry, Zach. I am sorr
y, Clare. I think there will be many, many ghosts in this town and I will not be able to distinguish one. A pause. Not at the start. After we are done I might have the scent of a good healer ghost in my muzzle. He sniffed loudly.

  “Too bad,” Zach said.

  Clare stroked Enzo’s head, numbing her fingers. “We could only ask. I’m glad you’re growing. And you’re getting a very nice range of places where you can manifest.”

  Enzo turned to her and licked her cheek. Over two whole states! Someday we will go further west, huh, Clare, huh?

  “I’d imagine so.”

  We have CLIENTS who will love us and talk about us. And Mrs. Flinton talks about us, and Mr. Welliam talks about us, and Mr. Rickman likes us as CONSULTANTS, and Desiree talks about us, and the Meeting People like us and that smelly Laurentine man we helped even talks about us. We will do much good.

  She nodded, not nearly as enthused with a burgeoning ghost seer business as her spirit guide.

  “Tell us more about Manitou Springs, Clare,” Zach said.

  Yes, Clare! Enzo wiggled his butt as if settling in to listen.

  “I confirmed that the whole town is formally designated as a historic district.”

  “Interesting.”

  “Yes. A lot of buildings and houses from the era I’m sensitive to. They take their heritage and history mostly seriously. The main street of Manitou Springs also leads to Pikes Peak.”

  “Uh-huh. We’re not going there today, either. No sightseeing.”

  Clare chuckled. “Just the springs research, ma’am,” she added in a flat tone.

  “What?”

  “Like that really old cop show, ‘just the facts, ma’am.’”

  “Huh?”

  “My brother liked really old shows when we were kids, and we could watch them online when our parents parked us somewhere when they wanted to go out and party.”

  “Yeah?” He stared at the road for a bit. “Are you talking about Dragnet?”

  “Yes! That was it! And it was your tone that I copied.”