Carey and I walked towards the abandoned house as the sun sank in the darkening sky. Her bright yellow goggles bounced on her forehead as we walked, while Casper, her familiar, walked at her side. The little black cat was scared of ghosts, but I’d convinced her to bring him along today in the hopes that he’d be able to conquer his fear.
I had to admit I was having second thoughts. The poor cat jumped every time my brother, Mart, went close to him. As far as ghosts went, Mart was pretty much harmless, but Casper was the jumpiest cat I’d ever encountered, while Mart’s tendency to take things too far didn’t help. As I had no familiar of my own, my brother was the closest I’d get to one. If anything, he was more high maintenance than most familiars were, and annoying in the way only a sibling could be.
“Here we are,” said Carey. “This is Healey House.”
The old brick house sat in a sunken area at the side of the river, nestled in a swampy garden overgrown with weeds. It was one of many houses which had been abandoned following the floods in town twenty-odd years ago, and rumour had it that some ghostly activity had picked up inside the house in the last week or two. Carey and I kept our ears open for any gossip and we’d failed to unearth anything on our last ghost-hunting mission, but I hoped this one would end in success for both of us.
No obvious spiritual activity pinged on my radar, however, aside from the usual transparent figures floating in the background as we walked. As an ex-Reaper, moving to a town as haunted as Hawkwood Hollow had been an adjustment and a half. The town’s everyday ghosts who wandered the streets mostly left me alone now, to my relief, but that didn’t change the fact that I was a magnet for spirits. In other words, the perfect work partner for a teenage ghost blogger. Which was just one reason I’d agreed to accompany Carey to Healey House in the hopes that she’d get some good footage of this elusive spirit.
Carey sprang up to the doorstep and pushed the door inwards with a creak. The hallway smelled of mould and neglect, shadows spilling across bare floorboards patched with rotting scraps of carpet. We both wore dark clothing—my idea—though I could see Carey’s signature bright socks poking out from under the hems of her jeans.
Carey pulled the ghost goggles over her eyes, and there was a click as she turned on the microphone. “Here we are, in Healey House, abandoned after the floods in the town of Hawkwood Hollow two decades ago. I’m with Maura, the Reaper Witch, as we attempt to unearth the secrets of the—”
She cut off in a yelp as she tripped over something in the hall, catching her balance on the nearest door frame.
“You okay?” I asked, ignoring Mart’s laughter in the background.
“Yep,” she said. “I think there’s a loose floorboard somewhere underneath there.”
“Old houses can be hazardous,” I said. “Careful. We don’t want any of us getting injured.”
I trod across the bare floorboards, which were covered in a thick layer of damp and creaked with each step. The floor seemed sturdy enough, though, so I didn’t see the need to employ my trusty Reaper’s shadows to catch my balance.
Carey’s familiar didn’t seem to agree. Casper set one paw into the hall, hissed, and recoiled back into the doorway.
“It’s okay, Casper,” Carey called. “It’s safe.”
I beckoned to her familiar. “I think he’s more bothered by the wet floor than the ghosts.”
“Boo,” Mart said from behind him.
The little cat yelped and backed up into the doorway, his ears pricked.
“Mart!” I said. “Cut that out.”
“Spoilsport.” He floated into the hall, arms spread wide as though he could still touch the walls, as I led the way through into an equally damp living room.
“Any ghosts yet?” Carey held her ghost goggles at the ready. Homemade and fitted with lenses which could see ghosts but not much else, the goggles were bright red in colour and stood out against the dark backdrop of the house. The microphone was a neat addition, but she had yet to perfect it so that it picked up on ghosts as well as living people’s voices.
“Not that I can see.” I strained my ears, but I heard nothing upstairs. “Or hear. I’d keep the goggles off until we’re close.”
“Will do.”
In the lead, I waded through the living room, wishing I’d worn more suitable shoes. My feet squelched along the soggy carpet and sank into dampness, while Carey spoke into the microphone.
“Citizens of Hawkwood Hollow have heard screaming from this house on and off for years,” she said. “However, in the last few weeks, the reports of ghostly activity have picked up. Will we be the first to catch a glimpse of the infamous spirit?”
“The only thing you’ll catch in here is a cold,” Mart said.
I withdrew my foot from a particularly damp patch of carpet and spotted a few lines of text scrawled on the wall in thick marker. I moved closer, trying to read them, but the lines appeared to be made up of symbols which weren’t in any language I could read. They looked vaguely like the sort of runes one might use in a spell, but I wasn’t exactly up to speed on my knowledge of the latest arcane symbols. “I think someone was casting a spell in here.”
“Ooh.” Carey bounded up behind me. “There’s an old rumour that this house was once used as a meeting place for a cult.”
“That, or it’s just graffiti,” said Mart. “The house was abandoned twenty years ago, not two hundred. It’s hardly an ancient ruin.”
“Mart, your optimism is infectious,” I told him. “Let’s see if we can find anything else.”
Carey, who took my brother’s interruptions in stride—perhaps surprisingly considering she couldn’t actually see or hear him—backed into the hallway and headed for the stairs.
I extricated my feet from the swampy floor and turned away from the wall, when a sudden jolt of coldness shot through me like ice water flowing through my veins. My head snapped up, my skin chilled, and shadows crept around my feet.
What the—?
“Maura?” said Carey. “Did you see something?”
She couldn’t see the shadows—the house was too dark—but she’d probably felt the temperature drop and seen my change in expression. But it wasn’t a ghost I’d sensed. My Reaper powers had kicked in for a different reason.
Someone, somewhere in town, had died.
“No, I don’t see anything.” Even though I was telling the truth, it felt like a lie. “Mart, any ghosts?”
“Do I not count?” He pouted.
So he hadn’t sensed the chill of someone passing from the living world into the afterlife. He’d left most of his own Reaper powers behind when he’d died, so it wasn’t entirely a surprise, but the knowledge that I alone had sensed it made me want to leave the house altogether. I tried to calm my breathing, reasoning that it didn’t necessarily mean a bad omen for our ghost-hunting mission. Back when I’d first started my Reaper training, I’d grown used to the sudden bursts of cold whenever someone in the general area passed on, but my abilities had gone into hibernation for years after I’d turned my back on the position and left my home. I couldn’t say I knew why they’d chosen this moment to switch back on, but it wasn’t worth ditching the ghost hunt for. Not if it was just a regular death which I wasn’t supposed to be aware of anyway.
Besides, dealing with the dead was the job for the local Reaper, and I wasn’t one. Since old Harold had retired years ago, the only thing he did with his scythe was hang his coat on it, but that didn’t mean he wouldn’t have stern words for me if I reaped a soul without his knowledge. I’d rather not get into another spat with him, so I did my best to put all thoughts of Reaper business to the back of my mind and continued searching the house.
No spiritual disturbances presented themselves. Not so much as a slamming door or a faint breeze which indicated a ghostly presence. Except for Mart, of course, who offered a running commentary which made me glad Carey’s microphone couldn’t pick up on the sound of ghosts speaking. Despite all our efforts, though, the spirits we actually wanted to find didn’t materialise. Maybe the new death, whoever it was, had scared them off.
When I was alone in the hall waiting for Carey to finish searching the living room again, Mart floated up to me. “Who walked on your grave?”
“Mart, someone died.” I spoke in a low voice. “My Reaper powers kicked in and told me someone passed on. No mistaking it.”
His brow wrinkled. “Seriously? You sure it wasn’t just this creepy old house?”
“You told me you didn’t see any other ghosts in here, either,” I pointed out. “Anyway, the feeling is different when a ghost appears. You should know.”
“I haven’t been able to use my Reaper powers since before I died,” he said. “You don’t have to rub it in.”
“I’m not. I’m just trying to figure out what happened here.” I tried to put on a neutral expression when Carey emerged from the living room. “Can you have a look outside?”
“Well, all right.” Mart floated away through the front door, his transparent form vanishing through the wooden surface.
Carey halted in front of me. “What’s up?”
“My brother’s being his usual helpful self.” I spotted poor Casper shivering in the shadows, his fur standing on end. Sometimes I wondered if the cat was more in tune with all things ghostly than most witches, but even familiars weren’t able to sense death the way Reapers could. “Not sure we’re going to find anything in here, to tell you the truth.”
“Me neither,” she said. “We can always come back another night. I’m sure the ghost will show up eventually, if we’re persistent enough.”
“You never know,” I said. “Look how long it took us to lure out Mrs Renner, and that ended up being worth it.”
If you discounted the part where Mrs Renner’s old house had nearly collapsed on top of us, that is. We were lucky we’d got any footage out of that mess, but Carey’s account of the events of a few weeks ago on her blog had proven a big hit, and she now had subscribers in the double figures. While I’d once vowed never to use my ghost-hunting abilities publicly again, it was nice to have something to focus on aside from my life’s long streak of bad decisions and the knowledge that I was thoroughly disappointing both my Reaper father and my witch mother.
In fairness, I had a steady job now for the first time in a long while. Over the last few weeks, I’d been working part-time at the inn which Carey’s family owned, and as a bonus, I got all my meals for free and a roof over my head. The least I could do was give Carey a helping hand with her ghost blog, since that was the reason I’d ended up coming to Hawkwood Hollow to begin with.
With Casper padding along at our side, Carey and I left the house and closed the wooden door behind us.
Mart floated over to us, barely visible in the gloom. “Hey, there’s trouble up on the bridge over there. Maybe that’s our dead body.”
Uh-oh. Motioning Carey to stay back, I peered up at the bridge, where a group of people gathered—including Detective Drew Gardener, chief of police here in Hawkwood Hollow. Tall and broad-shouldered with longish dark hair, he cut a striking figure amongst the crowd even from a distance. My heart flipped a little when he caught my eye, talking to someone on the bridge.
“Did something happen?” Carey said. “That’s Hayley over there, from the inn.”
She quickened her pace, as did I, and we walked up the sloping road to the bridge and reached the gathering crowd. Aside from the police, who were mostly shifters, a few witches and wizards had wandered onto the bridge from the inn. Hayley, my main co-worker aside from Carey and her mother, stood among them, her expression anxious and her spiky blond hair ruffled from the cold wind.
When I saw the body lying on the old stone bridge, my heart sank. I didn’t recognise her, but the woman lay still, her hair plastered to her face by river water and weeds clinging to her clothes. My Reaper instincts had been closer to home than I’d realised.
“I just levitated her out the river,” said a wizard wearing a red hat, his voice slurring. “We were on our way back from the bar when Archie nearly fell off the bridge. I levitated him to safety, and then I saw her floating in the water.”
“That’s Harriet Langley,” said someone else. “I know her. She’s a witch, and she works at the hospital.”
“What was she doing out alone?” said another witch.
“Going to the bar at the Riverside Inn, I’d wager.”
“Or going home.”
Carey hovered on the balls of her feet. “Should we find out what happened?”
“We have to walk across the bridge to get home anyway,” I reminded her in an undertone. “C’mon, let’s head back to the inn. I’ll talk to the detective on the way.”
The two of us walked onto the bridge, and Drew gave me a nod when he saw me approaching.
I halted in front of him. “Hey.”
“Maura,” he said. “And Carey. What’re you doing out this late?”
“Ghost hunting,” I said. “What’s going on?”
“I’m afraid someone drowned in the river,” he said. “I’m still trying to piece together what happened. Did you see anyone when you left the inn?”
I shook my head. “Nah, we went straight to Healey House, down there on the other side of the bridge. Didn’t see anyone on the way.” Living or dead. Not that most people would make that distinction. I alone saw the half-dozen pale transparent figures drifting around—but none of them resembled the woman lying on the bridge. Her own ghost wouldn’t appear until later, if at all.
“Are you taking Carey back to the inn?” he asked.
“Sure.” I nudged Carey in the arm. “You okay?”
Carey had gone pale, clutching Casper in her arms, but she gave a mute nod.
“I’ll see you later,” I added to the detective. “Better get home.”
There was nothing I could do for the victim now. My Reaper senses hadn’t told me to escort her soul into the afterlife and I couldn’t see or sense her ghost at all. Not surprising, given that the town was swimming in so many spirits that I’d never get a moment’s peace if my Reaper senses reacted to every one of them. There was usually a gap between when someone died and when their ghost returned, besides.
Carey and I crossed the bridge and reached the cobbled street on the other side, near the Riverside Inn. The inn, owned by Carey’s family, also included a restaurant and bar which were popular with the town’s residents, and the lights inside the bar looked warm and inviting in the cold night.
“Poor guy,” I said. “I get the feeling Drew was supposed to have the night off and didn’t expect a bunch of drunk wizards to find a body in the river.”
Come to think of it, my Reaper senses had reacted less than half an hour ago. Had the witch really been out alone when she’d drowned? Given how quickly the crowd had appeared, I couldn’t say for certain, but if I’d gone to look outside when my senses had reacted, I might’ve seen more.
There wasn’t anything I could have done. It wasn’t like I knew it was coming, did I?
Carey put down Casper to walk at her side. “Do you think her ghost might show up?”
“Maybe.” I slowed my pace as we neared the inn. “I should probably talk to the detective tomorrow.”
“Why?” asked Carey.
I hesitated. “Because… because my Reaper senses went off. When we were in the house. They told me someone died.”
Her eyes rounded. “Really? Did you know it was her?”
“No,” I said. “My Reaper senses aren’t that specific. All that happens is that it suddenly goes cold, but I can’t tell who died until I see the body. I didn’t even know she was that close to Healey House.”
Her brow furrowed. “So what are you going to tell the detective?”
“I don’t know,” I said. “This is the police’s job, not mine. I have no idea why my Reaper senses reacted the way they did. They haven’t for years.”
With one exception: the time they’d reacted to Mrs Renner’s ghost the week I’d first come to town. I’d been fighting to save Carey’s life at the time, and I didn’t need a sixth sense to tell me a powerful ghost was on the horizon. The sense that reacted when someone died, though… that one had been dormant for much longer. If I’d been an active Reaper, the same sense would have dragged me to the body in order for me to escort the soul into the afterlife. With the scythe I didn’t have, because I hadn’t been an active Reaper for years. What had my senses expected me to do, really?
“Why not?” she asked.
“Because I quit using my Reaping skills,” I said. “Except in extreme circumstances.”
“Like the other week,” she said.
“Yeah.” I’d begun to regret bringing up the subject at all. This wasn’t my responsibility. I’d begun to settle into Hawkwood Hollow, ghosts and all, but that didn’t mean I wanted to be its Reaper. That road only led to trouble. Reapers stood on the edge of paranormal society, as a rule, and for most of them, nothing mattered more than their job. They didn’t have friends or families. They certainly didn’t go sneaking around old houses in the hope of getting decent footage of local ghosts for a teenager’s blog.
Even the local Reaper didn’t act like a typical one, come to that. Since he’d retired without an apprentice, nobody else in town was inclined to take his place. I’d spent my first couple of weeks in town on tenterhooks, expecting an ambassador from the Reaper Council to show up at any minute and send in someone to take on the role instead, but I’d got complacent. Maybe I shouldn’t have done. I mean, the place was swarming with ghosts. Someone aside from me was bound to notice the town had slipped through the cracks eventually, and I didn’t look forward to that day with any level of pleasure.
I’d never been good at settling down. The last few weeks in Hawkwood Hollow had been among the most settled I’d ever felt during my time living in the magical world, and the notion of my Reaper powers getting in the way wasn’t a pleasant one. At the very least, an inconvenient awareness whenever anyone passed away would dampen my attempts to blend in, to say the least.
Yet this situation might be a one-off. I hoped it was, anyway. For now, Carey and I walked towards the welcoming warmth of the Riverside Inn.
