He stood stiff as a tree as I pressed against him. “What are you doing, Violet?”

  Throwing myself at him, as usual. “In most cultures, this is considered a pre-mating ritual.”

  The corner of his mouth twitched. “There’s a camera in the corner watching us.”

  “I don’t care.”

  “You should. This is a small town. People talk. A lot.”

  Pushing aside all of the angst about my screwed-up life, I leaned my forehead against his chest and just breathed. The scent of his skin mixed with his fabric softener and woodsy cologne eased some of the tension pounding behind my eyes.

  The second floor bell dinged; we kept rising.

  “Thank you for helping me tonight, Doc.”

  “I haven’t done anything.”

  “You’re here.”

  “I’m curious.”

  “Maybe so,” I smiled up at him, “but you’re here with me.”

  His dark eyes searched mine, then his easy grin surfaced. “Yeah, well, I have a weakness for smart blondes with sexy curves.”

  I nuzzled his neck. “What are you doing later?”

  The third floor bell dinged.

  His hands skimmed down my ribs and over my hips. “Peeling that dress off of you.”

  I pulled away from Doc as the doors opened, loving the fire in his eyes as they drifted down the front of my dress.

  “Ready?” I asked.

  “For you, Boots, on cue.”

  I stepped out of the elevator into the third floor hallway. Halfway to Cornelius’ suite, I realized Doc wasn’t following me.

  A glance behind me found him leaning against the wall, bent part-way over. His eyes were closed, each ragged breath visible in his bent back.

  I rushed back to him. “Doc?”

  “It’s here.”

  “Is the smell as strong as Prudence’s was?” I said referring to the presence he claimed was in the Carhart house.

  “I told you before, Violet; it’s not just a smell.”

  “Humor me.”

  “It’s stronger. Something is wrong.”

  “Maybe we should leave.” I glanced back toward the elevator.

  “No. Just give me a minute.”

  He inhaled deeply several times, his Adam’s apple bobbing with each gulp. I stood by and kneaded my hands. The third floor seemed unnaturally quiet, thank God. The sight of Doc all pasty-gray and wheezing would draw attention.

  “Okay, let’s go.” Doc pushed off the wall, and led the way. “Which room is it?”

  “Just up ahead on the left.” I followed Doc, close enough to try to catch him if he dropped.

  When we reached Cornelius’ room, Doc leaned against the jamb.

  I frowned up at him. “You sure you want to do this?”

  He knocked on the door.

  The sound of footfalls came from the other side. As the door clicked open, I stood up straight and pasted on my happy-Realtor smile.

  “Hi, Corn—” I started.

  Only it wasn’t Cornelius. It was Safari Skipper from behind the hotel’s reception desk.

  She smiled back. “You must be Violet. Master Curion awaits you.”

  I must be Violet? She said that as if we hadn’t already met at the reception desk.

  She held open the door, ushering us inside the shadowed entryway, and then led the way into the chilled suite. Cornelius must have the windows open, or the air conditioner cranked on high.

  I hesitated, leaning back to whisper to Doc, “Did she say ‘Master’?”

  He nodded, sweat beading his upper lip. His eyes looked like black marbles against his too-pale skin, his pupils were dilated.

  “Doc, you should—”

  “Just go.” He nudged me forward.

  I took several steps across the plush carpet and came to an abrupt stop just inside the darkened, in-suite living room. “Holy crap.”

  Every available surface was covered in computer screens, video cameras, and black boxes with blinking green and red lights. In the midst of the digital wonderland, Cornelius sat at a round table with three people I’d never seen in my life. Each sat in front of an open laptop, the screens lighting their faces in an eerie glow—the only light in the room. The tang of heated plastic and electronic bits mixed with a sweet vanilla aroma, undoubtedly from the dinner-plate-sized white candle flickering in the center of the table. The scene alone gave me goosebumps, the blast of cool air from a fan to my right increased my chills.

  Where had Safari Skipper run off to? Who were the others at the table? And why in the hell was Cornelius wearing a Viking-like hat with only one horn?

  Cornelius glanced up from the screen, looking absurd with the horn sticking out the side of his head as he stroked his goatee. “Violet, you came, just as promised.”

  I didn’t remember promising him anything. It was more like an ultimatum.

  Cornelius’ cornflower blue eyes glanced behind me, his smile appearing, making his cheekbones look even more gaunt. “And you brought a friend—excellent. Seven will help us make a stronger circle of power.”

  “Circle of power?” What was this? A casting call for The World’s Greatest Super Friends cartoon?

  “Is your friend a believer?” Cornelius continued in spite of my slack jaw. “Skeptics might skew our results tonight.”

  “A believer in what?” I asked. A stupid question, but I had a short history of misunderstanding Cornelius, and I wanted to make sure we were on the exact same page tonight.

  Cornelius laughed. It sounded like a horse whinnying. My headache clenched my brain. “Ghosts, of course. I told you we were having a séance tonight.”

  No. He had not told me that.

  I would have remembered if he had, and I would’ve worn something much more black and ninja-ish, like everyone else—if I’d actually decided to show up.

  And I would never have asked Doc to join me.

  Oh, shit. Doc.

  Wincing, I slowly turned to look up at Doc and ran headlong into his very dark, very pinched glare. A muscle ticked in his jaw.

  “You should have told me, Violet,” he said. He might have been compressing pieces of the Earth’s mantle into diamonds between his back molars.

  I opened my mouth, but hesitated, not sure where to start in my please-forgive-me speech, especially with Cornelius listening.

  “Don’t waste your breath,” Doc said in a low, disgust-thickened tone.

  After shooting a wary glare behind me, he turned and stalked out the door, leaving me alone with the ghost whisperer and his crew of ghost-seeking ninjas.

  * * *

  After Doc left, Cornelius spent time explaining to me the purpose of all of his meters and gadgets and cameras, and what each of us were supposed to do throughout the séance.

  Safari Skipper and her leather-covered-biker-boyfriend were in charge of the video cameras. They were to make sure all fifteen, spread throughout the whole suite, stayed running while the ghosts came calling. According to Cornelius, ghosts were often shy and had a funny habit of turning off electronics.

  The other two ninjas were fellow hotel guests who had overheard Skipper telling her boyfriend about the excitement several nights ago at the last séance. They looked to be in their early twenties. Both were tall, skinny, and a bit gangly, like they’d been stretched on a taffy pulling machine.

  I couldn’t tell if they were siblings or a match made in heaven, since they sat close to each other at the table, but never touched. They told me their names, which I promptly forgot and decided to go with Thing 1 and Thing 2, in the spirit of Dr. Seuss.

  Cornelius made an excellent Cat-in-the-Hat, with the way he flitted around the room in his kooky, one-horned Viking hat. I hadn’t found the guts yet to ask what the purpose of the hat was, but the night was young.

  During the séance, Thing 1 and Thing 2 would have the job of keeping an eye on all ten of the Electro-Magnetic Field meters set throughout the room, which Cornelius explained were supposed to measure the fluctuations emitted from entities. These EMF fluxes supposedly occurred when entities tried to communicate or interact with someone in our “human realm.” The greater the flux, the stronger the entity, according to Cornelius.

  My role during the party would be just to sit still and listen. When I asked “to what?” Cornelius laughed at me like I was joking, and then gave me a small, palm-sized digital recorder to monitor—as in push the Record button when he instructed, and then make sure it continued recording no matter what happened.

  I’d rather have been in charge of watching cameras. At least then I could move around a little and try to walk off my worries about whether Doc would ever talk to me again after today’s multiple disasters.

  Finally, Cornelius announced it was time to start the séance. Much to my surprise, he didn’t want us to sit around the table and hold hands.

  “Hollywood’s idea of a séance is pure fiction,” he told us and sat down alone at the table.

  I still had trouble understanding which part of a séance wasn’t fiction. But, since he’d reminded us multiple times that skepticism would draw negative energy, and then reinforced his warning with a menacing frown, I kept my big, skeptical mouth shut.

  “Violet, have a seat on the ottoman and close your eyes. I need you to channel your energy with mine.”

  Okay. No problem. I dropped onto the ottoman and squeezed my eyelids closed—that part I could handle. But the only kind of channeling I knew how to do involved a remote control and a television.

  It’s too bad Harvey wasn’t here with me. He would have made this whole scene much more palatable.

  I sat quietly in the dark as Cornelius began to chant in a low-pitched voice. What he was chanting I had no idea, but I was pretty sure it wasn’t English.

  For the umpteenth time, I asked myself why I hadn’t followed Doc’s lead, chased him down, and apologized all over myself.

  Money.

  Oh, right. The green stuff that kept my kids fed and clothed.

  I stifled a yawn.

  I so needed this sale. My gut churned at the “what ifs” that kept creeping up on me in the darkness.

  What if Cornelius decided not to buy the hotel?

  What if I lost my job and had to start over … again?

  What if Doc had just walked away for good?

  Another yawn surfaced. I remembered where I was and swallowed it. My shoulders relaxed as Cornelius’s chants became rhythmic, mesmerizing, hypnotic.

  What was I thinking about? Oh, right. What-if crap.

  What if Ray really was stealing body parts?

  What if I stumbled upon the whole mess in the Mudder brothers’ garage?

  What if Natalie found out about me and … .

  A kaleidoscope of colors whirled around me, then blackness chased it all away.

  … I jerked awake at the sound of the suite’s door slamming open.

  Blinking through my sleep-hazed vision, I whirled around to see if Doc had returned to join the séance.

  But it wasn’t Doc.

  Instead, Wolfgang Hessler stood in the doorway in all of his breath-taking, handsome glory.

  I sprang to my feet, my heart battering my ribs, almost bruising.

  What was he doing here? He was dead. I’d seen him dead, even confirmed his identity to Cooper as Wolfgang’s corpse laid on a stretcher.

  Time seemed to slow to a crawl, my vision tunneling.

  I gaped at the killer who’d tried to torch me in his mother’s house last month. His handsome face began to shrivel and darken, like he was smoldering from the inside out. Wavy blond locks fell from his head in clumps, until only scorched patches of flesh and bone were left on his blackened skull.

  His silk shirt and dark trousers smoldered, small fires breaking out here and there on his body. He stood there in that doorway, staring at me with cobalt blue eyes that seemed to bulge from their sockets as his skin blackened and crinkled around them.

  Heat rolled over me in waves as he burned. Small pops sounded from the flames. The sweet, but acrid smell of burning flesh surrounded me, filling my lungs, making me retch. I tried to step back, but couldn’t. My knees had locked up tight.

  Wolfgang lurched forward. The sudden movement caused his nose to fall off his face.

  I watched with hysterical, horror-filled laughter tumbling from my throat as it bounced across the carpet and rolled out of sight into the bathroom. Tears ran down my cheeks.

  He staggered toward me, his body stiff-legged like rigor mortis had begun to set in.

  “Violet, darling,” he said through rusty sounding vocal chords. Smoke seeped out from his swollen, split lips as he spoke.

  I opened my mouth, but could only manage to whimper back at him. My feet refused to budge, no matter how hard I willed them to get the hell out of Dodge. Shudders started in my shoulders and moved south. An icy layer of terror coated my muscles, freezing me in place.

  The last vestiges of what was Wolfgang disappeared in a lick of flames, except for his eyes. Those blue-blue eyes I’d stared into so many times as I’d daydreamed of what could be. Now, framed in a blackened skull, they promised nightmares.

  Several more lurches and it stood before me, reeking of cooked flesh and bone and smoke. I tried to scream, but only air escaped, no sound.

  “Violet,” it rasped again, then clawed at its face, ripping away strips of charred flesh. It opened its jaws wide enough to grab what was left of the sides of its mouth with each gnarled fist. Then it tore its face in half right in front of me.

  I screamed. Every cell inside of me screamed.

  Wolfgang’s skull cracked like an eggshell, and from its center a pair of horns pushed out, followed by a misshapen slick, black head covered in pustules with two orange eyes that glowed like embers. It sneered at me, showing off its sharp, sword-like incisors.

  My scream died, all of my breath feeling like it’d been sucked from my lungs.

  “Violet Parker.” Its voice was smooth and deep; its accent sounded strange, like a blend of a Southern drawl with a hint of some Slavic tongue.

  “What do you want?” I whispered, my vocal chords tight with dread.

  It leaned in close enough for me to smell its foul, rancid breath. Tendrils of wispy steam leaked out through its snout.

  “GET OUT!” It screamed, spraying bloody spittle in my face.

  I shrieked and stumbled backwards, my body free suddenly from its frozen state.

  Tripping over the ottoman, I tumbled ass-over-teakettle onto the floor behind me. When I scrambled back to my feet, the thing was gone. The pieces of flesh, the smoke, the smoldering carpet, everything. Even the stench was gone, replaced by the vanilla scent of the lone candle still flickering on the table.

  In the monster’s place, Cornelius and his group of ghost hunters all stood around me, slack-jawed, their eyes wide.

  “Holy fucking shit!” Safari Skipper’s biker boyfriend broke the silence.

  My gaze bounced from one to the next. “Did you see that?”

  “What?” Thing 1 asked.

  “Was it a ghost?” Thing 2 asked.

  “It was a …” I paused, stumbling for words. What was it?

  Cornelius stepped forward and grabbed me by the shoulders. “Violet, what did you see? Was it hazy, kind of white? Floating?”

  Not at all. Wolfgang had been crystal clear, in full color, lurching and stinking. I blinked, trying to make sense of what had just happened.

  “Did it talk to you?” Cornelius continued. “Did it mention me?”

  Him? Why would Wolfgang mention Cornelius? A weariness settled into my limbs, making them heavy. I dropped onto the ottoman. “Tell me what happened?”

  “No, you tell us,” Skipper said. “One minute you were over here snoozing away, even drooling a little, and the next thing we knew, you jumped up and started screaming your head off.”

  Snoozing away. The séance. The chanting. The yawning. Oh, Christ. I’d fallen asleep. I covered my face with my hands and spoke through my palms. “I’ve been having trouble sleeping lately. I must have had a nightmare.”

  “That was some messed up dream, lady,” biker guy said. “You have one hell of a set of lungs on you.”

  I lowered my hands and pushed to my feet. “I’m sorry I messed up the séance, you guys. I should probably go.”

  Cornelius put his arm around my shoulders and walked me to the door. “I want to talk to you more about this,” he said for my ears only. “But your eyes are all red-rimmed and you look like you’ve been up for a week straight. You need some rest.”

  “Gee, thanks,” I tried to laugh, but a noise came out that sounded like someone sat on a chicken.

  I tensed as he opened the door, afraid I’d see Wolfgang standing on the other side and it would start all over again.

  The hall was empty.

  “We should do this again, Violet. You are an excellent conduit.” Cornelius shut the door behind us. “Come see me in the morning.”

  “Cornelius, I’m not really in the mood to sit through another séance anytime soon.”

  “No, silly,” he lightly punched my shoulder with his fist, like I was quite a kidder.

  I wasn’t laughing.

  “Come and see me about the hotel.”

  “What do you mean?” My brain was still choking on smoke and adrenaline.

  “I want to put an offer on it.”

  I blinked. Twice. “You do?”

  “Of course. This place is a ghost gold mine.”

  “Did something happen while I was sleeping in there?”

  “Hell, yes. The EMF meters redlined.”

  “Which ones?”

  “All of them.” He leaned forward and pinched my cheek. His weird half-smile almost three-quarters full. “Violet, this place is going to give the Winchester Mystery House a run for its ghost-touring money.”

  “Great.” I tried to sound enthusiastic, but after having the piss scared out of me, all I could muster was another blink. “I’ll see you in the morning.”

  He practically danced back into the room.

  I, on the other hand, shuffled to the elevator like I was ninety, using the walls every now and then when my legs wobbled and threatened to give out. I made it out the front doors without seeing anyone I knew, thank God.