***

  I shoulda known sleeping would be a bust.

  The day had gotten steadily worse, and even spending all those hours with Henner hadn’t been able to salvage it.

  Six other houses, all over town, and each one was the same sad story. All the houses were different: new, old, bungalow, two-story, duplex, colonial, ranch, foursquare. Every house was different, sure, but the horrible, gaping void where the spirit of a person used to be was horrifyingly identical. And horrifyingly missing.

  It had gotten real bad as the day went on. I started feeling that awful nothingness standing on the porch, walking up the driveway, turning the corner onto the street. I didn’t know if the sites themselves were getting worse or more powerful, or if I was getting more sensitive to the energies they put off. I hoped like heck it was the former. I never wanted to feel anything like that ever again, and certainly not stumble across it because I took a turn onto the wrong boulevard.

  And the other thing that was the same in every location? That pulling feeling—like something was trying to separate me from my body. Like my soul was trying to be yanked right outta my skin. Cain had also felt the same.

  What had happened to those ghosties? Had they been forcibly punted into the afterlife? Or were they just… gone? I shied away from that thought, in case it triggered what Henner had termed a: panic attack.

  Without Henner there beside me, I probably wouldn’t have been able to handle it. Cain tried to help, to look at things with the eyes of a trained snooper, but he was like getting an itchy blanket thrown around your shoulders when you were hoping for angora. Cain was normally chomping at the bit to get at the crime scene, to make his own deductions, like my favorite investigator of all time, Dr. Quincey, M.D. But I could feel how badly the energies were hitting him, too. We couldn’t hide it from each other since we were in the same body, and that fact just seemed to make both our anxieties worse.

  I kicked off my covers, and changed position for the three-hundredth time, trying to find the magical spot that would let me stop thinking about all the doozies in my life and actually get some sleep. No such luck, though. Maybe I needed a different pillow. A potion or a candle from Poppy would probably do the trick, but when I checked my clock, I realized it was two-thirty-six in the morning—hardly proper calling hours.

  With a dramatic sigh, I sat up. If I wasn’t gonna be able to sleep, I could at least try to clear my head another way.

  The heavy gold ring sat on my nightstand, stamped with a year and some college I’d never heard of. Cain’s class ring. It had been important to him when he was alive, and now that he was a spook, it was the anchor that held him in this world. I probably could have channeled Cain through my body full time, but having him bound to a piece of jewelry that I could take off gave us both a bit of privacy I definitely needed. There was only so much of sharing my body with an uptight badge that I wanted to endure.

  A light t-shirt, some yoga pants Wanda had enchanted to wick away sweat, and I was just about ready to go. I finished lacing up my running shoes, and slid Cain’s ring onto my thumb, the only finger that was close to fitting the band. It wasn’t that Cain was a plumper—he just had much bigger fingers than I did.

  Instantly, there was a rush of cool goosebumps over my arms as his ghostly presence settled into place.

  What is it? His voice was sharp, interested. Is there a new crime scene?

  Cool it, Caper Crabby, I responded as I slipped the house keys into the little hidden pocket in the waistband of my pants. I just can’t sleep, and I’m going for a jog.

  A jog?

  Right. To clear my head. You wanna come with me?

  Looks like I’m already coming with you.

  I frowned. Hey, I can leave you on the counter if you want.

  No, no, I don’t want.

  Chapter Six

  The night air was cool on my skin, and refreshing in my pipes.

  I could feel it blowing away the cobwebs in my thinker too. It was freeing to run, to not have to think, to have nothing but the movement of my body and the faint slap of my shoes against the pavement.

  My love for jogging was new. Wanda had suggested I try it. Actually, what she’d said was: ‘You’re annoying me, take a hike,’ but I’m not much of a woods kinda gal. There ain’t much in the way of wilderness in Hollywood, and recent, less-than-fun excursions in the trees around Haven Hollow hadn’t exactly endeared the woods to me.

  So, I’d tried jogging instead. I’d seen people do it on the tele before, and I’d seen people go past the house in Silverlake early in the morning. It wasn’t something I woulda considered in my first life—I mean, who wants to run around getting all sweaty? If I was gonna exercise, it was going to be dancing all night to a big brass band, surrounded by people.

  But Darla 2.0 was proving to be different to Darla 1.0. And strangely enough, solitude was starting to appeal to me more. After a century of isolation, sometimes big crowds could be overwhelming.

  Cain’s presence was all around me, like I was wearing a shirt borrowed from him, smelling of his cologne. It wasn’t oppressive, though. He was mostly quiet, enjoying the jog the same way I was. If I’d really wanted to go fast, I could have let him take control of my body. He’d mentioned that as a copper, he’d had to train himself to outrun the thugs. Apparently, when he’d been alive, he’d been in pretty good shape. I believed it ‘cause when he was a spook hanging around the house, it was real easy to see the swells of his muscled forearms.

  In the quiet hours of morning, in the near silent streets, something plucked at my senses like the strings of a violin, and just as discordant. Haven Hollow wasn’t like normal towns. It was a territory where supernatural beings could live as themselves, for the most part. It had a kind of energy about it, a bit of oomph you didn’t find in other places. Part of that was ghostly energy, on account of how much activity the spirit world saw.

  Normally, even just walking down the boulevard, there would be ghosties pinging off my radar. I didn’t hear them, exactly. It was more like an awareness I had, like I could feel their presence.

  Tonight, though, everything felt muted—like I was walking around with a blanket wrapped around my head. The energy was low, lower than I’d ever sensed it since I’d set foot in this town. It felt smothered, depleted somehow.

  Uneasiness churned in my guts, and my fingers and toes prickled like pins and needles.

  I’d worked up a bit of a sweat, enchanted clothing aside, by the time I reached the local gas station, so I slowed to a walk, breathing deep.

  You wanna go up William’s drive, or down Clemments? I asked of my ghostly companion.

  Cain was quiet as he considered it. Williams would involve crossing the railroad tracks.

  Railway tracks could be a bit of a hotbed of activity. Not that a lotta people died there, but because the ones who did tended to be fairly… traumatized by the event. Plus, some spooks could anchor themselves to the train, and that meant ghosties that had a lot of mobility and had seen a lot. I had sympathy for them, of course, but it wasn’t something I wanted to risk running into in the middle of the night, alone, and totally unprepared with no equipment but my phone and house keys.

  Good point.

  “Darla?” The voice that called out to me was laced with a hint of an Irish brogue. “Is that you, cousin mine?”

  I turned, a surprised but pleased smile already crossing my face.

  Even in a place like Haven Hollow, you weren’t likely to run into a lot of friends or relatives while gadabouting in the very early hours of the morning. Most the residents kept pretty human hours, in order to blend in with the more mundane occupants of town. The most notable exception being Lorcan Rowe, our vampire dentist who kept late hours, so he could tend to his clients after the regular work day. Because he was also a vampire, he and daytime didn’t really get along.

  And even though he’d called me ‘cousin’, that was just a joke. After I’d come back to life, I’d needed a new identity. My old one was a century old, and listed as dead, so not exactly ideal. Lorcan had saved the day, just like the classy gent he was, and claimed me as a distant relative. Not only that, but he’d gotten me all the papers and identification living in the modern world demanded.

  He was a real marshmallow.

  And he was also a total dreamboat, just a real big six of a man. Tall, blonde, with the prettiest green peepers you’d ever seen. Combine that with the Irish accent, and most gals would be begging for mercy.

  But Lorcan Rowe was firmly in the ‘hands-off’ category, even if I wasn’t already taken by Henner. Because no matter how much she denied it, sometimes violently, Wanda was sweet on him. Wanda was also my summoner, the one who’d granted me my second life, and in my mind, that sorta kinda made her my second mother. She didn’t like that comparison and every time I tried to call her ‘ma’, she said she’d hex me if I did it again. So I didn’t do it again—I just called her ‘ma’ in my own head, so she’d never know.

  I waved to Lorcan, my breathing not quite steady enough to respond.

  “Is everything alright?” Lorcan’s blond brows furrowed. A hint of the predator peeked out from behind those emerald peepers.

  “I’m just out for a jog.”

  That made Lorcan’s eyebrows nearly touch his hairline. He gave me a look, and then pointedly checked his watch. “At this time of night, my dear?”

  That actually got a giggle outta me. “I know, it’s late. Or early? But I ain’t selling you a line. I couldn’t sleep, and I really needed to get out and clear my head.”

  “What’s wrong?” All the jokes and teasing vacated Lorcan’s voice. Just like that, it was serious business Lorcan and that Lorcan I mighta liked best because it was nice to know he cared.

  Just remembering the things I felt earlier in the day made me shiver. I wrapped my arms around my chest, trying to play it off like I was cold, but that just had Lorcan slipping his jacket off and trying to offer it to me. I actually had to scoot backwards with my hands up to keep him from wrapping me in it ‘cause I felt the only fella who could give me his jacket was my main squeeze.

  “I’ve been looking into a case,” I explained. “And it looks like something in the Hollow is destroying our spooks.”

  Lorcan blinked. “Is that even possible?”

  “Apparently?”

  “Hmm,” Lorcan said as he rubbed his chin. “Explain, my dear.”

  I nodded. “Well, it’s like this: the spooks haven’t moved on, they aren’t on a different plane, they’re just kind of… imploded. Disappeared. Snuffed. Rubbed out. Pushing up daisies.”

  “I’m familiar with the concept,” he said, tone dry as a good martini.

  A little huff that shoulda been a laugh escaped me. “Sorry. It’s just left me a bit rattled because you don’t think of ghosties as capable of dying but I think that’s the best way to describe what’s happening around here. It’s like one second they’re there and the next, they’re not.”

  “No doubt. It’s quite unsettling.” Lorcan shook his head and held out an arm to me. “Allow me to escort you home, my dear. You’re a former ghost, after all. Thus, whatever this issue is, it might be a danger to you.”

  I went still. I’d been worried about Cain, but I hadn’t really considered that I might be a target too and as soon as that thought hit my thinker, my whole body got the heebie-jeebies. Would ‘former ghost, now alive’ be close enough to dead that I should be concerned?

  Lorcan musta thought I was hesitating because I was going to turn him down, because he smiled, flashing strong white teeth with just a hint of fang. “I insist.”

  Truth was, I felt safer with him beside me. Vampires were seriously strong contenders in the supernatural heavy weight championship, and I knew he’d look out for me. Even though he joked about me being his cousin, deep down, I think he actually liked the idea. Being a vampire meant he’d outlived (or outdied as the case may be) all his family so I figured it might have felt good to him to have a cousin again, even if I wasn’t technically related.

  I’m not a frigging damsel in distress, Cain groused. I don’t need an escort home from the ball.

  “Put a lid on it,” I muttered.

  “Pardon?” Lorcan asked, frowning at me.

  “Oh, sorry, I was just talking to Cain.”

  Lorcan’s peepers opened a bit wider. “Ah, is the good constable in then?”

  I wasn’t exactly sure what he was talking about or who the constable was (or what a constable was) but I figured it was best just to nod so that’s exactly what I did.

  “And how is our Cain Morgan this fine night?”

  “Oh, he’s just swell,” I answered with a big grin. “He said he’s real pleased you’re escorting me home because…” Then I leaned into Lorcan and lowered my voice like I was telling him a strictly confidential secret. “He don’t like to admit it, but he’s afraid of the dark.”

  Good lord! Cain railed from inside me. Tell fangface you’re kidding this instant!

  I ignored him, taking Lorcan’s arm.

  “Well, you tell Cain I’m happy to escort you both home,” Lorcan answered.

  Darla, I will never speak to you again if you don’t rectify this situation at once! Cain continued and in my mind’s eye, I could see him pacing. I couldn’t help but smile. I have a reputation to uphold!

  “You need to be more careful, cousin,” Lorcan interrupted Cain’s tantrum. “It isn’t safe for you to be out and about at this time of night.”

  “Isn’t Haven Hollow about as safe as it’s possible to be?”

  He cocked his head to the side. “Yes and no. Yes, our kind are welcome here but don’t forget hollows attract all kinds.” Then he looked at me with a smile. “Just be careful, will you?”

  Is he really going to walk us all the way back to the house like we’re a lost toddler? Cain continued.

  Looks that way.

  “How are you finding it?” Lorcan broke into my mental conversation with Cain. “Living alone, I mean.”

  “Oh, well, I mean technically I’m not alone. And Taliyah comes over with the kids pretty regularly.” If my voice got a little pointed on the last part, well that was no one’s business but my own, and maybe a sulking spook who wouldn’t make time for his only remaining family.

  “Ah, that’s quite nice then?” Lorcan asked as he looked over at me, and then his face got this real faraway expression. “I do miss having family around me.”

  “Well, Wanda’s become your family now, right?”

  “Quite so,” he answered as a big smile took hold of his mouth. “And I must admit, I am happier in recent times than I have been for years.”

  “I’m real happy to hear that, Lorcan,” I said and meant it. Then I thought about his question and continued. “I do kind of miss living with Libby,” I admitted. She might be fussy about cleaning, but she was also pretty keen to cook and make clothes, and to mother anyone who held still long enough. And sometimes I missed her mothering.

  Lorcan grinned. “I believe the feeling is mutual. The other night, Wanda was complaining about the amount of leftovers Libby had crammed into her refrigerator. I believe the last offence was a container of meatloaf.”

  Oh, boy. Saliva pooled in my mouth. What I wouldn’t have given for a slice or two of Libby’s meatloaf right then. She made her sauce from canned tomato soup, and I still hadn’t figured out what she did with it, but one thing I did know? It was delicious.

  We were just about to turn down Cain’s street when I tugged Lorcan to a stop. “Wait.”

  He was instantly on alert, his nostrils flaring as if to catch a scent. “What is it?”

  “Up ahead.” I kept my voice real quiet, but I knew Lorcan could hear me as clearly as if I were speaking directly into his ear, owing to his vampire senses. “Do you see?”

  He focused forward, green peepers shining in the street lights like a cat. “Ah.”

  Down the block, drifting along like a faint smudge of fog, was a spirit. Even from a distance, I knew something was wrong. The ghost gal looked almost dazed, her face blank of all expression as she floated slowly down the street, looking like she didn’t know where she was going, only that she was on her way.

  The spiritual energy of the Hollow was off, like it had been depleted, and on my entire jog I hadn’t caught sight of a single spook. Not one boo, or corner of a sheet to be seen. And suddenly, here was a spook out for a stroll, blankly drifting towards the edge of town? Something was up.

  “I’m going to get closer.”

  I slowly approached the spirit and the closer I came, the more I could make out her features. She was young or had been when she’d died. Late teens, maybe early twenties. She wasn’t a ghost I recognized, not that I knew all the ghosties in Haven Hollow... Long dark hair trailed down her back, the ends slightly curled. She was wearing a pretty dress, something long and be-ribboned. I woulda thought she was going to a party if it wasn’t for the way the front corner of her head had been flattened, blood caking her hair to her face and neck.

  “Hi,” I said, keeping my voice gentle as I reached out with my power, brushing it over her, trying to pull her out of her daze. “I’m Darla.”

  No response.

  No recognition, even.

  The ghost just kept drifting forward, like I wasn’t even there, passing right through my arm in an icy wave when I didn’t step out of the way quick enough.

  That was probably the oddest part of the night, I thought to myself as I rubbed a hand over my arm, trying to chase away the jitters. Spooks always reacted to me. It wasn’t always a good thing, or a safe thing, but I’d never had one ignore me, not one that wasn’t trapped in the loop of their death like a video on replay. But those weren’t even real spooks—they were just trapped energy from another time, energy just replaying itself.