Well, there was a loaded statement if ever I’d heard one.

  Haven Hollow sure had been jumping ever since I blew into town, hitching a ride on Poppy’s grandpa’s pencil case. Wendigos, warlocks, demons, missing kids, and murder mysteries, not to mention the local vampires putting the squeeze on Lorcan to finish turning Wanda. Having one of the Courts of Faerie as backup muscle in case some other mob of ghoulies decided to pay us a visit sure would be helpful.

  I sagged back into my chair. “I guess I don’t really have a choice.” I managed to sound more pragmatic than petulant, so I took it as a win. Maybe all that physical maturity was finally bleeding through.

  Bailey leaned forward, reaching across the table to touch my arm. She bit her lip, something she always did when she was worried. “Darla, if you don’t want to do it, I can always try. I don’t want you to force yourself into something you’re not comfortable doing.”

  “Horsefeathers!” I snapped upright in my chair so forcefully, my libation sloshed onto the table. “You think I’d sit back and let you take a bullet for me?”

  “We don’t know if I’d get hurt.” Bailey’s face settled into stubborn lines, but the corners of her peepers were pinched. Neither of us believed those words.

  Black strands of hair lashed my cheeks as I vigorously shook my head. “No. I can do it. I will do it. I just need a bit of time to get used to the idea.”

  “If you’re sure.” Bailey pulled her arm back, her shoulders drooping as she accepted my decision.

  I wasn’t sure at all, but I’d never forgive myself if Bailey forced herself into a difficult summoning and possession just because I was being a chicken. How could I live with myself if something happened to her? After all, these dames in this room were like my sisters. Well, with the exception of Wanda, who was more like my ma. And maybe Poppy was like an aunt since I’d known her so long.

  “Sure, I’m sure,” I answered.

  “Well, I think we should be heading home,” Libby called out, in her mother hen, jingle-brained sort of way. “Darla’s going to need her sleep for her first day on the job tomorrow.”

  I couldn’t help but nod. “It’s gonna be a doozy.”

  Gin and bubbles burned my throat as I tossed back the last of my drink.

  It was then and there that I made myself a promise: a promise that I could pull this off.

  I could face down Blaise Howard, who’d hired me so he could make sure I hadn’t gone pet cemetery wrong. I could summon a police chief from beyond the veil, and let him possess me in order to help with a real important case. Of course, I still didn’t know what that case was but I had me an idea I’d find out soon enough.

  I could do this.

  No problem.

  Right?

  Ah, heck.

  Chapter Four

  The dodgeball game was still going strong by the time I stepped outside.

  Not only were we celebrating Black Cat Cocktail Club style, but it was also Finn’s birthday, which meant the fellas (and Astrid, Wanda’s cousin) were all reveling with a little game of ball. Finn, the little sweet-pea, was turning thirteen—yep, he was an honest-to-goodness thirteen-year-old now!

  It was a good thing Poppy had a big back yard. The way Roy and Lorcan were whipping the ball back and forth woulda obliterated any window that got in the way.

  Henner, Marty, Astrid, Finn, and RJ, Henner’s friend, stood at a safe distance, shouting encouragement and delivering running commentary on the match. Meanwhile, Wanda watched it all with an air of ennui, drowning her disinterest in her glass of wine.

  When Henner caught sight of me, he broke away from the group to jog my way.

  Even in his forties, Henner Tayir managed to look boyish—yep, the fella was a cake-eater and then some. Maybe it was the grin that almost took in his ears, or the cargo shorts and skeleton sweatshirt. Or maybe it was just a brush of something extra he’d inherited from his grandmother, Betanya the witch. Either way, it was a good look on him.

  I waited for him to catch up, trying to keep the goofy grin off my mug. I was too old to be making a fool outta myself.

  “Hey, you heading out?” Henner called to me as soon as he was in easy earshot. “I’ll walk you home.”

  A laugh burbled up that had nothing to do with the Gin Rickeys. “I’m tipsy, not out on the roof! I think I can make it home on my own.”

  I didn’t have the same tolerance for the tiger milk that I did from my first life, but I lived practically next door to Poppy, in the duplex just beyond the graveyard. It wasn’t no far walk, that was for sure.

  It had taken a few months, but Lorcan had rebuilt the duplex after another one of Wanda’s hexes went off the trolley and filled the building with a fast-growing mold that kept wailing about secrets and murder. An’ I’ll tell ya—mold is bad enough, but when it bumps its gums all day long, talkin’ ‘bout nothin’, you can get real sore. Anyhoo—the whole place needed to be torn down, and that’s exactly what my pa, Lorcan, did. Now that it was fixed, Wanda lived in one half of the new duplex, and me and Libby lived in the other side.

  Zombie or not, Libby was an okay roommate when she wasn’t being a square. She wasn’t rotten or stinky like what you see in the movies (a few of Poppy’s potions had fixed up that problem right quick). Mostly she liked to sew stuff, lecture me about my affinity for the giggle juice, and watch the cooking channel—leftover hobbies from being a housewife in the 1950’s.

  Henner stuck his hands in the deep pockets of his shorts. “I’m just worried you might get hit by a rogue ball. I mean, a ball thrown by a vampire or a sasquatch is going to be moving pretty fast. I’d hate for you to get hurt.”

  His words had me going all gooey on the inside ‘cause I was fairly sure they meant he was carrying a torch for me. I looked up at him and gave me him a ‘Darla special’ which was exactly three eyelash pumps and a smile where the ends of my kisser didn’t quite come up all the way. “I don’t want you to get hurt, either.”

  Henner gave me one of those big, belly laughs of his that was just swell. “Well, I might need to hide at your place until the storm of rubber balls lets up, and it’s safe to go outside again.”

  I shouldn’t have felt so giddy from his flirtation, I was far too old for him, after all, but I couldn’t help the rosy flush creeping over my cheeks. “Come on, then. Let’s skedaddle.”

  We cut through the graveyard, the long grass whispering against our stilts. Being out there with those crumbling headstones and weepy angels gave me the heebie-jeebies, and I was half scared we were gonna get an uninvited visitor of the ectoplasm sort. Yeah, yeah, I used to be a spook, so it was silly that I was scared of ‘em, but that’s just the way things were.

  Walking through that forest of the dead was a bit like moving through a fine mist, the energy of the dead felt cool and effervescent on my skin. Awareness prickled at the base of my skull, a feeling that I could reach out and touch that power if I wanted.

  If I called, the dead would answer me.

  You’d think there wouldn’t be much of a connection to the other side in a graveyard. I mean, sure, it’s full of dead people. But who’d ever haunt a graveyard? I, for one, never woulda. In general, spooks haunted places that had been sources of their greatest passions in life, good or bad. For a lot of ‘em, like me (back when I could float through things), that meant the place where they’d died.

  But, as Wanda explained it to me, a graveyard was a thin spot in the veil between life and death. It was technically for the living, to mourn and show respect to those that’d gone before them. But a cemetery was also full of the dead, and that gave it some va-va-voom, magically speaking. Especially for someone with death magic, like a Blood Witch.

  All I knew was that poking around in one was a bit like having ants marching all over me with freezing little peds. I’d spent most of my existence being dead, so I’m guessin’ I was just hypersensitive to that kinda energy.

  Lost in my own noggin, I drifted closer to Henner. The backs of our paws brushed against each other, and a different, much warmer energy slid over my skin. I sucked in a silent breath and all my lady parts suddenly weren’t concerned with ghosts no more.

  Henner turned toward me, his eyes dark. His smile was softer than before, like a secret shared between us.

  My heartbeat spiked like I’d been doing the Turkey Trot all night. A tingle prickled up my spine that had nothing to do with the creepy feeling of the graveyard.

  Thwack.

  A rubber ball slammed into a headstone that was maybe a foot away from me, before rebounding back toward Poppy’s yard.

  “Holy cats!” I shot straight up in the air, and Henner threw an arm up like he was trying to shield me from any other projectiles that might come flying our way, but he ended up looking like he was about to lead me in a Brazilian Samba.

  “My apologies, but the beast’s aim certainly has something to be desired!” Lorcan’s Irish brogue drifted over to us across the distance. It was just another example of his vampire abilities—his voice could float right far.

  My heart was still pounding in my throat and it felt like I had to squeeze my voice out around it. “You think he’s apologizing to us, or whoever’s grave he just spiked?”

  “Probably both.” Henner glowered back toward the game, which hadn’t seemed to slow down much from the near miss.

  Laughter bubbled up from my chest, golden and champagne bright. It just felt so good to walk with this fella, and know that if I reached out, I’d be able to touch him. Touch seemed like such a simple thing, until you’d lost it for over a hundred very long years.

  Henner turned back and gestured to the duplex.

  “Shall we?”

  He held out his arm to me, an old-fashioned gesture I admired, and I wrapped my arm around his as we kept walking.

  I felt it, the second we crossed back out of the graveyard. Just that little hint of awareness sliding back to sleep. The night air was a little warmer. My muscles, which I hadn’t realized were so tense, relaxed again.

  “So, I was wondering,” Henner said as we reached my front door. “If you might want to go out sometime? I’ve got tickets to the match next Saturday, I thought we could make an evening of it.”

  I wanted to say ‘yes’. I wanted to say ‘yes’ so bad, the anticipation made me pee a little. A night out with Henner would just be the frog’s eyebrows. Add in watching a wrestling match together and I was over the moon.

  I loved wrestling.

  My first sweetheart, Tommy Kilpatrick, he’d been a wrestler, and I’d gone to every one of his matches to cheer him on. There was always this excitement in the air, a live current running through the crowd. The smell of sweat and roasted peanuts as people worked themselves up to a fever pitch, like they could help their favorite fighter win if they just hollered loud enough. Maybe there was something to it, because I was usually one of the loudest, and Tommy had never lost a match with me in the audience. He’d called me his lucky charm.

  Ah, Tommy. He’d been a swell fella. Even a century later and in another lifetime, parta me still missed him.

  I’d toyed with the idea of summoning his spirit to see him again, but it had been so long. After that many years, how could a reunion be anything but an awkward meeting between familiar strangers? He’d had a whole lifetime he’d experienced. Probably gotten married along the way, had some scrappy kids, become an old egg and passed on, having never thought about the dame he’d stepped out with as a young buck.

  He hadn’t gotten stuck haunting the same house with his murderer, frozen in time with nothing but memories of better times.

  I still loved wrestling, though.

  I could just picture it, sitting together in the dark with Henner, watching the match. Pressed together by the crowd packing the stands while we cheered for our chosen wrestler. Oh, it’d be a gas.

  But, then it hit me…

  Next Saturday.

  By then, I’d be carrying a spook around with me. Not just any spook, a dead copper. And not for a little while, either. For the whole next year. So, I couldn’t even ask Henner for a raincheck.

  The idea of sitting with Henner in the stands to watch the match didn’t seem very enticing when I pictured some ghostly gumshoe hovering over it like a total bluenose. And what if things went well? Was I supposed to share the first kiss I’d had in a hundred years with the law squatting in the back of my head? Talk about a mood killer.

  Henner stood there, waiting for an answer, hope filling his chocolate-brown eyes. I opened my mouth to answer, but my thoughts raced too fast with indecision to get anything out.

  “I can’t.” It hurt to say the words. My heart sank somewhere around my knees.

  “Oh.” Henner rocked back on his heels. “Are you busy that day? We could go another—”

  “It’s just… well, it ain’t a good time for me, right now.” If he kept going, I was gonna start crying.

  His face fell, but only for a second. “Right, of course.”

  I wanted to explain, but how do you tell a fella you’re stuck on that you’re about to become the vessel for a dead copper for the next year? Once that happened, I was fairly sure Henner wasn’t gonna want to have anything more to do with me in a romantic way, and that was something I really didn’t wanna think about.

  “Okay, well.” He took a step back, and raised his hand to wave at me and there was definitely something sad in his peepers that hadn’t been there before. “Have a good night, Darla.”

  I didn’t watch him go. I stepped inside, and pulled the door closed with a definitive click.

  “Goodnight, Henner,” I said, when I knew he wouldn’t hear me.

  Chapter Five

  As it turned out, summoning a dead man involved a whole lot of shopping.

  First thing the next morning, I marched myself into Blaise Howard’s office and told him I’d take the job. Considering how much I’d had to talk myself up for the meeting, his response had been pretty underwhelming. He gave me one indifferent head bob and sent me off with Bailey and Steamboat Solis to get the supplies I’d need to summon Cain Morgan’s ghost.

  Bailey also needed to walk me through everything because I didn’t know what the heck I was doing.

  Having been a spook was something of a cheat sheet for being a medium. I could see and sense spirits easily. I’d never called one deliberately, though, just kinda stumbled over them. Everything I’d experienced since I’d become an honest-to-goodness, real dame had been an unconscious use of my new powers, which was all well and good when an earth-bound spook was yelling at you from down the block about getting knocked off, but the late Police Chief Morgan would need a more deliberate touch.

  Bailey was a trained medium with decades of experience in connecting with and summoning spirits of the dead. To her, this was all old hat. It shouldn’t have made me self-conscious, but jeez Louise, it did.

  “I’m gonna make such a hash of this. I just think it’d be better if you did the summoning, so I can’t screw it up.” I slid into the passenger seat of Bailey’s silvery blue Mazda.

  Bailey didn’t start the motorcar once I was inside, just gave me a pointed look. I blinked back at her, waiting for her to chastise me for whining and doubting myself.

  It took me a second before I figured out what she was really after and then I clicked my lapbelt into place real quick like. It wasn’t my fault I forgot about it, though. Never mind the “I been a spook for a hundred years and feared no accident” part. The last time I’d been alive, motorcars didn’t even come with belts.

  Once I was safely buckled in, Bailey started her up. “It wouldn’t be a good idea for me to do the summoning. It might interfere with your connection to Chief Morgan’s spirit, or prevent him from being able to possess you.”

  “Oh!” SS leaned forward, between the front seats. “If you’re nervous, Darla, I have some very pretty citron crystals. They’re excellent for energy work.”

  Bailey glanced in the rearview mirror, her brow furrowed like she thought Steamboat Solis was full of baloney. “That’s very thoughtful, Summer. But most crystals don’t work with spirit summoning very well. Stones and crystals don’t usually have a connection to the other side, since they have no connection to death.”

  SS blinked like her brain had gone on vacation, her long lashes fanning across pale cheeks. “Not even amber?”

  “Well, amber isn’t a stone—”

  “Because amber sometimes has dead things in it. Bugs and frogs and other gross stuff.”

  “Right.” Bailey craned her head around to check her blind spot as she merged into traffic. “But bugs and frogs also don’t really have a link to dead people, so—”

  “What if the amber was used to kill someone?” Steamboat’s voice arched up and she narrowed her peepers, as if she’d caught Bailey in her own trick.

  “I… I suppose that would…”

  “Do you have any amber?” I asked Steamboat, turning round in my seat.

  She curled up her kisser, real thoughtful like. “No. Why would I have amber? It has icky dead things in it.”

  This was definitely the ditsiest of any dame I’d ever met and my lips opened and closed on their own, like my voicebox wanted to tell Steamboat Solis to shut her yap. I turned back around without saying anything, though. I was getting better at keeping my kisser closed.

  The steering wheel creaked in Bailey’s grip.

  We drove in silence for a minute or two before I remembered my original point.

  “I’m just saying, I think raising Cain is more of a ‘you’ job than a ‘me’ job, Bailey.”

  SS snorted in the back seat.

  “What’s so funny?” Did she not see that I was in the midst of a crisis? I was gonna mess up my first job. Whatever important police work Taliyah needed her brother for would go unsolved and it would be all my fault.

  “Raising Cain.”

  I turned and raised a questioning brow at Steamboat, who rolled her peepers like I was the Dumb Dora.