Cara felt a lot braver with Mal next to her. Walking up the hill, she took in the bulk of Egan House, grim and glowering against the night sky. As ramshackle as Mal’s house was, it had a warmth that Egan House lacked.
“You saw the ghost upstairs, in the eastern bit,” Mal said, looking at the house. “Not in the parlor?”
“No. I was in the parlor, but the sounds led me upstairs. By the way, how can you even prove a ghost’s existence?”
“There are ways, but not many that your average scientist would accept. The supernatural tends to screw with technology. When the creatures from the otherworlds step into ours, it creates all sorts of disruptions. Lex says it’s the result of realities clashing. And the effects are to make cameras go wonky and recording equipment fail.”
“How convenient,” Cara noted dryly. “Who’s Lex?”
“My little brother. He’s a genius.”
“And also into ghost hunting?”
“We’re all into ghost hunting. I’ll explain later.” Mal gave her a sideways glance. “What’s reliable is your gut. The feelings you get when you step into a space where the otherworlds are close. All the standard descriptions—a chill down your spine, the feeling of being watched, getting jumpy for no reason—that’s real. That’s humans reacting to the presence of the supernatural.”
“Are you trying to scare me, because you’re scaring me.”
He shook his head. “Nothing’s going to hurt you, Cara. Not while I’m here.”
“You’re pretty full of yourself, you know that?”
“Yeah, I’ve been told.” He grinned, evidently not offended in the least.
Cara opened the door to her office trailer, grabbing the spare heavy-duty flashlight. Mal hovered in the doorway, taking in everything…including the sleeping bag.
She caught his narrowed glance the moment he saw the sleeping bag, but didn’t want to deal with that on top of everything else right now.
“Let’s go,” Cara muttered, pushing him out of the office and locking it behind her.
They reached the door to the house, still open wide since Cara had torn out of there in a panic. Mal tapped the flashlight. “You’re on lighting duty.”
They proceeded upstairs. Cara was relieved that there was no evidence of smoke or fire, because it meant the house was intact. But the flip side of that was she’d definitely been hallucinating, and that couldn’t be a good sign.
In the room where Cara first saw the…whatever it was, Mal looked around carefully. He put his hands on the walls, as if feeling for secret passages.
“What are you doing?” she asked.
“If there were real flames before, the walls would be hot. I’m just being thorough.” He pointed to the east wall. “The old wing used to be over that way, right?”
“Yeah. That wall is an exterior wall now, but it wasn’t meant to be originally. That’s why the bricks don’t quite match on the outside.”
Mal tapped a door on the wall in question. He tried the knob, which was purely decorative at this point. “Odd that they’d keep the door.” The door was a heavy, dark-stained cherry, with a tall mirror inset. The glass of the mirror was darkened with age, and the silver backing was seriously clouded and foxed, the little spots making it very difficult to use as a proper mirror.
Cara moved across the room to join him, regarding the door with interest. “I guess they wanted to keep the look, even though it’s a brick wall on the other side. It’s really sort of amazing that more of this house’s interior didn’t get stripped and end up in a salvage yard. They don’t make doors like this anymore.” She ran her fingers over the carved decorations with the love that any artist feels for work well done.
“You could do it,” Mal pointed out. “You could totally make a door this fancy.”
She felt suddenly shy. “Well, if someone’s got the money they can custom order anything.” Then Cara looked down, seeing a glint on the floor. She bent down to pick up the tool. “Weird. This is my chisel, but I was never in this corner. How did it get here?”
“Maybe you kicked it over here without knowing?”
“Across the whole room? I feel like I would have remembered.” On the other hand, she was freaking out at the time.
GO AWAY.
Cara felt the words resonate in her head, and she looked over at Mal. “Did you hear that?” she whispered, her former panic threatening to return in half a second.
He nodded, his expression going very calm. He maneuvered her toward the carved door. “Stay there, ok. I’m going to keep it away from you.”
Cara stepped back, and Mal moved in front of her. He shook himself a little, flexing his hands open and closed. Getting ready for a fight. She picked up on his tension, even though she’d never been in a fight in her life.
Without warning, a shadowy form coalesced in front of them. GO AWAY. It wasn’t speaking, but the words again shot into Cara’s mind.
Mal didn’t respond with spoken words either. Instead of sensibly getting the hell out of the way, he jumped forward, directly into the shadow.
The logical part of Cara would have said that it was impossible to fight a shadow, or a ghost. But the logical part of Cara was too busy gaping because Mal was in fact fighting it.
It was hard to see what was happening, with the flashlight being the only illumination. She could see Mal, mostly, though parts of him would get eclipsed by shadow every few seconds. Or was it that he was moving faster than normal?
Cara blinked, trying to understand what was happening. It was like Mal was there, and then he wasn’t, and then he was again.
The shadow pulsed and roiled around him, and now Cara heard an incoherent scream of fear and pain echoing in her head. Mal kept lashing out, moving it and himself steadily away from Cara.
“You’re hurting it!” she shouted, half-excited, half-terrified.
Somehow, he was connecting with the amorphous shape, and just as it contracted into a much darker, almost solid form…it vanished. But for an instant, Cara once more saw the shape of a young girl.
Mal stood alone in the middle of the room, in a ready stance, his eyes darting around, ready for anything to leap out again. After a long moment, he took a breath. His skin had a slight sheen, sweat from his sudden burst of controlled fury.
“It’s gone for now,” he said at last. “But I only surprised it.”
“You surprised me,” Cara burst out. “How did you do that? Hit a ghost? How fast are you? Like, you were weirdly fast.”
He shrugged it off. “I practice.”
No way was that the whole story, but Cara couldn’t worry about that now. She was shaking, her body catching on to the fact that something completely beyond her experience had just occurred right in front of her.
“That was real?” Cara’s legs felt watery, and she leaned back against the wall.
Mal made a step toward her, and Cara was about to beg for him to help her up, or even better, hold her and tell her things would be all right. She opened her mouth to embarrass herself, and that was when they heard the crash below.
A giant, unmistakable thump echoed through the house, like someone dropped a ton of bricks.
“What’s that noise?” Cara squeaked after a second of stunned silence.
“That wasn’t a ghost for damn sure. Did you hear that kind of sound before?” Mal asked in a low tone.
“No! It’s coming from downstairs. The parlor! My tools are still out.” Cara took a step toward the door, but Mal put a hand out to prevent her from going forward.
“Hold up. I’m going first.”
If this was what it was like to be around an alpha male, Cara was all for it. Mal moved down the stairs, as alert as he’d been during the fight. Cara trailed after him, happy that he was between her and whatever had made the crashing sound. Somehow, Cara had complete confidence that Mal could take on anything in his path. Before, she said he was full of himself. But what happened upstairs wasn’t bravado. It was cold, competent skill.
Mal paused in the hallway outside the parlor. The sounds were unmistakable now. Someone was moving the heavy equipment closer to the hallway. Cara grimaced, thinking of the cost of the drills and the lathe.
Mal held up a hand, signaling to Cara that she should stop. She halted, very willing to let Mal take the lead on this.
Mal then stepped up into the doorway. “Hey asshole!” he yelled, his voice booming in the echoing halls.
There was a startled silence, and then a shape hurtled out of the darkened room, directly toward Mal.
Cara screamed a warning, but before she could blink, Mal moved so fast he blurred.
She halted in midscream, her brain not able to take it in.
Mal had moved out of the way of the attacker and then sort of swooped around to position himself in the hallway, between Cara and the other guy.
The other guy, still nothing more than a shadow, raised an arm, revealing a crowbar in his grip. He howled, and started to bring his arm down, intent on smashing Mal’s head in with the wicked hook end.
Once again, Mal moved out of the way too fast to be believed, and then rushed the guy, delivering a brutal kick in his chest. The guy gasped for air and dropped the crowbar as he stumbled backward.
He braced himself, preparing to attack Mal. But then he turned and ran.
She didn’t miss it that time. Mal covered the twenty feet like it was two and rushed the other man before he could get out the door. Mal slammed him against the new plywood walls, pinning the guy there.
“Copper piping wasn’t enough?” he asked. “Too bad you chose tonight.”
“You can’t prove anything,” the other one replied in a rough tone.
“I installed a camera,” Cara said as she moved toward the pair, shining her heavy-duty flashlight around the hall.
Mal gave her a single glance that warned her to stay back. She saw that the other guy was struggling hard, and Mal didn’t want her to get hurt if he lost his grip.
She angled her beam of light on the guy’s face. A very familiar face. “Holy crap, it’s Barry!”
Mal grinned when he recognized the man. “Oh, good. I’ve been wanting to kick his ass for personal reasons anyway.”
“Fuck you and your fat girlfriend,” Barry snarled. “You’re not a cop. Let me go.”
Cara didn’t quite see Mal punch Barry, but she saw Barry drop to the ground, moaning in pain with his hands over his face. Blood trickled between his fingers. Mal might have broken the guy’s nose.
“Want to kick him in the balls?” Mal asked conversationally, hauling Barry up. “Great opportunity.”
Cara took a step back. “Don’t want to get my boots anywhere near there, thanks all the same.”
“Then I’ll do it, just to make sure he suffers. Go outside and call 911, ok?”
She nodded, reaching for her phone while Mal dragged Barry outside to the driveway, pushing him down face-first on the crumbly asphalt, with his arms pinned behind his back.
Barry struggled, or tried to, but Mal simply bent Barry’s right arm an inch further and told him to shut up when he whimpered.
Minutes later, the bright red-and-blue flashes of a cop car emerged from the darkness, and an ambulance was not far behind. Thankfully, neither vehicle used its sirens.
Two cops got out of the car, hands on weapons. The driver was a blonde who looked like a poorly disguised superhero, all sleek muscles and a great-fitting uniform. The guy who emerged from the passenger seat was older and bit grayer, but still in shape. The donut stereotype did not apply to these small-town cops.
The female cop looked to Cara first. “I’m Officer Hallihan. You placed the call?”
“Yeah. We found this guy, Barry Field, trying to steal some of my most expensive equipment. I’ve already reported a previous theft from this site. Copper piping.”
Hallihan nodded, and Cara figured that in a town this size, information like that would be known by the whole force. She then looked down to where Mal was keeping Barry immobile. “Mal. Fancy meeting you here.”
“How’s it goin, Hal?” Mal’s voice was casual, but Cara didn’t need to be a genius to figure out that these two had a past. It was in the way Hallihan tucked a loose strand of hair behind her ear, and the way Mal didn’t quite look at Cara as he stood up. Hal and Mal? She almost wanted to vomit at the cuteness of it. Perfect couple.
Barry protested his innocence as the cops hauled him up and cuffed him. However, Cara’s account was damning, and the male cop dryly noted that if a lot of copper piping and wire was found where Barry lived, he was going to have a hard time explaining it.
He shut up then, lapsing into a sullen silence. Hallihan and her partner radioed in that everything was under control. Cara answered a slew of questions, mostly about who she was and why she was there at night and why Mal was with her.
That was a little awkward, but Mal stepped up and took over. “She heard a noise and was smart enough not to investigate it on her own. She asked me to come with, and you know I’m a sucker for a damsel in distress.”
Hallihan snorted at that. “If you both are so smart, why didn’t you call 911 right away instead of going all Scooby Gang?”
“I figured I could handle it.”
“What if this guy had a gun? No matter how good at jujitsu or krav maga or whatever else you do, you’re not bulletproof, Malachy Salem. Next time, call the authorities, ok?”
“Yes, ma’am.”
“And don’t ever ma’am me.”
“Yes, Hal.”
The cops drove off, leaving Cara and Mal standing alone in front of the house.
“Well, that was a weird time. I need a drink. Want one?” Mal started walking down the hill.
“You know her,” Cara said, following him. She could tell when someone was trying to change the subject.
“Hallihan? Yeah. We were in an unarmed defense class last year. I mean, I taught it. She took it.”
“A teacher-student thing, huh.”
“Well, not till after the class was done. We might have gone on a few dates.” He rubbed the back of his neck, not looking Cara in the eyes.
“Might have, as in you don’t remember?”
“As in, I’m not sure they could be called dates.”
“Oh, really.”
“This conversation isn’t going well.”
“Maybe not for you,” she said. “I think it’s very informative.”
They reached the road, and Cara saw the name on the mailbox. “Oh, that reminds me. She called you Malachy Salem. Why are you listed on all my paperwork as Malachy East?”
“East is my middle name,” Mal said, ushering her into the house again. “One of them anyway. And yeah, I fudged a couple details on my application. I didn’t think I’d get the job under my name.”
“You have a record?”
“A few misdemeanors. I sometimes get into situations where things get physical. Fortunately I have a cousin with a particular set of skills.”
“Hacker skills?”
“The less we talk about that, the better.”
She pursed her lips. “I don’t like it.”
“My record?”
“I don’t like that you lied about your name.” For many reasons, she didn’t like it. A flush of guilt rushed up from her stomach.
“I didn’t like it either, and if I could have told you earlier, I would have. And I’m good at my job, right?”
“Yeah. For a liar with no background in construction, you’re all right.” She sighed.
“Want a drink?”
Cara wanted all kinds of drinks, but she shook her head. “I gotta go. It’s late and I’m tired.”
“Hold up, Cara. Go where? Was that a sleeping bag in the office? Tell me you’re not sleeping on site.”
“Hey, I had to make up the cost of the lost copper somehow. It’s fine.”
“It’s not fine at all,” he countered. “No way is it your responsibility to give up your housing just to make the budget, and Egan House doesn’t even have a working bathroom.”
“Not right now. But we’ll get the plumbing sorted in about a week,” she said, looking on the bright side.
Mal leaned forward. “A week in an office trailer with no plumbing? You can stay with me. In this house, I mean.”
“Absolutely not.”
“What? It’s right across the street. And you can sleep in a bed. And use a shower.”
Cara shook her head. “I’m really fine. Now that Barry is out of the way, there’s nothing to worry about.”
“What about the ghost?” The way Mal said it—totally reasonable, as if he were talking about a water main break—made Cara remember all the creepy feelings she got while she was there. Trust your gut, Mal had said. But Cara’s whole digestive system was against her, so how could she trust it now?
“There’s no ghost,” she said, willing it to be the truth. “Maybe Barry somehow made me see something. Like a hallucination induced by a chemical.”
“And you still want to go back there all alone in the middle of the night?”
“Um…”
“We have a perfectly good spare bedroom. And plumbing. And coffee.”
She hesitated, wavering at last.
“Just for a night or two,” he promised. “Let’s make sure Barry doesn’t have partners, ok?”
Her eyes widened. “Yeah, how did he move all that stuff on his own? It would have taken him all night.”
Mal sighed, evidently in relief at winning the argument. “Right. Let’s grab your things from the trailer and come back here.”
Cara nodded, wondering if she was making a gigantic mistake. Not that she thought Mal would take advantage of her. She knew he wasn’t interested, not when he regularly hooked up with women as buff as Officer Hallihan.
But if any of the crew found out Cara was sleeping in the same place as one of her workers, her authority would be totally shot.
“I’ll stay here,” she said, “but no one on site can know.”
Mal gave her a long, considering look that she couldn’t read, but then nodded. “You got it, boss.”