Coffee and Ghosts: The Complete First Season Read online

  “I ... I ...” Nigel surveys the parking lot, the coffee cups. His gaze follows the tree line. I see the instant the memories come flooding back. The chagrin on his face is painful to witness.

  “Oh, God,” he murmurs and buries his face in his hands. “I am so ashamed.”

  Malcolm hugs his brother, but Nigel won’t stop his litany of regret and shame.

  “I don’t know what I’ve done, and yet, I remember it all. I can’t explain it.”

  “You weren’t in control,” Malcolm says. “It was the ghosts.”

  “Oh, but I swallowed them.”

  Malcolm casts me a desperate look. I inch closer. My red and white striped stockings are ruined, so what’s a little more asphalt? I kneel and peer up at Nigel. Then I offer him my hand.

  “Hi, I’m Katy. You saved my life.”

  Now I have the attention of both brothers. And yes, the resemblance is there, although where Malcolm’s hair is a gleaming ebony, Nigel has a shock of pure white. Their eyes are dark, but Nigel’s have the look of a man who has seen far too many things.

  “I ... saved your life?” he says, each word its own question.

  “That thing.” I touch my neck. It’s tender, and I suspect a bruise is already forming. “It tried to kill me. It would have, or taken me over, or something. You crashed into me on purpose, didn’t you?”

  Nigel is silent.

  “You had second thoughts about it, didn’t you?”

  “I don’t know.” The words are rough and honest.

  “I think you did, and you didn’t have to save my life, but you did anyway.” I’m still extending my hand. I nod to it.

  He takes my hand, his skin nearly as warm as his brother’s. A second later, he exclaims, “You’re freezing.” He turns to his brother. “Malcolm, she’s freezing.”

  “I think there’s some tea left,” Malcolm says.

  We huddle around the tailgate and sip the last of Malcolm’s tea, my grandmother turning lazy circles in the steam from the samovar.

  * * *

  We return one last time to Lasting Rest Mausoleum. After Nigel gave up all the ghosts, a few mischievous sprites found their way inside. Apparently, they’ve been nipping at visitors and knocking over the fans. Personally, I think they liven up the place. But a client is a client, as Malcolm points out, especially with our cash flow the way it is.

  On our final circuit through the building, we find a discarded bed sheet, some fishing line, and what looks like a pulley from a child’s toy. The innocuous items feel menacing, but the air in the space smells merely recycled, not devoid of everything, not like before.

  Still, when Malcolm gathers the things, worry carves a frown in his brow.

  “Why bed sheets and bridal veils?” I ask both brothers later in the week. We’ve settled now into a new routine, one that includes Nigel. He lives with Malcolm, and knows his way around a computer. He plans to build us a ghost hunting database.

  To my surprise, it’s Nigel who speaks up first.

  “Sex and love,” he says. “That’s what most of them want, some form of it. Attention, love, acknowledgement, to be desired.” He shakes his head. “Even now, I can hear their chatter. It fills you up, but it leaves you empty.”

  And then he is silent. We’ve grown used to this, having him quiet, his gaze somewhere in the middle distance. I don’t ask him what he sees. I know he will tell us when he’s ready.

  In the meantime, Malcolm and I have an incident at the local law firm.

  “Your grandmother can’t keep doing this,” he says. “Someone will figure it out.”

  “You didn’t.” I have graduated back into jeans, my thighs healed, or mostly so. I’ve added a plaid blazer, but still feel underdressed for the gauntlet of lawyers we will need to pass.

  “How about this,” he counters. “She needs to be careful.” He stops our trek down the sidewalk. “You need to be careful, Katy. That thing—”

  “Is gone.”

  He stands firm in the center of the sidewalk so a mother with a stroller must scoot past us.

  “I can’t get that word out of my head,” he says once she passes. “Vendetta. It wasn’t about Nigel, and I don’t think it was about me. That leaves you.”

  “That thing is gone,” I say again.

  “For now.”

  “Yes, exactly. And in the meantime, we have a job to do.”

  “But—”

  I press my finger against his lips, a quick touch, there and gone. This close, he is all Ivory soap and nutmeg. “Let’s go catch a ghost.”

  To my surprise, Malcolm doesn’t protest. He merely takes my hand and starts walking.

  To my surprise, I don’t mind. Not at all.

  The Ghost Whisperer

  Coffee and Ghosts: Episode 3

  AS FAR AS GHOST ERADICATIONS GO, clearing sprites from Sadie Lancaster’s house almost never varies. I suspect they are the same two sprites, although with sprites, it’s hard to tell. I suspect they hold a certain amount of affection for Sadie since they always return. They don’t mind my efforts to catch them. At least, they don’t mind the coffee I use to do so. All in all, clearing Sadie’s house of sprites guarantees a certain amount of cash flow each month.

  K&M Ghost Eradication Specialists appreciates and counts on that certain amount of cash flow.

  “You know, Katy,” Sadie says to me, hands fluttering. “I’ve been talking to someone who says I should embrace my sprites.”

  “You could,” I say, mentally weighing cash flow against honesty. In my hands, I cradle a cup of coffee, one I plan to place in the master bath. Ghosts of all varieties love toilet humor. You really don’t want one in your bathroom. The mug stings my fingertips and steam rises from the coffee’s surface. In that steam, something glimmers. I may have my first catch already.

  “She says they won’t hurt me,” Sadie adds.

  “They won’t,” I say. “But they will play pranks.”

  Sadie gives her head an emphatic shake. “They’re only trying to communicate. You should know that, Katy.”

  Well, no, they’re not. And no, I don’t know any such thing. True, ghosts have desires, but not in the way most people think they do. None of them want to sit down for a chat. They don’t want to unburden themselves, no matter what you see on television. Like most things supernatural, information on ghosts is very misleading.

  “Anyway,” Sadie is saying. “Mistress Armand—”

  “Wait. Mistress Armand?” My partner—the M in K&M—is Malcolm Armand.

  “Well, yes. I just assumed she’s a sister, or an aunt. Same beautiful black hair and all.” Sadie waves a hand, dismissing my question.

  Aunt. Sister. Imposter? My hands tremble at the thought. Coffee sloshes over the rim. My skin smarts. I swallow back the pain. When I reach the bathroom, I’ll run some cold water over the burn. Now? Now I want to know more about this Mistress Armand.

  Sadie clutches her hands beneath her chin. “She did a reading, right here in the living room.” Her eyes glow. “She knows everything, about Harold, how even though he cheated, he still loved me ...”

  What else would you say to a widow, especially one both grieving and wronged? I sigh, my breath chasing steam from the top of the cup. The sprite is there, waiting to be caught. This one is a tease.

  “Cold reading,” I murmur to myself.

  “Pardon, dear?”

  “I said, the coffee is getting cold. I need to take it to the bathroom.”

  What I need to do is think, and possibly call Malcolm, and catch a ghost. I can do all three in the bathroom.

  I set the cup on the vanity, then return with a Tupperware container. I hold it open next to the rising steam. The coffee is cooling, and the sprite has had its fill.

  “In you go.”

  I don’t even need to scoop up the tiny thing. It floats compliantly into the container, settles at the bottom, and makes no protest when I snap on the lid. I hold the container at eye level and stare through the opa
que plastic.

  “We’ve met before.”

  In response, the sprite thumps the Tupperware’s side.

  Sprite secured, I text Malcolm. Nothing. I call Malcolm. Still nothing. As a last resort, I try the main number of the Springside Long-term Care Facility.

  “Oh, hello, Katy,” the manager says, her voice clear and light and full of humor. “Yes, Malcolm is here.”

  The fact I’m speaking with the manager—and she sounds so happy—can mean only one thing: Malcolm is holding court. The Springside staff and residents love him. Or rather, most of the female staff and residents love him. For a man so obsessed with our cash flow, he certainly doesn’t mind spending hours at one of our few gratis accounts.

  In the background, a cry goes up, a gasp as if a magician has pulled a bouquet of flowers from a hat and presented them to someone in the audience. Since Malcolm knows a handful of magic tricks, this is entirely possible.

  The manager laughs. “Oh, his visits brighten everyone’s day ... yours do too, Katy, I didn’t mean—”

  Whenever I visit, I only manage to mess up everyone’s bridge game. So no, I doubt I’m a day-brightener.

  “It’s kind of important,” I say. “Could you put him on the line?”

  The manager sets the phone down. Sounds filter through the receiver, chatter and laughter. Someone squeals. When Malcolm picks up the phone, his voice is tinged with warmth.

  “Malcolm Armand.”

  “It’s Katy.”

  There’s a pause in which I hear him mentally berating me. Yes, I know. I’m interrupting the Malcolm Armand variety hour and all his fun.

  “Do you have a sister?” I ask.

  This is a fair question—and not out of the blue as you might suspect. Up until a few weeks ago, I never knew Malcolm had a brother, one who swallows ghosts. It’s entirely possible his family tree includes a medium.

  “No.”

  “An aunt, then? Or a female cousin?”

  “Maybe a second cousin. Or is that first cousin, once removed? I can never remember.”

  “How about a mistress? Do you have one of those?”

  “Katy, what the hell is this about?”

  “Someone is in town. She claims to be—” I pause and glance at Sadie, eyebrow raised in question.

  “A medium between this world and the next,” Sadie rattles off. She sounds like she’s parroting an infomercial.

  “A medium. She’s been advising Sadie.” Possibly for a great deal of cash, but I’ll investigate that later. “And she calls herself Mistress Armand.”

  “Seriously, Katy,” Malcolm says. “Assuming I had a mistress, which I don’t, would she really go around calling herself Mistress Armand?”

  “No .... I was just trying to get your attention.”

  The line goes silent, and then his laugh fills my ear. It’s a rich sort of laughter that—if you could brew it and pour it into a cup—would taste like a sweet, dark roast.

  “You’ve got it,” he says, humor returning to his voice. “You always do.”

  My throat tightens. I’m not entirely certain what he means by this. However, I am certain I won’t ask. Or at least, I can’t ask. My throat won’t let me. Through the receiver I hear the volume of the chatter in the facility drop, a collective hush that sounds like the rushing of air. Malcolm sucks in his breath.

  “Uh, Katy, do you know what Mistress Armand looks like?”

  I repeat the question. It’s barely out of my mouth when Sadie hands me a trifold brochure.

  “Long, dark hair,” I say.

  “Check.”

  “Could be anywhere between twenty-nine and forty-nine.”

  “Check.”

  “Long, flowing robe-like thing?” I add.

  “I think they’re called kaftans.”

  Yes. Leave it to Malcolm to know the correct term.

  “Whatever,” I say. “She’s wearing a pink and yellow one in her photo. It’s fancy.”

  “Blue and green. But yes, and it looks expensive, like it’s made out of silk.”

  “It is made out of silk.”

  I jerk around because the lilting female voice seems to come from both the phone and the air around me.

  “Speaker,” Malcolm murmurs.

  I mute my own phone and then press it close to my ear, unwilling to miss a single word of this exchange.

  “I hear we share an interest in the supernatural and a surname,” that same lilting voice says. “I am Mistress Armand.”

  “Malcolm Armand.”

  He sounds impressed, or like he’s trying to impress. From the brochure, her image stares up at me. I assumed Photoshop. Perhaps I assumed wrong. My throat clogs again, the taste of it thick and salty. Don’t be stupid. Malcolm is your business partner. He’s free to impress anyone he likes.

  If only I weren’t so impressed.

  “We need to embrace our otherworldly friends,” Mistress Armand is saying. Her voice wavers in and out, like she’s turning as she talks.

  “Physically speaking,” he says, “that’s not possible.”

  Her laugh tinkles as if he’s uttered the funniest thing ever.

  “But you do catch them, don’t you?” she says. “They must have some substance.”

  Well, yes, but not enough for a hug.

  “And then you just set them free?” she asks.

  “Of course.” Malcolm’s voice is sturdy and sure. “We are strictly a catch and release operation.”

  “But, in some ways, isn’t that just as cruel?”

  Cruel? My ears strain to hear what Malcolm says, what she will say.

  “I don’t see how,” he says. “We set them free.”

  “Unmoored, unprotected, lost, in all that air? It’s like releasing a laboratory animal or a house pet into the wild. Without their familiar surroundings, they’re unable to survive.”

  Worry pings inside me. I’d never thought of what we do as deliberately cruel. It’s a service, really, for both humans and ghosts. Most ghosts are more than willing to be caught. Many, like Sadie’s sprites, find their way back to haunt yet again. My grandmother—who taught me everything I know about ghosts and ghost hunting—always said we were doing everyone involved a favor.

  “I don’t think that’s true,” Malcolm says, but the conviction in his voice bears cracks. At least, I can hear them even if no one else can.

  “Here.” Something rattles, something that sounds like paper, quite possibly a replica of the brochure Sadie handed me earlier. “I’m holding a séance tonight. Bring your little partner.”

  Little partner?

  “Cups of coffee and Tupperware?” She snorts a laugh, one that does not tinkle, thank goodness. “Come tonight and watch how a real ghost whisperer does it.”

  * * *

  Malcolm is not at our office by the time I arrive there, but his brother Nigel is. Nigel, who is also an Armand. Nigel, who knows a thing or two about ghosts, even if those things came from swallowing them. He’s recently recovered from his addiction to that. Although sometimes his eyes glimmer, like he’s contemplating a tasty sprite. He is also our resident computer expert. I hand him Mistress Armand’s brochure.

  “Whoa.” Nigel runs a hand through his pure white hair. “She’s … intense.”

  “A relation?”

  “Not that I know of, but—” He shrugs. “The Armand family tree is kind of scattered.”

  He studies the brochure for a moment, then glances up, dazzling me with a rare smile. “She has a domain name. Where there’s a domain, there’s a trail. Let’s follow it.”

  His hands fly over the keyboard while I pull up a chair to watch.

  “Here we go,” he says. “Looks like she maintains a static webpage. Not much here.”

  I lean forward for a glimpse of Mistress Armand’s website.

  Let Mistress Armand whisper the ghosts from your life. Guaranteed. Effective. Heal yourself and watch the ghosts flee.

  I roll my eyes.

  “Not impre
ssed?” Nigel asks.

  “Not really. She knew all about Sadie’s marriage, and how Harold cheated on her, and probably how he died, too.”

  “How did he die?”

  “In bed, with another woman.”

  Nigel cringes. “Really? Poor Sadie.”

  “Do you think she researches a town,” I say, “then uses that as a starting point for cold readings?”

  Really, it wouldn’t be that hard to scan the newspapers for tidbits and then ask a few questions around town. Harold Lancaster’s obituary was coy, but if you knew what to look for, you could read between the lines.

  And although I haven’t met her, Mistress Armand strikes me as the sort of person who knows how to read between the lines.

  “Probably,” Nigel says. “You can find out almost anything on the Internet these days.”

  “But why use your last name?”

  “To get our attention?” A new voice joins the conversation.

  Malcolm stands in the doorway to the conference room, which also doubles as Nigel’s work area.

  “What’s your take on all this?” Nigel asks.

  Malcolm gives a half laugh and shakes his head.

  “Is she …?” Nigel points to Mistress Armand’s portrait. “In person?”

  “Oh, yeah, and then some.”

  “What?” I demand. “She’s what?” I glance from one brother to the other, but neither one will meet my gaze.

  Nigel clears his throat. “Anyway, here’s the thing about having a domain name. Even though her registration is private, we can take a trip in the Internet Wayback Machine to see if she’s always been Mistress Armand.”

  He clacks the keyboard some more. Then, in triumph, he pushes back from his desk, fists raised in the air. “Lady and gentleman, meet Mistress Ramone.”

  Malcolm leans over one shoulder. I take the other. The website is unchanged except for the last name in the center of the screen.

  Nigel peers up at his brother. “We should get on the ghost forums, see if anyone is chatting about her.”

  I almost never bother with the ghost forums since anything there is either completely wrong, or so filled with hyperbole it might as well be. But in this case, maybe it’s just what we need.