Charmed and Dangerous by Lindsay Buroker

6

Morgen thoughtabout yelling for help, but the insults being thrown back and forth outside, French mingling with Spanish and English, promised Amar was busy. She didn’t want to distract him, and unless ghosts packed heat and could start shooting at her, she doubted she was in any immediate danger.

“Let’s hope.”

She was more worried about Amar and Wendy.

Another creak came from the loft. What had Napoleon seen up there that had scared him?

A thud and a clunk and a yelp of pain came from the street, followed by the sound of another vehicle driving up. Loup reinforcements?

Worried that Amar and Franklin would need her help, Morgen jogged toward the back room. She remembered seeing another door in there.

As she passed the graffiti, the words grew even brighter, almost pulsing with light.

“Yeah, yeah,” she muttered, refusing to be scared. “A decent self-respecting witch ought to be able to handle a mere ghost.”

And she would. Later.

She ran into the back room but halted. The chalk outline was also glowing faintly in the dark.

“Admittedly creepy,” she whispered and gave it a wide berth.

The back door was locked.

“Damn it.”

It should have been locked, as she hadn’t opened that door to come inside, but when she applied the key, nothing happened. Again, she tried her incantation. Again, the knob glowed green and did not unlock.

Morgen blew out a slow breath, struggling for calm. If she had to, she could use her staff to break a window and escape.

But dealing with whatever was haunting the place would be a better solution. Could she communicate with it somehow and ask it to unlock the doors? She had found that incantation that was supposed to force a ghost to show itself.

As she pulled it up on her phone, she headed back to the main room and the stairs to the loft. Before she started chanting ghost-summoning incantations, she wanted to make sure someone wasn’t hiding up there, sniggering at the door-locking tricks. She didn’t know who would play such pranks on her, but it was possible Arturo had a contemporary among the Loups.

Before starting up, she flipped the light switch. Earlier, it had worked, the bulbs not so much as flickering, but now, they didn’t come on.

“Of course not,” she grumbled.

Morgen thought about calling Wendy to check on her, but she started up the stairs first. She wanted to make sure nobody was spying on her from above. A ghost might not be packing heat, but a human could be.

The floorboards creaked riotously with each step. If someone was in the loft, she would never sneak up on them.

After memorizing the ghost incantation, she stuck her phone in her pocket so she could put both hands on her staff, leveling the antlers at the gloom ahead of her. She might need her flashlight app to search, but she wanted to be prepared in case someone jumped out at her.

Her heart thudded in her chest as she drew close to the top. A part of her wished she’d brought Lucky along, if only so she wouldn’t be alone here, but he might have run off with Napoleon. He wasn’t that brave either.

The last stair wobbled under her foot, and she flailed, catching herself on the railing. The old board gave way, clattering to the floor. Off-balance, Morgen lurched toward the wall. The step wobbled again, and she backed to the one below it. Now, her heart had a legitimate reason to hammer.

From her perch, she could see into the loft, but so much old machinery, furniture, vats, and who knew what else cluttered the space that she couldn’t see far. Drop cloths covered many of the items, leaving them a mystery. There wasn’t a clear aisle through the mess, and something hazy made it hard to see to the back of the loft. Smoke? No, she didn’t smell anything like that. Fog?

Special loft fog?

Morgen shook her head.

The creaks that she’d heard earlier had fallen silent. Outside, the werewolves were still shouting at each other, but their voices sounded farther away than they should have, as if Morgen had traveled to some other dimension only partially anchored in reality.

Avoiding the wobbly step, she stepped into the loft. Once again, the floorboards creaked under her weight. Were they thinner than the pine planks below? That would be surprising, given that there were thousands of pounds of junk up here.

She didn’t go far, instead peering and leaning around objects. She risked one-handing her staff so she could pull out her phone and turn on the flashlight. Dust assailed her nose as she shined the beam around, the hazy fog muting its power.

She spotted tiny ferret prints on the dusty floor and realized there would have been human-sized prints if someone had been in the loft recently. There weren’t any. So, the only thing up here was her ghost.

“Or my imagination,” she muttered, then raised her voice to try the incantation to force a ghost to reveal itself. “Under the moon’s magic, deceased soul stuck on this mortal plane, come forth and your presence explain.”

Long seconds passed. Morgen was about to try again when the board under her foot gave way with an abrupt snap.

Her foot plunged through, and she cursed as she flung herself to the side, staff clattering against a crate. She caught herself on the wall, banging her knuckles, and barely managed to keep ahold of the weapon. With shaking hands, she pointed it at the spot that had betrayed her.

A ragged hole was visible, one of the floorboards snapped in half, no hint of the support beams that held up the loft visible. Morgen swallowed, decided she’d explored as much as she would dare, and eased back toward the steps. If nothing else, she’d convinced herself that nobody was up here playing a prank on her. Whoever—whatever—was responsible for this wasn’t a Loup.

“Well,” she breathed, carefully navigating down the creaky stairs, “you’re a witch now, and you know magic exists. You can’t be that surprised when you find it.”

It would have been nice if she hadn’t found it in the building she’d signed a two-year lease for. Grimacing, she crept toward the front door, intending to try it again.

Before she reached it, a breeze whispered through the broken panes, stirring fog that had descended from the loft to create a haze in the main room. A glowing white figure hovered in the middle, a hint of arms and legs and a head, though Morgen couldn’t tell if it was male or female or even supposed to represent a human.

“What do you want?” She pointed her staff at it, though she reminded herself that she might have called the ghost with her spell and probably shouldn’t threaten it. It might be wondering what she wanted. “Is there any chance you can open the door?”

It didn’t speak or move, simply continuing to hover in the air.

Morgen eased toward the door and tried the knob again. It was still locked.

“Can I help you with something?” Morgen figured it would be wise to be polite to a ghost. “I don’t suppose you’re in need of a flea-and-tick charm? Or maybe something to keep hoodlums from throwing rocks through your windows?”

The ghost reacted by drawing back. The legs didn’t move, but the entire body floated toward the rear room.

Help me,a female voice said—or did that sound only in Morgen’s mind? Please, help me.

The voice sounded older, and was that a Russian accent?

“How? How can I help you?”

The ghost paused in the doorway to the back room.

Once again, Morgen thought of the chalk outline. Had it been made of the ghost when she died? Had she been murdered?

With little else that she could do as long as she was locked in, Morgen walked after the ghost. It floated through the doorway and hovered in the back room. Waiting.

Before Morgen reached the doorway, a faint clink came from above. Her instincts shouted at her to get out of the way.

Morgen threw herself to the side as something thudded down, then clanked. Her foot slipped, and she fell, hitting her shoulder on the floor. Gasping in pain, she rolled away and scrambled to come up to her knees so she could defend herself. As she got one foot under her, she leveled the staff toward the place where she’d been standing.

One of the giant meat hooks lay on the floor.

Her mouth drooped open with the realization that if she hadn’t moved in time, the sharp tip might have gone through her head and killed her.